WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[feaito]

I watched The Affairs of Cellini, one of the last precodes made starring the underrated Frederic March and Constance Bennett and the delightfully dappy Frank Morgan and the beautiful Fay Wray directed by Gregory La Cava. Considering the strength of the cast and director it does fall a little short but it is nevertheless entertaining. Frederic March is quite dashing with a beard and in period costume.

I'm glad you enjoyed it Alison, I think that Constance Bennett fared much better here than Fay Wray. She's a fine. mischievous comedienne.

[charliechaplinfan]

Yes she is, I'd love to see her in What Price Hollywood.

[feaito]

Me too and also in "Merrily We Live" (1938). I finished reading the book on the Bennetts an she was quite a character! After reading the book, I admire both Joan and Constance, but as a human being I much prefer Joan.

[MichiganJ]

I watched Le Grand Jeu, a terrific film by Jacques Feyder. Taking place in 1930s Morocco, the film is rich in atmosphere, particularly in reflecting the desert heat. The plot, an obvious precursor to Vertigo, is much better than the Hitchcock film. A Playboy is forced to leave France and his lover and he joins the Foreign Legion to begin a new life. But he soon meets a prostitute, the spitting image of his former lover… Marie Bell plays both the lover and the prostitute, and Feyder uses an ingenious method to distinguish between the two--and it's not just the hair color.

While all of the performances are terrific, the standout must be François Rosay who plays the woman who runs the seedy motel/brothel where much of the action takes place. Her character is so interesting and her performance so extraordinary that she may seem to overshadow the two leads. Not so, for in many respects, the film is as much her story as that of the of the stars. That's just one of the many fascinating aspects of the film, you can easily watch it from different character's points of view and the film and its themes are much the richer for it.

Special shout out to Christine for pointing out that Le Grand Jeu was being made available on DVD from Eureka!

[pvitari]

I have nothing to add here... just trying out my new avatar which is from The Man Who Came Back, a movie that belongs in the pre-code section. (The last movie I watched happens to be Bigger Than Life.)

[Ann Harding]

Special shout out to Christine for pointing out that Le Grand Jeu was being made available on DVD from Eureka!

Glad you enjoyed it so much, MichiganJ! Françoise Rosay is indeed a great actress and her husband Jacques Feyder provided her some brilliant parts in many films. I hope one day they will release Gribiche (1926), Pension Mimosas (1935) and Les Gens du Voyage (1938) with English subs. Her superb Cornelia in La Kermesse Héroïque (Carnival in Flanders, 1935) is already available from the BFI.

[MichiganJ]

Her superb Cornelia in La Kermesse Héroïque (Carnival in Flanders, 1935) is already available from the BFI.

Just dropped it into my shopping cart. Thanks!

[charliechaplinfan]

I watched the superb The Royal Family of Broadway this morning, the comedy in it way exceeded my expectations, I had no idea that it was a spoof on the Barrymore's, well at least a spoof on John Barrymore. Ina Claire was so much more vibrant than books on Garbo give us to believe and very much at home playing one half of the famous siblings. Frederic March playing Tony, the brother who sold out and went to Hollywood, he has a real flair for comedy. I had trouble beliveing the ending, were a daughter goes on after her mother has died but it made a good ending so I suppose it doesn't really matter.

[MichiganJ]

As a fan of silent films, I was amazed and slightly embarrassed to learn that in the early 60s there was a weekly half hour television show called Fractured Flickers, which was basically Mystery Science Theater as produced and voiced by the folks who made the great Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. The silents are re-edited (a feature down to under 10-minutes generally) with voices and sound effects presenting an entirely new, and often hilarious story.

Each episode is hosted by Hans Conried (who does some voices, too) and after the first fractured film, he does a short, tongue-in-cheek interview with a star. (Gypsy Rose Lee is introduced as an "expert in pantomime"--which she elaborates on.)

