WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[Gagman 66]

bettyjoan,

While I like OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS, I personally feel that the follow up OUR MODERN MAIDENS is a better movie. The latter title is also in far superior condition.

Both features have the Vintage Metro-tone scores, and they are quite excellent. I LOVED YOU THEN AS I LOVE YOU NOW, became a major Hit-tune from the OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS scoreing track.

Alison,

Have not seen THE DOLL, but I am looking forward to it. I have heard good things concerning THE BLUE LIGHT.

Roger,

The Thomas Meighan title sounds very interesting. I know some ladies who would like to see anything with this guy. Where did you find this movie, and what kind of print quality is your copy?

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I watched Sidney Franklin's Quality Street (1927) with Marion Davies & Conrad Nagel. This is a little comedy which starts out in very nice and spirited fashion with Marion being courted by the local doctor under the eyes of the town's gossips. Alas, the second part of the film with the return of the doctor is a bit disappointing, losing its momentum... Worth watching only if you are a fan of Marion's antics!

[drednm]

In 1927 and 1928, as the silent era was coming to an end, Marion Davies turned out seven films, not counting the abandoned FIVE O'CLOCK GIRL. In 1929 she made the talkie plunge in MARIANNE, her first starring talkie.

In those 7 films Davies played an amazing array of characters in SHOW PEOPLE, THE PATSY, TILLIE THE TOILER, THE RED MILL, THE FAIR CO-ED, THE CARDBOARD LOVER, and QUALITY STREET. Few silent-screen actresses could have produced so many terrific films in a 2-year period. Of these only TILLIE remains hidden away in an archive somewhere; the other six films are available on DVD or VHS.

QUALITY STREET is based on a play by James M. Barrie and was remade as a talkie for Katharine Hepburn in 1937. This silent version is terrific in its costumes, sets, and of course in Marion Davies in the dual roles of Phoebe and Livvy. Phoebe is about to be engaged to Conrad Nagel when he suddenly goes off to the Napoleonic Wars. Years later he returns to find Phoebe an old maid. Furious that he should find her old, she masquerades as her pretend niece Livvy and captures his romantic attentions.

Essentially playing three characters, Davies is just wonderful as the hopeful young Phoebe, the plain and worn-out Phoebe who runs a school, and the kittenish Livvy. Nagel is solid as the suitor. Helen Jerome Eddy plays Susan, Kate Price is Patty. Flora Finch, Margaret Seddon, and Marcelle Corday play the busybodies.

Davies proves once again that she was a fine actress and a super comedienne. She's a delight here and dominates every scene she's in. During this period she ranked among the top FIVE box office stars (with Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, William Haines, and Norma Shearer) for MGM but still the urban legends persist about her unpopularity and lack of talent. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[charliechaplinfan]

Gagman, it's good to have you back on line

[feaito]

Yesterday I re-watched Mae West's "She Done Him Wrong" (1933), a very good Pre-Code; the print included in the new DVD release is quite good (and vastly superior than the one I had before, copied from an old TV airing) and the R. Osborne intro is always a plus. I still prefer "I'm No Angel" (1933) though as Mae's finest and funniest film.

[myrnaloyisdope]

Yesterday I re-watched Mae West's "She Done Him Wrong" (1933), a very good Pre-Code; the print included in the new DVD release is quite good (and vastly superior than the one I had before, copied from an old TV airing) and the R. Osborne intro is always a plus. I still prefer "I'm No Angel" (1933) though as Mae's finest and funniest film.

I watched She Done Him Wrong a couple weeks ago and was pretty disappointed. For a 60 minute film it has a lot of filler. The only thing it has going for it is Mae West's wisecracks, some of which are very funny, but she's not in it all that much. I also find it weird seeing Cary Grant in his early roles, because I expect him to do something really cool or witty, and then he just plays it completely straight.

[jdb1]

Several of West's very early films are based on her stage plays (written by and starring her) and represent Hollywood's attempt to censor her work. Most of these movies are changed so much that they are miles away from the intent of the originals.

