WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[knitwit45]

Hey Dan, not to go off subject, but when are we going to see another cover of Liberty magazine? We know the hero is back to work, and everyone is congratulating him, but what happens next?

Thanks!
Nancy

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just watched Female, Someone mentioned on here that it has an objectionable ending and I have to agree. I'm all for romantic films but a woman who potentially throws everything away for the right man, all the power and influence she's built up, her workers security. I won't say anymore I don't want to spoil it too much. I did find the majority of it really watchable though, a different take on the female boss and I should imagine quite groundbreaking for it's day. I liked Ruth Chatterton she's a good actress.

From my seat on the floor, FEMALE is Exhibit A that pre-code films have been oversold in the last 15 years or so. Since the rediscovery of the pre-code era, FEMALE has been viewed as drama, even as a feminist tract -- something it was never meant to be. Critics and audiences in 1933 correctly saw it as a comedy -- it's written, acted, and directed very broadly, stopping just short of farce. If you watch it that way, the ending makes perfect sense.

And besides, doesn't William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew have the same kind of ending as FEMALE? So, too, does the Greta Garbo film QUEEN CHRISTINA. And that last one's based on history . . .

Face it, the basic story has quite a pedigree . . . I've even seen it played out in the lives of two close female friends of mine -- one of whom I worked for. (I can appreciate George Brent's point of view, too!)

Even allowing for the fact that it's a comedy, it played false to me at the end. Perhaps it was a faling in the screenplay. The Taming of The Shrew I can see the comparison but for me, it works. Female is still a film worth viewing, it's a unique film of it's time.

[feaito]

Very Interesting viewpoint on "Female" Dan. Still, I'd have preferred another ending. The first half of the film is much more interesting I think.

I watched "Emma" (1932), a quite engrossing drama starring the marvelous Marie Dressler and Jean Hersholt. Ms. Dressler was a first class pro and I'm so glad that she was "rediscovered" by MGM during the early '30s and became a star. The film is completely hers. Richard Cromwell is great as Hersholt's finest son and Loy is good as his snooty, pompous sister. The scenes which show Dressler and Hersholt at the train station and in Niagara falls are the most endearing.

I also saw Norma Shearer's early talkie "Let Us Be Gay" (1930). She and Marie Dressler are the best of this film. The film is rather stilted, but much better than "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" (1929). Rod La Rocque has a fine deep voice, but does not impersonate his role of Norma's estranged husband convincingly. He's quite inexpressive. Gilbert Emery comes off much, much better as a devil-may-care character who tries to romance Norma. In the first scenes Norma plays very well a dowdy housewife, who later becomes a Social Butterfly. Marie Dressler is quite funny as a British Dowager and Hedda Hopper plays an affected society matron who becomes jealous of alluring Shearer. Definitely worth watching.

Thanks Carrie and April!!

[drednm]

I watched THE SOUL OF THE BEAST this weekend.... a 1923 film starring pretty Madge Bellamy as a circus girl, Cullen Landis as a lame violinist, and Noah Beery as the villain.... there's also an elephant.

[myrnaloyisdope]

there's also a elephant.

Sold.

[Gagman 66]

Ed,

I haven't seen to much of Madge Bellamy before. In-fact the only films I can think of are LORNA DOONE, and THE IRON HORSE. But I must have saw one or two others besides those? Was the film good? What did the print look like?

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I watched Lewis Milestone's New York Nights (1929) with Norma Talmadge & Gilbert Roland. It was Norma's first talkie. The story revolves around a musical star, her playboy husband (G. Roland) and some of the gangster world around. The film is very hansome looking thanks to Wm Cameron Menzies's sets and Ray June's cinematography. It doesn't look too static for such an early talkie; there are even some interesting tracking shots. But -and that's a big but!- the actors are very stilted in their delivery as if they were practicing for a dialogue coach during an elocution class.... Instead of 'talking natural', they sound desperately stagey. Norma's voice is perfectly alright, but, she is very self-conscious when she speaks, so is Gilbert Roland. A great shame, but worth investigating if you are interested in early talkies.

[drednm]

Jeff the print is ok but not great and has, no surprise, a terrible music score. Still worth a look for a cute film that doesn't overplay its hand. And it sure looks like Bellamy up on that elephant and doing tricks.

Ann H. I liked NEW YORK NIGHTS and was surprised to hear Norma Talmadge NOT have the terrible NEW YAWK accent I had always heard about. The film is much better than her followup and final film DuBARRY, WOMAN OF PASSION. This film disproves another of the great Hollywood legends about the failures of great stars to make the transition to sound.

Norma would have been about 36 when she made NEW YORK NIGHTS.

