thunderbolt ( 1929 film )
thunderbolt: fay wray and george bancroft star in the 1929 gangster film directed by josef von sternberg. (ucla film & television archive )
thunderbolt (1929) - - (movie clip) it' s only ...
thunderbolt (1929) - - (movie clip) don' t you ...
was, in 1929), but it was the first german sound film. th
mon 2 sep 1929 - the sydney morning herald (nsw: 1842 - 1954) page 8 - new films .
thunderbolt .
the sydney morning herald (nsw: 1842 - 1954), mon 2 sep 1929, page 8 - new films .
thunderbolt .
claire johnston, “sternberg’s thunderbolt ”, focus on film no. 2, 1970, p. 54 .
woman in the moon (1929, germ .) (aka frau im mond )
diary of a lost girl (1929, germ .) (aka tagebuch einer verlorenen )
pandora' s box (1929, germ .) (aka die büchse der pandora )
un chien andalou (1929, fr .) (aka an andalusian dog) (short )
survival status: prints exist in the ucla film and television archive film archive [ two 35mm positives ] .
white hell of pitz palu (1929, germ .) (aka die weiße holle vom piz palü )
a criminal known as thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. into the next cell is placed bob moran, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with thunderbolt' s girl. thunderbolt hopes to stave off the execution long enough to kill young moran for romancing his girl .
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thunderbolt is a 1929 american pre - code proto - noir film which tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend. it stars george bancroft, fay wray, richard arlen, tully marshall and eugenie besserer .
a criminal known as thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. into the next cell is placed bob morgan, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with thunderbolt' s girl, without knowing of their relationship. thunderbolt hopes to stave off the execution long enough to kill young morgan for romancing his girl .
in his 21 june 1929 new york times review, mordaunt hall described thunderbolt as “a musical comedy plot striving to masquerade as a drama”. its deliberately conceived absurdist structure anticipates the final act of dennis potter’s 1978 teleplay for the series pennies from heaven .
a criminal known as thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. into the next cell is placed bob moran, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with thunderbolt' s girl... . see full summary »
josef von sternberg directs with camera movement constrained by early - talkie sound recording, brassy ritzy (fay wray) not buckling under pressure from cop william l. thorne, asking after her old gangster boyfriend and threatening her new one (richard arlen), in thunderbolt, 1929. >
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backstage at a harlem night club ritzy (fay wray) has just told her fugitive boyfriend (george bancroft, title character) shes going straight and wants out, hes more concerned he might have a rival, until the cops show up, in thunderbolt, 1929, directed by josef von sternberg .
backstage at a harlem night club ritzy (fay wray) has just told her fugitive boyfriend (george bancroft, title character) shes going straight and wants out, hes more concerned he might have a rival, until the cops show up, in thunderbolt, 1929, directed by josef von sternberg. >
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janet bergstrom and cecilia cenciarelli summarize their research on von sternberg’s lost film the sea gull .
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{ { cite news urltoken | title = new films .
thunderbolt .
| newspaper = [ [ the sydney morning herald ] ] | issue = 28, 599 | location = new south wales, australia | date = 2 september 1929 | accessdate = 10 july 2018 | page = 8 | via = national library of australia } }
thunderbolt has suffered neglect in comparison to underworld. both films share common features such as the noble gangster dying for his friends and due to his kindness to animals: bull weed gives milk to a kitten while thunderbolt befriends a dog that leads to his capture. but thunderbolt undermines superficial sentimentalities derived from the earlier film by emphasising comic undertones such as the eponymous character playing doggy games before he attempts to murder bob. death row is really a vaudeville venue with thunderbolt teaching his pet dog to “play dead” before his execution (9). but sentimentality may actually conceal deep masochistic desires. this will not be the last occasion von sternberg subverts genre conventions, utilising a particular type of masochistic performance technique he also mentions in his autobiography (10) .
a growing source of silent era film information. this listing is from the progressive silent film list by carl bennett. copyright © 1999 - 2018 by carl bennett and the silent era company. all rights reserved .
another unbelievable film from someone who is quickly becoming one of my very favorite directors, with sound design from 1929 (holy shit) that' s as dense and creative as anything this side of francis ford coppola, and a performance from george bancroft that proves he' s von sternberg' s male dietrich .
). despite his limited acting range, george bancroft carries the film almost singlehandedly, although his delivery is so slow that you soon become convinced that the film is being played at half its intended speed. today ,
serving as proof that josef von sternberg did make fine films before the blue angel, thunderbolt is a bizarre gangster picture which is as much a romance as a thriller .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
the film gets long during its lengthy scenes, especially after the more interesting technical methods cease. it’s decent instead of interesting .
: the “director’s cut” was released in argentina during the 1920s, with spanish intertitles and inserts made at ufa. a collector acquired a print. (once more we have a collector to thank for saving film history .) when the argentine film archive (
this josef von sternberg underworld melodrama (which he did just before he went to germany and made the blue angel) was filmed as a silent and released in that form in some places, but sound was added after the film was completed, and it was more generally released as a talkie. george bancroft is the gang leader known as thunderbolt; fay wray is his gun moll, ritzy; richard arlen is the bank clerk who knew her before she took up with thunderbolt, and wants to marry her. bancroft was such a genial, large - spirited actor that he makes thunderbolt likable even while he' s framing the bank clerk for murder. the two men wind up facing each other in opposite cells on…
this list collects every film from the starting list that became they shoot pictures don' t they' s 1000 greatest films. this…
see, for example, s. m. eisenstein, v. i. pudovkin, and g. v. alexandrov, “a statement”, film sound: theory and practice, ed. elisabeth weis and john belton, columbia university press, new york, 1985, pp. 83 - 5; v. i. pudovkin, “asynchronism as a principle of sound film”, film sound: theory and practice, pp. 86 - 91; lucy fischer, “ enthusiasm: from kino - eye to radio - eye”, film sound: theory and practice, pp. 247 - 264 .
), but she also bears a resemblance—perhaps deliberately enhanced through costuming and make - up—to barbara steele and other horror - film heroines of the 1960s .
unfortunately, there’s a lot of flash in the screenplay. in terms of plotting, thunderbolt is exquisite. the first half of the film operates without a protagonist. all of the films scenes are long, but those first forty - five minutes play even longer due to the passage of time (a couple months). there’s the initial setup, with fay wray and richard arlen as young lovers who get picked up by the police. it seems wray’s got an infamous paramour, played by george bancroft (as the titular thunderbolt, a moniker describing his lethal right). there’s some stuff with wray and bancroft, then a very pre - code scene with wray staying with arlen and mother eugenie besserer, and finally the development into the second half of the film .
thunderbolt also uses sound expressionistically whether it originates from the sewing machine of a mother (eugenie besserer), worried about a son fired from his bank job due to police pressure, or the sinister squeaking sounds from a dog’s cat ball toy that thunderbolt squeezes in his last hours on death row as he considers his revenge on bob. when thunderbolt hits someone in the black cat, a drum roll accompanies their slide to the floor. a crashing cymbal instantly synchronises with the final fall as the victim reaches the floor. although part two naturally lacks the impressive camera mobility of part one’s nightclub sequence, the limitation of space does not prevent the appearance of innovative sound techniques complementing those heard earlier. both parts complement and counterpoint each other .
following a violent incident leading to the cessation of the music, entertainment resumes with a black torch singer singing a blues song, “daddy won’t you please come home”, the lines articulating later feelings of romantic despair thunderbolt and ritzy will later experience. the nightclub sequence ends with the police raiding the club armed with tommy - guns, appearing little different from the gangsters they seek. as the lights go off, the police appear in the entrance lit in german expressionist / pre - film noir lighting. but thunderbolt escapes off - screen. the off - screen sound techniques used in the black cat nightclub scenes anticipate those later used in the death row sequence .
thunderbolt has some excellent use of sound. it’s a very early talky and i’m hesitant to say any of its uses were innovative, because the word suggests others picked up on the techniques and developed them. most of thunderbolt ‘s singular sound designs didn’t show up again in hollywood cinema for over twenty years. the way von sternberg uses on camera singers, showcasing them as a performance for the characters to watch, not for the audience to see, doesn’t resemble any of the ostensibly similar scenes in the 1930s. the overall sound design–the street scenes, the edits–resembles german film a lot more than american; there’s a particular lack of flash to von sternberg’s tone .
thunderbolt foolishly tries to rehabilitate its protagonist (and inevitably, i suppose). it just goes about it in the worse way possible. it removes the agency from the character, making his salvation a passive event. instead of being interesting, it’s de facto .
according to harold truscott, a focus on film reader from yorkshire, who saw both versions, the silent differed from the sound version by re - staging the positions of actors in certain scenes: “bancroft’s movements in the cell were different in the two films, he stood differently against the bars in the silent version. i should say, also, that the silent version was a good deal more powerful than the talkie. bancroft’s work in the cell was tremendous, but it lost some of its power in the talkie. ” his comments are similar to comparisons made between silent and sound versions of alfred hitchcock’s blackmail (1929). see focus on film no. 5, 1970, p. 16 .
tony williams is professor and area head of film studies in the department of english at southern illinois university, carbondale. a frequent contributor to cteq annotations on film, he has recently published the second edition of larry cohen: the radical allegories of an american filmmaker. the second edition of hearths of darkness: the family in the american horror film is scheduled for december 2014. the second edition of the cinema of george romero and an edited collection of essays, postcolonialism, diaspora, and alternative histories: the cinema of evans chan, will appear in 2015 .
josef von sternberg, one of the few internationally admired american directors, achieved his greatest success with his one german film. sternberg emigrated to the u. s. from austria in 1908, and after a decade of apprenticeship in the film industry during which the “von” was added to his name by an image - minded producer, he gained wide critical acclaim with his first directorial effort ,
static but superb gangster film - it was von sternberg' s first talkie. before the director found a muse in marlene dietrich he made three superb films with burly george bancroft who here plays the notorious gangster, thunderbolt. the film is a love triangle between the gangster, his moll (fay wray) and the young man (richard arlen) she is in love with. caught and imprisoned he frames her lover on a bank robbery charge and both men get to face each other in cells. superbly acted by bancroft who predictably plays it tough but shows the man' s vulnerable side in his interactions with the girl, a dog and the mother of his rival. he has…
i’m not convinced that the film is quite the masterpiece that some claim, but it is a major item in powell’s oeuvre nonetheless, and i felt privileged to have seen it in ideal conditions .
the second half of the film, with bancroft on death row, is where thunderbolt starts to pick up. the character–going into the second half–is already supposed to be somewhat endearing, because he cared for a stray instead of promptly murdering arlen (and, presumably, besserer). the second half doesn’t try to rehabilitate him. instead, it’s a goofy prison movie with bancroft as the gangster (who we never actually see commit any crimes in the running time). there’s some decent stuff, a few good scenes here and there; really, it’s about bancroft all of a sudden becoming the film’s lead. his performance is occasionally shaky, but it doesn’t matter. he commands the screen .
proof that for a few brief moments after the sound cinema singularity, it was possible for anti - naturalism to exist. the best film of the 1920s is a talkie. death to silent cinema !
ron mottram, “american sound films, 1926 - 1930”, film sound: theory and practice, p. 226. he also notes the use of space in the death row sequence, dividing the cells with off - screen voices of prisoners from the unified world of the prison separated from the outside world. neither camera mobility nor creative use of mise en scène are absent from this early sound film .
, had elevated expressionism to the sound film and opened up new possibilities for its presentation. however, only von sternberg, and later orson welles, had the technical virtuosity and artistic integrity to continue the
the film is also interesting visually. with its use of high contrast black and white photography and omnipresent shadows, the film presages the film noir thriller. the one sequence of particular interest is the one in which the principal baddie, lang, ascends the staircase to confront his rival. the noirish lighting transforms the staircase into a spider' s web in which lang becomes enmeshed and incapable of carrying out his deadly plan. the same visual motif recurs in the prison scenes, but this time lang and his rival are both caught, like flies in a spider' s web, awaiting a cruel end .
metropolis has been reconstructed many times since the 1960s. in 2001, the murnau foundation presented a digital restoration of the film supervised by martin koerber in collaboration with enno patalas. in this version, which is available on dvd (transit film, kino international) about 30 minutes of the original material are missing. in 2003 - 2005 enno patalas and anna bohn together with a team at the university of the arts in berlin created a “study edition” version in which the missing footage was represented by bits of gray leader. for the first time the full length of the film was reconstructed with help from the the original music score .
the expressionistic, shadow - laden environments are beautifully atmospheric, especially the decadent atmosphere of the cabaret stage and dressing rooms. these are meticulously crafted frames that achieve visual depth by shooting highlighted and backlit subjects through shadowy foreground scenery. the expressionist visuals are so dramatically well presented that the film can be pretty well understood without any semantic input from the sound track. in fact it may be better to watch the film without subtitles enabled .
in
thunderbolt ,
an audible production featuring george bancroft, there is a queer idea of humor, that of portraying what the producers esteem to be the lighter side of the death cell. the greater part of this production is of scenes in an aisle of barred cells, with a privileged... view full article in timesmachine »
the film was shot cheaply in a salzburg studio, using garish, modernist settings against black backgrounds. these create a labyrinthine, floating space that avoids seeming stage - bound. (hein heckroth, the production designer, had previously worked on several powell films, including the red shoes and the tales of hoffman .) i was reminded of hans - jürgen syberberg’s parsifal (1982), which looks somewhat less original in the light of powell’s film .
the print shown was a privately held technicolor original from the era, in nearly mint condition. (the british film institute has a print as well .) the sparse subtitles written by powell himself were added for this screening .
