Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

kidboots "Alibi" was a sensational talkie debut for Chester Morris who played Chick Williams, the first of the anti heroes who were to dominate Hollywood in the 1930s. Chester Morris was first noticed in the Broadway cast of "Crime" - in fact the whole cast was raided for the movies - Sylvia Sidney, Douglass Montgomery, Kay Johnson, James Rennie, Jack La Rue and Kay Francis, a cast Broadway producers nowadays could only dream about. The role of amoral Chick Williams bought him instant recognition and an Academy Award nomination and even though he lost to Warner Baxter for "In Old Arizona" (Chester should have won) studios were riveted to his performance and during 1929 Paramount, Warner Brothers/First National and RKO used him constantly. Even though Roland West produced, directed and wrote the screenplay for this trail blazing talkie, based on the Broadway play "Nightstick", his career faded soon after when he retired and went into the restaurant business with his current girlfriend Thelma Todd.Joan (Eleanor Griffith) is going out with recently released prisoner Chick Williams (Morris), she is a policeman's (Purnell Pratt) daughter who feels he only needs the love and support of a good woman to help him go straight. But behind Chick's pleasant exterior is a hardened criminal who is really the brains behind the gang who welcome him back to the fold. Another fixture at the almost futuristic nightclub (shades of "Broadway") is amiable drunk Danny (Regis Toomey) who has his eye on cute singer Toots but when Joan walks into her apartment one night she finds Danny with her father and realises he is a plain clothes policeman. They are trying to get the robbers of a fur heist in which a policeman was killed - they are convinced Chick was responsible. Even though she could betray Danny she doesn't, but she also has a bombshell of her own to drop - she is now married to Chick and can furnish him with an alibi for the night of the murder.Although Morris didn't have much to do during the first half of the movie once Chick's true colours are revealed he dominates every scene. There was a trifle bit of over acting and grimacing but for his first talkie he handled himself like a veteran. For an early talkie (April 1929) there was a lot of innovation and while a couple of things didn't come off the rest did - in the interrogation room as a prisoner is broken down into confessing to his part in the robbery, through having his face directly at the audience, they see his expressions and know he is guilty before the cops do. It may have been lifted from the stage production but it worked. The German expressionistic vogue hadn't entirely faded away and the Art Deco sets and lighting were used to great advantage, especially the chase sequence up on the roof top.Because 1929 was the height of the musical boom, action was often stopped for a musical number (they slowed the film down a bit). It even boasted a hit song "I"ve Never Seen a Smile Like Yours" sung by Irma Harrison (dubbed by Virginia Flohri, as reported in a Photoplay expose about dubbing in 1929). Harrison was cute but didn't make much of an impression, the same can be said of Eleanor Griffith who only made "Alibi" and another film back in 1922, but she did make an impression on movie suavey John Halliday whom she married in 1929.

MARIO GAUCI Having become a fan of director West via the ‘old dark house’-type comedy-thriller THE BAT WHISPERS (1930), I looked forward to watching every ‘new’ film of his – in the intervening years since that first viewing of BAT (on the eve of the Millennium, no less!), I had only managed to catch up with the somewhat unsatisfactory Lon Chaney vehicle THE MONSTER (1925) but, now, in quick succession came the original Silent version of THE BAT (1926) and ALIBI (1929), his first Talkie (notable for its innovative early Sound technique).The latter is a gangster melodrama (a genre pioneered by Josef von Sternberg’s UNDERWORLD [1927]) whose quality was even recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where it was in the running for three Oscars – Best Picture, Best Actor (forgotten star Chester Morris) and Best Art Direction (by the renowned William Cameron Menzies). While there are many who now look at it merely as a curio – and there’s no denying that its chief interest, after all these years, remains West’s artistic approach to the medium (extending also to camera position and movement, editing, and set design) – I found the plot itself, simple and moralistic though it is, reasonably absorbing.Morris has just been released from prison and, while resuming his criminal activities, conveniently hitches up with a policeman’s daughter – she’s obviously naïve and speaks up for him when confronted with a murder rap. An undercover agent (Regis Toomey – who, feigning a drunken act, starts off by being obnoxious but eventually proves both hero and martyr) is ironically called upon to provide an alibi for Morris…but the girl unwittingly blows his cover and, inevitably, spells the man’s doom (bafflingly, West even places unwarranted emphasis on his overlong and maudlin death scene!). Eventually cornered in the top-floor of a high-rise, Morris breaks down before the cop who had been his rival for the heroine’s affections, revealing his true color (the star’s performance – alternating between smugness and a perpetual scowl – hadn’t been particularly distinguished up to that point, but he effectively shows his range here: his come-uppance, then, is truly incredible and unexpected). Also worth mentioning is the film’s unflinching brutality: Morris’ associate, the ageing owner of a popular establishment, has a tempestuous relationship with his “dizzy” moll (played by Mae Busch, frequent foil for the comic duo of Laurel & Hardy) and, at one point, he pushes her and she bashes her head against a cabinet!; later on in the scene, it’s he who gets thrown clear across the room by a punch from an enraged Morris.Having just read the “DVD Talk” and “Slant Magazine” reviewers’ comments on the film, I’m not sure I agree completely – perhaps because I knew beforehand Morris would be playing a crook – with their contention that the line between hero and villain is deliberately blurred (in view of the Police’s objectionable methods, particularly a scene in which a captured member of Morris’ gang is literally terrorized into a confession) and even arguing that the gangster is initially depicted as sympathetic (his stretch in jail having apparently been the result of a frame-up). However, I got the impression that the Police were required to be tough in order to effectively meet the gangsters’ wave of lawlessness and violence (note how the cops stick together when a colleague of theirs is callously slain during a robbery, with the synchronized rapping of police clubs – the film was, in fact, based on a play called “Nightstick” – unleashing a dragnet over the whole area in a matter of seconds). Incidentally, an inspired way to further showcase the new-fangled Sound system was by throwing in a handful of ‘static’ musical numbers during the nightclub sequences! That said, the quality of the “restored” audio was frankly quite horrid – with dialogue often too low to grasp or else being drowned out by extensive crackling on the soundtrack, and even dropping out entirely for a few seconds a couple of times! While nowhere near as distracting, the DVD transfer does display occasional combing; for some reason, too, the opening credits of the film have been digitally recreated!

