Fri 4 Apr 2014
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: SUBMARINE (1928).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews , Silent films[2] Comments
SUBMARINE. Columbia, 1928. Silent film with sound effects. Jack Holt, Dorothy Revier, Ralph Graves, Clarence Burton, Arthur Rankin. Director: Frank Capra. Shown at Cinefest 26, Syracuse NY, March 2006.
Ace deep-sea diver Jack Dorgan (Jack Holt) marries a woman he meets at a dancehall (Bessie, played by Dorothy Revier). When he’s called to work, Bessie, bored, goes out and meets Bob Mason (Ralph Graves), who, unknown to her, is Jack’s best friend.
Jack returns unexpectedly, finds the two together and throws Bob out of the house. When Bob is trapped in a sunken submarine, Jack, the only diver who might be able to reach the sub, sulks at home, unwilling to help the man who betrayed his friendship. A chance discovery reveals Bessie’s duplicity and Jack races to the rescue of the crew.
According to the program notes, this was Columbia’s first “A” picture, and Capra was brought on after Harry Cohn fired the original director. Capra obtains the assistance of the Navy, shooting on location in San Pedro with 100 Navy seamen as extras.
The last third of the film keeps cutting from the trapped seamen to the rescue attempt, with the tension building until the final minutes of the film. Capra’s skill with actors makes the shopworn triangle believable and Holt, one of my two favorite actors when I was a kid (the other was Buck Jones), is every boy’s idea of a resourceful hero.
Graves, hardly remembered today, is almost as good as Holt, and Revier is perfect as the girl you love to hate.
April 4th, 2014 at 7:57 pm
I had always liked Holt’s work as a character actor, so when I discovered some of his work as a leading man I was pleased to see he was just as good, though a bit long in the tooth for some of the later ones like the serial Holt of the Secret Service. I’ve always wished I could see one of his Lone Wolf silent outings.
I’ve seen this one and agree on Capra’s handling. Wasn’t Holt also in Dirigible, the notorious Capra film where he had actors put dry ice in their mouths so their breath would show and several got bad burns in their mouths? Of course back then they were still firing live rounds at actors in shootouts as Cagney discovered in Public Enemy.
As you say Capra does well with the trite plot. I wonder how many movies Hollywood made where a bad girl got in the way of the bromance between the leads?
April 7th, 2014 at 12:53 pm
Yes, David, you’re right about Jack Holt’s appearance in “Dirigible,” which also features Ralph Graves.
That bromance spoiler list could be a long one.