Reviews

I have this out of the local library in an interesting format. CD-ROM, which means I can keep it out for three weeks instead of three days. :) It's the only format the library has. Somebody mentioned the only way to really watch an epic film is in a theater. I heartily agree, especially since I was watching it as 2 1/2 by 4 inches (approximately) because if I made it full screen it looks like DVDs do when you use the zoom (the picture quality, that is). I would even have preferred my 20" TV screen. That complaint aside, I'm glad I got to watch it.

In it the people are just that, people. Neither noble nor villainous. There are people acting in a noble way but they are flawed. There are people who yielded to their baser instincts (and who knows if I wouldn't do the same--I hope not but . . . .) but who were not basically evil.

Because it's a British film about a British ship, the class structure as it existed even when this film was made is very clearly defined but as I mentioned, one class wasn't better or worse than another. There was nobility evinced through all the classes as well as some not so very nice actions.

I do like when the lifeboat is being filled and Lightoller asks if there are any more ladies, the steerage passengers who had managed to find their way up, presented the women with them and said "Here are some ladies", which makes them true gentlemen.

There are many, many such moments through out this movie.

The one I saw is the "alternate version" which essentially has words not deeds at the end instead of the other way around.

There aren't any performances that played false. None of them go overboard (pardon the pun). The band members, which played the version of "Nearer My God To Thee" which they would have been familiar with, not the one known by Americans, gave subtle moving performances. I appreciate that the cellist sang the words. I don't know if that was just to enhance the moment (which it certainly did) or because they knew that upon release in America that we would wonder what they were about in not playing "Nearer My God To Thee" (not recognizing the tune).

I hit the mute button to avoid the oddball "music" and the narration. Everyone is comparing this to the 1939 version but recently I got a 2 disk set of the music of the 1903 stage version and actually (from reading the plot, what there was of it, in the notes that came with the CDs) this movie hearkens back to it, with the dungeon and dictator and other anarchist elements. A 1910 film version is sort of the stage version in digest form. The play was performed by various amateur and professional groups from 1904 through the 1930s. So it's probable that Larry Semon developed his version less from the book(s) than from the play.

Though they are disguises and not characters, Semon and Hardy made a pretty good Scarecrow and Tin Woodman.

Semon didn't seem to know when to stop wringing a joke. Jerry Lewis was just as guilty in a few of his first post-Dean Martin films, too.

Charlie Murray was marvelous as the humbug wizard with that wonderful rubber face of his. I wish he's gotten more screen time.

The lines on the title cards aren't any worse than others of the period. It was the heyday of the wisecrack and very few of the comedies of the day overlooked an opportunity to use them. I'm including Laurel & Hardy, Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

(Spoiler ahead) Joyce Grenfell as the intrepid knitter stands out in my memory, probably because I was watching the St. Trinian's movies that she appeared in during the same time period. Her character knitted by the mile (not the mile-a-minute of crochet/knitting patterns) and the colors would change depending on her mood. There was a strip of (probably) yellow that she remarked was done on a "particularly dreadful day". It didn't matter whether the movie was in black and white or color because we had a b/w TV (which is where I saw it). She was murdered by having her knitting needles stuck cross ways through her neck. Mervyn Johns (Glynis Johns' father) was funny as the little man building an ark in the garden. I thought of him as this character just a few years later when we had a really bad, days long rainstorm in Southern California (where I grew up).

I would really love to see it again. I absolutely adore British character actors. No matter how dreadful the material (I didn't really think this was so dreadful when I was 13 but who knows in my 50s?) they can make one smile or laugh out loud.

Black and white or color, I hope Columbia releases it. They're usually short on extras on the DVDs but in this case I'd overlook it.

For a Stooges short, this one has a pretty straight title (not a play on words). Doesn't even look like a Stooges title! Since it's a Curly short, it's amongst their best (not that Shemp, Joe Besser, or Joe DeRita didn't do good ones). Curly and Larry each get a good bit--Curly when he's attacked by the hood of the car, the navigator, and Larry when he's the Fraulein, getting the plans from the Nazi.

This short was made at the height of their career(s) and before Columbia really tightened down on the budget (not that they ever were free-flowing with the dough anyway). The stock footage was pretty much kept to the planes dropping bombs.

An excellent "slice of life".

This movie actually doesn't depress me as much as it did when I was a teenager (I first saw it in my early teens). Instead of the end bumming me out, I realize it was just the way Jo's life was going to go--not as she had romanticized it. Nothing in her life was going to substantially change, in spite of her having a bi-racial child. Her mother is there, back in her life, having kicked out the "sister" (Geoff) and being kicked out herself by her new husband.

