Frankie and Johnny (1936) and Her Man (1930)

[Lokke Heiss]

I saw two interesting films this weekend at MoMA, the first, the 1936 Frankie and Johnny, and then an earlier version of the story, titled, Her Man (1930). Both films you could describe as ranging from obscure...to really obscure, and both have huge pluses and minuses, and are well worth a look to pre-Code movie buffs. Even though they both take the famous ballad Frankie and Johnny song as inspiration, they come off as extremely different films that weirdly, have the same inability to have Frankie actually KILL Johnny, a difference amplified when you watch them back-to-back.

The 1936 film starts well, with cardshark Johnny (Chester Morris) on a steamboat on the Mississippi, where he cons a group of other gamblers, and wins a pot of money. Arriving at St. Louis, he soon meets Frankie (Helen Morgan) who is about to leave for California with her steady. Instead, Frankie and Johnny hit it off, and become an item - finally Johnny reverts to his old ways and two-times Frankie. When she finds out what is going on, she picks up a gun and on her way to shoot Johnny, is bailed out by having the deed done by man who is friend of the saloon keeper.
This version of Frankie and Johnny is full of odd choices, partly as result of the low budget, and partly perhaps as a result of using the 1928 play 'Frankie and Johnny' by Jack Kirkland as the basis for the story. But these issues are minor compared to key scenes that look like the projectionist broke the film in several places during a reel change and did a hasty splicing job getting the ends back together, leaving the viewer to figure out what happened in the most important parts of the story.

This problem was even addressed in the original NY Times review of this film, which said, "Two years have passed since the picture was filmed in the Bronx and those two years have seen the censors grow mightily in power and authority. What they have done to the picture is more than we can imagine."

That indeed, is exactly the problem with this film - this was never going to be a great film, and after retakes and re-editing of the scene where Frankie is about to shoot her lover who 'done her wrong,' Frankie and Johnny becomes instead a frustrating curio.

Still, the movie is watching, if only for the hodgepodge of great scenes found among the clutter. The best of these occurs in near the end of the film, when Johnny tries to quietly exit the theater during a performance of Romeo and Juliet, which is being staged in the roughshod theater than passed for class and culture in 1870 St. Louis. Just at the scene where Romeo is mourning for his dead Juliet, a fight breaks out in the audience. The performers try to go on for a moment, then as the yelling from the crowd gets louder they give up - and then the actress playing Juliet gets off her slab in disgust, and mutters, "I told ya we shouldna have played in this here hick town!' This odd obscure film is well worth watching just for this one wonderful moment.

The second feature of this Frankie and Johnnie twin-bill was Her Man (1930) directed by Tay Garnett. This recently restored film is going to force a lot of us to re-consider our position that movies from this era were stagy, locked down productions where actors barked into a mic hidden in a flowerpot as the agonizing minutes dragged by. Not so, at least not in 'Her Man,' where Tay Garnett's camera moves so fluidly from scene to scene that at times it feels like Garnett and the director of photography, Edward Snyder, were trying to outdo Murnau's The Last Laugh for the title of who really had the 'The Unchained Camera.'

Although the film uses Frankie and Johnny as inspiration, it's really not that story at all, since in this version, since there is no love lost - 'amour fou,' or otherwise - between prostitute Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees), and Johnny (Ricardo Cortez), who merely is her pimp, and has her working in a dive-bar in Havana, Cuba.

It is said that Ricardo Cortez's rather limited acting range had only two expressions: 1) a threatening sneer, and 2) no expression at all, and Cortez uses both of these tools to the best of his ability in playing a murderous sleezebag who threatens Frankie when she tries to leave him. But a handsome sailor, Dan Keefe (Phillips Holmes), comes to Twelvetress aid, and at this point, the story becomes not Frankie and Johnnie, but Frankie and Dan, which admittedly, doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

It's clear that at some point, Dan and Johnny are going to duke it out for the possession of Frankie, but the moment Phillips Holmes walks into this picture, (looking like a Greek God on a weekend pass from Mount Olympus) this picture - at least visually - changes its focus, and begins to look like an odd preview of Fassbinder's Querrelle, with the sailor/whore iconography just sort of...right out there. Anyway, there is a big fight at the end, and Johnny gets his, without either Frankie or Dan actually having to kill him, so for all that for all that horrible, wretched struggle, Frankie and Dan are left to walk out of the picture as a happy guilt-free couple in one really strange and happy pre-Code ending...until the day, I guess, when Dan wakes up one day to look in the mirror and realizes why he did indeed want to become a sailor.

[entredeuxguerres]

...The second feature of this Frankie and Johnnie twin-bill was Her Man (1930) directed by Tay Garnett. This recently restored film is going to force a lot of us to re-consider our position that movies from this era were stagy, locked down productions where actors barked into a mic hidden in a flowerpot as the agonizing minutes dragged by...

