Cortechba Overrated

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

JohnHowardReid Director: GREGORY LA CAVA. Dialogue director: Frank Reicher. Screenplay: Walter De Leon. Dialogue: Frank Reicher. Adapted by Jack Jungmeyer from the stage play by George S. Brooks. Photography: Arthur Miller. Production manager: Lucky Humberstone. Assistant director: Paul Jones. Sound recording: D.A. Cutler, Clarence M. Wickes.Copyright 26 September 1929 by Pathé Exchange. New York opening at the Colony: 5 October 1929. 7 reels. 6,028 feet. 66 minutes. Available on a 9/10 Grapevine Video DVD.COMMENT: Like the stage play, the whole action of the movie takes place on the one set. Admittedly, it's quite a large set, much bigger than a theatre could handle, but it's not very glamorous and does tend to out-stay its welcome. Nonetheless, I'm told that this is what a real newspaper office actually looked like back in 1929. More surprising still is the information that the reporters and their behavior are accurately depicted. Certainly - with a notable exception - the movie is competently acted. The exception, sad to say, is Carole Lombard who does absolutely nothing with her role at all, and looks about as glamorous as a street cleaner. Maybe she could point a finger at the wardrobe mistress and photographer, Arthur Miller, for her drab appearance, but her lack of spark and animation can surely be blamed on the director, Gregory La Cava. Yet some years later, she and La Cava got together for a movie that turned out to be the highlight of both their careers - My Man Godfrey (1936). But while La Cava's handling here is no more than routine, cameraman Miller brilliantly overcomes many early talkie, sound-proof booth problems.

kidboots Even though Carole Lombard was steadily catching the public's eye and picking up good notices she realised there was no long term future for her at Pathe. They were too busy grooming Ann Harding and Constance Bennett into stars and from the look of 1929 it seemed as though she and Robert Armstrong were going to be developed into a team!! Fortunately by the next year she was at Paramount and destined for better things.I don't think there would have been much incitement to seriously portray the effects of alcoholism at the height of prohibition - and with Robert Armstrong as the star there were going to be just as many laughs and wisecracks as serious moments. But no one told Carole and, surprisingly, she gives the film it's thoughtfulness.This is a "Battle of the Sexes" between husband and wife, "rival reporters" Margaret and Steve Banks - Margaret is the dedicated reporter of the Morning Herald who has just scooped her husband out of a "love nest, chorus girl, dope ring" story, he has just been fired by the Express because of too much time spent in speakeasys!!! The "dope" angle is more interesting - yes, in pre-coders there is often references to dope, hop heads, snowbirds etc but not to base the main story of a movie about it - unless it was one of those under the counter exploitation movies!! After being sacked once and for all, Steve storms out of Addison's office and makes good his promise to find a story that "will turn this town on it's ear" - the confession of a chorus girl Rose Perreti, exposing a big dope ring but soon after when Addison is found dead in his office all fingers point to Steve who has been set up by racketeer Joe Reno (Sam Hardy) who wants Steve out of the picture forever!!Special mention goes to "blink and you miss him" Lew Ayres as a copy boy. And Cupid Ainsworth who has the best role in the film as Vera, the paper's resident "sob sister". She has wise cracks for every occasion and bats off derogatory comments about her weight like Babe Ruth. There is even a conversation about being gay - Vera, with her very masculine looks and style of dress, is told to go and "be gay like I know you can be"!!!

bkoganbing Big News casts Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard as a pair of reporters married to each other but working for rival papers. If you expect to see the gifted comic Lombard from such future classics as My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century Big News will disappoint you greatly. This one is strictly the show for Armstrong.Armstrong drives his editor Charles Sellon to distraction with his drinking and carousing and it certainly is wearing on his marriage to Lombard. But as he says speakeasies are great place to pick up stories and Armstrong has been successful.A particular speakeasy owner Sam Hardy is the leader of a narcotics ring in their town and Armstrong has the goods on him. Hardy tries something stupid, he goes to the newspaper office and murders the editor and frames Armstrong for the crime. But naturally our intrepid reporter is too smart for Hardy.Big News is little more than a photographed stage play and the original play was no world beater either. It never holds your interest in the way such other films like Detective Story, Dead End, Rope, or Rear Window do that are all almost exclusively on one set.Big News is directed by Greogry LaCava who also did My Man Godfrey. Whatever he brought out in Lombard for that film stayed buried here. In fairness to Carole, she was not given much to work with.Still it's 1929 and movies were learning to talk. Films like Big News show how much was left to learn.

MartinHafer Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard star in this early talky about the newspaper business. Armstrong plays an obnoxious drunk who, inexplicably, Lombard loves. He constantly shoots off his mouth and you wonder why the paper puts up with him. By the end of the film, however, he's redeemed himself and shows that he's a darn find newspaper man.The film is odd in the way it portrays Armstrong as a relatively high-functioning and lovable alcoholic. In some ways, it seems to excuse his addiction and presents a very odd and convoluted message. It's also odd in that one of the characters seems to be that of a very manly lesbian. Both are things you never would have seen in a Hollywood film once the toughened Production Code was enacted in mid-1934--when alcoholism needed to be punished and lesbians needed to vanish.So is the film any good? Well, in spots it's quite good and in others it lets the viewer down. A few of the performances are poor (such as when the murder is discovered near the end of the film) but the overall plot is engaging and worth seeing. But, for 1929, it's actually quite good--had it been made a year or two later, I would have given it a slightly lower score.For folks like me who simply watch too many movies, it also was a thrill to see Tom Kennedy play a SMART policeman—as he almost always played very stupid ones!