Dance Hall

The graceful camera motion, combined with the voices mismatched with mouths confirms the trivia entry to this 1929 RKO talkie: this was shot as a silent and then sound was goat-glanded onto it. Also, Arthur Lake, better known for his role as Dagwood in the "Blondie" movie and TV series for twenty years, is unbearably twitchy in this love triangle set around a dance hall.

Nonetheless, there are some technical issues to this movie that make it important. There is an early example of two people doing ballroom dancing that is shot in a long take to show their movement. Most film historians indicate that this manner of shooting dancing was an innovation for the Astaire-Rogers films about five years after this, yet here it is. Perhaps this was a specialty number, but it points the way. There is also some antediluvian foley work in the home shots, feet clumping along the floor, utensils clattering on dishes and doors latching and unlatching. They are loudly annoying, but definitely added sounds.

However, unless you are afflicted with a technical curiosity in such things, you can skip this one.

Dance Hall (1929)

* (out of 4)

This here is one of the worst films I've seen from this era of Hollywood when they were switching from silent to sound but at the same time it's a must see. Tommy (Arthur Lake) loves his dance hall partner Gracie (Olive Borden) and wants to marry her but a good- looking aviator (Ralph Emerson) whispers a few things in her ear and she falls in love with him not knowing that he's just playing her. DANCE HALL is bad on pretty much all levels including a mysterious technical one that I'll get to in a bit. As for the movie itself, it's pretty awful right from the start with some very horrid performances, an obnoxious and predictable story and some of the worst direction you're ever going to see. What's really bad are the two lead characters because both are just so annoying and incredibly stupid that you just want to shake both of them in hopes that they'd wake up. I really can't think of anything "good" going on with this thing but thankfully it's bad enough to where it keeps you entertained. Now, the strange thing is that the audio track appears to be dubbed or something. The trivia section at IMDb is the only place I've seen comment on it and a search through various forums turned up nothing. The spoken dialogue is often seconds before or after the moving mouths on the screen. This apparent dub job is worse than those English version of various Godzilla movies and it's so bad here at times that people are done speaking with their mouths by the time the audio starts. I'm not sure if the original actors dubbed their own dialogue or not but whoever did the voice of Lake sounds just awful. Whatever the case is, DANCE HALL is without question one of the worst films I've seen from this period but it's also highly recommended to those who enjoy bad movies.

I noticed that the sound was pretty weird in this early talky--I think anyone would since it's so obvious. It was badly out of sync at times and it was kind of funny. It does not appear to be just a silent with sound added, as the film is VERY voice-intensive throughout. It looks like they shot it like a talking picture but either lost the sound track or added one later very haphazardly. BUT, on the positive side, so many of the films from 1927-1929 with sound are practically unintelligible when you try to watch them today--and "Dance Hall" is easier to understand than most. Too often, you can barely hear the actors because the sound technology was so bad--here they are mostly very loud and very clear--mostly. A few of the actors did mumble their lines a bit. And, I still wish they'd captioned this film before showing it on Turner Classic Movies.

Tommy (Arthur Lake) loves to dance and has won a lot of trophies with Gracie (Olive Borden). He loves her but is so tongue-tied he's never told her. When a slick aviator blows into town (Ralph Emerson), the pilot isn't afraid to express his feelings to Gracie and she's soon smitten with him. You almost feel sorry for Tommy, though he is a bit of a weenie and never speaks up about his feelings. And, he's too much of a nice guy to say anything when the pilot confides in him his feelings for Gracie. And, he whines a bit and needed to 'man up' so to speak. So will Tommy ever profess his love for Gracie? And, what will happen to the pilot? Tune in and see.

I actually thought this film wasn't quite as bad as most of the reviewers said. I guess this is because I've seen tons of 1927-1929 films and realize they can be a lot worse than this one! This isn't exactly a glowing review but in context, "Dance Hall" isn't a bad film at all. A good film? Well, not exactly--but a nice little time-passer, definitely.

A few final observations. Arthur Lake is known to old movie fans as Dagwood from the Blondie films--so if you are wondering where you saw him before, this is probably it. Also, the soda fountain routine was a variation on one Laurel & Hardy did a few months earlier in "Men 'O War". I wonder if some others used it before them.

I can't bring an expert historian's perspective on 1929's "Dance Hall", but I can speculate some. It must have been among the first batch of talkies produced by RKO, but clearly doesn't have the production values of a "Rio Rita".

In fact, the TCM print demonstrates clear issues with sound and picture sync. It doesn't seem to me that this was ever intended as a silent, nevertheless the entire soundtrack seems to have been dubbed in by the actors after the fact. One could speculate whether this was done because of technical failures or limitations at the time of filming or for budgetary reasons, but it creates a jarring effect that will turn some viewers off immediately. It does seem though, that this could be corrected through restoration work, but who's going to put up the money for something like that?

As for the film itself, it's a fairly paint-by-numbers love triangle set in the world of the dance hall. Arthur Lake seems born to play these naive lovelorn 20-something roles, and while we're supposed to identify with and root for him, it's hard not to also want to slap him upside the head a few times as well, viewing the film through 2013 eyes.

Visually, the film is somewhat ahead of many other 1929 productions in that it keeps its characters moving and mostly avoids the interminable stagy scenes and long pauses characteristic of the period.

It is painfully obvious where the film is going at any given moment, and anyone who's seen just a few movies of this age won't have too much trouble predicting the next scene at any given time. It also has that hallmark of the era, the oddly placed comic relief character, who in this case shows up for his biggest laugh during arguably the dramatic crescendo of the film.

All in all, a middling melodrama that is somewhat more visually interesting than many of its 1929 cohorts, plagued by issues with the sound technology used, which will turn off many but be tolerated by others.

Likeable little b-movie featuring a young Arthur 'Dagwood' Lake as a young man whose gawky mannerisms vanish when he's on the floor of his local dance hall. His partner of choice is Olive Borden, but she only has eyes for flashy, two-timing pilot Ralph Emerson. Production values are low, and the sound is frequently out of synch, but that somehow adds to its homely charm.