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.

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.

Gloria Swanson and Sadie Thompson

SADIE THOMPSON (1928)
DIRECTED BY: Raoul Walsh
STARRING: Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore, Raoul Walsh
NOMINATED FOR: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Gloria Swanson)
Best Cinematography (George Barnes)

Gloria Swanson is mostly remembered, in a totally ironic way, of her role as fallen movie star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. Ironic in that Swanson was just as huge in the silent era and just as small in the talkies. She was very much a self-made woman, moving up from Mack Sennet's Keystone slapstick comedies (which she reportedly hated)into the costume dramas of Cecil B. DeMille and Sam Wood, where she became a fashion, a self-proclaimed "clothes horse."

She eventually built such a celebrity of herself that she gained control of her own roles, something only the likes of Chaplin could do at the time. And in 1929, Gloria Swanson wanted Sadie Thompson.

In 1921, W. Somerset Maugham's short story "Miss Thompson" was serialised and published. Based on a real life trip Maugham took to Pago Pago and his passing encounter with a San Francisco prostitute and a zealous preacher, it was later adapted into a highly succesful play entitled simply "Rain."

It was a controversial move on Swanson's part for many reasons. The Hayes code was mear months away from making it's impact, but making a movie that made a prostitue the protagonist and a preacher the antagonist at any point in history is a risky move. Yet, Swanson took the reigns as both star and producer and went ahead and did it anyway.

This film also brings back two familiar names. First, cinematographer George Barnes. We explored his earlier work in which we discovered his love affair with hands, but hand shots like those hardly show up in Sadie Thompson, and I wouldn't have known this was a George Barnes film had his name not been in the credits.

The other is production designer William Cameron Menzies. We already know that Menzies likes exotic locations, so Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, is right up his alley.

But we also know that Menzies prefers to keep things simple and don't make fantasy versions of foreign lands, like so many films do. There aren't any crazy samoans running around in face paints, beating drums, going Umaga crazy. In fact, there are hardly any natives at all. Pago Pago was a repair station for the U.S. Navy, so instead there's a bunch of horny white sailors hanging around.

In fact, there's only one samoan character in the entire film: the cigar-smoking wife of the local inn.

Not exactly the best image of the samoan people, but then, her husband isn't exactly a catch either.

That's him on the right, played by James A. Marcus, who played the villian in previously review The Eagle. On the left is tourist Dr. Angus McPhail, played by Charles Lane. Early on in the film these two become good buddies, and act as the (almost) silent observers to the events of the film, only popping in once and be the film's Statler and Waldorf.

So, our story begins with a ship from San Francisco arriving at Pago Pago. The marines, bored out of their minds, wait excitedly to see what San Fran has to offer. It offers Sadie Thompson.

I should tell you, I am a 21st century man, and as such, my concepts of beauty are different from those common in the 1920s. The stars that were considered glamorous in the silent era had weird oval faces and distracting saucer eyes and were filmed in annoying soft glow and it does nothing for me.

But Gloria Swanson? She's cute.

All the marines flock to Sadie, and she gets them all wrapped around her finger. They trail her everywhere, including her hotel room, where they help set up her things.

All these merry times quickly end however. Another person was on that boat, and he's got a hair up his ass.

Alfred Davidson is now the island's resident reformer, focusing on bringing the natives to Christianity. He's the same kind of religous extermist that's played the bad guy in a vast number of films, the most recent example I can think of being The Mist. I'm actually kind of tired of this type of character myself. Very few people are like this in real life, and don't really represent their respective religons on a whole. There's a lot to be said against Christianity, but displaying these kind of characters and going "Eh, look at that, I told you they were crazy" is not the best way to go about doing that.

Davidson is played by Lionel Barrymore, who's best remembers as playing Henry Potter in It's a Wonderful Life. Now, I like the guy, but in Sadie Thompson, he doesn't really add any depth to his character. His gestures are wide and theatrical, and his face is always that of menace. Still, it maybe a 2D character, but Lionel really does know how to strike a pose.

So, how does Gloria Swanson's acting fair? A lot better. Where as Barrymore plays most of his role with his arms and his stance, Swanson plays her's with her face. It seems like Film Acting 101, but consider that most actors from the silent era were stage veterans, where you didn't have any closeups. To be able to communicate without words and to do it so detailed within your own facial expressions wasn't so common back then.

The film really only has two characters, Sadie Thompson and Alfred Davidson. Sadie is an ex-prostitute on the run from the law for a crime she says she didn't commit, and Davidson holds enough power over the island to ship Sadie back to San Francisco. Most of the film consists of their conversations, her trying to convince him to just leave her alone, him trying to convince her to atone for her sins.

Davidson is a dangerous man, and while Sadie is able to keep herself happy by being entertained by the marines, the moment the fun stops, her mind returns to Davidson.

Finally, Davidson convinces the govener to ship Sadie back to San Fran, back to the police. This results in a great scene where Sadie starts cursing Davidson out.

We can't hear the words, of course, but we can see how people react to them.

Davidson then goes on the offense, telling her that her fate is certian, that the only way she can stand her time in jail is to turn to God, literally beating her into a corner.

Now I feel like a sports announcer.

