The Black Watch (1929) User Reviews

Ford Transitions To Talkies...

[xerses13 · 6/10 · 12 May 2009]

THE BLACK WATCH (1929) is John Ford's first full fledged sound picture. Previous efforts featured music, sound effects and some muffled voice overs. Here the dialog is clearly heard and sound effects do not trample over it. FOX had long been using 'sound on film' recording by Western Electric Sound System for their 'Movietone News'. This not only gave them practical experience in managing sound, but the system was simpler and better then its competitors such as WARNER BROTHERS' 'Vitaphone'.

THE NUTS; Early in World War One (WWI) The Black Watch a Scottish Regiment is committed to the front. Captain King is detached under special orders to go back to India to quell a possible revolt near the Khyber Pass. Since it must be kept a secret, Captain King leaves under a cloud of suspicion and is considered a "shirker". King preservers and succeeds in his duty returning in honor to the regiment. For details watch the movie, it is worth watching, nuff said.

Though the film is fairly pedestrian, John Ford gives it his usual panache. The Ford touches are particularly evident in his attention to the details of military traditions. If you did not know that it was Ford film you would have come to that determination in the first ten (10) minutes. The principals, Victor McLaglen (King) and Myrna Loy (Yasmani) and other actors handle their roles well enough for the time. You could see though they were getting used to the idea of sound dialog rather then the pantomime of the Silent Film. It is especially interesting to see Ms. Loy in her early erotic period before she became best friend and wife over at M.G.M. Film was later remade in 1953 in WideScreen as KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES starring Tyrone Power. Rating IMDb Six******Stars.

Silly, creaky war film from director John Ford

[AlsExGal · 6/10 · 25 December 2022]

Victor McLaglen stars as Captain Donald King, a member of a Scots regiment of His Majesty's Armed Forces during WW1. While his company receives orders to ship out to the front, King is given a different assignment, He is to go undercover to India, where he will pretend to be a drunk who gets chased out of the service so that he can infiltrate a gang of Muslim rebels who worship a woman named Yasmani (Myrna Loy) as a goddess. Naturally things get further complicated when King falls for Yasmani. Also featuring Randolph Scott and John Wayne as extras.

This was director Ford's first sound movie, and it shows. For the first 45 minutes or so, I was prepared to call this one a complete turkey, just horrible in nearly every way, but by the end I thought pretty much the same thing, except it plunged into pure camp, and Ford manages to shoot some visually interesting shots when the action moves to "The Cave of the Echoes". McLaglen and Loy are awful, and you would never know from this that either would be capable of acting their way out of a paper bag.

Ford certainly hadn't grasped sound acting, and virtually everyone is terrible, drawing lines out to ludicrous length and over emoting like the worst silent film ham. Loy looks great, and she has a lengthy scene in a white, virtually see-through shirt. I was left wondering what kind of East Indian Muslims also worshiped random white ladies as goddesses, but that train of thought led nowhere. The fiery, shadowy Cave interiors are atmospheric, and the scene where McLaglen is "forced" to wrestle the Muslim champion is amusing, as I would think it was harder to stop Victor McLaglen from wrestling random guys on the set every day. 5/10 on its merit as a dramatic film, 7/10 on a so good it's bad scale, I split the difference.

Ford fumbles the first feature experiment with sound

[davidmvining · 5/10 · 23 October 2021]

I find the birth of sound to be the most fascinating point in movie history. Things like widescreen cinematography and color eventually ended up dominating cinema after their introduction, but those were slow and gradual processes. Simplified, movies went from silent in 1928 to sound in 1929. It was a sea change and it happened all at once. John Ford had included some sound in a couple of previous silent films (notably Riley the Cop), and his first full talkie, a short film called Napoleon's Barber, is lost. That leaves The Black Watch as his first feature length talkie, and it's obvious that even a practiced hand like Ford was lost in this strange new world. The new technology and its inherent limitations didn't kill the film completely, but they killed parts of it for sure.

