Speak Easily (1932)

The best I can say about Speak Easily is it's mildly amusing.

Keaton plays an isolated professor spurred to discover the outside world in this unmemorable plot; Durante is a manager of a traveling dancing troupe.

Speak Easily was Keaton's second-to-last MGM film and the second of three films in which MGM teamed him with Jimmy Durante. Durante fans (are there many now?) probably find much to enjoy here, but Keaton fans can only see Keaton's talents being amazingly wasted. It's sad to see only glimpses of genius sprinkled through the film: Keaton nonchalantly removing himself from a policeman's gaze, gracefully choreographed pratfalls with Thelma Todd... Keaton's scenes with the very funny Todd, minus Durante, are the best in the film.

Keaton was in a bad place when Speak Easily was made. Continual, headline-making conflicts with this wife, Natalie Talmadge, Keaton's alcoholism and his creative conflicts with MGM all contributed to missed days on the set, costing MGM $33,000 in delayed shooting.

Speak Easily has fallen in the public domain and is available in many poor prints on DVD. The best print available is probably in the Warner Bros. Buster Keaton at MGM Triple Feature DVD-R box set. Speak Easily is also shown on TCM.

Kongo (1932)

For dark, rotting depravity, look no further than this sound remake of Tod Browning's 1928 collaboration with Lon Chaney, West of Zanzibar. Both tell the same story, but in Kongo, Walter Huston reprises the same role he originally performed on stage (and which West of Zanzibar was based) and he has a delicious time hamming it up. Huston looks like a deranged pirate with a wicked, mischievous glint in his eye, an insane prototype of Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth.

Huston is "King Deadlegs" Flint, a paraplegic planning revenge in an African swamp, manipulating the natives with magic tricks and living with man-hungry Lupe Velez and two Lupe Velez-hungry henchmen.

If you haven't seen West of Zanzibar or Kongo, I won't give away the plot's twists and turns here. I will say that drug addicted-Conrad Nagel and Virginia Bruce get caught in Huston's web and, like so many Tod Browning-related films, the ending is EC-like in its ironic justice.

All in all, Kongo is probably not as strong as the more tightly constructed West of Zanzibar. Where Kongo excels is in atmosphere; the sweaty and heated look of the film is downright claustrophobic.

Kongo has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.

Are You Listening? (1932)

William Haines is a murderer on the run from a nationwide, radio-reported police manhunt!

This isn't your typical William Haines flick. In fact, it's the last film he made for MGM and the last feature film he made for a major studio. When he's carried away on a train at the end of the film, he's also, in effect, leaving Hollywood.

Are You Listening? plays like a mashup of MGM's first musical, The Broadway Melody (1929) and Haines' previous radio-centric film, Remote Control (1930). As in The Broadway Melody, half of the film tells the story of how young girls who come to New York
to make a living are used and abused. In the no-less-depressing other half of the film, Haines plays a radio writer married to horrendous shrew Karen Morley who plays evil like you've never seen her play it before. Meanwhile, Haines has fallen in love with one of the aforementioned women, the appealing Madge Evans (also Haines' love interest in Fast Life).

The first half of the movie is an uneasy mixture of light comedy (primarily poking fun at radio's primitive production methods) and drama. Are You Listening? gradually sheds all humor and becomes an outright melodrama, with an almost noir atmosphere unlike any other Haines movie. The technology with which Haines made his living becomes the technology that hunts him down and entraps him.

Those who love character actors will have a field day with Are You Listening?. Neil Hamilton, Wallace Ford, Hattie McDaniel,Jean Hersholt, John Miljan, Joan Marsh, Charley Grapewin and more appear.

Old Time Radio fans will be especially interested in Are You Listening?. I'd direct those just discovering Willam Haines to The Girl Said No, The Smart Set or Navy Blues.

Are You Listening? has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.

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.

New to DVD: Salute to the Marines (1943) and Music for Millions (1944)

Salute to the Marines, starring Wallace Beery in Technicolor and Margaret O'Brien and Jimmy Durante in Music for Millions are being released to DVD-R for the first, by Warner Archives.

Check the Warner Archives site for details: 
http://www.wbshop.com/category/wbshop_brands/warner+archive.do

Scaramouche (1923)

Though produced by Metro, not Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Rex Ingram's Scaramouche, starring the upcoming Ramon Novarro, was released by MGM during their first year in business. Like Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, also rereleased by MGM, Scaramouche is an epic film, with huge, sixty-acre lot sets, seemingly hundreds of extras and immaculate, astonishing set design.

Scaramouche, though, is a much better film than The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's a rousing, swashbuckling spectacle that's free of most of the mawkish tendencies of many later MGM epic films (Mare Nostrum, I'm looking at you).

