Director: Archie Mayo
Those familiar with Edward Everett Horton in films like Holiday or the Astaire & Rogers vehicles will be delighted to see the usual supporting actor take on a rare leading role in Wide Open. His character is not too far removed from those that he played in 1930s comedies—he’s hapless and exasperated, finding himself in various situations that lead to his embarrassment. Wide Open expands the potential of this type by suggesting the wholesomeness of it. If Horton will amusingly steam with frustration as he continues to have the rug pulled out from underneath him, the desperation for a laugh eventually gives way to something that aspires for audience empathy, if only to celebrate his very perseverance. Moreover, while Horton is usually characterized as sexless, here he is equally virginal but still nonetheless a bachelor who, shortly into the film, turns red in the face as a beautiful young woman (Patsy Ruth Miller) finds herself half naked in his apartment. Horton and Miller have a likeable chemistry together, and there is a party sequence that includes a memorable interpretation of “Nobody Cares If I’m Blue” (sung with an appropriate drunken desperation by Louise Fazenda). Without Horton as the lead, Wide Open would be a forgettable entertainment, but fans of the actor will take an added interest in the material.
Director: Archie Mayo
At the time of its release, the New York Times published a review that heralded John Barrymore’s role as the eponymous Svengali as the very best of his career. It was a remarkable transition coming just one year after Barrymore’s take on Ahab in Moby Dick, said to be a performance in which the infamous drinker appeared inebriated on the screen. Barrymore’s performance is the most complex of the monsters from the 1930s deluge of horror films, a man equal parts diabolical and pathetic. In one scene, he considers using his hypnotic control over Marian Marsh for sexual purposes, but he collapses in a heap of self-hatred, pitifully wailing that, “it is only Svengali talking to himself again.” Beyond Barrymore’s performance, Svengali is notable as a remarkable feat of visual stylization. Art director Anton Grot contributes Germanic miniatures of a gnarled town, with crooked roofs and winding pathways, and Barney McGill photographs them in such a way as to make the sense of looming threat palpable. In the most acclaimed shot of the film, the camera focuses on Barrymore’s eyes before pulling back through a window, over several roofs, and into the room of Marsh. Directors like Rouben Mamoulian were experimenting with radical, showy camera movements at the time, but McGill’s use of the long take is shattering, exemplifying the extent of Svengali’s control over not only a woman, but the town below. Ironically enough, however, as his gaze is followed and the camera pulls back, the image of Svengali himself gets smaller and smaller, echoing his own castrating feelings of self-hatred.
Director: Archie Mayo
It’s a great bit of casting to peg Edward G. Robinson in the dual role at the center of The Man with Two Faces, which doesn’t for a moment attempt to conceal a twist that was meant to shock theatre-goers when they saw the play (originally titled The Dark Tower) in 1933. Playing the self-professed finest actor in the country and eventually sinking into a role so deeply that he fools all of those around him, it’s a character that forces the audience to reflect on Robinson’s incomparable talents–his elasticity as a performer is the main attraction. As for the film itself, it is visually masterful (credited to Tony Gaudio, who also shot Robinson in his break-out role in Little Caesar) and more than a little ridiculous. The talented Louis Calhern plays a caricatured villain so despicable that his wife (Mary Astor) becomes nearly comatose in his presence (one isn’t sure whether to attribute this to a history of abuse or bonafide hypnosis). He’s a marvel to behold in his grandiosity–it’s a ridiculous character, but the performance is every bit as intense as it is delirious. The film’s most accomplished moments come towards the beginning in which the arts of acting and directing creep into these character’s lives in more subtle ways. Robinson takes on the literal multifaceted role of the title, but the film makes an argument that everyone changes themselves based on the circumstances of those around them, whether that be to don the mask of the protector, or to find yourself rendered impotent when confronted by your abuser.
Director: Archie Mayo
Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck were paired for the first time as lovers in Gambling Lady, a Warner Brothers pre-Code that examines the uneasy intersection between high and low societies. Stanwyck plays the daughter of an honest gambler who commits suicide rather than turn crooked, and McCrea is a blue-blood who accidentally gets her arrested. Though the proceedings are agreeable and breezy, there is little to distinguish it from the pack – Mayo goes through all of the beats expected of both a crime picture and a romantic melodrama without much thought or visual sophistication. Only Stanwyck’s relationship with older men manages to provide some genuine intrigue. Early on, it’s treated as a surprise to see that the man she has been talking to is her father and not her lover – she calls him Mike, rubs his shoulders, even kisses him on the lips before they part. Once he is dead, she displaces this interest in McCrea’s often present father – just before the credits roll, she embraces McCrea for a kiss, only to reach so far around him that she holds hands with his father, as if suggesting a perverse love triangle.
Director: Archie Mayo
A well-crafted, sensitive weeper from director Archie Mayo, Ever in My Heart examines the prejudices faced by German-Americans during the first World War. Barbara Stanwyck stars as a Daughter of the American Revolution who marries a German-born college professor played by Otto Kruger. Once the war comes, the couple faces persecution by their community – Stanwyck’s brother, an American soldier, derogatorily calls her a “hyphenate”, scoffing at Kruger’s authentic claim of citizenship despite offering him sincere congratulations only years prior. The anti-German sentiment is mined more thoroughly than one might expect in the early-goings – the American cause is not portrayed sympathetically in the slightest, with the community being uniformly exclusionary and overly proud. Mayo, though having directed a number of quality pictures in his career, is not often regarded as an important artist of the period. Ever in My Heart provides a good case for his talents – in two pivotal moments, he maintains a lengthy close-up on Stanwyck’s face without cutting away for a devastating effect, achieving a tremendous poignancy in well-worn melodramatic territory.
Director: Archie Mayo
Marian Marsh, perhaps most well remembered for her role opposite John Barrymore in Svengali, was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1931 (an impressive year in which she was listed alongside Joan Blondell and Anita Louise, among others). Her charm is on display in Under 18 – a picture which, if not particularly noteworthy as a piece of filmmaking, is a fascinating sociological time capsule from the early days of the depression. Marsh is envious of the upper class models of her factory, and concludes that she doesn’t wish to marry her delivery boy boyfriend because he won’t be able to bring her out of tenement living. Though not quite as rife with sexual innuendos as its pre-Code contemporaries, the film has a terrific climax set at the home of a playboy millionaire played by Warren William. Desperate for money to pay for her sister’s divorce lawyer, she intends to sleep with the man for his favor. The resolution, however, is both improbable and nonsensical – had the film been released just three years later, one might assume that it was the product of Code-era compromise, but, as it is, it is remarkably out of tone with the rest of the picture, leaving a sour taste on what is otherwise a zeitgeist film meriting discussion.
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