, which was released in german and english language versions and which ranks with the greatest films of all time. the film marked a transition for von sternberg from his earlier harsh realism to his subsequent baudelairian obsession with feminine ambiguity and erotic v
i' m not as crazy about the beginning of this film (though, as one can expect, the scene in the speakeasy is as good as they come in sternberg), but once it reaches the jail cell, thunderbolt instantly becomes top tier. this is perhaps the most literal of the films i' ve seen from sternberg so far, insofar as the metaphorical cage that houses the characters' fragile, complicated sense of masculinity becomes material for the majority of the picture. it' s a shame that sternberg and bancroft only did three films together; they seem like a match made in cinematic heaven
still stands today as one of the stellar expressions in film history. the story charts the tragic downfall of an older german professor as a result of his ruinous infatuation with a lower class cabaret singer. the novel on which the script is based ,
writing a few months after the director’s death, she praises andrew sarris for re - evaluating the non - dietrich films but added that further reassessment suffers from the vagaries of distribution especially concerning access to the director’s first sound film then released on 16mm. despite gaylyn studlar’s examination of the von sternberg - dietrich collaboration, few detailed explorations exist of the director’s other films (2). good copies of thunderbolt can be found only in the u. c. l. a. and m. o. m. a archives, while poor quality bootleg copies circulate on dvd and vhs. the silent version, made for general release in cinemas not equipped for sound, is unobtainable (3) .
( sometimes with only gray leader onscreen). the editors determined the duration of each scene by a critical comparison of the remaining film materials with the music score and other source materials. this dvd edition was released in a limited edition available to educational and research facilities. for information see
). this scrupulous version includes the original score, a lot of production material, and the complete script by thea von harbou. it’s a model of how digital formats can assist documentation of film history. the dvd incorporates production stills and intertitles from the missing scenes, and presents each scene
the following day was the formal ceremony: thomas’ farewell speech in the university auditorium, a converted chapel. thomas and other professors, garbed in robes and caps, filed in and thomas took the floor to present his talk, “of feedback and phasmids: a farewell to film studies. ” he offered both an oblique account of his institutional political battles and a broader account of trends in film theory across the last three decades. he wove clips from master and commander into his talk, which sometimes bolstered a comparison between his tough - minded handling of the program and captain jack’s nautical tactics .
thunderbolt was josef von sternberg' s first american talking picture. george bancroft, a von sternberg regular (despite frequents clashes between the two men), plays a death row inmate who may be on the eve of eternity, but who has still one more murder on his mind. he plans to kill the young lover (richard arlen) of his former girl friend (fay wray); fortuitously the lover is incarcerated in the same prison where bancroft awaits the chair .
von sternberg regarded the arrival of sound technology as challenging. he also saw it as another way to stimulate audience imagination: “to be correctly and effectively used, sound had to bring to the image a quality other than what the lens included, a quality out of the range of the image. sound had to counterpoint or compensate the image, add to it – not subtract from it. ” (5) his attempt to put sound in its appropriate relationship to the image remained unnoticed except by his fellow director ludwig berger who congratulated von sternberg on making “the first rounded out and artistically elaborated sound film” (6). thunderbolt does have its share of stilted dialogue and problems associated with the new technology. but these minor flaws should not prevent modern viewers from appreciating the innovative nature of the creative solutions von sternberg used for this new form (7) .
, a violent attack on imperial germany, written in 1905 by heinrich mann (brother of thomas mann). von sternberg was to make vast alterations translating the novel, which had been an old abandoned project of g. w. pabst, to the screen, including the elimination of the last third of the novel. later when there was public criticism for those changes (in germany) and when, for complex political reason, ufa tried to dissociate its film from the radical leftist, mann, the author replied simply, “had i been more mature (when i wrote it), i would have developed the character of professor unrath more humanly, as in the film. ”
the dog outwits the kidnappers at first appears to be a sort of sequel (as it is described in the program), since it stars the same dog (blair) who had played rover, and again there is a kidnapped baby. it’s not really a sequel, though, since cecil hepworth, who had played the father in the earlier film, here appears as the kidnapper, and the dog is not named rover. the new film is more fantastical than the original, since the dog races after the car in which the child is abducted and rather than fetching its master, effects the rescue itself by driving the car back home when the villain leaves his victim unattended !
isual imagery. what causes this film to transcend the trivial genre of bourgeois male corrupted by bohemian female is the subtly conceived role of lola - lola. . the directness of dietrich, contrasting well with the elaborateness of jannings, established the ground for her magnetic appeal. her impassive, even sometimes sympathetic, innocence renders the fate of the professor into true tragedy .
