Change Your Image
joan_freyer
Reviews
The Wind in the Willows (1984)
addictive fun!
I bought this box over a year ago and watched it for 10 minutes and dropped it because it was not 'high tech' but when I rediscovered it last week at the bottom of my stack I was amazed. it is addictive good fun and totally enchanting! The characters are all charming and so convincing you think they are real. Each of the characters are given their 'time in the sun to shine' and the production values, the sets, the costumes (yes! there are costumes!) are all amazing.
The ferrets are wonderfully evil and are real scene stealers! The voices are wonderful too. Every voice is perfect for the role and the beauty of the narration is especially enjoyable! Try it! you will be delighted! JEF
The Iron Horse (1924)
great movie
I just got to see this and it is a great movie! Classic John Ford! I won't repeat what the other reviews say but rather add some things not pointed out by others: The barroom fight scene is amazing. The crowd hold up lanterns to illuminate the brawl and this creates an amazing effect. The crowd surround the two men fighting so you can't see much of the fight which adds to the realism. Only a very confident director would 'hide' a vicious fist fight inside a crowd scene. The effect makes the fight appear to be viciously real. The voice over implied that Ford goaded George O'Brien, a real life navy boxer, into really fighting the double for the villain ( the double is never shown face front in the fight).
The final fight scene and shoot out is also very impressive in it's realism. Ford adds nice touches like the wounded man smoking calmly during the fight and one of the Indians falling to his death with his dog coming up to sit by his dead Indian master. Ford's ability to add tiny details adds to every scene.
Most of the scenes are shot in snow and one blizzard and you can often see the breath of the actors in a scene. It must have been very cold but the effects build up and add to the realism that this was filmed in the winter and not the summer.
This is a great film and shows John Ford already a master of his game. Everyone should see it and not be freaked out that it is a silent. The music is fantastic and you forget it is a silent. In a silent the visuals rule rather than words anyway and Ford would tear pages of script away. He did not need words.
J E F
Fig Leaves (1926)
forgotten screen gem
Fig Leaves is a forgotten screen gem that should be out on DVD. It is an early Howark Hawks screwball comedy with George O'Brien doing a Cary Grant before there was Cary Grant role. The satire of the 10 Commandments is great.
The actors are very funny. Seeing this makes you realize how good George O'Brien was. He was discovered in the Iron Horse and mostly did westerns but here he is a great comic actor and in Sunrise he did a great dramatic part too. He had a surprising range. It is a pity more people cannot see this film.
J E F
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (1971)
great series --pity it is only two box sets!
This is a great series from the 1970s and it is a pity it is only 2 boxes. The collection is exciting because 1) there is a who's who of wonderful character actors starring and 2) there is a who's who of little known but wonderful writers of detective stories here complete with short bios.
The series is a fine recreation of Victorian and Edwardian times. It is video and is fussy but the sets are lavish and some shows feature live action in the countryside.
Most of the plots are clever and the characters include female detectives too! Nice touch! Some are doctors but others are jewelers or insurance or gentlemen or cockneys. Instead of building as series around a young star to be (perhaps) the producing team used the best character actors around and therefore the series is a who's who of the very best talents around.
check it out! you will like it! J E F Rose
The Golden Chance (1915)
surprisingly good
I agree with other reviewers that the silent De Mille seems better than the talkie De Mille we are more familiar with. This film is a nice little gem.
The lighting and intense shadows is striking and the ending is oddly enigmatic. The acting is restrained and the Cinderella twist is clever. The pacing is a tad slow but the action fight scene at the end is quite violent considering clearly no stunt men are used. Reid clearly throws a man up and over his head to the ground and the furniture is not breakaway.
As others have commented on, I was interested in seeing Wallace Reid because of his tragic end. I wanted to see what he was like before the tragedy of 1919. He is certainly good looking and the role might have been cliché and boring except for his understated but clever way of turning a cliché rich young guy into an interesting man who is no one's fool.
He smiles as the secondary villain tries to lure him into an obvious trap as if pitying the transparent ploy. He seems to almost be playing, toying, with the drunken husband when they fight over the gun during the robbery. Reid's performance is almost ironic, making the throwaway part quite interesting.
