42nd Street (1933)

42nd Street, released in 1933, is of course the great backstage musical. This was the first of the great Warner Brothers musicals. There had been musicals prior to this but there had been nothing like 42nd Street. Musicals had had a brief vogue early in the sound era but faded quickly. No-one had yet worked out exactly how to make film musicals.

42nd Street is a hardboiled musical. Yes, there’s plenty of emotion and quite a bit of corniness but it has that Warner Brothers hardboiled edge that prevents it from descending into syrupy sentimentality. The characters are outrageous and larger-than-life but we believe in them. We believe that they feel things. We believe in their heartbreaks and jealousies and insecurities. It’s like a delicious cocktail but with enough hard liquor in it to give it a real kick. 42nd Street is gritty reality and fantasy combined.

It was also the first musical to feature the genius of Busby Berkeley’s extraordinary big production numbers. Musicals wold never be the same again.

It’s also a pre-code musical which gives it an extra bite that would be sadly missing from musicals once the Production Code came into force.

Warner Brothers knew that they had a winner and three more great musicals followed in quick succession - Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade and Dames - but after that the Production Code exercised its dismal effect and the golden age of Warner Brothers musicals came to a close.

The plot has been recycled many times but in 1933 it was still fresh.

Genius producer Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is putting on a new Broadway musical comedy show, Pretty Lady. Despite his string of hits he’s broke (he lost everything in the Wall Street Crash) and his health is breaking down. Pretty Lady has to be a hit. He has established star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) as the headliner. Tycoon Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) is putting up the money because Dorothy Brock is his mistress.

For young Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) this is her first show. She’s only a chorus girl but it’s a start. She doesn’t know it yet but this show is going to make her a star, by pure accident.

The movie was based on a novel of the same name by Bradford Ropes, a novel that was sleazy and scandalous. So sleazy and scandalous that Warner Brothers simply had to buy the rights.

This movie features a galaxy of acting talent all playing outrageous characters. There are just so many wonderful performances. There’s Una Merkel as cute but ditzy chorus girl Lorraine, there’s Ginger Rogers demonstrating her comic skills as the adorable Anytime Annie (the girl who never said no). Guy Kibbee gives one of his trademark performances as the ludicrous Abner Dillon. George Brent is solid as the man Dorothy really loves. Dick Powell is charming as the show’s juvenile lead.

Warner Baxter as Julian Marsh is like a force of nature. He’s hardbitten and cynical but while he’d hate to admit it he loves show business. It’s in his blood. Bebe Daniels is extremely good. Ruby Keeler is ridiculously adorable.

But the real star is Busby Berkeley. Lloyd Bacon is the director of the movie (and he does a fine job) but Berkeley directed the musical production numbers. What makes those numbers so great, and what makes this movie so great, is that these numbers are supposed to be taking place on a stage in a theatre but they’re pure cinema. They’re staged in such a way that they can only be appreciated when seen through the camera’s eye. Berkeley’s genius was that he understood that this is the way to do it. He understood that he was working in film, not on stage.

I love the final shot in this movie. It’s not what you expect in a musical but in this film it works.

42nd Street is a good example of the inherent aesthetic superiority of black-and-white. Shot in colour it would have looked tacky. Shot in black-and-white it looks all class and style. It’s also a movie that would never have worked in a widescreen format. If you have real talent you don’t need colour or widescreen.

42nd Street was not just the first great movie musical. It remains the greatest of all movie musicals. Very highly recommended.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and quite a few extras.

My Past (1931)

My Past is a 1931 Warner Brothers pre-code romantic melodrama.

John Thornley (Lewis Stone) is a wealthy middle-aged industrialist. He leaves the running of the business to his much younger workaholic partner, Bob Byrne (Ben Lyon). John prefers to spend his time lazing about on his yacht and chasing actresses.

For six years he’s been chasing musical comedy star Doree Macy (Bebe Daniels). He thinks that eventually he’ll catch her.

