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Unashamed, a family drama which spends its second half in a courtroom, is sadly dated. Its tone, theme and morals are thoroughly mixed up.
Helen Twelvetrees plays a rich girl courted by the appropriately named fortune hunter Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley). Twelvetrees' father and brother (Robert Warwick and Robert Young) protest against the relationship, to no avail. Then Swift convinces Twelvetrees to spend a night in a hotel so he can force her father to give in...
A resulting act of violence results in a courtroom battle fought by defender Lewis Stone and prosecutor John Miljan. Only, the movie asks you to root for the lying main characters. The quick, weird feel-good ending doesn't help - it's both unbelievable and celebrates injustice.
I can't recommend this odd relic to other than hardcore film fans.
Unashamed is not available on DVD, but has been broadcast on TCM.
Payment Deferred is a crime thriller and showcase for actor Charles Laughton, who previously played the same protagonist role on stage (both stage and film are based on the novel by C.S. Forester).
Laughton plays a pathetic in-debt banker who commits a crime in order to stay financially solvent. His wife and daughter (Dorothy Peterson and Maureen O'Sullivan) gradually begin to suspect wrongdoing and his affair with a worldly (you can tell because she has a European accent) local merchant (Verree Teasdale) only gets him deeper in trouble. Ray Milland also plays one of his earliest roles. It all adds up to a slowly simmering tale that's a bit darker than the sort of film MGM usually made.
Nearly the entire movie rests on Laughton's slumped, sad shoulders and he's perfect looking for the role. I do wonder if he wasn't too entrenched in the character, after 70 Broadway stage performances, to bring the sort of subtlety in acting the film camera requires. His performances on film in the decades ahead would be much more convincing.
I do need to mention the direction of Lothar Mendes (1894–1974), who quite capably directed a variety of genres over a forty year span and who here shoots some wonderfully evocative compositions which reminded me of Fritz Lang's work on films like M. Payment Deferred also has the sort of decaying sense of place as Lang's House By the River.
Payment Deferred is not available on DVD, but has been broadcast on TCM.
Although Ramon Novarro first sang on film in The Pagan (1929), Devil-May-Care, made the same year, is his first all-talking picture. He passes this crucial test with ease (many other Hollywood stars were not so lucky). His accent may be out of place in a Napoleonic-era film (the same was true of his co-stars, especially blues and jazz singer Marion Harris), but his voice and singing are splendid.
Devil-May-Care is very much in the swashbuckler mode and, in fact, is somewhat similar to MGM's earlier Bardelys the Magnificent (1926). Novarro plays a Napoleon loyalist who, while escaping from Royalist forces attempting to execute him, falls for a stubborn Royalist daughter, Dorothy Jordan. Compared to other early sound films, Sidney Franklin's direction is remarkably smooth and accomplished. It doesn't seem as stagebound as most other 1929 films and only suffers from a few of the odd editing choices one sees in MGM films of this period. It even features a completely superfluous Technicolor ballet sequence.
That the film is so technically accomplished is made more remarkable when you take into account this was one of the first Hollywood musicals (the songs by Herbert Stothart and Clifford Grey range from okay to annoying). It's a missed opportunity that Marion Harris didn't sing in the film.
Ramon Novarro is fine in the film, ensuring more years of work at MGM. His mischevious pursuit (some might call it stalking) of Dorothy Jordan can seem a little creepy, though, perhaps depending on what mood you're in when you watch it. John Miljan's also in this film. But, you knew that.
Devil-May-Care has been shown on Turner Classic Movies.
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.
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.
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.
Laughing Boy, based on the Pulitzer prize winning novel by Oliver La Farge, could have been a good film. The story - of a Navajo, Ramon Novarro, who marries a fellow Navajo educated by whites and torn between two cultures - is a fascinating one and it's unique in its complete sympathy with the Navajo; there's not a good white person portrayed in the film.
