Feel My Pulse

I've come to the conclusion the people don't rate a review on IMDb on the basis of whether they found it useful, or even whether they agreed or disagreed with the reviewer's comments on the movie itself, but strictly on the basis that the reviewer has either praised a star who is no longer regarded as with-it, or demoted a star who is regarded as one of Hollywood's super-elite. I made both mistakes with the following review. I praised Richard Arlen and demoted William Powell – even though Powell himself often said that his characterization in this movie was not a performance he was proud of, and that he was simply tired of playing the villain. Anyway, although Louise Brooks always regarded Richard Arlen as one of the least capable actors in Hollywood, Arlen was in fact extremely charismatic in the right part. Oddly enough, it was the simple, easy, one-dimensional parts like his role in "Beggars of Life" that had directors like Wellman tearing their hair in frustration. But give Dick a complicated what-she-didn't-know-was, and he was terrific. His charming performance in this movie is an excellent example of the skill that enables him to carry off the acting honors with seeming ease, outclassing both William Powell (whose lack of enthusiasm at once again playing the heavy is patently obvious) and even Bebe Daniels (who plays on just the one hysterical note throughout with no subtlety whatever). To make the screenplay work, Bebe should at least partly meet her match in Powell. But she doesn't. She walks all over him from the first, and this destroys any comic tension in the plot. It's not until she comes up against Heinie Conklin that we find an actor who can equal Arlen in keeping her at bay. Director La Cava and photographer J. Roy Hunt do their best to keep up the pace and give the plot developments much-needed credibility and atmosphere, but finally go all out instead for an over-the-top, slapstick conclusion. Available on both an excellent Grapevine DVD and a just barely watchable Alpha.

Feel My Pulse casts Bebe Daniels. as a rich girl who because of her parents' fear of germs has been raised like a hothouse geranium. Howard Hughes or television's Adrian Monk has nothing on her.

Because of some 'excitement; it's decided that Daniels needs a rest cure and the family has endowed a sanitarium located on an an offshore island. But the mental health field just ain't that lucrative and the one they put in charge of the place has turned it over to William Powell and a gang of rum runners. Remember this is the time of Prohibition.

One of Powell's gang is roughneck Richard Arlen and while Daniels may have led a sheltered life she sure knows what she likes in men. Though the two don't hit it off at first she comes around.

The film is directed by Gregory LaCava and he would go on to direct William Powell in one of his greatest films My Man Godfrey. When he decides to play along with Daniels and treat her like a patient in her own sanitarium notice his body language. It really does look like Godfrey Park in My Man Godfrey.

The climax is hysterical as Daniels shrugs off all the inhibitions her hot house upbringing has given her. Can't say any more, you have to see it.

Glad this silent film has not been lost.

"Feel My Pulse" is quite an entertaining late-silent comedy from Paramount Pictures. This one takes an extremely offbeat premise and runs with it in a pleasing semi-deadpan style. Has been raised to be a hypochondriac according to the eccentric terms of a will. Now her skeptical Texan uncle has custody of her, so she escapes to the family-owned sanitarium, which has unfortunately been taken over by rum-runners.

Daniels plays this an understated, almost straight way that lets the comedy of the situations come through all the more, and, of course, much of the premise is an excuse for playing on the juxtaposition of Daniels' sheltered, mannered, stilted character among rough bootleggers, and this comes off well with the scenes of a newly-arrived Daniels trying to navigate riding in a taxi cab are some of the funniest.

It doesn't make sense to call this film talky since it isn't actually a talkie, but it is curiously dialgue-dependent, with frequent use of longer-title cards to carry scenes. This isn't usually too intrusive in the case of this particular film, but it's curious. The scenes that take place just after Daniels' character have arrived at the sanatorium, in fact, is essentially carried by a series of good puns that make ailments sound like drinks and vice versa ("local bruise" / "local brews"). This is a later silent feature, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were written before the studio knew if it would be made silent or not.