Then Bob meets Doree and becomes smitten with her. He’s a married man but he assures her that his wife Consuelo (Natalie Moorhead) is in Paris getting a divorce. You’d think an actress would be worldly enough not to fall for the oldest line in the book, but she falls for it.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Bob’s wife had no intention of divorcing him.

So now there’s a kind of romantic quadrangle, with Bob and John both chasing Doree while Doree and Consuelo compete for Bob. That’s it for the plot.

I do have some issues with this movie, primarily relating to character motivations. I just don’t buy John’s pathetic self-sacrificing emotional masochism. I don’t buy the idea that he’d spend six years chasing Doree without getting anything in return. It doesn’t gel with his hedonistic outlook. After a few months he would simply start chasing another actress, but he doesn’t. It’s totally at odds with everything else we know about him. It doesn’t ring true. I have a problem with characters who do things that are wildly out of character just because the script says so. It’s a sign of lazy writing. In this case it also leads us to despise the man, which weakens the movie’s emotional impact.

I also just didn’t like the heroine. She’s believable, but she’s a heartless manipulative woman. If she’d been meant as a calculating vamp that would have been fine but I get the impression that we’re actually meant to like her.

Does it have a pre-code flavour? Up to a point it does. It’s fairly explicit about the fact that Bob and his wife have a sexless marriage. It certainly implies that Bob and Doree sleep together. It tries to be daring in treating adultery casually but at times it’s a bit too coy. It does let Doree off lightly for trying to steal another woman’s husband. It wants to be naughty, but it pulls its punches a bit.

There’s a slightly nasty vibe to this movie. The message seems to be that lying and manipulating will get you everything you want while if you behave honourably you’ll wind up with nothing. The only really decent character in the movie is the one who ends up getting it in the neck.

I’m all for pre-code openness and pre-code lack of moral judgments on characters for minor indiscretions but I’m a bit uncomfortable with a movie that lets a louse like Bob off so lightly.

The acting is mostly fine. It’s not the fault of the players that the characters are badly written.

Ben Lyon is dull. Lewis Stone is fun. Bebe Daniels is good. Joan Blondell once again finds herself playing the heroine’s best friend and once again she steals every scene she’s in.

Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels were married in real life which makes the total lack of onscreen chemistry between them rather puzzling.

My Past just didn’t work for me. The script is very weak. Doree and Bob are simply awful people that I didn’t care about. This might have worked if the movie had been played as a cynical comedy. My Past is not a terribly movie but it’s disappointing and it’s hard to recommend, even with Bebe Daniels and Joan Blondell in the cast.

The Warner Archive DVD is barebones as usual but it’s a nice transfer.

The Last Flight (1931)

The Last Flight, released by First National Pictures in 1931, is a fascinating pre-code exercise in post-war angst and existential despair.

It was written by John Monk Saunders, whose writing credits encompass most of the classic World War I aviation movies of the 20s and 30s including Wings (1927) and the original 1930 version of The Dawn Patrol. He had been an army flight instructor during the war. His job was to teach men to kill, and die, in the air. It had an effect. Saunders committed suicide in 1940 at the age of forty-five.

The Last Flight begins with two buddies, Lieutenants Cary Lockwood (Richard Barthelmess) and Shep Lambert (David Manners), in the midst of their final dogfight over France in 1918. They survive the crash of their plane.

They are among the lucky ones who returned from the war alive. Or are they lucky? When you send young men off to war, even if they come back alive they haven’t really survived. Cary and Shep are all broken inside. Not physically, but mentally and spiritually and emotionally. They are the walking dead.

They head to Paris when peace comes. They only know how to fly and to kill, not useful peacetime skills. And they can’t fly any more. Their nerves are shattered. There is however one thing they can do. They can drink. They decide to devote their lives to drinking.

There’s lots of Lost Generation stuff in this movie. This was 1931. The new American literary superstars were writers like Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, chroniclers of that Lost Generation.

Cary and Shep hang around with other American WW1 vets, all of them broken in some way by the war and all living lives devoted to empty despairing hedonism.

