Category: 1931

City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)

About halfway through City Lights, I realized most of the gags repeat. Especially when it’s Chaplin and his de facto sidekick, Harry Myers. But instead of making the bits seem rote, the repeat value just makes them funnier. There are some differences in how the jokes work, but not very much; Chaplin also lays into the repeat imagery. In the third act, it all makes sense when there’s finally a different reaction to a repeated narrative bit. The way Chaplin brings it all together is sublimely delightful.

The film opens with the most outdoor sequence in the film, with Chaplin—playing the Tramp—interfering with some city occasion. What sets it apart—besides people having audible (but distorted) voices in an otherwise silent picture. There’s diegetic sound and a musical score (by Chaplin), but all the dialogue’s in intertitles. Immediately after the opening scene, Chaplin meets beautiful blind girl flower seller Virginia Cherrill. He’s smitten with her and buys a flower—she doesn’t realize he’s a tramp; she thinks he’s a rich guy.

Luckily for the Tramp, he almost immediately makes the acquaintance of actual rich guy Myers. Well, luckily, in the big picture sense. In the immediate picture sense, Chaplin and Myers have a very disconcerting friendship (from Chaplin’s perspective, anyway). Myers is a drunk; his wife has run off to Europe and isn’t coming back. He’s a wild man when drunk, but when he sobers up, he can’t remember he’s made a new pal in Chaplin. So Chaplin keeps getting the boot.

But whenever he’s got Myers’s inebriated support, Chaplin thinks about how he can help Cherrill, which cements the idea he’s wealthy (he’s driving Myers’s Rolls Royce). Just as someone in Switzerland (maybe Fredonia) develops a cure for blindness, Cherill’s grandmother (Florence Lee) gets a letter from the landlord. Pay up or get kicked out. Tomorrow.

Will Chaplin be able to keep Myers drunk enough, long enough, to be able to hit him up for some cash? Cherill and Lee owe twenty-two dollars; Myers carries thousand dollar bills (and some hundreds, I think). So it’s not like it’d be a problem. Except whenever Myers gets the slightest bit sober, he completely forgets bestie Chaplin.

Myers’s unreliablity leads to some occasionally drastic measures for Chaplin, such as a fantastic boxing match. Chaplin fights badass Hank Mann, whose slightest slap can knock out a real boxer—so, Chaplin’s in real danger. And the third act’s pretty dark. City Lights isn’t a tragedy overall, but it’s mostly a tragedy. The opening bit doesn’t have much tragic subtext, but pretty much everything else is soaked in it. There’s a suicide attempt—with nooses around the neck are one of Chaplin’s repeat sight “gags”—there’s destructive drinking, which the Tramp pretty early on acknowledges is way too much. But he’s got to get drunk to get to be friends with Myers.

Most of the comedy set pieces in the first half involve their drunken carousing. They’re hilarious together too. Chaplin and Myers have great timing together; Myers’s performance as constantly stupefied drunk is superlative. A lot of it is Chaplin’s direction. He’s got just the right pacing for Myers to slowly realized what’s going on in the scene and then rush to get involved (making things worse). Except the Tramp’s rarely asking him for help in these scenes. It’s usually just Myers barging in. It’s always very funny.

Then the third act’s emotionally rending, as the Tramp finally seems to be on the way to a win—or at least not a loss—only to fail thanks to cruel people. It’s a lot, especially since Chaplin also breaks one of his repeat cycles to make the narrative change happen. Even with the finale involving another repeat cycle, the only way to know if the move will work is to do it. And they work beautifully both times. So good.

Chaplin’s performance is exquisite. The Tramp’s navigating hostile, turbulent waters in hanging out with Myers. Then he’s basically got a courtship arc with Cherrill, with her blindness being integral to Chaplin being able to pull off the ending.

Myers is also great. Not so much when he’s sober. He’s fine when he’s sober—like he’s doing the part, and it’s good—but when he’s drunk, he really gets to have some fun. Cherrill doesn’t get any fun. She gets small joys, usually with caveats related to her blindness (and poverty—if Cherrill had any money, the blindness wouldn’t be such a detriment to her success). But she does get a full character arc, something no one else in the film besides the Tramp is even in the picture long enough to attempt. Myers doesn’t get a character arc, for instance.

City Lights is a fantastic mix of slapstick and sincerity. Chaplin finds the heart in every situation—Myers’s alcoholism is a reaction to intense depression—without ignoring the various unjustifiable cruelties people inflict on one another.

