Category Archives: Pre-Code Reviews

Wings
Directed by William Wellman
Written by John Monk Saunders, Hope Loring, and Louis D. Lighton
1927/US
Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Mary Preston: Remember – I saw the war, too, Jack! And I can’t blame – anyone – for anything! What happens from now on is all that matters, isn’t it, dear?

Can’t believe it took me this long to get to the first Best Picture Oscar winner.  And I was not disappointed.

The setting is WWI. David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) is a son of the richest family in the small town in which he lives.  Everybody, including the principals, expects him to marry the rich and lovely Sylvia Lewis.  All-American middle class boy Jack Powell (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers) is in love with her too.  Jack is oblivious to the fact that Mary Preston (Clara Bow) is crazy about him.  Both men enlist as combat pilots and go off to France.  They become flying aces and eventually best friends.  Mary enlists as a motor pool driver and catches up with them in France.

Most of the film is devoted to spectacular aerial footage of combat. So we get action, adventure, comedy, tragedy, romance and male bonding.  Gary Cooper’s two-minute scene in this film set him on the road to stardom.

Two and a half hours of war movie didn’t exactly sound like a load of fun but I loved this.  It was charming when it needed to be, touching when it needed to be, and, wow, those flight scenes were unbelievable.  Amazon had the restored print with colorized flames coming out of planes that are shot down.

The Big Trail
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Hal G. Evarts, Marie Boyle, etc.
1930/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant

Breck Coleman, Wagon Train Scout: We can’t turn back! We’re blazing a trail that started in England. Not even the storms of the sea could turn back the first settlers. And they carried it on further. They blazed it on through the wilderness of Kentucky. Famine, hunger, not even massacres could stop them. And now we picked up the trail again. And nothing can stop us! Not even the snows of winter, nor the peaks of the highest mountain. We’re building a nation and we got to suffer! No great trail was ever built without hardship. And you got to fight! That’s right. And when you stop fighting, that’s death. What are you going to do, lay down and die? Not in a thousand years! You’re going on with me!

This ambitious tale of pioneers on the Oregon trail combines a simple plot, a cast of thousands, and the launch of a natural born star.

As the story begins, hundreds of settlers (here called pilgrims) are gathered in Missouri preparing to set off for new homes in Washington State on the Oregon Trail.  Young Indian Scout Breck Coleman is hanging around the camp preparing to set out for parts unknown.  Then he notices that Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.), whom he suspects of killing his friend is wagon master.  Breck is convinced to sign on.

He meets awkwardly with single beauty Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) and they spar for most of the rest of the film as she rejects his advances.  Ruth is also being courted by a fugitive con man who is more “civilized” than Brent but is really after her money.

The journey is beset by raging river crossings, indian attacks, torrential rain and mud, steep mountains, and finally snowstorms.  Meanwhile, our revenge and love triangle plots get sorted out satisfactorily.

The 23-year-old John Wayne went straight from the prop department to a leading role here and was oozing star quality right out of the box.  The other actors are OK but you can’t take your eyes off of Wayne.  The other outstanding aspect of the film is the awesome photography and choreography of the epic wagon train scenes and animal crossings.  Truly ahead of its time.

Unfortunately the high cost and technology adopted by this movie – it was shot simultaneously in 70 and 35 mm and in four separate language versions – ensured it would be a box office flop.  So Wayne would be relegated back to B movies until John Ford made a star of him with Stagecoach (1939).

Condemned!
Directed by Wesley Ruggles
Written by Sidney Howard from a book by Blair Niles
1929/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Jean Vidal: Did you or did you not give my wife a monkey?

A decent action/adventure for the sound era.

Jean Vidal (Dudley Digges), the sadistic and gross warden of Devils Island, made a loveless marriage with the pious, timid, and much younger Madame Vidal (Ann Harding). She throws herself into her housework to take her mind off Jean and her extreme homesickness.  Jean thinks household chores beneath the dignity of a warden’s wife and insists on hiring a prisoner to help her.  He thinks he has found the perfect candidate in Michel Oman (Ronald Colman), a gentleman thief recently sent to the island.

Michel and the Mme. form a close emotional attachment and the pair soon become the talk of the town despite the chaste nature of their relations.  This makes Jean a laughing stock and he is determined to get to the bottom of the stories.  His treatment of both lovers ends only in their declaring themselves and plots for Michel to escape.  The second act of the movie is devoted to the escape through the fever-torn jungles of Guyana.  With Louis Wolford as Michel’s tough convict buddy.

This drags at times but is entertaining mostly due to Colman’s debonaire performance.  I like Ann Harding but I thought she overdid it a bit in this one.  She certainly looked lovely.

