Home » film (Page 26)

Category Archives: film

Silents, Golden and Not So Golden

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Nancy Nash and Earle Foxe in John Ford’s Upstream (1927)

Silent movies are not for everyone. Because of the times in which most of them were produced, the results can be off-putting because of hokiness or a tendency toward melodrama. This week at Cinecon, I have seen silents that were great, some that were merely interesting, and some that were just plain bad.

The best of the lot was John Ford’s backstage drama, Upstream (1927), a film which was thought to have been lost. In 2009, however, a print was discovered by the New Zealand Film Archive. Although many scenes were spoiled by rotting of the nitrate stock, enough came through to make this one of Ford’s best silents, better even than the more famous The Iron Horse (1924).

The story was about a down at heels Shakespearean actor named Eric Brasingham (Foxe), who is courting Gertie Ryan (Nash), the partner of vaudeville knife-thrower Juan Rodriguez (Grant Withers). He gets his chance for the big time because a London theater is willing to take a chance on him because the Brasinghams are a famous acting family (even though Eric himself is a nonentity). His fellow denizens in a theatrical New York boardinghouse give him a big send-off, but he leaves Gertie in the lurch.

In London, he manages to succeed. He becomes conceited and supercilious, and omits writing to Gertie. She, tired of waiting, marries the knife-thrower. Then, suddenly, Brasingham descends on the boardinghouse as a publicity stunt and finds his reception is not what he had hoped.

Director John Ford does here what he specialized in: Characters who are well developed and interesting. Even the vaudevillian song-and-dance Callahan Brothers are unforgettable, as is the  “star boarder,” played by actual Broadway star Raymond Hitchcock. Even though the theatrical subject matter is not typical Ford—better known for his Westerns and Irish films—the director is at home regardless what he does. And certain stylistic touches link it with films as different as the Hamlet scene in My Darling Clementine (1946), in which Grant Withers is one of the Clanton boys.

More typical of the silents I saw was the excellent The Goose Woman (1925), directed by Clarence Brown and starring Louise Dresser. Graphically, it was a gorgeous film, but the melodramatic plot comes across as risible today: A famed Italian opera star has to make a choice between having a child and continuing to sing at La Scala. She has a child, and her voice goes kaput. What kind of illness is this? Was the baby delivered via the vocal chords? In any case, the singer becomes a goose woman on a farm and a full time lush, until she must make a Sophie’s Choice type of decision regarding her son, who is accused of murder.

On the Boulevard

Posted on by

On Hollywood Boulevard Near Grauman’s Chinese Theater

I have spent two days at the Cinecon show in Hollywood so far this week. Because the films playing tonight don’t interest me, and because tomorrow, we’ll be here for fourteen hours, we decided to leave early today and on Sunday. I had to do that to retain Martine’s good will so that we could see a rare print of John Ford’s Upstream (1927) ending around 10:30 pm.

In the meantime, the short walk (two and a half blocks) between the Egyptian Theater and the Loew’s Hollywood Hotel where the film memorabilia vendors (and Martine) are working and where our car is parked, is as wild and woolly as ever. Tattooed monkeys and brainless girls wearing next to nothing seem to predominate. There are endless tours of Hollywood surrounded by teams of touts who try to funnel tourists into the buses. everal times a day, I have to tell them I’m not interested because “I live in this sh*thole.”

The scene above is of Zoo Central in front of the Hollywood & Highland Center next to Grauman’s Chinese Theater. You see one girl at the left being photographed by one of the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Behind her is one of the tour buses, accompanied by someone dressed as Johnny Depp in some recent movie whose title slips my mind.

I have been seeing some great films at the Egyptian, however, especially today. I sat through Robert Florey’s Dangerous to Know (1938) with the lovely Anna May Wong and Akim Tamiroff; Madge Kennedy in Dollars and Sense (1920); W. S. Hart in Wild Bill Hickock (1923); and John Blystone’s Gentle Julia (1936) with Marsha Hunt and Jane Withers, both of whom were in the audience as guests.

Last night, Martine and I saw Erle C. Kenton’s Always a Bridesmaid (1943) with the Andrews Sisters. A special treat was a film clip of the famed Nicholas Brothers dance duo, with two granddaughters of Fayard Nicholas tap dancing in synch with what was on the screen.

So, on the whole, it’s a mixed blessing: Great films in a particularly nutty place.

Hollyweird Again

Posted on by

On the Boulevard in Hollywood

I will be taking a break from posting to this weblog over the next few days. Every year during Labor Day Weekend, Martine and I have been attending the Cinecon show in Hollywood. While Martine helps my an old friend of mine sell movie memorabilia at Loew’s Hotel at Hollywood and Highland, I will be spending most of my time at the Egyptian Theater watching somewhere between fifteen and twenty old movies that, for the most part, have not been available to the public since they were first released.

Many of the titles will be silent with organ accompaniment, with most of the others dating from the early sound era. Typically, there are a few outliers whose originals were on nitrate film stock that has been transferred to safety film and cleaned up in the process. Nitrate stock is a fire hazard, and virtually all films before 1948 or so were shot on it. (I recall seeing the studio version of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 production of Rope go up in flames at a USC screening years ago.) Some more recent films had serious problems with fading color which film technicians have been able to restore to their almost original color quality.

For more information about Cinecon 48, visit their website for background information, a summary of films being screened, and the screening schedule.

As much as I like old films,spending time in Hollywood will be a drag. Labor Day Weekend almost always brings with it a heat wave.Add to that the problem of finding a decent restaurant on the Boulevard, where most of the eateries are oriented to downmarket tourists who come to stare at the stars’ names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Or to the even more downmarket residents of Hollywood, consisting in teenage runaways, low-rent hipsters, prostitutes of multiple genders, and the homeless.

It has always amused me that tourists who have failed to do their research come to Hollywood expecting to see celebrities in what has evolved over the decades into a rather ugly slum. The only hope I see for Hollywood is that public transportation improvements, especially with the Red Line, have made it profitable for developers to try to do something to gentrify the place a bit.

You Can’t Win Them All

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Cityscape of JUST IMAGINE in the distant future: 1980

Some films are better known for stills than for the films themselves. One of them is Fox’s Just Imagine (1930), a science fiction musical set in the distant future year of 1980. Today, Martine and I attended a screening at the American Cinemathèque’s Aero Theater in Santa Monica. The event was to honor the late art director Stephen Goosson (1889-1973), who was responsible for designing such pictures as Lost Horizons, Meet John Doe, It Happened One Night, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. (Yes, all the above were directed by Frank Capra at Columbia Pictures.)

Just Imagine, however, was directed by the less talented David Butler. Except for Goosson’s outstanding design work, the film was corny to the max. In fact, Martine walked out of the picture about three quarters through because she couldn’t stand it any more. I gamely sat through all of it and cringed through El Brendel’s vaudeville-style comedy routines. Although  Brendel received top billing, he was a major drag on the picture.

Late next week, I will be attending Cinecon 48 in Hollywood and sitting through upwards of fifteen films from the silent era and the early days of sound, with a few outliers that were more recently made. This was, for me, a foretaste of the film orgy to come.