Linda (1929)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/9/2019

Linda was our eighth film from 1929, and our first silent after three straight talkies or partial talkies. It stars Helen Foster, whom we saw in 1928's Road to Ruin, and is directed by Dorothy Davenport, or "Mrs. Wallace Reid" as she is billed, who -- along with Dorothy Arzner from last week -- was one of the very few prominent woman directors of the time. She was the widow of Wallace Reid, whom we saw in 1915's Carmen and 1919's Hawthorne of the U.S.A., and who had died in 1923 as a result of a drug addiction.

Foster plays Linda, a girl from a poverty-stricken family, living in the mountains. Bess Flowers plays a visiting teacher who sees promise in Foster, and tries to convince her to expand her horizons. At the same time, her father, played by Mitchell Lewis, tries to marry her off to the local mill boss, played by Noah Beery -- the older brother of Wallace Beery (whom we've seen several times) and the father of Noah Beery Jr., known for playing James Garner's father on Rockford Files. Linda, however, is more interested in a doctor played by Warner Baxter.

Various plot developments ensue -- nothing very surprising, excepting maybe the final scene. The film seems old-fashioned for 1929, and could have been made a decade earlier with only minor modifications. It is a bit condescending to its rural characters and their lack of sophistication. The title cards, for instance, attempt to capture the dialect of the area, a device which ends up being distracting and unnecessary. However the film is not cynical; if anything it is overly earnest. It also has a certain humane spirit running through it; with the exception of Linda's father (who is portrayed as a violent alcoholic), and one other minor character, everyone is portrayed as reasonably good-hearted, or at least redeemable. The film is warm-spirited without completely shying away from some harsh realities, even if in the end it was not sharp or stylish enough for my tastes.

Our next film is A Throw of Dice, our ninth and last film from 1929, and our first Indian film. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

The Road to Ruin (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 10/7/2018

The Road to Ruin was our eleventh film from 1928. This film stars Helen Foster as a high-schooler who makes the mistake of smoking cigarettes and seeing boys, which, as the title suggests, inevitably leads to cataclysmic disaster -- and in rather short order too, as this film is only sixty minutes long. Despite the fact that it has a respectable rating on IMDB, and was apparently a box-office hit, this is perhaps the worst feature film that we've seen as part of this project. It reminded me of sub-par after-school specials, warning against various arguably risky behaviors, but in a risibly alarmist and hysterical tone -- and transparently taking perverse pleasure at showing the consequences. We have seen many films with misguided or wrongheaded moralistic authorial viewpoints -- most of the Griffith films we've seen, for instance -- but never with the kind of clunky writing and lack of dramatic structure on display in this film. It has rather poor production values as well, though some of that may have been the fault of the print, which was not in terribly good shape.

One of the reasons that I'd originally decided to add this film to the project was that IMDB had listed it as being directed by Dorothy Davenport, the widow of Wallace Reid (whom we'd seen in Carmen and Hawthorne of the U.S.A.) However it appears that she directed the sound remake in 1934 (also starring Helen Foster), while this film was directed by Norton S. Parker. This led to my first successful IMDB correction, so I suppose the viewing wasn't a total loss.

Next week we'll watch The Mysterious Lady, our twelfth film from from 1928, and the second starring Greta Garbo. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT