Year: 1929-30
Cast: Lawrence Tibbett, Catherine Dale Owen, Nance O'Neill, Judith Vosselli, Ullrich Haupt, Elsa Alsen, Florence Lake, Lionel Bellmore, Wallace MacDonald, Kate Price, James Bradbury, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel
Director: Lionel Barrymore (and Hal Roach, uncredited for the Laurel and Hardy Scenes)
Nominations: Best Actor (Tibbett)
This one is gonna be unique, and hard to review, since only fragments of the film exist, and I watched an attempted recreation (it was actually really well done) to give you as close an approximation as one can of what the film would have been like.
It gives one an idea, but it's still not like watching the actual movie. I can see that the movie itself might have been fun and exciting to watch.
Opera singer Lawrence Tibbett, in his film debut, sings his way through the part of Yegor, a laughing bandit in early 1900's Russia.
The film isn't really an opera, since most of it is spoken, but Tibbett gets several numbers to perform, making this something of an odd musical that seems to mainly exist to showcase Tibbett's vocal talents. As an actor, he's pretty good for the melodramatics of the 1920's and early 30's. He plays Yegor as a boisterous bruiser who likes a good laugh, a drink with his boys, an invigorating raid...and becomes a shy boy when alone with a woman he might actually have feelings for.
One part of this film I was surprised to see, but pleasantly, is that it co-stars that great comic duo, Laurel and Hardy, who play two hapless members of Yegor's raiding party, and every now and then we focus on their comedic exploits as they attempt to do things like mount horses or open stuck doors. This seems a bit out of the ordinary for the duo, who as far as I can tell, usually played themselves, or at least characters based on themselves (right down to having their names), and if it's not a straight-up Laurel and Hardy film, they are restricted to cameos. Here they're a part of the story, but neither the focus of the film nor mere cameos, as we cut to their hi-jinx several times, which are clearly taking place within the film as comic relief. They even have names that aren't their own; Ali-bek and Murza-bek. I'm no expert on the pair, but for them to show up as supporting comic-relief characters in an otherwise serious(ish) movie seems odd.
Also, as a majority of their humor was sight gags, there are long stretches of soundtrack with no words as they do their thing...that we can't see, and there aren't much stills for.
Yegor, back from a successful raid and hanging out at a local tavern, is falling in love with the Princess Vera (Catherine Dale Owen, and princess of what, we aren't told), but upon getting back home, Yegor discovers his beloved sister Nadja (Florence Lake) has been raped by Prince Serge (Ullrich Haupt), brother to Princess Vera. Nadja ends up taking her own life, and you can probably guess what this does for the chances of a relationship between Yegor and Vera. It actually kinda plays out like The Taming of the Shrew and ends in a way I was surprised to see in 1930.
I think if I'd been able to see this in full, I would have enjoyed it as a diverting romp, but I still say the standards of what makes an Oscar-worthy film, or performance, were far different in an age where the entire idea of a film where you can hear the actors is a pretty new and amazing thing. Silent films, in my opinion, seem to hold up better than these early talkies, because they were more artistically focused, while these films just seem enamored of the idea that the actors can be heard. Not one of these films I've watched this time through have really lasted in public memory, though The Love Parade still has fans among appreciators of old musicals and Ernst Lubitsch fans. There wasn't anything special about this film; to be honest it kinda annoyed me in places. Tibbett is very robust and loud, but nothing special.
Next post will be a ranking and choosing of my own winner. And I can't say I'm not glad to leave this year behind. Which kinda sucks.
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