Flickers in Time

Sweepings
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by Lester Cohen from his novel
1933/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page

Daniel Pardway: I rattle around in that old house like a pea in a shoe box.

Lionel Barrymore arrives in town looking for opportunities just after the Great Chicago fire. He has little money but big dreams. He decides to open a kind of general store sell all the items people will need to rebuild. Over the decades the store prospers along with Lionel. By this time Lionel has four grown children: Eric Linden, William Gargan, Gloria Stuart and Alan Dinehart. He longs to leave his business to them but they are spoiled and lack either the interest or the aptitude or both.

This movie did not wow me. Barrymore is always excellent.

Riptide
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Written by Edmund Goulding and several uncredited writers
1934/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Mary: No man’s gonna let me or not let me do anything ever again.

Mary (Norma Shearer) plays a freethinking woman with a “wild past”. She meets aristocrat Lord Rexford (Herbert Marshall, falls in love, and marries him. She tells him about her wicked ways and he swears he can forgive and forget. Three years later, they have a happy marriage and live in style with their adorable little daughter. He must travel to New York without her.

Mary takes the opportunity stay with her aunt Hettie (Mrs. Patrick Campbell) in her Riviera home. There she meets Tommy (Robert Montgomery), with whom she shares a past. He now drunkenly attempts to woo her but Norma stands strong. A paparazzi gets a photo of an innocent kiss and Herbert refuses to believe it was innocent and files for divorce. The couple separates and Tommy arrives in New York to continue his seduction campaign. Can a happy ending be pulled out of this situation? Do you have to ask?

Shearer seems to have made the same movie over and over. She reforms her wild ways through love. But her husband doesn’t understand her. There’s always Robert Montgomery around to get dumped. This is not the best of the films with this plot but it is quite watchable. As always, Shearer looks fabulous in her gowns by Adrian.

Blondie Johnson
Directed by Ray Enright and Lucien Hubbard
Written by Earl Baldwin
1933/US
First National Pictures (Warner Bros.)
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Blondie Johnson: This city’s gonna pay me a livin’. A good livin’! And its gonna get back from me, just as little as I have to give.

This is a very fun movie with the ever fabulous Joan Blondell in the lead for a change.

Blondie Johnson (Blondell) begins as a downtrodden unemployed girl who is homeless along with her dying mother. She quit her last job when the boss couldn’t keep his hands off her.  She can get no assistance from the government. When mom dies, she bitterly decides that from now on she will be out for only one thing – money.

She gets a job in the chorus to afford some decent clothes and proceeds to prove herself a very competent con artist. Her first accomplice is taxi driver Sterling Holloway. Then she meets gangster Danny Jones (Chester Morris) and gets involved in progressively more elaborate and lucrative cons. Blondie is all business with Danny but he wants something more.

Joan Blondell lights up the screen in every movie she appears in and never more so than when she stars. She is pitiful, hard-bitten, and love-lorn as required by the plot. Very entertaining and recommended to Blondell fans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO95iUPOpms

The Lady Refuses
Directed by George Archainbaud
Written by Wallace Smith, Robert Milton and Guy Bolton
1931/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

June: There are two times when no one can advise a man. The first, is when he’s drinking too much. The other, is when he loves the wrong woman.
Sir Gerald Courtney: Does that bar… even a father?
June: *Especially* a father.

This obscure movie did not wow me.

The action takes place in London with a bunch of American actors trying to sound English. June (Betty Compson) has fallen on hard times and decides to take up prostitution. But on the very first night she hits the streets, the coppers spot her and chase her down. She seeks sanctuary In the posh townhouse of aristocrat Sir Gerald Courtney (Gilbert Emery).

Sir Gerald  immediately takes a liking to the obviously clever and pretty June and decides she is just the woman to distract his son Russell (John Darrow) from gold-digging hussy Berthine Waller (Margaret Livingston). June is highly successful at this, perhaps too successful, and succeeds in making two men fall in love with her.  With Ivan Lebedeff as Berthine’s boyfriend/pimp.

This is a so-so programmer though it did hold my interest.  Compson was ten years older than Darrow and looked it.

No trailer or clips so here’s a tribute to Compson.

Tabu: A story of the South Seas
Directed by F.W. Murnau
Written by F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty
1931/US
Murnau-Flaherty Productions
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube

The Girl: [writing a goodbye letter] I must go. Hitu is here and waits for me. You will die if I do not obey. I will go so that you may live. The tabu is upon us. I have been so happy with you far more than I deserved. The love you have given me, I will keep to the last beat of my heart. Across the great waters, I will come to you in your dreams when the moon spreads its path on the sea. Farewell.

In his last film, a late silent movie, F.W. Murnau gives us a simply beautiful Romeo and Juliet story set in the South Pacific.

Robert J. Flaherty was supposed to co-direct this film and it has a documentary feel to it with many rituals of Polynesian life captured. A strong handsome young man (Matahi) falls in love with a beautiful young Riri (Anne Chevalier). Matahi is an expert spear fisherman.  They live in Paradise and their love is idyllic.

Then aged warrior Hitu comes from the main island and announces the sacred virgin has died.  Riri is the chosen successor.  A man can be killed for even looking at her.  The lovers flee to Papeete which has been Westernized by colonizers to a certain extent.  Matahi also proves to be an expert at pearl diving.  He is tricked out of his prize pearl by white men.  Can the couple escape the long arm of Hitu?