[MichiganJ]

Watched Lady of the Night (thanks, Jeffrey), a programmer that features the beautiful Norma Shearer in a dual performance playing a judge’s daughter, and, more interestingly, the daughter of a convict the judge “sent up”. The pedestrian script doesn’t explore their relationship, and instead is a simple love-triangle, with a happy ending neatly provided to all. While the film isn’t that great, Shearer’s performance is quite fun, especially when she’s the gum-chewing spit-curl wearing Molly. Shearer’s obvious affection for this character is infectious, and makes the film very worthwhile viewing. The introduction to the film included the interesting tidbit that Joan Crawford was Shearer’s stand-in, during the two-shots, always shooting Crawford from behind (her best side ).

[Synnove]

I've just watched Female, Someone mentioned on here that it has an objectionable ending and I have to agree. I'm all for romantic films but a woman who potentially throws everything away for the right man, all the power and influence she's built up, her workers security. I won't say anymore I don't want to spoil it too much. I did find the majority of it really watchable though, a different take on the female boss and I should imagine quite groundbreaking for it's day. I liked Ruth Chatterton she's a good actress.

From my seat on the floor, FEMALE is Exhibit A that pre-code films have been oversold in the last 15 years or so. Since the rediscovery of the pre-code era, FEMALE has been viewed as drama, even as a feminist tract -- something it was never meant to be. Critics and audiences in 1933 correctly saw it as a comedy -- it's written, acted, and directed very broadly, stopping just short of farce. If you watch it that way, the ending makes perfect sense.

And besides, doesn't William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew have the same kind of ending as FEMALE? So, too, does the Greta Garbo film QUEEN CHRISTINA. And that last one's based on history . . .

Queen Christina is an entertaining movie, but it has very little to do with history, Coffeedan. The real Christina had many different reasons for abdicating, but as far as I know, there was no handsome Spanish envoy involved. Nor did her career as a politician and a public figure end with her abdication.

Norma Shearer was a pretty good actress, wasn't she? Of course her marriage to Irving Thalberg helped her career, but it seems to me that she had plenty of things going for her anyway. I long to see her in He Who Gets Slapped, and Marie Antoinette.

[Ann Harding]

Tonight I got to see a marvellous 35 mm print of Mitchell Leisen's Cradle Song (1933) with Dorothea Wieck (right) and Evelyn Venable (left). It was Mitchell Leisen's first feature film. The story is very simple. Joanna (D. Wieck), a young girl who became the foster mother to a brood of motherless kids decides to take the veil. Doing so, she leaves the younger children disconsolate. She starts to regret leaving them until one day, a baby girl is abandonned at the door of the convent. Joanna raises the baby as if it was her own daughter. As she grows up, she hopes she will follow in her steps as a nun...
Like all Paramount features of the time, the cinematography by Charles Lang was just a treat to the eye: a lovely creaminess with varigated shades of greys. The close-ups of Dorothea Wieck and Evelyn Venable had this lovely diffusion that gave them an etheral quality. The film overall had a wonderful atmosphere which it manages to sustain all through the film. The German actress D. Wieck gave a wonderful performance as Joanna; she reminded me in some ways of Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus. Her daughter as an adult was played by the lovely Evelyn Venable (she made after this film the wonderful Death Takes a Holiday with Leisen again). Leisen managed to maintain the emotional level until the end. A lovely film!

[feaito]

Parisians are lucky Christine. To have the chance of watching 35mm prints of such exquisite, rare films. "Cradle Song" seems to be quite a gem!

Thanks to Christine and Jeff, who shared this film with me, finally I got to see the landmark movie"The Big Parade" (1925), one of the best movies of all time. It contains John Gilbert's finest moment on screen playing very, very sensitively the leading role in this truly awesome epic. I had the idea that the film had more battle sequences than it actually has and it's perfectly balanced in that aspect. Some friend of mine told me it was not the same to be anti war or against the war than being a pacifist. It's subtly different and he explained it to me in detail. I feel that this film is a pacifist movie.

When I watched the film I could not stop recalling Milestone's powerful and masterul "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), although "The Big Parade" has the added plus of the beautiful, ethereal, sensitive love story between Mélisanade (Renée Adorée at her very best) and Jimmy (Gilbert). The battle scenes are so harrowing, so gripping, "choreographed" like a "dance of death" with soldiers falling off as flies. Terrible. There's something in the way these scenes were filmed, which with the aid of a mesmerizing Carl Davis score, make an unforgettable and terrifying experience. Human misery at its worse. Karl Dane is also outstanding. 10 out pf 10. Thanks Christine for telling me that this film had to come out of my big list of "pendings".

Immediately afterwards I saw "Desert Nights" (1929) -thanks to Jeff- a very good adventure film starring John Gilbert in peak form as a the dashing manager of Diamond Mine in Africa. Ernest Torrence is as always superb as a villain and sultry Mary Nolan is very sexy and has lots of chemistry going on with Jack Gilbert. Very sensuous scenes featuring both. Jack Gilbert is the perfect hero. A great discovery.

