Tweet CINEFEST review

Yup, it rocked!

Yup, it rocked!

Thanks for sharing the details.


Jim

Yup, it rocked!

Thanks for sharing the details.


Jim

You're welcome. I will write something detailed later, but I got in last night and immediately went out to see a friend and didn't get back home til after midnight, then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch.

Yup, it rocked!

Thanks for sharing the details.


Jim

You're welcome. I will write something detailed later, but I got in last night and immediately went out to see a friend and didn't get back home til after midnight, then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch.

Slacker.

Slacker.

For that you get nothing. I won't even write about the Clara Bow clips from lost films or the sound version of "His Captive Woman".

... or the Merlot!

... or the Merlot!

Quite right!

I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I thoroughly enjoyed HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN. The restoration we saw was a work in progress- the video image was quite clear but the transfer rate gave some of the images a jerky quality. That aside it was highly entertaining with Sills and Mackaill in excellent form.

I was less enchanted with MAMBA. I'm glad it survives and that I was able to see it, but I didn't like it. It was well made and the color and sound are excellent- possibly some of the best 2 color Technicolor I've seen. Unfortunately the story itself left a lot to be desired- a typical love triangle with a muddlled political / war subplot. The rescue at the end was pretty exciting though.

Just my own opinions- your mileage may vary

Frank,

Thanks for the report on HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN and MAMBA. What about GET YOUR MAN?

GET YOUR MAN I felt was middle-of-the-road. Despite the missing reels, it's one of those stories that has implausibility past the point of suspension of disbelief, but Clara Bow's character is basically unsympathetic, since she orchestrates the disbandment of the hero's (admittedly unfair) marriage.

Frank,

Thanks for the report on HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN and MAMBA. What about GET YOUR MAN?

It was great, you shoudda been there!

My row-mate said it should have been called "Steal your Man". I think the best bit was the one that turned up in the clip reel- Bow fakes a taxi wreck, then lays down after straightening her dress & powdering her nose.

Josephine Hull has a small bit in the beginning of the film- it was fascinating to see her. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to have anything to do thereafter.

I'll throw in my 2 cents worth. I thoroughly enjoyed HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN. The restoration we saw was a work in progress- the video image was quite clear but the transfer rate gave some of the images a jerky quality. That aside it was highly entertaining with Sills and Mackaill in excellent form.

I was less enchanted with MAMBA. I'm glad it survives and that I was able to see it, but I didn't like it. It was well made and the color and sound are excellent- possibly some of the best 2 color Technicolor I've seen. Unfortunately the story itself left a lot to be desired- a typical love triangle with a muddlled political / war subplot. The rescue at the end was pretty exciting though.

Just my own opinions- your mileage may vary

Well, now I feel a little better about missing MAMBA. I was a zombie Sat. night after no sleep the night before and just couldn't stay up that late. I did stay conscious for HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN and enjoyed it a lot too. It was my introduction to Dorothy Mackaill. Interesting that the island footage was actually Hawaii and that Mackaill moved there in later years and guest starred in some episodes of Hawaii Five-O in the 60's and 70's.

Doug E.

Well, now I feel a little better about missing MAMBA. I was a zombie Sat. night after no sleep the night before and just couldn't stay up that late. I did stay conscious for HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN and enjoyed it a lot too. It was my introduction to Dorothy Mackaill. Interesting that the island footage was actually Hawaii and that Mackaill moved there in later years and guest starred in some episodes of Hawaii Five-O in the 60's and 70's.

Doug E.

Yeah, Eric and I have different opinions on "Mamba", I loved it, even though the story was kind of thin. I thought Jean Hersholt was the perfect villain and although the print was a bit battered, it looked pretty darn good.

On the other hand, I thought "His Captive Woman" could have been trimmed by about 20 minutes and the ending was stupid. The "print" looked wonderful and I could get beyond the jitters of the digital projection. Personally, the best part was Dorothy Mackaill running around about 80% of the movie in very skimpy clothing.

[silentfilm]

Here's a publicity photo from His Captive Woman showing Mackaill during production.

