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
Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...
- 8/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
A favorite subject at MGM in the thirties was the "three girls in the big city" sub-genre, which as an approach to questions of sexual morality and wish fulfillment has proved a long-lived one, revived in the Jean Negulescu Cinemascope romp which gives this article its title, and in a certain TV series which has spawned a couple of feature films but which I will not sully this sweet ocean breeze by uttering the name of.
Beauty for Sale (1933) follows on the heels of popular MGM affairs like Our Dancing Daughters and its quasi-sequels, and like most of those films it presents a trio of characters, one more or less virtuous, one tempted to sin and punished somewhat, and one entirely destroyed. It's based on a novel by one woman (Faith Baldwin, a much-adapted specialist in urban romances), and is written by two others (Eve Green & Zelda Sears), and casts...
Beauty for Sale (1933) follows on the heels of popular MGM affairs like Our Dancing Daughters and its quasi-sequels, and like most of those films it presents a trio of characters, one more or less virtuous, one tempted to sin and punished somewhat, and one entirely destroyed. It's based on a novel by one woman (Faith Baldwin, a much-adapted specialist in urban romances), and is written by two others (Eve Green & Zelda Sears), and casts...
- 5/30/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
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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