Edisone

Taylor was entirely too old (27) and WAY too "meaty" to play a star athlete in this film. His fat legs show to disadvantage, and the scenes of him outpacing the track team are absurd. Thers is no possibility of someone of his weight beating the skinny competition shown in this film.

If the character had shown some spark of humility & a desire to learn better, this would have been a much more enjoyable story. Think of Harold Lloyd in "The Freshman", where his character wants to succeed by his own efforts, and learns early-on that he can't fake it. Heart warming was that, while this is just a demonstration of a notion of Yankee Superiority and how 'We Americans' can overcome the 'Snooty Englishers'. Spare us.

Taylor's character ultimately fails to win our hearts with sincerity; his "nerve" is all he has, and while that's enough to turn the story to his favor, it really isn't sufficient to make us believe he's a good egg after all.

Of course, all of this is tainted by Hollywood's habit of using 25-30-35 year olds in the roles of college students (and even 40 year olds, in the case of The Nutty Professor of Jerry Lewis - several of his supposed Football Heroes were OLDER than he was, at the time of filming)

Wow, this must be the most elaborate one-reeler I've yet seen! Singing, dancing, a full and excellent orchestral score, cowboys, Injuns, a chase scene, operetta-style 19th Century kingdom ... hmm, what did I leave out? Oh, kidnapping, rescue, swing music, Cliff Edwards waving the flag & singing about the Good Ol' American Way ... hahaha . Beautiful color, virtually every costume in Warner Bros closet... now there are Injuns doing a square dance with the King of Whositland... while Cliff "scats" .... I didn't really write a "spoiler", but just know that the whole 15 minutes is a surprise. Great stuff, this is, but almost any movie at the matinée might seem a letdown, after this bright, cheerful, breathlessly silly spectacle. Look for it on Turner, although Turner never lists shorts in its schedule.

This movie is great, mind you - but only in the way it tells a very BAD story. Stella is so terribly crude, and never learns better. Her husband is incredibly snobby and small-minded. Neither ever learns better. Is this realistic? Somehow, Stella understands that her daughter is ashamed of her gaudy manners & dress, yet cannot understand that she just needs to tone it all down? I don't think so. Stella is a GOOD woman, and a VERY GOOD mother. Giving up herself, so her daughter can be associated with a bunch of bigoted snobs is disgusting.

Much of what we see might have been normal for the times - people having a beer or two, enjoying a player piano, dancing - but it is made out to be some sort of moral inferiority. "I can't have our child living this way!" Spare me.

This story tells me one thing: that the Unwashed Working Class cannot ever hope to aspire to the heights of the Upper Classes. And that is simply a load of hogwash.

This is a most excellent drama, set in San Francisco from 1904 to 1908, with the great earthquake of 1906 at its center. While the business failure of Flynn's character is a little unrealistic, both he and Bette Davis play sympathetic characters; they made me feel the disappointment of people who expect a lot out of Life and then suffer through its hardships.

The scenes of the earthquake are terrific - don't miss the seemingly ENDLESS shaking and destruction of Bette's rented room, as her neighbor comes screaming into the room looking for comfort, and the indoors gives way to the OUTDOORS! Very nice effects for 1938, 60+ years before computer imaging! That part of the story seems all the more poignant to me, now that we know the death figures were faked - at least 10 times as many died as the officials admitted.

I won't give away the ending, but it was satisfying and made me glad to have seen the film. Do catch it on Turner, which runs it a couple times per year.

Creaky, but worth seeing just to see ANYTHING with sound from 1926. The quality of the recording is not bad, actually - the orchestra sounds good, with nice effects from the drummer. However, the microphone was too far away from the singers, even from Anna Case; she needed to be another 10 feet closer! I think the reason for the poor camera work is that the camera was encased in a big, sound-proof booth with a window; there just wasn't much room to pan the lens.

I would never have guessed that Rita Hayworth, then 8 years old, was in this; the girl in the dance routine looks much older. Nice footwork, anyway. Love the Vaseline-haired guy (oh, brother. he-he) Anna Case's makeup was truly ghoulish - I suspect it was done by someone with very little or no experience in movies. Still, this film is good to see for the history value. Once.

The story isn't much, but Buster packs every scene with so many gags that you don't mind. It's easy to see why he was so successful, until MGM stuck him with stories that were totally unsuitable.

The original score is fantastic, here - it includes a great deal of popular music and makes commentary on the situations, but the meaning will be lost on most modern viewers (I collect records from that period, so I recognize most all of it); even so, it moves the action right along and gives us a rare chance to experience a silent film just as it was presented to contemporary audiences. No cheesy piano accompaniment, here! The sound effects are well done, and used sparingly.

The shipboard scenes could have been trimmed a bit; they seem to drag. Otherwise, time flies during this movie - you won't regret watching it! Just compare it with the average sound 'comedy' which Hollywood produced until 1932 or so, and you'll realize how they lost the art of making good films for a while. It's a crime that Keaton wasn't given the chance to produce his own talkies, because he might have changed the whole concept of what made a good SOUND comedy! It's a wonder that audiences didn't rebel against the boring, static, yawnful talk-fests that early sound comedies became; maybe the novelty of Talkies really WAS enough to bring them into the theaters.

I'd haven given this a 10, except for the draggy ship scenes - but the ending is satisfyingly Keatonesque!