It’s a lovely, singular motion picture.

Transatlantic (1931, William K. Howard)

Transatlantic is a pre-code Modern Marvels Melodrama. Set in some fascinating technological, man-made invention or creation, a varied group of characters get together and have some drama. Sometimes there’s a murder, sometimes there’s not. Transatlantic has a murder. Unfortunately, it takes its sweet time getting there too, which gets frustrating; the film doesn’t even run eighty minutes, and it’s got at least fourteen minutes of artistically null montage padding.

I need to specify that montage padding is artistically null because the film’s third act has artistically potent montage padding. Transatlantic’s editing is fascinating; for most of the film’s runtime, it seems like editor Jack Murray and director Howard are doing a lousy job filming the script. Howard can’t direct the script, and Murray can’t cut the dialogue. It’s real obvious; lead Edmund Lowe has a bunch of desperate one-liners to close scenes, and no one can get them right. They’re painful.

Thankfully, even Transatlantic knows not to overuse (too much) a device.

The film’s got exquisite Art Deco production design, and even when Murray’s cuts are obviously between location second unit footage and the sound stage, the film’s visually impressive. Howard never goes too wild with the action set on deck; Transatlantic takes advantage of it only looking like an ocean from the water. Set most of your action in dining halls and staterooms; it’s like you don’t have to be on an ocean liner at all.

After an eight-minute opening boarding montage, the film quickly establishes its cast and their situations. First, there’s kindly old lens grinder Jean Hersholt. He’s European; he came to the United States, worked for years, saving his money, and now he’s taking daughter Lois Moran back to see the Old Countries. He invested his money with banker John Halliday, who’s also on board. Halliday’s traveling with his wife, Myrna Loy (who isn’t, it turns out, young enough to be his granddaughter), but wants to cat around with Swedish dancer Greta Nissen.

Loy knows about Nissen, causing her distress, but she’s also the money in the marriage, so Halliday doesn’t want her going too far.

Finally, there’s Lowe. He’s the Gentleman Thief skipping the States, so he doesn’t have to testify against a pal. He’s not working this trip—when fellow criminal-type Earle Foxe offers him in on a score, Lowe turns him down flat. Lowe takes an interest in Loy’s martial distress (they once knew each other, all very obscure) while also befriending Moran and Hersholt. Especially Moran.

Lowe’s medium charming. If he could deliver his zingers, if Howard could shoot them, if Murray could cut them, he’d be high charming. A compelling performance in Lowe’s part would entirely change Transatlantic, which usually suffers from a lack of performance personality.

Luckily, around the halfway point (in the film, not the voyage), Howard, Murray, and cinematographer James Wong Howe start showing off. There are two Nissen dance performances; the first isn’t any good, the second’s got dynamite shots and cuts. It’s a precursor to the superior third-act action sequence, which has Lowe tracking the bad guy through the ship’s bowels. Gunfights, fisticuffs, chases, all sorts of things. It’s a movie-saving finish.

Lowe’s okay, Loy’s not good, but she’s sympathetic, and Halliday manages to be an effective creep while also not giving a good performance. It’s inconceivable he and Loy are married, but he also can’t sell his hard-partying grandpapa behavior. Moran’s middling, ditto Nissen. Though Moran’s at least got some moments. Nissen does get that good dance scene. Hersholt’s bad.

Billy Bevan plays Lowe’s steward, who can’t stop repeating the same description of ocean liner life. The film hangs on to the bit so long, and through so many unfunny uses, it finally works in the end.

Kind of like the movie.

Night Nurse (1931, William A. Wellman)

For most of Night Nurse’s seventy-two minute runtime, lead Barbara Stanwyck is able to keep the film going just through her intensity. She’s a new nurse on her first assignment after the hospital, caring for a couple of anemic kids in their mansion, condo apartments, or just studio apartment set. The hospital set in Night Nurse is solid. The ritzy rich place, not so much. They need the separate apartments because the kids—vaguely annoying but not entirely unlikable Betty Jane Graham and Marcia Mae Jones—need to be kept away from their mother, Charlotte Merriam, who’s busy getting drunk while they get worse.

