Wordiezett So much average

Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

atlasmb Yes, this early talkie is not the smoothest production to watch. And some of the acting could have been more subtle. But I found it interesting to watch--mostly because it represents an historic era in filmmaking.The story is about a small group of idle rich who decide to sail a yacht across the Pacific. During the trip, they are ignorant of the crew's dissatisfaction with the way they are treated. The steward, Ted, especially is resentful of his lot in life. He privately vents his anger over having to wait hand and foot for people who, he feels, are no better than he. Due to uncontrollable circumstances, the situation changes. Class distinctions break down and Ted makes a power play, motivated by revenge and his perception of "justice".Variations of this story have been filmed numerous times since, which makes me wonder if some of them originated from this film. There are definite similarities between this film and "Swept Away", which I heartily recommend--the original directed by Lina Wertmuller.

max von meyerling Written by Hollywood Ten screenwriter John Howard Lawson, this crackles with class resentment. The blasé privileges of wealth: i.e. Going to the office at eleven and working furiously until noon, are thrown into a maelstrom of class war. It starts with the usual, per the period, bunch of night club swells dressed to the nines, blithely decide to take a yachting journey to San Francisco. While they talk about the crew in disparaging terms, the steward seethes at being ordered about, being blamed for their faults, etc. While the rich lounge on deck drinking highball, the crew is restricted to the heat of below decks. A storm, which the rich welcome for a bit of excitement, seriously damages the ship, giving the steward the opportunity to mutiny and take over the ship reversing the situation. Its clear that Lawson was writing a parable of Class War. Its always been my hypothesis that early talkies became unpopular not because of their crudeness because of the early recording equipment, but because the subject matter, mostly 1920s theater, was made instantly passé by the depression. Men in white tie at the country club dance, fluttering flappers trying to decide between one vapid stockbroker or another. These became chokingly irrelevant in the depression. Here this begins in the same way but gets down to the ugly truth quite quickly. That this wasn't popular at the time is obvious. The O'Neill type ending doesn't help. Lawson was to take a lesson from this and spread Communist propaganda in more subtle ways later in his career. He was, however, just as doctrinaire, becoming the head of the Communist Party cell in Hollywood.

boblipton 1930 was the year that MGM went to all-talkie production and this movie demonstrates their lack of ease with the new medium. In addition they saddled themselves with a lot of sequences shot on the water, always a risky proposition -- although the ship was likely at the docks.Meanwhile this production is afflicted with all the stereotypical problems of early sound productions: a static camera, unnatural-sounding sound with a lot of hiss and badly directed dialogue. Even if you discount these problems, this story of how brutish purser Louis Wollheim seizes control of a yacht after it is wrecked in the storm lacks interesting characters. Each character can be defined in a sentence. The interesting parts of the movie are the sailors trying to deal with the storm as it swamps the yacht; and Kay Johnson checking on the badly injured Conrad Nagel. Those, however, are clearly shot MOS. The rest of the movie makes use of cuts where a moving camera would have been better.MGM clearly figured this movie to be a greater success than it turned out and its failure pretty much ended the career of Kay Johnson and knocked Conrad Nagel out of the leading man category. Louis Wollheim survived and prospered off his next movie, the great ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. If the MGM brass thought this movie would propel them firmly into the sound era, they were sadly mistaken.

drednm Early talkie could have been good but the hideous performance of Louis Wolheim and bad direction kill this effort despite some good work by Kay Johnson, Zeffie Tilbury, and Carmel Myers. Even Conrad Nagel is not all that bad, but the endless monologues of Wolheim kill any tempo this film might have had plus he's just plain bad. This is one of several talkie flops that ruined Nagel's starring career; this is also Myers' first major talkie. Too bad. She was interesting. Johnson has a couple of dynamite scene, and Tilbury (famous as the grandmother in The Grapes of Wrath a decade later) is awfully good as Lady Daley. Holmes Herbert, Jack MacDonald, and Ivan Linow co-star.