The film starts in England at a dinner for a Scottish regiment, the titular Black Watch, on the eve of their departure for France at the beginning of World War I. The field marshal (David Torrence) sends word that Captain King (Victor McLaglen) should report at once. In the earliest sign that the film has done sound all wrong, the field marshal very slowly explains the situation in India that he needs King to go and help solve. The dialogue is told in small chunks (think William Shatner when he struggled to remember his lines, but worse) with massive airs. For what essentially amounts to an exposition dump, this is painful to listen to.

From what I've read, Ford had no idea how to direct with sound. I mean, who did? It was brand new. He went with what he knew, though, and he seems to have been whispering the lines to his actors. They seem to be hearing half a sentence of dialogue from their director, speaking it, and then waiting another couple of seconds for another line. It's stilted, unnatural, and honestly hard to listen to. I don't demand realism all the time from movies, but this is the kind of unrealism that is a distraction with no narrative or cinematic purpose. If this were limited to this particular scene, it would be of limited concern. However, it's most dialogue scenes (not all), and, most damagingly, in every scene that Myrna Loy is in.

Alright, so the mission King is on is to infiltrate the army of hill people led by the mysterious female figure, held up like a goddess amongst her followers, Yasmani (Loy). King was selected because he grew up in the area while his father was stationed there, and he knows the local languages (which he never speaks, of course). He quickly meets up with an Indian officer, Mohammed Khan (Mitchell Lewis), whom King knows from his youth, and they concoct a plan with the local English officers. King is to look like he drunkenly kills a fellow officer and goes on the run, hopefully welcomed into the open arms of Yasmani.

It works, and then we get the dialogue completely undermining everything. When you have really quick and deeply felt romances in film, you have to really sell it to the audience. This is the mystical "chemistry" that pairs like Bogart and Bacall had in To Have and Have Not. I could not begin to tell you if McLaglen and Loy had chemistry, though, because literally every single line of dialogue between them is fed to them by Ford. It's two actors, taking breaths between every half line of dialogue, and speaking with great import. It becomes outright silly after a while, and it prevents any kind of emotional engagement with the scene.

The movie's not worthless, though. There are small dialogue scenes that are fine (like when King and the officer he was to have killed explain the situation to each other), and the film is often simply great to look at. It was very common in the early days of sound to not film everything with sound. You filmed with silent cameras a lot, preserving the freedom of motion and framing that you no longer got from needing to work inside a glass box. There's a particular shot, showing the Black Watch marching down a dark road in Flanders, that's absolutely gorgeous. There's also a moment where Yasmani shows the Black Watch to King through a crystal ball, and the framing is perfect so that King's younger brother fills the bottom left of the frame while King fills the top right.

The adventure elements are also fairly solid with an ending that actually engages with the situation seriously enough to be believable and has some pretty good action beats. The stuff about men dying on the battlefields of World War I in France is earnestly presented even if it ends up feeling like extra material not entirely necessary for the film.

So, the performances are largely awful (Ford's fault), but it's otherwise a thinly engaging adventure film that often looks great. This is kind of what I expected from an established director's first talkie. There's craft still there, but Ford was well within the learning curve of the new technology in a way that made the film hard to watch at times. Still, I've seen worse.

Everything but the kitchen sink in this early Ford epic.

[uds3 · 4 April 2002]

John Ford had notched up almost 50 films in the director's chair when he took on this project in the late 20's coinciding with the advent of sound.

Far less well known than its 1953 re-make (known AS KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES) with Tyrone Power in the Victor McLlaglen role, the story is that of British Army Officer Captain King, who encounters way more than he expected when he is asked to put down an Indian rebellion up around the Khyber Pass.

Very dated now and without the benefit of wide screen color which so enhances desert dramas especially, BLACK WATCH is still an interesting time-capsule. I saw it many years ago on late night TV, both to compare with the later version and to see how John Ford's direction held up in 1929. On both counts, the film scored well!

Terminate With Extreme Prejudice

[mmallon4 · 7/10 · 30 August 2020]

The Black Watch marked John Ford's first venture into talking pictures and as expected with talkies from 1929, the film's dialogue is delivered at a snail's pace as one actor will wait over a second for the other to finish before they themselves start speaking, creating many long gaps in the dialogue and making the film's pace slower than it needs to be. This gives The Black Watch a disjointed feel while the film still uses title cards over establishing shots - a silent era holdover. Visually speaking, however, the production values do not let the film down with the craftsmanship to be expected from a John Ford picture. The sets and costumes are lush and there are plenty of grand and expressionistic visuals - ultimately the film succeeds in creating that sense of adventure.

