Luci del circo

Rain or Shine (1930)

** (out of 4)

Mary Rainey (Joan Peers) takes over her father's circus after his death but soon finds herself in major financial trouble. The manager, Smiley Johnson (Joe Cook), always has a positive spin on everything but soon not even his fast talking can help the situation. Opinions on this film seem to be extremely mixed and I'm going to have to fall on the negative side. It's rather hard and perhaps unfair for my to criticize the film for the reasons I'm going to but here goes. I found Cook to be an incredible talent here and he gives an amazing performance. At the same time I'd say his performance was too amazing because he plays an annoying character and that's exactly how it struck me. The frustration the owner in the film has over his attitude and actions is the same frustration I started to feel and this really started to take away from the film for me. The first thirty-minutes kept me entertained but then I finally hit a wall to where I was wanting to hit certain characters. Again, it's somewhat unfair for me to bash Cook for giving a great performance but I couldn't help but to have his character on my nerves. The supporting performances are rather good as well and that includes Tom Howard as a dimwitted fool who can't keep anything straight. In perhaps the funniest and most unbelievable sequence, Ethel Greer, a real life "Fat Woman", falls out of a trailer and gets stuck in the mud. The men can't pick her up due to her large weight so they have to get an elephant to do the job. This scene is certainly outrageous and in some ways so shocking that I couldn't help but laugh my behind off. The ending picks up a lot of steam but by that point I was pretty much wore out and ready to move on.

In the early days of sound films, studios really didn't know how to use the new medium. Instead of normal speaking voices and normal actors, Hollywood felt a need to overwhelm the audience with sound. A lot of vaudeville comics who spoke a mile a minute were shoved in front of the cameras to take advantage of the fact that audiences could now hear the actors speak. Some of these early talkies are downright dreadful while some others are just odd curios. RAIN OR SHINE falls into the category of just plain dreadful.

Most of the blame for this film being so terrible and tough to watch falls on the shoulders of its director, Frank Capra. While Capra did great things for Harry Langdon during the silent era and from the mid-1930s on he made some of the most iconic American films of the era (IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, MEET JOHN DOE and many others), but even great directors have their duds--and this film was definitely a dud.

The film is nominally about a circus that is chronically on the verge of bankruptcy. However, the entire show was the vaudevillian, Joe Cook. While one of the reviewers thought that Cook was hilarious, he was simply too much--like a giant migraine. He talked and talked and talked and talked. If you liked this sort of in your face routine again and again, then you'd probably like the film. However, I didn't think he was funny and felt the director should have placed more emphasis on the talented members of the cast. That, or simply punched Cook in the mouth and told him to shut the heck up!! Terrible pacing, annoying dialog and nothing to like--this is truly one of the most painful films I have seen. I only kept watching because I assumed it would get better---it didn't.

It's evident this is a dated movie, but I think it is eminently watchable. Not Capra's best by any means, but a decent insight to the workings of circuses in the late 20's. A score of wonderful character actors, slapstick and physical comedy nicely blended with vaudeville routines. Yes, the dialog is fast-paced, but there are great one-liners and wholesome comedy. It's a shame the musical numbers are dealt with in the opening and closing credits rather than scored in the movie. Joe Cook is amazing as he juggles, tightrope walks, and balances his way through the movie. His dialogue is quick, tight, and funny. Most of the actors were unknown to me as an amateur film buff, but now I will look for more of their movies. The viewer can see the similarity to Wheeler and Woolsey, The Marx Brothers, Al Jolson, and other stars of early talkies. The visual reproduction is very good, with little background noise, as is the audio recording. This movie is part of a new Early Capra release with four other titles.

Pretty bad film.

This is like an exploitation film of the circus. It easily could have been the documentary about life of circus people; that would have been actually pretty impressive, since there are not much documentaries about circus folks, at least not at that time. Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is almost 70 years later.

But I digress. There is not much plot here, it's just circus doing circus in front of the camera. Acting is poor, story is not existent and it's pretty obvious that Capra at that time was the gun for hire and did what studio demanded.

There is only one reason to watch this film. If you are on a Capra marathon, e.g. you want to see all the Capra film, go ahead. If you don't seek to accomplish that, just stay away from pre-1933 Capra films. Almost all of them are pretty bad.

RAIN OR SHINE is a neat little circus film directed by Frank Capra and based on a Broadway musical that ran for almost a year in 1928.

By the time this film went into production, the vogue for musicals was over, so all the songs were cut from the film (a common occurrence in 1930). Still, there was enough plot to carry the 90-minute film.

Joe Cook was the star. The long-forgotten, Cook was a major star on Broadway. His nickname was "the one-man vaudeville" because he could sing, dance, do comedy, and perform a series of juggling tricks. Cook made his film debut in a 1929 talkie short called AT THE BALLGAME.

In RAIN OR SHINE he plays the fast-talking manager of a failing circus owned by a girl (Joan Peers) who inherited it from her father. Two employees are in cahoots to ensure the circus fails so they can take it over. In a weak subplot, Peers and her boyfriend (William Collier, Jr.) attend a disastrous dinner party at his snooty parents' mansion.

Cook is front and center through most of the film as he attends to all the problems and egos under the big top. There's also a funny running gag with Cook and a local citizen (Tom Howard) and how he becomes a partner with the help of the Princess (Louise Fazenda).

The finale is quite exciting after the bank attaches the day's receipts and the performers realize they won't get paid. Cook is terrific in a series of circus tricks as he tries to put on a big-top show all by himself. Peers and Collier are OK as the young lovers, Fazenda has little to do, Howard is funny as the local, and Dave Chasen (who founded the famous restaurant) is funny as the stooge.