The Power of the Press

Power of the Press, The (1928)

*** (out of 4)

Nice comedy/drama from Capra. Clem Rogers (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) is a cub reporter who gets his big break covering the murder of a District Attorney. One the scene Rogers sees the daughter (Jobyna Ralston) of an upcoming Mayor leaving the house and soon it's all over the news that she was involved in her death. She claims she's innocent so the reporter sets out to see if she really is and soon uncovers a dark political plot. This Columbia film runs a brief 64-minutes and while it doesn't feature anything ground breaking, it does manage to keep you entertained with a smile on your face. The best thing going for the film are the performances with Fairbanks coming off very charming. He's very believable as the rather dumb reporter yet when it's time to be serious he can manage this as well. Fairbanks can play both the comedy as well as the drama and his energy helps keep the film moving. Ralston is also very good as the daughter and the chemistry with Fairbanks comes off very well. Mildred Harris is terrific as the mystery lady who might know a lot more than anyone else and Philo McCullough and Wheeler Oakman turn in fine performances as well. The movie is so short that we really don't get any sort of character development or a well drawn out story but I really don't think the point was to make some sort of grand mystery. The movie was clearly meant to be light entertainment and that's what it is. Capra's direction perfectly handles the lighter moments as well as the romantic moments but he also handles the suspense quite well. There's a terrific scene where Fairbanks plays drunk to try and find some information from a bootlegger that works perfectly and what really happened to the D.A. is good as well. Fans of Capra and Fairbanks will certainly want to check this out even though it's rarely talked about when people discuss either man.

Director Frank Capra, signing with Columbia Pictures in 1927 after severing ties with comedian Harry Langdon, said he "wasn't at home in silent films." But his body of nine movies without sound was a learning visual tool for the young director. It helped that Columbia, headed by brothers Jack and Harry Cohn, was a recent start-up studio producing mainly shorts and two-reel comedies as fillers to play between the bigger studios' main feature films. When the ambitious Capra was hired, he at first had to prove himself as a talented filmmaker whose resume, besides directing a scant few of Langdon films, was thin. Judging from his first couple of years's output at his new studio, he definitely proved his worth.

In the first year with Columbia, Capra directed seven 1928 feature-length films. His final movie that year was October 1928's "The Power of the Press," about a cub reporter (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) who gets the assignment to cover the murder of the city's attorney general. The young newspaper man stumbles upon a web of organized crime and corrupt local politics. The fourth estate factors in a number of future Capra films. "The Power of the Press" also begins a common theme of the director's by focusing on dishonest politicians.

The magic of "The Power of the Press" is seen in Capra's quick pacing when the action unfolds. He absorbed the Soviet filmmakers's philosophy that an inch of static footage is wasted space. The "fat" has to be excised when the activity on the screen quickens. Capra also had the gift of interjecting humor into certain scenes his audience least expects. "The Power of the Press" follows a familiar pattern of Capra's showing a sincere but inexperienced protagonist getting duped by corrupt people surrounding him, but emerges much the wiser by triumphing over such dishonesty.

The lead in "The Power of the Press" was 19-year-old Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (son of the famous actor), whose presence in the tail-end of 1925's "Stella Dallas" increased his visibility, securing him larger roles. He's exuberant as the rookie reporter Clem Rogers, who's given the large murder story when the paper's editor finds no other reporter in the newsroom so late at night. Clem discovers Jane Atwill (Jobyna Ralston), daughter of the opposition candidate running against the city mayor, hightailing out of a window of the murdered city attorney's house. It's a set-up by the current mayor, knowing if she's a prime suspect, he's golden for a no-opposition election. But Clem digs deeper to discover the corruption inside city hall.

Jobyna Ralston, comedian Harold Lloyd former lead actress for a number of his films, was enjoying success in her free-lancing days She appeared in eleven movies after her final picture with Lloyd, 1927's "Kid Brother," before she received her big role in "The Power of the Press." Another actress in the film was the former Mrs. Chaplin, Mildred Harris, who continued her busy stagecraft playing Marie Weston.

19-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Jr plays a cub reporter who stumbles upon Jobyna Ralston as she exits the house of a recently violently deceased DA by the window. A snappy little drama from Frank Capra with welcome touches of humour to paper over the thin plot.

Frank Capra follows up a well-made but misguided naval thriller with another thriller, this one centered around a young reporter trying to uncover some corruption and crime at the highest levels of his unnamed city, and its right back to feeling like a Capra film. It doesn't have the same warmth as some of his better-known films, but it's got that little guy standing up alone against the big guy dynamic, all while Capra shows surprising affinity with thriller mechanics. It's a surprisingly effective little film.

