Hollywood Cavalcade
by Buster Keaton, Irving Cummings, Malcolm St. Clair
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Actor: Alan Curtis, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, J. Edward Bromberg, Stuart ErwinDirector: Buster Keaton, Irving Cummings, Malcolm St. Clair
Brand: Fox
Writer: Brown Holmes
Writer: Ernest Pascal
Writer: Hilary Lynn
Writer: James Edward Grant
Writer: Lou Breslow
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-10-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Hollywood Cavalcade
DVD Review: A uneven tribute to films' "silent" era!
Summary: 4 Stars
1939's "Hollywood Cavalcade" is a nice but uneven tribute to the "silent" era of cinema,with roles reprised by many of the greats of its' time.
The film stars Alice Faye and Don Ameche in the lead roles.Ameche starts out as a prop man/wanna be director who discovers Alice on stage and brings her to Hollywood.Ameche through coersion and determination makes a star out of her and a huge name for himself.But Ameche becomes a workaholic,ignoring the possibilties of a great romantic future right in front of him.Eventually as his star falls Alices' rises and she goes on without him and in the process marries,much to Ameches chagrin,a then leading man.To make matters worse the man who backed Ameche and had stuck with him from the start leaves him to become Fayes' manager.In the end we get the prerequisite happy ending with the trio back working together and as the picture fades,on to bigger and better things.
The problem I have always found with the film is its' uneven script.Not only does the plot give us problems but the subject which it homages is ,at times,in overkill mode.There are SO many in-jokes and nods,so many convoluted references to events and people real and imagined,that it is hard to sometimes wrap your head around and enjoy what is happening on the screen.This aside though,what has made this film one that has been sought after and eagerly watched by many film buffs has been for its' plethora of silent stars that actually appear in it.People like Buster Keaton,Ben Turpin,Chester Conklin,Stuart Erwin,Harold Goodwin,James Finlayson,etc,seen in B&W AND in colour! And what colour we have here.Fox has done many,many hours of restoration on this film after making a fine grain transfer and it shows.I have never seen it so clear and crisp.
Most of the film is in brilliant three-strip technicolour while the silent sequence was shot in glroious black and white.The plot of the main film you know.The plot of the B&W part is slight,to say the least.While some of the greatest comedy by Chaplin,Keaton or Laurel and Hardy didn't need plot to succeed,this one could have used a little of that infusion of vitality and inventiveness.The end product here is too pat and sterile with little life.
It involves a cat who has got a bird in a cage trapped.A telephone operator hears the birds' cries(thinking it's murder) and telephones the police for help.Well the police are the thinly disguised Keystone Kops made up of Keystone and Roach veterans.They make their raucous way,in typical Keystone Kop style,to the scene.Meanwhile the owner of the house at which the "murder" is taking place,Molly(Faye),summons a policeman on his motorcycle.She and the cop(Keaton) race off at breakneck speed to get to her home.As is the case in many of those films of old,neither The Keystone Kops or Molly w/her cop,ever makes it.Mack Sennett who also appears in main portion of the film,oversaw the production of this sequence.
Overall this film is worth getting not so much for the plot or its' homage to the genre of "silent" films(which is all over the map) but for the film stars of old that appear once again before our eyes in both black and white and in colour.It is a gloriously restored print with which Fox has done a great job.In fact beacuse of this fine work I gave the film an extra star.The DVD also gives us some nice bonuses such as a still gallery,a featurette on the film itself,a brief sequence of the films premiere,some outtakes(watch for a SMILING Keaton!) and an eight minute feature on Keaton and a four minute one on Roscoe Arbuckle,both of which include Patty Tobias the president of the International Buster Keaton Club.
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Description of Hollywood Cavalcade
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