Best Cinematography 2nd Academy Awards Nominees 1930: The Divine Lady and 4 Devils

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Now we come to the next look on a Best Cinematography nominee. I say nominee and not nominees here because, alas, 4 Devils is a lost silent film that came out with a later version that had some synchronized sound starring, among others, last year’s Best Actress award winner Janet Gaynor. Neither version have survived to the present day. Apparently, there’s a chance that some heirs of the last actress to have borrowed the print from Fox might still have it, so someone needs to start going through all the old boxes of junk inherited from Mary Duncan that are probably lying growing mildew in the attic of an old woman somewhere. Such a shame. But we must live in the moment and move on!

The second film The Divine Lady is one I had a damnable time finding. Bah. It appear the fates are working against me this time. I did find a mostly complete copy of the film on YouTube, but the last ten minutes of the ninety-nine are missing, and the only other copy to be found has its titles in Spanish, but if you really want to know what happens, start that version of the film right here. It makes it hard to judge a film on its own merits when there’s a beginning and middle while I had to take pauses to translate the Spanish I didn’t already understand with Google Translate. Still, I shall do my best.

The Divine Lady is a period romance of the that in the same vein as we saw in last year’s entry in the Best Adaptation category Glorious Betsy. That is that there’s a romance that did indeed take place at some point in history’s past and that also got adapted to make it more suited for the screen. But we’ll discuss more of that at length during the other nominations it wracked up. Here, we’re going to just discuss the look and synchronized sound of the picture.

This picture didn’t really seem to move me one way or the other. I wasn’t blown away by how amazing the cinematography was, but neither was I so bored that I wished for the picture to be over sooner then it actually was. It felt more like a piece of toast with butter on it: still good but perhaps missing a bit of jelly. Where it mainly shines is during scenes where it goes all out. This was clearly a picture in which Hollywood went all out, with at least two or three great battleships created for the intense battle scenes on the ocean, and a rather lovely set for a part where Emma goes to a fair with her first love, the odious Honorable Charles. The ending, where there is a double-exposure as Horatio recalls his love Emma while he lays dying, is also done rather cleverly, reminding me a bit of the double-exposure done in Tempest, last year’s winner, during the prison scenes. But there simply isn’t enough there for me to really engage with it and see it fully as worthy of winning.

The synchronization is unfortunately where the film lacks a lot. It’s just…there’s no other way to put it: it’s just bad. It’s not so noticeable during scenes where crowds are shouting, but when cannons are supposed to be going off and the booms don’t even seem to match up as each of them shoots out a cannonball, we’ve got a problem. One of the main talents that the main character Emma is supposed to have is that she has a lovely singing voice. The voice used, which I am not sure if was actress Corinne Griffith’s own, is indeed lovely, but it matches up as well as a bad Japanese anime dub. The lip flaps don’t match at all, with the singing going on when her mouth is closed, stopping when it’s open, or just plain not matching what the actress is mouthing at all. Seriously? Couldn’t they have at least gotten her to just mouth ‘Watermelon’ over and over again to smooth things out? Instead, during the middle of scenes where we are supposed to be being charmed by Emma’s beauty and during romantic moments when she sings to the men she loves instead are turned into moments of hilarity and ridicule at this bad dub process. No, I will not give this film a pass when others from this very year and in this very category like Our Dancing Daughters and the winner White Shadows in the South Seas managed to do their synchronized soundtracks far better.

Due to this fact, the picture just underwhelms me quite a bit. I don’t see it worthy of being a winner at all, so I’m glad it didn’t. Overall, the category for this year hasn’t quite been as up to snuff as I would’ve liked. I’m currently in the process of watching the winner and I’m hoping that this one will finally have some payoff in comparison to these blander offerings.

Best Writing Nominee 1930: The Leatherneck

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Here we finally come to a film I thoroughly enjoyed. The Leatherneck is a typical action/drama combo about a trio of Marines that are accused of deserting and the tale one of them tells as to why they really went missing. While the official Wikipedia page lists it as being a totally silent film, some other sources indicate there was a talkie version that was the main one with the silent version simultaneously put together for theaters that hadn’t yet installed sound equipment. This was common practice back then as the silent films began to fully be transitioned out. This might account for the amount of title cards present, which appears to be greater than usual for most silent films, and the short run time, which at just a hair over 52 and a ½ minutes is extremely brief even for a film of the day. Films like this were also cut down when they were show at home reels, usually to five reels, accounting for the missing portion as well. Apparently, there is supposedly a version out there that is 65 minutes long, and I would be most curious to see it since the current version is already quite gripping.

Two of the main leads, William Boyd and Alan Hale, were the leads in Skyscraper, but this picture shows how well they could show off their dramatic chops as well as their comedic ones. The third one rounding out the trio of actors was Robert Armstrong, best known as playing as Carl Denham in King Kong and the sequel Son of Kong. Honestly, the film is so well-paced and well-acted that my descriptions won’t really do it justice, so just trust me on this one, and give it a watch.

The story starts off in the middle as three Marines struggle through the deserts of Manchuria back towards their base in Tientsin. By the time they get there, Buddy is dead, Fuzzy is insane, and the third Tex just collapses from the stress of everything he’s seen. (The nicknames seem to have been pretty common fare for the time, so get any chuckles over how ridiculous they may sound today out now please.) Most of the film is then told in flashbacks as he explains to the military tribunal deciding his fate what happened.