Seeing the film you do see what a tragedy that 1919 accident was which destroyed him. Reid had the looks and talent to have been a great star. Instead he was destroyed by the age of 31.
JEF
The Affairs of Anatol (1921)
visually dazzling and masterful
The other reviews provide a lot of information (I did not know Reid was so close to death in this film and that is tragic indeed) so I will just add that the film is visually dazzling with it's super saturated color tints and color cards. There are two brief scenes that appear to be early two strip Technicolor. I gather they are actually colored in some way but they look amazing nevertheless.
The shot of Fan Nightclub exterior and the interior scene when Reid dances with the flapper is glorious use of color and stage design. The Synne scenes (including leopard) are fun.
This is a fun film to have. The restoration of super saturated color and full color title cards is amazing and the music is very good. If anyone wants to see a silent film and be surprised they should check out this film! J E F
Man, Woman and Sin (1927)
title is misleading but film is good
I have just watched this twice and while the title is misleading, the film if actually good.
The film boasts moody dark photography and eerie light effects (especially in the ghost house) that is quite striking. When Eric Von S did it critics raved and this director does it better despite not being known by the critics. The director also does gritty slums scenes and newspaper scenes with gritty details you don't expect in 1920 movies from MGM. His script is honest too. The vamp is not really a vamp and the boss is not a bounder despite keeping the vamp as a mistress. There is no 'happy ending' tacked on. The boy and girl walk away and continue living their lives wiser if not more happy.
J Engels is a cult now because of her short life and tragic talent and she is good as the society writer determined to survive in an exploitative world. She is never melodramatic and the last sight of her peering out of a back window of her limo is striking. The woman is not good. She is not bad. She is just a surviver. The 1920s usually does not show that aspect of working women so that is unusual.
Gilbert did this film the same year as 'Show' which features him in an gaudy cad role of a sexy bounder. That makes this film interesting because Gilbert is trying to do the exact opposite of the Show: playing a naive 18 year old kid who falls head over heels in love with the first girl he dates after an aborted visit to a brothel he is too scared to consummate. Sure the kid is a sap and a 'mother's boy' but why did Gilbert try the role? Gilbert plays the kid very callow, naive, and unhand some (Gilbert is clean shaved and so very unhand some) and he is no catch. When he panics after killing the boss he runs away and hides in the ghost house. The moody light effects are very effective as he cowers in the shadows, his white handkerchief fluttering like a ghost. When his mother comes with the police in tow he cowers in her arms like a little boy. Not heroic but his fingers patting and stroking her sleeve are tiny touching details.
Gilbert plays the part of the kid very well (even if it is not a sexy, swaggering part) and it is to his credit he tries this part at all. He does not make the boy brave and ends the film only a little wiser and much sadder. You wonder what will happen to the mother's boy next. He does not seem promising. The movie offers no happy ending or promise of a future happy ending. So you are left to wonder.
The writer director based it on a book so he was limited. He should have made the prologue of the boy and girl from opposite sides of the tracks the same two grown ups seen later. That would have been more effective. But apparently the book does not say that even if the film would have been more effective if liberties had been taken.
Ignore the title and give the film a chance and be surprised. I think (despite the bad quality of the print and pasted on can music) you will like it.
J E F Rose
Desert Nights (1929)
surprising good outing
I just got this DVD and watched it with mixed feelings anticipating to see a declining star. I was surprised to find (despite the obviously missing reel) a star at his top in a gritty action drama.
Jack Gilbert is very good as the kidnapped manager of a diamond mine as he schemes and bluffs his way from being tied up and about to be killed to capturing his capturers. His Rand is a gritty, ruthless equal to a murderer and a dubious moll.
A key scene is when he is tied up and being threatened by the murderer. Gilbert laughs as he is threatened. What is interesting is his laugh. It is not an Errol Flynn laugh. Nor is it hysterical. Rather it is edged with black and nervy tension and is surprisingly scary. Gilbert's Rand is not a nice guy. He plays their game with equal viciousness and deceit.