Colman received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.

Montage of clips from Colman’s films – what an actor! what a face!

The Single Standard
Directed by John Robertson
Written by Josephine Lovett from a novel by Adela Rogers St. John
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Opening Title Card: For a number of generations men have done as they pleased–and women have done as men pleased…

Greta Garbo was still making silent movies in 1929.  Her loveliness makes them worth watching for fans.

Arden Stuart (Garbo) is a wealthy young socialite.  Polite society is beginning to bore her. After refusing the proposal of Tommy (Johnny Mack Brown), an eligible young man, Arden takes off on a romantic moonlight drive with the family chauffeur.  She is caught in a passionate embrace and the chauffeur loses his job.

Several years later she meets ex-boxer painter Packy Cannon (Nils Asther).  He believes love should be free and equal.  This makes him a soul mate to Arden and they sail off in his yacht the “All Alone” where they pursue an idyllic affair.

Packy eventually dumps Arden on the grounds that their love is interfering with his work. Arden goes home in disgrace.  She eventually agrees to marry Tommy and they have a child.  What will happen when Packy turns up again eager to rekindle their romance?

Despite all the posing Garbo does in this film, she is completely mesmerizing and makes one half of an absolutely gorgeous couple with Asther.  The story is kind of average and predictable.

Alibi
Directed by Roland West
Written by Roland West and C. Gardner Sullivan from a play by John Griffith Wray et al
1929/US
Feature Productions
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Joan Manning Williams: Law! Is bull-dogging, third-degreeing people into confessing crimes they didn’t commit, is that law?
Buck Bachman: No, but… Oh, I don’t understand.
Joan Manning Williams: Of course you don’t. You’re a policeman. And you’ll never understand!

This precursor to the great gangster films of the early thirties is atmospheric but suffers from early talkie-itis.

Straight-arrow Detective Sgt. Buck Bachman (Harry Stubbs) is in love with Joan Manning (Eleanor Griffith), a policeman’s daughter and wants to marry her.  She rejects him in favor of recently released gangster Chick Williams (Chester Morris), whom she thinks was wrongfully convicted. They marry.

But Chick is unrepentant and is soon back to his evil ways.  He takes Joan to the theater and uses her as an alibi for a robbery committed during the intermission.  A policeman is killed and soon an intense police investigation begins to corner him.  With Regis Toomey in his film debut as a police double agent.

This movie has its merits.  It looks good, with plenty of atmospheric lighting, and Chester Morris makes an excellent charismatic anti-hero.  On the other hand, it suffers from the slow pacing and stilted dialogue style that mars many of the very early talkies.  Regis Toomey hams it up to the max as my least favorite film character the “comic” drunk.  On balance, I’m glad I saw it.

Alibi was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Morris), and Best Art Direction.

Restoration Demonstration

Where East Is East
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Tod Browning Henry Sinclair Drago, et al
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Tiger Haynes: Your heathen tricks have broken enough men! You’re going to leave this boy alone!

The last of the ten films Tod Browning made with Lon Chaney was this OK melodrama.

The setting is somewhere in Southeast Asia, possibly Laos. Tiger Haynes (Chaney) is a wild game trapper who sells the tigers and other animals he captures to circuses. Tiger dotes on his daughter Toyo (Lupe Velez) and is very protective of her. Toyo falls in love with cute white boy Bobby and they get engaged. Tiger is skeptical but eventually warms to the young man. He asks him to escort one of his tigers to Singapore.

On his journey, Bobby is seduced by vamp Mme. de Sylva (Estelle Taylor), unaware that she is Toyo’s estranged mother.  High melodrama ensues.

This is an OK way to spend an hour but nothing great.

Can somebody explain to me why grown daughters in early cinema are always flirting with their fathers, sitting on their laps, kissing them on the mouth etc.?  I don’t think that it is meant to be as creepy as it seems to me now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpJwYjcZNt0

Bulldog Drummond
Directed by F. Richard Jones
Written by Herman C. McNeile
1929/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to Members)

No matter where she’s a hiding
She’s gonna hear me a comin’
Gonna walk right down that street
Like Bulldog Drummond
‘Cause I’ve been searchin’  – “Searchin”, The Coasters (1957)

This was the first talking Bulldog Drummond picture though it may be among the last I have yet to see.  Ronald Coleman is perfect in the title role.

Bulldog Drummond (Coleman) is bored to tears after serving in WWI so he places an ad in a newspaper and begins his work as a private eye being hired by Phyllis (a young, blonde Joan Bennett) whose uncle has been kidnapped by extortionists.  Phyllis will become his long-suffering and eternal fiancee in the remainder of the series.  The other running character is Algy, Bulldog’s friend and sidekick.  The actors change many times but the characters remain the same.

