Ronald Colman and Bulldog Drummond

Bulldog Drummond (1929)
DIRECTED BY: F. Richard Jones
STARRING: Ronald Colman, Claud Allister, Joan Bennett
NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Ronald Colman)
Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)

The transition from silent films to sound was perhaps most dangerous for the actors. If an actor didn't have a voice to match the physical persona they had built up in their silent career, they might never find work again. The most famous case of this was the career of John Gilbert, though his unexpected (but not bad) voice really only played a small part in his steep decline.

British actor Ronald Colman was one of the few stars that not survived the transition, but flourished in it. He had a great voice, and thanks to a side career in radio, knew how to use it. He had a natural charisma that he put in most of his roles, and found success in all kinds of films, be they action, comedy or romance, of which Bulldog Drummond is all three.

The character Bulldog Drummond was created by British author Herman Cyril McNeile as sort of an answer to the rise of American pulp novels. Unfortunately, like a lot of British writing in the early 20th century, McNeile's stories contained a lot of racism and general thugishness that would make the character an unacceptable hero today.

Fortunately, both Ronald Colman's and Bulldog Drummond's first foray into sound exorcised these negative elements, and what you're left with is a cool actor playing a character who's just simply BETTER then everybody else.

Throughout the film, the character of Bulldog Drummond, a retired World War I captain living in the British high life, goes around with a smirk on his face. He knows he's so much better then the people around him, and he's loving it. We're introduced to him reading in a gentleman's club full of old farts. A servant accidentally drops a spoon, upsetting the silence, and the old farts get cranky, and all Bulldog Drummond can do is laugh at how stuck up these people are. Then he starts whistling.

Because he's just simply BETTER then them.

The character of Bulldog Drummond is a bit unique, because he's not a professional crime solver, just a guy who's bored and looking for adventure. He's not even looking to help people, as his classified ad suggests.

And he does find adventure in the form of a girl's kidnapped uncle, but even on the case, he never starts taking anything seriously, even around the girl who hired him.

And most people would take this situation VERY seriously, because once Bulldog agrees to try and free the girl's uncle, he finds himself transplanted into a rather dark and very dangerous pulp world.

In a world with mad scientists, murderers in the shadows and secret passages, you'd expect a hero to stay focused and serious, but Bulldog Drummond is just so much BETTER then everybody.

And that's ultimately where the film's entertain value comes from, Bulldog Drummond smirking and easily outwitting all these dangerous criminals who want to cause him serious harm. I didn't smile during the action scenes, I smiled at small moments like Drummond playing a little tune on his car horn to mock the crooks he just escaped from.

In many ways, Bulldog Drummond is the grandfather to the wisecracking antiheroes who throw around one-liners with each victory, guys like Bruce Willis' character in Die Hard, but perhaps Drummond's nearest relative is this guy:

That's what Drummond is. A cartoon. Just like Bugs Bunny sticking his fingers into Elmer Fudd's gun barrel and having it backfire, the rules just don't apply to Drummond, and he always ends up on top. Part of that comes from the script, but a lot of the credit needs to go to Ronald Colman, who's light smirk and general body language really sells the character's superiority over everyone else.

Perhaps it's because it's such a rarity for a hero to go through no hardships at all that makes the film as enjoyable as it is, a contrast to the struggle of the heroes of every other film. I'm sure it'd get boring really fast if more good guys had it this easy. Bulldog Drummond would probably trump any of those guys, though. Bulldog Drummond is just BETTER then everyone else.

Warner Baxter and In Old Arizona

In Old Arizona (1928)
DIRECTED BY: Irving Cummings
STARRING: Warner Baxter, Edmund Lowe, Dorothy Burgess
WON: Best Actor (Warner Baxter)
NOMINATED FOR: Best Cinematography (Arthur Edeson)
Best Director (Irving Cummings)
Best Writing, Achievement (Tom Barry)
Best Picture

There was a reason the early sound films were called "talkies." Most shoots were limited to a single microphone, and that was usually reserved for the dialogue. It was hard to pick up sounds that weren't within a few feet of it, so films were enclosed on sets to allow for easier sound pick-up.

This is what gives In Old Arizona it's claim to fame: Along with being the first sound western, it's the first sound film that largely takes place outdoors.

Unfortunately, this isn't as big of a deal as it sounds. The microphones barely picked up anything beyond a few feet, so for a ten second shot of a man riding a horse, you might hear the hoof beats for about two seconds, followed by eight seconds of total silence. More minor sounds that would create atmosphere, like the wind, weren't picked up.