Their tale starts off in France just after WWI. Tex is guarding German prisoners and is friendly enough with Fuzzy that he takes him out of the prisoners’ quarters to go for a drink. There they meet Buddy, who refuses to drink with a German. A fight breaks out that engulfs the whole bar, and when the military police come to break it up, the three flee the scene having become friends during the meantime. They give Fuzzy an American flag patch to remember them by.

Some years later, Fuzzy has become an American citizen, and joined the Marines himself. He meets his friends back up in Russia during the Siberian Intervention just after the Russian Revolution that had occurred a few years earlier. (There’s our mention of the Russian Revolution for you during this year of movies! Take a shot!)

They go drinking and find a drinking companion in the form of the American mercenary Captain Heckla. He’s never officially mentioned in the film as a mercenary, but it’s clear he must be because he never would’ve gotten away with his actions if he was in the real American military. The three become friends with a family aligned with the White Russian faction through their connection with Heckla, with Tex falling in love with Tanya, the daughter in the family.

Heckla has a plan to steal the potash mine that belongs to the family in Manchuria by bumping off the father and letting the three “decide what to do with [the children].” Outraged, they beat him up, and forget about him for a bit. Tex marries Tanya with his friends serving in the wedding. But the happiness is short-lived and the light-hearted part of the film is completely over at this point.

During one bad night of the revolutionists taking over, Tanya’s father and brother are shot by revolutionists that have been egged on by Heckla, with the film lingering on shots of the terrified people being lined up to be shot before showing their shadows crumpling to the ground in a nice bit of cinematography. He then goes to their home, stating Tanya’s family is waiting for her just outside the city. Trusting him, she goes with him against the warnings of the family’s old retainer Dmitri. Tex and his friends run to the scene and the anguish on his face can be felt when he finds his father- and brother-in-law’s bodies.

Running to the house, they find Dmitri only just alive, who manages to tell them that Tanya was taken by Heckla before he dies. Despite all their searching, they can’t find any trace of her, and the three get transferred to Tientsin, China, with Tex still despondent over the loss of his wife.

Buddy and Fuzzy find an ad in the paper stating that there’s a potash mine now under the control of Captain Heckla. They decide one of them should head up there to find out what happened to Tanya, but decide not to tell Tex in case it all turns out to be nothing. Fuzzy elects to go, telling Buddy to come after him if he’s not back in two weeks. Two weeks later, Buddy goes, and Tex is left saddened as he wonders where his best friends have gone. Another soldier mocks them for being deserters, but the cook tells Tex he has a note from Buddy to give him in two weeks. Tex forces him to hand it over, and realizing what has happened, immediately sets out after his friends.

When he gets to the potash mine, which is in the middle of nowhere (referred to fittingly as the Bad Lands in the title cards), he finds Heckla dead and Buddy unconscious with a bad wound in his side. He revives his friend long enough to find out he and Heckla got into a shoot-out during which Buddy managed to kill him, but not before taking injury himself.

He then finds Fuzzy in the next room, who has been driven mad through incessant Chinese water torture for now close to three or four weeks. Let me tell you, Fuzzy’s actor sells his insanity quite well, the eerie eyes gazing on out into nothing with his mouth open, barely able to stand or move under his own power. You can feel the pain of Tex and Buddy as they weep for the loss of their friend, who might as well be dead. Buddy reveals Heckla didn’t even say where Tanya was before he died, thus proving their entire quest for naught. Tex shoots Heckla’s corpse a few times out of sheer frustration.

This brings the film up to the beginning of the movie as the three struggle through the desert. Or rather Tex struggles with an insane man and one slowly bleeding out to find civilization before all three perish. They manage to make it to a river and find a boat willing to take them back to the city. Buddy, blatantly lying to spare his friend pain, tells him he’s O.K. not a minute before he dies in his arms. Tex is heartbroken, seeing one friend dead and the other still completely mad, feeling like he’s lost both his best friends.

With the tale told, it’s time to decide his fate. The only one who really believes Tex’s story is his immediate superior, with the rest of the military tribunal thinking it’s some outrageous poppycock to hide the real reason he deserted and murdered one of his best friends. Things look pretty grim.

Tex’s captain makes an appeal to Fuzzy to help out his friend. He’s still insane and fiddling around with his American flag patch incessantly. His eyes stare off at the street at nothing in particular as a familiar face is wandering the streets, asking a question of one person here and another of someone else over there. Fuzzy snaps back to reality and runs to the window just as she begins to move out of sight, screaming out “TANYA!” She comes to the window, recognizing her friend, and is quickly ushered inside as the captain realizes they now have a material witness who can corroborate the story. Just in time, too, for the jury is about to vote an entirely guilty verdict. Fuzzy is left outside in the clear throes of PTSD, or as it was known back then, shell shock.

Tanya explains Heckla took her all the way into Manchuria before she started to suspect he was lying. How the hell did he string her along for all that time? Just promising her brother and father were waiting just over the next hill for over one-thousand miles? While parts of Russia do lie right next to the area of Manchuria, I still have to question Tanya’s common sense at this point. That journey had to have taken a couple of days at the absolute very least and it was only after she’d literally been taken to the middle of nowhere in a desert in a completely different country that she started to think ‘Gee, maybe this guy is a liar?’ It’s the only point in the movie where Heckla has a point as he sneers at her and calls her a fool.

Fortunately, she regains whatever smarts she dropped in favor of acting like a dodo for the sake of the plot, and full on runs away from Heckla as soon as he gets drunk. She tells of getting ill and spending weeks in a village until she could recover. Upon hearing that the Marines were stationed in Tientsin, she went there to find Tex. With evidence proving his story, the jury of officers acquits him of the charge of murder, but finds him guilty of the charge of desertion. The punishment is to be confined to quarters…for one whole hour.