The family is under the care of creepy doctor who doesn’t have a license Ralf Harolde. You know Harolde’s creepy because he winks a lot. It’s a weak, unsure performance. Some of it’s the script, some of it’s Harolde, some of it’s Wellman’s direction. Screenwriters Oliver H.P. Garrett and Charles Kenyon can’t seem to crack the dialogue, Harolde’s not bringing anything of substance, and Wellman’s relying on the gimmicks. Wellman has a handful of good sequences in Night Nurse, but they’re relatively short and never when the film really needs them. And nothing he does with the actors ever works. When an actor succeeds, it’s not thanks to Wellman (or the editor, Edward M. McDermott, who’s always at least a half second off in his cuts). Meanwhile, Garrett and Kenyon try a few things themselves—repetitive dialogue for Stanwyck, which doesn’t land the first time and doesn’t land the next four times they use it as a touchstone; they have a little more success with the callbacks mocking mean head nurse Vera Lewis.

Lewis initially doesn’t want to hire Stanwyck because she doesn’t have a high school diploma, but after Stanwyck literally bumps into hospital head of staff Charles Winninger and they make eyes at each other–and potentially Winninger at Stanwyck’s ankles—he makes sure she gets the job. Winninger and Stanwyck having any kind of horizontal interest (one assumes it’s more Winninger’s interest) in one another doesn’t make it through the first ten minutes, much less first act. After one lewd implication from Stanwyck’s roommate (it’s room and board for nurses) Joan Blondell, Winninger’s forgotten until they need a real doctor to tell Stanwyck no one’s going to believe some woman about the weird goings on at the Merriam house whether she’s a nurse or not.

The first third of Nurse is Stanwyck and Blondell’s antics while in training, which includes Stanwyck patching up a shot bootlegger—Ben Lyon—who then supports her career ambitions from afar. The rest is Stanwyck and Blondell on assignment—Blondell’s the day nurse and Stanywck is the night—with the sick kids. The house has a suspicious housekeeper (Blanche Friderici, who’s alternately fine and miscast, just not actually peculiar enough for the household), drunk mom Merriam’s drunk, rapey boyfriend Walter McGrail (who’s a great minor villain), and then brute chauffeur Clark Gable. Gable’s fairly terrifying for most of his scenes, which is a high light as the last third of Night Nurse just gets talkier and talkier. The movie only runs seventy minutes but they’ve only got story for maybe sixty. There’s so much padding, which gets particularly frustrating thanks to Wellman’s tedious composition and pacing.

Night Nurse isn’t just slow, it’s repetitive. No one can figure out how to stretch the scenes so they just keep saying the same things over and over again until the script can gin up some coincidence. There are also so many dead end tangents, including major characters. The film follows the tangent for a scene, dragging it out, then drops it and never mentions it again. If these moves were successful, the film would be narratively efficient. Since they’re not, it’s just floundering.

Stanwyck’s a good lead—which is different than giving a good performance; she’s fine, but she can only sell so much because she’s the only one interested in selling it. The script and Wellman are indifferent at best. Blondell’s good. Lyon’s really likable. Gable’s solid. Winninger’s disappointing, but a bunch of it could be the script not giving him anything to really do. But not all of it.

I somehow managed to forget to mention a large portion of Night Nurse is dedicated to getting Stanwyck and Blondell into various stages of undress. Wellman’s not particularly interested in those sequences either, which is good and all, but the way he shows his disinterest is to be just as disinterested in everything else. And if the screenwriters were as inventive with the mystery aspects as they were getting Blondell and Stanywck to change their clothes… Night Nurse might work out.

As is, Stanwyck keeps it engaging until the third act when the dramatics take over and then the movie fizzles when leveraging those.

The ending’s a bit of a trip, morality-wise, but not in a way it helps (or even hurts) at all.

Millie (1931, John Francis Dillon)

Even with some first and third act problems and a peculiar present action–Millie’s a solid melodrama. It works up actual suspense, actual danger, and finds true villainy amid the pat shittiness of men. In addition to passing Bechdel—briefly but definitely—the film ends up fully confronting all the things it seems like it’d be safer to avoid, especially since it shifts the protagonist role from the title character—played by Helen Twelvetrees—to the aforementioned villain. It’s a successful move, even if it does mean Twelvetrees loses the third act.

To be fair, of course, the better movie for Twelvetrees is potential Millie 2, as she spends this film floundering for seventeen or eighteen years (the aforementioned peculiar present action).

The film starts with Twelvetrees a rambunctious, but marriage age, teen, who lets businessman James Hall talk her into marrying him so she can move to New York. Of course, before she can go to New York, they need to stop off at a motel so Hall can check the tires (at least they elope first). It’s a disquieting scene, with Twelvetrees playing it a little too histrionic but at least they’re trying, as the film makes all sorts of implications about Hall’s expectations of her and her questionable willingness.

