For once the East Coast Execs got it right, noting the underlying quality of this modest programmer and sending it back in front of the cameras to add prestigious/expensive Talkie sequences to the completed silent cut in spite of a ho-hum reception from 'the trades' and new Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr. (Those additions now lost, the full silent exists in a superb print out on KINO.) After directing more than a score of 2 & 5-reel Westerns, 27-yr-old William Wyler moves confidently to this modern MidWest story; tough, funny, touching, about a gang of crooked boxing promoters moving town-to-town, fleecing small-town rubes with a fixed bout by sending likable ‘advance man’ James Murray ahead to warm them up, posing as a local boy bravely stepping into the ring against unbeaten Battling Roff (former pro boxer George Kotsonaros). But this time, Murray gets too involved with a girl (Barbara Kent) and a freckle-face orphan tyke (Jack Hanlon, phenomenal!) and can’t go thru with the scam. Wyler seems unable to put a foot (make that camera placement) wrong, with a fabulous economical narrative style getting his story to run in just over an hour by telling us three or four things at once. (The occasional immature/showoff shot great fun.) The film openly looks back at Chaplin’s THE KID/’21, but also ahead to King Vidor’s THE CHAMP/’31, even more to Meredith Willson’s THE MUSIC MAN/’62, though here the surrogate father/son story (really more Big Brother) takes precedent over the romance, and in very emotional fashion. Plus the boxing scenes really hold up: Wyler shooting with kinetic elan; Murray in fabulous ‘fissick’ as his young pal says. (His rapid decline after Vidor’s THE CROWD/’28 and this unaccountable.) Barbara Kent is fine as the girl, but Murray & Hanlon are the main event. (Hanlon debuted as one of the kids following Buster Keaton everywhere he goes in THE GENERAL/’26.) This one a real find.
ATENTION MUST BE PAID: Look fast for the guy in the ring holding up the Round # card; it’s Wyler.
DOUBLE-BILL: One more silent before Wyler did his first all-Talkie, HELL’S HEROES/’29, his exceptional version of THE THREE GODFATHERS (made twice by John Ford; by Richard Boleslawski; many more).
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