Weary River

Singing gangster Richard Barthelmess (as Jerry Larrabee) is sent "up the river" after an innocent bystander is killed in one of his orchestrated shoot 'em ups. In prison, Mr. Barthelmess (#46039) has more time for singing and less time for racketeering. He becomes a hit in the big house and decides to go straight on the outside. But, after serving his time, Barthelmess receives a rocky reception. While a wonderful singer, he's derided as an ex-con. Through it all, Barthelmess is encouraged by beautiful blonde Betty Compson (as Alice Gray). She and warden William Holden would like Barthelmess to keep trying, but he is tempted by his criminal past...

"Weary River" is a part-talking, part-silent film. It begins as a silent, with oddly primitive background music (for 1929), and turns "talkie" early in the running time. You're thinking it will remain there, but the silent style occasionally returns. Perhaps the soundtrack on these scenes was inferior and re-takes unsatisfactory. While mostly a sound film, the spirit is silent; this may be why the technology appears superior to many other early talkies. The possibly better all-silent version should be restored, if possible...

Then a very big star, Barthelmess maintained his standing during the transition from silent to sound. His voice was fine, but Barthelmess is obviously better in the older style. Barthelmess also mouths his songs for a vocal double. Taken from this film, the song "Weary River" was a big hit for the popular new singer Rudy Vallee. Randolph Scott and Sally Eilers are extras and elevator "boy" Raymond Turner looks frightened. Director Frank Lloyd's artful prison sequences require no dialogue, and photographer Ernie Haller is an obvious asset. Their assistant Alvin Knechtel was killed in a plane crash, sadly, on the verge of a promising career.

***** Weary River (2/10/29) Frank Lloyd ~ Richard Barthelmess, Betty Compson, William Holden, Louis Natheaux

"Weary River" is what you might call a transitional style movie from Warner Brothers/Vitaphone. While it's not truly a full talking picture since much of it is silent and uses intertitles, some of it is sound--a bit of the dialog and the songs. This is exactly what they did previously with "The Jazz Singer" and by 1929, they'd finally be making all sound pictures. So, many of the films from the studio in 1928 would be like this...providing enough sound to please the masses...for now.

Jerry (Richard Barthelmess) is a gangster, though he dresses nice and doesn't look or sound like one. His life of crime eventually catches up to him and he's sent to prison. The warden of the place is an odd one--very progressive for the time and dedicated to fixing the cons who can be fixed. As for Jerry, he's initially dubious but soon finds a niche leading the prison's orchestra and writing music. He's so successful that he eventually becomes a radio sensation and one of his songs is a hit. Soon, he's released from prison. However, there's a strong pull from his old life--and when he finds out who set him up, he's mad enough to kill. What's next? And, how does the old warden enter the picture?

This film suffers a bit here and there because the movie is a tad overly melodramatic. And, the story wraps up too quickly and easily. Still, for the time, it's a very good picture and worth your time.

The plot of Weary River is a peculiar amalgam of gangster movie, love story and musical centering around a sensitive hood played by Richard Barthelmess who, after being sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit, discovers his true passion for music and becomes a radio star (based on a true story, believe it or not!). As an entertainment, I give this film 7 out of 10 stars. It's dated but well-paced and amusing without being particularly outstanding.

This review is about Weary River's soundtrack, which is an astonishing achievement for its time but overlooked by film music historians... possibly because the recordings were only rediscovered and restored to the film in 1997.

Film music historians often talk about Max Steiner's 1933 score for King Kong and Franz Waxman's 1934 score for The Bride of Frankenstein as if Steiner and Waxman magically invented synchronized music for film out of thin air... which is preposterous. Due to the success of The Jazz Singer, early talkies were mostly musicals. But it's one thing to have people burst into song in the middle of a scene as if they were on the stage, as in Ernst Lubitsch's superior 1929 film "The Love Parade"... it's something else entirely when the music has to synchronize with action and dialogue over the course of multiple shots and scenes, as in Weary River.

You see, in early talkies, all the sound had to be recorded live simultaneously. If you were going to have music under dialogue, or sound effects, or dialogue looping, it all had to be recorded at the same time. They didn't have multi-track recording in 1929.

