Vidor's is an architectural cinema with none of Lang's determinism or Antonioni's decadence.
--Andrew Sarris
The Crowd is an antidote to the absurdity of "the American dream," a dubious. and undefined term that should be put in the dustbin. Money, a car, a house -- is that the "dream?" To me life is a delight if one has people whom you love and who love you, and culture you enjoy: to enjoy the laughter of your children and the warmth of one's spouse, to read the novels of Nabokov and Trollope, savor the elegant complexity of the paintings of Van Eyck and Poussin, weep with the beauty of Balanchine's ballets and Mozart's music. And these things do not require great wealth or power. It is pathetic indeed that some governors now don't want to keep state tuition low for French literature majors, only for those who study engineering! We even have Presidential candidates saying we need more plumbers and fewer philosophers!
The Crowd is about a family's struggle to make it in New York, to stand out from the crowd, mainly by making more money. Vidor's style here is very influenced not only by D.W. Griffith (Vidor's directing started only a few years after Griffith made his first films) but also by the expressionism of German directors such as F.W. Murnau. From the time John Sims's father dies to Sims's job in New York to the final scene in a vaudeville theatre, Sims is overwhelmed by the crowds and architecture of the city. A trip to Coney Island when he courts his wife and a train trip to Niagra Falls for his honeymoon are more ordeal than pleasure; only when they have a picnic in nature are they able to relax and enjoy themselves, before returning to their tiny apartment and Murphy bed. Sims is trying to make it big by writing advertising slogans in his spare time, but even when he wins $500 it leads to the death of his daughter playing on the street and his own serious drinking problem. He is finally redeemed by landing a low-paying job and by the love of his son and his wife.
The Crowd is silent filmmaking at its peak, just before sound took over. The camera moves fluently through the traffic and crowds of New York, where no one stands out and no one can stop to share your grief, where the people and buildings can overwhelm you if you let them.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Turrner Classic Movies March 2016
On March 1 we have Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, 1941 (about which I have learned a great deal reading about Orson Welles recently; see my recent post about Young Orson by Patrick McGilligan) and Hitchcock's Lifeboat, 1944, which takes place entirely in a lifeboat, an intelligent and neat piece of problem-solving.
March 2: Minnelli's Lust for Life, with its wonderful use of widescreen and color.
March 3: Stephen Roberts's The Story of Temple Drake (from the Faulkner novel Sanctuary; does anyone read Faulkner these days?), Michael Powell's eye-popping Black Narcissus, 1947, and Lubitsch's Design for Living, 1933, Noel Coward by way of Ben Hecht.
March 6 is Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953, with choreography by Jack Cole, and Ingmar Bergman's Lesson in Love, 1954,described by Robin Wood as being "notable among Bergman's work for its freedom and spontaneity of invention."
March 10 is Nicholas Ray's Wind Across the Everglades, 1958, and the return of Joseph Losey's M 1951.
March 13 has Lubitsch's elegant musical, The Smiling Lieutenant, 1931, and two more by Ingmar Bergman, Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953, and The Devil's Eye, 1960.
March 14 has John Huston's indispensable The Asphalt Jungle, 1953.
March 15 is Frank Tashlin's lovely piece of Pop Art, Artists and Models, 1955.
March 16 is Chaplin's Great Dictator, 1940 and on the 17th is Billy Wilder's corrosively funny Kiss Me, Stupid from 1964. Fritz Lang's fatalistic period piece, Moonfleet, 1955 is on the 18th and John Ford's Western ,Fort Apache, 1948, is being shown on the 19th.
Bresson's intensely minimalist A Man Escaped, 1956, is on the 19th and Orson Welles's ambivalent return to America, Touch of Evil, is the 20th.
On March 22 is Hitchcock's vigorously Roman Catholic I Confess, 1953, and Wilder's bleakly funny The Apartment, 1960.
On the 26th are Buster Keaton's brilliantly funny The General, 1926, and John Ford's classic Western, Stagecoach, 1939.
On the 28th is Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, 1945, on the 29th is Robert Rossen's Lilith, 1964, with an interesting discussion of Dostoevsky in a mental institution, and the 30th has Samuel Fuller's marvelously pulpy Shock Corridor, 1963, with a journalist undercover in an insane asylum.
March 2: Minnelli's Lust for Life, with its wonderful use of widescreen and color.