it was a terrific two days for us, not least for witnessing the great admiration and devotion that his colleagues and students displayed. they even edited, in secret, a book in homage to him (left). thomas has not only reshaped our sense of how film works, but his dedication to media education has created a generation of lively and original young scholars .
there were plenty of other revelations. we got the reconstructed prite (was it the first really modern soviet film ?), a bit of an original kuleshov experiment in constructive editing, and a tantalizing fragment from the female journalist (1927), with a surprisingly pensive hohlova as a modern - day reporter. sasha (1930), directed by hohlova herself, was a sympathetic portrait of a pregnant woman. an educational film called forty hearts (1930) explained the need to electrify the soviet countryside and was brightened by faux - naïve animation. timur and his crew (1942), with some of the charm of a nancy drew movie, showed young pioneers helping on the home front; it unexpectedly centered on a girl’s devotion to her military father .
in the 1960s and 1970s, it was common to say that eisenstein and vertov were the most experimental soviet directors, while the others were more conventional. then we realized that in films like arsenal (1928), dovzhenko had his own wild ways. then we discovered the feks team, kozintsev and trauberg, and the bold montage of the new babylon (1929). a closer look at pudovkin, particularly his early sound films like a simple case (1932) and deserter (1933), revealed that he too was no timid soul when it came to daring cutting and image / sound juxtapositions. but surely their mentor kuleshov, admirer of hollywood continuity and proponent of the simplest sorts of constructive editing, played things safe ?
cast: george bancroft [ ‘thunderbolt’ jim lang ], fay wray [ ‘ritzy’ mary ], richard arlen [ bob morgan ], tully marshall [ the warden ], eugenie besserer [ mrs. morgan ], james spottswood [ snapper o’shea ], fred kohler [ ‘bad’ al friedberg ], mike donlin [ kentucky sampson ], e. h. calvert [ district attorney mckay ], george irving [ mr. corwin ], robert elliott [ the prison chaplain ], s. s. stewart [ negro convict ], william l. thorne [ police inspector ], elmer ballard, king tut
the film belongs to the late period of powell’s career, after the controversial peeping tom had made it impossible for him to work within the mainstream film industry. it was produced by norman foster —though not the norman foster who directed journey into fear and several of the charlie chan and mr. moto films. this norman foster was an opera singer whose stage career was cut short by a dispute with herbert von karajan. his widow, sybille nabel - foster, explained this and described how foster produced and starred in two television adaptations, herzog blaubarts burg and die lustigen weiber von windsor (1966). foster had originally approached ingmar bergman to direct the former, but when that proved impossible, powell stepped in—and probably a good thing, too. it was definitely his kind of project .
thomas is also an old friend, a big influence on our work ever since his days at brighton film review and monogram, and a generous host when we were visiting london in the 1970s and early 1980s to work on our book, the classical hollywood cinema. he kindly published kristin’s lubitsch book in the amsterdam series. i wrote a little tribute essay for his sixtieth birthday festschrift, available in english here .
critical comment on the film is frequently divided between its so - called dream - like nature and its sordid realism. what is actually achieved is a brilliant synthesis of expressionism and artistic detail to bring about a realism of the imagination of memory. the expressive power arising from von sternberg’s control of the cinematic environment to its last detail results in effects even more strongly felt than those of pabst. siegfried kracauer, commenting on
both jannings and dietrich give superb performances. jannings’s highly gestural presentation, derived from his silent movie experience, leads effectively to the dramatic gestures of the clown in the final scenes. dietrich’s performance, by contrast, is a brilliantly natural presentation of the reflexively amoral and passionate aesthete. he embodies the neuroses of civilisation; she represents the innocence of the pagan. there is nothing cruel about lola - lola, but she can’t help being who she is and she embodies her own signature song: “falling in love again”. this first sound - film performance of dietrich was never surpassed for its mixture of uncompromising and unfathomable femininity. overall, the dialogue and character attitudes are, despite the expressionistic tones in the film, very natural – they reflect an openness in the filmmaking of those days that would soon be curtailed by the hays code .
the melodrama soon kicks in (bancroft, from prison, frames arlen and arlen ends up on death row and there’s conflict) and the film can’t narratively recover from it. there are still some decent scenes, some excellent shots from von sternberg, and bancroft maintains. arlen, on the other hand, is silly and awful. it’s a bit of a surprise too, because he was fine during the first half .