Set during the time leading to the French Revolution, Scaramouche is based on Rafael Sabatini's enormously successful novel released only two years earlier. Though straining credulity (Novarro is an outcast aristocrat and a law student and a playwright and actor and a master swordsman and a leader of the revolution), the screenplay and directing are smooth and captivating, the actors entertaining and the choreographed scenes full of life.

Alice Terry is Novarro's love interest and Lewis Stone, who so wonderfully played cads during this period in his acting career, plays one you especially love to hate here.

Scaramouche is filled with half-shadowed knick-knacks, ornate costumes, kids playing games and other extraneous manifestations of life. I can describe it no better than historian Kevin Brownlow: Scaramouche is "primarily a work of art in the 18th-century tradition. The period has been so beautifully evoked that it seems inconceivable that the picture belongs to this century. It looks as though the combined efforts of several 18th century painters, sculptors, scenic designers, costumiers and architects have reached a climax of rococo glory on celluloid."

The compimentary and full-bodied orchestral score (commissioned, I think, by Turner Classic Movies) used for the Warner Archives DVD-R I watched is by Jeffrey Mark Silverman. While it may not have any memorable themes, neither does it detract from the film as so many composed or hodge-podged scores for silent films do.

The same print is shown from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and can also be ordered from Warner Archives here: http://www.wbshop.com/product/scaramouche+1923+1000179701.do

Chasing Rainbows (1930)

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.

The Squaw Man (1931)

The Squaw Man...where does one start?

Based on a 1905 play which had four Broadway revivals, the Squaw Man plot now seems archaic: an English aristocrat, Capt. James Wynnegate (Warner Baxter) flees England, honorably taking the blame for stealing funds he did not steal to save the reputation of the woman he loves (Eleanor Boardman) and her husband (right!).

He then does what any English aristocrat would do in that situation: becomes a cowboy in Montana, where he marries an Indian maiden, Naturich (Lupe Velez), he'd rescued from a local thug (Charles Bickford) - they have a son. Seven years later, the law shows up to arrest Naturich for the murder of the thug (she had shot him, to rescue Wynnegate). The very same day, Roland Young as a family friend and Eleanor Boardman show up to take Wynnegate home (her husband's now dead) and Wynnegate is convinced to send the son back back to England and, heartbroken, Naturich kills herself. The (abrupt) end.

Cecil B. DeMille's movies are often best enjoyed as surrealistic alternate versions of D. W. Griffith's movies. Griffith traded almost solely in Victorian-era melodrama. DeMille did, too, but with a sensational, bizarre bent that is best exemplified here by a cut from British high society to a hilarious desolate shot of the forlorn, wild west "Buzzard's Pass".

(Yep, I'm aware the transition is there in the 1905 source material, but DeMille finds a way to make it seem crazier. He was a master at creating absurd, only-in-Hollywood, leaps in logic. In Fool's Paradise (1921), he deliciously lets his hero pursue his dream girl from a Mexican border town to Siam, where she dances for a prince in front of a pit of alligators. Yes!! I wouldn't at all be surprised if David Lynch wasn't thinking of DeMille when he incongruously had his film director, Adam, meeting The Cowboy at a stereotypical ranch in Beechwood Canyon in Mulholland Drive - itself a critique of Hollywood's absurdities.)

The Squaw Man is certainly watchable for those who just want an involving story. DeMille knows how to tell a story that people want to see, even creaky, predictable stories, and he must have loved this one - this is the third time he filmed it. Even when the ending is telegraphed, you want to see what happens next. Lupe Velez gives a genuinely sympathetic performance here, and the ending is sad no matter how you look at it.

All the actors have given better, more expressive performances in other films and the reason is the dialogue is stilted here, old-fashioned for 1931, requiring stilted mannerisms, especially in the beginning scenes in England. The scenes with Velez and Baxter fare better, and Dickie Moore as their son acts with an ease the others aren't allowed. He doesn't care about the lofty source material - he's just havin' a good time!

The Squaw Man has been released on a Warner Archives DVD-R, along with the 1914 version.

Where East Is East (1929)

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.

But the Flesh is Weak (1932)

What bizarre catalyst propelled Irving Thalberg and company to churn out one MGM romantic "comedy" after another starring leads whose defining characteristics were boorish, brutish, insufferable infantilism? I would argue that in the hands of William Haines, this sort of material could border on comic genius, in a surreal Jonathon Winters-ish way. Usually, though, it just thuds and offends, and But the Flesh Is Weak is a prime example.

In this film, written by Ivor Novello, deadbeat Robert Montgomery and his philandering father, C. Aubrey Smith, do their best to mooch from, seduce, and wed (or not) rich women. That's practically the entire story. Montgomery at first latches onto the interesting Heather Thatcher, but then quickly dumps her for a widow, Nora Gregor (better known for her role in Renoir 's Rules of the Game).

There may be a fine line between romantic persistence and cloddish, creepy annoyance, but this screenplay asks Robert Montgomery to dash over it and never look back. Gregor 's ending line "I knew I loved you when you hit me" was the straw that broke the camel's back for Mary. Bleahhh.

