Count Your Blessings #6

 

CYB: Pearl Diving at You Tube

So much technology rides current wind. I’m beginning to take miracles for granted. For instance what’s being done with Public Domain content aboard You Tube. Features, shorts, cartoons, all put to freshener that is, what, AI? CGI? I’m dumb to details of how but dazzled by results. All of a sudden comes high-def spun off standard transfers, clouds parted to bluest of skies. We’re talking talkies of earliest vintage looking near-as-good as if put through process previously expensive that also took more time to achieve. Advanced techs will call it “fake” and maybe much of it is, but so long as I’m guided by eyes/ears alone, these things will more than do. Flaws sure, occasional blips, work improving all the time, reminiscent of sound where first unveiled in the late twenties. That had kinks too which had to be, and were, ironed out. Such modern equivalent exhilarates plenty. All jobs aren't performed equal. You may sift a dozen transfers of Applause before landing on sweet spot that is “BlimeyTV.” Blimey is right. Don’t know who he/she/they are, but each/all is parting curtain between us and quality long awaited from titles too long on dimmer setting. Titles through 1930 are so far grazed upon with each New Years freeing up more. We’re kids in a sweet store where oldies seem not so old. Behold what crossed my way over a past week: The Doorway to Hell, Three Faces East, The Bishop Murder Case, and Old English. More, much more, is accessible, additions each day, hour in fact, the lot for free unless you buy You Tube Premium which sidesteps ads that make syndication of yore look like public television before that amounted to nightly begging for financial support. Work happening now smack of labors for love, in a sense all of what YT creators do, save ones clawing way toward “influencer” standing.

I stumbled across BlimeyTV like all of favorites now on an ever-growing tickle list. They along with others teach that movies online need no longer be “authorized.” Imagine how Disney felt when a flock of Mickeys entered the Public Domain (or do they really care?). Same with features … good features, not just wretched antiques. When Animal Crackers can be had, used, enjoyed freely by all, well, that’s change. Same for good ones with Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, all who straddled silent and talk eras. The four features I watched were more/less random picked. A hundred others could qualify. It’s my choice now rather than what corps permit me to see. The Doorway to Hell is long a TCM member, had from Warner Archive in standard DVD. BlimeyTV somehow punched it up, don’t ask how. Cue Robert Mitchum as Dan Milner: “I’m not knockin’ it man, I’m just trying to understand it.” Through 1930 Doorway comes Lew Ayres as head hood “Louie Ricarno.” Believe in him or not, this was neat off-casting for Ayres and I bet audiences were captivated, maybe shocked, by it, after he’d done All Quiet so recent before. This and Okay, America plus Iron Man shows how Ayres bent expectation and wouldn’t fall into a male ingenue trap. He conveys essential goodness in Ricarno, near to an end being hope, the wrap sobering because it’s Ayres rather than a heavy we root to be caught or otherwise quelled. Thing about gangsters operating then was even baddest ones merited crowd support, Depression’s public wrapping arms round the lot. Aspects of life having changed little means many still want Cagney, Robinson, Muni and kin to prevail. Go-getters appeal no matter how they go about getting it. The Doorway to Hell has as bonus a starter-out Jim Cagney making presence felt throughout. Of course he could have played Louie. I don’t see how Warners, Wellman, anyone, could think of anyone other than JC for Tom Powers in Public Enemy.

The Doorway to Hell pleases on ground level crime films later got above. Rough exterior here does not conceal polish beneath as would case for later 30’s crime. Whole of Hell is rough. No music backgrounds save several “Brunswick” records played on “Brunswick” machinery. Warner never shied from whoring its wares, one more thing I admire them for. Rowland Brown wrote the underlying story. He was surely the one who came up with “Mileaway” for Cagney’s character name. Brown was all-pavement as a scripter. Had his temper been cooler, he could have defined a whole genre instead of just highlighting it all too seldom. Did I mention The Doorway to Hell never looked so good before? At least for me. Next was The Bishop Murder Case. Just looked and lo/behold, I gave it a short paragraph in August 2012. Pleasure sustains since, primitive as Bishop is. Why keep coming back? Rathbone for one. Let him just talk and I am appeased. Mysteries are the more mysterious the earlier they got made. This and the Wm. Powell Vance series are deepest of narrative wells. Swim them at peril you’ll sink for dialogue sometimes tough to divine plus snail-pace and clues missed for nodding off here/there. Still there is deep regard I feel for these. Must at this juncture mention Applause, the Mamoulian kick-starter for sound as creative expression with cameras no more nailed down, at least by him. Applause is progressive as all that, but fifteen minutes was all I could last thanks to downer recap of beat-down Helen Morgan, herself beat-down no matter what parts she played (hard offscreen life) so I go in with pity for her as eternal doormat epically mistreated by a louse who we know will be around for most (too much) of Applause. I wanted Helen, or somebody, to clunk him with a heavy ash tray, or anything, and release us all from bondage, heels really heels in those days. Applause fits best under “Academic Interest,” but again, it never looked so good, certainly not what I saw first time around 1970 on educational TV out of Linville, Tennessee, a UHF channel (first one I was exposed to). Linville was and remains known for caverns not unlike ones Tom and Becky ran from Injun Joe in.

To follow was Old English, as in George Arliss, which makes Old English, like all his, irresistible. Again, seen it before but not like this. He plays “old,” mightily old, which most figured George started out as. Rascally per always, he outwits chiselers and would-be usurpers, verbal weaponry unique to Arliss, for who else since approached him along such line? Old English was lifted bodily off the stage, Arliss having done it there to greatest so-far legit success. He didn’t bother “opening up” where transferred to screens. So long as he was there to carry bags, who cared if we stayed indoors or out? Here’s the stunner re Old English, and don’t read what follows till you watch the show: George eats and drinks himself to death for a third act, deliberate so as to defeat threats to his beneficiaries, selfness, noble as we expect, but how this consummate actor stages run-up to demise --- humor first in the food and (much) drink, then a pretty much planned-for stroke, very realistic as Arliss would of course insist on, collapse and death in his favored armchair, work upon this world finished. Imagine anyone else’s star vehicle finishing thus, and Old English was a comedy to this point. Such was good and plentiful reason why Arliss stayed a star of substantial heft. Final of four was Three Faces East, seventy-one minute matter of Constance Bennett outfoxing Erich von Stroheim. It’s about spying circa the Great War and I give up trying to separate agents from double agents and are they for or against us. Stroheim works best, as always, for himself, love making him finally mis-step, Connie the object of fatal temptation. Von poses as butler for the English manor where intrigues take place. Watch him unpack Bennett clothing (emphasis on underthings) and know what great acting was about. Beauty of Three Faces East was Von not just in background, but prominent throughout. We get him front, center, and ongoing. I’m a pig in mud where it’s Stroheim. No such thing as enough of him, let alone too much.