Then the film skips ahead three years to Twelvetrees a miserable wealthy housewife who isn’t even allowed to bathe her own kid. Hall is always going out on business and never wants to paw her anymore; at least mother-in-law Charlotte Walker is nice to her (better than her own mom, who threw her to wolf Hall without a thought), but Twelvetrees needs friends. So when childhood pal Joan Blondell calls up looking for a loan from a rich friend, Twelvetrees is more than happy to hang out.

Blondell and her roommate, Lilyan Tashman, are professional lady friends to rich, sometimes married men who travel the country looking for the best time. We don’t get a lot of specifics, but it’ll turn out acerbic Tashman is the soulful one whereas Blondell is always the ditz. They’re both really good, but Tashman’s fantastic when she gets to play it earnest.

Unfortunately, they take Twelvetrees to a place she’s never frequented—a lunchtime cabaret for businessmen and their girlfriends—and she’s in for a rude awakening.

The next time jump is two to four years (I think it starts at two, then skips ahead another two to hit four total; sometimes there are title cards, sometimes not) and Twelvetrees is now on her own, trying to make her own way. She’s still good friends with Tashman and Blondell, but isn’t interested in finding men to pay for her upkeep. Instead she works at a hotel cigarette stand, charming various men, most importantly businessman John Halliday and newspaper reporter Robert Ames, but never getting serious (or horizontal) with them.

This middle section of the film, which has Twelvetrees’s anti-romance resolve breaking and coming to another rude awakening, has her best acting in the film. She’s no longer reduced to either giddiness or despair and there’s a lot of character development before she gives in to temptation.

The last act has another jump ahead—this time seven or eight years (I should remember, there’s a title card)—and at that point the film shifts from Twelvetrees being the protagonist to her being the subject. Most of the supporting cast doesn’t get old age makeup, but Twelvetrees gets very tired late thirties eyeshadow and maybe Rock gets a little. Frank McHugh, as Rock’s fellow reporter and amiable sidekick, however, gets none. And Halliday finally seems to be playing his age (late forties).

Though the film’s very timey-wimey with the present action. If it starts in 1931 and ends in the late forties, obviously there’s no World War II because they didn’t know but there’s also no change in the world in those seventeen years. If it starts in 1914 and ends in 1931 or whatever… I mean, they missed the Great War. Also the technology appears identical.

The third act has all the suspense and the most dramatic melodrama—not really soapy though—and while the resolution sets up a far better potential story for the cast, it’s still a reasonable success. Just a bummer they weren’t able to center Twelvetrees through it—though then you couldn’t do the third act in fifteen or twenty minutes; it would’ve been nice for her to get to keep her movie in the finish.

Acting-wise, Twelvetrees, Halliday, and Tashman are the best. Ames is a little flat, though some of it’s the script (some of it’s just everyone else having more personality). Hall’s probably the only complete whiff. Solid support from Anita Louise as well.

Millie’s a lot better than it should be, with the filmmakers actually sticking by a scandalous but also not at all story until they get it told. And when Twelvetrees gets to be the star (and have some agency), she’s excellent.

The Woman Between (1931, Victor Schertzinger)

The Woman Between ought to be the most scandalous, salacious Pre-Code soap possible given the tawdry subject matter—trophy-ish wife Lili Damita (it’s complicated, she’s got her own business and she’s French) cheats on her husband on her latest voyage back from Europe and it turns out she’s shacked up with his son, Lester Vail. Now, they don’t know each other because Vail ran away from home when dad O.P. Heggie announced he was getting married. Apparently Vail didn’t even know Damita’s name? It seems like he might’ve heard it since she was a famous dress shop owner in New York but whatever….

The film takes about fifteen minutes—it only runs seventy—to get to that core drama; until then, it spends a bunch of time following Heggie’s daughter, Miriam Seegar, around as she prepares for Vail’s homecoming. Including going to Damita’s dress shop. But it actually opens with Seegar’s friend, Anita Louise, in an inventive opening title sequence.

Sadly that opening title sequence is the last time the film is inventive.

And then once it gets to the dress shop it seems like at the very least there will be amazing Art Deco set design. But then the shop is the only place with amazing Art Deco set design and we’re rarely going back to the shop.

When Damita arrives… well, she’s opposite Seegar and Louise and Seegar and Louise have already had enough material it’s clear they’re going to be godawful—it can’t be all their fault, given Schertzinger’s direction—but Damita gets some initial sympathy because Seegar and Louise are so bad. Then Heggie shows up and he’s bad, but then Vail shows up and he’s annoying; Damita runs out of sympathy fast.