While naturally the humor varies (fractured comedies are generally less successful than fractured melodramas), so far each episode has at least two or three out-and-out belly laughs. It helps to know the actual films that are being "fractured" and some of the best include:

Blood and Sand, which becomes "Death of a Traveling Salesman". Valentino plays Willy Roman, a smarmy insurance salesman.

The Drop Kick, which becomes "Cornell Goes Wilde". There's a football premise but the real laughs come from Richard Barthelmess who endlessly drop kicks a football while saying "One, two, three, O'leary!" in George of the Jungle's voice.

The Mark of Zorro becomes "The Barber of Stanwick". This one I had to pause because the title alone had me rolling, but the story, where Doug Fairbanks as "Zeke" gives free haircuts is just brilliant in its wackiness.

Likely to be the best, though, is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which becomes "Dinky Dunstan, Boy Cheerleader". Here, Lon Chaney as "Dinky" leads the UCLA cheerleading squad as they play the big game against Stanford. Things don't go so well, though, and in the end "Dinky" finds himself cheerleading at another college. Guess which? (Hint: It's in the midwest!) I can't remember when I've laughed so hard.

Only a third of the way through this terrific collection.

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I watched the Gaumont DVD of Marcel L'Herbier's L'Homme du Large (1920). It's a pleasure for the eye as the newly restored print -entirely tinted- is just beautiful. In Brittany, a fisherman Nolff (Roger Karl) dreams of the day when his son Michel (Jaque Catelain) will follow him at sea. Alas, his son prefers to get drunk in a dive with his friend Guenn-La-Taupe (Gwenn-the-mole) played by a very young Charles Boyer. At home, his mother and sister are toiling while he spends his time doing nothing except playing cards. With this melodramatic narrative, we could have a really flat picture. But L'Herbier was already a master of the image, even in 1920. The cinematography is stunning whether for the interior showing the intimacy of the fisherman's family or the exteriors, all shot on locations in Brittany. The film is really a poem to the beauty of the Brittany landscape and seascape. The actors do a very good job, even the often disappointing Jaque Catelain, comes to life as the good-for-nothing and spoiled son. It's really funny to recognise a very young Charles Boyer as a chain-smoking villain. The film is accompanied by a very good new orchestral score by film composer Antoine Duhamel. A really interesting film.

[charliechaplinfan]

Charles Boyer looks instantly recogniseable. It looks beautifully tinted.

[feaito]

Thanks to Alison I watched "Man, Woman and Sin" (1927) a quite short film (64 minutes?) that gives one the opportunity of witnessing one of the rare cinematic appearances of Stage star Jeanne Eagels. Miss Eagels is lovely and gives a good performance as a kept woman and John Gilbert in turn, gives a sensitive performance as the naïve man who falls for her. A noteworthy performance too by Gladys Brockwell, as Gilbert's mother. A worthwhile film.

[charliechaplinfan]

Isn't Jeanne Eagels enchanting? A pity she didn't make it to talkies.

[feaito]

It's a pity that she died when she was so young.

[Gagman 66]

Fernando,

MAN, WOMAN & SIN is so short, because the second half of the movie was never made at all. The planned trail sequences were entirely scrapped after Jeanne Eagels was fired by MGM at the insistence of Director Monta Bell Mid-way through production. Bell haphazardly pieced together a quickie ending from rough outtakes filmed before Eagels was let go. What does the print look like? I have a copy, and it appears almost like a copy protected VHS, transferred to DVD-R without overriding the copy protection. Keeps going from lighter to darker over and over again. I'm sure there is better material than this, although the print itself isn't bad, it's just the recording the is very sub-par. I like the movie allot personally, (but not as well as THE COSSACKS), so does Kevin Brownlow. It would be interesting to see where the story had gone, if Eagels hadn't been so difficult to work with.

I added a score to this film as the disc I acquired was Silent. Although I know there was a clip with a score on Youtube. This is the Main-title and Jeanne Eagels re-occurring theme I used for my version. Prepare yourself.


http://fan.tcm.com/_MAN-WOMAN-38-SIN-Ta ... 66470.html