The Black Watch is a loose adaptation of Talbot Mundy's novel The King of the Khyber Rifles. The Heart of Darkness style story sees Captain King (Victor MacLaglen) of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland ("the descendants of highland chieftains who rallied behind Wallace and conquered under Bruce") sent on a military mission during World War I to take out a cult leader in a territory not under British rule ahead of the northern frontier of British India near the Khyber Pass. The first portion of The Black Watch features a heavy emphasizes on military tradition with plenty of thundering bagpipe action to show off that sound technology, plus nothing beats some Auld Lyne Sang regardless of the movie. The Black Watch holds a number of parallels to the adventure film Gunga Din which was released 10 years later and also starring Victor MacLaglen in an Indian setting.

One of the main draws of The Black Watch is Myrna Loy in the spotlight role of Yasmani - Goddess to the natives ("others have been sent to take her out but never returned"). Observe the theatrical manner in which Loy moves her body alongside her hammed up pompous speech delivery, all while cloaked out in lavish costumes and surrounded in splendour and opulence. Yasmani claims to be a white woman descended from Alexander the Great, with Aryan blood running through her veins as she puts it. When she delivers a sermon in the cave of echoes she speaks of the prophecy that a woman of Alexander's line shall find a mate and are destined to rule these tribesmen.

The identity of the cult in the film is not made clear. The film gives many indications the cult are Islamic extremists (there is no mention of the words Muslim or Islam) from members praying to Allah to proclaiming the murder of infidels and even the appearance of a flag with the Islamic Star and Crescent. However, in Islam you wouldn't have a woman, let alone one of western origin at the head of a traditional Islamic movement. Likewise wouldn't referring to Yasmani as a Goddess not go against Islam's (and Abrahamic religions' as a whole) monotheism? Not to mention the cult's racial undertones raises many questions. I can't deceiver if The Black Watch is a poorly researched movie or was intentioned to be deliberately vague?

Ford's first feature foray into sound is solid.

[jfsch · 6/10 · 17 April 2022]

Released in 1929, THE BLACK WATCH is an entertaining flick shot in black & white, and John Ford's first all-talkie film. It's based on the 1916 novel 'King of the Khyber Rifles' by Talbot Mundy.

Captain Donald King (McLaglen) goes undercover and leaves his regiment (Black Watch) to put down a rebellion in India at the at the start of WWI. There he finds the beautiful princess Yasmani (Loy) who plans to send her minions to attack British forces at the Khyber Pass.

As we would expect from a Ford movie it has a good look, especially the outdoor scenes. The Cave of Echoes scenes are well crafted with fine visuals and sound effects.

The problem the movie has is it's dialogue in many scenes, Myrna Loy's in particular, is stilted and stagy , as if they thought the mics couldn't keep up with their voices. Still, a good movie.

Melodrama over Adventure in the first Hollywood sound film on British India

[briantaves · 2/10 · 3 February 2006]

In 1895, 16-year-old Talbot Mundy fled the strait-laced Victorian upbringing of his native England for a life of adventure. He crossed the entire northern frontier of India, toward Tibet, spent four years in Africa, and traveled the Middle East in the wake of World War I.

Colonial odysseys of the time led most writers to echo Rudyard Kipling's support of British imperialism or Sax Rohmer's "yellow peril." Not Mundy. His fantasy-adventure books challenged assumptions of Western cultural superiority.

Mundy's writing, such as Om–The Secret of Ahbor Valley, Tros of Samothrace, and Queen Cleopatra, were based in Eastern religious teaching, informed by his membership in the Theosophical Society in San Diego, California.

Radio won him an audience of millions of daily listeners in the 1930s. However, he had much less luck in Hollywood. Mundy's second book, King–of the Khyber Rifles (1917), had become an instant classic, telling of the fabulous Yasmini, who tries to conquer India. Mundy was a believer in full equality between the sexes, and such female characterizations were vivid and proactive. Native figures, especially Indians, often dominated Mundy's novels, placed in the position of imparting eastern wisdom to Western characters.

