Son of India (1931)

Ramon Novarro plays another exotic lover in Jacques Feyder's Son of India. Through an arresting series of events, he becomes a ragged pauper, then a rich prince in Bombay. American tourist Madge Evans soon enters the picture and the movie becomes a tragic tale of love fighting against racial boundaries and prejudices. (Would the love story be transpiring if Novarro wasn't rich? I doubt it.)

Son of India features some impressive sets and action scenes; how often do you get to see Novarro buried alive in the same film as a rampaging elephant? The entire film held my interest, even when the romance became increasingly saccharine. Unlike many of her films, Madge Evans gets a more demanding role in this one.

Son of India is packed with the usual MGM character actors, including Marjorie Rambeau as a snobbish aunt, Conrad Nagel as Madge's sister, and C. Aubrey Smith and John Miljan in smaller roles. Ann Dvorak's even on the screen for a minute or two as a seductive dancer.

The movie ends far too quickly (not helped, when watching on Turner Classic Movies, by their loud and abrasive promo following). I'm surprised they didn't cut Novarro off in mid-sentence!

This was Feyder's last American film. Later in the '30s, in France, his movies laid the groundwork for the Poetic Realism film movement. His artistry was vivid, though, even in his American films.

Son of India isn't available on DVD.

Fast Life (1932)

Fast Life was, in several ways, the end of an era at MGM. It was the last film for stars William Haines, Conrad Nagel and Cliff Edwards as MGM contract actors. It's hard to believe Haines' films were no longer successful at the box office; Fast Life is indeed funny, exciting and fast.

Funny is in the ear and eye of the beholder. Haines is obnoxious as usual here, but Cliff Edwards as his pal Bumpy has some amusing lines and double-takes and a priceless sight gag with a mind reader. Though he didn't bring his ukelele, Edwards does do a little singing, one a soulful little number and also some scat joking; the guy had so much talent that anything he does is good and it's a shame MGM didn't star him in his own movies. The story of MGM is the story of many vastly wasted talents.

The story here is slight but servicable: Haines has invented a revolutionary new motor (right!) and meets cute with Madge Evans (a thankless role), whose father happens to be in the boat business and eager to win a Catalina speedboat race. The absurdity of early '30s MGM film scenario writers knew no bounds.

Conrad Nagel untypically plays the baddie here, a stiff, humorless jerk so unlikeable that Haines looks appealing in comparison. All ends well.

Fast Life has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.

Eskimo (1933)

Like director W.S. Van Dyke's earlier White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) and Trader Horn (1931), Eskimo was another ambitious, expensive adventure filmed in a then-exotic local (Alaska) and again used many natives, this time Inuits speaking in their own tongue. The film also incorporates some amazing documentary footage of hunts for caribou, walrus and whales.

The film tells the story of Mala (played by Ray Wise, later Ray Mala), his family life, the daily fight for survival and his tragic dealings with the encroaching white culture. Though the movie threatens at times to sink under the weight of melodrama, and though the action sequences are riddled with ludicrous rear projection shots, the story is completely engaging. Its nearly two-hour running length goes by quickly.

I'll forgo the plot details and allow the film to surprise new viewers. Eskimo deals frankly with race relations (the most malicious character in the film is European) and the sexual mores of the Inuit (the film was tellingly distributed under the title Eskimo Wife-Traders). This is also definitely not a movie in which one can say no animals were harmed during the making. A ferocious fight to the death between a human and a wolf ends with the wolf getting its head smashed in with a rock! I was surprised at Turner Classic Movies' "G" rating for this one.

Director W.S. Van Dyke plays a Canadian official, while Peter Freuchen, who wrote the two books Eskimo was loosely based on, plays the aforementioned evil ship captain. Eskimo begins with a title card claiming that the only actors were those playing the Canadian parts, but that's untrue. Ray Wise was a cameraman and actor and the three female leads were Asian actors.

Eskimo hasn't been released on DVD.

Navy Blues (1929)

William Haines' Navy Blues was his first talking role and every rambunctious/obnoxious, sly and crazy characteristic suppressed in his earlier films due to lack of sound is here let loose in all its anarchic glory. Haines-haters beware! 

Navy Blues was directed, uncharacteristically, by Clarence Brown. The plot is simple: while on shore leave, Haines falls for innocent Anita Page and courts her (stalks might be the more appropriate word), much to the consternation of Page's mother, Edythe Chapman, though not her father, J.C. Nugent, a beat-upon, forlorn fellow who also used to be a Navy man. 

