Director: Charles Brabin
Austrian-born Mady Christians enjoyed success on the stage and screen in Germany prior to her arrival at MGM with A Wicked Woman, a melodrama about the plentitude of sacrifices made by a mother for her children. The early scenes are very promising–it’s a black night, with raucous amusements confined to a jazz bar while our heroine is confronted by her drunk, abusive husband. A quick scuffle leads to his death. Director Charles Brabin and cinematographer Lester White use high-contrast lighting to give texture to the run down home on the swamp, and that only heightens when Christians disposes of the body while lit only by crashing bolts of lightning. A long shot of her rowing a boat in a lake, with her ghostly pale face framed in a black cloak, is an image that evokes Charon, the ferryman of the dead from Greek mythology. From thereon, as Christians establishes a wholesome life for her three children, the weepy gets sidetracked with sub-plots that either go nowhere or wreak havoc on the tone (has there ever been a more unlikely romantic pairing that Betty Furness and Sterling Holloway?). Christians plays big, with her guilt and worries recessed deep into her face in every shot, but it mainly works. Despite her efforts and the strength of her character, however, the screenplay fails to make anything of her children (Furness, Jean Pearker, and William Henry) or the man who loves her (Charles Bickford).
Director: Charles Brabin
This unusual early talkie from MGM is an irresistible, often horrific melodrama thanks to a disturbing performance from Louis Wolheim. He plays a steward aboard a small ship carrying five upper-class snobs, most notably lovers Howard Vazey (Conrad Nagel) and Dorothy Daley (Kay Johnson). As tensions rise, Wolheim’s hatred of the idle rich comes to the fore as he refuses his passengers food and maintains power through a pistol and the help of a burly, dim-witted cook (Ivan Linow). As with many productions made early in the sound period, the camera is mostly static, however director Charles Brabin has good sense of composition and tends to arrange his characters in the space in dynamic ways. There are a handful of striking, high-contrast shots that seem held-over from the silent era–one late in the picture shows the Dorothy on the floor in what looks like a pit of blackness, lit only by a small lantern on a desk. Wolheim is the film’s biggest pleasure in a role that seems written for Lon Chaney. He begins the picture with sneers and japes and ends in a maniacal frenzy, effectively terrifying both Dorothy and the audience in his attempts to take her to bed. Johnson does well as the damsel even if she seems non-phased by dehydration (when she should be at her most miserable, she declares that she is happy because she has love). Wolheim’s next film would be the blockbuster masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front, and his life would be tragically cut short a year later from stomach cancer.
Director: Charles Brabin
Even by the standards of 1932 Hollywood, The Mask of Fu Manchu is shockingly racist. The title character seeks to eliminate the white race with his army of Chinese warriors and black slaves. Once he has been discarded, the heroes travel on a boat bound for England, where they are sure to ask that the Chinese servant on board is uneducated so as to confirm that he will not pose a future threat. Hateful as it may be, director Charles Brabin brings much to this marvelously constructed thriller, moving it at a rapid pace and providing a series of memorable images – watch as Boris Karloff’s Fu Manchu is introduced with a giant playhouse mirror that distorts his face in terrifying, exaggerated angles. Though his torture devices include the requisite tarantulas and snakes, his lair is strikingly modern in a Bond villain sort of way. His surgical table sits on a giant black staircase in an otherwise glowing white room, defying the expectations that one would have of an Eastern-themed villain. Beyond the pleasures that the picture provides as pure spectacle, just as worthy of noting is how explicit it can be. Myrna Loy is memorable as Karloff’s daughter, a perverted sadist who enjoys watching her father’s prisoners tortured before she has her way with them.
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