March 3: Stephen Roberts's The Story of Temple Drake (from the Faulkner novel Sanctuary; does anyone read Faulkner these days?), Michael Powell's eye-popping Black Narcissus, 1947, and Lubitsch's Design for Living, 1933, Noel Coward by way of Ben Hecht.
March 6 is Howard Hawks's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953, with choreography by Jack Cole, and Ingmar Bergman's Lesson in Love, 1954,described by Robin Wood as being "notable among Bergman's work for its freedom and spontaneity of invention."
March 10 is Nicholas Ray's Wind Across the Everglades, 1958, and the return of Joseph Losey's M 1951.
March 13 has Lubitsch's elegant musical, The Smiling Lieutenant, 1931, and two more by Ingmar Bergman, Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953, and The Devil's Eye, 1960.
March 14 has John Huston's indispensable The Asphalt Jungle, 1953.
March 15 is Frank Tashlin's lovely piece of Pop Art, Artists and Models, 1955.
March 16 is Chaplin's Great Dictator, 1940 and on the 17th is Billy Wilder's corrosively funny Kiss Me, Stupid from 1964. Fritz Lang's fatalistic period piece, Moonfleet, 1955 is on the 18th and John Ford's Western ,Fort Apache, 1948, is being shown on the 19th.
Bresson's intensely minimalist A Man Escaped, 1956, is on the 19th and Orson Welles's ambivalent return to America, Touch of Evil, is the 20th.
On March 22 is Hitchcock's vigorously Roman Catholic I Confess, 1953, and Wilder's bleakly funny The Apartment, 1960.
On the 26th are Buster Keaton's brilliantly funny The General, 1926, and John Ford's classic Western, Stagecoach, 1939.
On the 28th is Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, 1945, on the 29th is Robert Rossen's Lilith, 1964, with an interesting discussion of Dostoevsky in a mental institution, and the 30th has Samuel Fuller's marvelously pulpy Shock Corridor, 1963, with a journalist undercover in an insane asylum.
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Sherlock Holmes
As I stood mesmerized by the lacy green motion, the rich odour of earth, the endless sussuration of the flat leaves brushing the sky, it came to me that this country embodied the Chinese doctrine of paradox: the apparently weak prevails over the overtly strong; soft and yielding will always overcome hard and rigid.
--Laurie R. King, Dreaming Spies (Bantam Books, 2015)
Sentences that include "skein" or "sussuration" ... --they're literary.
--James Parker, The New York Times Book Review, Feb. 21 2015
Laurie King's Dreaming Spies is a book about Sherlock Holmes and his wife Mary Russell, who first met in The Beekeeper's Apprentice in 1994 and have now appeared in thirteen books. At the beginning of the series King's Holmes was not much different from Doyle's, except perhaps that he was more interested in women after he retired. The first books in the series were interesting and appealing, as Holmes and Russell gradually fell in love and Holmes used her scholarly assistance in solving crimes, but gradually Holmes assumed less and less importance and in some later books in the series barely made a token appearance. Dreaming Spies takes place in 1925 (before some of the earlier books in the series), mostly on a passenger ship going from India to Japan, Bombay to Kobe. There is some marvelous stuff about the interactions of the people on the ship and much detail about traveling through Japan and taking the baths along the way. But when the detecting begins, with an attempt to recover a book that contains some kind of secret plan or treaty, it becomes unconvincing and formulaic, with plenty of clichés about the differences between West and East and little ratiocination from Holmes. King, at least so far, has largely failed to show how marriage and semi-retirement have changed Holmes from the character in Doyle.
I also recently watched Bill Condon's Mr. Holmes, a movie in which Holmes, in 1947, lives with a housekeeper and her son and is trying to recover the memory of his last case, even at one point going to find prickly ash, to aid his memory, in the destroyed Hiroshima of Japan, a country that has changed much from 1925. He gradually recovers his memory, about a woman who wanted to live with him and committed suicide when he failed to respond to her broad hints. The movie reminded me of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), in which a detective fell in love with the woman he was following, and especially, Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), in which Holmes made the mistake of falling in love and being betrayed by the woman. Condon, who also made Gods and Monsters (1998) about director James Whale growing old, does a beautifully low-key job of showing Holmes's love of beauty and the country after years of grimy London. The irony of course is that nature provides its own share of violence.