Sadly, though, Laughing Boy is a mess. Ramon Novarro is seriously miscast in the lead role. With his Prince Valiant-like haircut and too much makeup, he looks ridiculous. Also ridiculous are the anachronistic songs he's made to sing (or lip-synch), which made me wonder if Jeanette MacDonald was going to glide onstage and join in. Fellow Mexican actor Lupe Vélez fares somewhat better as Laughing Boy's prostituting wife, but exotic doesn't equal authentic.
The movie, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, was partly shot on location with real Native Americans (some of the location footage may be left over from Universal's earlier attempt to film the novel). When mixed with particularly bad rear-projection scenes, cheap looking sets and MGM actors dressed like Navajo, the result is worse than jarring. It's absurd and takes you right out of the picture.
Laughing Boy's fate worsened when the Hays Office demanded cuts which almost make the film nonsensible. Due to fear of controversy, MGM didn't promote the film and it lost money - continuing a pattern for Novarro's films which culminated in MGM not renewing his contract in 1935. Laughing Boy was Novarro's least favorite film of the ones he appeared in. Andre Soares, in his book on Novarro, Beyond Paradise, reports that novelist Oliver La Farge splashed a drink in the face of the screenwriter of Laughing Boy after the release of the film; the ultimate commentary on the film.
Laughing Boy is not available on DVD, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
Although originally released by Metro in 1921, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was rereleased by MGM in their first year in business, 1924.
A long (132-minute) tale of two generations of a splintered, warring family, The Four Horsemen is primarily known today as the film which made Rudolph Valentino famous. He plays a rich, spoiled wastrel through much of the film, until he falls in love (with a married woman) and attempts to redeem his sorry life by joining the French infantry in WWI.
Directed by Rex Ingram, the story is hokum, pure and simple, complete with a pious, emotionless, creepy Nostradamus/Christ figure (one of several who pop up in MGM silent films when sanctimonious sentiment is needed) who foretells days of apocalyptic wrath and brotherly love.
The movie is, though, good, old-fashioned Hollywood spectacle. The sets are gargantuan, filled with the kind of mysterious clutter you only see in silent movies. The themes are large, accented by color-tinted images of Hell. And, with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, you get a star in the making. The very first scene Valentino appears in, rakishly stealing another man's vampish date to dance a tango with, is alive, smoldering and timeless in a way most of the rest of the movie isn't. The scene has "classic" written all over it.
Be prepared to slog through a lot of the second half of the film, though. You know you're getting starved for entertainment when your eyes light up at a lost monkee jumping out of a handbag.
You do get to see Wallace Beery and Alan Hale playing evil German scavengers and the film's love interest, Alice Terry, has an acting style more subtle than you often see in silent films.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse has not been released on DVD. The version shown on Turner Classic Movies, a Photoplay production with a grand orchestral score by Carl Davis, is the one to beat. Amazon is selling an on-demand DVD-R version with a simpler score. I recommend holding out for the TCM version.
This 1932 version of sophisticated thief Arsène Lupin (the character reused throughout the century in numerous countries) has one strength: the brothers Barrymore. Lionel and John, in their first feature film together, are always a joy to watch; Lionel, with his charming irascibility and John, with his suave, mocking urbanity.
John Barrymore plays Lupin, of course, with Lionel as the police inspector driven to capture him. Most of the film takes place on a country estate and at the Louvre, where Lupin steals the Mona Lisa under the inspector's nose.
I'd like to recommend Arsène Lupin, but I found the film's pace terminally lethargic, more characteristic of a 1930 or '31 MGM film. I didn't find myself caring about Karen Morley, John's love interest, at all, either (despite the racy pre-code banter), so the interplay between the Barrymores was the only thing holding my interest here. Their ending scene in a police car was a very nice example of their subtlety and collaborative talents.
Recommended only for Barrymore and Arsène Lupin fans.
Arsène Lupin hasn't been released on VHS or DVD, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
Paid is a solid entry in Joan Crawford's early talkie dramas. In fact, it was her first major dramatic role - it gives her a wide range of emotions to display in a role originally meant for Norma Shearer (who, instead, was on maternity leave).
