In Old Arizona | Henry Armetta, Warner Baxter

In Old Arizona | Henry Armetta, Warner Baxter | This is a sleeper - literally

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In Old Arizona

	In Old Arizona Henry Armetta, Warner Baxter 20th Century Fox, 2005 average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 05/13/2008 Run time: 95 minutes Rating: Nr

The Caballero's Way

Set in the late 1890s and featuring Warner Baxter in his Oscar winning role as the Cisco Kid, IN OLD ARIZONA is oddly entertaining. One of the first all-talking movies, its primitive sound recording techniques make it a pretty static `action' western. Although some scenes were shot outdoors - impressively catching the actors' voices without boom mikes showing at the top of the screen - most of the action takes place indoors, if action we can call it, while the actors sit real close to each other and talk loud and slow in interminable dialogues. Missing is the normal musical scoring and under-scoring, although many scenes open and close with picturesque cowboys, pianists, and caballeros singing or strumming an old-timey standard. This odd entertainment will appeal to you if you want to see how films went about figuring out what to do now that they finally had a sound track.

IN OLD ARIZONA is taken from O. Henry's short story "The Caballero's Way." It's a story that's easy to find with a simple internet search and is worth the hunt. The movie is more or less faithful to the source: the Cisco Kid loves Tonia (Dorothy Burgess) who, O. Henry tells us, was `half Carmen, half Madonna, and the rest...let us say, was humming-bird.' The movie Tonia is quite a bit more Carmen than Madonna, though, and it's not long before her roving eyes fall upon calvary Sgt. Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe), a bowery boy, transplanted to the old west, who is mesmerized equally by the humming-bird charms of Tonia and the sizable bounty offered for the Cisco Kid, dead or alive. Not quite the antagonist or motivation envisioned by O. Henry, but close enough for the purposes of this movie. With its simple but strong plot in place, IN OLD ARIZONA shows us how this deadly love triangle plays out.

For fans of old movies IN OLD ARIZONA is fascinating. As one of the first big pictures released after the introduction of sound, I was engrossed more by the way the movie's makers used their new toy than with the story. What sound effects do they use for stagecoaches and galloping horses? How do they handle background, or ambient, noise? Not too well, as it turns out. There's a scene in a bar where the directors (Irving Cummings & Raoul Walsh share directing credits) have a piano player sing in the background while a conversation is going on in the foreground. The music more or less drowns out the conversation. Baxter's Mexican accent sounds like it was filtered through Chico Marx. Surprisingly, this was Dorothy Burgess's first movie. Twenty-one years old at the time, her acting, with its languidly paced exaggeration, belongs in a silent film. Usually I like or dislike a movie solely on the content of the story. My reaction to IN OLD ARIZONA is a little different. The story was okay, but there was way too much gibble-gabble, too little action, and a good chunk of the dialogue is hard to follow. I added another star because this is a transitional film, in good condition, and a study of not only what Hollywood was going to do with sound, but also what it would try and discard in the future.

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This is a sleeper - literally

I have been looking forward to viewing this film for decades. I remember seeing it for sale years ago. When I saw that it was finally coming out on DVD, I was excited!
If you enjoy films from the late silent period and the very earliest of talkies, this is for you - for technical reasons. This was the first all-talking movie shot outdoors. If you study the film to imagine how it was shot and the obstacles that were overcome to produce this film, you'll marvel.
However, if you are looking for content ---well. I know its the first screen appearance of the Cisco Kid. Yes, Warner Baxter is in it. Plus you'll see other early appearances. But as for the story and the long windy dialog...it did put me to sleep. I actually fell asleep and awoke as it was ending. It seemed much longer than the 99 mins listed.
So for historical reasons, I give it a thumbs up and will keep the disk for my collection. But as a drama or a western film, move on to some of the classics of the 1930s.

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the bowery boys meet the cisco kid

this is probably the highest ranking anyone will ever give this film, but i genuinely enjoyed it. warner baxter creates the role of the cisco kid, adapted from an o. henry short story, and it owes more to o. henry than to zane grey; the dialog is punctuated with tough "noo yawk" street lingo of a century ago, and the denouement is pure irony. and incidentally, there is a hilarious exchange between the two lead cowboys where they compare the size of their respective guns. is this for everyone? by no means. but if you are a westerns buff, and are willing to take a look into a different time and a different mindset, give this a try.

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A technological triumph of early sound

Although this film was released in January 1929, it was filmed in 1928. That makes it truly amazing when you think that the first all-talking picture wasn't even released until July 1928 - "Lights of New York". As others have mentioned, this film does not have lots of action - much screen time is spent with characters just talking in specific locations. There are no exciting shoot-outs or chases as you would expect in a western made just five years later. This is probably due to the motion constraint of the early sound cameras. However, you do get some tremendous long shots of some stunning western vistas. This was because Fox was an early adopter of sound-on-film versus sound-on-disc. This gave Fox the ability to shoot outside and made the studio an innovator in the production of newsreels - they could take their cameras anywhere.

As for the film itself, I'd recommend it only if you're interested in early sound films. Otherwise, you'll probably be bored stiff due to the lack of action. Warner Baxter's portrayal of the Cisco Kid is quite good. He doesn't get too campy with a role that could have been over-the-top in the wrong hands. I do have to wonder - why is every single member of the army that is pursuing Cisco speaking with a Queens accent and why are they using urban New York slang? Was there a mix-up at central casting that day? Was the cast of this film supposed to show up for a Bowery Boys film or a gangster picture and wound up here by mistake? In 1928 there were dialogue coaches, but probably not many coaches on regional dialect. It's a shame to think that if John Wayne had tried out for this early sound western he would have been turned down because he didn't sound like he was from Brooklyn.

As for the quality, the video is quite good on this DVD. The signal/noise ratio is a bit of a problem throughout the film - it is hard to hear quiet conversation. However, this is probably due to the early sound technology. There are no extras on the DVD at all.

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Severely dated, but worth getting for anyone interested in the early days of sound

I'd been looking for this film for quite a while and finally saw it a few years ago. While it has weak points and severely creaks throughout (it is almost 80 years old, after all) Warner Baxter's performance is reasonably good and there are entertaining moments-particularly if you speak Spanish, as there are some lines of dialog spoken in Spanish which I found highly entertaining.

As to the DVD itself, the transfer is fairly good, allowing for the film's age. I was quite satisfied with its quality.

Recommended for film buffs, particularly fans of early westerns.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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