Word: besting
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...while the Commission firmly turned its course away from Prohibition, the Wet and Dry letter-writers of the land turned eagerly toward it. At the Commission's offices at the Department of Justice arrived sack after sack of mail, bursting with suggestions as to how the Commission could best treat this subject...
...cast of well-chosen actors and actresses with difficult names, acting competently and intelligently without makeup on their faces, so that they do not look like actors and actresses but like men and women. People have learned to expect photography so quietly beautiful or so imaginative that the best effects of Hollywood technicians seem artificial or flamboyant by comparison. They have also learned to expect doses of tedious propaganda extolling communism and episodes in which unnecessary impressionism takes the place of ordered storytelling. This picture of a peasant marriage includes most of the virtues and few of the defects...
...Oscar Shaw, who have always done well on Broadway, sound like people singing on an old phonograph record with a blunt needle. It is doubtful whether the urbane, uproarious clowning of the four Marx brothers will seem funny in districts rural enough to admire the routine dance-numbers. Best shot: a wheel-ballet from overhead...
...understudy who got her chance. Dancing intervals, punctuating the Negro comedy of Stepin Fetchit, get across by such not entirely original, but fairly effective devices as photographing all the girls' feet at once or all their eyes. One good color sequence partly makes up for mediocre tunes. Best shot: backstage hands on opening night...
...other girls. Ethel Waters sings in her husky, exciting Negro voice. The story of backstage life is tedious, archaic, complicated. The music is about what you would get in a drawing-room operetta. In spite of these drawbacks, this picture is the most interesting of its type to date. Best shot: the ballet coming down a flight of stairs in feathers...