Tex asks how Tanya found him and she tells him it was Fuzzy who had seen and called out to her on the street. Realizing that his best friend finally uttered a word after so long, he goes out into the room. Fuzzy is back to staring out the window with a blank expression, and for a moment, it appears it was just a temporary lapse back into sanity, which he has now lost again. But when he turns around, he utters Tex’s name, and the film ends with the three friends hugging each other, allowing for a bittersweet ending.

I think the poignancy of the tale comes from the fact that it could still be all too relevant today. Just change the places around a little, the Middle East for Russia, maybe keep China the same or replace it with another country that borders Afghanistan or Iraq, and it all still hits home all too hard. Tales about friendship and romance tend to stay topical, especially in one like this where the friends are so devoted to each other.

Also the actors give top-notch performances. They really were giving their all for what was soon to become the obsolete art of emoting in a silent film and it paid off, as the chemistry between most of them feels natural and comes across well on the camera. It’s easy to empathize with them and the tension that rises as you wonder if everything will turn out okay makes you keep on wondering until the very last few minutes when it all ends up being settled. This was one of my favorite movies of this entire year’s review and I’m tentatively saying this one should’ve won the category.

Best Writing Nominee 1930: Our Dancing Daughters

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For those who like to complain that millennials are full of privilege and like to take without ever giving one-tenth the effort to give back, I present the characters of Our Dancing Daughters. This is a group of young people that seem to be cut from the same set Bruce Wayne is in Batman. That is, this group of twenty-somethings don’t work, don’t go to college, and spend their time drinking, partying, smoking, and having sex pretty much 24/7 while being supported only by allowances given by their wealthy parents. Anyone who wants to complain about the degradation of the youth needs to look back to their great-grandparents’ generation to realize this baloney has been going on a lot longer than we realize.

But I’m a grumpy twenty-something year old whose probably just a Bitter Betty about not being able to spend my life in a party haze. (Though truth be told, I’d still prefer to be a book-reading haze even if I had the means to do whatever I want.) These are the characters we’re supposed to root for or at least empathize with. The main character is Diana Medford, a flapper among flappers who spends her time partying hard, living fast, and flirting with anyone who so much as breathes in her direction, while really being kind, caring, and loving underneath the excess. Her foil is her frenemy Ann, who pretends to be a virtuous little ingenue who wears long dresses, never drinks, and has never (perish the thought!) ever thought about having sex with anyone but the man she’s going to marry. Secretly, her morals are far more corrupt then Diana’s will ever be, making her a fast little bitch whose been groomed by her mother to be a golddigger.

Caught in the middle is Ben Blaine, and yes, he’s about as boring as white bread as you might expect from a name like that. The only real thing he’s got going for him is that he’s exceedingly nice, but even this trait gets turned around on him as he’s virtually a doormat after he gets married, not even able to stand up to his shrew of a wife. Exactly why Diana is so keen on loving him isn’t really explained. At least Ann’s motivation is made abundantly clear: he’s worth millions, just the man for her little gold-digging heart. She lays it on thick about how she can’t be “free with her love” and how she just wants to have a home and babies and to basically be a good little submissive wifey. Gag.

Ben marries the supposedly virtuous Ann because Diana is considered “fast” aka slutty. I would also like to point out Ben is a big fat fucking hypocrite here engaging in the oldest of double standards: Diana and Ann have made it both clear they love and want to marry him, but while Diana’s harmless flirting with men that goes nowhere manages to brand her as a “tarnished woman”, Ben can date two women at the same time, but no one calls him out on what an assholish thing this is to do when both women consider what they have with him an exclusive relationship. Ben says “A man has to be sure of the woman he’s marrying”, but apparently his definition of this is dating women simultaneously to see who is the better match, as if women are horses or dogs to be judged against one another for first prize.

Fortunately, this movie does take a sharp turn to be steeped in reality as it shows what really happens when you marry someone who pretends to be something they’re not and when you toy with someone’s emotions long enough. Ben ends up miserable with Ann, who shows her true colors by promising her lover Freddie she’ll meet up with him literally while she’s still on her honeymoon.

Diana, in the meantime, shows how hurtful it can be to someone to condemn them based off them based off gossip and a few snap judgments. In a poignant moment, she ends up tearfully asking her parents if there’s something wrong with her. She exclaims men don’t want honesty, they want flattery, trickery, and lies. She doesn’t appear to be wrong, as men in this film seem to prefer this ideal woman that doesn’t even exist instead of the real women right in front of them.

There’s a secondary plot within Diana’s set of friends. Good guy Norman wants to marry Beatrice. In fact, I think the two people in the poster up top might supposed to be them, since Joan Crawford definitely didn’t have dark hair, while Beatrice in the movie does. Unfortunately, Beatrice has slept with a lot of men in her past, and she feels she’s become tarnished forever, no longer a pure, virginal maiden worthy of marrying such a perfect man as Norman. Here we once again have the double standard of letting men run around and sow their wild oats and damn the consequences to any of the women they do this with , while women are supposed to sit like ornaments on a shelf without ever having so much as the wrong fingerprint put on them before the perfect match comes along. (Watch the classic Way Down East from 1920 to see where this can lead.) Just how women are supposed to find this perfect match if they’re never supposed to experience anything about romance and love is unknown. Might as well put them in high towers and hope for a dashing prince to come along like in Rapunzel.

Now I will give credit to Norman: he actually does have a refreshing view on the matter. Much like Chico in 7th Heaven didn’t care about Diane’s role as a streetwalker before she came into his life, even telling her, “You’re not that bad!”, Norman has a modern take that it doesn’t matter what Beatrice was before, it only matters what she is now. Or rather, he forgives her, as if her past is something so shameful that it warrants forgiveness at all, rather than just understanding and acceptance of who she was as a person. He keeps this up until not one, but two ex-boyfriends land on their doorstep at once to wish the happy couple well.

While it is understandably awkward for Beatrice to have two of her former beaus stop by with her brother (and it’s obviously coded she slept with both of them) and it’s a natural reaction for Norman to take it badly, I have to question why two people who are obviously getting more mature than the rest of this band of cavorting yahoos masquerading as friends continue to associate with them. Freddie is about as immature as a twelve-year-old who just discovered porn and the other two guys as just as bad as they seem to think making obnoxious insinuations about all banging the same girl is height of hilarity when her husband is right there. Dicks.

You’d think this would be a sign that it’s time for them to find a new set of people to hang out with, married folks who have it more on their minds to settle down and have families instead of partying 24/7. Or at least address the pressing issue of how Norman seems to think his wife doesn’t truly belong to him. Since apparently she wasn’t his alone, it somehow makes her less of a lover to him. As Beatrice puts it after he storms off, “Yes– all through our lives together–he’ll be coming back–then leaving me again,” suggesting this isn’t something that’s ever going to get better. What, is he just going to storm out like a pouty child every time something dares to remind him he wasn’t the one to deflower his wife? That’s gonna get old real fast. Grow up, dude. I know the 20s was an era of modern radicalism, but I’m pretty sure marriage counselors existed even back then.

Unfortunately, being the secondary couple, they make up off-screen, and are back together at the end with no further complications rather than exploring the complex situation of how to have a relationship with a wife who has a “free-love” past further. Honestly, I’m beginning to think an entire movie about the two of them would’ve been just as compelling.

But getting back to Diana, Ben, and Lord Almighty, the hurricane force of Bitch Ann. Diana decides she’s going to leave for Europe, because unlike mere mortals, the idle rich can just up and move to a completely different continent when they’re depressed and needing a change of scenery. Damn, I wish I could do that. I can barely afford a trip to Las Vegas even at the best of times. So Diana decides to leave and get away from the pain of having Ben still around. Meanwhile, Ann is willfully running around with Freddie right behind Ben’s back, who sounds an awful lot like like Willy Wonka in this clip with how pathetic his attempts to rein in his wild wife’s behavior are. He’s obviously got a clue of what’s going on since his sweet, virtuous, milquetoast bride transformed into a harpy as soon as the “I do’s” were done, but beyond that, it’s like he’s all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and has no idea what to do.

So Ben decides to go to Diana’s going-away party and Ann, after gaslighting him during an argument and storming off in a huff, decides to go there to meet Freddie.

When everyone collides at once, sparks are bound to fly. Diana and Ben have a long heart-to-heart where she bluntly explains to him she never once tried to hide who she was, either the good or bad sides of her. Ben admits he married the wrong girl and they share a tender moment….just in time for Ann, who is drunk and full of hypocritical fury, to catch them.

Ann invites the entire party, including the very uncomfortable siblings Freddie and Beatrice up to humiliate her husband and Diana. At this point, she’s acting like such a hellion that it’s a wonder no one calls her out on her behavior or at least bitchslaps the crap out of her. But Diana takes the high road and Ben…well Ben is useless as usual. Why is this guy such a hot commodity besides the millions he comes with? Diana flees the party in a car after she and Ben declare they love each other once more.

Ann passes out drunk and wakes up when Beatrice and Norman decide it’s time to get her home. She’s precariously perched at the top of a very tall, straight staircase, watching a bunch of homely washerwomen clean the bottom. She mocks them, stating, “Women– women– working!” before asking “Hey– why are you working? Haven’t you have any daughters– pretty daughters? Pretty daughters — doll ‘em up! A rich man wants his money’s worth–!” As if what she did is so dang hard to do, hard as manual labor even. It becomes apparent this is done to make it clear this mean little shrew doesn’t have a decent bone in her body and makes it all the more satisfying when she goes tumbling to her death. Yay for the death of those who stand in the way of romance?

The movie ends with a newspaper announcing a timeskip of several years, allowing Diana and Ben to get back together. They kiss as their love theme plays and the movie ends.

Honestly, I couldn’t enjoy this movie very much. There’s too much of a divide between the message being sent about a woman has to choose between being a promiscuous whore and being forced to be a saintly virgin in order to catch a man. One or the other ladies! Being an actual human being with wants, desires, and flaws is not an option! Let’s hope the rest of these movies don’t make me nearly as grumpy regarding the ways our society hasn’t evolved in the past ninety years. This one goes at the bottom of the list for this category.

Best Writing Nomination 1930: Skyscraper

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Here comes the usual obligatory comedy picture nomination for the Best Writing category: Skyscraper. Gonna state right off the bat that this wasn’t nearly the best picture of this category, but it also wasn’t the worst. It’s a decent enough comedy, especially compared to some of the train wrecks they bring out today, though compared to others in this category it just lacks a little bit of the good ol’ spit ‘n polish treatment.

The basic premise is that there’s two blue-collar construction workers both vying for the attention of a pretty girl. Fun fact is that Ayn Rand, yes the same one who wrote Atlas Shrugged, wrote an early treatment of the film based off the short story by the same name. As happens with adaptations a lot, she shifted things around a lot. The construction workers were turned into architects and one was an extremely driven idealist dedicated to making sure the skyscraper got constructed. The ending would’ve involved him standing triumphant on top of the completed skyscraper with his arms outstretched overhead. Apparently, the director didn’t like this treatment, and chucked it in favor of one more true to the initial storyline. But Rand didn’t let the ideas she’d created go to waste. She turned them into one of her most famous works: the novel The Fountainhead.

So the finished product apparently stayed much the same as the original story, though how much so I can’t say since I wasn’t able to find a copy of the story. Honestly, this one is pretty good for a laugh. Maybe not as good as Speedy or Two Arabian Knights were when I reviewed last year’s movies, but still worth a viewing. Fortunately, a very kind viewer uploaded a copy of the film to YouTube, though it’s not in the best quality, but beggars will not be choosers in this case. I do recommend finding a soundtrack you like to listen to this film, as the ’round the merry-go-round organ music that accompanies this particular copy can be rather grating.

William Boyd, who you will recall played the handsome male lead playing off a more homely foil in Two Arabian Knights, returns here as, you guessed it, a handsome male lead playing off a more homely foil. The foil is Alan Hale, a hefty fella who was a consummate sidekick to bigger stars, but considering the length of his career, I doubt he was too bitter about being a character actor. “Blondy” and Slim Strede “The Swede” are two tough New York construction workers who spend their days messing with each other and some of the other construction words, providing a lot of fun physical humor in-between the title cards which physically spell out the vernacular of the New York accents. You might want to find a 20s slang dictionary when you watch this, because some of the phrasing is rather odd by today’s standards.

There is one scene where I’m not entirely sure what happens. The young and reckless Red is swinging back and forth on a line from one part of the construction to another. Just after his father warns him not to do that and he scoffs he’ll be fine, he loses his balance and falls. The problem here is that it’s never made clear if he died or was just seriously hurt. The scene simply cuts away from the scene and skips to Blondy and the Swede looking glum while giving his father money. If it was the former, this was a rather dark turn for a comedy to make without ever making it clear what happened, and if the latter, then there needed to at least be a few seconds more or a title card to clear up what happened. I wonder if perhaps some footage got sliced up in the ensuing years of preserving this film. But moving on.

Blondy and Slim Strede save the life of Sally, a streetwise girl, when a construction beam nearly falls on top of her. She faints and they carry her into a hall where a dance rehearsal is going on. When she revives, her two knights in shining armor having ended up in more shenanigans while she was out, Sally gets a job as the producers assume she’s there as a dancer. She ends up in a relationship with Blondy despite Slim’s best efforts to get the girl and all seems well.

But as usual in a comedy, there has to be a certain amount of seriousness to invoke a feeling of pathos so that the audience stays engaged with the plot. Blondy injures his leg while saving his best friend Swede as a beam nearly crashes on both of them, sending them plummeting to the ground. Honestly, was there no safety standards set in place back then? Was everyone just expected to do the best they could and if stray beams hit people, was it just a bit ‘oops’ moment? Anyway, Blondy ends up with a badly-broken leg, and due to a bunch of macho man bullshit, seems to think Sally will feel sorry for him and feel pity since he can’t work while he heals. This part hasn’t aged very well by modern standards, as this whole macho, stoic, never show any feelings routine is something that can quickly lead to a form of toxic masculinity. It also is very condescending towards the attitude of women, as if women are such simple creatures emotionally that they can’t possibly understand the world of big, strong men and what they go through in their lives. But this part doesn’t last too long, so the grating aspects of these outdated attitudes don’t irritate the senses too much.

Blondy is in a funk and nothing seems like it will snap him out of it, so Swede comes up with a plan. He pretends that Sally is now dating him to make his friend jealous and goes out with her every week, pretending they’re a couple while he just takes Sally out as platonic friends while he tries to reassure her that Blondy still loves her, despite never telling her just why he’s being a grade-A jerk.

So Blondy keeps continuously trying to walk without crutches and landing flat on his face. Side note, as TV shows and movies are always trying to kill us, this is just a good way to prolong your healing process or even injure yourself further permanently. Crutches are there for a reason. Use them until a doctor tells you otherwise. Heroic willpower in real life should be saved for more important things like lifting SUVs off of pinned toddlers. So Swede takes Sally to the construction site one evening and Blondy finally decides to go there, using crutches be damned or not.

Sally finds out that he’s using crutches and predictably doesn’t care or pity him, which just goes to show most comedy plots can be solved through a heaping dose of communication. Still fuming with temper, he and Swede get into a fight again which ends with him knocking Swede clear off the building and into one of the machines. The picture ends with the three of them laughing and then searching for Slim’s missing tooth, which has been a running gag throughout the picture.

So this was a decent enough little film, but I doubt it would be the best of the year. There’s just too many other good pictures to get through.

Best Writing Nominee 1930: The Valiant

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The Valiant is a good strong film and I greatly liked how the poignancy of the picture resonates even today. Granted, the premise of a prisoner sentenced to death and refusing to reveal if he’s a wondering family’s son and brother wouldn’t really work today since everyone and their mother has fingerprints if not outright DNA to test. But as a film of the times it’s very good.

The story is based off a one-act play which made up mainly of the last fourth of the movie where a condemned man sees a woman who thinks he might be her brother hours before he’s set to be executed. This meant a little bit of an expansion in order to accommodate even a movie run time as short as an hour, so it shows the events leading up to how he ended up in jail and the home life of the family who suspects he might be their son.

