Review - Sidewalks of New York

October 12, 2018

Sidewalks of New York – 1931, US

At some point in the first half of the twentieth century, the United States became concerned over the plight of young boys and began debating just what should be done with them. The options appear to have involved either getting tough or changing their behavior through kindness. Only one of those strategies makes for a good narrative, so it is natural then that Hollywood would make films in which noble men and woman worked as hard as they could to help youths who were just one step away from either a life of crime or a life in jail. 1938 brought both Spencer Tracey’s Boys Town and James Cagney’s Angels with Dirty Faces. Five years earlier, William A Wellman’s Wild Boys of the Road depicted young boys entering adulthood far too early and its consequences for both society and the youths themselves. Buster Keaton’s Sidewalks of New York was released in 1931, making it a predecessor for later similarly-themed films, yet its telling – and more than a little problematic – that its solutions for youth rebelliousness are merely band aids, actions that, while having the effect of making society feel better, are both simplistic and slightly insulting.

In the film, Keaton plays a rather wealthy landlord named Harmon. Toward the beginning of the film, Harmon meets a young ruffian named Clipper (Norman Phillips Jr.), who’s fallen under the influence of local gang leader Butch (Frank Rowan), and Clipper’s tough-as-nails sister, Margie (Anita Page). Their first meeting involves a slap to the face from her and a declaration of love–at-first-sight from him.  To win Margie’s heart, Harmon embarks of a mission to straighten Clipper out, and as usually happens in movies of this sort, his means of doing this involves giving the trouble boys a place to constructively exhaust their energy, a gymnasium.

Think about this for a moment. According to the film, the solution for youth unruliness is not to improve local schools, fight for safer, more modern neighborhoods, or improve local employment opportunities. It is not to provide programs for them to go to after school that better prepare them for the future, but to put a basketball in their hands or let them duke it out in a boxing ring. Sure, sports can be a godsend for many young men, but the number of people who make a living in professional sports is so minuscule that presenting a gym as the sole saving grace of the community is naive at best and classist at worst. I remember watching the Academy Awards one year and seeing Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis discuss putting both balls and books into students’ hands, and the message was clear. Sports are not enough; minds must be engaged as well. It was true then, and it is true now.

This is not to say that Sidewalks of New York is not also an intermittently interesting film. A Buster Keaton film can never truly be bad, for there are always scenes in which Keaton’s magic shines though. In this one, he has several humorous moments, yet few that I would describe as side-splitting. In one memorable moment, he exits his chauffeur-driven car to address the brawling youths around him and says, “Come, come, my little men.” His delivery is perfect, as is his subsequent retreat back into his limousine. A later courtroom scene gives Keaton the opportunity to engage in both verbal witticisms with an increasingly frustrated judge and physical comedy, and a later scene involving Harmon’s attempts to find the words to woo Margie and the romantic titles of popular songs is quite inventive. Unfortunately, other attempts at comedy are less successful. A boxing match never feels wacky or wild enough, and a stage performance, in which Harmon and his valet, Poggle (Cliff Edwards), attempt to be Shakespearean by ending every other word with eth never quite comes together, partly because of the complete disconnect between the disaster we see unfolding on stage and the audience’s utter disconnect to that madness. They should be laughing uproariously at the calamity in front of them, not whole-heatedly applauding it.

Page gives an adequate performance as Margie, yet the film denies her the opportunity to do much with the role other than talk loudly and encourage Harmon to be more manly. Missing are scenes in which she genuinely falls in love with him, and there’s little in the film to back up its assertion that they have any a deep connection. The same can be said of young Clipper. More is needed to establish a father-son relationship that a few scenes in which Harmon doesn’t report Clipper’s criminal behavior to the police, but since the film neglects to give us these scenes, we just have to accept his eventual change of heart. I felt that acceptance was unearned.

The film ends with a crowd-pleasing scene in which the young gym attendees show their appreciation for Harmon, and it is indeed a fun sequence. However, it doesn’t make up for the film’s paint-by-numbers approach to storytelling or its troublesome solution to the supposed crisis of rebellious youth. Sure, it is a bit unfair to compare Sidewalks of New York to films that came after it or to criticize it for drawing from a playbook that was perhaps less commonly known at the time of the film’s release, but that is the perspective through which current viewers will likely see and assess it. And looked at from that angle, the film is only mildly interesting. We’ve seen Buster Keaton in this kind of role, and we’ve seen him in better, more humorous films. We’ve also seen him in movies that are timeless and that still reflect the best of American values. Sidewalks of New York is just not one of these films. (on DVD from Warner Archives)

2 and a half stars

Review - Free and Easy (1930)

June 16, 2016

Free and Easy – US, 1930

You can see the nervous, shaking hands of Hollywood all over Edward Sedgwick’s 1930 film Free and Easy. Here is a film starring Buster Keaton, an established star, that plays more like a trial run for an actor that a studio is of two minds about. It is as if they were conducting a test to determine whether audiences would still find him funny now that they could hear his voice, root for him to get the girl at a time when he was somewhat older, and ultimately continue to financially support his films in post-Jazz Singer Hollywood. If this was indeed their motivation, they should have chosen a much better test.