max von meyerling I know it is de rigor to inform readers if a comment contains spoilers but I want to issue an even sterner warning that this comment will treat the plot of ALIBI (1929) as mere fodder to be referred to in passing regardless of the consequences for those who haven't seen the film and who might want to maintain some sort of "suspense". For me the most interesting aspect of ALIBI is the fact that at this point (1929) the film industries of the US, Britain, Germany and France were equally capable of producing this type of film. The urban crime drama may have been pioneered by the French feuillade whose roots go back to written literature but it was perfected by Lang and the German School. Film Expressionism cried out for the geometrical shapes and dark shadows of the urban setting and the speed of what was just becoming known as 'modern life'. After all it was only in 1920 that 50% of the American population lived in cities even though the Jeffersonian ideal of the rural ideal was to linger in both film and literature until WW2.While expressionist lighting was used to tell the quintessential urban tale, the gangster story, in Germany, it was imitated around the world. The most adept imitator was Alfred Hitchcock, a one time art director who made his first film in Germany. It is important when discussing ALIBI to compare it to Hitchcock's contemporary effort BLACKMAIL, which was also shot in silent and sound versions. In fact ALIBI comes off as being vastly inferior. This is because ALIBI's auteur, Roland West is merely artistic while Hitchcock is an Artist.The disparity is most evident in the talking portions of ALIBI. There are problems with the sound which look like a compendium of SINGING IN THE RAIN gags. Sound levels vary and people are grouped, presumably to be in close proximity to the microphones. There is even a song in which the vocalist is seen badly lip synching to what, in the days before mechanical playback, must have been the actual singer off-camera. Hitchcock had a similar problem in that his female lead had a heavy Slavic accent and had to lip sync her entire role, which he pulled off far more effectively.The overwhelmingly biggest problem in the talking portions of ALIBI is the acting. Screen acting in talking films just hadn't been done and in this film everyone seems to be counting to three before talking. Its very off putting. Regis Toomy plays an undercover cop pretending to be a drunken stock broker referred to as "The Boy Wonder". He plays it like a grinning idiot with a silly broad smile on his face which seems to have been carved on in imitation of THE MAN WHO LAUGHED. No thought to the idea that he might appear sober and progressively get drunker and drunker, he's just a full time fool who couldn't have put over his act to a room full of ten year olds. Chester Morris, who was actually nominated for an Oscar for his performance, changes his demeanor as the role, NOT the character, demands. Released from prison, after a very effective silent montage, he assumes the leadership of a gang on no authority at all. His showy scene at the end where he becomes a blubbering coward reeks more of propaganda than drama. Re: All gangsters are yellow. When the undercover cop is discovered he is murdered somewhat inexplicably as knowing they were discovered the gang would have been better advised to get the hell out and not square accounts which would inevitably lead to the electric chair. However the necessities of propaganda required the villains kick the dog to confirm their sinister evil. Toomy has a super hammy drawn out death scene in which he actually wonders out loud why its getting dark. The academy might have thought this scenery eating was just the ticket in talking screen acting but apparently the public hated it and actors had to adapt to the new medium or else new actors untainted by the conventions of the stage brought in. Again, Hitchcock's characters are human beings, dualistic and inconsistent, their reactions ambiguous even to themselves. In ALIBI characters are set in stone and lack even free will. They act at the behest of a rigid morality tale whose points are hammered home. The police acquire information by literally pointing a gun at a suspects head not because they are tarred with the same brutal brush as the gangsters but to point out that this is the only way to treat 'them".The settings are over the top as well. Early geometrical deco, adapted from cubist designs and the neo-Mayan decorations of Frank Lloyd Wright (the curvilinear 'streamlined" deco was to come later) overwhelm the backgrounds. The silent scenes are very well shot. West knows the dramatic power of the dynamically unbalanced frame. Some shots use Caligari like angles and black and white shadows. There is a high shot of a car coming around a corner and stopping (done twice) which looks like it could have been lifted entire from Lang. (Also pointing out that as well as their film industries, automobile design hadn't yet diverged either.) Crowds pass by nighttime city streets as in Murnau. There are successful attempts at process shots and less successful attempts to use sound 'creatively'. Again, West's attempts pale beside Hitchcock's famous 'knife' sequence.As can be found in Roland West's IMDb biography, when he died he reputedly made a deathbed confession to Chester Morris that he murdered his mistress, Thelma Todd, whose death ended his Hollywood career. Morris and Todd co-starred in West' last film, CORSAIR (1931), another gangster melodrama. Apparently, unlike Hitchcock or Lang, West became involved in the gangster milieu rather than the cinematic arts.

mgmax This crime melodrama isn't terribly easy to sit through today, but you can see why it impressed everybody and got a Best Picture Oscar nomination in 1929-- director West is constantly experimenting with the possibilities of sound, dramatically raising and lowering voice volumes and playing with background noise, music (there's a not-bad dance number that foreshadows Busby Berkeley a little), etc.