They are doing what we all have to do--carry on with what life hands you.

Jo sort of reminds me of me, her attitudes and somewhat melodramatic way of looking at everything--at least the "me" of 40 plus years ago. Hmmm, wonder what Jo is doing these days?

Got a DVD player for Christmas and "Desk Set" was one of the movies my daughter gave me along with the player. I don't think my daughter was aware of the Christmas party in the movie (I can't recall if she's seen it) but that certainly made it appropriate as a Christmas gift. :)

I got a big kick out of Tracy's exit from Hepburn's apartment. It looks like it was something done on the spur of the moment and the director let them go on (smart guy).

The commentary on the DVD left something to be desired. Dina Merrill contributes very little information about the film and mostly chit-chats about her private life and other projects she'd done with other people. In another context I wouldn't have minded but except for a few bits of trivia about her co-stars and her own part in the film, she had very little relevant to say about this movie. The other person giving commentary was *not* Neva Patterson, unless her voice changed. It was a man who *was* very informative. People have commented on how this was a filmed stage play and the looks of the sets. He explains why Cinemascope movies of the '50s have the look they do. The various technical aspects (and giving answers to questions asked of the librarians but not answered on film) he went into were fascinating. I'd much rather have had him do the entire commentary. Sorry, Ms. Merrill, and I do like you.

Using a hairpin to fix the mainframe computer (can we say "fried components"?) was a play on the old gag that a woman's hairpin would fix anything, from a broken down car to a broken doorknob (I own a book of newspaper cartoons and a 1910 cartoon has that last one) when a poor helpless male wasn't able to do the repair job. Though I don't think I'd class Tracy as very helpless.

Fun from beginning to end and, I think, one of the better Tracy/Hepburn movies.

Dressler carries the movie. Beery is very much a supporting actor here, no matter what his billing was but he gives Dressler a run for her money. They made a good pair. Rambeau puts in a good performance, too.

The young girl is rather insipid but they usually are in these kinds of movies.

The older leads are playing people who have seen better days, though I don't think Rambeau's character really had too many "better days".

Dressler had never been pretty (watch "Tillie's Punctured Romance" 1914 starring her and Charlie Chaplin) but she had kindness and a certain sweetness that came through the characters she played, no matter how rough they were.

It was Dressler's movie. She darn near steals the show from Garbo in "Anna Christie" (also 1930). A force to be reckoned with.

Min watching her foster daughter (who she never formally had guardianship of) going off on her honeymoon and then being escorted off by the cops because she had shot and killed the real mother because the woman was going to blackmail her own flesh and blood (she had abandoned her in infancy to Min) really brings tears to my eyes. Bill was going to help her escape to Mexico on his boat (though she is almost robotic in her responses, as if it doesn't matter any more). The woman had actually attacked her with a hot curling iron when she felt threatened by Min (Min said she wasn't going to leave that room, though she didn't actually _do_ anything except stand in the doorway). Min shot her almost as a reflex. It had been established earlier in the movie that Min kept a gun to protect herself.

She has a slight, sweet smile on her face as she's escorted by the police through the crowd of onlookers who had watched the young couple. She didn't make it known to her foster daughter that she was in the crowd. She had seen the girl off to a good start. They're were going to settle clear across the country so it'd be unlikely they'd know what happened and Min would never tell why.

This film has a lot of enjoyable moments, such as when Manson (Robert Donat) and Denny (Ralph Richardson) drunkenly blow up the sewer that has been the cause of so much misery and death in the village early on.

The ending sort of dangles. The powers that be, after Dr. Manson has, with the help of an unlicensed practitioner, saved a little girl's life by collapsing her lung with a new, untried method (she's the daughter of the Italian restaurant's owner who Manson, now a society doctor, had tuned out when telling of her daughter's problem), are looking very seriously to striking the good doctor from the medical register. He and his wife blithely leave the courtroom to face an uncertain future, possible as an unlicensed practitioner himself. But who cares as long as they have each other!

Cecil Parker is excellent as the society surgeon who has no more business in an operating room than the man in the moon. I felt like Dr. Manson should have pushed him away and dove in when Denny's life hung in the balance and was lost. Denny had been hit by a car after leaving Manson's posh flat, having fallen off the wagon when he realized his friend had lost his ideals.

That was the beginning of Manson regaining his ideals.