kt: one of the high points of the week for me was michael powell’s 1964 film of béla bartók’s short opera bluebeard’s castle. it was made for german television and shown in bologna as herzog blaubarts burg. unfortunately it was programmed opposite the screening of fragments from kuleshov’s gay canary, but powell’s post - peeping tom films are so difficult to see that i made the difficult choice and gave up hope of seeing the entire kuleshov retrospective .
in 1991 thomas left the university of east anglia to form a film department at the university of amsterdam. many members of the university looked askance at the study of cinema, but he grew his program spectacularly. a department with scarcely half a dozen faculty members expanded to sixty staff members and 1400 students. the range of study is now immense, from classical cinema and dutch moviegoing in the silent era to theorizing about contemporary digital media .
as nabel - foster explained, after its initial screening on german television, herzog blaubarts burg has been shown seldom because of rights complications with the bartók estate. non - commercial screenings have occurred on public television in the u. s. and australia, but basically the film is off - limits until the copyright expires in 2015, seventy years after the composer’s death. nabel - foster has been providently preparing for a dvd release, gathering the original materials .
josef von sternberg has suffered perhaps more than any other director from the vagaries of film criticism; on the one hand he has been seen as a mannered, self - indulgent stylist with a trivial and dehumanized vision of the world, and on the other as a cult figure largely associated with the mystique of marlene dietrich, with whom he made seven films, beginning in the blue angel in 1930 and ending with the devil is a woman in 1935. (1 )
a viewing copy will not be forthcoming immediately, given the restoration task, but sooner or later we will have a good approximation of the fullest version of one of the half - dozen most famous silent movies. getting news like this while among archive professionals is one of the unique pleasures of cinema ritrovato. (special thanks to dr. bohn for clarification on several points and to enterprising film historian casper tybjerg, who helped me get a copy of the die zeit issue. )
although lucy fischer notes that directors such as von sternberg often used sound with “less auditory sensitivity” in shutting off sound when “characters moved from one space to another”, she loses sight of the fact that this may involve the deliberate elimination of off - screen sound to increase tension. fischer, “ applause: the visual and acoustic landscape”, film sound: theory and practice, p. 239. hitchcock uses the same technique when alice enters the phone booth in the sound version of blackmail .
one of the biggest surprises was news of dokhunda (1936), an ethnographically based fiction set in tazhikistan. although the film is lost, nikolai has reconstructed its plan, revealing that kuleshov adopted a strange preproduction method. he prepared “living storyboards, ” photos of the cast enacting the scenes. he then drew and scratched on them, creating busy, nervous backgrounds or changing the figures’ features and hair styles—kuleshov as pre - warhol scribbler, or a graffiti artist tagging his own images .
there looks to be no world outside of the moment and bancroft is usually at the forefront of this. von sterberg subverts sentimental motifs which, alongside the irony, seems so strangely out of place for a film that came out in the sound - period of the 20' s. music and dialogue acts in unity with one another working intangibly to exemplify emotions. every aspect compliments and brings the elements together. fuck, this is perfect, i' m at a loss for words .
the interaction of the body with props occurs with a special flair in young partisans. a bolshevik partisan tells some children how a boy saved his life in a german - occupied town (this flashback was directed by igor savchenko and functions as a short film on its own .) having learned their lesson, the kids gather in their schoolroom and under the teacher’s eye draw a map of the partisans’ camp. but when nazi soldiers burst in, the teacher flips the blackboard over; now all we see is algebra .
nikolai has also finished a dvd edition of prite that exemplifies what he calls hyperkino, a way of annotating and comparing a film’s images, texts, and supplementary materials for instant access. another project involves the yevgenii bauer classic, the king of paris (1917), which kuleshov completed. we haven’t had the intertitles for this, however, but now nikolai has discovered them, and they will go on the dvd version that is being completed. for more information on these projects and dokhunda, go to urltoken .
wrong again. just as we must reevaluate the other master soviet directors (even in their purportedly safe stalinist projects), so too does kuleshov deserve a fresh look. he got this thanks to yuri tsivian, who with the help of ekatarina hohlova (right; granddaughter of kuleshov and his main actress aleksandra hohlova) and nikolai izvolov, mounted a superb retrospective. it ranged from kuleshov’s first solo effort, engineer prite’s project (1918) to his final film, the short feature young partisans (1942 - 3, never released) .
kt: there were several programs of silent shorts, which i could only sample, as they tended to play opposite the kuleshov films. as usual, the bologna program included selections of short films from 100 years ago, so we were treated to numerous films from 1908. i was particularly pleased to see the dog outwits the kidnappers, directed by lewin fitzhamon, who had made rescued by rover two years earlier. that film had been so fabulously successful that it had actually been shot three times as the negatives wore out from the striking of huge numbers of release prints .