These are consistently entertaining mystery/private eye movies with a twinkle in the eye and a bit of excitement.  Ronald Coleman may be the ultimate Bulldog Drummond though The role would also fit Ray Milland like a glove later on.

The film was nominated for Best Actor (Coleman) and Best Art Direction.

The Broadway Melody
Directed by Harry Beaumont
Written by Edmund Goulding, Norman Houston and James Gleason
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant

Queenie Mahoney: Oh, dear, I’m just shaky all over!
Hank Mahoney: Oh, Queenie, will you stop. You’re gettin’ me nervous now. It ain’t gonna be a bit different than it was in Reading, PA and we’re going over just as big!
Queenie Mahoney: Oh… do you think so?
Hank Mahoney: Why, it’s cream in the can, baby.

This was better than I expected, which frankly wasn’t much.

Sisters Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank Mahoney (Bessie Love) have their hearts set on getting in a Broadway show and luck smiles on them.  Only problem is they both love the songwriter/star of the review Eddie Kearns (Charles King).

All the usual misunderstandings ensue before the happy ending.  The plot is but a framework to hang the songs of Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed on.

Is this the worst Academy Award winner ever?  I don’t think so.  It’s got a kind of charm that sucked me in.  We know this is pre-Code because the sisters need to change clothes frequently, displaying their lacy lingerie.

The Broadway Melody won the Best Picture Oscar.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director and Best Actress (Bessie Love).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pzVm6nm4xM

That’s Nacio Herb Brown on the piano.

Sunny Side Up
Directed by David Butler
Written by Buddy G. DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson
1929/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube

And keep your sunny side up, up,
Hide the side that gets blue.
If you have nine sons in a row,
Baseball teams make money, you know!

Could anything be more adorable than Janet Gaynor singing the title song?  I don’t think so!

The story is set in the Gay Nineties but the clothes are strictly 1929.  Molly (Gaynor) lives with roommate Bea (Marjorie White) in an apartment above a grocery store.  Bea has a songwriter boyfriend named Eddie (Frank Richardson).  They squabble constantly and will perform several novelty numbers throughout the film.  The grocery store owner Eric (El Bendel) is close friends with the young people.  Molly’s dream lover is millionaire Jack Cromwell (Charles Farrell) who lives in Southhampton.

Jack’s girlfriend and intended bride is not ready to give up her flirtations so he takes off in his car, destination unknown.

Jack and Molly meet cute just before the Fourth of July block party.  The neighborhood celebrates by entertaining each other with song.  After Jack catches Molly’s act, he proposes that she come to Southhampton to perform in an upcoming charity gala.  Her friends accompany her dressed as servants.  Jack also hopes to make his fiancee jealous so she will marry him.  We see several of the acts at the gala.  There are numerous misunderstandings.  If you don’t know how this will wind up, you haven’t been paying attention.  Jackie Cooper has a small uncredited part as a kid reciting a poem.

This is a very old-fashioned story but I found it charming.  Betraying its pre-Code roots we even get to see Janet Gaynor (!)  in lacy lingerie.  The songs are catchy.  Recommended to fans of musicals or the stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBxHSePHtq0

The Kiss
Directed by Jacques Feyder
Written by Hans Kräly and Marian Ainslee from a story by George Saville
1929/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental

André: Irene – we can’t go on meeting like this.

The last silent film made by MGM and by Greta Garbo was this OK melodrama/courtroom drama

The story takes place in France.  Irene Guarry (Garbo) is unhappily married to a cranky, jealous old man.  She has been meeting young attorney Andre Dubail (Conrad Nagel) on the sly.  They have even kissed.  But she has remained faithful to her husband.  To complicate things further eighteen-year-old Pierre LaSalle (Lew Ayres in his film debut) has a massive crush on her.

Pierre is leaving for college and begs for a last goodbye kiss.  Irene humors him but a peck on the lips leads to an unwanted passionate embrace.  The husband walks in on this.  The confrontation moves to another room behind closed doors.  Shots are heard.  Hubby is the one that doesn’t  emerge.  Irene is accused of the murder.  She is defended in court by Andre.  Who killed Mr. Guarry?

MGM and Garbo moved into the sound era with less a bang than a wimper.  The plot is pretty trite and the Tchaikovsky score is way too much for the subject matter. Actually, though, the movie is quite watchable especially for Garbo’s beauty and gorgeous gowns and the art deco design.  And I love Lew Ayres. It is only 62 minutes long.