Pretty soon, once Damita and Vail have realized what they’ve done, Woman Between gets engaging for it’s pure proto-camp value. Damita’s vamping around, Heggie’s doing this weird comedic thing, Seegar’s hissing… but the film’s got no sense of humor. It’s got joke sequences, always involving the staff—Halliwell Hobbes plays the butler and gets a bunch of it, but there’s some poor Black elevator operator who has to mug for Damita in an initial attempt to make her seem likable (which we never get again, actually)—and it’s always terrible. Because if Schertzinger’s even aware he needs timing, he’d have no idea how to execute it. And William Hamilton wouldn’t be able to cut for it.

Though, I’ll be a little nice—great photography from J. Roy Hunt.

The movie’s terrible and not even worth it for cringe-laughs, but Hunt’s black and white photography is excellent. Even though Schertzinger usually just has him shooting people standing against a wall–Woman Between might be a play adaptation, but it’s not stagy, it’s wall-y—at an angle. Terrible blocking in the film. Just real bad.

The ending makes a bit of a louder flop than expected—the third act, with better direction, might’ve been suspenseful—but the real problem is the performances, specifically Schertzinger’s direction of them.

Plus, you know, the script’s not good either. It’s just a soapy stinker.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—it’s pronounced Gee-kyl, incidentally, as in Fronkensteen—is a stunning disappointment. It’s difficult to know where to begin, given the film is about a scientist, Fredric March, who’s really horny for his fiancée, Rose Hobart (and she’s horny for him too), but her dad, Halliwell Hobbes, thinks March’s a no good horn-dog so he won’t let them hurry the engagement. It’s very frustrating for March, who’s working on a serum to make men less horny and more productive. For a while there’s that joke about Bruce Springsteen’s I’m On Fire is the song your mom liked about the Boss being so horny could die but then Jekyll becomes about March holding lower class working girl Miriam Hopkins his prisoner and raping and beating her for a month while Hobart’s away.

Large portions of the film are just Hopkins in utter terror as March, in the Hyde persona, threatens her until the scenes fade out on him inflicting pain on her while terrorizing her. March plays Hyde in makeup to make him look more savage, like a caveman. Only we’re going to find out the only savage thing about March as Hyde is his lack of empathy, which cave people had obviously. And then we find out… March the “good guy” is well aware of his bad behavior. The whole reason Hopkins is in this situation is because after March whines to his butler, Edgar Norton, about Hobart going away, Norton tells him just to start seeing a prostitute but March is too high class for it. So instead he takes the serum, which lets him terrorize and assault with abandon.

While the film is Pre-Code and so can get away with quite a lot, including Hopkins’s suggestively dangling her leg for forty-some seconds—see, March the good saves Hopkins in the street, she fancies him, but he’s engaged after all… so he has to take the serum to give himself the excuse to rape her.

I don’t think I’ve seen this film more than once or maybe twice before—a long time ago—and it’s possible I watched the cut version, which apparently excises the entire “March sets Hopkins up so he can constantly assault her” plot thread by dropping six minutes. But I’m trying to imagine how they recapped this movie for the Crestwood House kids’ monster books I used to read. Most of my memories of the film are things I’m sure were stills in that book.

So, another thing about the film is how much it acknowledges the reality of the situation. When March confides in fellow doctor Holmes Herbert, you’re hoping Herbert will have the sense to turn him into the cops. All of Hobart’s scenes become these layered suspense sequences; she’s under threat from March, who she’s convinced is a literal saint. I mean, March does operate on the poor and help little kids walk again, but he’s clearly only doing it because otherwise he’d be abusing women.

March is great as Hyde, low middling as Jekyll. The film punts resolving any of the multitude of questions it raises with a rushed third act. In addition to getting the movie done without fully addressing March—the good—as the villain, director Mamoulian doesn’t tie together any of the visual stuff he’s been doing throughout. The film opens with a length first person perspective shot, which echoes during one of March’s transformations (the transformation scenes start great but are terrible in the third act) and then Mamoulian forgets about them. The film’s aurally and visually ambitious until all of a sudden it’s just not anymore. Mamoulian’s composition is still good, it’s just not wildly ambitious like the start. He does do the big chase action sequences really well—and it’s really impressive if March did all the Hyde stunts himself–and Karl Struss’s photography is superb.

It just seems like Mamoulian’s going for something and instead all we get for a moral is “beware horny scientists.”

