Cast:
Vilma Bánky (Lena Shultz), Edward G. Robinson (Tony), Robert Ames (Buck), Richard Carle (Postman), Lloyd Ingraham (Father McKee), Anderson Lawler (Doctor), Gum Chin (Ab Gee), Henry Armetta (Angelo), and George Davis (Giorgio) Produced and Directed by Victor Sjöström (#1327 - The Wind, #1731 - The Phantom Carriage, and #1771 - He Who Gets Slapped)
Review:
Well, the foundation is tempting for this Pre-Code film. It is based on the 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard. The play won him a Pulitzer Prize for Drama that year while the production ran on Broadway for nearly 200 performances that featured Richard Bennett, Pauline Lord, and Glenn Anders as the key stars. There has been various restaging of the play since, at least when one isn't busy trying to stage The Most Happy Fella, a musical first done in 1956 based on the Howard play. There are two other film adaptations of the play with The Secret Hour (1928) and They Knew What They Wanted (1940). Die Sehnsucht Jeder Frau, a German-language version of this film, was produced and directed by Sjöström with Robinson and Banky retained. This was the penultimate film appearance for its star in Banky, but The Rebel (1933) is obscure enough to not even have its own Wikipedia page, so keep that in mind when talking about Banky and her varying surviving films (which is just a bit over a half dozen, and her one previous effort in sound were sequences in This Is Heaven, which has yet to be found). As for Robinson, this was his third major appearance in a film after The Hole in the Wall (1929) and Outside the Law (1930). Lastly, let us talk about Victor Sjöström. This was the first sound film for the director, who you might already recognize from his silent classics such as The Phantom Carriage (1921) and The Wind (1928). He would go on to direct two further films: Father and Son (1930) and Under the Red Robe (1937) before he retired to back to his native Sweden to act within the theater again.
You may be a bit confused when it comes to this film on the idea that a director like Sjöström could be constrained so hard with the standards that come with making a sound film. Banky apparently left film not because of anything to do with her Hungarian accent but instead to focus on spending time with her new husband, whom she married a couple of years prior. I can only imagine that the result of this film probably did not help matters, and this isn't to say she has a bad time here (the accent is obviously fit for films). It just so happens that in a film with two actors playing folks with distinct roots (one Italian), Robinson chews the scenery away from everything. There is probably supposed to be some sort of tragedy within her being trapped within this triangle of affection, but maybe it actually fit better when packed for a stage rather than what is presented here, because it just seems hollow. Robinson can only carry so far when playing to the seats with whatever is meant to play in this blustery act that is spent two-ways: before and after he is put in bedrest (yes not only is it a film about a woman discovering her soon-to-be husband looks different from the picture, but she also first sees him after he suffers an injury where he broke both legs). Ames (who died the following year from "delirium tremens" at the age of 42) happens to be in the middle as the "American" in the middle of this certain triangle, but he might as well be playing a block of wood with his lack of drawing power, no matter how much they try to make the eventual wooing of Banky seem inevitable. By the time the actual resolution happens, one can only throw up their hands. The attempt at cultivating a romance that starts with deception (heh, let's get a mail-order bride by showing my handsome buddy) only results a long and winding road of middling meandering. The fact that the film seems bound to stay firmly in the same place you usually see things only results in a very drawn out 92-minute runtime. Asking oneself "how does one go from The Wind to this?" is not a promising statement when trying to assess the quality of a very average movie, and yet here we are. As a whole, since this is a movie you can only find online rather than home video, the best way to enjoy it is for those who like to seek out these kinds of things and hopefully enjoy what they see, because I can't call it anything other than just a bit too average. It has a future star and a future retired star to go with a director who had seen better days, so take that for what it is worth.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment