Triple Staged watch these old mysteries not because I expect to find a good one. They rarely are, but often you can see a free art experimenting with different cinematic tricks while no one yet had a settled cinematic vocabulary. And here is a good...
A Depression-downtrodden waif uses her brains instead of her body to rise from tyro con artist to crime boss.
Suckers most of the movies in this period tried to find some new way of telling the detective story, many worked on the gangster side as well. Today, we don’t quite appreciate the cleverness in the variety. I think in part because the things that...
In an effort to get enough money to afford expensive treatment for her gravely ill American husband, a retired German entertainer returns to the cabaret, gaining fame as Blonde Venus and unknowingly catching the eye of a wealthy politician.
Furry are better von Sternberg Dietrich projects. The only charm of this one is the America situation. I never got the charm of Dietrich, and if you didn’t, you’ll find this empty. It has three stage performances by our blond Venus. The first of these is...
Prizefighter Mason loses his opening fight so wife Rose leaves him for Hollywood. Without her around Mason trains and starts winning. Rose comes back and wants Mason to dump his manager Regan and replace him with her secret lover Lewis.
No Cinderella you enter into a film, you are accepting a world. You are accepting whatever God and physics and mythology that the filmmaker has created. Within that world, wheels turn and things happen. All too often we think the movie is about those happenings. We...
An American missionary is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord holding her in Shanghai.
Frank can get value out of pretty much any film, but some are harder work than others because they place impediments. Capra and Spielberg are the leading placers of the leading impediments: representing the world in a way that is ideal, attractive, but presented in...
Underaware really like some of these Betty Boop cartoons. Many of the early ones deal with the overlap of evil, sex and hallucinogens, often mixed with jazz and Black men. This is one of the tamer ones in terms of the evil tone: she’s in...
Inverted Show is my favourite Our Gang short. It has everything that I recall fondly: rowdy fellowship and kids conspiring against adults resulting in innocent mischief. Although the series had already been around a dozen years, for me the master cast was the Spanky, Buckwheat,...
A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.
The Written Mystery early thirties was a time of great experimentation with the detective narrative, leading eventually to noir. This is one of those experiments, and a rather fine one. It has a framing device where an old cop is telling a young one about the...
Edgar starts out in a non-unfamiliar grumpy mood and tells some people off obnoxiously, then becomes overcome with joy and kindheartedness when he discovers that his wife is about to have a baby.
Slow Burn is included as an extra on the “The Southerner” DVD and is much the better experience. Both films represent a lost attitude in film. This one is worth re-experiencing: the Slow Burn flummox that was invented by this guy, continued in many radio...
The mirthful adventures of Police-Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot and his two constables, Albert Brown and Jeremias Harbottle, who stage a fabricated crime-wave to save their jobs---and then find themselves involved in the real thing.
Ineptness gang portrayed here is some sort of a triangulation among the Marxes, Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. We love theatrical movie ineptness, especially in policemen and politicians. Especially if the characters are Brits. And this is true it seems even if the audience is...
