10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad quality, over priced and it's the great Bette Davis!, August 15, 2009
Bordertown is great Bette Davis and Paul Muni, but in this DVD R format it is not up to visual par with other Bette Davis films on DVD , or other Warner films of the same period.
Obviouly, a whole bunch of third rate films that have piled up are being pushed on devotees of them. I love most of these films and am saddened to see the dirty plate they are now being served on, for they are not third rate or whatever.
A Simple solution: Do not buy anything in this "series". And, they are easy to spot: Same covers, no features listed, no subtitles for the hearing impaired, no restorations, no scene slections...you can skip, but you just get a 10 minute leap at each skip you make. This shows a tremendous lack of respect for many of these offerings: Private Lives, Bowhani Junction, Sins of Rachel Cade, Bordertown, Mr Lucky and on and on and at 28.99 plus tax!! The price adds to the outrage.
Save your tapes and skip this mess.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very strange little film, June 11, 2009
This is a variation on "They Drive By Night", and it was recently aired on Turner Classic Movies and seemed to be in good condition. That's important because this film is on DVD-R that has had absolutely no restoration done to it - whatever happens to be in the Warner vault is what you get. It comes with no extra features and not even scene selections. It is priced at about ten dollars more than films in the Warner Archives, which puzzles me since this film is not nearly as good as many of the films in the Warner Archives.
This film is not an introduction to Bette Davis. She had first worked at Universal and then switched over to Warner Brothers in 1931 where she starred opposite George Arliss in "The Man Who Played God". Universal thought she didn't have any potential. Bette Davis is still playing a largely supporting role here. Paul Muni is the actual star as a Latino man with big dreams (Johnny Ramirez) as he finally graduates from night school with a law degree. However, his first case finds him totally unprepared to the point of malpractice. Next he loses his temper and punches the opposing attorney in the nose. The judge recommends that he be disbarred, and our hero's short law career is over. A disheartened Johnny wanders down to a border town where he becomes friends with Charlie Roark (Eugene Pallette), and soon becomes partners with him in a casino there. Bette Davis plays Roark's wife who secretly loves Johnny. She thinks the only thing coming between her and Johnny is her marriage, so she leaves her drunken husband in the garage one night with the car running, making his death look like an accident to the authorities. However, Johnny really loves a society girl, and this drives Roark's widow to even more desperate measures.
Muni's last lines in the film and the apparent moral to the story will have modern audiences probably saying "What the...", but you have to remember this was made in 1935 and appreciate it for the performances.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Noirish film about the American dream, August 5, 2011
In the mid 30s film producers tried to expand their market so they began focusing on exotic locations. This led to a plethora of film biographies of famous Europeans (Rembrandt, Pasteur, Emile Zola), historical dramas (Henry VIII, Elizabeth), and films set in Asia (Fun Manchu, "China Seas") and Mexico ("Viva Villa"). Even Charlie Chan started visiting Paris, London, etc. "Bordertown" (1935) fit this need and was adapted from the 1934 novel of the same name by Carroll Graham. It stars Paul Muni and Bette Davis and was directed by Archie Mayo.
Paul Muni (1895-1967) plays a disgraced Mexican attorney living in the US who goes to work as a bouncer in Davis' saloon, makes it a thriving success, but has to deal with Davis' lust even while he is attracted to a socialite (Margaret Lindsay).
What's a nice Jewish boy like Muni doing dressed up as a Mexican? Remember that until the 60s (and even later) non-whites were consistently played by whites in films like "Birth of a Nation", "Last of the Mohicans", "Viva Villa", etc. Muni himself played a Mexican again in "Juarez" (1938).
FWIW - Muni was nominated for an Oscar his very first film, "The Valiant" in 1929, and 6 more times - "I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932), "Black Fury" (1935), "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936), "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937), "The Last Angry Man" (1959). He won once - for Louis Pasteur. To be nominated 6 times over a period of 30 years is remarkable (and unmatched) itself, but this achievement is all the more meaningful when you realize that Muni made only 21 films, and furthermore, he wasn't nominated for "Scarface" (1932) or "The Good Earth" (1937) in which his performances were also exceptional.