Then they meet a very strange girl. Her name is Nikki (Helen Chandler). To say that she’s eccentric would be putting it mildly. She’s totally mad. She’s also charming, pretty, likeable and weirdly fascinating. Soon she is surrounded by half a dozen drunken admirers, all broken-down ex-flyers. She recognises flyers immediately. They have a certain look in their eyes. She doesn’t actually say this but I think it’s fair to surmise that she can see in their eyes that they have looked upon the face of death.

There’s more than a tinge of existentialism. These young men, and this young woman, have freedom but they have no idea what to do with it. They have their pleasures, but their pleasures leave them feeling empty. The war has destroyed their faith in the old values. They have found no new values in which to believe. Being drunk makes them cheerful, but it’s a despairing kind of forced cheerfulness. They’re going nowhere and they’re in a hurry.

In this very year, 1931, David Manners and Helen Chandler would be paired in a much more famous movie, Dracula. Considering how dull they were in Dracula their performances in The Last Flight come as quite a surprise. David Manners is quite good. Helen Chandler’s performance is bizarre but it’s bizarre in just the right way and it works perfectly. Nikki is a Lost Girl. Like the men she just drifts through life without actually living.

Richard Barthelmess was, briefly, a very big star. He’s very good here. All the performances are nicely judged, with the right amount of disconnectedness.

What makes this a pre-code movie is not the sexual content (there is very little to speak of) but its cynicism about military glory and the military in general, and its overall pessimism. I don’t think the Production Code Authority would have tolerated such a negative view of the military.

The plot takes some very unexpected turns towards the end. There are events that come out of the blue, but given the way these people live you can’t help feeling that something like this was bound to happen. I like the way the shocks are not foreshadowed.

The Last Flight is one of the more successful attempts to capture existentialism on film. It’s a fascinating movie and because it’s a pre-code movie it’s pleasingly unpredictable. Highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very good transfer. It’s barebones. That’s perhaps a pity since this movie is probably easier to appreciate if you know a bit about the intellectual currents of the time.

The Squeaker (Der Zinker, 1963)

The Squeaker (the original German title is Der Zinker) is a 1963 entry in the West German Edgar Wallace krimi cycle made by Rialto studios. This one was directed by Alfred Vohrer and that’s usually a good sign. Vohrer really understood the genre. His krimis have that little extra something.

This one was based on Wallace’s 1927 novel The Squeaker (which had already been filmed three times back in the 1930s).

The story concerns a super-criminal and informer known as the Snake. His latest victim has been bitten by an actual deadly snake, a black mamba. At least that’s how it looks.

We’ve already seen a black mamba removed from its cage in the headquarters of Mulford’s, a firm that trades in exotic wild animals for zoos and circuses. Since the man who removed the black mamba was played by Klaus Kinski we suspect he might be the murderer, or might belong to the murderer’s gang, but in a krimi you don’t want to jump to conclusions.

Inspector Bill Elford of Scotland Yard (Heinz Drache) is on the case.

The press is on the case as well. Star girl reporter Jos always seem to get the scoops but Joshua Harras (Eddi Arent) who works for a rival newspaper is determined to change that.

There are those in the criminal underworld who seek to bring the Snake’s career to an end. They plan an elaborate trap involving a fake robbery.

The Snake always seems to be one step ahead of everybody.

Other murders follow. The murder methods are ingenious and invariably involve snakes. In the case of one of the murders three different murder methods appear to have been used.

The girl reporter mentioned earlier is actually Beryl Stedman (Barbara Rütting), the niece of old Mrs Mulford who owns the animal trading business. Beryl writes sensational thrillers in her spare time (thrillers packed with murders).

There’s a romantic triangle involving Beryl, Mrs Mulford’s business partner Frankie Sutton (Günter Pfitzmann) and Sutton’s secretary Millie.

There are the expected red herrings. The Snake could be almost anybody. The plot is convoluted, but in a good way, with lots of Edgar Wallace outrageousness.

