RAOUL WALSH Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBBB. USA, 1928. Gloria Swanson Pictures. Adaptation by Raoul Walsh, titles by C. Gardner Sullivan, based on the story Rain by W. Somerset Maugham, and the play by John Colton, Clemence Randolph. Cinematography by George Barnes, Robert Kurrie, Oliver T. Marsh. Produced by Gloria Swanson, Raoul Walsh. Music by Joseph Turrin. Production Design by William Cameron … More Sadie Thompson (1928)
BBBB (out of 5) An aging movie extra (Emil Jannings) drags his tired body to the set of his latest assignment, another day of earning a dollar fulfilling a silent-era stereotype. He flashes back to ten years earlier when, as a Russian general who was also cousin of the Czar, his Bolshevik enemies make a pauper … More The Last Command
BBBB.5 (out of 5) This excellent, beautifully shot drama is considered the film that sparked the craze for gangster movies in the thirties. Rough thug George Bancroft finds his lawyer friend Clive Brook at a bar and convinces him to give up the booze, turning the man from a useless bum to a dapper dan in no … More Underworld (1927)
BBBB (out of 5) Charming comedy from the sophisticated treasure trove of classics that Harold Lloyd made in his heyday. He plays an obsessed baseball fan who can’t hold on to a job for very long, but is very good at keeping the heart of a beautiful girl with whom he is madly in love. Her … More Speedy
BBBBB (out of 5) This beautiful film won the only Academy Award ever given out for Best ‘Unique And Artistic Picture’, and it was well-deserved. It tells the story of a plain-jane housewife (Janet Gaynor, who tries to be plain but is clearly not) whose husband dabbles with a city girl who convinces him to … More Sunrise (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
BB.5 (out of 5) Inter-class romance occurs when Russian peasant John Barrymore rises in the ranks of the Czar’s army through exemplary service and becomes a lieutenant. He falls in love with a beautiful aristocrat (Camilla Horn) who scorns him because of his low birth and, thanks to his Pepe Le Pew-level methods of wooing her, … More Tempest (1928)
BBBB.5 (out of 5) James Murray is terrific as John Sims, an American born on the fourth of July to parents who expect great things of his life. The result is actually quite disappointing when he gets married to a lovely young woman (Eleanor Boardman) and never makes it far enough in his career to … More The Crowd
