Applause (1929) (B&W) | Helen Morgan, Joan Peers | Great backstager and early talkie with...

Applause (1929) (B&W) | Helen Morgan, Joan Peers | Applause is not exactly everything these gals are gonna get...

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Applause (1929) (B&W)

	Applause (1929) (B&W) Helen Morgan, Joan Peers Kino Video, 2003 average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great backstager and early talkie with inventive camera work

Made in 1929, this film was directed by Robert Mamoulian and features some pioneering camera work. Specifically, the static camera of other 1929 films is absent here. Mamoulian does some of this by shooting part of the picture silent with sound dubbed over it, such as in the scene where Kitty first arrives in New York and the camera follows her line of sight as she looks around the hustle and bustle of Grand Central Station. In scenes with lots of motion that have dialogue, Mamoulian has the players walking away from the camera so he can dub in the dialogue unsynchronized to the players' actual speech. If you didn't know how he did this, you wouldn't notice it.

If you are expecting to see Helen Morgan the torch singer doing the same type of act she did for Ziegfeld in his Follies, you'll be disappointed. Instead, be prepared to see Helen Morgan the actress in this one. Here Helen Morgan plays Kitty Darling, a woman of burlesque whose husband is sent to the electric chair for killing a man in a fit of jealousy. Kitty gives birth to their daughter, April, at about the same time. Convinced by a friend that the burlesque backstage is no place for a child to grow up, Kitty sends April to a convent school in Wisconsin. She remains there from age 5 to age 17.

When April returns home she finds her mother's world in sharp contrast to the peace of the convent. Plus, Kitty has taken up with a younger man. He is a parasite who is two and three timing her and soaking up what money she has. He tries to put the moves on April, but with no success. Kitty dealing with the end of her career and both her private and professional humiliation is hard to watch. Morgan gained weight and donned an unkempt blonde wig just for this part, and her acting is superb. Do realize that much of the film focuses on April, Kitty's daughter. Joan Peers was the actress playing April, and this was her first credited screen role. She handles the part quite well, but by 1931 her career in films was over.

There are a few extra features on the DVD:
* An interview with Helen Morgan after her 1933 marriage.
* A short speech by Mamoulian from 1986 on the 50th anniversary of the Director's Guild of America which he helped found.
* An excerpt from 1929's "Glorifying the American Girl" in which Helen Morgan sings.
* Some text entries on the correlation of the novel "Applause" and the film.
* A newspaper article from 1929 in which the author has interviewed director Robert Mamoulian entitled "The Camera is the Thing".
* An image gallery

By the way, the video quality is excellent and the audio is fine too. It is necessary to turn up the volume a little during some outdoor or crowd scenes that have dialogue. However, there is no hissing and crackling in the audio, nor is the sound of shoes clomping around and jewelry clanging in competion with speech as in many other early sound films.

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Applause is not exactly everything these gals are gonna get...

Rouben Mamoulian created a masterpiece in Applause, a movie that studies the dark, seamy and sleazy side of show business burlesque. The reviewers are right; Mamoulian makes it clear that this burlesque show won't exactly attract high society: his close up shots of the dancing girls with gold teeth who are not very slender highlight the sleazy elements of the burlesque side of show business and the lecherous men in the audience don't exactly seem like a "soft-sell" crowd either. Indeed, as one reviewer writes you still cringe at the brutality with which the burlesque girls are treated by both the bosses and their audience; their life is full of degradation and rough, hard work as they wish to lead better lives.

This desire for a better life gets its spotlight in Kitty Darling's character, played so ably by the great Helen Morgan. Kitty becomes inextricably tied down to the world of burlesque. However, when Kitty's daughter April is born, Kitty wishes April could lead a better life. Therefore Kitty sends April to a convent with a little prodding from one of her not so loyal men friends, Hitch Nelson, who is played by Fuller Mellish Jr.

Eventually money runs out and Kitty's daughter April, now eighteen or so, leaves the expensive convent school with its sheltered ways of life. April comes to New York to live with her mother Kitty and Hitch. However, although mother and daughter love each other very much, a reconciliation with total honesty may prove difficult. And what will happen after April meets the clean-cut man of her dreams just as her mother Kitty's career and personal life become all undone? A few plots twists later as you watch the film and you will get your answer. However, there will be no spoilers here, folks; you'll have to watch the movie to know how it all works out!

The cinematography is excellent; the camera angles reflect forethought and the camera moves along with the characters, even fading in and out to focus on only certain characters in one scene. Excellent! The black and white stays fairly sharp for the film's age but the sound is not as clear as you would experience in the movie theaters of today.

The DVD offers a few bonuses: direction Rouben Mamoulian gives a brief commentary on the film in retrospect; Helen Morgan sings a song with her real life husband and Helen sings yet another song from another movie which was produced in 1929, the same year that Applause came out in theaters.

I highly recommend this film for film buffs who want to enjoy excellent performances by very capable actors including the famous Helen Morgan. Applause provides us with excellent examples of the camera being used as a tool that moves about instead of being stationery; this in and of itself remains noteworthy in film history as Applause was one of the earliest films to use the camera this way.

Great job, everyone!

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a standing ovation to kino

whenever i have to prepare for a production of 'cabaret' or 'chicago', i make it a point to refer to 'applause'. the arts camp i work at will be doing 'chicago' and i'm choreographing it. i will be driving my cabin mate nuts with it because i will watch it and other musicals of roxie's time a lot!

mamoulian was a maverick. it is hard to get the uninformed to appreciate what he was doing because there have been so many advances in film since 1929. but think of what sound did to slow movies down to a creeeping crawl at that point. and how this film has scenes that move and sweep along. the camera angles on many of the shots are arresting and they help to push you into that seedy milieu of kitty and april's world.

then, there's that wonderful, heart in the throat performance from helen morgan. she really does some astonishing work with the character, especially at the end. she would never be as good on film as she was in this film.

but mainly, though i enjoy morgan's work, i like to look at the dance steps of the 1920s and i like to see how they were set. then it's a good mix as i combine them with what people expect to see. and the style. and the design. and the capture of a pre-depression era manhattan. then i get back to morgan again and it's time for another enthusiastic viewing of a great film and a great time capsule of 1920s style girlie show.

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APPLAUSE

A "tear-jerker" (before the Hayes office took effect), but surprisingly well-done,with some unexpected storylines ...Helen Morgan must be one of the most under-utilized talents in movie history. A natural.Simple, affecting. A small gem.
The film is worth seeing , even 'tho it's a bit hurky-jerky in it's editing, for its subject matter and the way in which much of it was dealt with at the earlier part of "talkie" history. Unexpectedly complex, for the time.

reviews: page 1, 2

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