Again, March is terrifying and fantastic as Hyde. Hopkins is even better. Hobart’s good, Hobbes is good.

If the film’s third act were as deliberate and intentional as the first act, if it tried to resolve itself even a little instead of dropping the ball and running away as fast as humanly possible—which, even Pre-Code, might not have been possible… who knows. Also if March were anywhere near as good as the good guy as the bad guy, though Samuel Hoffenstein and Percy Heath’s screenplay deserves much blame on that one. They punt on March’s character development far sooner than anyone else.

The film’s just the right combination of unpleasant and unrewarding; it’s undeniably effective but also a pronounced failure.

The Lady Refuses (1931, George Archainbaud)

The Lady Refuses gets frustratingly close to making it to the finish. It collapses in its final moments, though it’s barely been keeping it together through the third act, when everything (by everything the main plot and the single directly related subplot) comes together and profoundly fizzles. The only reason it provides any tension at all is because the movie puts its most likable, appealing character—maid Daphne Pollard—in some kind of danger. Without that peril, it’s just a shrug, like everyone’s lost enthusiasm for the story.

Not a surprise given the eventual resolution.

The film tells the age-old tale of London gal down on her luck, Betty Compson, who has to chose the bridge or working the street–Refuses is kind of shockingly real about that dichotomy—and picks the latter. Only her first night out the cops decide to harass her so she knocks on a fancy door and who should answer but lonely old widower Gilbert Emery. Refuses juxtaposes the cops on Compson’s trail and Emery’s layabout drunkard son John Darrow being disinterested in hanging out with Emery and Emery getting the sads. So when Compson needs help—any kind of help—Emery’s an enthusastic aid.

Soon after a nice dinner and Compson’s assurances she’s never actually worked the street before tonight and hasn’t yet had any customers, Emery hires her to get Darrow away from Margaret Livingston. Now, Darrow thinks Livingston is just after him for a good time, but she’s actually in cahoots with his childhood friend Ivan Lebedeff to get a sizable chunk of Emery’s estate somehow.

By somehow it involves Livingston bedding Darrow on a regular basis and Lebedeff getting more and more insanely jealous over it even though he’s apparently in on it. It’s unclear. There’s zero backstory for any of the characters outside an occasional line—actually, wait, I’m not sure there’s anything in backstory except Darrow and Lebedeff being childhood friends, no one else gets anything.

For instance, there’s no explanation to Emery being openly British and Darrow being obviously American. Ditto Compson, who’s ostensibly a Brit but the character maybe makes more sense if she’s American and there’s even an implication but it’s subtle and Refuses, you know, refuses to do subtle. And the only time Compson does try an English accent… well, a more gracious reading would have her being faking it intentionally.

Anyway.

Things quickly become a love triangle—wait, actually a pentagon when you through in Livingston and Lebedeff—because while Darrow falls for paid personal savior Compson, Compson and Emery are in love. It’ll all work out in the end, Compson and Emery are sure.

As The Lady Refuses is a Pre-Code melodrama (not to mention the title), things very obviously do not work out and the last twenty to thirty minutes they just get worse and worse.

Acting-wise, Compson’s probably the best, though she’s far more effective for her ability to emote than to read her lines. Though the biting her lip thing is kind of annoying (but nowhere near Darrow’s terrible Groucho Marx impression). Darrow’s bad. Emery’s occasionally cute but not good. Archainbaud’s direction is standoffish but when it’s Emery, it just seems British. Albeit British with some boring composition, which eventually gets editor Jack Kitchin in trouble because Archainbaud’s obviously not shooting enough coverage.

Refuses is occasionally academically interesting as an early talkie or a Pre-Code or whatnot, but it’s a fail overall. The resolution’s an odd mix of disappointing and insulting.

City Streets (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

The first third of City Streets is this awesome bit of experimenting from director Mamoulian as he tries to figure out how to make a sound picture. Lots of great shots and camera setups, usually with too dawdling cuts. William Shea holds everything just a few seconds too long. But the montage imagery itself is fantastic. And Mamoulian carries it over into the narrative a bit too, though he eventually stops with it after sort of peaking.