Free and Easy finds Keaton playing Elmer Butts, the clumsy, yet sweet-natured agent of a local pageant winner named Elvira Plunkett (Anita Page), who is on her way to California to try to make a name for herself in Hollywood. Accompanying them is Elvira’s overbearing and obnoxious mother (Trixie Friganza) because practically every comedy of this sort required a mother to be loud, rude, and controlling. The role is a cliché, and no attempt is made to establish a character or explain her background. There’s not even the obligatory, “It’s my job to protect you now that your father is gone,” which would have at least established a motivation. Instead, we get a character whose dominating personality exists solely for comic purposes, yet provides few, if any, laughs at all.

On the train to California, mother and daughter meet a famous actor named Larry Mitchell, played by Robert Montgomery. We know he’s famous because Elvira finds his picture in one of the Hollywood magazines of the time. The three of them are soon separated, but somehow we just know they’ll be reunited. After all, the genre calls for him to be instrumental in getting Elvira her first big break. In a bit of a surprise, he has a surprise hand in getting Elmer an audition. Unfortunately, Elmer proves himself to have little screen presence, almost no comic timing, and extreme difficulty understanding even the most basic directions from director Lionel Barrymore – that is, until it is cinematically convenient that he do so.

If is often said that slapstick comedies were collections of various gags fit nicely into the most basic of plots. For example, a boy’s pursuit of a girl could contain a party scene, a training scene, a big speech, and a daring rescue, with only one of two of them being truly essential to the plot, and in many ways, Free and Easy resembles such early slapstick films. There’s a long scene involving Elmer’s attempts to get onto a Hollywood lot that does not serve any narrative purpose, and the film’s final act is a long song and dance number whose only reason for existing seems to be to prove to audiences that Buster Keaton could sing and dance, a point at odds with its earlier contention that he couldn’t.

In between these scenes, the film struggles both narratively and comically. While it includes a few interesting and tender moments between Elmer and Elvira, it never establishes much of a narrative arc, relying instead on brief appearances by popular Hollywood figures such as director Fred Niblo, Gwen Lee, John Miljan, Karl Dane, Jackie Coogan, and Cecil B. DeMille, as well as impressive set pieces on MGM’s Hollywood lot. Audiences in 1930 likely enjoyed seeing such an array of figures in the same movie, and I can imagine them pointing to the screen each time someone they recognized appeared. However, removed from 1930s Hollywood, the scenes have little purpose. Worse than that, they slow the film down and rob it of time that could have been used to advance the storylines involving Elmer, Elvira, and Larry. In fact, I’d venture to say that at least half of Free and Easy is comprised of scenes from “other films,” including most of the film’s big finale. So, while the film’s final moments are filled with wonder, fancy footwork, and impressive effects for the time, none of them is truly essential to the plot.

The film has much bigger problems, however. It is perfectly understandable that MGM would have wanted to showcase their newly-built studio and demonstrate just what could be created on it. One wonders, then, why they didn’t just make Free and Easy a musical. Why couldn’t Elmer have sung about his love for Elvira, or Elvira’s mother rhapsodize about men and how important it was to keep them away from her daughter? Why wasn’t Larry given a song in which he explained his change of heart? Such moments would have made much more sense than a pre-code song about a fake king and queen.

And then there’s the direction. What can you say about a film in which takes that should have ended on the cutting-room floor made it into the final product? Were the other takes so much worse that Sedgwick just threw up his arms and moved on to the next scene? This sounds preposterous, but no other explanation makes sense. For the first half of the film, Keaton’s timing is just off. He seems a step behind the cast members, as if he was giving the audience time to laugh or trying to build up to a particular look or emotion. Whatever the reason, the result is awkward, and many scenes have an amateurish feel to them. A good director – or one with more power – should have been able to fix this. A good director – or a better screenwriter – would have known how to use Keaton properly. Here, no one seems to know how to film slapstick or build to comic moments, and scenes start and stop without any real purpose or reward for the audience. Many seem intended to be funny, yet they are more likely to produce stone-faced expressions and moments of utter silence.

Unfortunately, this was the fate of many comedians who tried to make the transition from silent comedy to talking films. They saw their power behind the camera, as well as their studio’s confidence in them, wane significantly. New directors came in, and many producers began emphasizing spectacle over plot. Movies simply had to move faster and be visually spectacular. Keaton’s work toward the end of Free and Easy demonstrate his ability to adapt and excel in the new medium; the first half does not. It’s inexplicable, and Keaton deserved better. (on DVD as part of TCM’s Buster Keaton Collection)

2 stars

*The film was an enormous hit and remade twice, first in 1937 as Pick a Star and then in 1945 as Abbott and Costello in Hollywood.

*TCM’s Buster Keaton Collection appears to be out of print.