The Gallant Fool (1933)
The circus arrives in Great Shows. Rainey Big Ben and Kit Denton, the star of the show, are informed that no representation will be allowed in the city, and that their presence is not desired by the local potentate. This incomprehensible hatred is equaled only by the Kit 's father's contempt for women. Kit, who criticized his father's contemptuous attitude towards Alicia, his girlfriend, Kit's father tells him of the drama he lived in Big Ben many years earlier.
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A Brilliant Conflict
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
I doubt anyone will be surprised with anything in the movie's plot. Bob Steele and dad George Hayes (teeth in, hair combed, still a bit stagey in his acting) are members of a circus. Bob loves acrobat Arletta Duncan. Hayes says no woman is worth being a fool over, confesses he's a wanted man, which is why he only appears in public in clownface, and that Bob was born in this very county. So when Bob goes the next morning to buy a horse and motherly Vane Calvert comes out and is nice, we know how that's going to turn out.What makes this movie so good is that it isn't a western but a circus movie, and Bob is at his most acrobatic. He mounts his horse in an engaging manner; he engages in various hi-jinks on the slack wire, the trapeze and so forth, and he fights, of course. Surprisingly, he also sings a little, a love song to Miss Duncan, and while he's not a great singer, he can carry a tune if you're not too fussy about the details. It's Bob Steele at his action best in a different way. The circus acts make up half the movie, and they are a lot of fun.The copy I saw was not a good one, but it was good enough that I could tell that DP Faxon Dean was a good one, even though this was his next-to-last film. Take a look at the way he moves his camera to maintain composition and focus during the circus acts. He retired to run a camera department for Jesse Lasky and a photographic-equipment-rental business for a quarter of a century.