The Finger Points

Good story, but you can tell it was made in the early years of talkies - very slow, deliberate movements, and LOTS of dark eye makeup on everyone. The supporting cast is the strength of this movie - Fay Wray (2 years before King Kong) plays the love interest Marcia Collins. Clark Gable (eight years before Gone with the Wind) is the antagonist-designee Louis Blanco, who is helping to cover up the naughty things his boss is doing. Blanco is trying to convince reporter Breckenridge Lee, played by Richard Barthelmess to help them cover up the naughty things going on in this fair city. I love the line by Fay Wray that she can tell he's from the South from his accent, although the only accent I can hear is some dropped R's, (since he was raised in New York). Unfortunately, Barthelmess, who is very wooden and stiff, being used to working in the silent movies, is the main character and the weakest link here. Note in his list of films, he made about sixty silent films prior to 1930, but very few after that - probably his best known talkie would be "Only Angels have Wings" with Cary Grant.

This is another film I had to see in my unhealthy quest to see all of the available Fay Wray films out there. However, this film surprised me, as it was a pretty good story. It also has a young Clark Gable as a gangster in a scene stealing role that demonstrates his star power very early in his career.

The plot has been covered in other reviews, so I'll keep my review short.

The pluses: Fay looks great, Clark Gable is good, and the story is solid and interesting.

The minuses: Richard Barthelmess is fine, but being from the south, he shouldn't have even tried the accent.

Overall a fine film and definitely worth a viewing.

Socially-conscious Warners/First National delivered a corker of a newspaper melodrama in 1931, but this wasn't it: It was "Five Star Final." This fast-moving but muddled early talkie shares the crowded city desk with editors yelling "stop the presses!" and a cursory examination of the process of putting out a news daily. But here, the paper is genuinely excellent and socially responsible, not a muckraking tabloid. And the idealistic cub reporter (Barthelmess, who looks far too old to be a cub reporter) turns rotten awfully quickly, becoming a yes-man to a mobster (Gable in a typical early role, and effortlessly natural and likeable). It drains audience sympathy for our hero, and we don't see why his journalistically wise, sob-sister colleague (Wray, who looks too young to have Seen It All) would stick around with him, or take him back without his having really reformed. The motivations are confused throughout, and when our hero meets an unhappy fate, the movie seems to mourn him, but we don't. It's like a morality tale without a clear moral. Warners got better at its social realism quickly, and Barthelmess went from this comparative potboiler to the far more interesting "Cabin in the Cotton" -- again playing an idealistic sap, albeit one with more consistency.

Finger Points, The (1931)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Static but entertaining gangster picture has a wet-nosed reporter (Richard Barthelmess) from the South going to the big city to become a star but he soon learns that nothing is easy. After busting a gambling operation and getting nothing out of it, the reporter decides to partner up with a racketeer (Clark Gable) but soon the reporter gets too big for his current situation. This film is based on the life of Chicago Tribute reporter Jake Lingle who got involved with Al Capone and the rest is history. This film version is pretty good, although it's a bit slugish at time but this is due mostly to just how movies were during this early sound era. Barthelmess is hit and miss in his role. He's somewhat shaky during the nervous reporter segments but he settles down once he starts to enter the big shot period. Gable steals the show with his supporting performance and Fay Wray plays the love interest.

I love movies which give you a sense of what it was like to be living & working in the time. (It's the sociologist in me. ) This movie is one of these. The plot is very interesting and the acting is first rate all round. Fay Wray is very good, but Richard Barthelmess steals the show and not just in the "silent" parts. Never seen him better.