It's ironic that Donat's character is interested in lung ailments since chronic asthma is was took him. It had been commented on (about another of Donat's movies, I believe) that asthma is treatable now and with today's treatments he would have survived longer. Maybe. Maybe not. Asthma is an unstable enemy. Just when you think you have it under control, it turns around and bites you. True, there are more and better treatments. In Donat's time the standard treatment was adrenaline shots and tedral tablets. But it's still a killer.

Hmmm, maybe that's the aspect of the character that attracted him to making the movie.

One of the reviews for this movie said that Manson didn't have an affair with a society woman, as he did in the book (which I haven't read). They sure did imply a "relationship" since he stands his wife up for the hysterical (on many levels) society patient. Takes a little more than professional interest in her.

The "moral" ending floors me because she's being rewarded in a way for sleeping her way to the top and ruining people's lives. Or maybe not. Maybe the Hays Office thought that being "poor but happy in Pittsburgh" was the worst punishment that could be meted out to her sort. Since a pre-code version has been found (Robert Osbourne last week on TCM said there wasn't a pre-code copy) it will be interesting to see the two versions.

Until then, the best way to view it is to stop at the end of the ambulance scene, which may or may not have been the original ending (it may have been just before that) but it sure beats Pittsburgh! The pasted on "happy ending" plays so false because of what has gone on before. I personally like happy endings but only when they fit. George Brent, who has been accused of being a wooden actor (though I like him) gave a very good death scene. Just looking at the scene you knew that that was the end of the story. His and the movie's.

The camera moving up the outside of the building floor by floor as she did the same was a neat bit of visualization.

Her father certainly got his just desserts. Talk about poetic justice. Blown up by the still that he was pimping his daughter out to keep (yes, must keep one's priorities straight).

Maybe George Raft was in dutch with the department for being stupid. Like swiping evidence, disturbing possible crime scenes, getting cozy with possible suspects. OK, I'll give him that last one. But walking straight into dark rooms and not checking for light switches? Sheesh, he was just asking to get clobbered a whole lot more than he was.

I don't have any quarrel with his acting. He probably did pretty good considering the material he was given.

I agree the best scene was that of his mother and her friend re-enacting the possible way the composer died. It was a hoot.

Actually it wouldn't have taken much to have turned the whole movie into a comedy.

I've read several comments here that say "The Jazz Singer" seems biographical about Jolson but that's probably coincidence. No, it's not. Samson Raphelson, who wrote "The Day of Atonement", the short story that "The Jazz Singer" is based on, was inspired to write it by seeing Al Jolson perform on stage in Chicago in the early 1920s. The story is contained in a collection called "No, But I Saw The Movie" edited by David Wheeler ISBN 0140110909.

I get totally into the movie each time I see it and I've seen it dozens of times, sometimes re-winding it and watching it again in the same sitting. I first watched it 40 plus years ago when it shown on the afternoon slot of a local Los Angeles TV station along with commercials. KTTV didn't give it special treatment.

It is kind of fun to look for familiar faces. Roscoe Karns (he played "Believe you me" Shapely in "It Happened One Night") comes to the train station to tell Jakie about his big break and gives him his train tickets.

Jolson was a Broadway star and, from what I've read, had people eating out of his hand. He'd sing encore after encore and audiences would lap it up. Plus he took the time to make a lot of records when most stage stars left that to singers who worked for the recording studios. His recordings (even the acoustic era--pre 1925) are terrific. So people were familiar with him even in the boonies. "The Jazz Singer" came with a ready-made audience, not just to hear sound on film--there had been experimental short films that did that, in addition to the sound track of John Barrymore's "Don Juan"--but to hear JOLSON! I really don't think the film would have been the success it was with anyone else. I couldn't imagine anyone else playing the title role (and that includes remakes). I try to picture George Jessel in the part, even though he played it on Broadway, and I can't.

I adore Yudelson the kibitzer. When the men are gathered trying figure who should sing Kol Nidre since the cantor is unable, is a hoot, each, including Yudelson, thinking *he* should be the one to sing, implying the others couldn't carry a tune in a hand-basket. The scene where each person brings an identical prayer shawl for Papa's birthday is funny, too. Even Jakie, though his is different looking, brings one. Mama, who receives the gifts for Papa, looks as if she could be saying "Oy vey!" I like the change the movie made over the short story. He comes to his Papa before the old man's death. They're estranged but are reconciled before it's too late. In the short story he's summoned after his father's death.