The Squall

No one is going to mistake The Squall for a good movie, but it sure is a memorable one. Once you've witnessed Myrna Loy's performance as Nubi the hot-blooded gypsy girl you're not likely to forget the experience. When this film was made the exotically beautiful Miss Loy was still being cast as foreign vixens, often Asian and usually sinister. She's certainly an eyeful here. It appears that her skin was darkened and her hair was curled. In most scenes she's barefoot and wearing little more than a skirt and a loose-fitting peasant blouse, while in one scene she wears nothing but a patterned towel. I'm focusing on Miss Loy's appearance because she is by far the best if not the only reason to tune in to this antiquated early talkie and to stick with it. You sure won't be held by the dialog, which is hopeless. In one typical passage, Nubi gazes out the window at the departing caravan and waxes poetic: "Always the gypsies, they sing. Weird and sad. When the big sun have breath of fire that burn, and when the pale moon look from behind cloud and breathe air cold as death, they sing." Poetic, or what? Lovers of purple prose will have a field day. I can't help but wonder, however, if in her later years Miss Loy preferred to forget her involvement with this project.

Like so many early talkies this one was an adaptation of a Broadway success. The stage version opened at the 48th Street Theatre in November of 1926 and ran for over a year. The play provoked a famous episode involving the humorist and theater critic Robert Benchley, who had a well-known aversion to characters who spoke in thick dialect or pidgin English. According to a much-repeated anecdote Mr. Benchley squirmed uncomfortably through the opening portion of this show. The Spanish village setting (which became a village in Hungary for the movie, for some reason) gave the actors license to practice accents with varying degrees of success, but Benchley's patience reached its limit when, during a family dinner sequence, a door burst open and an actress dressed as a gypsy girl dashed into the room shouting "Help! Help! He keel me!" She then threw herself at the feet of the mistress of the household and exclaimed "Me Nubi! Me good girl! Me stay here!" At that point Mr. Benchley rose and announced to his companion: "Me Bobby. Me bad boy. Me go now," and left the theater.

The film version offers numerous examples of unintended humor but never approaches Benchley's level of wit. The melodramatic plot concerns the Lajos family: father Josef, mother Maria, and son Paul, a student at the nearby college. We would consider this prosperous family "upper-middle class" as they are landowners with servants and all the comforts of life, but their comfortable existence is abruptly thrown into turmoil when a gypsy caravan arrives in the village and their home is invaded by, yes, Nubi the nubile gypsy girl. She arrives at their door during the storm of the title-- symbolizing stormy emotions, I daresay. The girl is fleeing an abusive relationship and begs for sanctuary. After considering the matter the Lajos family agrees to hide her from her angry lover, who shows up shortly afterward but is turned away. Nubi becomes a servant in the household. Kindness motivated the family's decision to take her in, but soon enough that conniving little Nubi pays them back by seducing every able-bodied male in the vicinity, starting with the Lajos' servant Peter, then working her way up to son Paul. Nubi breaks up Paul's relationship with his fiancé Irma (played by Loretta Young, still a teenager), causes him to flunk out of school, and then prompts him to buy jewelry for her by stealing the savings of the family's maid Lena (ZaSu Pitts). Lena, for her part, is still mourning the loss of her own fiancé Peter, seduced and tossed aside by Nubi when she turned her attentions to Paul. Ultimately Nubi sets her sights on the patriarch Josef, and I suppose if the running time had been longer she also would've gone after Uncle Dani, Maria, the village priest and God knows who else.

I guess it goes without saying that a scenario like this one easily lends itself to parody, but even so during its first half The Squall exerts the undeniable fascination of a daytime soap: we watch, hypnotized, as the Bad Girl works her spell on the men-folk and wreaks havoc like an irresistible force of nature, almost like-- a storm! Ah-ha, another metaphor! But as the plot machinations grind onward the campy fun fades. During the later scenes we see less of Nubi as the focus switches to the dysfunctional dynamics of the Lajos family, and frankly after a while these people get to be a real drag. The son in particular behaves like an absolute heel, yet the parents never acknowledge this or face up to their own shortcomings; everything, we're told, is the fault of Nubi, that no-good tramp.

The men of the cast are dull. Aside from Miss Loy the only actress who rises to the occasion is ZaSu Pitts, terrific as usual. The mother of the Lajos household is played by Alice Joyce, a longtime silent star who seemed out of her element with speaking roles, and who retired soon after this. Loretta Young's fresh prettiness provides a nice contrast to Nubi's dusky allure, but her line readings are so awkward it's kind of endearing. No, there's only one reason to watch this flick, and that's Nubi herself. I can't think of another actress who could've played this silly role and managed to come off half as well. I'm not an objective observer, however. I have a desperate crush on Myrna Loy and will watch her in anything, even The Squall.