I've always been a little puzzled by the fixation many have (since the subject is brought up ALL the time) on microphone location; I mean, once one accepts the proposition that sound pictures can't be made without the use of 'em, what difference does it make where they're positioned? That irrelevant & distracting consideration never crosses my mind, interests me not in the least; what strikes me as far more grotesque than a mike hidden in a flowerpot is the thought of one suspended on a boom a foot above the speaker's head; actually wish I'd never seen photos of how that's done.

Only those who've formed the bad habit of reading professionally-written reviews would believe that "stagy, locked down productions" were invariable, but so what, anyway? Isn't, for ex., The Letter of '29 one of those stagy, locked down productions? Or The Trial of Mary Dugan? Or a hundred other marvelous pictures? I appreciate & enjoy the effects produced by Garnett's "unchained camera" (having just watched them in Bad Company), but it's not more important than the cast, story, script, & acting.

[boblipton]

Mike placement is very important for proper sound recording.I've recently become fond of a modern singer, Emily-Claire Barlow. She produces her own records and my go-to guy for jazz and big band has raved to me about how her technicians have figured out how to mike a bass fiddle.

Alan Dwan started as an engineer and was noteworthy for his ability to show his performers enjoying themselves and his technical prowess. If you've ever seen his Man to Man, you'll note a sequence in which he attaches the boom mike to a dollying camera and the way the sound shifts to indicate precisely where the POV is, is fascinating.

Bob

[entredeuxguerres]

Mike placement is very important for proper sound recording...

Bob

I know that, and I've often heard dialog spoken in early talkies that sounded faint or indistinct when it came from a certain character on the periphery of the scene; nevertheless, compared to stupidly written scripts, bad casting choices, etc., it is to me a very minor consideration.

Fate has denied me Man to Man, but I'm willin'.

[Donald Binks]

Mike placement is very important for proper sound recording...

Bob

I know that, and I've often heard dialog spoken in early talkies that sounded faint or indistinct when it came from a certain character on the periphery of the scene; nevertheless, compared to stupidly written scripts, bad casting choices, etc., it is to me a very minor consideration.

Fate has denied me Man to Man, but I'm willin'.

I was reading of how the sound was recorded on the church scene in the Richard Tauber film "Blossom Time" (1936) where he sings "Love Lost for Evermore". One would think that in order to record the tenor singing stridently above a choir and an organ there would need to be a number of microphone placements, plus an army of sound men sitting at consoles fiddling with knobs. No. The scene was recorded with just one microphone - high up and centered apparently. The fact that everything comes out perfectly is a tribute to the craftsman who worked well with what some would now think of as antiquated equipment and methods. Phoeey, I say to those who think that modern day methodology is always the best.

[boblipton]

I've been thinking about Lokke's statement that films like Her Man will force a reevaluation early sound films. I suppose at some level this is true, but like the thread on German films during the Nazi era, it strikes me as more a matter of looking at the movies demonstrates that the "experts" whose opinions have held sway for seventy years have been full of s**t. Anyone who has seen Mamoulian's Applause or Eagel's performance in The Letter know better. The issue has never been the movies or the fans -- anyone who has spent thirty years whining about rumors of London After Midnight knows that we are anxious to see these flicks and make our own evaluation.

Nor do I expect my evaluations will resemble those of any of the experts. I have seen a lot of formerly lost movies over the last twenty years, from cartoons (thanks Tommy Joe!) to Ozu to a Chaplin movie that the experts at the BFI decreed didn't exist. It looks like about half a dozen Nitratevillains have seen Her Man, and while we may disagree on certain details of evaluation, we all report recognizably the same movie with the same salient features. We need to stop relying on experts, many of whom freely comment on films they have never seen, speaking about societal contexts they don't understand, for good reasons and bad. Frederica and Entredeuxguerres will never agree on anything, but you know what? They've seen the movies they are talking about and are willing to judge them on individual merits and that makes them each ten times the valid critic that someone like Kracauer was. Brent Walker looked at hundreds of hours of Sennett films before writing his book and gave me insight which informed my viewing of them.

I have written elsewhere that I will look at any movie -- although I shudder at the thought of Ham & Bud or Ulmer porn with his daughter as a player. Don't let any expert tell you what's worthwhile. Even if he is right on some level, it may be your taste in junk.

Bob

[Donald Binks]

I think Bob, it is a case of some people who take stock of other people's opinions too much - especially if such opiner is paid to give them out.

I really enjoy reading all the "reviews" Nitratevillians write in the various threads here about pictures they have seen. These people are not flogging a horse, but giving honest impressions of something they have actually seen recently. Of course as we are all different, we may not see these films with the same eyes - but we may learn something of them that we didn't know beforehand. Some have even got to see some rarities we may never get to see - and thus a first-hand expose is always valued.