This is beautiful to watch, the young actors are charming and natural, and the music is fun. It was Murnau’s final film. He died in an auto accident during post-production at only 42. Recommended.

Floyd Crosby won the Best Cinematography Oscar.

Millie
Directed by John Francis Dillon
Written by Charles Kenyon and Ralph Murphy from a novel by Donald Henderson Clarke
1931/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to Members)

Millie Blake: I can’t afford to go out nights.
Helen Riley: Well, you certainly can’t afford to stay home nights. Not at this stage in the game

In this movie, pre-Code shenanigans are mixed with melodrama and a strong cast.

Helen Twelvetrees plays the title character, a girl all the small town high school boys are crazy about. She protects her virtue fiercely. Then wealthy businessman Jack Maitland (James Hall) asks her to marry him and she accepts. They move to New York City. Three years later she has an adorable little girl and James is spending more and more time away from her on “business”.

Angie Wickerstaff (Joan Blondell), a friend from back home, calls Millie and wants to see her.  Blondell’s co-conspirator in gold-digging is Helen Riley (Lilyan Tashman).  The roommates are short on rent money, They take Millie out to a speakeasy where she sees Jack dancing and romancing another woman. She drops him like a hot potato, loses her daughter, refuses to take any of his money, and makes a success of herself through hard work.

Millie continues to attract the attention of many men but the only one that respects her is Tommy Rock (Robert Ames), a newspaper reporter. They date for years. When she discovers Tommy also has a girlfriend on the side, she dumps him and goes on a downhill slide into the hard-drinking partying of Angie and Helen. Finally, an incident causes Millie to snap and a courtroom drama ensues.  With John Halliday as a would-be sugar daddy.

This is a very ok movie and kept my attention for the entire 85 minutes of its run time. Blondell looks so young! I loved Twelvetrees and Tashman in other movies and they are both in top form here. If the plot appeals, I can recommend it.

American Madness
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin
1932/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Upon receiving his AFI Lifetime Achievment Award] I’d be the first to admit I’m a damn good director. – Frank Capra

Thomas A. Dickson (Walter Huston) runs a successful bank. He believes that credit should be given based on character not on wealth. His board of directors believes this “faith-based lending” will wreck the bank and wants either to get Walter to change his ways or quit. Walter refuses to do either.

Then the bank is robbed of $100,000. It was evidently an inside job and blame is placed on cashier Pat O’Brien who is in charge of the vault. He has an alibi which he refuses to use because it might compromise Walter’s wife Phyllis (Kay Johnson) whom he found in the apartment of creepy bank executive Cyril Cluett (Gavin Gordon).

In an elaborate game of “telephone”, rumors that the bank has lost millions in the robbery and is on the verge of failure spread like wildfire through the city.  A run on the bank ensues. I will go no further except to say that many of the tropes in this movie would appear again in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). With Constance Cummings as O’Brien’s fiancee and Huston’s secretary.

This is an excellent movie. The acting is terrific and the skill that Capra was developing is evident in every scene, especially the spectacular crowd shots during the bank run. Recommended.

Murders in the Rue Morgue
Directed by Robert Florey
Tom Read and Dale Van Every from the immortal classic by Edgar Allan Poe
1932/US
Universal Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Dr. Mirakle: My life is consecrated to great experiment. I tell you I will prove your kinship with the ape. Eric’s blood will be mixed with the blood of man.

Overlooked Universal horror entry loosely based on the Poe story complete with “Swan Lake” opening music.

Bela Lugosi plays mad scientist Doctor Mirakle who displays his “man-ape” in a carnival sideshow by day and conducts evil experiments on young ladies in an attempt to combine ape and human blood by night. With Leon Ames (still billed as Leon Wycoff) as Pierre Dupin, here a medical student in love with the Sidney Fox, the ape’s choice for a bride.

This film is marred by some ham-handed comic relief and unconvincing ape effects. On the other hand, it does feature some pretty spiffy cinematography by DP Karl Freund.

The American Kingdom
Directed by Edward H. Griffith (with an uncredited George Cukor)
Written by Horace Johnson from a play by Philip Barry
1932/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Daisy Sage: For all our big talk, we both still belong to the animal kingdom.

I enjoyed this stagey but unique and adult sophisticated love triangle.

Tom Collier (Leslie Howard) is the free-thinking owner of a small publishing company. His father (Henry Stephenson) considers him a total flop. Dear old dad is very pleased to learn of Tom’s  engagement to Cecilia (AKA ‘Cee’) Myrna Loy. He did not approve of Tom’s three-year live-in love affair with Daisy Sage (Ann Harding). Daisy has been off in Paris studying art. Daisy, who had previously scorned marriage, has decided she wants children and more or less proposes to Leslie before he can announce his engagement to Cee.

Ann was also Leslie’s dear friend and had a major influence on his thinking. Leslie thinks he can remain friends with Ann after marrying Myrna. Myrna does her best to make this impossible. Actually, Myrna, a master manipulator, tries to change Leslie in every way and to isolate him from his former friends altogether.

This is an adaptation of a stage play and feels very stage bound. It’s a sophisticated adult story and the acting is good, if also stagey. This time around the Myrna Loy character made me so angry I was shouting at my TV. She really was convincingly despicable – the sign of a good actress. She has at least as much screen time as Harding but once again doesn’t get her name above the title.

Multiple complete versions of the film are currently on YouTube.

No trailer or clip so here’s a tribute