SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Antonius Block The movie that launched Joan Crawford's career, and which so nicely captured some of the spirit of the flappers in the late 1920's. The scenes of her cutting loose with the Charleston amidst art deco furnishings are certainly the highlight. The plot itself is a pretty thin morality tale. Crawford and Anita Page pursue the same newly minted millionaire, who confuses who is "the pure one" and of course gets it wrong. Perhaps it's understandable, since there is a lot of dancing, legs, and playful kissing of guy friends to go around. There is an undercurrent of the double standard common for the time (how interesting this was made in the same year Woolf gave her 'A Room of One's Own' speeches); Dorothy Sebastian plays another character who must live down her past, and convince her husband to forgive her for it. The movie is silent and not in the greatest shape anymore, but that might have added a little to its charm. It's also interesting to see the short hairstyles, cloche hats, and the dialog:Offering a drink: "Li'l hot baby want a cool li'l sip?"After a big kiss: "What a service station *you* turned out to be!"By the shoreline, to a pretty song; ah youth: "It's such a pleasant thing – just to be alive!" "You want to taste all of life – don't you?" "Yes – all! I want to hold out my hands and catch it – like the sunlight."

secondtake Our Dancing Daughters (1928)Listed as a "silent" movie but actually an early synched-score movie with intertitles, and it's a really good one. If you think a dance and music movie can't be silent, check this out. Yes, it's 1928, less than a year after "The Jazz Singer," but we see a full blown plot about infidelity, some pretty terrific photography, and dancing like only 1928 can offer.The star is the ever self-aware Joan Crawford.But there is a whole slew of beautiful "girls" on hand here, daughters all of them, and parents with different kinds of acceptance and worry. All these young women are going out to party hard, and some disguise their intentions and others just let loose. There are lots of scenes for the men in the audience—women dressed in as little as possible for the times (which was quite little, before the 1934 Code) and lots of legs and bright faces and big eyes. That of course is also the downfall of what is a pretty amazing movie, filled with crazy fun dancing. Crawford was famous for her dancing (she won lots of trophies going out to local competitions—and I mean Crawford, not any character). We see it here. She's the wildest of the women (she tells one suitor she is "Diana the Dangerous"), and one parent even bemoans that their sweet girl is cavorting with the likes of such a wild one.But what else does this movie offer? Great question. I think it might be about courtship, or falling into superficial love, or maybe just how to snake a rich due with some lifted gauzy skirts. The men don't have much to offer, or show—they are fully clad in expensive tux-like suits. Alas. It's worth saying, as a photographer, that the visuals are really nice even if the camera is often stuck to a tripod. The use of very shallow focus (allowing for great soft backgrounds behind the sharp foreground figures), and the atmospherics of the place (the rocky coast, or the rainy day) are great. This is no German Expressionist film— nothing that remarkable—but George Barnes does what the film needs really nicely. (He did Hitchcock's "Rebecca," to give you an idea of his talent.) You have to see it with this in mind to get it, and then you'll see what I mean, especially the very very careful shallow focus.In the end this is all about boy meets girl…and the matchmaking and the engagements and the cheating. It's a fast ride, and if not especially deep or complex, it's fun and wonderfully immoral. I'll say, if you don't like silent movies you should skip this, I think. There are too many silent movie qualities here (like some of the exaggerated reactions, and the stiff over-telling of the story) to keep you going unless you are used to it. But there is a lot of the fun 1920s stuff here if you are prepared for the style. I liked it more than I expected, and some of it even made me wistful and appreciative.

gftbiloxi Wealthy and flashy Diana falls hard for Ben Blaine--who unjustly interprets her vivacity as looseness and in turn falls hard for prim and proper Anne--who is in fact a vicious gold digger with a heart of stone. Will Ben ever see through Anne's facade and realize Diana's true worth? Directed by Harry Beaumont with sets by the legendary Cederick Gibbons, OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS was bright, sharp, pretty to look at, and just sexy enough to make the censors fume--the type of film that MGM seemed to produce by the bushel during the late silent era. The studio expected it to perform well, but there was no reason for anyone to think it would generate more than passing interest, much less a legendary star. But it did.Born in 1904, Lucille Le Sueur endured a hardknocks childhood to become a popular chorus girl in New York night spots before signing with MGM in 1925--and renamed Joan Crawford she churned out some two dozen films in three years without setting the world on fire. Until, that is, MGM allowed her dance on table tops and despair of winning her true love in this slickly produced, well acted, but essentially formula melodrama. And even today it is still possible to see what all the fuss was about: not only was she bursting with youthful energy and appeal, it was the first film in which Joan Crawford really LOOKED like Joan Crawford, and although still limited her acting chops weren't half bad either.The overall cast is particularly strong, with Anita Page turning in a memorable performance as the pretty but wicked Anne and Dorothy Sebastian as Bea, a good girl with a few missed steps in her past; male leads Johnny Mack Brown, Nils Aster, and Edward J. Nugent provide solid support as various love interests; and Kathlyn Williams proves memorable as Anne's manipulative mother. While OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS will never rival the truly great films of the late silent era, it is still a lot of fun, and those who want to see Crawford's first cinematic hurrah will not be disappointed.GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Kieran Kenney Maybe I just missed something. Joan Crawford wanders aroundbig art deco sets in costumes only a movie star could wear, withtwo enormous eyes. If you look at her eyes in this film, it's reallysurprising. They're enormous. So much white area surroundingsmall dark pupils. And she upbraided Bette Davis for her bugeyes!This film is melodramatic tripe. Good for a few laughs nowadaysmostly, and a look into what drew money at the box office. I wishAnita Page's character had been more sympathetic. I really like tolike Anita in her performances, but here she's totally unlikable. Generally I don't mind that silent actors where lots of makeup andlipstick, but here the fact blazes out of the screen like nothing else. And it's a wonder we are supposed to care about any of them. Thewomen are shallow, and the men don't have a third of thebrainpower needed to catch on.Since I saw this movie, I have seen it's sequal, Our ModernMaidens. And I've seen the Clara Bow programmer The PlasticAge, and the Constance Talmadge/Ronald Coleman film HerSister From Paris. All of these films are more ephemeral now. They were fantasy films. Handsomely produced, but with slowpacing and uneven acting. Our Dancing Daughters, which I hadinitially heard a lot of good things about, was a resoundingdisappointment.