Flickers in Time

The Milky Way
Directed by Leo McCarey
Written by Grover Jones, Frank Butler, and Richard Connell
1936/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing

[box] [when asked whether the transition from silents to sound made any problems because of his voice, as with so many other stars from the era] I had to work a little on my voice because I hadn’t used it for years. I went to a voice coach for about five days, and then he said, “Good-bye, you just weren’t using it right”. — Harold Lloyd[/box]

Leo McCarey ensures that this is funnier than your average comedy.

Burleigh Sullivan (Harold Lloyd) is a mild-mannered milkman with well-developed skills in ducking to avoid punches.  One day, he confronts a couple of men who are harassing his sister.  During the incident, on of the men, who turns out to be the heavyweight champion of the world, gets knocked out.  The fighter’s manager (Adolphe Menjou) decides the only way to salvage his man’s reputation is to build up Burleigh and then let the fighter knock him out in a championship bout.  With Verree Teasdale as the manager’s wisecracking girlfriend and William Gargan as the champ’s sparring partner.

A lot of this is quite silly but there is enough inspired screwball dialogue for a good time.  Harold Lloyd’s physical antics are also frequently amusing.  I attribute the film’s success to McCarey who always gives a very enjoyable improvisational feel to his work.

Samuel Goldwyn bought the rights,  original negative, and almost all existing prints and destroyed them when he remade the story as The Kid from Brooklyn, starring Danny Kaye.  The film fell into the public domain and the print I watched on Amazon Prime Watch Instant left a lot to be desired.

Clip

Easy Money
Directed by Phil Rosen
Written by Arthur T. Horman et al
1936/USA
Invincible Pictures Corp.
First viewing

I’ve been unable to find much information about this decent poverty-row production.

Dan Adams works for the District Attorney and loses the prosecution of a man for insurance fraud.  It turns out he threw the case because the defendant was his brother. He resigns his position and gets a job with an insurance company(!) to flush out the big wheels behind the false claim ring, which has been operating under the front of an interior decorating business.  Along the way he falls in love with a claims adjuster.  The audience’s expectations are not challenged by the plot.

Easy Money is not a bad little police procedural type story, though nothing to write home about. This was the kind of thing that developed into film noir in the 40’s when the German immigrant directors got their hands on it.  I caught it on Amazon Prime Watch Instant for free.

Winterset
Directed by Alfred Santell
Written by Anthony Veiller based on the play by Maxwell Anderson
1936/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
First viewing

[box] When we’re young we have faith in what is seen, but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.  — Maxwell Anderson, Winterset[/box]

This film marked Burgess Meredith’s first credited screen appearance in a role he had played on Broadway.  It is not cinematically well-rendered but is worth seeing as a typical Depression-era social commentary and for the acting.

The story begins in a 1920 New York City tenament where radical Bartolomeo Romagna (John Carradine) and his family discover their car has been stolen, along with the revolutionary pamphlets and other materials in it.  The car is then involved in the killing of the paymaster of the company at which Romagna works.  Romagna is tried for the crime and sentenced to death based on this circumstantial evidence.  His final words to the judge are to the effect that he is to be pitied since he is killing an innocent man and will carry the burden for the rest of his life.

Segue to 1936.  A law school class examines the evidence and decides that Romagna was not shown to be guilty.  A key reason behind its finding is that a man by the name of Garth Esdras witnessed the crime but was never called to testify.  Romagna’s son, Mio (Burgess Merideth) reads the article and travels to New York hoping to track down Esdras.  Merideth has been obsessed by the execution of his father all his life.

It is here that the coincidences start to pile on inexorably.  Mio meets Garth’s sister, not knowing who she is, and it is love at first sight.  The judge at Romagna’s trial has become unhinged and is now investigating in the hope that he will be vindicated.  The mastermind behind the payroll robbery has been released from jail, is critically ill, and is out to mow down anybody who could possibly prove that he had anything to do with the crime.  They all wind up in the tenement apartment of Garth’s father.

Merideth is unbelievably young and good-looking in this.  All the actors are very accomplished.  The dialogue is too poetic to ever have been spoken by a living human but is powerful.    It’s an interesting period piece that kept me engaged throughout its 77 minute running time.

Winterset was nominated by the Academy for Best Score and Best Art Direction.  It won an award for Best Cinematography at the Venice Film Festival and director Santell was nominated at the Festival for the Mussolini Cup.

The Story of Louis Pasteur
Directed by William Dieterle
Written by Sheridan Gibney and Pierre Collings
1936/USA
First National Productions
First viewing

[box] Dr. Louis Pasteur: [to his assistants] Remember our aim: Find the microbe – kill the microbe.[/box]

I enjoyed this inspiring biopic and Paul Muni’s perfomance as the French scientist.

Irascible French chemist Louis Pasteur fights for years to have his theory that microbes cause disease accepted by the French medical establishment.  His theory helps him to discover a vaccine for anthrax and a cure for rabies.

Despite the dry sounding subject matter, my eyes were wet by the end.  It is amazing how helpless medicine was against disease and how vulnerable people were to infection by dirty hands and instruments before Pasteur’s breakthrough (which, admittedly was paralleled by Lister’s work on antiseptic surgery in Britain).  Muni absolutely disappears into his character.  Recommended.

Muni won an Academy Award for Best Actor, while Collings and Gibney won for Best Screenplay and Best Story. The film was nominated for Best Picture.

Trailer