MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: POWER OF THE PRESS (1928)

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

POWER OF THE PRESS (1928)

Delightfully lighthearted comic/romantic melodrama from Frank Capra who seems on holiday in this throwaway fare after scoring big on SUBMARINE/’28, Columbia Pictures first film to use synch-sound effects. Tossing off a final silent, everyone gets in the spirit as ridiculously handsome ‘cub’ reporter Douglas Fairbank Jr gets the year’s big scoop when the District Attorney is murdered and he spots cute mayoral candidate daughter Jobyna Ralston escape from a window at the back of the house. What a story! It’ll completely upend the election. What Fairbanks doesn’t know is that he’s being set up as patsy for a rival mayoral candidate now positioned to win on election night. But when Ralston pleads her case, Doug falls in love, and has to find the real killer. Capra, with fabulous moves from cameraman Ted Tetzlaff, shows tremendous late silent form (one shot whipping around an office door a real ‘Yowsa!’ moment). And watch for a great set piece, a mini-documentary on taking a story from typewriter, thru composition room, hot metal print run before it gets wrapped for the street. Done with a youthful zest for the medium few could equal at the time. Once we leave the newspaper offices the film loses some of its specificity, fun & momentum, but still a darn sweet ride. And that includes a wild car chase climax before young Doug straightens everything out to win the girl. All in just over an hour.

DOUBLE-BILL: Ralston, who didn’t survive the Talkie transition, probably had her best year in 1927: LIGHTNING; WINGS and in her regular spot as Harold Lloyd’s best co-star in his best pic THE KID BROTHER.

READ ALL ABOUT IT/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Perhaps because Joseph McBride wrongly refers to POWER just as melodrama in his epic, if mean-spirited, FRANK CAPRA: THE CATASTROPHE OF SUCCESS, everyone else follows suit . . . and tends to write off this fun pic. But all the melodramatic elements come with clear comic edge. Even in 1928, especially in 1928, height of Jazz Age sophistication, no one would have taken this seriously.

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Thursday, May 21, 2020

POWER OF THE PRESS (1928)

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