Oh, I'll second that the ending was stupid- the 1929 reviewer thought so too.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Okay, I'll post this now instead of waiting a few days until I can go over it more thoroughly. It's late and I only got about five hours sleep before checking out of the hotel, and I'm still not quite over the bad cold I came down with on Thursday night (that was mostly me coughing down in the front row or two), but I managed to see all but three of the features and two of the shorts (skipping some of the late-night and early morning screenings to get a bit more sleep and another dose of AlkaSeltzer-Plus).

It really was a great weekend of films, with nothing really super spectacular but a very high percentage of very good films and not too many obnoxiously annoying ones, and only a few I'd already seen before or had my own copies of. Titles I'd most like to show up on Blu-ray -- well, lots of 'em, but especially HAIL THE WOMAN, HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN, and GET YOUR MAN. THE FORBIDDEN TRAIL was an unexpected surprise, too. I'd also like to see PARTNERS THREE again with titles on screen long enough to read, and might want a restored version of that on Blu-ray as well. Top shorts of this year's Cinefest (not counting the restored color A TRIP TO THE MOON) -- NO CHILDREN (hands down!) followed by MATCHMAKING MOMMA (with Carole Lombard in Technicolor)! Here's a rundown of the whole weekend in screening order, with star ratings and very brief summaries, some of which I may expand later after I have some time back in the "real world."

CINEFEST 2012 Capsule Reviews
==============================

Thursday

FOOTBALL 40 YEARS AGO (1931) **
Campy Universal short with coach "Pop" Warner having his team demonstrate the way football was played back in the 1890s.
HELLO OUT THERE (1949) ** 1/2
James Whale's direction and art design give an impressive look to this short adapted from William Saroyan's downbeat noirish one-act play about a prisoner afraid of being lynched and a restless small-town girl longing for adventure, but Harry Morgan unfortunately delivers most of his performance as though he's still on stage (he'd originated the theatrical role). It all has the feel of an early TV drama.
WIFE TROUBLE (1928) ***
Amusing one-reel comedy of a man buying his wife a last-minute present of lingerie from a live model at his office, when his wife unexpectedly arrives and all sorts of door and window quick exits and entrances ensue to avoid the inevitable scene.
BELL BOY 13 (1923) ***
Douglas MacLean, a popular light comedian of the silent era, has almost no examples of his work surviving but here proves at least as competent as Johnny Hines, if not Harold Lloyd. In this predictable but enjoyable comedy he plays the young heir to a wealthy financier who forbids him to marry the actress he's been spending all his time with or he'll be disinherited, and his girlfriend won't marry him without his uncle's consent. As a result he gets a job as a bellboy while meanwhile his uncle meets and is charmed by the girl, not realizing she's the actress his nephew's interested in. Then after being fired as a bellboy, the nephew incites other hotel employees to go on strike.
BAD COMPANY (1931) ** 1/2
Some dark and cynical attitude with a few unexpected developments give Tay Garnett's gangster melodrama for RKO its greatest interest, as well as strong art design and unexpectedly fluid camerawork for such an early talkie. Pacing still drags at times and performances range from adequate to just a bit too theatrically over-the-top. Helen Twelvetrees and Ricardo Cortez star. It was much nicer to see this on a nice original old print, however, than my laserdisc.

