The Letter (1929)
Country: US
Technical: bw 65m
Director: Jean de Limur
Cast: Jeanne Eagels, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall
Synopsis:
The wife of a Singapore rubber plantation foreman hears that her lover has taken a half-caste Chinese mistress, and writes a compromising letter that will later prove compromising when she is on trial for his murder.
Review:
Before William Wyler's flamboyant Warner Bros version came this early talkie from Paramount. Inevitably boxy now, with long periods of hiss on the soundtrack as was de rigueur in the days before musical Mickey Mousing, it also seems painfully slow in spite of an economical running time. The trial scene has to be one of the least gripping in the canon, but Eagels, who died of an overdose shortly after this film, works up an impressive head of steam as the implications of her position bear down on her.
Country: US
Technical: bw 65m
Director: Jean de Limur
Cast: Jeanne Eagels, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall
Synopsis:
The wife of a Singapore rubber plantation foreman hears that her lover has taken a half-caste Chinese mistress, and writes a compromising letter that will later prove compromising when she is on trial for his murder.
Review:
Before William Wyler's flamboyant Warner Bros version came this early talkie from Paramount. Inevitably boxy now, with long periods of hiss on the soundtrack as was de rigueur in the days before musical Mickey Mousing, it also seems painfully slow in spite of an economical running time. The trial scene has to be one of the least gripping in the canon, but Eagels, who died of an overdose shortly after this film, works up an impressive head of steam as the implications of her position bear down on her.
Country: US
Technical: bw 65m
Director: Jean de Limur
Cast: Jeanne Eagels, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall
Synopsis:
The wife of a Singapore rubber plantation foreman hears that her lover has taken a half-caste Chinese mistress, and writes a compromising letter that will later prove compromising when she is on trial for his murder.
Review:
Before William Wyler's flamboyant Warner Bros version came this early talkie from Paramount. Inevitably boxy now, with long periods of hiss on the soundtrack as was de rigueur in the days before musical Mickey Mousing, it also seems painfully slow in spite of an economical running time. The trial scene has to be one of the least gripping in the canon, but Eagels, who died of an overdose shortly after this film, works up an impressive head of steam as the implications of her position bear down on her.