She Done Him Wrong was based on West's "scandalous" Broadway play Diamond Lil, but with most of the "scandal" taken out. Maybe West poured it on a little too thick in these movies in an attempt to compensate for the weakened plots and dialog.

Also bear in mind that before some really perceptive producer or director figured out what "Cary Grant" was all about, he was just one of many other tall, dark, handsome faces and bodies on the screen.

[Synnove]

"If Mae West you like, or me undressed you like, why, nobody will oppose..."

Mae West was one of the first people to give Cary Grant a real chance, wasn't she? I've heard that she helped him a lot in the beginning of his career.

Like Fernando, I also prefer I'm no Angel to She Done Him Wrong. I loved the courtroom scene in I'm No Angel. It's such a wonderful precode. Mae West could lay it on a bit thick, but she could also be really funny.

I saw Picadilly the other day. It's well made, with striking camera work, well directed by Dupont, but it's Anna May Wong's film. Anna May Wong plays a kind of femme fatale, a very poor woman who hurts a few too many people in her climb to the top. This role doesn't require her to show the kind of depth of emotion of, for example, The Toll of the Sea, but requires her to be hard, intelligent and irresistable, which she is.

This film has a lot of precode elements. There are numerous references to the nature of Shosho's (Anna May Wong) relationship with her boss Mr Valentine. She has to "dance for him in private" in order to get the job as a dancer, for instance. The film also deals with interracial relationships. It's frank about the social stigma involved, but also about the fact that people have those urges anyway, and it even suggests that things aren't the way they are usually depicted in the media: in one scene a white woman seduces a black man and convinces him to dance with her, instead of it happening the other way around. She gets thrown out, but not before she gives everyone a piece of her mind. That part made me really wish I could read lips. It's a great movie, I loved it.

[charliechaplinfan]

I know what you mean about Cary in these early roles. There are plenty of them out there, it took him a few years to develop into Cary Grant.

I've read from two different sources that Cary didn't like Mae West. He credited her with being an interesting study and he was able to learn from her but she was a scene stealer and not somebody who was easy to play opposite. I think she also took the credit for discovering him, which wasn't true he'd starred opposite Marlene Dietrich before Mae.The same sources also said that he wasn't the kind of performer to criticise other performers. It was just Mae West he didn't take to.

I liked Anna Mae as Shosho in Picadilly, it's her film.

[feaito]

Like Fernando, I also prefer I'm no Angel to She Done Him Wrong. I loved the courtroom scene in I'm No Angel. It's such a wonderful precode. Mae West could lay it on a bit thick, but she could also be really funny.

The courtroom scene is priceless!!

[srowley75]

I've been watching the Kino on Video restored edition of Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler in the past few days. I still have about a half-hour to go before I finish it, but I've enjoyed every minute of it. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is very good as the devilish title character, a psychiatrist and master of disguise and hypnosis who uses his power to bend the wills of others. Among other things, Lang's early films are known for their legendary set design, and this picture is no exception. Even though the movie clocks in at longer than 4 hours, you'll no doubt enjoy every minute of it.

Speaking strictly in terms of directors who had/have terrific sense of narrative drive, Fritz Lang was surely one of the ten greatest. Of the Lang pictures I've seen thus far (and with this one, I'll have seen everything available on DVD), I've yet to view one that I would call a snoozer. Even his middle-of-the-road films like The Blue Gardenia and Western Union will keep you interested.

-Stephen

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I watched A. Crosland's The Beloved Rogue (1926) with John Barrymore and Conrad Veidt. This is one of the multiple films about French poet François Villon. All of them offer a very fictionalized version of his life; for a very good reason: hardly anything is known about the poet's life (like that of William Shakespeare).
We are in Paris in the XVth century with King Louis XI (C. Veidt) on the throne. (He seems to get a really bad press in American movies while historically he was a very good king in extremely difficult circumstances; Preston Sturges' script for If I Were King is certainly nearer the truth!). François Villon is a full-blooded thief who writes verses. He meets the beautiful Charlotte de Vauxcelles far above his station, but decides to make her his wife. Paris is surrounded by the armies of the powerful Duke of Burgundy....
This John Barrymore vehicle is very hansomely decorated by William Cameron Menzies. Conrad Veidt offers a very amusing performance as Louis XI. There are some very nice stunts (if you want more details have a look at Brownlow's Hollywood where Fred Parry explains how he was thrown in the air! ). Overall, this is the best John Barrymore silent I have seen so far. It's far better than the turgid When A Man Loves, an appalling version of Manon Lescaut (with a happy end??? ). I still prefer If I Were King because Preston Sturges' script offers a better understanding of the time as well as the great divide between the king's court and the people.
A nice silent.

