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Sunday, January 3, 2021

SHADOW OF THE LAW (1930)

Early Paramount Talkie has a visually imaginative start under director Louis Gasnier before running out of creative steam after the second reel, wasting whatever promise it had.  William Powell gets things started, walking an apartment neighbor home (Natalie Moorhead, one floor above) only to wind up defending her from a violent lover and watching in horror as a punch hurled in self-defense sends the brute flying backwards out the window to his death.  (Cool special effects fall!)  After a speedy trial, it’s a life sentence as the mystery neighbor lady takes a powder, leaving Powell on the hook for murder.  Escaping prison, Powell establishes a successful new life under a secret identity, but when he finally finds the vicious dame who left him to rot and begs for help, she tries blackmail and then more lies, leaving him in the lurch once again.  Moorhead is something of a find here, shockingly amoral in her unexplained determination to ruin Powell’s life and leverage a comfortable lifestyle.  While Powell is predictably ahead of the Talkie acting curve, his easy wit and clipped style fully formed.  (Plus, for the couple of reels he’s in jail, appearing without his signature mustache to utterly miserable effect.  Gable & Colman were still themselves clean shaven; Powell simply disappears.)  Not without interest up thru the jail scenes; falling flat thereafter. 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Compare the prison scenes with George W. Hill’s THE BIG HOUSE, out the same year and looking amazingly advanced for the period, a real wallapalooza in Early Talkie cinema.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-big-house-1930.html

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