User Reviews

This amusing short feature is enjoyable to watch, and it must certainly have been practical in its time. Part animation, part live action, part comedy, part instruction, it is an interesting blend of material that works well. Most of all, perhaps, it is interesting that a feature like this was seen as a necessity, in order to help its viewers make better use of the capabilities of the telephone.

Starting with live action and then switching to animation, the feature uses a sympathetic animated telephone (the old upright kind, without even a rotary dial) to explain the ways that telephones are misused and abused, to the disadvantage of both the equipment and its users. It's a good job of using entertaining material to get its message across. Except for one brief sequence that features a character who now comes across as a dated stereotype, the overall tone is surprisingly contemporary.

Naturally, no one today needs help with a telephone, but there are still many who have similar difficulties both with the mechanics and the etiquette of using more recently invented technological gadgets. A feature like this may seem quaint in one sense, in that it deals with a now-obsolete version of a device whose present form is thoroughly familiar to us. But in a broader sense, it really points out a great constant in society over the years, as each generation sees its own innovations and must learn to assimilate them into daily life. The 'useless attachment' gag, for example, strikes home as clearly now as it did in the 1920s.

Part of the "More Treasures From American Film Archives" set, the little feature "Now You're Talking" is not unworthy of being called a historical treasure, simple though it is in itself.

Told from inside the brain of a man who seems quite cartoonish even in the live action scenes, a the anthropomorphic cartoon incarnation of the man's candlestick telephone ends up in hospital from all the abuse he gives it.

With the exception of an unfortunate racist caricature (the black zookeeper) there is nothing about this film I don't like. The production values are good, the woe-begotten phone is an empathetic creature, and the various aspects of the technology - the man struggling to remember the number he's dialing and holding the phone away to his chest when he talks - do evoke similar problems in the cell phone age (as the previous commenter noted, this film does have a strikingly modern feel). In fact, one line in the cue-card dialog bears a striking resemblance to a certain telephone commercial. Can you guess which one? Check your answer at archive.org, where the film (which they affirm is in the public domain) can be downloaded for free. Now all I have to do is find a song that syncs to it.

It seems a tad odd that a short film entitled "Now You're Talking" is a silent film! By 1927, sound was coming into use in the US but Bell Telephone decided to make this a silent...most likely because few theaters were wired for sound.

The short is from the Fleischer Brothers and at the time, they called themselves "Inkwell Studios" because of their "Out of the Inkwell" series of cartoons in which characters, such as Koko, left the inkwell and interacted with the real world. In this case, what starts off as a live action short soon becomes a public service message from the phone company about how you might be abusing their phones. I say their phones because at that time, homeowners and businesses did not own the equipment, it was rented from Bell.

Despite this sounding like a VERY dull film, it isn't and is actually enjoyable to watch even today. This is because the animation is lovely for 1927 and the jokes are very cute and clever. A few might blanch at the joke involving Mr. Lyon and the black character....though this sort of humor was pretty much in keeping with the times. Well worth seeing and you can also see it by downloading the short for free from archive.org.

I just watched a couple of Max Fleischer animated/live action shorts concerning the telephone as authorized by AT&T. The first is called That Little Big Fellow-which isn't listed on IMDb-which depicts one man trying to call another and having trouble because of the improper way he's doing the calling before calming down and slowing his stance. It's up to the animated character called Current to go through all the photographed wires to convey just what words-as depicted on screen as this is silent-are being said. Quite educational and entertaining, even today. Then there's this one I'm reviewing here which depicts another man having trouble getting his voice through the receiver and can't hear what the other person on the other line is saying. So he dreams in animated form all the troubles his telephone is experiencing because of his owner's abuse. My favorite part is when this owner has trouble remembering the order the telephone number is supposed to go as he tells the operator and instead of getting a Mr. Lyons, he gets a zookeeper who's trying to control a lion! (This zookeeper is drawn in the unfortunate black caricature of the time with likewise dialect printed on the balloon but if one knows about this and recognizes the way times were then, then one forgives this one incident.) Another very entertaining Max Fleischer short. As for ratings, That Little Big Fellow gets a 7, see above for this one.