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Thursday, March 19, 2020

FAST WORKERS (1933)

Belying their doomed Hollywood careers, fast-fading silent film super-star John Gilbert and disinterested silent horror-specialist director Tod Browning make a good job of this funny, tough-minded programmer. The setup, a favorite of Raoul Walsh & Howard Hawks, has two competitive pals driven apart by a gold-digging floozy when the real love match is between the fellas. Swap in a new profession/backdrop and just run the template. Here, it’s rivet men on a new skyscraper, Gilbert the hot-tempered sharpie/Robert Armstrong the soft-touch sap. Mae Clarke does a nice job suppressing her honest romantic inclinations to grab what she can out of a man’s saving account, but the main reason to have a look is for the unexpectedly strong work from Gilbert (looking & sounding well) and especially from Browning who elsewhere seemed largely determined not to adjust to the Talkies. His best known sound films (DRACULA/’31; FREAKS/’32) hopelessly draggy for all their fame. Right up to date on a technical level, you can feel the studio shorting the film on a few missing transitional passages which now have the advantage of forcing a modern pace. Plus an extra tasty supporting turn from Sterling Holloway, adding one more (high pitched) voice to the film’s remarkably nasty level of misogyny.

DOUBLE-BILL: While this film ended Gilbert’s pricey, long-running M-G-M contract, he returned later in the year at Greta Garbo’s request as co-star for QUEEN CHRISTINA. There, under far more pressure, he pushes too hard. He’s much more relaxed, more natural in this tossaway, the only sound film that makes you think he might have had a future if booze hadn’t finished him off in 1936 at only 38.

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