[Dixielandjazz] "Vitaphone Varieties" reviewed San Francisco Chronicle

[Robert Ringwald]

Vitaphone Varieties (Warner Archive)
by Mick LaSalle
San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 2011
There are people who love 1920s vaudeville, love the music and the comedy from that
period and find Vitaphone shorts -- early sound films of the singers and comedians
from that era -- just as entertaining as their original audiences found them. I am
not one of those people. Chances are you are not one of those people, either. Yet
I am telling you that I watched the entire nine-hour, four-disc set of these shorts
with immense fascination. I was almost always interested (when I wasn't, that's why
they invented fast-forward), and I was often touched. First off, when the acts are
good, they're more than good, they're interesting. Did you think the Marx Brothers
first brought absurdist humor to the screen? That's what I thought. Forget it. They
were all doing it, some of them well (Jans and Whalen), some of them poorly (Val
and Ernie Stanton), some of them brilliantly (Jack White). Second, when the acts
are bad, they're often just as interesting, or more interesting, a window into an
earlier way of thinking. But here's what's moving. In these shorts, the people may
be performing, but they're not acting. They're being themselves. And so we get to
see human behavior, in some of the earliest sound recordings, unmoored from the acting
and singing conventions of the time. With the artifice wiped away, what an amazing
thing to see people behaving as people behave today. Beatrice Curtis, bantering with
her partner Harry Fox ("The Bee and the Fox"), seems like a modern-day college girl
who, for some unaccountable reason, is dressed like it's 1929. A young harpist steals
glances at the camera as she plays. Comedians crack each other up. What a beautiful
thing to see the dead alive again and taking such pleasure in each other. Available
at warnerarchive.com, listing for $49.95 but selling for less.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
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