Bette Davis (1908-89) plays a sexually charged wife of a saloon keeper (Eugene Pallette) in Bordertown. Davis is a film icon. She appeared in nearly 100 films, was nominated for an Oscar 11 times and won twice ("Dangerous" in 1935 and "Jezebel" in 1939), nominated for an Emmy 4 times and won once ("Strangers" in 1979), 3 Golden Globe Nominations, and for "All About Eve" (1950) she won awards at Cannes, in Italy, and the New York Film Critics. According to AFI she is the #2 female screen legend.
In 1935 Bette Davis was finally on a roll. She received her first wave of critical acclaim for "Of Human Bondage" (1934). Life magazine called it the the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress" and Davis received the most write-ins ever recorded for an Oscar. Result - in 1935 she appeared in 5 films, including this one.
Eugene Pallette (1889-1954) plays Davis' ill fated husband. He was the best Friar Tuck in all the Robin Hood films, appearing in the classic 1938 version with Flynn and de Havilland. He played a similar role in "The Mark of Zorro" (1940), but these were only 2 of more than 200 film appearances.
Look for Archer Treacher (1894-1975) in a cameo as - what else - a butler.
Archie Mayo (1891-1968) directed more than 80 films from 1917 to 1946. He was an eclectic, making a variety of films from the Marx Brothers' "A Night in Casablanca" (1946) to Edward G Robinson in "The Man with Two Faces" (1934), Cagney in "The Mayor of Hell" (1933), and Gary Cooper in "The Adventures of Marco Polo" (1938).
FWIW - Mayo and Davis worked together again on "The Petrified Forest" (1936) and "It's Love I'm After" (1937), and with Muni in "Angel on My Shoulder" (1946). Davis and Muni worked together again in "The Corn is Green" and "Juarez" (1939).
1935 was a good year for films."Mutiny on the Bounty" and "The Informer" were box office and Oscar winners. Other top 10 grossing films included Gable and Harlow in "China Seas", Flynn and de Havilland in "Captain Blood", Shirley Temple in "The Littlest Rebel" and "Curly Top", and Greta Garbo in "Anna Karenina". Other notable films released that year included "Alice Adams" with Hepburn, "The 39 Steps", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "David Copperfield", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Les Miserables", "Top Hat", and "A Night at the Opera". In Germany, Leni Riefenstahl released "Triumph of the Will".
The NY Times called "Bordertown" "raw and biting" and praised Muni ("consummately satisfying") and Davis ("fine and uncommonly honest performance"). The film is often viewed as a criticism of racism, although the race card can be ignored and the film stands as a melodrama about one man's search for the American dream and the problems in achieving it. In fact, the film borders on "film noir" although these aspects have been ignored in favor of the focus on racism. There is also a strong carryover from the gangster genre in which David and Muni also appeared prior to this film.
Of course the racism is hard to ignore with comments like "savage" and "tribe" and "my own kind." It's also interesting to note that cinema at this time demanded that sex between whites and non-whites had to meet a bad end, often death, as it does in this film. In "Madame Butterfly" (1932) Asian Sylvia Sydney commits hari kari when Cary Grant marries a white woman. In Frank Capra's "The Bitter Tea of General Yen" (1932) Barbara Stanwyck's suitor, an Asian warlord (Nils Asther) drinks poisoned tea. Even as late as 1957 ("Sayonara"), Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki commit suicide because they cannot be together, and John Wayne seeks to kill his niece in "The Searchers" (1956) because she has been living with Indians.
FWIW - Many of the plot points were repeated in "They Drive By Night" with George Raft in the Muni role and Ida Lupino in Davis' role.
Bottom line - these are great performances from two of the biggest stars of the 30s, one of whom is already at his peak and the other who is a rising star, headed for even more fame in the near future.
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