( 1930), his most famous film, director josef von sternberg came to grips with the challenges of early sound cinema with this offbeat gangster melodrama. the problems posed by the early sound recording equipment defeated many a filmmaker in the late 20s, early 30s, but von sternberg fully embraced the opportunities afforded by this new cinematic development to enhance the movie - going experience. the sound highlights include a scene in a busy harlem nightspot, in which swinging cabaret numbers add greatly to the seedy atmosphere, and the later sequences in the prison, where convicts sing in chorus to counterpoint the horror of their predicament .
the great consoler reminds us of the popularity of o. henry in the soviet union, both among readers and the russian formalist literary theorists, who were fascinated by his flagrant, playful artifice. (boris eikhenbaum’s essay on the writer is one of the most brilliant pieces of literary analysis i know .) even though kuleshov must denounce porter for reconciling the masses to their misery under capitalism, the zest of the embedded film and the unique architecture of the overall project pay tribute to another entertainer who did not forgo experimentation. and kuleshov’s image of a writer in prison probably had aesopian significance for artists in the era of socialist realism .
kuleshov, like eisenstein, gained his fame for his ideas on editing and sound montage, but both men were deeply interested in performance. kuleshov’s idea that the film actor should become an angular mannequin carries on the impulse of meyerhold’s biomechanics, and he anticipated cgi software in suggesting that human action could be plotted on a three - dimensional grid. still, kuleshov usually gives his figures a fluid dynamism that doesn’t seem mechanical. the three narrative registers of the great consoler are delineated largely through acting: naturalistic and slowly paced in the prison scenes, rigid and posed in the shopgirl romance, and broad and eccentric in the embedded silent movie .
icknamed thunderbolt, jim lang is a hardened gangster who is hotly pursued by the police for a series of crimes that include robbery and murder. he risks capture by confronting his girlfriend ritzy in a harlem nightclub. she has made up her mind to leave him, but he has no intention of letting her go. when he learns that ritzy has moved in with her new boyfriend, a respectable young man named bob morgan, lang decides to settle the matter man - to - man with his rival. before he can reach bob' s apartment, the crook is caught by the police and soon ends up on death - row, having been convicted of murder. lang' s cronies successfully frame bob for an armed bank robbery and it isn' t long before bob is occupying a cell opposite lang' s. ritzy pleads with lang to confess to having framed bob so that he can evade the electric chair. lang is unrepentant and relishes the fact that his rival will share the same fate as him ...
a pressbook for this film calls it
a story of a hard - fighting man who lives outside the law in the hidden places of the negro district .
quoting director josef von sternberg on casting for the harlem scenes, the pressbook continues ,
we were fortunate that los angeles has a miniature harlem of its own in its central avenue district. a thorough search gave us scores of negroes who have really lived in harlem. harlem, which extends from 125th to 140th streets, new york, brings heart - beats of southern plantations to metropolitan civilization. sensation - seeking broadwayites make these cafs possible, coming to dance shoulder - to - shoulder with habitues of this black metropolis to the beat of staccato jazz .
references: afi - f2 n. f2. 5703; everson - detective p. 110; katchmer - eighty pp. 10, 12; limbacher - feature p. 251; parish - gangster pp. 33, 392 - 393, 400; ryall - blackmail p. 10; sarris - sternberg pp. 8, 16, 23 - 24; sklar - movie p. 179; vermilye - twenties p. 186: website - afi; website - imdb .
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jermaine fowler and omari hardwick of sorry to bother you take us back in time to the worst jobs of their careers .
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a poor factory worker, employed by a wealthy uncle, falls in love with a beautiful heiress but his happiness and promising future are jeopardized by a previous affair with a coworker he impregnated .
a blue - collar worker on new york' s depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide .
boisterous gangster kingpin bull weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for weed' s girlfriend .
in late 19th century vienna, lena smith, a naive peasant girl from hungary, has a child by a corrupt young cavalry officer, and goes to work his house as a servant, hiding the truth from... see full summary »
stopped in mexico by u. s. immigration, georges iscovescu hopes to get into the country by marrying a citizen .
a former imperial russian general and cousin of the czar ends up in hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary .
the blue angel is a sleazy bar and the local boys go there to see lola who is the dancer. the teacher goes there to confront his students only to fall for the dancer .
the story is set in the seamy soho section of london, where burglar basher bill shares bed and board with his sluttish girlfriend annie. as wicked as they come, bill softens when he meets virtuous salvation army lass elizabeth .
joan and magdalen are the daughters of a fisherman. magdalen leaves her fiancé, peter, to run off to the big city. joan and peter marry. magdalen' s return years later causes trouble for the... see full summary »
jeanne eagels plays the bored and restless leslie crosbie who turns to another man, geoffrey hammond (herbert marshall) for attention when neglected by her husband robert (reginald owen)... . see full summary »
' s only oscar nominated performance, though nominations were not official that year .