The warehouse complex housing the animals is the setting for much of the action and a great setting it is. The animals do of course play a part. Snakes are not the only animals used as murder weapons. There are even secret passageways, an essential Wallace ingredient. And a few gadgets.

Heinz Drache makes a fun likeable cop hero. Klaus Kinski is as crazed as ever. Eddi Arent provides comic relief. To appreciate Eddi Arent you have to see these movies in German with English subtitles - in the English dubbed versions he’s irritating, in the German version he’s genuinely amusing and you realise why he was considered such an asset by Rialto. The supporting players are all extremely good. These movies had the cream of German acting talent at their disposal.

There’s an impressive visual set-piece which provides an exciting finale.

This was the first Rialto krimi shot in Ultrascope, a German version of Cinemascope. The combination of black-and-white cinematography and the ’Scope ratio always works well.

Style matters in a krimi and this film has the characteristic krimi style which goes so well with Wallace’s stories. Realism doesn’t matter very much - these movies exist in their own universe which isn’t Germany and it isn’t England and it doesn’t really coincide with anything in the real world but it’s a fun and intoxicating place to visit.

The Squeaker is a fine example of an early period krimi and it’s highly recommended.

The Tobis DVD presentation offers both English and German language options, with English subtitles for the German version. The transfer is up to their usual very high standards.

The Temptress (1926)

The Temptress is one of Greta Garbo’s very early MGM silent pictures. It was released in 1926.

She was already a rising star (The Temptress would be a major box-office success) but was not to become what would later be called a superstar until the release of Flesh and the Devil a year later.

At this stage Garbo was rather frustrated at the course her American career was taking. MGM seemed to see her as another vamp. Garbo was not comfortable with this. She was not interested in playing women who were heartless predators. She felt she would achieve more playing women who experienced intense emotions. She was of course correct. She could play bad girls and dangerous women, but she was at her best when they were more than mere vamps. And she proved to be superb at playing women who suffer for love.

Elena (Garbo) meets the handsome dashing Manuel Robledo (Antonio Moreno) at a masquerade ball in Paris. He has returned to Paris after a period trying to make his fortune in the Argentine. He is captivated by her mystery and her beauty. She tells him that she is madly in love with him, and there is no other man in her life.

Disillusionment follows for Robledo when he discovers that Elena is married, to the Marquis de Torre Bianca (Armand Kaliz). She assures Robledo that this doesn’t matter, that she will go way with him anyway. Robledo is shocked at the idea. He is shocked that he has fallen for a wicked temptress.

It soon becomes apparent that Elena has had quite a career as a seductress. Men have ruined themselves for her. At least one was driven to suicide.

Robledo decides to return to Argentina, to escape the wickedness of Paris, and mostly to escape the wickedness of Elena.

He is pleased when his old friend the Marquis de Torre Bianca shows up in the Argentine. He is not so pleased that de Torre Bianca has brought his wife with him - the temptress herself. The Argentine is a place where a man can make a new start, but not with a woman like Elena around.

Robledo has problems with the notorious Manos Duras (Roy D’Arcy), the leader of a large band of what are in practice bandits and trouble-makers. When Manos Duras catches sight of Elena you know there will be problems.

Pretty soon men are making fools of themselves over Elena, and fighting over her. This excites and amuses her. Robledo is determined to have nothing to do with her, but it’s not easy to keep away from such a woman. More trouble is sure to follow, and it does.

The question is whether Elena really is wicked or not. She certainly has a way of leading men to their doom, but they want to be led. There are suggestions that Elena is to some extent a victim. Her effete husband was hiring her out to a rich banker in order to finance his gambling debts. The men in her life have certainly not always behaved honourably, and sometimes perhaps they deserved their fates. Elena’s true nature remains enigmatic. Perhaps she wants to reform, and perhaps she doesn’t.

The Temptress was set to be directed by Garbo’s mentor Mauritz Stiller, whom she idolised. Stiller was one of the greats of the early Swedish film industry. He had directed her in Gösta Berlings Saga in Sweden in 1924. Unfortunately Stiller clashed with the MGM hierarchy and was fired from The Temptress which was completed by Fred Niblo.

