"The Great Gabbo" is an American movie from 1929, so this one is from over 85 years ago and of course it is a black-and-white film still. But it does have sound as the sound era was quickly progressing in his early years at this point. Just to put it in perspective, this film is from between the two great wars of the 20th century, came out 4 years before Nazis came into power. This shows how old it really it. According to IMDb, this is a German-language movie, but this is only partially true I believe. There is German dialogue in here, but it is very rare and the great majority of the dialogues are in English language. I guess this error is due to co-director and lead actor Erich von Stroheim being from Austria originally. He is in almost every scene during these slightly over 90 minutes. He plays a stage artist who works as a ventriloquist, but the more he keeps doing so, the more insane he becomes. I personally always found these little puppets or dummies (or whatever they are called) fairly creepy, so I can somewhat understand it. Add some romance (unrequited love?) and lots of music and you have this video in a nutshell. EvS's performance is probably the best thing about the film, but to be harsh one could also say it is the only good thing here. The music is not catchy, the story is not too interesting and I also must say I did not really care for the characters at all. For the most part this felt like a pretty uninspired work. I do not recommend the watch.
Review of The Great Gabbo
