Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Hottoceame The Age of Commercialism

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Spondonman The reviews of this one simply compelled me to give it a try; I wasn't disappointed. I love films made at the dawn of sound, and in this case also the dawn of taste, apart from often being entertaining they usually tell me a lot about who we were and who we now are. All white people back then apparently considered they were innately superior to all other races, nowadays gifted with movie-hindsight all races can all afford to be retrospectively superior to everyone in the primitive past, and in both cases, innocently. Where we will end up though is another matter – it even tells me something that the original New York stage play ran to 184 performances in 1927, and that this film in black and white (if you "know black from white") has actually survived Time when much worthier films were left to rot.Dawn is a white native goddess with a hazy past, white Britisher Tom Allen loves her purely but jet blacked-up native Shep Keyes lusts after her. It was still clunky old Noah Beery for all the make-up though – I just had to laugh at the blackened armpits of his shirt. He's worth watching singing to his whip too. The first song is shrilled out by a blackface Margaret Dumont lookalike – I looked out in vain for Captain Spaulding. Vivienne Segal and Walter Woolf King (pre-Marx's Lasspari) are excellent in their lead roles with every word and every lyric perfectly enunciated, every emotion delivered complete with Capital Letters. I loved Woolf's line at one point about not letting Segal sacrifice herself and "go through with this savage religious stupidity" – out of the mouths of babes! The songs, even when the lyrics make you sit up are in the main dull as ditchwater except for We Two (I was wishing for Eddie Cantor though) and the energetic A Tiger (the routine later bettered in King Of Jazz's Ragamuffin Romeo).It's exhilaratingly barmy doing Vienna in the jungle, but it must have played pretty old-fashioned and pointless even in 1930. So if you decide to hunt this down as it's probably banned from TV and watch it, keep it in the strict amber of context and you will have a unique experience no matter what your colour or prejudices. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Blazing Saddles (my personal bête noire) which was not innocent but malicious.

mukava991 This wacky operetta, bursting with flagrant racism, takes colonialist kitsch to levels perhaps never surpassed. It is, as they say, a hoot and a howl and a real eye-popper. The story, little more than melodramatic scaffolding for a generous heap of songs, some pertinent and others stuffed in to jazz up the otherwise standard operetta-style score, involves the attempt to rescue a white girl (Vivienne Segal) from the East African tribal community that raised her before she can be "married" to Mulungu, the local god, who favors her above her black- skinned tribe members because, of course, she is white. All of this occurs against the backdrop of a German occupational force in British East Africa during World War One. Heavy-handed melodramatic plot developments are interspersed with "comic" interludes involving slapstick, novelty songs and joke routines right off the vaudeville stage.Inconsistencies and absurdities abound, the most flagrant being the portrayal of a native go- between by Noah Beery in blackface and a ridiculously inappropriate Stepin Fetchit accent; among the most straight-out entertaining sequences are songs added for the film version: "We Two" sung winningly by ace music hall veteran Dick Henderson with Marion Byron. Byron also delights with "A Tiger" – another jazzy number which she milks to the last drop of her pint-sized self. The other, slower songs which came from the stage original ("My Bwana," "Dawn," and "Mooda's Song") fare less well and are harder to understand, despite the fine voices of Segal, leading man Walter Woolf and Alice Gentle as Segal's "mother." Lupino Lane does some astounding acrobatics for "In a Jungle Bungalow." This is not the only bad musical film he enlivened.The campiest moments occur during the climax when the white girl is about to be married to Mulungu by a bug-eyed, blacked-up witch doctor (Nigel de Brulier) who delivers his lines like a 19th century Shakespearean ham. The rock-bottom melodramatics are so over the top by the time you get to the atrociously dubbed finale, nothing matters any more. You can either goof on it or shrug, be grateful that those days are over, and move on to something more edifying. All in all, a fun fest for parties of musical theatre/musical film aficionados. This movie is to musicals what "Plan Nine from Outer Space" is to science fiction.

catmommie What can I say about Golden Dawn? To describe it as jawdroppingly, breathtakingly, deliriously bad does not come close to doing it the justice it so richly deserves. Film aficionados describe it affectionately as The Second Worst Musical Ever Made (the first being the legendary Howdy Broadway), yet even that hallowed title cannot prepare you for the cheesy wonders in store. Racist, sexist...did I mention racist?...this is a film that must be seen to be believed, and even then you'll wonder if someone slipped you something. The film is based on the semi-hit stage musical of the same name and boasts musical numbers by Oscar Hammerstein, Jr., who really should have known better. From the moment Noah Beery steps on stage in embarrassing blackface to warble an ode to his whip, to the hallucinatory Hymn to Domestic Violence sung (badly) by Marion Byron, to the truly indescribable moment when Vivienne Segal belts out a showstopping "My Bwanna," the laughs just never stop. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll wonder who in the hell thought that making a pseudo-Viennese operetta about colonial Africa was a good idea, you'll...but you catch my drift. This movie is available on the Dawn of Sound laserdisc set, but I have decided to hold out for the Collectors Edition Director's Cut DVD with several language tracks, a Making of Golden Dawn documentary, and a whole lot of film-school twaddle on the commentary track. My advice to you is if you insist upon seeing this film-and I cannot recommend it to the faint of heart-do not do so alone! Make sure you are surrounded by friends, and are in a calm, familiar environment. Have oxygen ready and make sure your First Aid kit is fully stocked. It might be best to notify the authorities in advance. I ignored this sage advice for my first viewing and almost swallowed my own tongue. And do not even THINK about popcorn. Golden Dawn is a full-on three martini film. Better yet, just chug the gin from the bottle.

Schlockmeister I guess the novelty of sound was what got this quickie musical produced. It had a rather unsuccessful run on stage and here we see why. Noah Beery in awful blackface that stains his clothes singing a song about his whip and how it makes him the Boss man. His accent, while supposedly an African native is pure Black Southern "You-all" and "we'all". The "natives" are painted in random patterns, looking like skeleton men extras from the "Danger Island" series that used to play along with the "Banana Splits" on Saturday mornings. The music is okay, the lyrics atrocious. Lovely and talented Vivienne Segal sings a love song about "My Bwana", Alice Gentle sings the opening solo, which is basically telling the Africans how great the White men are and to obey them. Lupino Lane the comedian will remind many of Stan Laurel in his speech. I made it through the whole thing, call me a masochist. It does show that just because it is old and Black & White, doesn't always mean it is a "classic".