Based on the play, "Within the Law", Paid has Crawford portraying a destitute worker sent to prison for a crime she didn't commit. After studying law during imprisonment, she's released ready for revenge on the boss who charged her in court, the legal system and just about the entire world!
Paid starts stong, then becomes vaguely unconvincing (Joan's Mary Turner becomes the virtual head of a criminal gang in just a few short scenes) and finally culminates in an odd, stage-bound act taking place in a police department. It has some very dated acting and those charmingly bizarre editing choices found in the earliest MGM talkies.
Even so, Crawford is worth watching throughout the entire film and, despite the film's faults - bottom line - you want to know what happens next.
Paid also stars Marie Prevost as Crawford's floozy partner in crime, Robert Armstrong as the gang boss Crawford tries to protect, Douglas Montgomery as the boss' son and a coterie of MGM character actors playing criminals, victims and policemen.
A five minute prison shower fight scene was shot but deleted before the film was released. Some stills from the scene exist.
The film was originally made in 1923 as Within the Law, starring Norma Talmadge and Lew Cody and was made again with the same name in 1939, starring Ruth Hussey and Tom Neal.
Paid has been released on Time Warner Archives DVD-R and has also been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
The Rag Man's an agreeable Jackie Cooper and Max Davidson comedy/drama, unseen for many decades, but shown on television for the first time on Turner Classic Movies in 2004.
Max Davidson plays a junkman who takes orphan Cooper in as a companion and business partner. Though the movie could have went down the path of pathos (as Chaplin's The Kid did, also starring Cooper as an orphan), it doesn't go there.
It does entertain for its duration, with lots of scenes tailored for Cooper's charming facial expressions and body language. (Davidson's character, ill for much of the film, spends most of his time in a chair or bed - I can barely remember him walking across the room in this movie!). It's a pity Davidson's career took a nose dive after the arrival of sound (to the point that his last roles were uncredited); anyone who's seen his '20s comedy shorts can attest to this German actor's talents.
The Rag Man also has some nicely historic location footage shot in New York and a new score for small orchestra by Linda Martinez - a score that borders on being too dissonant but, again, doesn't go that route.
MGM made a sequel to The Rag Man, Old Clothes, the same year with the same cast and director, excepting the sequel also starred a young Joan Crawford. A print of the film reportedly still exists.
Mare Hokum is more like it. While often visually impressive, with scenes shot in Italy, France and Spain, Mare Nostrum's an odd and not really satisfying WWI spy drama.
Antonio Moreno, who at one short time was a competitor to Rudolph Valentino, plays a sea-obsessed freighter captain, Ulysses Ferragut, who falls for a German spy played by Alice Terry (the wife of the film's director Rex Ingram).
Ulysses has a wife at home who's so unimportant to the plot, she only appears in three scenes -she's cold and unloving in the first one and apparently going mad in the last one!
One of the reasons Ulysses falls for the German spy, Freya, is that she reminds him of a portrait he keeps of Amphitrite, a goddess of the sea. Okay... I didn't buy the Freya character; in the first half of the movie she's vamping it up, seducing Ulysses and conniving around. Then she suddenly (and stupidly) reveals to her co-spy that she loves the guy! We don't see anything on the screen to indicate the abrupt turnaround.
When Ulysses' son (the smartest and most loyal character in the story) is killed by a German submarine which Ulysses helped situate, Ulysses joins the war effort. Ulysses and Freya both end up dying for their war crimes, both memorably. Ulysses floats to the bottom of the sea to the arms of his beloved Amphitrite, while Freya, in a well directed scene, is shot in a firing squad.
Mare Nostrum's a very mixed bag. Some of the most important scenes of the film are blemished by the use of obvious ship models. Other scenes benefit from on location footage.The film has good actors, a good budget and good direction, but a screenplay that sinks.
Mare Nostrum was for many years considered a lost film. Turner Classic Movies has broadcast a beautiful print of it, with a fine piano score accompaniment. The film is not currently available on DVD.