While the idea of being executed within three months of being sentenced seems odd in today’s world where we’re lucky to execute people before they die of old age, it wasn’t uncommon back then. The spree killer Charles Starkweather was executed only eighteen months after initially being sentenced to death in the late fifties. Three months is a bit quick,

Honestly, the one who carries this movie solely on his shoulders is Paul Muni, the man who calls himself “James Dyke” (get out all your Have A Gay Old Time sniggers about his unfortunate choice of a spur-of-the-moment last name out now, please) and claims not to be Joe Douglas, the brother of the girl Mary who comes to see him. Most scenes feature him and he gives a wonderfully restrained performance as the killer, emoting without overacting, and using the advance of sound to wonderfully put emotion into his voice at key moments. A more detailed analysis will be in his Best Actor review.

This becomes clear in the section of the movie where Mary comes to see him. She and her mother have been wondering what happened to their brother and son for years now, and she claims it’s what has left her mother in poor health. Despite it all, she begs that he tell her if he is their family member, citing that not knowing is worse then knowing ever could be. Though he’s not around for the exchange, he seems to realize the knowledge that her son is a murderer will kill the frail old woman, and Mary flat-out tells her fiance she won’t marry him if he is her brother, stating the judgment that would follow her for the rest of her life.

The two of them give a remarkable performance given they’re in a single room simply moving back and forth between the space while talking for almost twenty minutes. Many of Dyke’s expressions key the viewer into exactly what he’s thinking even if he’s not saying it. During the conversation, he tells a rather convenient tale of how he served with her brother, and watched him die as a hero in WWI trying to save an officer. His remarks earlier of having done “everything but be a success” in life makes it pretty clear this is likely Joe, who is making up an ending for himself he wish he’d had rather then the one he’s going to face. Mary takes this all in, and despite her reservations, seems to decide this is the version she wants to remember her brother as, even if the truth is staring her right in the face.

The little twist comes at the end. While there is a convincing argument that Dyke is her brother, it’s also possible he’s just a man with a heart wanting spare some people pain. But after Mary has exited the room, Dyke recites the half of the goodnight exchange that her brother used to say with her, proving definitively once and for that this is her brother Joe. All that he did was because he didn’t want his family to have the pain of knowing their once golden boy was in fact a murderer.

The ending, however, is a touch weak. The film would’ve been better off just ending with Dyke being led off to his death and fade out, which is what the ending of the play is. Having to show the happy family reconciled with the idea of their son being a hero rather then a killer seemed a bit ham-handed, as if we hadn’t already gotten the idea of them believing what they wanted to with the reaction of Mary in the prison.

Honestly, this is one of the best films I’ve reviewed for this particular year, and I will be hard-pressed to find another which reaches its caliber in this category. We’ll see if it should’ve won the award at the end of this all! Until next time, movie fanatics.

Best Writing 2nd Academy Awards 1930: A Woman of Affairs

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Now it’s time for the Best Writing category. Honestly, this is one of my favorite categories, for while I may not be an expert on cinematography or art direction, I’d like to think I know a little something about writing. Here we have A Woman of Affairs, starring Greta Garbo, and based off the book The Green Hat.

Apparently, a lot of the adaptation changed key facts from the book to screen adaptation including the characters’ names, and including all references to heroin use, homosexuality, and the main key plot point of a character suffering from syphilis. While the Code wasn’t in effect yet, most of these subjects were far too controversial to be shown on screen. Not the first time Hollywood has ever done this, though the effectiveness in this case might have been negated by changing a key plot point.

The main crux of the plot revolves around one of the two English Merrick siblings named Diana. Their family motto appears to be live fast and die hard because they’re the only two left. Diana is a modern woman who knows what she wants and is implied to have had more then a few lovers, while her brother Jeffry is an alcoholic who seems bent on the path of self-destruction. Diana and Neville have been in love with each other since childhood, so either he doesn’t care about the fact she’s gotten around, he doesn’t know, or the gossip is totally wrong.

Diana and Neville are torn apart because he’s got some macho bullshit going on about being unable to live with her and keep his honor if he was supported solely by her. She waits for two years, but gets tired of whatever he’s doing, my guess being twiddling his thumbs down there in Cairo. How long does it take to become self-sufficient to his liking anyway?

She gets tired of waiting (can’t blame her) and marries their other childhood companion David. While she doesn’t love him, it’s clear she still cares about him, but on their wedding night, he shockingly jumps to his death after receiving some form of news. Let me tell you, that was a pretty big swerve in the movie to see him up and die, during which they don’t shy away from showing his body crash right into a greenhouse. Diana mourns him, but refuses to comment on any gossip as to why he’d take his own life except to say he did it “for decency.”

It’s here I have to be my usual contrarian self and examine this film with a 2019 magnifying glass. David’s death is a tragedy, especially since he’s apparently supposed to be this perfect saint of a man, but what sticks in my craw is how easily everyone blames Diana for it. Like not a single person besides Dr. Hugh, who’s always in her corner, sticks up for her. They all automatically assume David was somehow so horrified at realizing he’d married a woman who got around and would most likely be unfaithful that this led to taking his own life. Um….what? Are you telling me a man would have such delicate, smelling-salt needing, might-faint-at-the-sight-of-a-mouse feelings that the idea of being married to a promiscuous woman would cause him to be unable to take another moment of being alive? The idea sounds absurd the longer I stare that the words that I just wrote. That’s like slut-shaming taken to the craziest extreme.

I’m still waiting on my version of the out-of-print book The Green Hat to arrive to compare, but I suspect this is also where the homosexuality part of the book came into play, as it makes very little sense otherwise as to why Jeffry would blame his own sister for ten years for David’s death unless he’d also been in love with him. He never does forgive her and this is a rather sad part of the movie as Diana comes back after a ten year self-imposed exile where she had a string of lovers, thus seeming to prove everyone right about her character, just to see her dying brother. He refuses to see her and dies without her ever getting a chance to talk to him, taking his anger over the beatific angel David’s death with him to the grave.

