Too much of everything

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Director: GREGORY LA CAVA. Dialogue director: Frank Reicher. Screenplay: Walter De Leon. Dialogue: Frank Reicher. Adapted by Jack Jungmeyer from the stage play by George S. Brooks. Photography: Arthur Miller. Production manager: Lucky Humberstone. Assistant director: Paul Jones. Sound recording: D.A. Cutler, Clarence M. Wickes.Copyright 26 September 1929 by Pathé Exchange. New York opening at the Colony: 5 October 1929. 7 reels. 6,028 feet. 66 minutes. Available on a 9/10 Grapevine Video DVD.COMMENT: Like the stage play, the whole action of the movie takes place on the one set. Admittedly, it's quite a large set, much bigger than a theatre could handle, but it's not very glamorous and does tend to out-stay its welcome. Nonetheless, I'm told that this is what a real newspaper office actually looked like back in 1929. More surprising still is the information that the reporters and their behavior are accurately depicted. Certainly - with a notable exception - the movie is competently acted. The exception, sad to say, is Carole Lombard who does absolutely nothing with her role at all, and looks about as glamorous as a street cleaner. Maybe she could point a finger at the wardrobe mistress and photographer, Arthur Miller, for her drab appearance, but her lack of spark and animation can surely be blamed on the director, Gregory La Cava. Yet some years later, she and La Cava got together for a movie that turned out to be the highlight of both their careers - My Man Godfrey (1936). But while La Cava's handling here is no more than routine, cameraman Miller brilliantly overcomes many early talkie, sound-proof booth problems.

A crime comedy drama with R. Armstrong and Carol Lombard (before a 3rd vowel was added), she has more of a supporting part, which she plays in her dignified way, a bit otherworldly, spectral, very classy, her generic character in her early sound movies, a distinguished young woman; she also seemed determined on her ascending way to stardom. The supporting cast is very good.The life at a newspaper headquarter is shown as cool, but isn't glamorized. The age was more stoic, and the life's hardships are confessed, admitted, allowed, expressed; the sets show a dirty editorial office, with the throng, garbage and untidiness, and the threat of unemployment. The leading actor plays a reporter fond of his profession and of drinking.Armstrong, a very believable leading player, could be a dynamo, even as a drained journalist. I know that his reputation paled, faded afterward, which is unfair. He was credible in each leading role he has made.The movie, co-written by DeLeon, is exciting and refreshing. The _subjacent play seems good.

The plot elements of this movie, in my mind, take second place to the repartee, or verbal fencing, that takes place among various characters. One character is always needling another; each tries to top the others in snarky insults. I suppose this is where the "comedy" label comes from.For instance, there's the repartee among the various reporters on Robert Armstrong's newspaper. Cupid Ainsworth (a large fat woman) comes in, saying she's late because "I couldn't find a cab." Armstrong responds, "You mean you couldn't find one to fit you." Ainsworth gives as good as she gets, however. When Armstrong comes back into the office after being bawled out by his wife, she says, "Well, well, well! Here comes the lion with the lamb's haircut!" (Ainsworth gives a very memorable performance in this movie, in my opinion.) When Armstrong goes into the editor's office to get bawled out, Ainsworth cries, "Hold on boys, we're going around a curve!" (To me, that was better than Bette Davis' famous line, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!") Tom Kennedy is in the movie, playing a cop. (I always think of Kennedy as Gahagan, from the Torchy Blane movies.) Armstrong refers to Kennedy as "Flatfoot," and he growls, "Lay off the puppies!" Armstrong and his even-more-drunken buddy get into a battle of wits in a speakeasy with members of a drug-dealing gang. Armstrong says, "I recently heard of two hop-slingers who were punished by being put in a barrel with a skunk. Fortunately, the skunk died." His buddy responds, "He was probably bored to death by their repartee." I think this movie has a quite adult sensibility as regards inter-personal relationships and conversation. (Adult meaning "adult," not "dirty.") It's not a Pollyanna or Hollywood sensibility -- there's friction and oneupmanship among various characters. That makes a refreshing change. Kennedy's cop role is also more adult than his slapstick-ish Gahagan roles. I like the whole tone and atmosphere of this movie.I always enjoy seeing Armstrong, who is perhaps best known as the impresario who brought King Kong back from his island. He was a quite prolific actor, and always interesting.George ("Gabby") Hayes is also here briefly, and I'm always fascinated to see him in a movie, beardless and in an adult, not slapstick-ish role.In the end, the murder is pinned on the actual perpetrator (yay!), and Armstrong and his wife are reconciled. I like a movie with a happy ending, and to see justice is done.This movie, to me, is enjoyable, adult, and fun every time I see it.

Big News casts Robert Armstrong and Carole Lombard as a pair of reporters married to each other but working for rival papers. If you expect to see the gifted comic Lombard from such future classics as My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century Big News will disappoint you greatly. This one is strictly the show for Armstrong.Armstrong drives his editor Charles Sellon to distraction with his drinking and carousing and it certainly is wearing on his marriage to Lombard. But as he says speakeasies are great place to pick up stories and Armstrong has been successful.A particular speakeasy owner Sam Hardy is the leader of a narcotics ring in their town and Armstrong has the goods on him. Hardy tries something stupid, he goes to the newspaper office and murders the editor and frames Armstrong for the crime. But naturally our intrepid reporter is too smart for Hardy.Big News is little more than a photographed stage play and the original play was no world beater either. It never holds your interest in the way such other films like Detective Story, Dead End, Rope, or Rear Window do that are all almost exclusively on one set.Big News is directed by Greogry LaCava who also did My Man Godfrey. Whatever he brought out in Lombard for that film stayed buried here. In fairness to Carole, she was not given much to work with.Still it's 1929 and movies were learning to talk. Films like Big News show how much was left to learn.