Rhythms

Vitaphone made a huge number of musical shorts during the early days of the talkies. In the beginning, the films were experimental shorts made to try out the new sound system before it could be used for a full-length picture. "Rhythms" is not one of these earliest ones--by the time it came out in 1929, Hollywood was switching to sound at a very rapid pace. But this film IS innovative compared to the other Vitaphone shorts of the day because it intercut scenes of nature (such as Niagara Falls and lakes). This is innovative because almost all their shorts of the day simply featured bands playing on a stage. This one also featured folks performing behind a screen for a nice silhouette effect. As far as the music of Leo Reisman and his orchestra goes, it is only fair--meaning that the visuals are actually better than the music itself.

One other word about this one, I was surprised that unlike the other restored Vitaphone shorts I've seen in the recent collections, this one is VERY rough and I hope it's further restored in the future--providing they can find a better print or computer programs get better at filling in the bad portions.

Rhythms (1929)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Early talkie-musical from Vitaphone and Warner has Leo Ruisman and his orchestra doing a few numbers including Some of These Days, Lonely, the standard Milenberg Joys and the highlight If I Had You sung by Smith Ballew. There were hundreds of these Vitaphone films shot in New York City as talkies made it possible for musical acts to be "seen" instead of just heard on the radio. Warner was certainly the king at introducing these faces but many of them are now long forgotten and that's where Ruisman comes into play. I think most people might remember him from a couple of his tunes showing up in PAPER MOON but this here was his only appearance in front of the camera. For the most part this is a nice little short since the music is nice and that's certainly the most important thing. For some reason the film features scenes from silent movies, which I'm guessing were meant to show a "peaceful" image while the music is playing. The effect really doesn't work too well but I guess we can give them credit for at least trying something different.

This Vitaphone short musical number features Leo Reisman and His Hotel Brunswick Orchestra. Okay, the short does have a couple of interesting gimmicks that do add value to the performance, that is the inter-cutting of Niagara Falls into the performance and showing the band performing in silhouette. That was a bit of a surprise and pretty cool. However, the only musical number of real interest to me was the soloist singing "If I Had You." When watching these shorts, I try to remember that they were shown as but a small part of a theater bill and let audiences hear and see bands and other well known performers that they may not have been able to see in live performances. But filmed musical performances by their very nature do not do full justice to the live performances. This may be why this short comes across as pretty flat.