In the meantime, Neville has decided to marry a wonderful, sweet, caring, and kind woman name Constance. Honestly, she’s the one that gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop here because she sticks by a man who continuously proves he can’t be faithful. It’s best summed up when a high-society woman mentions that no man ever forgets Diana once he’s fallen in love with her. Neville proves this right as he cheats on Constance with Diana three freaking days before they’re set to get married, with Jeffry dying the same night. So apparently this guy can bang his ex-girlfriend and openly still be in love with her yet Diana still gets all the blame?

Nine months later, Dr. Hugh informs Neville that Diana has gotten very sick and may die. In the book, it’s explained this is the result of a miscarriage, but it’s never outright stated in the movie, though the timing of her being gone for nine months is a clue. Neville goes to see her because he’s one of the only people left in the world who cares about her. He brings Constance because somehow he still thinks he can claim he has honor at this point. This exchange sums it up best:

Neville: Constance is outside. Will you go and talk to her? It was only honorable to bring her along.
Hugh: Oh, yes – honor. We mustn’t forget that.

What a farce Neville seems to be playing at, trying to have his cake and eat it too. Honestly, his wife is a saint to be so understanding of her husband clearly being in love with another woman, claiming time after time neither of them can help it.

Greta’s performance shines here as Diana summons the strength enough to get out of bed when she realizes the flowers Neville sent her have been taken out of her room, where previously she was bedridden. When she realizes Neville is there, she embraces him, but upon seeing Constance, she reins herself back in because she’s acknowledged before Constance is a much better woman then she’ll ever be.

With a few more scenes of Neville and Diana being moody while Constance is a martyr for love, the two lovers eventually decide to go to South America to be together. Constance decides to let them go to make them both happy, but Neville’s father, who has never approved of Diana and was the one to send Neville away when they were young to begin with, meets with her to try and change her mind.

Everyone ends up in the room together and Neville reveals the big secret Diana has been carrying about for a decade: the reason David died was because he was a crook who had been embezzling thousands over the years. The police were going to arrest him, so rather then go to jail he killed himself. This is apparently the biggest change, for in the book, the reason he kills himself is because he has syphilis, and Diana’s character in the book says he died “for purity”. Back in the 20s, penicillin had only just been developed as a cure in the late 20s after the book was published in 1924 and wouldn’t be widely-available till the 40s for the public, so getting the STD was a slow death sentence. This of course brings in the fact that David was hardly the honorable, saintly fellow everyone thought he was if he slept around enough to get the disease.

By changing this key fact, the whole tone of his suicide changes. Rather then showing to have been a hypocrite all along while it was his wife who actually had honor in the matters of virtue, it makes him corrupt in spirit only rather then body and spirit. For Diana has kept her mouth shut sitting on this secret for ten years rather then impinge on everyone’s memories of him, saying it’s the only good thing she’s ever done. With this out in the open, Neville’s father says that Diana is good, but she replies that Constance is the truly good one. It’s amazing how much awareness she has of her own nature whereas Neville appears to have his head shoved firmly up his ass about how much of a hypocritical disaster his supposed honor has caused him.

There appears to be a small portion of the film missing here since Diana abruptly disappears while Neville tells Constance he’s going to stay because Diana told him about her “secret”, despite none of this happening on screen. The secret is that she’s pregnant. She replies Diana lied to get Neville to stay with his wife.

Everyone suddenly realizes Diana is missing and go off to find her. They find her car crashed into the tree where she and Neville had made promises as sweethearts. She’s dead, wrecked body unseen by the camera. Her last act becomes her most selfless one so that Constance may have some small bit of happiness while Neville finally matures into the husband he’s supposed to be.

The entire thing is a tragedy from start to finish and not the fun kind. This is a Shakespearean tragedy, where things start off with almost comedic timing (a girl courted by two men and marries the wrong one!), and become worse the long the story goes on (Suicide, more death, etc). It’s just misery upon misery heaped upon this poor woman until her only course of action is to commit suicide so that others can be happy. A bit of the punch that could be packed is lost in translation as they censored parts of the book that were too risky for film, but what is left is still a fine example of cinema. Is it best enough to have deserved the Best Writing award? Something tells me no. I think the best is yet to come.

Best Art Direction Winner 2nd Academy Awards 1930: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

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For this review, it shall have to be rather brief, for the simple matter that I cannot find this film in any shape or form. I know, I know, it’s a running them among many of the films of this era, but short of traveling to the George Eastman House film archive in New York to watch the print of the film that apparently they have there, I don’t really have a lot of options here.

So alas I can’t fairly judge who the winner of this category should be with so many of the candidates missing. Perhaps we are missing out on a great film. Perhaps not. I shall not know for quite some time I fear.

Best Art Direction Nominee 2nd Academy Awards 130: Alibi

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Now we come to another nominee for Best Art Direction. Alias is a gangster film and one of the talkies that were nominated at that year’s Academy Awards. It’s an interesting film to watch in a visual sense. Much like In Old Arizona, it’s both helped and hindered by the fact that it’s an early sound film. The hindrance comes in that the bulk of emotion has to be portrayed by a technology that was far from perfect, so shots are quite static most of the time, and a soundtrack is nonexistent. Fortunately, the visuals still manage to hold their own in terms of making the movie palatable.