TRAILER MANIA IV: The A's, B's, and C's of Universal (1930s-60s) ***
Ray Faiola assembled a diverse hour-long selection of trailers to Universal Pictures, from major classics to typical genre titles to obscure program pictures.
MATCHMAKING MOMMA (1928) ***
Fun late silent Sennett comedy starring Daphne Pollard arranging a pageant for daughter Carole Lombard to attract a wealthy husband for her, but stepdaughter Sally Eilers shows up and plans quickly go awry. Several scenes are in two-color Technicolor in this rare and lovely original old Kodascope print.
THE FORBIDDEN TRAIL (1923) ***
Another fine Kodascope print magnified the already impressive values of this low-budget but highly proficient and well-written western starring Jack Hoxie. A notorious bandit raises a baby taken from a massacred wagon train as his own daughter. Meanwhile the son of a Colonel he killed in the same wagon train attack has grown up to become a lawman determined to hunt him down, yet falls in love with the girl. Plenty of action and interesting plot twists keep things moving. Especially unusual is the prominent sympathetic supporting role by a black character who knows the secret of the girl's real identity.
HELEN OF FOUR GATES (1920) ** 1/2
Continuing the theme of a daughter not realizing the man she thinks is her father is not actually her father, this interesting if sometimes hard to follow British silent feature was directed by Cecil Hepworth and appears to be set about a century or two in the past. A man is embittered after his true love rejects him because another suitor claims his blood is cursed by insanity, but when they both manage to die soon thereafter, he agrees to her dying wish to raise her daughter. Unfortunately he decides he'll take revenge on her by mistreating the daughter as badly as possible and once she's of marriageable age he tries to destroy her budding romance with a young laborer by informing him of his family's long history of mental illness. Of course things have to work out to a satisfactory conclusion.
RED SALUTE (1935) ** 1/2
This peculiarly timely "red scare" romantic comedy has Barbara Stanwyck as a general's daughter who is planning to marry a rabble-rousing left-wing campus activist so he sends her off to Mexico against her will. In trying to get back she meets trouble-prone right-wing young soldier Robert Young, and the odd couple make a dash across the border together for different reasons, and of course reluctantly fall for each other.

N.Y., N.Y. (1957) ***
This experimental documentary in the "city symphony" genre uses aesthetically designed abstractions of reality through distorted lenses, prisms, and mirrors to show a day in the life of New York City.
CRASHING HOLLYWOOD (1931) ** 1/2
Roscoe Arbuckle directed this two-reel comedy about two Hollywood girls trying to show a country cousin a good time by throwing a party at a vacationing producer's house one of their boyfriends has a key to, inviting a crowd of movie star doubles instructed to "go wild" soon after she arrives. Naturally the producer returns home unexpectedly.
MULTICOLOR DEMO REEL (1930) ***
Test footage of this two-color process show a flight of a rare 1910-era airplane, the Hollywood premiere of DIRIGIBLE, and various other colorful scenes.
THE STREET OF FORGOTTEN MEN (1925) ***
Herbert Brenon directed this character melodrama reminiscent of a vehicle for Lon Chaney or Emil Jannings. Percy Marmont plays the Chaney/Jannings role, an expert professional beggar on the Bowery who agrees to raise a dying prostitute's baby daughter. He uses the substantial income he earns to lead a double life on Long Island where he can shelter the girl and give her a good education. Grown up into a refined young lady (Mary Brian), she attracts the attentions of millionaire Neil Hamilton but is torn by her love for her guardian. Naturally Marmont must do the right thing and leave the country, faking his death so she'll find happiness. Also appearing briefly in the last part of this Paramount picture is a young Louise Brooks.
MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS (1933) ***
Pleasant formula musical of songwriter making it big and small-town music shop owner who loves him; Universal’s answer to Busby Berkeley hits doesn’t approach them in style but has the same heart.
HI DIDDLE DIDDLE (1943) -didn't see-


