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Lucky Star (1929)
Topic Started: Dec 26 2011, 10:12 PM (263 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Lovely, lovely film directed by Frank Borzage and starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Ferrell.

A small farm in the U.S.A.; lotsa kids, a widowed mama, and young Janet, who befriends the local linemen, particularly Mr. Ferrell and "Big Boy" Guinn. War's declared (this is 1917, see) and off they men go (the enlist, it seems, to meet French girls). Janet faithfully writes them regularly ("Hope you ain't been shot dead; rite if you're bored and i'll nit socks") and when they return, she becomes quite close to Ferrell, who was paralyzed in the trenches, and to Guinn, who woos her widdered mother but wants to marry Janet. And soon, she turns 18, and friendship ain't the only thing blossoming 'round them parts, brother.

I could look at this film all day; just impeccable set design and cinematography. Movies used to be so beautiful, didn't they?


"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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All the Gaynor-Farrell pictures are worth watching. This one kinda got lost in the shuffle during the conversion to sound, and we're lucky it survives.

That Murnau-Borzage set turns out to be a real treasure.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Frank Hale
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There’s certainly a lot to like in that collection.

Agree about Lucky Star. The two lasting images I have in my head from the whole box are the wonderful set of Charles Farrell’s house in the hollow in Lucky Star and the 40-mule-team threshing machine in City Girl.

And speaking of City Girl, did Paul ever gave us a definitive yea or nay on that overhead travelling shot in the cafeteria?
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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I'm not sure what you mean, Frank. I vividly remember the overhead track from a showing at MOMA in the Sixties because I've never seen anything like it before or since. I haven't found it on any DVD I have, but I'll keep trying because the thing was remarkable.

Incidentally, Charles Farrell (not Ferrill) was Gale Storm's dad on My Little Margie. I thought he was cool when I was a kid and he had grey hair. Think of that!
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Frank Hale
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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That was the problem I had with another picture in that set: “Liliom”. The handsome young lady killer speaks with the voice of Vern Albright!
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