There’s an extraordinary deep-focus tracking shot early on in which the camera pulls away to reveal guests sitting at an incredibly long table, a shot very reminiscent of shots in Citizen Kane, except that it was done in The Temptress fifteen years before Citizen Kane. It would be tempting to think that some of the other rather bold shots in this movie may have been Stiller’s work but in fact not a single frame shot by Stiller remained in the finished film. Stiller had shot a lot of footage but Niblo reshot every single scene.

It has to be said that Niblo did a fine job, and having William H. Daniels as cinematographer helped a good deal. Right from the start Bill Daniels knew how to photograph Garbo. He makes her look stunning, and seductive, and mysterious.

This is unabashed melodrama but it’s a beautifully crafted film and Garbo already had very obvious star quality. This is fine entertainment and it’s highly recommended.

This movie is included in the Garbo Silents two-disc set which was bundled with the wonderful Warner Garbo Signature Collection DVD boxed set. The Temptress looks pretty good and the print includes some tinted scenes (I just love the tinting in silent movies).

The studio felt that the ending would work for sophisticated big city audiences but that less sophisticated audiences would require a lot more sugar coating so they filmed an atrocious alternate ending which is included as an extra.

I’ve reviewed one of Mauritz Stiller early Swedish movies, the delightfully wicked and outrageously immoral Erotikon (1920).

The Right to Romance (1933)

The Right to Romance is a 1933 RKO pre-code melodrama.

Dr Peggy Simmons (Ann Harding) is one of the nation’s top plastic surgeons. She has achieved everything she could wish for career-wise. She has however started to realise that she’s not just a doctor, she’s a woman. She wants more out of life. She wants to dance and wear slinky dresses. She wants to smell of perfume, not ether. She wants fun. She wants romance. A woman has a right to romance.

Romance was already on offer, from fellow surgeon Dr Helmuth Heppling (Nils Asther), but she had never realised it. And the truth is that while Heppie (everyone calls him Heppie) is a seriously nice guy he is not the kind of man who is likely to sweep a woman off her feet. And she really wants to be swept off her feet.

She turns her back on her career and heads to California. She becomes a social butterfly. And she meets Bobby Preble (Robert Young). He’s more to her taste. He is irresponsible, reckless, handsome, dashing and very romantic. He’s a daredevil pilot. Sweeping women off their feet is exactly the sort of thing that he does, and does well. Peggy falls for him and falls for him hard. Being head-over-heels in love is a new experience for Peggy but she likes it. She wanted romance and she’s found it.

It’s all seems so perfect. Peggy and Bobby are crazy about each other. Marriage is the obvious next step.

There are however some potential problems. Peggy and Bobby are from different worlds. Peggy is from the serious grown-up world in which people take responsibility for their actions. And she enjoys being a doctor. Devoting herself to helping people is what she does. Peggy wants a husband who takes marriage very seriously.

Bobby has never taken responsibility for anything in his entire life. He comes from the world of pleasure and indulgence. He’s very good-natured but he’s just an overgrown kid. Love, romance and marriage are fine but they’re not things to be taken too seriously.

There’s also the complication of another woman, Lee Joyce (Sari Maritza), who rather thought that Bobby was going to be hers. She is from Bobby’s world. She doesn’t care how irresponsible Bobby is. She doesn’t mind that he’s a playboy.

And there’s the Heppie complication. He hasn’t given up loving Peggy. And Heppie is from Peggy’s world, the world of adult responsibility.

What follows is all rather inevitable. Peggy and Bobby can’t help being the people they are.

This is unabashed melodrama so you have to accept a few plot contrivances. That’s how melodrama works.

How pre-code is it? It’s not overly pre-code but there is a reluctance to judge people too harshly or to assume that every transgression must be punished, whereas the Production Code would have insisted on punishment. There’s a plot element towards the end that would have been handled much more crudely under the Production Code.