Friday

SKIRMISH ON THE HOME FRONT (1944) -didn't see-
CONTENTED CALVES (1934) -didn't see-
HIS NEW LID (1910) ** 1/2
Cute D. W. Griffith comedy of a man (played by future producer Thomas H. Ince) whose hats keep blowing away, and when one hat is returned while he's on a business trip, his wife believes he's died. He returns home only to terrify mourners at his funeral.
CLASSMATES (1914) ** 1/2
Class-consciousness, alcoholism, sudden blindness, jungle fever, romantic triangles, are all crammed into four reels starring Blanche Sweet, Henry B. Walthall, Marsahll Neilan, and Lionel Barrymore. "Supervised" by D. W. Griffith, the first and last reels are relatively well-made, especially by 1914 standards, filmed in late 1913 with effective Griffithesque staging and editing if no real closeups. The middle two reels slow down substantially as the four West Point classmates search the Amazon jungles for their old classmate but there's a reasonably satisfactory if perhaps far-fetched conclusion.
LAUGHTER (1930) ***
Wonderful fluid camera work, beautiful lighting, good sound recording and engaging performances by Nancy Carroll, Fredric March, and Frank Morgan sustain this comedy-drama about a showgirl married to a busy financial tycoon rekindling a relationship she once had with a composer, now newly returned from France. The pacing of this early talkie is still sometimes sluggish, especially various romantic subplots. It's certainly no Lubitsch, Wilder, or Sturges film, but there are elements later echoed in DESIGN FOR LIVING and other screwball comedies, as well as socially conscious soap operas.
LADDIE (1940) ***
Tim Holt turns in a solid performance as the title character of this heartfelt period romance between an Indiana farmboy and the daughter of his aristocratic stand-offish neighbor newly arrived from Britain with a bitter personal secret. Virginia Gilmore co-stars, with cute Joan Carroll as "Little Sister" and a strong supporting cast including Spring Byington, Miles Mander, Joan Leslie, and Peter Cushing.
TILLIE'S TOMATO SURPRISE (1915) * 1/2 (only one reel of the feature)
Only one rather disjointed reel survives of this Lubin slapstick comedy sequel to Marie Dressler's hit from the year before at Keystone. It will probably make more sense if the rest of the film is ever discovered.
PARTNERS THREE (1919) ***
This Thomas H. Ince production directed by Fred Niblo stars Enid Bennett as a cafe singer in an abusive marriage who manages to find happiness after embarking on a mining expedition in partnership with two men. Various complications emerge and are eventually resolved. Although performances and settings are impressive, sadly most of the intertitles are not on screen long enough to read, so much of the story is difficult to follow, but the last reel or so luckily has a few longer titles that help clear many things up.
JUST NUTS (1915) ** 1/2
Harold Lloyd demonstrates that his "Willy Work" tramp character was a reasonably effective Chaplin ripoff, doing entertaining if quickly forgettable formula slapstick typically revolving around trying to impress a girl.
A DEEP SEA PANIC (1924) ** 1/2
James Parrot is a shanghaied sailor, Mildred June a stowaway, and Kalla Pasha a brutal ship captain in this sometimes funny and sometimes just dumb slapstick burlesque of THE SEA WOLF, done earlier the same year as SHANGHAIED LOVERS with Harry Langdon by the same director (Roy Del Ruth).
ASTRAY FROM THE STEERAGE (1921) **
Moderately amusing shipboard farce with Billy Bevan and Louise Fazenda.
CONFESSIONS OF A CO-ED (1931) **
A heavily soapy plot emphasized by the slow early talkie pacing follows the misadventures of selfish overprivileged college students and their various affairs, starring Sylvia Sidney and Phillips Holmes. It's somewhat redeemed by its impressive cinematography, an appearance early on by Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys, and the pre-code frankness to its sordid facts-of-life plot.
THE TOY SHOP (1928) ** 1/2
Pleasant if heavily sentimental two-color Technicolor short about a poor little girl taken in by kindly storekeeper at Christmas. This is on a DVD somewhere, but I forget which one.
A SONG IN THE DARK (1920s-30s) ***
Musical movie historian Richard Barrios presented another selection of clips from rarely-seen early musicals.
FOOD AND GROWTH (1930) **
This promotional film for milk depicts a grade-school science experiment feeding three rats either coffee, sugar-water, or milk, and examining the results. The old original print looked great.
THE DARK MIRROR (1920) ***
Interesting psychological thriller that gets immediately into the action until several minutes later we realize it's all a dream by troubled artist Dorothy Dalton and the usual exposition begins. Soon, however, her disturbing "dreams" start to come true and her psychoanalyst boyfriend decides to investigate.
THE GRACIE ALLEN MURDER CASE (1939) -didn't see-


Saturday
Saturday's morning and afternoon showings were all 35mm film prints shown at the historic Palace Theatre.

