You could do a lot worse on this boat than a tumble with me

[sovay]

That was nine hours straight of pre-Code Paramount Pictures. Six features, three shorts. The sun had just risen by the time we were wandering the cool, shuttered streets of Harvard Square. I am not sure that I have, presently, the brain for a film-by-film writeup such as I produced for the Somerville's sci-fi 'Thon in February, but it was a wonderful thing to meet rushthatspeaks, derspatchel, and ajodasso for and exactly how I wanted to spend whatever stamina I had left this weekend. At this distance, I think I was most impressed by Girls About Town (1931) for its refusal to end in any of the moral directions that would have been inescapable a few years later, White Woman (1933) for everything about Charles Laughton (although his mustache alone would have sufficed), and Cleopatra (1934) for the way it retained only such minute and passing fragments of historical accuracy as would cause its audience to splutter all the more incoherently at the rest of the film, viz. the panther girls leaping through flaming hoops or Rush's speculation that Claudette Colbert's costumes were contractually obliged to reveal more of her breasts with each change until she got down to two feathers and a necklace and had to start building up again. The Wild Party (1929) mostly proved that Clara Bow should have flourished in the sound era (and that we are all very glad some things about gender in this country have actually changed) and the ending of Hot Saturday (1932) seems to have left everyone in the theater confused. There is no other word than "phenomenon" for Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933). Betty Boop Talkartoons are sort of amazingly surrealist. There were free donuts and coffee. And free pizza. Which I did not eat at the time, because that was two or three in the morning and I was doing fine on bitter lemon and chocolate with cornflakes in, but I have just made up for it by reheating some of the pizza from yesterday's adventures in moving and now I am going to lie down. I really, really hope an all-night pre-Code marathon becomes a regular feature of the HFA. I wouldn't at all mind two institutional excuses to lose sleep with film and people I like.

Comments

[sovay]

Haven't seen this one, but the more recording I hear of silent stars, the more I become convinced that the old "people's careers ruined by sound" trope is utter bosh.

derspatchel tells me—and I trust him on this sort of thing—that Bow's voice was not well received at the time; it's as sparky, streetwise, and carelessly sexy as the rest of her, but you can hear Brooklyn in it. Apparently that didn't go over so well. Grit teeth, wish for alt-history machine.

John Gilbert, though, appears to be a myth.

The silent star I've previously missed most in the sound era is Richard Barthelmess, whom I've only seen in speaking roles—the tough-break protagonist of William Wellman's Heroes for Sale (1933), a fascinating supporting part in Only Angels Have Wings (1939). It is incomprehensible to me that he was out of movies entirely by 1942, because from a modern perspective he transitions beautifully from one style to the next, especially in his low-key, naturalistic acting, his slightly rough tenor voice and his neat-boned face. He gives an amazing interior performance as the disgraced and ostracized flyer in Angels, a man who enters every scene with his shoulders tensed and a wary, half-defiant flick of a look from under his brows, his mouth braced down like a tight little reverse smile. He never says anything to defend himself; his stone face is mistaken by the other pilots for a lack of shame. He has such thick dark lashes, every time he lowers his eyes is as good as a blow. He makes two or three films after that and retires. I could have watched him happily for years. I have to assume it wasn't a world he wanted to/felt he could stay in.