Movies watched lately:
Night Song (not a pre-code so this will be brief): Dana Andrews: recently blinded composer/pianist. Merle Oberon: wealthy socialite who loves his music but to overcome his bitterness, pretends to be poor blind girl. They fall in love. As herself she sponsors contest. He wins of course and has the money to have surgery to restore eyesight. He falls in love with her as her real self not realizing she's also the poor blind girl he's also in love with. They go to hear the big concert with Artur Rubinstein performing his concerto. Just as he's about to enter the concert hall... well, I don't know because my @#()*$(*# recorder cut off 10 minutes before the end! Actually I suspect it's TCM's fault because they have a bad habit of running movies over their assigned times on the TIVO/Direct TV computerized listings. I hope TCM reruns this sometime again soon (so far it's not scheduled again).
Way Down East. No, not the classic silent directed by D.W. Griffith with Richard Barthelmess (one of my biggest movie loves) and Lillian Gish, but the 1935 remake with Henry Fonda and Rochelle Hudson. Not a classic. :) Some good performances, especially from stern-faced Russell Simpson as Henry Fonda's father, but this version was missing something, and I don't mean the first act which has been cut from this remake that opens with Anna's arrival at the Bartlett farm. I never really quite got why Fonda's David falls so deeply in love with Hudson's Anna -- it's like she's there and boom, he loves her. OK, she's young and pretty, but still... And although I've enjoyed Rochelle Hudson in the past, she came off as just a little too tough to be this frail, frightened girl. The journey across the river's ice floes was particularly fake looking with a lot of process shots. It was interesting to see and to compare, but for me the version to watch is still, by far, the D.W. Griffith silent.
Finally, the movie Raoul Walsh made right after The Big Trail: a chamber drama, The Man Who Came Back, starring Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor. Definitely a pre-code; it's from 1931. The source was a 1912 short novel by John Fleming Wilson, which was made into a play. I've read the book, which is really very good but haven't been able to find the play. It was first made into a film in 1924 starring George O'Brien and Dorothy Mackaill but I don't even know if it still exists (can't find anything about it at silentera.com and the one commenter on IMDB is notorious for writing up reviews of movies he hasn't seen or are known to be lost). As I said, the book is very good -- it's about the alcoholic prodigal black sheep son of a wealthy man whose life consists of a series of moves that finally bring him to the brink in a Shanghai opium den; he meets a female opium addict who convinces him to turn his life around, and the second half of the book is him retracing his steps back to each place he's been, making things right and finally returning home. He comes back not just physically but spiritually and morally.
The movie is fairly similar to this except that Farrell is literally "shanghaied" to Shanghai on orders of his father and dumped there to sink or swim, and Gaynor's character is a combination of three women from the book and the rationale for getting her into the opium den is ludicrous to say the least. :) This is really Farrell's movie and I think he really shines here as a dissolute rich kid alcoholic who gets about as low as you can get short of the DTs and death. His silent characters frequently had a dark streak and in real life he was no stranger to a drink, and it all combines into a very believable portrait. Gaynor is fine when being the sweet cabaret singer in love with Farrell even if he is a drunk, but as an opium addict she is trying WAYYYYY too hard -- she's just not credible with her overly dramatic vocal delivery, and I suspect that will be the only time ever I will ever say that about Janet Gaynor. The two best scenes in the movie are the San Francisco party where Farrell weaves around and finally finds Gaynor and they have a tender and happy scene together, and then his stumbling into the opium den looking for another drink (he trades his fraternity ring for some cheap hooch) and finds Gaynor, who at first denies she's his girl but finally admits she followed him there and started doing opium so he could see her rot. (At this explanation my eyeballs started doing that orbiting thing.) The close-up on Farrell when he spots Gaynor -- the change in his expression as he blearily realizes who he's looking at -- is a very fine piece of work from him.
I'm not planning to screencap this one but I did slip it into the computer to get a few shots of my favorite scenes. So herewith a 12 pic tour through the movie! ;)
Another morning after for our protagonist Steve (nice muscles) :)
Steve doing his best to annoy his dad -- sitting sideways in the chair and taking a drink
Sent to San Francisco by his dad, Steve spends his time partying heartily, which hasn't stopped Angie from falling in love with him
C-h-e-m-i-s-t-r-y
Kidnapped to Shanghai just after he and Angie have planned to marry and return to his father in New York, Steve hits bottom in an opium den
Janet Gaynor vamping it up as Angie the opium addict
Steve reacts to the sight of her
He's not happy when she tells him she wants him to see her rot away as her revenge for deserting her
His reaction is to almost strangle her, then decide it's time to start over, so they move to Hawaii and get clean
But that old demon drink has a hold of Steve -- he's dying for a taste
Forget about the demon drink, his family has arrived! And his aunt tells him his father's dying and he has to return to New York with them, without Angie because she's unacceptable in polite society. Thanks, Auntie!
After various complications, it comes out the way you would expect it to
And now, finally, Paula's fantasy of a sequel to this movie:
Many years later, Steve and Angie retire and move back to Honolulu
where Steve takes on a new job as fashion coordinator for Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O