NO CHILDREN (1929) ***
Very funny comedy of family refused entrance to hotels so the father pretends he's a ventriloquist and his mischievous kids are really just his dummies.
THE JANITOR (1919) **
Oddly interesting Hank Mann farce following a man's adventures after he applies for a job as janitor for an anarchist "peace" group that's trying to assaassinate members of another group.
THE PEST (1922) ** 1/2
Stan Laurel keeps trying to sell a book about Napoleon while poor Vera Reynolds is being foreclosed on by villainous landlord Glen Cavender and he also keeps running into annoying Joy Winthrop.
THEIR FIRST EXECUTION (1913) * 1/2
Peculiar and eventually annoying Mack Sennett farce (retitled AMATEUR EXECUTIONERS) about two bungling prison guards entrusted with making sure an electrocution goes off as scheduled for the governer, but when the prisoner escapes they inadvertently capture the wrong man.
GET YOUR MAN (1927) *** 1/2
Clara Bow is an American tourist who falls for Frenchman Buddy Rogers, but he's obligated to go through with a family-arranged marriage so Clara decides to charm his father and especially his prospective father-in-law so both she and the pre-arranged fiancée can get their men (you see, the girl would rather marry somebody else, too!). Reels 2 and 3 are missing from the surviving print and were bridged by explanatory titles and the original intertitle text, so the story was still easy to follow (and actually moved along a bit faster than it might have originally).
MR. FIX-IT (1918) ***
Fun, fast-paced comedy with Doug Fairbanks pretending to be his Oxford roommate Reggie so he can loosen up the stuffy family and get Reggie out of a pre-arranged marriage, while finding his own love interest, a poor girl with five young brothers and sisters, in the frenetic process.

HAIL THE WOMAN (1921) ***
The beautiful print of this Thomas H. Ince production directed by John Griffith Wray looked as if it had been struck from the camera negative, though most titles were reset or freeze-framed from flash titles. Luckily, the story was almost as fun to watch as the picture quality, with a strong flavor of D. W. Griffith, most notably WAY DOWN EAST, with just a hint of BROKEN BLOSSOMS at one point, as well as THE SCARLET LETTER. Theodore Roberts is a strict fundamentalist New England father who all but ignores daughter Florence Vidor but dotes on son Lloyd Hughes whom he's forced to become a minister, not knowing he's fallen for poor neighbor girl Madge Bellamy, who is abused by stepfather Tully Marshall. Meanwhile obnoxious but respectable squire Vernon Dent is attempting to woo Vidor, who would rather talk with a free-thinking writer living nearby.
ONE A MINUTE (1921) ***
Another pleasant Douglas MacLean vehicle, this still-timely themed film casts him as the young heir to a family drug store that has been losing business to the cut-rate chain store that just opened nearby. To compete, he concocts a secret formula wonder-drug from the worst-tasting ingredients he can find, and it’s such a hit that the rivals want to buy him out. Naturally he’s also in love with his rival’s daughter.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE (1937) **
Moderately amusing Three Stooges promotional short for a small cardboard "movie machine" (really a miniature Mutoscope) to be given away at the theatre.
ONCE IN A LIFETIME (1932) *** 1/2
Hilarious satire on Hollywood adapted from a Kaufmann and Hart play with Jack Oakie, Ailene MacMahon and Russell Hopton as a failing vaudeville team who decide to go to Hollywood to cash in on the talking picture craze. Naturally, we and they discover that intelligent people who struggle to succeed are quickly frustrated, while the dim-witted and simple-minded inadvertently become the movers and shakers, with their mistakes setting the latest trends.

The first five Saturday evening presentations were projected from video copies, as film restorations have not yet been done.
A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) ***
The restored hand-colored print of Georges Méliès' iconic sci-fi comedy-fantasy was presented with live piano music and live narration by David Shepard.
THE MUSIC MAKERS (1929) **
The surviving second reel of a fitfully amusing Vitaphone vaudeville sketch by Willie and Eugene Howard in a record store, with Willie doing impressions of famous pop singers.
CLARA BOW FRAGMENTS (1920s) ***
Very brief clips from numerous Clara Bow film appearances including short scenes missing from the surviving print of GET YOUR MAN and a single shot from RED HAIR (in Technicolor).
HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN (1929) *** 1/2
Engrossing and well-made part-talkie courtroom drama with all the trial scenes shot sync sound and all the flashbacks done silent with some sound effects and music throughout. Dorothy Mackaill is very strong as the cynical chorus girl who killed her rich lover and Milton Sills is effective as the single-minded cop who tracks her down and brings her back for trial. This was the first public screening in about 80 years or more, as the picture and sound survive in different archives and were only recently digitally recombined on video.
MAMBA (1930) **
Another recent video reuniting picture with sound was this rare exotic melodrama shot in two-color Technicolor, the picture portion just rediscovered a few years ago in Australia. While the color is beautiful and the film is a fascinating cultural artifact, unfortunately the story is more uncomfortably disturbing than entertaining, with Jean Hersholt as a brutal, selfish plantation owner in German East Africa just before World War I, an outcast even among the local colonial community. Still, there's a good action sequence when the natives attack the town.
KING OF THE KONGO (1929) -cancelled- ("technical difficulties")
EXILE EXPRESS (1939) ***
It was back to 16mm film again for his enjoyable romantic comedy-thriller about a Russian immigrant (Anna Sten) wrongly implicated in her scientist boss' murder and deported, but sprung from the train by foreign agents while a reporter (Alan Marshal) follows her, first for a story and later for love. There's a great sequence at a closed resort run by Etienne Giradot.


Sunday

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR (1940) -didn't see-

Justin Herman shorts ** 1/2 each - Reasonably entertaining, often cutesy one-reel documentaries.
THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL GIRLS (1950)
A girl who works at Florida's Cypress Gardens describes her life
WAY OUT WEST IN FLORIDA (1951)
A young Wyoming drifter finds himself ranching again in Florida with Brahmans
PARLOR, BEDROOM and WHEELS (1952)
A middle-aged couple buys a motor home, takes a trip, and finds a trailer park
WITHOUT REGRET (1935) ***
Fine remake of INTERFERENCE, with Elissa Landi and Paul Cavanaugh as couple blackmailed by Frances Drake because of Landi's previous marriage to Kent Taylor, believed dead but actually alive.
THE UNTAMED (1920) ***
Good Tom Mix western with Pauline Starke has Mix as "Whistling Dan," a William S. Hart-like character prone to violence, misunderstanding women, and taking justice into his own hands.
CHAMPAGNE WALTZ (1937) ***
Pleasant if overproduced romantic comedy with the music of Strauss plus some jazz, as band leader Fred MacMurray in Vienna, falling for Strauss descendent Gladys Swarthout who hates that he has destroyed popular taste for traditional waltz music.

I will write something detailed later, but I got in last night and immediately went out to see a friend and didn't get back home til after midnight, then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch.

At least you got some rest.
Immediately upon returning from four days of film watching at Cinefest it was off to my regular Sunday night film gang where we watched a serial chapter, feature and three shorts (all on 16mm, naturally!)
Unpacking, sleeping (and catching up with Nitrateville) had to wait!

I thoroughly enjoyed HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN. The restoration we saw was a work in progress- the video image was quite clear but the transfer rate gave some of the images a jerky quality. That aside it was highly entertaining with Sills and Mackaill in excellent form.

I also enjoyed HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN very much and agree about Sills and Mackaill. But how about those hilarious and hilariously out of place (for a serious murder and courtroom drama) bits with Marion Byron and Gertrude Howard*!
(*Needles to note, I assume, that there should be no confusing this Gertrude Howard with Shemp Howard's wife, also named Gertrude!)

I'd seen HIS CAPTIVE WOMAN several years ago at LoC (same 35mm print we saw in Syracuse I believe) and it sure was an improvement this time to be able to hear the soundtrack. The above mentioned Byron and Howard scenes meant little without sound, and without other research material I was able to refer to, the movie's ending wasn't very clear without the soundtrack.

Let's hope this movie becomes available (on TCM and/or released through Warner Archives) some time.

A big Thank You to everyone who did what it took to get this rare screening to happen at Cinefest!

It was interesting to see Josephine Hull's appearance in GET YOUR MAN- one more title in her short list of film appearances, and the earliest one known to survive.

Christopher,

Less than a year ago I asked if there were any decent surviving prints of HAIL THE WOMAN. Great to know that there are. Thanks for all the interesting reviews. THE UNTAMED is another Tom Mix title that I did not know still existed. What sort of shape was it in?