This is my kind of movie!
I initially approached Billy the Kid with trepidation. The great King Vidor directing a 1930 MGM western? The movie had to be an odd antique. It is, as it turns out, odd, but it's not an antique.
Billy the Kid is a slick, romanticized version of the real Henry McCarty and Pat Garrett and their involvement in the six-month long, 1878 Lincoln County War of New Mexico. Though the war is much simplified, some of what happens in the film was apparently true: the corrupt, government-tied land monopoly in the county, the cold-blooded murder of John Tunstall, the women's safe passage from the McSween house before it was burned.
It was Pat Garrett himself who helped mythologize Henry McCarty after the Kid's death. Garrett claimed to have killed him, but that story's been disputed. The real Billy was reportedly as cold-blooded a killer as the posse he was fighting against, an unscrupulous opportunist. Played here by Johnny Mack Brown in a star-making role, Billy is a romantic, non-compromising sharpshooter who's willing to risk everything for justice and is heroically non-plussed; when the ceiling beams of a burning house fall in front of him, he takes the opportunity to light his cigarette from the flames.
Wallace Beery, in a role which confirmed him as a star, is perfect at the ambiguously-motivated Garrett. Kay Johnson plays the love interest in a minimally-written role, and the movie is packed with character actors like Karl Dane, Roscoe Ates and Russell Simpson.
This is a western that doesn't play the by the rules of western movies. Like most MGM films of the period, it mixes humor into the events, creating some bizarrely incongruous, violent scenes.
King Vidor does a fine directing job; the location shots are gorgeous, the sets memorable, the storytelling compelling.
Billy the Kid was originally shot in the widescreen format, but only the more standard size ratio print exists. The film is available on Warner Archive DVD and has been broadcast by Turner Classic Movies. The version shown is the American one, wherein Pat Garrett allows Billy to escape with his life; the European version has Garrett shooting him dead.
If only films had been preserved as well as literature. Imagine, for example, some of S.J. Perelman or Robert Benchley's earliest books not surviving. Seems preposterous, but here we have MGM's second full-length musical, Chasing Rainbows, and the biggest music segments (in early Technicolor, yet) are missing. This is the movie that presented the song "Happy Days Are Here Again" to the world - and that song is missing.
Because of this, it's difficult to determine how good of a musical Chasing Rainbows is. What we have left seems, to my mind, not as focused or driven as MGM's earlier The Broadway Melody, but also not without charms.
A very young Jack Benny plays the ringmaster, the stage manager of a touring road show. Bessie Love is teamed again, as in The Broadway Melody, with Charles King. Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are the comic relief.
Jack Benny is fine for his role, but the problem is it isn't much of a role: the stage manager tries to keep the company on an even keel - and that's about as interesting as his character gets.
Bessie Love plays virtually the same role as in The Broadway Melody, jilted through most ofthe film by the clueless and weak Terry (Charles King), whose seduction by Nina Marten provides the movie's conflict. Love's big emotional scene is so acute, it's practically dropped in from a different movie.
You either find Marie Dressler and Polly Moran funny or not. I do - guilty as charged. Dressler was capable of both serious work and comedy (and singing, which she does in this film and which she did on stage years before she enteredthe movies) and Moran, with her expressive face and body language, had unexploited dramatic potential as well.
The version of Chasing Rainbows showing on TCM inserts explanatory title cards in the spots which have been lost to time. Still, several songs remain, all enjoyable.
This film has been released on Warner Archives DVD.
Skyscraper Souls just didn't do it for me. It's a low-rent Grand Hotel, with Warren William at the top (literally) as the sordid, egotistical, predatory owner of a very tall new building. He's also out to own Maureen O'Sullivan, an innocent secretary (though he's already having an affair with O'Sullivan's boss, Verree Teasdale, and he's married to Hedda Hopper!).