Thatcher's role is sympathetically written, for all the good that does the film; Edward Everett Horton plays Gregor's rival suitor in a part that doesn't play to his strengths.

There might have been an amusing line scattered here or there; if so, I can't remember them.

Remade by MGM in 1941 as Free and Easy.

But the Flesh Is Weak is available on Warner Archives DVD-R and has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

Polly of the Circus (1932)

In Polly of the Circus, Clark Gable plays a man of the cloth (as he did in Laughing Sinners the year before), this time falling for a circus trapeze artist, Marion Davies. But - their church refuses to accept her as his wife, so she runs back to the circus to kill herself from great heights. Can Clark Gable reach her in time? Will Polly of the Circus have a happy ending?

Sheesh!

Based on a 1907 play, Polly of the Circus is best described as nearly worthless product - a hollow commodity. A harsh-sounding call, I suppose, but they didn't even try to write a good screenplay for this film. The gears of the plot have been so overused (even when the film was made) that the shape of the final product is clear from the start. There's barely a moment of spontaneity present because the absurd plot demands it. Emotional outbursts come out of left-field because the plot demands it. In short, all sorts of far-fetched machinations transpire because the sappy plot demands it. The only extraneous thing in the film is a bizarre little conflict involving Raymond Hatten as an alcoholic church servant, in a role alternately creepy and "humorous".

Marion Davies, who thrived on improvisation and quick wit, is wasted in this vehicle. Gable doesn't suffer quite as badly, but C. Aubrey Smith, as his judgemental father, relies on Grand Gestures, playing to the back seats as if he's in a 1915 Theda Bara movie.

For what it's worth, this movie bombed at the box office, and Gable hated the script so much he walked off the set. Good for him.

Only recommended for Clark Gable and Marion Davies completists.

Polly of the Circus is available on Warner Archives DVD-R.

The Secret Six (1931)

A 1931 crime film with Wallace Beery, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Lewis Stone, Ralph Bellamy, and Johnny Mack Brown – a recipe for a great film, right?

The Secret Six has a great opening act, but then loses its way. First it’s the story of a low-life slaughter-house worker, Beery, opting instead for a rising career as a bootlegger and well-paid thug. Then it’s a love-triangle, with reporters Clark Gable and Johnny Mack Brown vying for the attention of club worker Jean Harlow. Then it’s a police procedural, with a bizarre and unexplained group of black-masked men in power working behind the scenes to bring down Beery, who by this time is in politics. Lastly, it’s a courtroom drama.

Get all that?

The casting is perfect. Beery, who wants steak for dinner after a day of killing cattle, could be reprising his role from The Big House. Lewis Stone gives an unexpectedly understated performance as the quiet head of the gang (did Brando see this?), and Ralph Bellamy, in his first role, is convincingly menacing as a double-dealing gangster. Gable, Harlow, and Brown play early versions of the sorts of characters Hollywood made them famous for.

The Secret Six also falters in its dialogue. I hate to dis the honored Francis Marion, who worked on 166 films from 1912 to 1940. She was Mary Pickford’s personal screenwriter (some great films, those), and brought good, basic storytelling skills to many silent and sound films. By the early ‘30s, though, the tropes she relied on in her dialogue were perhaps getting stale: The Secret Six must contain at least a dozen instances of the responses, “Yeah?” and “Oh, yeah?” Producer Irving Thalberg may have had a hand in the script’s plot, though, as there’s talk about Thalberg making Gable’s role in the film larger late in the shooting process.

The Secret Six has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.

Possessed (1931)

Possessed, with it's pre-code feminist script, swanky sets, slick direction and upper-echelon star power, is a quintessential early '30s MGM film (A Free Soul, starring Norma Shearer and Gable, from the same year, is another contender). It's escapist melodrama with just enough realism to keep from descending into absurdity.

The plot is a rubber-stamped depression-era fantasy made for its target audience: small-town factory worker Joan Crawford leaves for the big city determined to use whatever assets she has to live the high life, becomes a mistress to powerful man-about-town Clark Gable....you've seen this before, haven't you?

What's enjoyable about Possessed is seeing two of Hollywood's biggest stars in their prime, Gable in a new sort of male role for the time, an anti-hero, and Crawford, who MGM considered "the personification of youth and beauty and joy and happiness", before she mutated into something other. Those familiar with Crawford's background will realize she's practically playing herself here.

Noteworthy, too, is "Skeets" Gallagher, playing a perpetually inebriated dandy, whose ritzy living quarters and whimsical demeanor must have represented the height of freedom for audiences in 1931.

Clarence Brown's directing doesn't have the sort of dreamy look he excelled in earlier in his career, in films like The Flesh and the Devil, but it's perfectly fine, and benefits from some on-location shooting in the opening scenes.

Possessed has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.