MAN TROUBLE (1930) is from the era when gangsters spoke slowly and enunciated clearly. Even Edward G. Robinson had barely begun to rat-a-tat-tat. This was the film friends warned me against, but I liked it. It wasn;t the second film that day to contrast an ostentatious and a humble Christmas tree, and it was like a fine tree decorated with flaws.
Overly character-expository dialogue: nightclub proprietor Milton Sells spends his first scene clearly telling us “I love RISK — unlike SAFETY — which I despise.” (Not actual dialogue, but nearly)
Round vowels, round vowels: everybody is enunciating like hell, even the normally naturalistic Dorothy Mackail, who tries to get away with some actual human behaviour at times, which is disconcerting. Suddenly, in mid-scene, she goes from trading dialogue with her co-stars to just plain chatting, and it feels like she’s suddenly cut her puppeteer’s strings and attained independent animation.
Radio dialogue: “He’s in the water now. Going to get her. Boy, he sure can swim, can’t he?” After BROADWAY MELODY took the chance of having a character drive off in a car without showing it, filmmakers becomes briefly convinced that withholding spectacle and offering commentary instead is the way to wow an audience.
Characters who are meant to be charming who come off sinister: the old married couple who raise imaginary children, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF-style, and seem bizarrely intent on the young hero and heroine sleeping together. “That’s not a proper kiss!”
The faults of early talkie cinema are all there, including a state-of-the-art mic boom creeping into shot, but director Berthold Viertel (THE PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK) does move the camera a fair bit, including during music and dialogue. One bravura moment shows Dorothy Mackaill turning a mirror on her night club audience and using it as a spotlight: in a long pan, we pick up necking or squabbling couples, the roving light and roving camera in perfect harmony.
It was one of those nights when everything on was either too familiar or a bad risk, so like Milton Sills I chose risk and was glad I did.
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