Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

FRISCO JENNY (1932):
This is an interesting case of a pre-code talkie w/ some serious problems that nevertheless ends up overcoming its shortcomings and working. It opens with what seems like the beginning of what might be a very impressive tracking shot - a Keystone Cop pauses outside the swinging doors of a San Francisco saloon, then enters and walks to the bar for a stiff drink while the (enormous) camera rig follows. Are we in for a very early version of the kind of complex dolly shot that Welles could choreograph and get in the can in four hours and Noah Baumbach is able to choreograph and get in the can in five or six weeks? Nope - instead we cut to two short pieces of what looks like a longer opening tracking shot, showing us unrelated action of different minor patrons! Ah well - at least director William A. Wellman, uh - tried before giving up?

I can't pound on Wellman too much, though - because following about fifteen minutes of exposition about the romantic intrigue of the titular character (Ruth Chatterton), Wellman shakes up the plot literally by staging a truly impressive sequence of a 1906 earthquake destroying the bar and everything around it. Yeah, it's only a couple of minutes of practical FX, but by 1932 standards it's pretty darn cool! How can Wellman follow that up?  I guess with... absolutely no more SFX whatsoever, one brief shooting, and mostly a lot of utterly contrived melodrama. 

FRISCO JENNY isn't exactly an Idiot Plot, but it does assume some very, shall we say, primitive assumptions about 20th century morality, such as the perverse old chestnut about women with shady pasts being willing to suffer no end of indignity and even march to their deaths before admitting the kind of thing that absolutely no one would ever think twice about concealing today. FRISCO JENNY's plot simply makes no sense in 2026, yet it works, mostly because its title martyr is played by the incredible Ruth Chatterton, star of the following year's corker satire FEMALE. Chatterton is a tart wit in the early stretch and then segues effortlessly into earnest tragedy in the second half. I have to give Wellman some credit, too, for marshalling a supporting cast of people who (Louis Calhern notwithstanding) I have no recollection of seeing previously, yet they mostly come off as credible. In the case of the two most important supplemental characters - Chatterton's estranged adult son and her lifelong aide-de-camp - the acting almost approaches Chatterton's admirable understatement and verity. This is a movie that should just be laughable, but by the end it almost goes over.

3/5    I guess they were still trying to figure out what kinds of plots would fly with sound/dialogue in '32. (Then again the particular outre conceit here persisted into the era of Douglas Sirk 25+ years later and then fortunately drifted into obscurity.)