But even for all Mamoulian’s experimenting, Streets is never experimental. There’s always the script to drag it back to reality. Oliver H.P. Garrett (adapting a Dashiell Hammett original story, with help form Max Marcin) writes some great scenes and some excellent characters… he just doesn’t write the right ones excellent. Or, if he does, at the wrong times. There’s no reason Wynne Gibson, as a jilted mobster’s dame, ought to end up giving the most dynamic female performance in Streets. It’s literally Sylvia Sidney’s movie and she loses it to Gibson for the finale. Gibson’s great, but great because the movie doesn’t give Sidney a presence much less a chance. Possibly because no one realized Gary Cooper doesn’t work without Sidney around. His performance is better, but he doesn’t function right in the plot without her.

Streets is a crime melodrama. Sidney works for her step-father, a truly singular Guy Kibbee as an abject sociopath, who in turn works for crime boss Paul Lukas. Lukas is a classy European guy who seduces the women of his gang and then kills off his romantic rivals and promotes some duplicitous underling. He’s a psychopath, but one in the guise of a sociopath. Lukas is pretty awesome. He’s not as good as Kibbee because no one’s as good as Kibbee, but Lukas is frightening. Of course, Lukas doesn’t meet Sidney through Kibbee, rather through Gary Cooper. Cooper starts the movie a dope of a cowboy who’s found his way to the big city, just waiting until the circus shows up and he can join up. He’s Sidney’s fella. And he wants nothing to do with the bootlegging gangsters.

At least until Sidney’s in a jam and, being a complete moron, Kibbee’s able to talk Cooper into it to help her. Shame the only thing Sidney’s able to hold onto is the knowledge her fella would never get involved with the bootlegging gangsters.

There’s some great romantic scenes between Cooper and Sidney, which occasionally get messed up by the edits, occasionally amplified. The first one is on the beach and is exemplar good sexy until they cut to a two-shot in the studio instead of the location. Then one where the lovers are separated by a screen. Sidney’s amazing in that one. She also gets a few great thinking scenes, one accompanied by a sound flashback (the first in film, according to the IMDb), and then one where she’s got to figure out how to save Cooper.

Because once Lukas gets a look at her, he’s not going to stop at anything to get her.

And Kibbee’s more than happy to go along. And Cooper’s a dope who thinks Lukas is his pal.

There’s a better movie in the story, but maybe not much better. Cooper’s okay. He’s actually better as the plotting gangster than the dopey cowboy stud. Sidney’s excellent, but the material’s not always with her. Kibbee, Gibson, Lukas. William Boyd’s kind of blah as Lukas’s number two. Not bad just blander than he ought to be. Some of it’s the script.

There’s a great montage sequence of Cooper and all the mob guys looking at each other. I wonder how it’d sound with Ennio Morricone.

The film’s most impressive for Mamoulian’s direction. Unfortunately, you could cut together a ten minute reel of all the best directed stuff and be fine. For whatever reason, Mamoulian drops the experimenting in the second half and the melodrama stalls. It even drags, not good for an eighty minute picture. Maybe it needs to be longer….

The film just can’t figure out how to make all its pieces work; Mamoulian tries a lot of successful things, they just don’t add up. And he seems to get tired of trying, which hurts it.

But City Streets is still an amazing piece of motion picture making.

The Maltese Falcon (1931, Roy Del Ruth)

Not to be too obvious, but I really wasn’t expecting a twist ending for The Maltese Falcon. But only because I’ve… read the book, seen the 1941 version, seen spoofs of it; I sort of figured I’d be able to guess the plot turns. And I did, right up until the end, when Falcon shows its been doing an entirely different kind of subterfuge than usual. The film even takes a moment to acknowledge that twist and take a bit of a bow. It’s all quite the surprise.

But Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes’s script always seems too good for the production. Falcon is an early talkie. Director Del Ruth has no idea how to do close-ups—he and cinematographer William Rees—don’t match the angles right, the actors aren’t in the same spots, editor George Marks isn’t doing any extra favors (he doesn’t know how to cut line deliveries). The film does have some good visual storytelling ideas, but they’re mostly transition stuff; who knows maybe the script has the transitions. Or they’re just where Del Ruth has the best ideas. But—throughout—it’s clear this script deserved a better execution. Not as an adaptation of the source novel, but the script itself.

It’s not just the choppy filmmaking, it’s the acting. The best performance in the film is Una Merkel as Ricardo Cortez’s girl Friday. There’s a lot of implication they’re having an affair, but she doesn’t mind playing wing-girl for him hooking up with every other woman he meets in the movie until the last scene. Like, Cortez is a shocking man slut, so much so it forgives his performance. He comes off like a bit of a dandy, but then he’s able to toggle into being tough; he’s better at being tough. He’s a sociopath. So’s leading lady Bebe Daniels. Or is he falling for her and blind to it? Or vice versa? And those aspects of both characters is straight from the script, from how they behave, react to outside stimuli, whatever. It comes through in the film, but isn’t really presented well. It’s like the script has a point to make about the source novel, but the actual film doesn’t get the script is trying to make a point, but still precisely follows the script.

