Para alcanzar la luna

Looking at this film it is impossible to understand why Douglas Fairbanks never made it as a talkie actor. He really is splendid as a high-flying businessman who gives it all up for love. Energy to burn and still striking to look at (at 48 years old - he even has a shirtless scene) his star presence is undiminished by words. But the words are actually pretty good - the film is based on an Irving Berlin musical, but only one song remains (and that is sung for no apparent reason in the middle of the film, by a baby-faced Bing Crosby.)

Also good is Bebe Daniels as an aviatrix and especially fine is Edward Everett Horton as Fairbanks' valet. Their rapport and obvious affection for one another is very touching and provides for some great comic moments.

And the art deco sets are to die for!

While this film was apparently issued as a musical, there is really only a single musical performance in the entire 66-minute version that I saw, lasting only about 4 or 5 minutes. The original issue apparently had more in it, and considering that it was Irving Berlin material, it's a great pity that more of it didn't remain.

That being said, however, the single production number that does come along, 45 minutes into the film, is easily worth the price of admission. Not only is it the earliest extant film version of a Bing Crosby performance (and I swear he was wearing a toupee, even then!), but his solo piece was wonderfully supported by a second from Bebe Daniels, and yet a third, from a sultry-voiced woman who is no longer recalled, and all of it given life by a jazzy dance troupe — not as performers, but as actual dancers. It projects the storied Jazz Age with marvelous resonance, and is a joy to watch.

Douglas Fairbanks was 47 years old when he starred in "Reaching for the Moon," and in nine more years, he would be dead from a heart attack. He had only two more starring roles after this, and ended his career with only five movies since the advent of sound. While bickering with Hollywood moguls is cited as the main reason for his early retirement by age 51, his few "talkies" hint at his fading star.

No one could doubt his continued athleticism. In this movie, he showed some of the moves and agility that made him the king of the swashbucklers throughout the silent film era. But two things seemed to me to detract from his screen persona. First was his bombast and flamboyance. Surely, these were attributes in silent films when facial expressions and body movements were exaggerated to make up for the lack of sound. Fairbanks seems to be one of those early era actors who couldn't adjust to the less audacious acting. The second thing was his high-pitched voice. It wasn't effeminate, but its higher pitch did detract from the rougher masculine image of his leading role.

Bebe Daniels, on the other hand, had no difficulty transitioning from silent to sound film. She started as a child actress and had a long string of movies through the end of the silent era. She had a beautiful singing voice and had a number of good roles in musical films through the 1930s. She married actor/singer Ben Lyon in 1930, and in the late 30s they moved to England where they were a very successful husband-and- wife team on stage and on the radio.

This was also just the third appearance of Bing Crosby in the movies. Although his name had not yet appeared in any film credits – and wouldn't until the following year, he did have one song in this shortened film version. It also was the first film with Irving Berlin's music.

The plot of this film is OK, but the script doesn't make it very convincing. Still, it is an entertaining film with some historical value as well. It gives us a picture of the Hollywood scene during the years of transition from silent to sound films. We see some of the stars of those early years. And, one more little note of history to me was the setting of the ship voyage during the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Not many movies were made that had the great stock market crash in them. It's understandable that Hollywood wouldn't draw people to movies about depression, with the widespread depression that followed. But the treatment of the stock crash in this film gives it a nice added historical touch about an event that is rarely found in films of the mid-20th century.

At not quite 71 minutes, the version of this film that I have seen is even shorter than the theatrically shortened version listed by IMDb, although it does retain the Crosby footage. Perhaps the severe editing is one reason that I found this to be the most confused (and confusing) film of its period. We are given no clue as to why characters suddenly behave in a completely different way than they have previously conducted themselves, allegiances dissolve and reform for no apparent reason, and what might have made for an interesting plot twist (the introduction of drugs into a cocktail by Horton as valet) becomes no more than an excuse for Fairbanks's financial wizard to leap around his stateroom like a monkey playing football. Still, all the actors seem to be giving it everything they've got, trying to put the script across, and being able to see the three leads and Bing at the top of their games is the only thing that makes this movie watchable.

This movie was supposed to be a musical, but by 1930 audiences had tired of at least the "All Singing" part of "All Talking, All Singing, All Dancing" movies. Virtually everyone's first talking picture was a musical, and there just wasn't enough good music to go around. Theaters were even putting up signs in the cases of movies that sounded like they might be musicals with statements that read "This is not a musical" so as not to repel audiences. This situation lasted until 1933.

In this case, the movie probably would have been much better if it had gone through with the originally planned musical format. The introductory titles show that the music was written by Irving Berlin, and the cast even includes crooner Bing Crosby, who was so good in "The King of Jazz" that came out that same year. Instead, there is only one musical number two-thirds of the way into the film, and that is the only place we get to see or hear Bing Crosby. On top of that, Bebe Daniels, the lead actress, was a much better singer than she was an actress. Thus making this a romantic comedy of sorts really took away from all that she could have brought to the movie.

What you're left with is a little bit more than a shell of a movie. It seems like nobody bothered to fill in the blanks left by the depletion of the would-have-been musical numbers. I give this movie six stars instead of five mainly because of the historical value. Douglas Fairbanks would make only two more movies after this one. Someone else has already mentioned the factor his voice played in the end of his talkie career. It is worth mentioning that his voice isn't outright bad, but it just doesn't match the swashbuckling image he had developed during the silent era. It's a higher pitch than what you're expecting. It is great fun to see him doing some of his trademark acrobatic moves during the film, and it's hard to believe a man of almost 50 could still be so agile and have such a youthful and vigorous appearance. Particularly entertaining is Edward Everett Horton as the valet. He had a good career in silent films, but he would do even better as a character actor in the age of talking pictures where dialogue really allowed him to shine as a well-meaning if somewhat befuddled character in a myriad of films. Also, various sets in the film show off some fine and interesting examples of 1930 architecture, and it is interesting to see how the early stages of the depression were interpreted by people at the time. In 1930 the stock market sell-off is still portrayed as a "panic" and a temporary set-back that has merely bankrupted a few high-rolling financiers.