The Younger Generation

THE YOUNGER GENERATION (1929) starts as a silent film, complete with synchronized audio track (for music and sound effects), but eventually lapses into an early talkie with spoken dialogue. The scenes alternate between silent and sound throughout the duration of the film. It's an interesting curiosity for film history buffs, as the movie was released at seemingly the exact moment when Hollywood transitioned from silent cinema to talking pictures.

The story is nothing groundbreaking. The Goldfish family rises from the cultural melting pot of the Lower East Side to Fifth Avenue high society, thanks to son Morris (Ricardo Cortez), a shrewd businessman who grows the family furniture store into a successful antiques emporium.

Morris rules his family with an iron fist, forbidding his sister Birdie (Lina Basquette) from seeing her childhood sweetheart from the old neighborhood. The ritzy Fifth Avenue lifestyle stifles Papa Goldfish (Jean Hersholt), who misses his friends from Delancey Street. Morris even legally changes his surname from Goldfish to the less-Jewish "Fish" in order to distance himself from his family's ethnic heritage.

As an early talkie, many of the line readings are a bit awkward, though Basquette handles the dialogue better than the rest of the cast (even Cortez). But even with her naturalistic delivery, the lines are often written awkwardly.

Still, the human drama pulls at your heart. Financial success brings misery to the Goldfish family. Morris is a real jerk, and everyone else in his house suffers as he climbs the social ladder. Cut off from her family, Birdie stitches together a happy little life with her songwriter husband, while Morris obsesses over his social position and leads an ultimately empty existence. Lina Basquette is pretty cute as Birdie and Jean Hersholt's performance is heartbreaking.

In this film, we see Morris Goldfish (Ricardo Cortez) bring success to his Jewish family, first as a young newspaper boy in New York City, and later a very successful, ambitious businessman. His mother (Rosa Rosanova) sees his skills, and encourages him, but the father and sister miss their old ramshackle home and old friends on the lower east side. This is one of the crossover films, where the soundtrack technology was invented while the film was being made. About halfway through the film, it switches from a silent film with title cards into a talking picture with sound track. Then it goes back to using title cards until the very end, with the final scene using sound again. Most of the cast had been making silent films for years, so they probably had to adjust to the sound portions. Good job by most of the cast. Papa Goldfish (Jean Hersholt) spends most of the film lamenting their new high-society lifestyle, and it gets annoying after a while. He won't even be happy when one of his kids gets engaged and married. We watch as Morris gets more and more successful, and he treats his own family very badly. Most of the story is told in dialogue, and after the big, grand opening, it looks like the rest was filmed in one room. This came out just before the big money crash of 1929, so we can assume that Morris will get what he deserves later, even if this story ends mostly on a sad note.

A young Frank Capra slips easily into a milieu you wouldn't expect him to have much feel for--the Jewish Lower East Side--in this early talkie, adapted from a Fannie Hurst novel. Hurst wrote soap operas that validated the feelings of the common woman, but here she's more intent on portraying immigrant Jews, a subculture most of America probably knew and thought little about, with dignity and empathy. And the histrionics are effective. Capra always had a way with actors, and he helps Jean Hersholt, as the stuck-in-his-ways paterfamilias, and Lina Basquette, as a feisty but sympathetic daughter, to their best performances. Ricardo Cortez is more of a natural as the son than you think--he was born Jake Krantz. The early-talkie format, with some scenes with dialogue and others with titles and sound effects, is awkward--if we can hear footsteps and doors slamming, why can't we hear dialogue?--and the not-too-happy ending, with the son punished for his acquisitiveness, is a bit of a downer. But it's loaded with atmosphere, and shows Capra learning his trade quickly.