Ann Harding has the really tricky role. She’s the serious-minded good girl but it’s important that we don’t pity her or think of her as a prig. Harding does a fine job and manages to make her genuinely likeable.

Harding was a major star at the time but is now all but forgotten, which is rather sad.

In 1933 Robert Young was perfect casting as a reckless playboy and he’s amusing and charming.

The Right to Romance is perhaps not quite an overlooked gem but it’s still pretty good and it takes a grown-up look at complex emotional issues. It’s a forgotten movie that is worth rediscovery. Highly recommended.

This movie is included in the five-movie Spanish Verdice Pre-Code RKO Volume 2 DVD boxed set. All five films are in English with removable Spanish subtitles and the transfers are fine.

Trangression (1931)

Trangression is a 1931 RKO romantic melodrama.

Elsie Maury (Kay Francis) is married to mining engineer Robert Maury (Paul Cavanagh). They live a quiet life in the English countryside until Robert has to spend a year in India for professional reasons. He thinks Elsie would be unhappy in India so he packs her off to Paris where she has friends.

You might think that sending a young beautiful wife, who for a year is going to be a young beautiful lonely wife, to Paris is not the smartest idea and you’d be right. In Paris she meets Don Arturo de Borgus (Ricardo Cortez). Arturo is handsome, dashing and exciting - everything her husband is not. They become involved, although Arturo insists to his friends that the relationship has not yet been actually technically improper.

After a year Elsie receives a telegram. Her husband will be arriving the next day. Elsie is somewhat relieved - she has found Arturo a bit too much of a temptation. Arturo is devastated. He feels he cannot live without her. If only he could persuade her to spend a few days with him at his villa in Spain.

Robert wants to return to England immediately but agrees that Elsie can follow him later. So she goes off to Spain with her handsome Latin Lover. She is playing a dangerous game and she doesn’t know the rules. She is remarkably innocent. She is totally under the spell of Arturo’s romantic aura and cannot see that he is a ruthless womaniser who will tell a woman anything to get her into bed. As you might expect it all goes horribly wrong for her and she might end up with no man at all.

Elsie has another problem - Robert’s moralistic control-freak sister who hates her.

And Robert is disturbed by the changes in Elsie. She now wears make-up, a sure sign of moral laxness.

The plot is pretty basic and it’s all a bit too contrived.

Is there any actress more unfairly neglected than the wonderful Kay Francis? She’s in fine form here as a complex woman who is neither an out-and-out bad girl nor a plaster saint. She’s human and she’s not immune to temptation. Her problem is that she thinks she’s a sophisticated woman of the world when in fact she knows nothing of the big bad world. Kay Francis was one of the great pre-code stars who found the transition to the moralistic atmosphere of the Production Code impossible to negotiate.

And Ricardo Cortez was one of the great male pre-code stars who had the same problem. He specialised in playing dangerous men who led women into temptation and those roles just dried up completely thanks to the Production Code. Two great careers blighted by the Code. Cortez is excellent here - you can imagine women finding his dangerous charm hard to resist.

It’s the performances of Kay Francis and Ricardo Cortez that make this film worth watching. Aside from that it has a few problems. Robert is such a bore that we can’t possibly care if he loses his wife or not. Arturo is a cad with no complexity at all. Elsie’s sister-in-law is a one-note interfering busybody. There’s also a villainous servant, and he’s pure villainy and cowardice. The only character we can care about is Elsie, and she’s so impossibly naïve that we feel exasperation rather than sympathy.

The clunkiness of early talkies is often exaggerated but this one really is a bit clunky.

The pre-code content consists of the idea (that would never have been countenanced once the Production Code started to be enforced) that maybe adultery is something that can be forgiven.

Trangression doesn’t quite come off mostly due to the weak script and the fact that the characters are so badly underwritten that they just don’t engage us the way that they should. Worth a look but don’t get your hopes up too high.

This movie is included in the five-movie Spanish Verdice Pre-Code RKO Volume 2 DVD boxed set. All five films are in English with removable Spanish subtitles and the transfers are fine.