La nuova generazione

This film is one of the rare surviving goat gland films, that is, it's a part talkie. The film was made in 1929, and although more financially or technically advanced studios had graduated to all-talking pictures by now, poverty row Columbia was just beginning to work with the new technology. As a result, the film is split rather oddly into silent and talking portions, and it goes back and forth between talking and silent throughout the picture. However, it is very well done in spite of this. They must have had some trouble with synchronization, because often the speaking portions will have the speaker turn his/her back to the camera so you can't see that the sound is out of sync. Also, there is a song performed at a distance in which you can clearly see that the singer's lips and the song are out of sync.

Enough about the poverty row qualifications. The film itself is an excellent Frank Capra work about a Jewish family in a poorer section of New York City. Don't expect the optimistic Capra of later years here, though. The film is surprisingly downbeat although the Capra themes of the importance of family and the evils of chasing riches for riches sake shine through.

The film opens with Julius Goldfish (Jean Hersholt) selling from his push-cart. Actually, he's loafing and talking with friends and ignoring the push-cart. His wife Tilda (Rosa Rosanova) scolds him about his loafing and says he'll never get ahead. Meanwhile their children do not get along with each other. Morris, their son, is always looking for ways to make money, even salvaging stuff from a burning building in order to have a fire sale. Birdie Goldfish (as an adult, Lina Basquette) and Eddie Lesser (as an adult, Rex Lease) are childhood sweethearts. Ma Goldfish is always building up Morris' industry and ingenuity, and Birdie is Pa Goldfish's pride and joy, although Ma and Pa love both children.

Time passes, and the adult Morris (Ricardo Cortez) builds up the push-cart into a thriving antique business and moves the entire family to Fifth Avenue, not so much because he wants his family with him, but because you feel he would be embarrassed to have it known that his family is living on the East Side. Morris even changes his name to Fish to leave his Jewish roots behind and be accepted in the gentile social circles of upper crust New York City. To this end he tries to control the lives of his parents and his grown sister, even shooting disapproving looks at his dad whenever he wears his prayer shawl. Eventually Morris turns his parents into museum pieces and pushes his sister out of the family when her marriage to Eddie embarrasses him socially. The end is bitter-sweet with a final scene that is hard to forget.

Highly recommended as a touching dawn of sound film and a showcase of Capra's talents during this technologically challenging era when so many others were making either stiffly acted static dramas or ludicrous musicals in this transitional year of all-talking pictures.

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.

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.

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.

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.