La stella della Taverna Nera

The Wexner Center for the Arts screened the 4K restoration of this film on May 24th as part of their Cinevent preview. For such an early talkie, the camera is surprisingly fluid and the sound is ambient. The impressive movement makes this decent story better than average.

The story is very loosely based on the song "Frankie and Johnny." Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a prostitute working in a saloon called the Thalia in a seedy island town. She frisks drunken sailors and characters of ill-repute and her pimp Johnny (Ricardo Cortez) takes all her money. Frankie is described as a "good girl," which may mean she has not completely lost her innocence yet, but it is clear that that day is not too far in the future. One day a young sailor (Phillips Holmes) and his friends come to the bar and his youthful optimism makes Frankie see that he could help her escape her depressing life.

Twelvetrees is undeniably beautiful, and her acting is fine although slightly dramatic. Holmes truly shines in this role. He is boyish and charming and much less wooden than in some of his rich guy roles. With his hair down and his shirt torn he seems to truly breathe. Franklin Pangborn makes an appearance as a well-dressed drunk sans his trademark effeminate delivery, and he gets laughs anyway.

It's a variation of the Frankie and Johnny story with the same cast names and even a Nelly thrown into the mix courtesy of Thelma Todd. Bad guy Ricardo Cortez (Johnny) pimps out Helen Twelvetrees (Frankie) to steal from drunken visitors in a seedy dive on the waterfront in somewhere like Cuba. It's a rough bar that is frequented by sailors and people generally looking for a fight. Occasionally, if a customer gets too friendly with Helen, then that's the end for him - knife in the back.

As in the song - "He was her man and he was doing her wrong" - Cortez has a friendship with Todd. He doesn't seem too nice a person when he's around Twelvetrees. Into the bar strolls a new crop of sailors headed by Phillips Holmes (Dan) and it's love at first sight on his part leading him to dangerously pursue this 'taken' woman.

This film has a gritty, seedy setting which holds an interest with realistic characters. However, the film has to lose marks on 2 counts especially. The first is Phillips Holmes and his attempt to portray a tough sailor. He really doesn't need to puff out his chest when he walks. It's the blueprint for Popeye. Secondly, there was way too much attempted comedy with drunken sailors that just got tiresome. The women, in particular, in this film are good so it's a special mention for Twelvetrees, Todd and drunken lush Marjorie Rambeau (Annie).

This pre code film is from the early days of cinema. Yet its production values are not creaky. This spruced up version of the movie has a rather stylish credit sequence of waves washing over the sand.

The story begins with a woman who tries to disembark in America but she is sent back presumably labelled as an undesirable because of her criminal record, she is a prostitute.

The tropical island she is returned to is in the Caribbean, maybe Cuba. Set in the raucous, sleazy harbour area.

Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a good time girl. She get the sailors in the bar drunk, pop in a Mickey Finn so they can lose their wallets. Maybe a little bit more is given if the price is right

Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) controls the girls and he can turn nasty when provoked.

Dan (Phillips Holmes) is a sailor who understands Frankie and the path she has taken is not by choice. He has fallen in love with her and wants both of them to run away together.

Frankie knows that leaving Johnnie will not be easy. He will set his thugs on Dan. Maybe Dan's two drunken sailor friends will help him out.

The story is so-so and over the years become cliched being copied by other movies. Being set before the Hays Code, the sleaziness works well but a lot of it is implied such as the prostitutes in the harbour.

There is a lot of slapstick with Dan's drunken friends over the ownership of a bowler hat that has been stolen. There is a running gag as they play a slot machine where one wins money and the other does not.

Actually the slapstick becomes tiresome. There is a lot of visual flair by director Tay Garnett who has given a lot of thought to planning his shots.

I did think the look of Dan would now be regarded as camp. He looks like something dreamt up by Jean Paul Gaultier.

This isn't the safe, sanitised Cuba we see in HAVANA WIDOWS. No, this is a much darker, dirtier and dangerous place. Hugely underrated director Tay Garnett has gone for gritty, grimy realism here - this is certainly not the sort of place you'd find Joan Blondell! It's surprising therefore to find Helen Twelvetrees, the epitome of purity and sweetness here as one of the seasoned prostitutes servicing and fleecing the sailors on shore leave.

She might not have been as great an actress as some of her contemporaries but in this she is absolutely magnificent. Her dissolute character is so believably real and yet her face is so impossibly pretty and innocent that your brain explodes with the cognitive dichotomy of it all. If you've only ever seen her playing stereotypically mistreated young women constantly crying, this will be a revelation for you. Had she not got pigeonholed she might have been a great actress - who knows!

Interestingly this is one of those rare talkies made by Pathe before it was taken over by RKO. It's a superbly well made film and had the Depression not happened just as they were getting going, Pathe might have been one of the great studios - who knows!

Besides Helen Twelvetrees' remarkable acting masterclass, Ricardo Cortez is also great as her semi-psychopathic pimp. You can see why Garnett used him a year later to play the crazy, evil mob boss in his impressive gangster picture, BAD COMPANY. Overall, this is a surprisingly exciting and quite riveting drama. Some commentators have said that there's an annoying amount of irritating comedy - I disagree, I think the blend is just right making this a very entertaining film.

This outstanding pre-code melodrama cinched Phillips Holmes as a matinée idol. It's one of the earliest and certainly the best rendition of the Frankie and Johnny story...Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is the young prostitute on the Havana waterfront who is exploited by her nasty pimp (Cortez)and befriended, then beloved by an innocently angelic, poor young sailor (Phillips Holmes)(He even sings for her!) The Cuban government of the time protested the sleazy portrayal of its major port and the film was withdrawn after it's initial release. Thanks to the Hays code,it was never seen again and languished in film vaults. Holmes later starred in many more films in his tragically short career; "Broken Lullaby","Stolen Heaven", and "An American Tragedy" notably among them, but it was this film that raised him to luminary status. The gallant quality of the two young leads to rise above their tawdry environment and depressing circumstances is somehow still very touching and the film is an exceptional example 1930 film-making.