Skyscraper Souls also has a few other sub-plots, including one about Jean Hersholt and Anita Page (as a prostitute) that I never could make much sense of. Mainly it's about wheeling and dealing Warren William, who gave perfomances later in his career much better than this. His nonchalant self-assuredness serves him well, for example, in his Lone Wolf series for Columbia, and he's more enjoyable to watch there. Here, he's hampered by an over-the-top script in which he justifies whatever suits his fancy for the sake of his glorious building and progress.
Skyscraper Souls is beloved by a lot of pre-code fans (it may be one of the edgiest), but the combination of characters I didn't care about with sub-plots MGM had already over-used kept this one away from my heart.
Skyscraper Souls has been released on VHS and Laserdisc. It's not currently available on DVD, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
I like this movie. It covers territory most '30s films stayed away from (the effects of a divorce and remarriage on two young brothers) and it holds your interest to the end.
Jackie Cooper is the attention-needing younger brother who dislikes his new, emotionally detached step-father (who can blame him?) and feels betrayed by his emotionally weak mother (again...). They don't even tell Cooper they're getting married until the deed is done, the weasels! His older brother, played just adequately by Maurice Murphy, is gone for half the picture and sidetracked by the girl next door in the other half, so he's not much help, either.
The lone parental figure Cooper can rely on (to the extent that the law will allow it) is his biological father, played by Lewis Stone. He's cool. In his very first scene he finds a skull in the ground - it doesn't get any cooler than that! Their scenes together are wonderful, two consummate professionals of very different age, playing off each other with a casual ease.
Alas, this story is determined to have Cooper embrace his new lot in life, so a melodramatic climax is contrived wherein the step-father (Conrad Nagel), a family doctor, saves the life of Cooper's brother and proves himself worthy of Cooper's acceptance.
That ending's wack. I'd rather see a movie where Lewis Stone and Jackie Cooper rage against the social order! There needed to be a high-octane sequel, directed by Quentin Tarantino or Jean-Luc Godard. I'd pay to watch that.
Divorce in the Family is not available on DVD or VHS, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
What a crazy, mixed-up movie! Rich man Robert Montgomery is a kindly dipsomaniac in love with rich girl Norma Shearer (I assume they're independently wealthy - are they ever shown working a job?), but Shearer is instead lollygagging about with a handsome but caddish, globe traveling news correspondent (played by future Commissioner Gordon Neil Hamilton).
Hamilton leads her on, lies to her, then leaves her to travel her own way back from Mexico! Spurned Shearer then does what nearly every spurned woman did in MGM films of this period: she sleeps her way across Europe with one aristocrat after another, natch!
To add to the confusion of the viewer (if not the characters), Shearer goes back to the untrustworthy worm in the last scene (all he does is glare at her and she's his) while Montgomery feebly and complacently looks forward to his next drink. The end.
Mick LaSalle, in his fine book on women in pre-code movies, Complicated Women, extols Strangers May Kiss as an adventurous "pop-feminist document", far ahead of its time.This is probably true, though it is noteworthy that none of the characters in the film seem particularly happy about their situations or choices; if the film is a feminist document, it's perhaps prescient in that regard, too.
The usual MGM slickness is in the house with stunning art deco sets and gorgeous gowns (though the movie is hampered by some very poor editing). The greatest actors and sets in the world won't help, though, if you find the characters absurd, unlikable, or nuts. Complexly amoral characters were frequent in pre-code movies, but what worked in Norma Shearer films like The Divorcee and A Free Soul just ain't working here.
Strangers May Kiss isn't available on DVD or VHS, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
As horse racing movies go, Sporting Blood is an interesting and even unique one.
Through several opening title cards, the movie sets about with the intention of just telling the story of a horse, Tommy Boy, as he's transferred from owner to owner. The first half hour of the film is the best: Ernest Torrence plays the horse's first and most sentimental owner in an atmospheric, powerfully directed extended sequence. The sequence is also noteworthy (for 1931) for a portrayal of African Americans which isn't condescending or farcical. The Uncle Ben character (John Larkin) proves more instrumental to Tommy Boy's fate than any other.