Max Schmid, on The Golden Age of Radio (WBAI, 99.5, Sundays 7 PM to 9) has been playing the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas, in which Holmes was played by Basil Rathbone and Watson by Nigel Bruce, from 1939 to 1946. On January 21st of this year he played Murder at the Big Top from Feb. 4, 1946, written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher (for many years a reviewer of mystery fiction for The New York Times). Perhaps because this episode was near the end of the series the mystery was not that mysterious. But Boucher and Green effectively conjured up the circus as Watson had remembered it (the stories were usually told by Bruce as Watson to Harry Bartell, representing the sponsor, Petri Wine) and Holmes was very much in the Doyle tradition, solving something of a locked room mystery with ratiocination. To many people Rathbone is the radio and movie incarnation of Holmes (he and Bruce made 16 films during the time the radio show was running).
I have to admit that I do not care for the recent television versions of Sherlock Holmes but I do understand why some find them appealing: in an age full of religious excess Holmes represents the triumph of reason and logic. But Holmes's personality seems to me too deeply imbedded in Victorian and Edwardian England to survive an update to the 21st Century.
--Laurie R. King, Dreaming Spies (Bantam Books, 2015)
Sentences that include "skein" or "sussuration" ... --they're literary.
--James Parker, The New York Times Book Review, Feb. 21 2015
Laurie King's Dreaming Spies is a book about Sherlock Holmes and his wife Mary Russell, who first met in The Beekeeper's Apprentice in 1994 and have now appeared in thirteen books. At the beginning of the series King's Holmes was not much different from Doyle's, except perhaps that he was more interested in women after he retired. The first books in the series were interesting and appealing, as Holmes and Russell gradually fell in love and Holmes used her scholarly assistance in solving crimes, but gradually Holmes assumed less and less importance and in some later books in the series barely made a token appearance. Dreaming Spies takes place in 1925 (before some of the earlier books in the series), mostly on a passenger ship going from India to Japan, Bombay to Kobe. There is some marvelous stuff about the interactions of the people on the ship and much detail about traveling through Japan and taking the baths along the way. But when the detecting begins, with an attempt to recover a book that contains some kind of secret plan or treaty, it becomes unconvincing and formulaic, with plenty of clichés about the differences between West and East and little ratiocination from Holmes. King, at least so far, has largely failed to show how marriage and semi-retirement have changed Holmes from the character in Doyle.
I also recently watched Bill Condon's Mr. Holmes, a movie in which Holmes, in 1947, lives with a housekeeper and her son and is trying to recover the memory of his last case, even at one point going to find prickly ash, to aid his memory, in the destroyed Hiroshima of Japan, a country that has changed much from 1925. He gradually recovers his memory, about a woman who wanted to live with him and committed suicide when he failed to respond to her broad hints. The movie reminded me of Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), in which a detective fell in love with the woman he was following, and especially, Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), in which Holmes made the mistake of falling in love and being betrayed by the woman. Condon, who also made Gods and Monsters (1998) about director James Whale growing old, does a beautifully low-key job of showing Holmes's love of beauty and the country after years of grimy London. The irony of course is that nature provides its own share of violence.
Max Schmid, on The Golden Age of Radio (WBAI, 99.5, Sundays 7 PM to 9) has been playing the Sherlock Holmes radio dramas, in which Holmes was played by Basil Rathbone and Watson by Nigel Bruce, from 1939 to 1946. On January 21st of this year he played Murder at the Big Top from Feb. 4, 1946, written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher (for many years a reviewer of mystery fiction for The New York Times). Perhaps because this episode was near the end of the series the mystery was not that mysterious. But Boucher and Green effectively conjured up the circus as Watson had remembered it (the stories were usually told by Bruce as Watson to Harry Bartell, representing the sponsor, Petri Wine) and Holmes was very much in the Doyle tradition, solving something of a locked room mystery with ratiocination. To many people Rathbone is the radio and movie incarnation of Holmes (he and Bruce made 16 films during the time the radio show was running).
I have to admit that I do not care for the recent television versions of Sherlock Holmes but I do understand why some find them appealing: in an age full of religious excess Holmes represents the triumph of reason and logic. But Holmes's personality seems to me too deeply imbedded in Victorian and Edwardian England to survive an update to the 21st Century.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Young Orson, by Patrick McGilligan (Harper, 2015)
Young Orson is subtitled The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and is the story of Orson Welles's life from birth through the making of Citizen Kane in 1940, when Welles was twenty-five. As I have previously said, I read biographies to learn how some people, with all their neuroses and problems, can accomplish so much. As McGilligan says, one answer is a combination of luck and genius. But McGilligan's book also demonstrates quite clearly that Welles had the help of many sympathetic people, from his parents (his mother died when he was nine, his father when Orson was fifteen) to his guardian Dr. Maurice Bernstein; his headmaster at the Todd School for Boys, Roger Hill; his stage producer John Houseman and many of the actors and actresses he brought into the Mercury Theatre. When it came time to make his first film he had the unstinting support of George Schafer, head of RKO, and the artists Perry Ferguson (art direction), Gregg Toland (cinematography), Bernard Herrmann (music), Robert Wise (editor), Vernon Walker and Linwood Dunn (special effects), Maurice Seiderman (makeup) and, of course, Herman Mankiewicz to help with the screenplay.
