Film Review
Immediately before making
Der blaue Engel (1930), his
most famous film, director Josef von Sternberg came to grips with the
challenges of early sound cinema with this offbeat gangster
melodrama. The problems posed by the early sound recording
equipment defeated many a filmmaker in the late 20s, early 30s, but von
Sternberg fully embraced the opportunities afforded by this new
cinematic development to enhance the movie-going experience. The
sound highlights include a scene in a busy Harlem nightspot, in which
swinging cabaret numbers add greatly to the seedy atmosphere, and the
later sequences in the prison, where convicts sing in chorus to
counterpoint the horror of their predicament.
The film is also interesting visually. With its use of high
contrast black and white photography and omnipresent shadows, the film
presages the film noir thriller. The one sequence of particular
interest is the one in which the principal baddie, Lang, ascends the
staircase to confront his rival. The noirish lighting transforms
the staircase into a spider's web in which Lang becomes enmeshed and
incapable of carrying out his deadly plan. The same visual motif
recurs in the prison scenes, but this time Lang and his rival are both
caught, like flies in a spider's web, awaiting a cruel end.
Sadly, there are also a great deal of weaknesses. The plot is as
unconvincing and amateurish as most of the performances, and some of
the characterisation is just too wacky to be taken seriously. The
prison warden looks and acts as if thinks he is doing a Marx Brothers
picture, something which completely ruins the tension of the last few
scenes. Fay Wray is so jarring that, at times, you wish that some
giant hairy ape would turn up and carry her away, but alas that did not
happen until four years later (in
King Kong). Despite
his limited acting range, George Bancroft carries the film almost
singlehandedly, although his delivery is so slow that you soon become
convinced that the film is being played at half its intended
speed. Today,
Thunderbolt
is a creaky patience-testing plod-a-thon, but at the time it represented a major
advancement in the use of sound and lighting in a motion picture.
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Nicknamed Thunderbolt, Jim Lang is a hardened gangster who is hotly
pursued by the police for a series of crimes that include robbery and
murder. He risks capture by confronting his girlfriend Ritzy in a
Harlem nightclub. She has made up her mind to leave him, but he
has no intention of letting her go. When he learns that Ritzy has
moved in with her new boyfriend, a respectable young man named Bob
Morgan, Lang decides to settle the matter man-to-man with his
rival. Before he can reach Bob's apartment, the crook is caught
by the police and soon ends up on death-row, having been convicted of
murder. Lang's cronies successfully frame Bob for an armed bank
robbery and it isn't long before Bob is occupying a cell opposite
Lang's. Ritzy pleads with Lang to confess to having framed Bob so
that he can evade the electric chair. Lang is unrepentant and
relishes the fact that his rival will share the same fate as him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.