As others have pointed out the scene where a bottle of liquor is confused for medicine goes on a little long -- and so does a slightly disconnected scene of Daniels floating on an errant board that doesn't really come of as a stunt. Overall though the pacing is good the film moves a long at an enjoyable clip.

A Bebe Daniels take off on the Harold Lloyd classic "Why Worry?" from 1923. Bebe plays a rich hypochondriac who has been raised to think she's susceptible to all kinds of physical woes, when she is in truth as healthy as a horse. She is thrown into an adverse situation unknowingly (like Lloyd in "Why Worry?"), fraught with danger, but through her ignorance she manages to avoid harm. There she meets a VERY handsome taxi driver and orderly (played by gorgeous Richard Arlen) who seems taken with her, but becomes impatient with her imaginary woes. Lots of physical and situational comedy in the picture and some of the title cards are hysterical. William Powell is very believable as the fake doctor and his debonair and mischievous screen persona was obviously already formed by the time he made this 1928 silent with Bebe. The print is pretty good too, very few artifacts, which is unusual for a silent.

By the way, Bebe looks fantastic in this part. She wears very nice clothes. :)

Definitely recommended. I give it a 9 out of 10.

"Feel My Pulse" is an amusing, if short and insubstantial, late-silent-era slapstick comedy starring Bebe Daniels. Daniels started out in slapstick as leading lady to Harold Lloyd in the Lonesome Luke shorts before moving to Paramount and appearing in a couple of Cecil B. DeMille's early sex comedies. Here, she has a vehicle of her own, with an impressive cast of supporting players and good talent behind the camera. Richard Arlen (who also had an important supporting role in "Wings" (1927)) plays Bebe's beau, William Powell plays the baddie, and comedian Heinie Conklin plays a drunkard. Director Gregory La Cava would later team up most famously with Powell as the lead in "My Man Godfrey" (1936). And, its plentiful title cards were written by Academy-Award nominee (for the one and only time title writing was an Oscar category) George Marion Jr.

Discovering Daniels's considerable gifts as a silent comedienne and seeing all-time great actor Powell in one of his early supporting parts in a silent film (see him also in "The Last Command" (1928)), including a bit of fourth wall breaking, are just bonuses. "Feel My Pulse" is wacky fun, with Daniels as a hypochondriac-in a role that seems to have been taken from her former partner Lloyd's early comedy "Why Worry?" (1923), as well as being reminiscent of a comedy such as Douglas Fairbanks's "Down to Earth" (1917). Despite running barely longer than an hour, however, it seems to lack much of a narrative, and that's where the numerous intertitles come in to pick up the slack. Daniels travels to a sanitarium, which she kind of owns (although she doesn't control her finances, because, I guess, this is 1928 and she's a woman), so that she may rest from her imagined ailments. Problem is that the sanitarium is being run as a base of operations by rum smugglers (this is during Prohibition, remember). Powell is the knife-and-gun-wielding head smuggler turned rapacious phony doctor and adversary for Daniels, and Arlen is one of his henchmen who, through some very convenient plot contrivances, develops into Daniels's romantic prize. The ending is uproarious fun.

As for the title cards, they contain some good jokes, including on the vocabulary of Daniels's character. Not only her use of medical language (I had to look up "angina pectoris"), but her use of ten-dollar words such as "remuneration" and "immaculate" also confuse the smugglers. The contemporary slang (e.g. Calling Daniels a "young rib") and cultural references are also of interest. This movie taught me that, apparently, Gene Tunney was well-known for his intelligence. Who knew that anyone's go-to comparison for complex lexicography would involve a heavyweight boxing champion. Numerous, if funny, intertitles are a double-edged sword in silent cinema, though. I think they tend to fill the gap where more visual means should be used. Take Daniels and Conklin's drunken encounter, for instance-it could've benefited from less repetitive drunk talk and singing in the title cards and, perhaps, more physical slapstick.