Veteran William Wellman directed this pre-Code thriller that puts an average New York family at odds with a pack of ruthless gangsters. It’s a 1931 tale of drive-by shootings, witness intimidation and child kidnapping — just one year later, movies about child kidnappings were banned, after the tragedy of the Lindbergh baby. Walter Huston is the rather ruthless District Attorney, and the ex-vaudeville funny man Chic Sale plays an old codger that shows his family what Good Americanism really means — the show could serve as a surly critique of what passes for law and order and good citizenship now.
The Star Witness
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 68 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 19.99
Starring: Walter Huston, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane, Edward J. Nugent, Dickie Moore, Nat Pendleton, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, Allan Lane.
Cinematography: James Van Trees
Film Editor:...
The Star Witness
DVD
The Warner Archive Collection
1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 68 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 19.99
Starring: Walter Huston, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane, Edward J. Nugent, Dickie Moore, Nat Pendleton, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, Allan Lane.
Cinematography: James Van Trees
Film Editor:...
- 4/6/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Groucho Marx in 'Duck Soup.' Groucho Marx movies: 'Duck Soup,' 'The Story of Mankind' and romancing Margaret Dumont on TCM Grouch Marx, the bespectacled, (painted) mustached, cigar-chomping Marx brother, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 14, '15. Marx Brothers fans will be delighted, as TCM is presenting no less than 11 of their comedies, in addition to a brotherly reunion in the 1957 all-star fantasy The Story of Mankind. Non-Marx Brothers fans should be delighted as well – as long as they're fans of Kay Francis, Thelma Todd, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Allan Jones, affectionate, long-tongued giraffes, and/or that great, scene-stealing dowager, Margaret Dumont. Right now, TCM is showing Robert Florey and Joseph Santley's The Cocoanuts (1929), an early talkie notable as the first movie featuring the four Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. Based on their hit Broadway...
- 8/14/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Loretta Young films as TCM celebrates her 102nd birthday (photo: Loretta Young ca. 1935) Loretta Young would have turned 102 years old today. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the birthday of the Salt Lake City-born, Academy Award-winning actress today, January 6, 2015, with no less than ten Loretta Young films, most of them released by Warner Bros. in the early '30s. Young, who began her film career in a bit part in the 1927 Colleen Moore star vehicle Her Wild Oat, remained a Warners contract player from the late '20s up until 1933. (See also: "Loretta Young Movies.") Now, ten Loretta Young films on one day may sound like a lot, but one should remember that most Warner Bros. -- in fact, most Hollywood -- releases of the late '20s and early '30s were either B Movies or programmers. The latter were relatively short (usually 60 to 75 minutes) feature films starring A (or B+) performers,...
- 1/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
One of the joys of William Wellman's pre-Code output, and one of the pleasure of the pre-Code era per se, is how apparent flaws sometimes just add flavor. The filmmakers of that era were mostly not aiming for perfection anyway, but concentrated on grinding 'em out like sausages, trying to preserve a decent overall quality, injecting some special spicy tang of their own devising whenever possible, but moving onto the next one as soon as they could.
The Star Witness (1931) is bizarre, exciting, funny/unfunny, brutal, and generally off-kilter in a way that makes for engaging viewing. If its qualities were transposed to a modern studio picture, we might find it in some way "unsatisfying," but it can certainly hold up its end of a double bill, as it is doing on Saturday, Feb 25 at the Wellman retrospective at New York's Film Forum.
The movie's worst move, really, is...
The Star Witness (1931) is bizarre, exciting, funny/unfunny, brutal, and generally off-kilter in a way that makes for engaging viewing. If its qualities were transposed to a modern studio picture, we might find it in some way "unsatisfying," but it can certainly hold up its end of a double bill, as it is doing on Saturday, Feb 25 at the Wellman retrospective at New York's Film Forum.
The movie's worst move, really, is...
- 2/16/2012
- MUBI
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