Lastly I watched an excellent Pre-Code Prison film starring the fantastic Barbara Stanwyck as a hardboiled gun moll: "Ladies They Talk About" (1932). Swiftly paced and tough. Full of pre-codish lines and a situations and characters who would not appear again under the Code. Preston Foster plays a minister who falls for Stany and wants to redeem her. Lillian Roth plays deftly one of Stany's prison mates. Maude Eburne is a hoot as another intern, a tough Madam. Dorothy Burgess is Stanwyck's antagonist. Ruth Donnelly plays one of the matrons and Lyle Talbot has small onscreen time as Stany's sweetheart; a crook. All you expect a Warners Pre-Code should be. A must-see. Thanks for sharing it with me Alison.

[drednm]

I watched OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS today in honor of Anita Page's death at 98... she was terrific in this 1928 silent starring Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown.

[Ann Harding]

I am glad you enjoyed it so much, Fernando!!! It took me years to see this masterpiece....it should really be on DVD ASAP.

[Gagman 66]

Fernando,

I'm elated that you finally got to see THE BIG PARADE! I agree wholeheartedly that this is among the greatest motion pictures ever produced. And far and away the most imporatant movie historically speaking in my opinion not yet on official DVD.

The entire cast is so memorable. Icluding Tom O'Brien as "Bull O'Hara", who you did not mention earlier. Renee Adoree is wonderful here, for my money, she had every bit as much on-screen chemisty with Gilbert, as He had with Garbo, if not more so. Personally I perfer Renee to Garbo all around. I rather doubt that Greta would have been able to pull off the "Jimmy Leaves For The Front" sequence nearly as effectively as Adoree did. A powerhouse scene that one is never likely to forget once you have seen it. King Vidor was such a brillant film maker. This scene has been repeatedly borrowed from in film, after film down through the decades. But no one else ever has even come close to the impact of the original!

I think I sent you a couple of copies of this film? Didn't I? One is from TCM Memorial Day of 2004, the last time they ran the movie in any form. Since that time, as I have often mentioned, the film has been in Limbo for the past four years on TCM pending the new restoration, from the original camera negative. Which though completed in 2004, still has no music score recorded. The other copy is of the MGM laser-disc. The earlier one has standard thumbnails, with Monochrome background stills, the newer one has tinted still's with motion thumbs on the menu, and music.

I sent them both, because each has some subtle differences. The audio is a little low on the LD transfer for some reason. Higher, and bolder, on the TCM broadcast. The opening credits of both versions are different. On TCM, you see the 1931 sound re-issue credits. On The Laser-disc transfer, you see the original 1925 credits. I recently obtained a different LD transfer, that strikes a happy medium between the two. Good volume to the audio, and none of the glare trouble, of the other laser-disc transfer. but I haven't added a menu to that one yet. Inspite of the slightly different credits, both are still the Thames Silent's presentation with the Carl Davis score, originally produced in England in 1983.

The Davis score as fantastic as it is, will not be on the up-coming DVD release at all, unless they include both the new restoration and the older Thames version, hopefully it to re-mastered. Although you should know that Davis score was in-fact heavily adapted from the William Axt-David Mendoza original 1925 score released with the film to theaters with live Orchestra. The Melisande Waltz, and Gilbert-Adoree romacnce themes, among others, were all part of the 1925 score, and Davis kept them in-tact. I have been expecting Robert Israel to reprise that complete score with his orchestra on the DVD release as He has done at a handful of live screenings since 2005.

Unfortunately, Rodney Sauer of Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra told me this past week, that He felt it was extremely unlikely that Warner's will have Israel, or anyone else record the original 1925 score? There are just to many potential copyright issues involved that could escalate the cost of the project substantially? All I can say is I sure hope that He is wrong about this matter?

My friend Jack Theakston, saw the newly mastered print, with the 1925 score being played by Israel and his 19 piece Orchestra live in 2005, and astoundingly enough He preferred the arrangement to the Davis one! So you can imagine, ever since that time, I have greatly anticipated hearing the Axt-Mendoza score for myself. I shutter to think of THE BIG PARADE being entrusted to some group of fledgling young composers! That simply can not be allowed to happen with a picture of this magnitude!

I figure that the vast majority of the Axt-Mendoza score should be "Public Domain" material. There may have been some original compositions, but for the most part the score was actually a compilation of vintage music themes that should pre-date 1923, making it mostly Public-Domain fair? After all the storyline takes place in 1917-18.

While TCM's Charles Tabesh was confident that THE BIG PARADE would be out on DVD next year, He couldn't tell me what score it would have? I will keep on trying to discover this information and let you all know should I learn anything definite.