Cinefórum-Clásico

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 Going Straight is the second of Norma Talmadge's surviving feature films, and one of her few films available on video. Made in 1916 during her year under contract to Triangle, it is an engaging and suspenseful crime drama.

The films opens on the happy family of Norma and Ralph Lewis, with their two children. As they read a newspaper clipping, it brings back memories of their former life. Several years before, they were part of a criminal gang, with Lewis as one of the ringleaders. Norma was a confederate employed at the houses that they planned to rob, enabling them to pull daring inside jobs. After one of their capers, the police raid the hideout and capture the whole gang, except for Norma, who escapes to the roof and watches as her husband is taken away. None of the gang informs on Norma, so she is never captured. She writes to her husband in jail to tell him that she is going to have a baby, and he vows to go straight.

Back to the present, Lewis runs into one of his old criminal associates, Eugene Pallette, and tells him how happy he is to have turned around his life. Pallette isn't impressed, however, and begins blackmailing him with the threat of sending Norma to jail for her former crimes. The thought of her in the dock is enough to convince Lewis to join Pallette for one more robbery. What they don't know is that Norma and the children are spending the night in the very house they are robbing!

Within a very few years Talmadge would develop into one of the finest actresses on the screen. Here, she is still rather immature and not quite up to the more dramatic moments, being particularly given to excessive eye-widening. She is, however, very pretty and charming and is a most pleasing leading lady. Ralph Lewis is adequate, if unmemorable as the husband. A young and relatively slim Eugene Pallette is convincingly slimy as the villain. A standout performance is that of George Stone as the homeless boy who is befriended by Norma's children but is forced by Pallette to be his associate in blackmail and robbery. There is a particularly grim scene of the boy, with his newspapers and a dog, settling into a flophouse for the night. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the film, as in other crime films of the teens, are the location shots of the seedier sections of 1916 Los Angeles. There is a fascinating documentary quality to these sections of the film, and they make a great contribution to the overall atmosphere.

If you are interested in seeing what it was that made Norma Talmadge a great star, this film is not the best place to start. If however, you would like an exciting little crime film, this is an excellent and enjoyable choice. Though the print is quite worn in spots, it is the best print of any Talmadge film currently available on video, with subtle tinting and an appropriate piano score. 

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 Au milieu des années 10, les frères Franklin (Sidney et Chester) sont réalisateurs au sein de la compagnie Triangle où ils tournent des longs métrages en 5 bobines avec les acteurs sous contrat de la compagnie. On peut voir en particulier au sein du coffret More Treasures from the American Film Archives, l'excellent Gretchen The Greenhorn (1916) avec Dorothy Gish et Eugene Pallette tourné dans les quartiers populaires de Los Angeles. Going Straight est encore plus ambitieux dans sa narration avec un exemple de flash-back, encore bien rare à l'époque. Nous suivons un couple, à priori sans histoire, les Remington qui sont parfaitement insérés dans la bonne société. Mais, la lecture d'un article de journal leur rappelle leur passé criminel. Ils faisaient parti de la bande de Briggs (joué par un Eugene Pallette mince et inquiétant) et participaient à des vols et cambriolages. Un jour, John Remington (R. Lewis) a été arrêté et emprisonné. Mais, suite à la naissance de leur premier enfant, il décida de se réformer complètement. Malheureusement, une rencontre fortuite avec Briggs va faire resurgir le passé inéxorablement. La qualité du film repose sur différents facteurs. Il y a d'abord le jeu des acteurs : Lewis, Talmadge et Pallette sont naturels et sans emphase. Et puis, le film a pratiquement été entièrement tourné en décors naturels, sans aucun doute dans les bas quartiers de Los Angeles, ce qui donne au film une qualité quasi documentaire. Le récit est parfaitement structuré, sans temps mort. Et de plus, la cinématographie de ce petit film est superbe. Avec le plus souvent un éclairage naturel, on voit apparaître Briggs à contre-jour ou encore, on voit Norma Talmadge près d'une fenêtre avec un rayon de soleil dans les cheveux. le film contraste habilement les bas-fonds où vit Briggs, qui fréquentent les asiles de nuit où l'on paie trois cents pour dormir à même le sol dans un local surpeuplé et exigu, et la maison confortable des Remington. Au total, c'est un très joli film superbement exécuté et joué. 

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 Do you recognize this glowering visage — haunted, hangdog and criminous?
The film is GOING STRAIGHT, a 1916 Norma Talmadge vehicle in which the serious one of the Talmadge sisters is rather sidelined, screen hubby Ralph Lewis getting most of the (melo)drama as a former housebreaker who’s built up a respectable business, only to have a wretched former cohort turn up to blackmail him into undertaking one last “job” –
The fiend in human form, who works, Fagin-like, with the assistance of a saintly street urchin, is played by your friend and mine Eugene Pallette.
My friend Lawrie once told me during a screening of SHANGHAI EXPRESS, rather to my astonishment, that the bloated wine-sack with the bullfrog basso-profundo was once a handsome leading man. It’s not really true. The earliest Pallette sighting I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy was INTOLERANCE, in which he plays a huguenot with the emphasis on huge. Though not the full cannonball of later years, he’s still sufficiently chunky to make the sight of him in tights… memorable.
But in GOING STRAIGHT, made the same year, Huge Euge seems pretty willowy. Maybe it’s just the more forgiving nature of men’s fashions in the twentieth century, or maybe he put on a bunch of weight during the months between productions. However, a strange effect occurs watching the film, in which E.P. initially appears unrecognizable, a wispy figure, robbed of his orotund orations and dirigible circumference, but as the footage unspools before you, it’s like he’s slowly donning an ectoplasmic fat suit, spreading and darkening like a volcanic cloud, and his low-key playing assumes the familiar gestures and expressions we know from the boisterous pre-code fat man, until his eventual defenestration threatens to tear the film from its sprockets.
The movie itself is a Griffithesque morality play from that era when the American crime movie had more in common with Dickens than with the later gangster cycle. Everything’s slanted to favour the upwardly-mobile protagonists, who may have started as housebreakers but who are now allowed to lie, conceal, rob and kill in order to protect their respectability!
Some kind of underworld slang? No, children’s midnight pantry raid. I always get those two things mixed up.
The movie is available from Grapevine Video, which means you get a print that looks like it’s been blasted with buckshot and fed through a lawnmower, but this is one of their better-looking releases: contrast and brightness are strong, and I think they even chose a nicer door to project it on.