This lavish 1930 talkie was produced by United Artists, the studio cofounded by star Fairbanks, with additional financing from Joe Schenck, on his way to creating Twentieth Century Fox with Zanuck. The film brought together some of the best talents of the 1920s: among them, Wm. Cameron Menzies who did the great Art Deco sets, Irving Berlin who provided the story and wrote the songs (all but one deleted), Ray June photography, Harold Kern editing, Alfred Newman scoring, the screenplay and direction by that old reliable craftsman Edmund Goulding. Somewhere during production, however, someone, star/producer Fairbanks or Schenck perhaps decided that musicals were box office poison, and the songs should be cut. A disastrous decision. This film is Wall Street crash panicky without the much-needed breathing places that songs would have provided. Their absence make the flimsy plot ever flimsier. The result is a messy and out of balance movie. It's like what might have happened if someone decided to cut out the Marilyn Monroe scenes from SOME LIKE IT HOT or the Marx Brothers from DUCK SOUP. Fairbanks and Bebe Daniels, handsome as they are, push their theatrical charm button a bit too much; their star turns makes the artificiality of their acting cloying. They are so over-the-top that Edward Everett Horton, perfect as always as the valet, seems a Method actor. No one has yet to put together the missing pieces and restore what might make a first rate entertainment The BBC is said to have shown.some of the cut out material.
Review of Reaching for the Moon