The locations in Arizona were certianly photogenic, but with such weak sound sources, it would have been a lot more satisfying to just give the non-dialogue portions of the film to a foley artist. Not that there's a lot of those. This is a "talkie," and it earns that title. This film will NOT SHUT UP! It's wall-to-wall boring conversations between three bad actors, and it's enough to drive you bonkers.

Let's start with Baxter.

Warner Baxter, who won the Academy Award for acting somehow, plays the Cisco Kid, #1 outlaw of the west, and oversized hat connoisseur! This is my first film with Warner Baxter, and I'm not sure what his acting strengths are (or if he even has any). He's never allowed to physically act throughout the entire film, he just stands there with a smile and reads off his lines.
And he keeps talking, and talking, AND TALKING. He never stops talking. There are a lot of scenes where he's alone, and he just talks to himself. He sees a wanted poster for him, and he laughs and gives a monologue about how awesome he is. He monologues about everything: about how awesome his girl is, about how awesome babies are (seriously), about how awesome his wine is, etc.

And despite all this talking-and-nothing-else, Warner Baxter isn't very good at it. Maybe it's his faux-Mexican accent (even though the character is Portuguese, figure that one out). Maybe Baxter couldn't play young (the character was 25 and Baxter was 39). Maybe he just couldn't get over how goofy and large his hat was.

In any case, Baxter was bad, and the Cisco Kid was uninteresting. The description of the film I read compared the Cisco Kid to a wild west version of Robin Hood, which is nothing but a complete misunderstanding on what Robin Hood was about. Robin Hood didn't just "steal from the rich and gave to the poor," he fought a corrupt government that squeezed money unfairly from it's citizens. The Cisco Kid just stole stuff.

The opening of the film shows the Cisco Kid stealing a box of money from a carriage, and then leaving. The people the Kid steals from aren't rich or corrupt or anything, they were just passing through, and the Kid never has any intention though the film to do anything with the money but buy things for him and his girl. What an asshole.

It should be noted that in this classic western story of law makers and law breakers, there's hardly any action in it. The carriage stickup is just the Cisco Kid pointing a gun at a few people, them giving him the money, and him leaving. No shots fired, no hasty escapes, just routine.

There's only one scene in the movie that would qualify as an action scene. About two-thirds of the way through, three random guys spot the Cisco Kid and try to take him down for the reward on his head, but the Cisco Kid makes quick work of them. It's a quick moment, shot from a distance, and has nothing to do with what little plot there is in the film. So, with those two short moments out of the way, what left for the remaining 60+ minutes of film?

Talking, talking, talking, talking, TALKING.

And then we have Edmund Lowe and his character Sgt. Dunn. Despite being the Cisco Kid's main foil, Dunn comes off even worse of a character. He's a gambler and a womanizer who cheats on his wife, and he's only really after the Kid for the money, not because it's the right thing to do. The main problem with this is that Edmund Lowe must not have gotten the memo and thought he was playing the good guy, because despite what this character does, Lowe always plays the character as an aw-shucks-boy scout that ends every sentence with "geez".

And then we have Dorothy Burgess and her character, the feisty Mexican Tonia Maria. Tonia is a gold digger, and sleeps with other men behind the Kid's back. She's easily the least-likable character in the film, and it doesn't help that Burgess' performance is damn near racist.

Eventually, Tonia gets with Dunn, and we realize that the only reason we're even rooting for the Cisco Kid, a selfish bandit, is because everybody else is WORSE. What we end up with is an hour and a half film where three totally unlikeable characters do nothing but talk to each other about nothing, all while being played by three bad actors. This is what Hollywood wanted to pretend was entertainment back then.

Roland West and Alibi

Finally! An interesting movie!

Alibi (1929)
DIRECTED BY: Roland West
STARRING: Chester Morris, Harry Stubbs, Mae Busch
NOMINATED FOR: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Chester Morris)
Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)
Best Picture

It's kind of heartwarming to discover that SOMEBODY was trying to use sound artistically this early in it's history. Most sound films at the time were just stationary cameras filming people talking. Sound was just that, sound. A gunshot was a gunshot, a footstep was a footstep, and a scream was a scream. There was very few attempts to bring symbolization into sound this early in the game.

Alibi is a dated, creaky film now, but put into context, and it's pretty amazing. The very opening scene is a montage of simple sounds. A prison guard twirls his baton, creating a beat.

A bell is rung to the same beat.

Prisoners drag their feet.

Another prison guard beats his baton against a wall.

This is the earliest musical moment I've seen in sound pictures. The film is not a musical, but the simple beat and the poetic images suggest the opening moments of a modern music video. Most musicals at that time were simply Broadway performances put in front of a camera, usually involving dancing girls with glittery costumes.

Alibi has those too, though.

This is the main problem with Alibi, it has split personalities. The film was originally conceived as a silent film, but the success of talkies forced director Roland West to transform it into a sound film.

