BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

McL-Cassandra Art Director Cedric Gibbons truly out did himself on this sumptuous set! Wow! Crawford and the gang spill from one stunning Art-Deco room to another. From the wallpaper and murals, to furniture and fittings, this movie is a riot of cool sleek decor. The screwball inter-title lingo alone is worth a gander. The films plot is ultra simple but the picture is worth investing a little time into, especially as it portrays an era when young people first began asserting themselves through fashion. I'll bet not many viewers know where the moniker "FLAPPER" comes from? Well. back in the 1920's, the VERY FIRST fashion "craze" began to spread across the youth of America and soon young ladies actually enjoyed being considered overtly wild, and loved vigorously dancing to the hip new sounds of jumping jazz music. They sported stylish short bobbed hair cuts and donned their brothers galoshes. If you're unfamiliar with galoshes, ..they are rubberized winter boots that usually fit OVER the shoe with a zipper or buckles in front to hold them in place. Well these gals decided to wear their brothers galoshes DELIBERATELY UNZIPPED/ or UNBUCKLED so that when doing the Charleston, (and other aberrant dance steps), their boots would FLAP around! They also wore dropped waist dresses to appear more straight up and down like a male and even bound their breasts to be as flat chested as possible! The whole idea was to shock society and the girls loved scandalizing their parents by trying to look like boys! Must have seemed OUTRAGEOUS at the time given that the Edwardian period was still clinging to the decade? Of course the boys egged on this behaviour and swooned over this "new" girl who seemed far more approachable and therefore touchable! Not surprising. Anyway the fad of flapping boots rather quickly faded away but the "FLAPPER" designation stuck. Our Dancing Daughters is a somewhat forced time capsule of the era but Joan Crawford gives a frantic flapper film performance for the ages.

Michael Morrison Joan Crawford was THE flapper.People who know her from her padded-shoulder days might not know she was well known as a dancer in the early days of her career and of motion pictures.She was very watchable, usually, and certainly so in "Our Dancing Daughters." Anita Page was paired with Crawford often, but here she is a not very likable character. Too bad, but she is very good in the role.In a more agreeable part, Dorothy Sebastian is very likable, and very pretty.Nils Asther is cast in a not too sympathetic role, too, and Johnny Mack Brown, still better known for his cowboy roles, also plays a dumb man and the two of them make us wonder what women see in us anyway.Frankly, the film is predictable in its plotting, but the people are worth watching.The version I saw was on Turner Classic Movies, and the soundtrack was rather annoying. One particular vocal recording was played again and again and again and became very intrusive.I recommend watching it for its historical value, but can't imagine wanting to see it more than once.

mukava991 Our Dancing Daughters is a beautiful example of how far the silent cinema had come by 1928, the year it decisively decided to give itself up to talk. The medium had reached a point where the action was silent but synchronized to a score and embellished with occasional sound effects such as knocking on doors, ringing of phones or a spoken word here and there. It was the short-lived pinnacle of a dying art form. These feature films from the late silent period provide valuable insight for composers who are supplying music for previously unscored silents. This solidly constructed and well-shot story follows the trajectories of three young females of differing temperaments living through various stages of being young and wild in the roaring twenties. We have Diana Medford (Joan Crawford), a straightforward, unashamedly pleasure-loving, self-absorbed but basically decent sort who lives to dance and generally party around. Then there is the more serious and experienced Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastian), whose fiancé (Nils Asther) chooses to overlook her wayward past as long as she will marry him and retreat from the party circuit. Finally there is Ann (Anita Page), a coldhearted golddigger who lures the dashing millionaire Ben Blaine (John Mack Brown) away from Diana by pretending to be an innocent maiden simply yearning for marriage and motherhood. At first it seems as if Diana is a hellcat, but her splashy demeanor is merely the honest excess of youth. Life has its knocks prepared for her and she has to take them, which she does nobly and sportingly. Not Ann. She turns to drink, with disastrous results. Each of the three main characters is introduced by shots of their legs and feet: Crawford's slipping into heels to shimmy in front of a mirror; Sebastian's planted firmly next to her fiancé's as they attentively listen to a pre-date lecture by her parents; Page's seen while seated on the floor, removing a pair of ripped silk stockings, preparatory to stealing a pair of from her mother.The soundtrack is made up of a small number of musical compositions from the period, repeated throughout the film. There are up-tempo dance numbers for the party scenes and slow ballads for the one-on-one romantic clinches. The photography is uniformly beautiful with generous use of medium close-ups, all against the backdrop of sumptuous sets designed by Cedric Gibbons. Great looking costumes too.Crawford and Page are both stunning embodiments of the light and dark sides of "the flapper." Sebastian's role is less flashy. None of the performances is dated.Most documentaries that deal at any length with "roaring twenties," the Great Depression or the Golden Age of Hollywood inevitably include a bit from this film, usually the party where balloons fill the air as Crawford dances exuberantly on a table top.

MartinHafer When I give this movie a score of 8, it is relative to other silents of the era. Seen today, viewers might be a little less charitable, though it is still a good and involving film.The first portion frankly did not impress me. You had lots of party animals dancing about and the wildest among these was the flapper, Joan Crawford. She was uninhibited and not exactly the girl you'd take home to meet your folks--although deep down she really was a nice girl. She and the other two ladies featured in the film were trying to balance having a good time with finding a good husband. Unfortunately, Joan didn't play the game so well--convincing the man of her dreams that she wasn't exactly pure and innocent.After Joan's love is taken, the movie moves into high gear. Up until then, the movie looked more like somewhat random film footage of flappers partying--with very little in the way of plot. However, the second half is much more plot driven and interesting. Some of this was because of how frankly the film dealt with sex for 1928 and some was because the overall messages were quite interesting. Joan, while a wild flirt, was a basically honest and decent flirt. Her rival was much more coy and "nice" but a liar through and through--leading to a dandy and rather amazing conclusion scene on the stairs (you have to see it to believe it).An excellent silent Pre-Code film, though you may notice that the film moves too fast and jerky. While this isn't always noticeable, when the people are dancing, they appear to be hyperactive, amphetamine-pumping gerbils!!! This is because someone forgot to adjust the film speed to compensate for the differing frame rates for silents (between 16 and 22 frames per second) and talkies (always 24 frames per second). If the film were restored, the film could be slowed slightly and the occasionally dirty print could be cleaned (there are some hairs stuck on the print in a couple scenes, for instance). TCM or some film archive, I hope you are reading this!!