Seu Homem

"Her Man" is a very enjoyable old film. However, as I watched, I couldn't help but think that it was a bit like a Popeye cartoon--a very sleazy and adult Popeye cartoon at that!

The film is set somewhere where there is a port--perhaps on a Caribbean island. The summary on IMDb says that the leading lady, Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a Parisian but the location is definitely NOT Paris (there is no large port there and very few palm trees). Plus, neither Twelvetrees nor any of the other actors have any sort of French accent or make any mention of France. Regardless, this 'lady' works at a clip joint--a bar where they cheat sailors and the women are definitely NOT ladies! The place is run by a scum-bag named Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) and he oozes with sleazy and menacing charm. In many ways, he seems like a homicidal pimp---promising HIS women the world but forcing them into lives of quiet desperation.

One day, a nice sailor named Dan (Phillips Holmes) enters the place and Frankie is expected to do her routine--steer him to alcohol while drinking water disguised as gin. In other words, she gets him to buy her these expensive drinks and who knows how much, if anything, he'll be left with at the end of the evening. However, Frankie feels sorry for the guy since he seems pretty decent and she rescues him from the place. Despite her cold outer shell, he sees her as a decent woman--stuck in a hellish life. So, he offers to take her away from this dump. The problem is that the last guy who tried that was killed by Johnnie. What's next?

This is an amazingly gritty and sleazy sort of film. Oddly, however, they also threw in some comic relief that really distracted from the plot. Perhaps they thought the film would be too gritty and too depressing otherwise. Regardless, the film has some fine acting and is far less stilted than most early talkies. In particular, I loved the opening scene with Marjorie Rambeau walking through the streets as the camera moved with her. It was a difficult shot technically and it really impressed me as I watched this camera-work. Worth seeing and available for free at the internet archive website.

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.

It is probably notable - although this is a side story -for showing what happened older prostitutes as they began to trade on rapidly diminishing assets. The very first scenes are Annie (Marjorie Rambeau) leaving the Havana bar where she has probably been for decades and leaving a ship with the cops recognizing her and telling her to go back onboard. That with her criminal history she cannot come into the US. Then you just see her feet and legs from the knee down, walking wearily along the street, back to the Havana bar that is her home.

The central story is about a young prostitute, Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees), her pimp, Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez), and a young sailor, Dan (Phillips Holmes) who sees the good in Frankie and wants to take her away from all of this. The film portrays Frankie as a pickpocket, but nobody dresses in such a ridiculous gaudy fashion just to empty the pockets of drunks, so her true profession is merely implied. What Frankie doesn't know is that Johnnie is a killer and will do anything to keep her in the bar and working for him.

There is some comedy thrown in that actually works. I say that because during Prohibition it seemed that filmmakers thought that just having someone publicly drunk was supposed to be funny when today it is tiresome. But the duo of Harry Sweet and James Gleason as Dan's two continuously drunk sailor companions is truly funny. So is Franklin Pangborn as a rather distinguished fellow with a bowler hat that the two drunk sailors want to steal. It's odd seeing Pangborn depart from the snooty effete fellows that he usually played. Slim Summerville is a drunk who continuously tries to knock hats off of people's heads. What is this obsession with hats?

I'm not spoiling anything, because the movie doesn't say this or even imply it, but because Frankie says she doesn't even know her birthday or her folks and has been living a life of cheating and stealing as long as she can remember, I rather wonder if Annie was her mother? Annie seems to focus on Frankie's welfare more than on the other girls in the bar, and if Annie grew up knowing nothing more than what Frankie knew -stealing and prostitution since childhood - maybe she thought that what little she did was what motherhood looked like. The sins of the fathers being visited on the third and fourth generation may not be God being vindictive as much as it is the statement of an unpleasant truth.

I'd recommend this one. It has good camera work and natural performances for it to be an early sound film.

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.

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.