Tommy Boy is shown sold to a succession of owners, each with diminishing respect or care for the horse. Then Clark Gable and Madge Evans enter the picture and it deflates. What had previously been a single-minded film about the fate of a horse becomes a late-in-the-game, conventional MGM love story about the redemption of sordid characters and the story of a horse.
One can imagine the producers' concerns that the story of just a horse wouldn't have the sex appeal needed for box office draw, but the Gable/Evans plot seems forced into a movie that was doing fine by itself.
Still, Sporting Blood is worth watching for some other good qualities: the direction, the Kentucky racing cinematography and the appearances of longtime silent film stars like Lew Cody and Marie Prevost.
Sporting Blood has been released on a Warner Archives DVD-R and is also shown on Turner Classic Movies.
Don't let the so-so reviews on IMDB.com fool you: when viewed on the big screen, with excellent piano accompaniment (as at Cinevent 2009), Where East is East is a typically twisted, timeless, and highly enjoyable Tod Browning/Lon Chaney production - probably not on a par with The Unknown or West of Zanzibar, but not that far off, either.
Just listing the elements involved tells all you need to know: Chaney as a lion-tamer, Tiger Haynes, Lupe Velez as the daughter he loves, Lloyd Hughes as her fiance, seduced by the exotic, mysterious Estelle Taylor as Madame De Sylva - and a caged gorilla who hates De Sylva's guts, all in the fetid Chinese jungle.
It's clear, a half hour into the story, what the ironic, EC-like conclusion will be, but it's the details and style that make this movie stand out. Chaney's a force of nature here - I think it's one of his most subtle roles. Velez is perfectly cast as the naive and energetic Toyo; Hughes as Bobbie does a creditable job; and Estelle Taylor makes the movie hers with a languid performance that practically makes you smell the exotic perfumes she must be soaked in. Browning, by good instinct, doesn't speed these scenes up but lets the story tell itself slowly and carefully.
The 16mm print we saw was quite good. Where East Is East has also been released on Warner Archives DVD. I don't know which musical score is used for the DVD, but hope it isn't the reportedly dreadful '30s reissue soundtrack used for a TCM UK broadcast.
By the late '20s, William Haines' screen persona had settled into a formula, giving his films the same sort of predictable inevitability other MGM formula stars of the day excelled in (like Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo).
In Haines' films, he played an obnoxious cut-up who pursued women dubious of him and squandered his talents and duties until he fell from grace - at which point he wised up, matured, won the day and the woman. The settings changed, but the story was always the same.
You either like William Haines or you don't. Some find him funny, others obnoxious (some, like myself, find him funny and obnoxious). Even Haines naysayers would have to admit that, in his infantile, improvisational antics and edgy, out-on-a-limb rambunctiousness, he was willing to go where no other comedian had gone before (save, perhaps, Harry Langdon). In Haines' work one can find the seeds of Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Jonathan Winters, and even Andy Kaufmann. And like most of those comics, Haines was also adept at playing serious scenes when required.
The Smart Set takes place in the world of polo. Read the formulaic plot described above, imagine stock polo footage, and you have most of this movie.
Having not seen an MGM film in awhile when I wrote this review, I had forgotten what a smooth machine Thalberg and Mayer had running at MGM during this time period; even this average, non-blockbuster film has a smooth, professional finish. Thalberg or his assistants make sure the scenario plows straight and true to its foregone conclusion. The unpredictably of Haines' wild actions, though, keep your interest (one scene seems particularly to presage Jonathan Winters). An on location car chase is imaginatively shot. One night scene of Haines alone on the polo field is especially moody. And a scene with Haines crying for his lost horse is as bizarre as it is effective.
The Smart Set also stars Alice Day as the love interest, and Jack Holt and Hobart Bosworth as poloing rivals.
The Smart Set has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies with an okay film score by Marcus Sjowall.
The same print has been released on DVD-R by Time Warner Archives.
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