Falcon’s also pre-Code, so lots of sexy, lots of scanty. Since the film revolves around Cortez and Cortez is apparently only in the private detective racket so he can score with vulnerable women… even though Del Ruth and Rees can’t figure out how to match a shot perspective between close-up and two shot, they do manage to create a fantastic narrative distance. It’s just it needs to be identified, which doesn’t happen until the twist ending.

Back to the acting.

Cortez is okay. It works out, but it’s occasionally a little much. He’s only got like two things he can do. Three if you count him putting his hands in his vest pockets. Daniels is similar. She’s got some really good moments, but they’re spread out wrong. The film doesn’t know how to emphasize its actors’ deliveries, which is most on display with ostensible scenery-chewer Dudley Digges. Digges is a sweaty mess of vague but obvious sinfulness with major interpersonal communication issues. And somehow Del Ruth, Rees, and Marks manage to drain all the momentum from his deliveries with how they cut between shots. Maltese Falcon has a lot of pacing issues, down to reaction times for actors. There’s a lot of talking in the film; the vast majority of the film is just talking. And Del Ruth never figures out how to keep up the momentum of it. It’s like it ought to be stagy, but isn’t. Del Ruth is overenthusiastic when it comes to emphasizing the performances.

And it mostly hurts Digges. Hurts Matieson a bit, but not as much. Matieson doesn’t bit down on a sofa arm and rip it apart. Digges goes wild.

Walter Long’s good enough as Cortez’s partner. Thelma Todd is about as good but wasted as Long’s wife, who Cortez is having an affair with; naturally. Though, again, the twist. It covers a lot of storytelling choices from the script, including who gets screen time and how. Robert Elliott is annoying as the by-the-books cop. He comes off as an idiot, not a capable crime solver. J. Farrell MacDonald is fine as the good cop. They’re around a lot, but they don’t really matter because they’re not women Cortez can try to make time with.

The Maltese Falcon is way too blasé about itself. It’s got an exceptionally good script, but Del Ruth doesn’t seem to know what to do about it. Or with it.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Roy Del Ruth; screenplay by Maude Fulton and Brown Holmes, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett; director of photography, William Rees; edited by George Marks; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Bebe Daniels (Ruth Wonderly), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Spade), Dudley Digges (Casper Gutman), Una Merkel (Effie Perine), Robert Elliott (Detective Lt. Dundy), Thelma Todd (Iva Archer), Otto Matieson (Dr. Joel Cairo), Walter Long (Miles Archer), Dwight Frye (Wilmer Cook), and J. Farrell MacDonald (Det. Sgt. Tom Polhouse).

THIS POST IS PART OF THE MYSTERY MANIA BLOGATHON HOSTED BY ROBIN OF POP CULTURE REVERIE.

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Hot Biskits (1931, Spencer Williams)

Hot Biskits refers to lead Thurston Briggs. He’s Hot Biskits, only he uses a pseudonym because he’s a con man. He’s got a cushy job as a miniature golf course manager; the owner is a crooked cop, who’s fine just so long as the managers don’t make any money on the side.

Although Briggs can’t play golf, he’s told everyone he’s the second best player in the world. An old acquantiance happens upon the mini-putt course and recognizes Briggs. Briggs, back in his cardsharp days, promised to take any bet.

Notice how long I’m going on with the recap? Biskits is like ten minutes. Writer, director, and costar Spencer Williams–he plays Briggs’s eventual partner in an attempt to cheat to win the game–Williams is busy. Lots is happening.

Williams has got a good sense of comic timing, both when acting and directing his cast. The only time the short drags is at the front, with Briggs’s pontification about his miniature golf skills. Biskits recovers real fast–after that opening, Briggs is great. That scene just didn’t work.

Most of Biskits works though; Williams makes some ambitious moves, mostly with dialogue comedy but also with the direction. The short’s on a budget and Williams has some ingenuity in keeping costs down. It’s short comedy but not slapstick.

Biskits is fun stuff.

2/3Recommended

CREDITS

Written and directed by Spencer Williams; director of photography, Glen Gano.

Starring Thurston Briggs (Prof. Zion Williams a.k.a. Hot Biskits) and Spencer Williams (Jim).

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