THE TOY SHOP (1928) ** 1/2
Pleasant if heavily sentimental two-color Technicolor short about a poor little girl taken in by kindly storekeeper at Christmas. This is on a DVD somewhere, but I forget which one.

It is included on Flicker Alley's release of The Garden of Eden.

My 2012 Cinefest review:

http://www.elbrendel.com/2012/03/cinefe ... eview.html

WIFE TROUBLE (1928) ** 1/2
Amusing one-reel comedy of a man buying his wife a last-minute present of lingerie from a live model at his office,

And we thought it was exciting when someone sent a strip-o-gram girl to sing "Happy Birthday" to somebody in the office...

Jim

WIFE TROUBLE (1928) - Educational Cameo silent short. ** 1/2
Amusing one-reel comedy of a man buying his wife a last-minute present of lingerie from a live model at his office.

And we thought it was exciting when someone sent a strip-o-gram girl to sing "Happy Birthday" to somebody in the office...

Jim

The scantily clad lingerie model was Muriel Evans lookin' fine in what appears to be her first film appearance.
Also in this short, as the secretary, was the beautiful Adrienne Dore who often appeared in roles that showed off her lingerie but in this case she remained fully clothed and for a change was given the opportunity to show her comedy talents.

The husband was Robert Graves with Amber Norman as the suspicious wife.

It's a fast and funny short. I've seen it a few times now and it only gets better! In fact it was screened not long ago for group that included a few guys who claim to hate silents and when it was over they all gave it a "thumbs up!"

[Christopher Jacobs]

WIFE TROUBLE (1928) - Educational Cameo silent short. ** 1/2
Amusing one-reel comedy of a man buying his wife a last-minute present of lingerie from a live model at his office.

And we thought it was exciting when someone sent a strip-o-gram girl to sing "Happy Birthday" to somebody in the office...

Jim

The scantily clad lingerie model was Muriel Evans lookin' fine in what appears to be her first film appearance.
Also in this short, as the secretary, was the beautiful Adrienne Dore who often appeared in roles that showed off her lingerie but in this case she remained fully clothed and for a change was given the opportunity to show her comedy talents.

The husband was Robert Graves with Amber Norman as the suspicious wife.

It's a fast and funny short. I've seen it a few times now and it only gets better! In fact it was screened not long ago for group that included a few guys who claim to hate silents and when it was over they all gave it a "thumbs up!"

The more I think back on this short, the more I think I'll upgrade my ** 1/2 rating to a *** rating. The early Thursday morning screening made it one of the very first films of the weekend, but I think it was at least as fun as MATCHMAKING MOMMAS, if not quite up to NO CHILDREN. All three of these would be great to see thrown in as bonus items on some silent feature Blu-ray someday.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Christopher,

Less than a year ago I asked if there were any decent surviving prints of HAIL THE WOMAN. Great to know that there are. Thanks for all the interesting reviews. THE UNTAMED is another Tom Mix title that I did not know still existed. What sort of shape was it in?

The print of THE UNTAMED was just okay, a bit contrasty especially in the opening reels, but somewhat better later on. It would have seemed decent 40 years ago when we were lucky to get 16mm dupes of anything, long before all the recent restorations from early-generation sources, but being a Fox silent, it's possible that nothing better currently exists. It's well-worth seeing, however, quite an interesting and dramatic change of pace from what we're used to in his later, more comedy-oriented, action films (as I noted, suitable material for William S. Hart in Mix's oddly conflicted role here).

Some stills from the missing footage from GET YOUR MAN can be seen here:

http://clarabowarchive.tumblr.com/search/GET+YOUR+MAN

[silentfilm]

Matchmaking Mamas, including the color scenes, was on the old Lumivision Nothing Sacred DVD that is now out of print.

Some stills from the missing footage from GET YOUR MAN can be seen here:

http://clarabowarchive.tumblr.com/search/GET+YOUR+MAN" target="_blank" target="_blank

What relevance does the gun have in these stills?
Is there a gun (and indeed a rope) involved somewhere in the missing reels? Just wondering.
Great site, BTW. I shall be frequenting it...er...frequently.