I wrote when I started this blog how important Citizen Kane was to me when I saw it at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968; it had the incredible impact of causing me to realize, almost instantaneously, how great movies could be. I strongly disagree with Chaplin that the film did not have enough "human emotion" in it; it dazzles on many technical levels but it also moves one with its stories of love and loss. McGilligan makes quite clear that this film did not come out of nowhere, it was extensively prepared for by Welles's ground-breaking theatre experiments and radio work. I know McGilligan could not see the plays, obviously, but it is not clear how much of the radio work he actually listened to. Most of Welles's radio work -- everything from Moby Dick to King Lear --is available (I use https://www.otrcat.com but there are numerous other sources and various formats).
There's been much written about Welles, and McGilligan did extensive research, with the help of other Welles scholars -- especially Joseph McBride -- to separate truth from fiction, not an easy job, since Welles himself often gave contradictory accounts of his early life.
I wrote when I started this blog how important Citizen Kane was to me when I saw it at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968; it had the incredible impact of causing me to realize, almost instantaneously, how great movies could be. I strongly disagree with Chaplin that the film did not have enough "human emotion" in it; it dazzles on many technical levels but it also moves one with its stories of love and loss. McGilligan makes quite clear that this film did not come out of nowhere, it was extensively prepared for by Welles's ground-breaking theatre experiments and radio work. I know McGilligan could not see the plays, obviously, but it is not clear how much of the radio work he actually listened to. Most of Welles's radio work -- everything from Moby Dick to King Lear --is available (I use https://www.otrcat.com but there are numerous other sources and various formats).
There's been much written about Welles, and McGilligan did extensive research, with the help of other Welles scholars -- especially Joseph McBride -- to separate truth from fiction, not an easy job, since Welles himself often gave contradictory accounts of his early life.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Nelson George's A Ballerina's Tale
A Ballerina's Tale is a sympathetic filmed portrait of Misty Copeland, the first African-American principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre. It's a little unclear to me why this is such a big deal, since even Copeland says "I'm an artist; I am a dancer." Certainly she struggled to succeed in classical ballet, growing up in a broken home in San Pedro, California, overcoming everything from poverty to an a leg injury during her first major role. But has everyone forgotten about The Dance Theatre of Harlem, Arthur Mitchell's company that clearly demonstrated that black dancers can dance classical ballet as well as anyone? True, Dance Theatre of Harlem has only just begun to tour again, after close to ten years of financial problems.
And why is it necessary to bash George Balanchine while celebrating Copeland? The idea that Balanchine only wanted flat-chested pinheads for dancers has been promoted, by among others, Gelsey Kirkland, and has been debunked numerous times. Among the many "curvy" ballerinas promoted to principal are Karin von Aroldingen, Patricia McBride, Suzanne Farrell, and Native American Maria Tallchief. One of the reasons for the effectively individual qualities of Balanchine's ballets is the variety of dancers with whom he worked. It is true that no African-American woman has yet been principal at the NYC Ballet but Balanchine did promote male dancers Arthur Mitchell and Mel Tomlinson and Albert Evans became a principal after Balanchine's death.
Copeland should be celebrated first as a dancer and, somewhat unfortunately, Nelson George is more interested in celebrating her as a successful African-American woman. To see how good a dancer she is I will have to see her perform by overcoming my general distaste for the mostly tedious American Ballet Theatre repertory.
And why is it necessary to bash George Balanchine while celebrating Copeland? The idea that Balanchine only wanted flat-chested pinheads for dancers has been promoted, by among others, Gelsey Kirkland, and has been debunked numerous times. Among the many "curvy" ballerinas promoted to principal are Karin von Aroldingen, Patricia McBride, Suzanne Farrell, and Native American Maria Tallchief. One of the reasons for the effectively individual qualities of Balanchine's ballets is the variety of dancers with whom he worked. It is true that no African-American woman has yet been principal at the NYC Ballet but Balanchine did promote male dancers Arthur Mitchell and Mel Tomlinson and Albert Evans became a principal after Balanchine's death.
Copeland should be celebrated first as a dancer and, somewhat unfortunately, Nelson George is more interested in celebrating her as a successful African-American woman. To see how good a dancer she is I will have to see her perform by overcoming my general distaste for the mostly tedious American Ballet Theatre repertory.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
The Little Orchestra Society's Gershwin! Got Rhythm?
I wrote about LOS on Dec. 7th and this Sunday, Feb. 7, we took our four-year-old to see their Gershwin show; our daughter's dolls were dancing throughout the performance. I particularly liked that they included Gershwin in this series, breaking down some people's preconceived ideas of what "classical" music is. This performance included selections of many different Gershwin works, from Porgy and Bess to Walking the Dog, a delightful instrumental from the movie Shall We Dance (1937) played while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were walking their dogs on a ship from Europe to America, and Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, from the same film.
Of course the music reminded me of Balanchine's wonderful ballet to Gershwin music, Who Cares, and this performance included some excellent tap and jazz dancing by Samantha Gardner, Avery Royal and Jessica Wu, with choreography by Steven Cardona. There was also some marvelous piano playing --especially in Rhapsody in Blue -- by William Wolfram and some sultry singing by Jennifer Fouche.
Once again LOS kept the hokiness to a minimum -- the set was a supper club -- and added some interesting didactic elements, including a short video of the workers at a piano factory putting the pianos together.
Of course the music reminded me of Balanchine's wonderful ballet to Gershwin music, Who Cares, and this performance included some excellent tap and jazz dancing by Samantha Gardner, Avery Royal and Jessica Wu, with choreography by Steven Cardona. There was also some marvelous piano playing --especially in Rhapsody in Blue -- by William Wolfram and some sultry singing by Jennifer Fouche.
Once again LOS kept the hokiness to a minimum -- the set was a supper club -- and added some interesting didactic elements, including a short video of the workers at a piano factory putting the pianos together.
Friday, February 5, 2016
Robert Florey's Bedside, 1934, Another Film with Jean Muir
Robert Florey is a director little known today, mostly because his career was largely in B-pictures, films for the bottom half of double bills when audiences expected two films (and, usually, a cartoon and a short subject). Florey made movies until 1950, when he turned to TV. I have seen only a few of his many films but Bedside and The Face Behind the Mask (1941) are excellent B movies, each intense examinations of the dark side of the American dream, each running a little more than an hour.
Bedside starts with a shot of a man's hand on a woman's shapely leg. The man is an x-ray technician in a doctor's office and he is played by the always-sleazy Warren William. Jean Muir is a nurse in the same office who convinces William to finish his one remaining year of medical school; William accepts her loan to do so. When instead he spends the money on booze and gambling he gets a job as an orderly in a hospital where he is the only one around when a man desperate for morphine comes in looking for a fix. Williams provides it in exchange for the man's medical license and sets up as a doctor, hiring another doctor to do the actual work while William chases the female patients. Jean Muir is in love with him and becomes a nurse in his office, turning a blind eye to his womanizing and drinking until he starts romancing an opera star, a romance that his publicity man promotes in order to attract more business.
Florey's direction is swift and efficient, with low camera angles emphasizing the position of the patients in the bed, perhaps even in the grave. The film highlights how power and money can be used in pursuit of success and how publicity can be used to promote the unqualified. Florey suggests how easy it is for one in a position of power -- such as a doctor -- to abuse that power.
Bedside starts with a shot of a man's hand on a woman's shapely leg. The man is an x-ray technician in a doctor's office and he is played by the always-sleazy Warren William. Jean Muir is a nurse in the same office who convinces William to finish his one remaining year of medical school; William accepts her loan to do so. When instead he spends the money on booze and gambling he gets a job as an orderly in a hospital where he is the only one around when a man desperate for morphine comes in looking for a fix. Williams provides it in exchange for the man's medical license and sets up as a doctor, hiring another doctor to do the actual work while William chases the female patients. Jean Muir is in love with him and becomes a nurse in his office, turning a blind eye to his womanizing and drinking until he starts romancing an opera star, a romance that his publicity man promotes in order to attract more business.
