Broadway

"Broadway" (1929) contains some instances of dizzying, stupendous camerawork; most of the film, however, is shot in a more prosaic manner. The sets are impressive, but the story playing out inside them is mostly trite. The two main leads lack charisma; some secondary roles (the cop, the crook) are better, and then there is Evelyn Brent. Brent had already starred in one of the very few all-talkies made in 1928 (!), "Intereference", so unlike most of the other cast members, she was not new to all this. And she has more star presence than anyone else. She is the perfect embodiment (and what a thick body it is!) of female vengeance, and her climactic scene with the crook single-handedly earns this film an extra half-star. The final sequence is in color, but in current prints, at least, it looks terrible: someone needs to remaster this. **1/2 out of 4.

"Broadway" is a very unusual film. While it is a very early talky and is dated in some ways, in others it's amazingly advanced...especially with the truly spectacular camera-work. For the artistry alone, it's well worth seeing!

The opening credits are shocking and very interesting...and you know you're in for a special film. Using a model of Broadway, a man dressed up like a demon roams the streets and the titles then appear over it! For a model scene, it was very, very well done. Also well done are scenes using cranes, amazing dissolves and a roving camera- - something rarely seen even in films of the 30s! Also amazing are the costumes....especially the one with the skyscraper hats!

As for the story, a mobster named Crandall owns the theater in which the film is set. He's involved in bootlegging and early on in the picture, he murders his competition. As he and his sidekick are dragging the body outside, Billie and Roy see them...and are told the guy was drunk and they are 'helping him'. This story is unquestioned...but when Scar is found dead nearby, Roy realizes what has happened. As for Billie, she obviously has feelings for Crandall, and he's been heaping his attention on her, and she lies for the guy when asked about this later. So what's going to become of Billie and Roy? And, what of the murder? Will it go unpunished?

This film is unusual because although you see lots of costumes and dancers, it's not a musical until the very end--which is, incidentally, in Two-color Technicolor...and it's very degraded (looking mostly black and orangy-red). The copy I saw on YouTube sure could stand restoration.

As far as the overall film goes, it was BRILLIANT for 1929....and still holds up pretty well today.

The Film Forum in NYC screened the sound version of this film on July 24,2012. The Technicolor last reel of course is lost but the rest of the film was complete and ran about 108 minutes. Will not give away the plot but is worth viewing just to see the innovative use of a giant camera crane to film the Night-Club scenes. Really amazing for a film made in 1929. I must say that the acting is really not that great for a film listed as a Universal "Super Production" in the opening credits.Glenn Tryon is passable playing the role of the comedian but you have to wonder how much better the film would have been if Lee Tracy, who played the same role in the Broadway Musical that the film was based on had appeared in the film also.

If you take away director Paul Fejos's flashy crane shots and stunning opening sequence set to the music of Ferde Grofe's "Metropolis," there isn't much left to "Broadway," an otherwise static transfer of a stage play to the screen in the early talking era. The quality of the sound is superior to most talkies made in 1929 and the camera set ups and actor blocking are slightly less moribund, but there are still too many long sequences of posed bodies mouthing dull dialogue. Glenn Tryon, the appealing vaudevillian from Fejos's "Lonesome" the year before, is fine as the hoofer who dreams of getting out of Club Paradise and hitting it big. And Evelyn Brent, in what amounts to a supporting role, dominates the screen with her smoldering presence whenever she appears. Problem is, in order to make this routine play about backstage intrigue involving showgirls and bootleggers interesting as cinema, Fejos chose to make liberal use of innovative, ambitious crane shots, requiring an inflation of the nightclub setting to such gargantuan proportions that the main character's ambitions seem questionable; isn't he already headlining in the biggest show place on earth outside a football field? Rather than a small-time venue, we get something more like a surrealist-cubist airplane hangar and it soon becomes clear that the movie is simply an excuse for Fejos to experiment with a new toy. The sweeping camera draws attention to itself, whereas the liberal use of superimpositions in "Lonesome" a year earlier revealed truths about modern mechanized drudgery and the nature of urban crowds. Most of the songs by Con Conrad, Sidney D. Mitchell and Archie Gottler are cut off before they can get much beyond their introductions, their purpose reduced to another means of showing off the gigantic stage set. At well over 90 minutes, "Broadway" outstays its welcome. The much-touted finale, synced to a reprise of the film's best song, "Hittin' the Ceiling," looks like a jerkily animated third-generation color photocopy.

Broadway now exists in two versions - the 88 minute visual silent with Hungarian subtitles and the 105 minute soundtrack only of the talking version (inflated for production numbers).

I was most impressed with the cinematography (Hal Mohr) in the scenes that could be filmed silently with soundtrack added later. The tracking and crane shots are amazing for any period, but especially for an early talkie; about an hour into the silent print, a morning after shot reveals the enormous night club set being cleaned by custodians with an almost surrealistically mobile camera. In contrast the scenes including dialogue are filmed rather conventionally with a non-moving camera.

The night club set is a stunner - looks like it took up an entire sound stage - kudos to Art Director Charles D. Hall. There are only a handful of other sets, mostly small backstage interiors.

The plot is very simplistic. I won't reveal any details as I don't want to provide spoilers. However, I can reveal this. There are two parallel plot lines - one involving a hoofer and his romance with one of the chorus girls, and the other a reel one murder involving management and bootlegging that relies on feelings of guilt and paranoia to bring the guilty party to heel.

Glenn Tryon is a lousy singer, but Evelyn Brent's superb performance as Pearl carries the film.

As a piece of cinematic history, it's a treasure to find. Now if the talking version pictorial elements surface, we'll be able to really compare the two.