Page soon leaves home with Haines and wants to marry, but Haines isn't ready for that sort of commitment. In typical fashion for MGM films at the time, the next time Haines returns to town, Page has, out of some sort of twisted sorrow and pride, become a near-prostitute. This plot twist rings totally false in the film; it isn't true to Page's character or to the tone of the rest of the film. This is a William Haines comedy, after all, not Eugene O'Neill! There's, at least, a somewhat happy ending to the film.

Cliff Edwards and his ukelele are missed (by me) in this movie. The void is occupied by fellow seaman Karl Dane, playing the kind of one-note character that ruined his career; so much talent was suppressed, wasted and undiscovered at MGM at the time.

If you like Haines' brand of comedy or want to see the uninhibited spirit of an Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey or Jonathan Winters in full bloom in an early talkie, watch Navy Blues. Movies like this one and Haines' next film, the mini-masterpiece The Girl Said No, are practically urtexts for comedy styles practiced at the end of the century.

Navy Blues is available in a good print on Warner Archives DVD-R and has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

Freaks (1932)

"We accept her! We accept her! One of us! One of us! Gooble-gobble, gooble-gobble!"

Once you've heard this chanted by a tableful of "freaks" in Tod Browning's Freaks, it, like many of the images in the film, will be seared into your brain forever. The chant would be vaguely disturbing even if it were sincere, but is doubly so since the person they are singing it to is a circus performer who looks upon the freaks with undisguised contempt.

Browning, who had had such success with similar sordid subject matter in his films with Lon Chaney, set Freaks in a circus sideshow quite like the kind Browning worked in in his youth. Though the film stars typical dependable MGM performers like Leila Hyams and Wallace Ford, the real stars of the film are real side-show performers, the freaks of the title, most of whom lived their lives in circuses quite like this one. In Freaks, the physically distorted are the "heroes"; the villains of the film are "normal" people.

Though it was little-seen in the immediate decades after its initial release, Browning's twisted circus sideshow fable has had such an influence since that it seems downright prototypical. From Stephen King novels to Tales From the Crypt, from David Lynch's The Elephant Man to EC Comics, those images from Freaks have seared the brain of many a creator.

Freaks is the sort of unytpical MGM film which only could have been made while Irving Thalberg was in charge. No later moguls at the company would have had the reckless audacity or inclination to engineer such a film. Not to say Freaks was accepted during its time; the film was so disturbing to MGM brass, test audiences and exhibitors that it was quickly cut by 25 minutes and then taken off the market altogether. Browning's career never really recovered.

Even with much of the most outrageous material cut from the film, its not surprising MGM got cold feet. The EC-like revenge plot is still lucidly told, even with an outageously "happy" ending shot last minute and tagged on.

Freaks is available on DVD.

The Great Meadow (1931)

The Great Meadow is based on the novel by Elizabeth Madox Roberts which had recently been published. In it, a group of 1777 Virginians decide to start a new life in Kentucky after hearing an inspirational talk by Daniel Boone. The film follows the settlers as they make their arduous trek and start a new life in trecherous surroundings.

Even taking into account the film's faults (most of which were endemic to nearly all early sound films), The Great Meadow, directed by Charles Brabin, is a different sort of "western" picture. The focus is on the common people and their physical and emotional hardships. Silent star Eleanor Boardman, who would appear in sound films for just a few more years, is sympathetic as the lead, who leaves her family behind to marry and begin a tenuous new life. Johnny Mack Brown's one-note performance isn't as convincing, but is adequate.

The Great Meadow benefits from a nearly non-existent film score. It, like MGM's Billy the Kid, was originally shot in a widescreen process, though it's impossible to tell from the 35mm print shown now; no shots seem cropped or scanned. IMDB states the film was shot in a process called Grandeur, while the in70mm website lists The Great Meadow as having been shot in Realife.

Warning: The Great Meadow has a jaw-droppingly sudden ending which may lead you to believe the cameraman simply ran out of film then and there.

The Great Meadow isn't available on DVD, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

Reel Old Films

If you're looking for a new resource for old, hard-to-find films, you may want to check out Reel Old Films, which is now listing hundreds of films of all genres: https://reeloldfilms.com/