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movies and tv shows are certified fresh with a steady tomatometer of 75% or higher after a set amount of reviews (80 for wide - release movies, 40 for limited - release movies, 20 for tv shows), including 5 reviews from top critics .
there is nothing edifying about this production, and it is hardly an entertainment .
george bancroft received best actor oscar nomination for this crime movie directed by von sternberg .
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at west point, 1857, in the conceit of wally kline and ...
father barry (karl malden) with a fiery sermon in the hold ...
just the top of the
yankee doodle boy
number from george ...
blob, the (1958) - - (movie clip) do ...
jobless vin (steve mcqueen) blows his stake at the saloon, ...
this is how they did it, the transition in which the ...
2010 (1984)  (movie clip) my god, ...
12 angry men (1957) - - (movie clip) ...
wounded zack (gene evans) and sidekick
short round
...
in the town for which the movie is named, sheriff shaw ...
cop dave (joe partridge) puzzles over a series of women ...
blinding plot speed as hildy (pat o' brien), who really is ...
still from the opening scene, lord henry (george sanders) ...
the movie debut of albert finney, at work in the raleigh ...
backstage at a harlem night club ritzy (fay wray) has just ...
leonard maltin classic movie guide, copyright 2005, 2010. used by arrangement with penguin group (usa) inc .
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a reconfiguration of underworld for the arrival of sound, so its poetry can echo on to auden (
in the prison of his days / teach the free man how to praise
). a feline eye opens josef von sternberg' s camera, prowling across an ankle - level row of sweethearts at night until spotting the pert moll (fay wray) and the bank teller (richard arlen) intertwined on a park bench. a police matter ,
don' t get ritzy with me, you ritzy ,
her dream is to be
regular people
far from the gangster (george bancroft). the black cat nightclub has slanted picket - fence décor and the beginnings of the innovative tessitura (a stuttering maitre d' side by side with theresa harris doing a torchy
daddy, won' t you please come…
arguably the most ravishing use of sound ever, designing contrast between anti - naturalistic rapture and adorned artifice, subverting dramaturgy towards a sense of masochistic anguish, senseless pride giving way to an ontological death drive. shadows and music, a monumental performance, underlying comic tones as its matter drifts in between genres, an absolute masterpiece .
what a quirky movie. it' s maybe the earliest dramedy i' ve seen .
being in love with her is apt to cause you a lot of trouble, young man .
just before he traveled to germany to make the blue angel with marlene dietrich, josef von sternberg directed this, his first talkie, for paramount. filled with eccentric characters, unrestrained overacting, and off - kilter line readings, this is as much an absurdist comedy as it is an underworld melodrama. (take the nervous warden, who frets when bancroft knocks a fellow death - row prisoner' s block off .
listen, doc. you' ve just got to see that this man lives ,
he says, adding ,
do something. i' ve got to execute him tonight .
) it also features the kind of overlapping dialogue that would become robert altman' s trademark decades later, proving just how far von sternberg was ahead of the curve.
thunderbolt is a 1929 american pre-code proto-noir film which tells the story of a criminal , facing execution , who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend . it stars george bancroft , fay wray , richard arlen , tully marshall and eugenie besserer . the movie was adapted by herman j. mankiewicz , joseph l. mankiewicz ( titles ) and josef von sternberg from the story by charles furthman and jules furthman . it was directed by sternberg . bancroft was nominated for the academy award for best actor . 
thunderbolt is a 1929 american pre-code proto-noir film which tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend. it stars george bancroft, fay wray, richard arlen, tully marshall and eugenie besserer. the movie was adapted by herman j. mankiewicz, joseph l. mankiewicz (titles) and josef von sternberg from the story by charles furthman and jules furthman. it was directed by sternberg. bancroft was nominated for the academy award for best actor.
thunderbolt is a 1929 american pre-code proto-noir film which tells the story of a criminal, facing execution, who wants to kill the man in the next cell for being in love with his girlfriend. it stars george bancroft, fay wray, richard arlen, tully marshall and eugenie besserer. the movie was adapted by herman j. mankiewicz, joseph l. mankiewicz (titles) and josef von sternberg from the story by charles furthman and jules furthman. it was directed by sternberg. bancroft was nominated for the academy award for best actor.