Florey's direction is swift and efficient, with low camera angles emphasizing the position of the patients in the bed, perhaps even in the grave. The film highlights how power and money can be used in pursuit of success and how publicity can be used to promote the unqualified. Florey suggests how easy it is for one in a position of power -- such as a doctor -- to abuse that power.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Jean Muir: Two Films
Turner Classic Movies recently showed two movies with Jean Muir, a largely-forgotten actress of the 30's who was blacklisted in the 50's. Though both these roles could be called supporting roles they were significant in these two Warner Brothers films, both made in 1934 and each running slightly more than 70 minutes.
G.W. Pabst's A Modern Hero stars Richard Barthelmess, a silent-film star for D.W. Griffith (Way Down East, 1920) who struggled in the sound era. This is the one American film that Pabst made. He had success with American actress Louise Brooks in the silent period in Germany (Pandora's Box, 1929) and after he made A Modern Hero he returned to Germany, staying there during the war under murky circumstances (he went there for his father's funeral and, he said, was not allowed to leave). In any case, A Modern Hero is a gem, something of a diamond in the rough of Pabst's career. Barthelmess plays the ironic "hero" who uses wealthy widows to finance his career, from making bicycles to making motorcars in the early part of the 20th C. He came to America originally as a circus performer with his mother, who lost an arm to a leopard in her animal act after being deserted by her wealthy lover. Jean Muir plays the mother of Barthelmess's out-of-wedlock son whom he rediscovers later in life. Muir continues to reject Barthelmess and their son dies in an accident, driving a car his father gave him. In a dark scene indeed the son' s coffin arrives on a train in a rainstorm and Muir won't even talk to Barthelmess. In an expressionistic film full of ironies Barthelmess eventually loses all his money and returns home to his alcoholic mother, played intensely by Marjorie Rambeau.
If there are those who think movies of the 30's are not relevant today, they should see Alfred E. Green's Gentlemen are Born, another ironic title, about four college graduates struggling to find jobs in the Depression. Green was a workmanlike director for Warner Brothers who was occasionally inspired by his material, as he was here. Jean Muir plays a supportive wife who helps her unemployed husband through hard times, as the college graduates come to believe, as the banking father of one of them says, "one can't figure it any way but in dollars and cents," an attitude still common among many college graduates. The banking father jumps out a window and one of the four graduates is killed when the owner of a pawnshop thinks he is being robbed. The remaining college graduates continue to struggle, eventually realizing the important thing is to never give up. Jean Muir and her husband have a baby and look towards the future, while the banker's daughter marries someone whom her mother thought was out of her class. Everyone continues to struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table.
G.W. Pabst's A Modern Hero stars Richard Barthelmess, a silent-film star for D.W. Griffith (Way Down East, 1920) who struggled in the sound era. This is the one American film that Pabst made. He had success with American actress Louise Brooks in the silent period in Germany (Pandora's Box, 1929) and after he made A Modern Hero he returned to Germany, staying there during the war under murky circumstances (he went there for his father's funeral and, he said, was not allowed to leave). In any case, A Modern Hero is a gem, something of a diamond in the rough of Pabst's career. Barthelmess plays the ironic "hero" who uses wealthy widows to finance his career, from making bicycles to making motorcars in the early part of the 20th C. He came to America originally as a circus performer with his mother, who lost an arm to a leopard in her animal act after being deserted by her wealthy lover. Jean Muir plays the mother of Barthelmess's out-of-wedlock son whom he rediscovers later in life. Muir continues to reject Barthelmess and their son dies in an accident, driving a car his father gave him. In a dark scene indeed the son' s coffin arrives on a train in a rainstorm and Muir won't even talk to Barthelmess. In an expressionistic film full of ironies Barthelmess eventually loses all his money and returns home to his alcoholic mother, played intensely by Marjorie Rambeau.
If there are those who think movies of the 30's are not relevant today, they should see Alfred E. Green's Gentlemen are Born, another ironic title, about four college graduates struggling to find jobs in the Depression. Green was a workmanlike director for Warner Brothers who was occasionally inspired by his material, as he was here. Jean Muir plays a supportive wife who helps her unemployed husband through hard times, as the college graduates come to believe, as the banking father of one of them says, "one can't figure it any way but in dollars and cents," an attitude still common among many college graduates. The banking father jumps out a window and one of the four graduates is killed when the owner of a pawnshop thinks he is being robbed. The remaining college graduates continue to struggle, eventually realizing the important thing is to never give up. Jean Muir and her husband have a baby and look towards the future, while the banker's daughter marries someone whom her mother thought was out of her class. Everyone continues to struggle to pay the rent and put food on the table.
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