[charliechaplinfan]

I watched The Red Kimona a film produced by Mrs Wallace Reid. After Wallace died she made a film about drug abuse and then moved on to films about other social problems. The Red Kimona deals with the problem of women being removed from their families on the pretext of getting married only to be left high and dry and forced into prostitution far away from her home.

Priscilla Bonner played the leading role. It told her story, her shame and her trial for the murder of the man who had led her to this life. It was a very touching production. The only odd thing for me was the introduction by Mrs Wallace Reid who came across as a school marm hectoring her students but it's a very different time nowadays.

An interesting historical curio.

The I watched The White Hell of Pitz Palu it was long running to 133 minutes and the star is the mountain itself. I wondered if I would have to cut it down into two nights viewing seeing as it was a film about monutaineering but I was completely drawn into it and watched it from start to finish transfixed.

I have had some experience of a couple of high mountains in Austria, one of them a glacier and they are foreboding places, eerie almost. I didn't feel at all secure whilst I was on the glacier. Nitpicker as I am but they were not wearing enough clothes when they were up that mountain. I was up a mountain in July and it was cold. Leni Reifenstahl only had a blouse and skirt when staying at the hut 3000m up the mountain.

It is a beautiful movie, mesmerising full of a sense of impending danger. Something can be so beautiful, like Pitz Palu an so dangerous. I've watched modern movies of this kind and they haven't held my attention. This film held my attention because I'm in awe of how they got their shots and of how these people survived on the mountain and more importantly how they were rescued when everything had to be done of foot.

A breathtaking movie

[myrnaloyisdope]

I recently have watched several Joan Blondell films, all of which I enjoyed.

Alfred Green's Union Depot was probably the best of the bunch. It's fast, furious, fun Grand Hotel knockoff set in a Train Station. Blondell plays a down on her luck chorus girl trying to get the money for a ticket to Salt Lake City, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a vagrant who becomes her knight in shining armor. Along the way you have a creepy old man with a fondness for Joan Blondell and dirty books, a violin case full of counterfeit money, floozies, fistfights, and murder. Blondell doesn't do much but look sad, but those big eyes are magnetic. It's a really solid film, and the direction is very good.

Mervyn LeRoy's Big City Blues was another fast and furious ride, clocking in at just over an hour. Eric Linden is a hayseed with 1100 dollars who moves to New York City and gets taken for a ride by pretty much everyone, well except for Blondell who is streetwise and tough but with a good heart. Linden and Blondell get accused of murder after a brawl breaks out at a wild party featuring a very young Humphrey Bogart. Linden is very good as a hayseed, and it's too bad he never got a chance to shake his being typecast due to his baby-face.

The Crowd Roars is an early Howard Hawks auto racing film with Blondell, James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, and the aforementioned Linden. It's your typical Hawksian story of manliness, action and redemption. Cagney is a star driver, and Linden as his kid brother who wants to become a driver. Cagney tries to hold him back, but the kid ends up being better than him, which precipitates Cagney going down the tubes. Dvorak and Blondell play the respective women of the two men. There's some great action sequences, and all the performances are solid, but it's not one of Hawks best, though it's definitely quite watchable.[/b]

[traceyk]

Watched the Robert Montgomery birthday line-up yesterday and was disappointed in "Strangers May Kiss." Well, the ending anyway. Talk about a double standard! It was ok for the reporter to be married and still sleep with Shearer (and who knows how many others) but when she turned the tables on him, suddenly she's no good??? And she believed him? Silly girl. She should have married Robert Montgomery if she married anyone.