[Lokke Heiss]

Well, I could have started my rhetorical flourish about re-writing the historical lack of mobility with early sound pictures with the added caveat: Of course anyone bothering READING this film review at on Nitrateville is already 'extremely well informed' about this whole situation and is de facto exempt from this bias toward early pictures being static and 'not as good' ... sort of a version of "I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.'

A larger truth is that while the film history books may indeed need to give more nuance to the early talkie transitional problem, the much greater problem is the growing disinterest in the general public or even film student... (or, groan, film professors) in any films before, say 1980. I had a film professor start his German Cinema class with films from the 80s, explaining to me, "Why start with any earlier films...they're all so boring."

A separate issue for this film is the DCP restoration - I saw this movie digitally projected, and have to say the image looked dead to me - also the sound seemed 'over-fixed' with the dynamic range altered from the original track (or so I am guessing). So had problems with the restoration, but would have to see what they started with up on the screen to be better informed about what they ended up with. I've brought up this DCP issue before - is it must me? - that is, do my eyes just miss the jitteriness, or is something really missing from this version that a 35 mm can still give you?

[boblipton]

Her Man was digitally projected? I thought MOMA was committed to film. I didn't notice the issues you attribute to DCP, so maybe it is you, or perhaps I'm simply happy enough to be looking at this on a real screen with a live audience, instead of on a 480-line broadcast off a a vhs produced from 16mm. print.

I also see more new movies than most people here will admit to, so perhaps I am immune to DCP issues.

[wingate]

If you are watching Lights of New York you are always wondering where the Mike has been placed.
Also bear in mind that until well into the thirties musical numbers were recorded live with the orchestra present..For an example of this you should watch the I 've got my eyes number in Showgirl in Hollywood

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

...The second feature of this Frankie and Johnnie twin-bill was Her Man (1930) directed by Tay Garnett. This recently restored film is going to force a lot of us to re-consider our position that movies from this era were stagy, locked down productions where actors barked into a mic hidden in a flowerpot as the agonizing minutes dragged by...

I've always been a little puzzled by the fixation many have (since the subject is brought up ALL the time) on microphone location; I mean, once one accepts the proposition that sound pictures can't be made without the use of 'em, what difference does it make where they're positioned? That irrelevant & distracting consideration never crosses my mind, interests me not in the least; what strikes me as far more grotesque than a mike hidden in a flowerpot is the thought of one suspended on a boom a foot above the speaker's head; actually wish I'd never seen photos of how that's done.

Only those who've formed the bad habit of reading professionally-written reviews would believe that "stagy, locked down productions" were invariable, but so what, anyway? Isn't, for ex., The Letter of '29 one of those stagy, locked down productions? Or The Trial of Mary Dugan? Or a hundred other marvelous pictures? I appreciate & enjoy the effects produced by Garnett's "unchained camera" (having just watched them in Bad Company), but it's not more important than the cast, story, script, & acting.

There are a number of points to bear on this thread: To me, an important one was the sheer unavailability of talkies from this period only a few years ago. Unless you had frequent access to a major film institute in, say, the 1970s, your chances of seeing such films was pretty thin. Even the BBC (admittedly doing a much better job then) would only air the famous ones such as BLACKMAIL, ALL QUIET, KING OF JAZZ,THE BLUE ANGEL, etc. The scorn heaped on many films of this period by contemporary critics such as James Agate, and of later historians was almost all we had to go on, although in my case (and of course others on this site) poor reviews and comments were not in the least off-putting. Although conditions are not always ideal, at least we now have the chance to see many of these films, and often in very good copies.

One of the more readily available books, Alexander Walker's 'The Shattered Silents', is at least informative and interesting, despite the fact that he sometimes seemed to give opinions / comments on films which appear to be lost. One may not agree with some of his criticisms, but it is a lively work. Everson's 'American Silent Film' has a worthwhile chapter on this period, too.

[entredeuxguerres]

If you are watching Lights of New York you are always wondering where the Mike has been placed.

I'm not, though I've watched it several times. Can you pay attention to the film while preoccupied with that consideration? I could not.

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

If you are watching Lights of New York you are always wondering where the Mike has been placed.

I'm not, though I've watched it several times. Can you pay attention to the film while preoccupied with that consideration? I could not.

I, too found LIGHTS OF NEW YORK too interesting to fuss about where the 'mike' was, apart from the odd occasion. It was not the painful experience which some writers would suggest - not by a long chalk - although it was a film I'd waited some forty years to see. And how long should it run? My copy lasts just under an hour, TV time, but I had been given to understand it was originally longer.

[wingate]

You meeeeen take him for a ride