Another scene occurs early on when the 'Lady Diana' mockingly aims a rifle at Rand. For a second his eyes go gritty. No proper English woman would or should aim even an unloaded rifle at someone. How does Gilbert do it? A split second look as his Rand registers that there is more to this pair than appearances say? The film is gritty and clearly entering Pre-Code in it's sweat, torn clothes, undone blouses, semi nudity, and ungallant threats by all three players toward each other. Everyone threatens everyone and the sexual tension between all three is very Pre-Code risqué. Rand kisses the moll in one scene ---by force and unwanted -- and teases her lover by entering her tent in the night in another scene --- and closing the tent flap! The title cards are gritty and it is interesting to speculate if Gilbert's wish for this to be his first talkie had happened. Would this have launched him into sound better? It is more modern and gritty and just might have saved him. As it was, it is an interesting and teasing addition to the mystery of John Gilbert and why he fell from superstar to failure in only six years.
J E F Rose
Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
Gilbert the Magnificent
I just watched this film and it is fantastic! Because Vidor and Gilbert took the ironic tongue in cheek route it comes across as modern. The visuals are fantastic. The action is great too. Gilbert radiates sexy appeal in the first part and he was certainly a star which is why no one sees beyond that. But I would like to point out a later scene...
Gilbert and the girl see a garden shrine and kneel and she promises eternal love and then turns to him as if to say 'your turn buddy!'. He grins (bet won) and starts to swear out a phony line only to realize he can't lie now. Suddenly he realizes he is a cad, a total lying cad. A fake. A terrible man instead of the 'Magnificent' image he always saw himself as being.
Gilbert turns his head away and kneels in total silence and stillness as shame takes over. She goes balistic. He kneels in still and withdrawn shame and the realization what sort of man he really is. She storms away. He still kneels in quiet and now shattering shame, not moving, very quiet. This is good acting.
Gilbert was not just a pretty face of a stupid guy. Gilbert was a film actor who took his job seriously and loved films and believed in films at a time few did. He played characters rather than played his 'star lover persona' and he played cads, bad guys, funny guys, good guys, weak guys, and even implied bisexuals. He did the role. He did not do 'movie star'.
I wish people would rediscover his real talents and see all his films in context to see he did few 'lover boy' films (and this clearly makes the title great lover a inside joke!). Instead Gilbert tried to act in many roles and expand his roles to be taken seriously. Alas he is today remembered as a joke when he was tragically, anything but.
I am glad this film was discovered and restored and put on DVD and I wish his other films would also be put on DVD so the world can rediscover Jack Gilbert. I also recommend the bio Dark Star by his daughter which shows the real man behind the cheap jokes.
J E F
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
flesh and the devil
I still remember one scene from my college days of Gilbert coming back and discovering his best friend (homosexual lover?) has married Garbo. Gilbert's face is first transformed by joy, passion, then surprise, shock, contempt, concern for his unstable and naive friend, and finally cold irony --- all in the space of less than two minutes and this is not over acting !!!! But rather the best film acting. Twenty years later I watched this film again and am impressed anew how good Gilbert is.
Garbo's mystique aside, Gilbert delivers a great acting performance here. Didn't anyone notice this scene? Tell me one modern actor who could have done this scene? Gilbert's work is I think underrated because of Garbo's later reputation and his tragic destruction courtesy of Mayer. But his acting in films from early Fox to later MGM films all show he took acting seriously, took his characters seriously, hated his 'great lover' title, and wanted to be a good actor. And I think he was a good actor too. He usually underacted. He was not a 'ham'. People should watch him work here instead of just looking at Garbo or writing him off as a 'pretty face'.
In Dark Star (bio by his daughter) we are told Noel Coward made a homosexual pass at Gilbert and Gilbert just laughed and give him a whiskey. I can't believe Gilbert was stupid, being a writer himself, not to read between the lines and understand the implied homosexual undercurrent. The other male actor was clearly playing Urich as homosexual. So I think we can assume the 3 leads understood the implied theme and had fun with it. This is Pre Code before Pre Code.