What we end up with is a film where half the scenes are like the one at the beginning, filmed silent with sound dubbed in later, and the other half falling into the same claptrap of all the other early sound films, with glittery flow-stopping musical numbers and people standing in rooms talking while the camera doesn't move.

The plot is at least interesting, so we have that to get us through the exposition scenes. The film revolves around the relationship between ex-con Chick Williams and the police. For the first half of the film, we learn that the police planted a gun on Chick which resulted in him going to prison. When Chick gets out, he connects with the daughter of the police sergeant that framed him, much to the father's dismay.

If the film has anything to say, it's that, sure, criminals are bad, but the police are not much better. Chick's framing is the big off-screen example of the police's questionable tactics, but that's not enough for us. We have to see these guys do their dirty laundry themselves.

During a heist, a police officer is shot, and the police are going to get answers no matter what. They bring in a two-bit thug and start questioning him, demanding a name out of him even though he claims an alibi.

This scene is my favorite in the entire film. Roland West did a lot of experimenting with sound in the film, and he may have been one of the first directors to discover that with sound comes silence. Silent films never had the luxury of silence, with live music always being played. With a sound film, when the sound goes away, you pay attention, you get tense. So, when a mysterious face appears in a door...

...and one officer goes to stand by the window...

...and the other officer wipes the fingerprints off a gun...

...and there's no sound to explain it all, no sound to comfort you, then your heart really starts to race.

It's amazing how hopeful I get when I see someone trying to regain the artistic freedom lost by technology. As CGI continues to take over films, I hope we get more and more directors who try and implement it in new and artistic ways.

Again, the film is still a mixed bag, and that goes for it's other elements. It was nominated for it's art direction by our old friend William Cameron Menzies. Some descriptions of the film has dubbed it "inspired by German expressionism," but I don't agree. However, the slightly off-beat art deco is something to enjoy.

So while Menzies' production design is a hit, the acting is a big, big miss. It seems most of the actors involved were still suffering from the jitters of converting to silent style to talkie style. Chester Morris, nominated for Best Actor for his role as Chick Williams, always seems like he's trying to squeeze his skull out of his head.

However, the worst offender is Regis Toomey, playing an undercover detective named Danny McGann. His cover? Drunken Wall Street broker.

Danny's drunk character is so over the top it's laughable. At first I thought the character of Danny was a bad actor, but when Danny's cover is blown and we see the real character, I realized that it was Regis that was the bad actor. Every scene with Danny is sooooo drawn out and annoying, and it makes sense that his most drawn out and annoying scene is when he dies.

It takes minutes for him to finally go. He tells everyone his regrets, makes his finally wishes, etc., all with twenty second pauses between each line. And finally, right before he dies, UKULELE MUSIC STARTS PLAYING! What is this crap!?!

*sigh* Such is the nature of this film. If you want the good, you got to take the bad. It's certainly the best film from the 2nd Academy Awards I've looked at so far, and in this sea of dead weights, you take what you can get.

Emil Jannings and The Last Command

THE LAST COMMAND (1928)
DIRECTED BY: Josef von Sternberg
STARRING: Emil Jannings, Evelyn Brent, William Powell
WON: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Emil Jannings)
NOMINATED FOR: Best Writing, Original Story (Lajos Biró)

It seems very fitting that the first film to win Best Actor would be a film entirely about acting, and very ironic that the man who won the award, Emil Jannings, won the award for playing the only man in the film who isn't acting.

The film opens in 1920s Hollywood, "The Magic Empire of the Twentieth Century" as the titles tell us. Director Leo Andreyev (played by William Powell) scans through a pile of headshots of Russian actors, looking for just the right extra for his film. He stumbles on this one.

It's not a very flattering photo, and the description on the back says the man has very little acting experience (which turns out to be true more ways then one). However, the director MUST have him for some mysterious reason, so they call him at his apartment.

Here we offically meet Sergius Alexander, an old broken Russian man living alone. A nasty twitch keeps his head shaking, as if to say "NO" to everything he encounters.

It's a really convincing twitch too, I thought for a moment that they actually got a damaged man to play the part. Instead, they got Emil Jannings, our Best Actor winner. A Swiss actor born in 1884, Jannings became a powerful silent star throughout the 1920s, particularly in the works of F. W. Murnau. His 1928 acting nomination was for two films (something the Academy only did that year), the other being the sadly lost The Way of the Flesh.

1928 was a great year for Emil Jannings. 1929, not so much, but we'll get to that later.

