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.

Oscar Lagerstrom and Raffles

Raffles (1930)
DIRECTED BY: Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, George Fitzmaurice
STARRING: Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Bramwell Fletcher
NOMINATED FOR: Best Sound, Recording (Oscar Lagerstrom)

I've said many negative things towards the introduction of sound in the film industry, but this is not so much a distaste in sound itself as it is a mourning of the lose of what COULD have been. The only point to that is to warn people of how future technological advances can impede on art.

Now that we've had the large clunk of transitioning between silents and talkies and are in the first Academy Awards to give out awards for sound, it's time to stop looking back and instead look forward to the artistic and technical advances sound will offer films as they begin to grow again.

Raffles belongs to the technical side of things. The film and it's sound can be both described in one word: functional. The film is a largely no-brainer light comedy that serves as a Ronald Colman vehicle (of whom I'll have much more to say about in my review following this one). Neither groundbreaking nor insulting, just functional.

The sound design on the film is equally so. Now that sound was no longer a novelty, it had to be made both unobtrusive when it wasn't needed (unlike scenes pausing to showcase their sound effects like in In Old Arizona) as well as technically sound (unlike the horrible sound levels in Coquette).

Which is not to say the sound design doesn't occasionally have fun with itself. The very first scene is that of three police officers sipping soup.

Right off the bat we're shown how dysfunctional the police force in this film are, because the sounds of biological functions are funny, and it wouldn't have been appropriate in 1930 to open a film with three police officers farting.

However, beyond this and two other unimportant moments, the sound never really brings attention to itself. The only recurring motif in the sound design is that of chiming clocks, none the least being Big Ben, since the film takes place in London. Even these barely register though, merely a way to fill the gap of silence as Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, pulls off his little heists.

Very rarely do sounds in this film overlap. When a character walks through a room, we hear his footsteps or the floor creaking. However, when a character walks through a room while talking, we only hear the dialogue.

This sounds like no big deal in today's film world, but barely a year ago filmmakers found themselves obligated to include every single sound they could to display the novelty of it all, so it's nice to start seeing restraint in these films. The only time sounds overlap is when there's just no other way around it, like when two characters chat while in a dance club.

In many ways, Raffles may be a more important film in terms of the use of sound then some of the more artistic attempts at the time like Alibi because Raffle displays control. All the artistic talent of a painter isn't worth a damn if he has a twitchy arm, and while Raffles may be artistically uninteresting, it's at least dominate of it's functions, so much so that they finally got the camera to move again.

Remember, cameras during that time were so loud that they had to be encased in sound-proof booths so they wouldn't be picked up on the microphone. So imagine my surprise to see not one, but several scenes of characters to and away from the camera while the camera follows, complete with sound!

I really don't know how they did it. Maybe they invented a quieter camera or a more selective microphone or they dubbed the sounds and dialogue in later (and if it is a dub, it's a really, really good one). Whatever they did didn't catch on with everyone, and a lot of the films during that time still had the nailed-down camera thing going against them.

Sound is not and has never been an enemy to film, it's merely it's misuse that caused so many filmmakers and film viewers headaches. While Raffles the film is ultimately unmemorable, it does show a lot of control of it's functions, and now that the tools have been used properly, we can finally see what we can make with them.