I watched this film mainly because of Myrna Loy and Loretta Young. Although the storyline is rather silly and the acting seems over-emotional and trivial today, the movie still has its very own charm. It might not be a milestone in film history, but it has its funny moments, mostly unintentional, simply from the way it has been made - such as the idea of rural Hungary in the 1920s with open jewel shops in the middle of the night. But it is a true delight to watch Loretta Young and especially Myrna Loy in one of their early films. Myrna totally stole the show from the rest of the cast - even though her lines were as silly as the rest of the dialogue and her part of the gypsy girl is so stereotypical it seems sort of racist today. Still, she made the most out of it and kept me watching through the whole two hours runtime. I even felt kind of sorry that later on in her career she didn't play any sassy villains anymore. Surprisingly well done was the music score, far better than the dialogue. Perhaps they had better made it a silent picture. So if you watch this movie as one of the first talkies and don't focus on the storyline too much, you might still enjoy this old 'treasure'.

I only watched this film because it's an early film appearance by Myrna Loy, but it's a pretty embarrassing early appearance. Loy made this film before she got big and when she was frequently cast in "exotic" roles. Set in Hungary, Loy plays a gypsy girl who's taken in by a kind family after she's escaped from her abusive master. Loy then proceeds to seduce every man in the household and causes all sorts of upheaval. That story might have been fun if this film were and edgier of pre-code melodrama, but it's stagey and not all that compelling. There's a famous story about Algonquin Roundtable member Robert Benchley walking out on the theatrical play version of which this film is based upon. In the play, when Loy's character bursts into the kind family's household, she states "Me Nubi! Me good girl! Me stay here!" Benchley then supposedly got up and said, "Me Bobby. Me bad boy. Me go now." and left the theater. Still, despite the terrible script and ham-fisted direction, Loy is fun in her man-eater role and makes the film watchable. Loretta Young also appears in the film as part of the kindly family.

As Hollywood was making its transition from silent pictures to talkies, 1929 is left as a year full of oddities and curios. The Squall is a 100% talking picture and is one of the more watchable talkies from 1929. While watching The Squall or any other talkie from 1929 one must take into account the movie was presumably filmed with a camera in a soundproof box. It's evident the actors in The Squall have been heavily coached by diction experts and instructed to say their line as clearly and enunciated as possible - a scenario which anyone who has watched Singin' In the Rain will be familiar with. Likewise, none of the actors turn their heads when speaking to avoid going off-mike nor at any point do any of the cast simultaneously walk and talk.

So while none of the performances in The Squall bar one certain screen siren are anything to write home about, the production values are surprisingly very high. The Squall was directed by famed Hungarian-British producer and director Alexander Korda. I can only speculate if the director's heritage is the reason why the film takes place in Hungary whereas the play the film is based on is set in Granada, Spain. The sets and costumes are very detailed in this upper, middle-class Hungarian farm from what I assume is around the turn of the century. Complete with grand windmills, herds of animals, farm equipment and some nice miniature work, the film succeeds in creating an atmosphere. Just as significant in an unusual move for films right up until the early 1930s, is the use of a music score throughout the entire picture, suitably a heightened and melodramatic one to accommodate the sound effects of blustering storms.

However, the real reason to watch The Squall and the film's saving grace is the one and only Myrna Loy in the overacting triumph of her long and varied career as the scruffy, barefooted gypsy girl Nubi. The gloriously, melodramatic performance sees this seductress manipulate three men in the same household as she tears the once idyllic Lajos family apart. Particularly pathetic is the son Paul (Carroll Nye), an utter simp who buys jewellery for Nubi from money he stole from his parents. I can watch Myrna Loy in just about anything thus I can easily buy into the destructive charm of Nubi as she over emotes in broken English and always referring to herself in the third person - even in one early scene as Nubi proclaims "no more!", it appears as if Myrna Loy is trying to hold back her laughter. The contrast to the vampish Myrna Loy is the purity and innocence of a wide-eyed Loretta Young as Irma, a mere 16 years old at the time.

It should come as no surprise for a film as melodramatic at The Squall to play big with its use of symbolism and metaphor. The film's opening shot features a Christian cross overlooking the farm and during a dinner the family has near the film's beginning, the grandfather states that squalls are the work of God that he "gives us shadows that we may know light. He gives us sorrow that we may know joy. And perhaps he sends the squall that we may learn the beauty of a limpid sky". Nubi, of whom arrives at the family home during the midst of a storm, takes advantage of the Christian principle of sheltering the poor and homeless only to wreak havoc - an evil spirit if there ever was one.

This movie was made in 1929, just a couple years since "talkies" started. And it shows. Myrna Loy was good as the bad gypsy, Nubi. Myrna, a girl from Montana, was typed cast in her early films as exotic women - gypsies, Asian women, women of mystery. I have been a fan of hers since I saw "Manhattan Melodrama" and "The Thin Man". But although this is a cute movie, she could not even save it. The rest of the cast seem not to know how to act natural. It seems they just read their lines. They all are so wooden. Maybe they were still use to not having to express their feelings other than by facial, as most silent films did, they did not know how to do it with words. Loretta Young and Zazu Pitts is also in this and I am glad to say they did improve with later movies. Loretta Young became a fine actress. It is worth the watch just to see a very young Myrna, Loretta and Zasu.