Weary River has musical underscoring in virtually every shot of the picture. If you wanted underscoring in 1929, you had to have the orchestra and conductor on the set with the actors. But Weary River has music that flows from silent sequences into talking sequences. To allow that to happen, the composer had to write music for the entire film after they had shot the silent sequences and edited them together but BEFORE they had shot the sound sequences. The composer/conductor (Louis Silvers, who certainly deserved the big screen credit he got for his work) would then have to record all the music for the edited silent sequences. Where the silent and sound sequences were to join together, the conductor would have to record the music to a metronome beat; this would allow the yet-to-be-recorded sound sequence to join seamlessly with the silent sequence musically.

At some point in this process, the composer and director would have to collaborate in order to pre-plan the shot list for the sound sequences... because Weary River has a very sophisticated editing scheme for the visuals. There are a lot of different kinds of shot sequences leading into spoken dialogue. You don't just go from a silent sequence with musical score into a static shot with dialogue on a soundstage. There are many cuts, pieces of business, scene changes, sound effects or synchronized spoken words, all of which had to flow seamlessly into a spoken dialogue exchange in the film with unbroken music playing under it. That means a lot of planning, charts, diagrams. There is nothing spontaneous about the synchronized sound and music of Weary River. It's a choreographed dance of visuals and effects and music and dialogue, all recorded live on a soundstage with actors on a set waiting for their cue. Did they have the conductor in a soundproofed booth with glass windows containing a metronome so that the click didn't get onto the sound track? Did they run edited film behind the orchestra with punches flashing the tempo while the actors waited on the nearby set for their cue to speak? There was clearly one sequence I saw where an actress had to sit with the orchestra and deliver her line in time to her own actions on a film playback which then flowed into a sequence shot live on a set with other actors. This is not a typical early talkie. The fluidity of the shots, and the way the music synchronizes with them and works with the dialogue to create an integrated whole, all recorded in one pass... mind boggling. Things flow together so seamlessly that you don't even realize what you're looking at.

Compare Weary River with a 1929 film like The Vagabond Lover; its shots and music integration are simplistic, static, nothing more than 2 or 3 cameras pointing at a band playing and singing. 1929's The Broadway Melody is exactly the same, primitive camera positions and static shots and nothing very complicated.

Weary River, on the other hand, is a much more sophisticated production... to achieve that fluidity, that seamless integration of music and sound and imagery, required some really extreme measures on the part of the production team given their technical limitations. I'm surprised it's not more highly regarded. In terms of technical achievement, Weary River rates 10 stars.

Unfortunately, the music is not as memorable as King Kong or Bride of Frankenstein. But Weary River makes sound film look like silent film WITH a synchronized musical score and dialogue, which is an amazing feat. Director Frank Lloyd won the Oscar for best director that year, and he deserved it. In 1929, the team at Warner's was the best in the business when in came to sound films, and Weary River is a technical tour de force. You won't see anything more fluid with background music until 1932's groundbreaking Love Me Tonight.

I am a fan of early talkies.I have seen many but none quite like this.The first reel is silent,the second sound,the third starts off silent then 3 minutes in sound comes in.For the rest of the film,silent and sound constantly interchange.Was this supposed to be an experiment.Was it started as a silent picture.Were they short of sound apparatus some of the time?Why didn't they just make one sound and one silent version?We shall never know.I actuallybfound it quite entertaining even if I got fed up listening to Weary River.

Mostly talkie that's part silent (a goat gland), this film boasts solid performances by the stars: Richard Barthelmess and Betty Compson. He's a small-time gangster who gets framed by a rival and goes to prison. She's the moll with a heart of gold who waits for him.

This early talkie also boasts a few songs, including the wonderful title song sung by Barthelmess (but really Johnny Murray). Not just a gangster picture, this one shows how Barthelmess reforms and goes out into the world only to be called CONVICT at every turn. He almost goes bad again but a visit to the old warden (William Holden) sets him straight. Of course the rival gets bumped off anyway.

This film garnered a lot of bad publicity in 1929 because even though Barthlemss (a major star of his time) signed statements that the singing voice is his, rumor had it he was dubbed. It's obvious he's not singing live but whether the voice is actually his, we may never know. Still, Barthelmess gives a solid performance as does the beautiful Betty Compson (check out those close-ups!)as the loyal friend.

WEARY RIVER may be the first early talkie where there was a controversy over possible dubbing. It almost doesn't matter now, but Barthelmess got caught in a lie, stating he did his own singing when the songs were dubbed by Johnny Murray. Watch this one for Richard Barthelmess and Betty Compson--both early Oscar nominees--in solid performance in a very early talkie.