It’s a gangster film with just a touch of noir, so the black-and-white really sells the piece. Take for instance the scene where a policeman is shot after catching some crooks in a robbery. There’s only a few words said, but the advent of sound makes it clear what’s going on as the policeman signals for others by banging his nightstick. We cut to cops closing in from all corners as a pale white hand reaches out from the absolute black darkness of the car, shooting the police officer in the back. It’s a great scene even if the rest of the movie is uneven.

Another good one is when Tommy, a police officer assigned to the case, and a colleague drag a lowlife into the police station to sweat him out until he confesses who killed the policeman. The frantic crook glances frantically to the door, where the shadowy face of an officer keeping anyone from coming in is seen, and back to the two cops hounding him for information. The advance of sound makes this scene particularly effective as the two cops switch off trying to get him to confess while he protests his innocence. At the height of the scene, there’s a POV shot from the criminal where you see a dizzying kaleidoscope effect as the visages of the two men swim and swirl before his eyes, finally breaking him down enough to confess.

Finally, a third is when Danny, an undercover police officer, is found out and cornered by Chick and two goons. The tension is built up slowly as the music from the nightclub plays in the background while there’s a POV shot from Danny as he watches each of the crooks draw closer, their faces getting bigger, larger, and more menacing with each step towards the camera. The camera then focuses on the drunken affectation he continues to wear rather then let them know what’s going on. It’s only when he finally acts and disarms two of the men in a swift move that the music entirely fades away, leaving them in a tense stand-off.

There’s other bits here and there, like the show-off nature of having dancing girls be able to dance to synchronized music for one of the first times on film and the police at the end trying to catch Chick as he evades them in a dark room, only to fall to his death once he reaches the roof and tries to jump off it.

It’s all good moments, but unfortunately, that’s all there is to it: just moments rather then the picture as a whole. Was it good enough to have been worth the win? That I don’t know, for alas, the winner The Bridge of San Luis Rey appears to be a film entirely lost to time. But more on that next time.

Best Art Direction 2nd Academy Awards Nominees: The Patriot, Dynamite, and The Awakening

Why am I putting these three films together in one entry? Because none of them have any watchable versions. This is truly the tragedy of films from the early era. Of these three films, The Patriot and The Awakening, are considered to be completely lost or only with fragments of them found. The third, Dynamite, one of the inimitable Cecil B. DeMille’s early sound pictures, is almost completely impossible to find. I have a site that potentially could get me a copy of the silent version of the film, which was produced alongside the talkie version, but I’m not holding out a great amount of hope.

I would like it if places like UCLA and private collections made it easier for the average Joe to get a hold of the films that they’re sitting on. If they have them, why not make them available for public consumption? If I’m looking for them, then I can’t be the only one. If there’s an audience for your product, even if it’s a small audience, then one should make that available for purchase. Everyone loves making money. They also should get a move on because these films will soon be in the public domain by 2025 and then anyone will be able to demand them. Perhaps by then I will be able to come back to these films and be able to give them a proper review.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I’ll have another review up for you soon of the only other film in this category to still have a surviving copy that was available for me to watch: Alibi.

Best Art Direction 2nd Academy Awards 1930 Nominee: Street Angel

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Now it’s onto the category of Best Art Direction. Here’s another familiar movie, that rare one that ended up being nominated in two different years: Street Angel. Art direction is basically filming the world around you, so anything on set that’s not the actor tends to be filed under art direction.

The world of Street Angel is set in the city of Naples in Italy. While I can confirm the historical accuracy to the way looks in the film is minimal, the confining spaces of the city are very effective in conveying things like Angela’s desperation trying to evade the police, the long streets that she walks while trying to become a streetwalker, and the small space that Gino and Angela call home that has a much more cozy feeling to it.

By contrast, the scenes with the circus are set in the countryside, complete with having the occasional wild animal in the shot like a baby bear allows the open spaces to reflect the happier, more relaxed times with the couple. It’s only when they go back to Naples that the scene changes to a dark night, reflecting the sad parting of Angela and the friends that had taken her in.

There’s other ways the film draws you and shows you how effective the space is being used. you’ll notice how often the height difference between the two of them was made use of. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell had a full foot difference between them (5’0″ and 6’0″ respectively) and most of the directors in their films would play that up to make the shots here more dramatic. What’s interesting about Street Angel is that many of the shots are shown in such a way as to make Janet the taller of the pair, usually by a good head height or so by placing her on a chair, in a window above Charles’ head, or by having him sit down while she stands.

They seem to suggest that Angela is actually the strong one of the pair, a suggestion which is made true at the point where she leaves him without saying it’s because she’s got to spend a year in prison. Whereas she manages to get through her sentence without falling into depression or despair, the same can’t be said for Gino. As soon as she’s gone, he can’t paint at all, instead sinking into a haze from which he can’t seem to escape. This is represented by the change in lighting in the picture. What was once lit up brightly is now much more dim.

This culminates in the final scenes. Gino now wears all black clothing to show how dark and cynical he’s become in mindset. Angela and Gino meet up again shadows and fog that permeate the entire docks, drawing an emphasis to both of their dark moods. In the final minutes of the picture, the picture of Angela repainted into that of a saint is lit up with a light that shines from somewhere off-screen to remind Angela and Gino (and by extension the audience) of the woman’s purity and gentle nature.

Overall, the film does a good job with art direction. Normally, I’d make more commentary about comparing it to the other films in this category, but alas, most of them are lost or haven’t had a version of the still-existing ones released. So should it have won that year? It’s hard to say, but I’m guessing one of the other films just had a little bit more oomph to the picture.