Clem (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is the newest man at the newspaper, given the task of writing weather reports while his editor (Robert Edeson) cuts out all of the florid language he adds in while he dreams of breaking the big story that will make his career, much to the derision of Johnson (Dell Henderson), a senior reporter who laughs at his dreams. Luck comes when Clem is the only one around as the editor receives news that the district attorney has been murdered, sending Clem to the scene to pick up what news he has. He stumbles across a young woman, Jane Atwill (Jobyna Ralston) fleeing the scene, given the scoop by the nearby Van (Wheeler Oakman) that she had something to do with the murder. Clem has made his mark, his editor accepting the story and putting it on the front page in a huge headline.

Now, there's a small thing that films occasionally do, that I find to be more prominent in silent films than sound ones, where we get montages of "how things work", and Capra offers us a quick montage of how the newspaper press works mechanically. We watch Clem write the article, the papers go to the layout men, the layout men hammering the new plates into place, the new mold getting made, and the new printing plate getting put on the roller. It's quickly paced, doesn't get bogged down in the details, has no intertitle to explain what's going on, and it's informative while being germane to the plot, if not entirely necessary. It's a good little interlude that's well handled in its place.

The plot ends up turning when Jane shows up, demanding that Clem retract the story because it's not true, she's the daughter of the leading candidate for mayor, and the story is tanking his chances of winning. Clem goes to his editor demanding it to be retracted, a demand that leads to him being fired. Clem and Jane end up following the trail they pick up that takes them into the corruption of the other candidate, Robert Blake (Philo McCullough), and his band of crooks defending his secret past that involves the hidden dame Marie (Mildred Harris). The specifics of the actual history aren't that detailed (it's a MacGuffin, in the style of Hitchcock, so fine), but the trail of getting to that secret is detailed (a bit silly in a couple of respects, to be honest) and straightforward, making Clem into a real reporter who wears out his leather soles to get the story.

There's fun to be had in this film, and part of it is the winning performance from Fairbanks Jr., having adopted some of his father's charm and applying it as liberally as he could to this brash, young reporter. He's not swashbuckling, but he's adventuring anyway. It's a very plot heavy film, not allowing much in the way for character exploration, so charming is the right way to go for a lead. His supporting cast is the result of strong typecasting, especially with Oakman as the violent gangster who pops in and out of the story.

In a curious note, the print I saw seemed to be missing a brief section of the exciting climax where Clem gets a gun away from Van, the sort of plot mechanics that matter in some small manner, the movement of people from one place to the next is important to make sense, but ultimately don't matter that much for meaning and intention of the overall piece. I only bring it up because it was jarring but didn't affect my appreciation for the film. It's not like Capra left it out on purpose, it was just lost to some projectionist or other over the course of the previous 95 years.

Anyway, The Power of the Press is a demonstration of Capra's ability to move in and out of genre like any good studio director of the era. He was making films his own within them, the little guy who gets fired from the newspaper being the only one to continue the fight against the corruption of city hall (well, sort of, just a guy who wants the position) is purely the sort of thing that Capra would get known for, in particular films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. His storytelling is rougher, but his technical skills are surprisingly adept (there are some tracking shots in here that are really quite fun). It's him in proto-form, and it's nice to see him continue to change and grow as an artist.

Frank Capra's fast-paced "The Power of the Press" is even more dazzling in its 66-minutes (cut from 72) Kodascope version. Young Douglas Fairbanks plays it just right as the go-getter hero, taking care that his brashness is always cleverly tempered. His delightful interpretation of an always-laughing bootlegger is highly amusing. It's also good to see Jobyna Ralston as the in-peril heroine, Robert Edeson as the cigar-chewing editor, Dell Henderson as a blob of a reporter and Wheeler Oakman as the crook's chief accomplice, but it's blonde Mildred Harris who manages to steal the movie from all of them – and that's before you realize who she actually is, none other than the Mildred Harris who married Chaplin and then flitted around high society after her divorce in 1921, had a running affair for years with the Prince of Wales, married a gent named Everett McGovern, divorced him in 1930, and that some year introduced the Prince to another high-flying socialite, Mrs Wallis Simpson. She was only 42 when she died of pneumonia in Hollywood in 1944. Of her 134 movies, only a few survive. "The Power of the Press" was her last starring role. But what a role!