Watched "The Younger Generation" (1929) with Jean Hersholt, Lina Basquette, Ricardo Cortez, Rosa Rosanova, Rex Lease, Syd Crossley, and others. Concerning a Jewish family from NYC's lower east side. Directed by Frank Capra, this is silent with three short talkie sequences and a music and sound effects overlay otherwise. Hersholt is content in his surroundings, and loves to joke and laugh and be merry with fellow street hawkers, while his wife, Rosanova, wishes to move up and out of the life they're in. Son Cortez is already hawking newspapers and making money at a very young age, set to rise out of this life and onto Fifth Avenue. His sister, Basquette, is the apple of her father's eye, and she is enamored of a young harmonica player, Lease. He wishes to become a song writer. Cortez and he are at odds from early childhood. As years pass, Cortez becomes ultra successful and moves, taking his family with him, up to Fifth Avenue and tremendous wealth. But the happiness that was seemingly inherent in most of the family is now barred by a steely front of money and vapid social status. Eventually, Cortez actually snubs his family, calling them foolish servants in front of invited wealthy acquaintances so that he won't have to admit that they're his parents. His parents are shattered. The scene is shattering! The final scene, after several circumstances with Lease and Basquette in-between, is also shattering. How Cortez is situated at the end is monumentally shattering.

This moral fable is brilliantly executed by all involved. For me, this was the best performance I've ever seen Cortez give. I was bothered near the beginning with some of Cortez' hand placements which reminded me too much of stage performing and less of film acting. Other than that, the other performances are nothing short of great. The film, though possibly not for everybody, especially if you're turned off by moral fables, is revelatory for the period. It will instantly remind many of "His People" (1925) with Rudolph Schildkraut if any are familiar with that silent; they're nearly the same story, and, curiously enough, Rosa Rosanova is in both films. The film's Jewish circumscription is felt through and through, and Capra has obviously purposely made that choice. The ethnic aura makes the film even more compelling. The prayer that Hersholt prays near the end is supremely moving in context, and the resulting events are the threading of the needle sewing the coming tapestry.

Simply outstanding! The print was also nearly perfect, and the sound was actually well done for 1929. The talkie sequences don't necessarily add anything special to the film, but must have been very satisfying to audiences when the film was released. The sequences don't seem to be like other goat-glanded films of the era, but the sound is used in conjunction with the rest of the film. The final sequence before the very end scene is sound. The end scene itself, which is profoundly silent, is tremendously moving because of its silence. Highly recommended!

Younger Generation, The (1929)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Early Capra melodrama has poor Jewish family taken out of the ghetto by their youngest son (Ricardo Cortez) who strikes it big. He moves his father (Jean Hersholt), mother (Rosa Rosanova) and sister (Lina Basquette) into a large house and expects them to do what he says and stay away from the "filth" they grew up around. Soon the three start to realize that money can't buy happiness but will the son learn this before it's too late? At this point in time Columbia was still a very small studio so they couldn't afford to go all in in terms of sound movies so this is another example of a silent with a few sound segments scattered throughout the film. I've always found this to be incredibly distracting but I think Capra does a great job at when to use the sound and I also think the quality of the recorded words is among the best I've heard from this era. Considering how poor the studio was it's rather shocking that some of the other studios early talkies didn't come off sounding better. With that said, there are some major problems with the film but for the most part it's a nice time filler that fans of the director will want to check out. The biggest problem is that even in 1929 this material was way too predictable. There's really not a single thing that happens in the film that you won't see coming from a mile away. The format pretty much follows every morality film that came before it and I just wish at some point Capra would have shaken things up just to keep us off guard or at least in some drama. It should come as no shock that Capra does a great job with what's here and manages to keep the film moving quite fast and he keeps it as entertaining as the screenplay will allow. The cast also keeps things moving nicely with their fine performances. Cortez would play this type of role countless times in his career and he always managed to do good with it. Hersholt clearly steals the film as the tortured father. In the end, this isn't the greatest film ever made but I think Capra did the most he could considering what he had to work with. I think those who like to search out these early talkies will find the quality here to be above average and will make one wonder why some of the bigger studios didn't have their stuff sounding as good.