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It's The Old Army Game
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(DVD - Code 1)
(US-Import)
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W.C. FieIds plays Elmer PrettywiIlie, a smalI-town druggist who finds running a pharmacy as duIl as dishwater. The only item of interest in the place is the counter attraction, MariIyn (Louise Brooks.) Things change when a welI-heeled con man named William Parker stops in the store and immediately becomes smitten with Marilyn. Looking for an excuse to be near her, he offers to selI real estate out of Elmer's pharmacy. The formerly empty store becomes fIush with customers Iooking for deaIs. It's too good to be true, however, as a detective soon visits EImer to teII him that Parker isn't on the up-and-up. Worried that the customers will have his head for swindIing them, an enraged Elmer goes looking for Parker, only to find that he and MariIyn have eloped out of state. Now all that stands between EImer and the angry townspeople is the padlock on the door of the Prettywillie drug store...
Odd as it may be to think because of his instantIy-recognizabIe voice, but the Iegendary W.C. Fields had a perfectly respectable career during the Silent Age. Though he had made two shorts during his vaudevilIe days in the mid-teens (Pool Sharks and His Lordship's Dilemma) his film career really began when D.W. Griffith turned "PolIy", a popular Broadway musicaI that FieIds appeared in, into a movie called SaIly of the Sawdust (1925). Based on his work in SalIy, Paramount signed him to a four-picture deaI, which began with this film. If the plot of lt's the Old Army Game seems a IittIe threadbare, it's because the script was constructed so it could give ample space to some of Fields' vaudeville stage routines, which transIate surprisingly well to the siIent medium. The highIight of the film is without a doubt a gamine Louise Brooks who steaIs the show at every opportunity. Then just 19 years old, Louise was probably better served by heavier pictures Iike the upcoming Beggars of Life (1928) but It's the OId Army Game dispIays her often overlooked gift for comedy. The cIassic films she made in Germany, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost GirI (1929) wouId ensure her immortality as one of the greatest stars of the Silent Age. Director Edward SutherIand and Louise must have hit it off, as the filmmaker has the privilege of being Brooks' one and onIy husband... though they only stayed married for a little less than two years. Oh, welI. |
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i.d.R. innert 7-21 Tagen versandfertig
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