In one last ditch effort, Sadie pulls the "throw a fit like a five-year old" play.

The rest would be spoilers. Not that I haven't given away plenty of spoilers before, but so far, out of all the films I've seen for this project, this film is my favorite so far, and I'd prefer you just see it yourself.

Plus, um, I'm busy.

Go away.

William Cameron Menzies, The Dove, and Tempest

William Cameron Menzies was one of the most interesting visual artists and directors of Hollywood's golden age, bringing exotic settings to the big screen from the romantic silents of the 20s to the colorful epics of the 50s. He worked mostly as an art director and was the very first person to be credited as "Production Designer" in 1938. We'll get to that film eventually.

In the 1st Academy Awards, he was nominated and won the award for Best Art Direction (though then called "Interior Decoration") for two films. Like oh so many in these first couple of Academy Awards, one of the films is lost. Luckily, one isn't, and we can finally review our first official Academy Award winner.

As for what we don't get to see:

THE DOVE (1927)
DIRECTED BY: Roland West
STARRING: Norma Talmadge, Noah Beery, Gilbert Roland
WON: Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)

Almost all of Menzies' work took place in foreign locations. The Dove takes us to Hollywood's romantic Mexic... wait, what? Oh sorry, it's in some unnamed location. It was GOING to be Mexico, but for some hazy political reasons that I'm still trying to research, it wasn't allowed for any movie at the time to say anything bad about the place.

Gilbert Roland as Gilbert Roland in "The Dove"

The plot is the classic boy-meets-girl-but-other-boy-wants-girl-and-there-is-a-bit-of-kidnapping. Sadly, I can't say any more then that. Only four of it's nine reels survive at the Library of Congress, and I'm a bit too broke right now for air travel.

So, let's go ahead and move on to the movie we CAN watch.

TEMPEST (1927)
DIRECTED BY: Sam Taylor
STARRING: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn, Louis Wolheim
WON: Best Art Direction (William Cameron Menzies)

Tempest, not to be confused with the Shakespeare play of the same name, takes place in Russia in the early 1910s, during the Russian Revolution that resulted in the Soviet Union. Now, Russia was always a favorite location of the silent era. All the curvy doorways and roofs were visually more interesting then our dumb ol' box houses. Many films in Russia tend to take it over the top. Take Josef von Sternberg's 1934 The Scarlet Empress. Sternberg's Russia is one full of melting gargoyles, bell towers and secret passages. It's almost cartoonish (though it works for that film).

So, imagine my surprise when I found that Menzies, the man who did Things to Come and Invaders from Mars, played Russia like it was a real place. Oh, sure, there's plenty classic examples of Russian architecture...

But the movie takes the time to explore the dirtier, more down to earth, more human parts of Russia, like this shower thingy:

And here's the home of our film's hero, Lieutenant Ivan Markov:

God, it's hard to imagine a day before kitty posters.

Ivan Markov is a man who believes Russia is whatever the guy in charge tells him it is. A peasant going up ranks in the army, he just wants to prove himself. Markov is played by John Barrymore, who could cut cheese with his profile.

However, things fall apart when he falls in love with the General's daughter, played by Camilla Horn and her giant anime eyes.

Unfortunately, the princess (daughter of a general=princess?) isn't all that taken by him. In fact, she hates him purely for his past as a peasant. Depressed by his rejection, Markov decides to get REALLY drunk.

Anyone who knows their silent film star history might flinch at this. John Barrymore's career was ruined in the 30s by alcoholism, and died of liver disease. Still, this film sets up the best shot of the entire picture, in which a drunken Markov watches his fellow dancers from the bottom of his glass.

Talkies almost killed moments like this.

This film has a great deal of old school special effects. The film opens with a model of the Russian city the army is stationed in.

We pan across it one way, and start panning and zooming the other, and the cut to a real set is pretty damn seamless.

In another great scene, Markov, his passion for the princess discovered, is thrown into a jail cell to rot. After several months, Markov starts to go slightly mad, first hallucinating the war, and then the princess' mocking face.

It's not perfect. You can see the edges of the screen the images are projected on pretty easily, but the scene has it's effect.

Ok, so Russia is realistic and there are great scenes. Is there anywhere where the film falls flat in the visual department? Well, kind of. The costuming just seems to fall flat... but it doesn't.

Ok, here's the deal. There's a lot of emphasise put on the clothes the characters where. The clothes in this movie are supposed to tell people what your social status and rank are. They're so important in the story, when Markov is removed from the army, they hold a demonstration of ripping off his uniform to symbolize his fall. The demonstration seems more like death by firing squad.

Later in the film, the general is captured by the new Red Terror, he's publicly humiliated by having his clothes ripped apart.

So, as much as a metaphor clothes are used in the film, the clothes seem to be rather bland. If there was one part of the film to go overboard on the production design, it should have been wardrobe, if nothing then to even it out.

I don't want to end the film on a low note, though, so I saved one last great scene for last. The Red Terror have taken over, and are executing members of the old army. It's the general's turn to face his fate.

We see the firing squad. Behind them is a propaganda poster with a caricature of the general, looking evil and menacing. The general these people have been symbolically fighting this entire time.

Then we cut to the real general, alone, small.

Waiting.