So Alexander is summoned to the film studios, where he's assigned the role of general. His fellow extras waltz around and pose and curse and fight with each other, but Alexander simply sits quietly as his pulls out a medal that's not part of the costume. One of the extras asks him about it, and Alexander tells him that he used to BE a general in the Russian army. The extras laugh at the old man's claims, play a bit of keep-away with the medal and then leaves him alone, giving him some time to reflect on who he is and who he was.

The flashback is brought by mirror.

The Alexander of "now" is a much different man then the Gen. Alexander of the Russian Revolution. Ten years younger, with a load of confidence and an Orson Welles smirk, and no twitch in sight. Alexander, cousin of the Czar, is the leading general of the Russian army, who is currently in the middle of battle with the Bolsheviks.

The film is directed by Josef von Sternberg, which came as a surprise when I learned it. The film looks nothing like Sternberg's later works (and not just because Marlene Dietrich isn't in it). It's clear that Sternberg hadn't developed his strong sense of mise-en-scene yet. Take a look at the Russian settings in The Last Command.

Fairly standard stuff. Now, compare these to the Russian settings in Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress, which he made only six years later.

Night and day, practically! Granted, The Scarlet Empress takes place in the 1700s while The Last Command takes place in the 1910s, but I doubt 18th century Russia were THAT fond of creepy statues.

Back in the flashback, Gen. Alexander is looking over the troops while two mysterious persons plot in an empty room... Hey, wait a minute? Isn't that Andreyev, the director? Well, it seems back then that he was actually a Bolshevik spy. His companion is fellow spy Natalie Dabrova, played by Evelyn Brent. They need to get close to Gen. Alexander, but how?

But before they can finish plotting, they're captured and taken to prison. After his examinations, Gen. Alexander returns to his office and starts looking through the passports of captured spies.

We're starting to get into the meat of this film. A lot of comparisons are made between 1910s Russia and 1920s Hollywood, not the least being the class system of both. The leaders/directors are pampered, while the citizens/extras wait silently in the background for their own chance.

It turns out that Andreyev and Dabrova are pretending to be theater actors. Gen. Alexander, though knowing she's a spy, is very taken by Dabrova. Pretending to be convinced that she actually is an actress, Gen. Alexander asks that she come with him to have dinner with a number of high-ranked officers, and she agrees. No way she can turn down a chance like this.

Dabrova hates Gen. Alexander not because of what she knows of HIM, but because he symbolizes Russia. However, during the party, she starts to get a sense of his true character. He's nice and funny and a bit clownish, but the real moment of his redemption is when officers call him during the party. They tell him that the Czar will be coming to the battlefield in a few days, and that Gen. Alexander should start a battle to impress him.

Gen. Alexander, however, has no interest in wasting lives just to put on a show, even if it means displeasing the Czar. It becomes clear that in this world of spies and diplomats, Gen. Alexander is the only truely honest person in the film. Every other character is acting. We even get a scene where Debrova, in a rare moment alone, rehearses murdering the general.

Eventually though, she falls for the man. Of course, almost all movie relationships have bad timing, because mere minutes after the two offically get together, the Russian base is attacked by the Bolsheviks. After a long brutal battle scene, the Bolsheviks finally get to Gen. Alexander...

...and start beating the crap out of him...

...but what really breaks him is when Debrova seems to betray him and gives the Bolsheviks the idea of having Gen. Alexander work for them as a servant, forcing him to shovel coal on a train.

However, this proves to be another act, this time to save Gen. Alexander's life. After a long series of scenes of Alexander suffering one humiliation after another, Debrova finally gets a moment alone with him, and assists his escape.

After knocking out a guard, Alexander jumps from the train and lands hard in the snow. AND THEN THE TRAIN CRASHES FOR NO REAL REASON.

The train crash comes out of nowhere. There was no build up for it, it was just a random act of destruction, one last ultimate tragedy for Alexander as he watches his love sink into the icy river. I had to admit it, but I laughed.

And with that final chaotic moment, the flashback ends, and we return to the broken, twitchy Alexander we were introduced to. He and director Andreyev finally meet, and Alexander realizes what is going on. Andreyev recognized him from his headshot, and now Alexander is to suffer one more humiliation. Once again dressed as a Russian general, Andreyev directs Alexander to give one last desperate speech to the extras playing his soldiers. And Alexander delivers.

Emil Jannings became a star in the silent period, which more or less ended with 1928 and the release of The Jazz Singer (which we'll get to in due time). As sadly was the case with many actors and actresses at this time, Jannings's thick accent prevented him from continuing work in the USA. He moved to Germany to act in films and theater there, and during that time become a huge Nazi supporter, dismissing any fans he had left.

So in a haunting way, Alexander's last command is also Jannings'. And when Alexander dies of a heart attack mere moments later, Jannings' career goes with it.

Let's see him act his way out of that.