Fox bought the screen rights to King–of the Khyber Rifles in 1928. At the end of the year Douglas Z. Doty offered a Continuity Outline, placing King in the "Black Watch," the first introduction of the key idea preserved in the final screenplay. Rewa Gunga is no longer a persona assumed by Yasmini, but a separate character, presumably because the androgynous combination of a woman who sometimes disguised herself as a man was regarded as too complex, or unusual, for audiences to fathom.

The decision was made to film in sound, and a new writer, James Kevin McGuinness, was brought in for dialogue. After production, the American release title was changed from KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES to THE BLACK WATCH, while the original title was retained in the United Kingdom.

Donald King is summoned by the War Office and told that since he knows Pushtu and Hindustani like a native, he must prevent a holy war about to be incited by Yasmini, a goddess to the troublesome hillmen. The assignment requires King apparently leave the regiment as a slacker. Only after twenty four minutes does THE BLACK WATCH finally shift to the center of action--"Peshawar--on the northern frontier of British India--near the Khyber Pass"--but the movie's locale is never convincing as India.

King meets his father's old companion, Risaldar Major Mohammed Khan, who prays "For all the violence I have displayed toward my fellow men, Allah forgive me." He is lifted from another Mundy novelette, "For the Salt Which He Had Eaten," to which Fox had also bought the rights. Officially deemed too old, Khan is glad to join King for a secret mission. Khan is the only character in the entire film redolent of Mundy, and as played by Mitchell Lewis, is perhaps the best acted individual as well.

Finally, with more than half the film over, the narrative is about to reach the Khyber pass; only two-thirds of the film is set in India, and 40% per cent in the hills--versus nearly all of Mundy's book. The mystical portrayal of the Khinjan caves by Mundy is replaced in the film with a cacophonous din of loud prayer and fighting men that resembles Madison Square Garden gone mad.

Rather than Mundy's emphasis on the indigenous people, in THE BLACK WATCH it is on the Scots and the World War I subplot. The scenes in England serve as a framing story, grounding the excursion into Asian culture by showing another foreign tradition, Scotland, one less foreign to the audience. The mood of the Indian scenes is destroyed by cross-cutting to the trenches of France, paralleling the front lines of France and King's service in India.

Yasmini reveals to the surprised King that she is a descendant of Alexander the Great. She relates a prophecy that when a woman of Alexander's line shall find the mate ordained to rule these tribesman, they shall conquer together. King's restrained response is to wander to the other side of the room, saying "It can't be," despite his growing love for her.

King's men remove their native robes to reveal British uniforms, assembling their machine guns in a critical spot overlooking the cavern, bottling up the hillmen, and setting the stage for a struggle that is small and obviously budget-conscious (the film was made for $400,000). Yasmini, dressed in angelic white, says "Thou hast triumphed," and is shot by one of her own; King lifts her away as his men's machine guns spray the cavern. King goes to Yasmini's room where her maids have placed her dying body. In the moving death scene, the best of the film, the couple are clearly in love. The final sequence parallels the opening, returning to a dinner of the Black Watch, their numbers thinned around a smaller table.

McLaglen turned out to be far more capable in his role than Loy was in hers, particularly in the dialogue scenes. The film was moderately successful, with an estimated gross of $800,000.

Ford's direction won critical praise for its visual and auditory artistry, but not its narrative sense. The style nullifies the adventurous elements, preventing THE BLACK WATCH from becoming the spectacle it might easily have been; the largest number of extras go into the scene in the London railroad depot. The entire movie is deliberately overdone, from the pacing to the acting.

THE BLACK WATCH is one of the most unusual, even bizarre, commercial movies made during the early years of sound movies. It belongs to a time when the empire adventure, or adventure of any type in the colonies, had yet to be formulated as a cinematic genre; on the screen, India was still treated more as melodrama than adventure.

Definitely one of the best films of 1929, but a laugh a minute travesty 90+ years later.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 4 October 2023]

Technically, this is one of the best films of the early sound era, looking far advanced to most films even though some of the acting is terribly paced and ridiculously melodramatic even in the standards that would be created for films in the next few years after it. It's definitely a triumph for director John Ford, lavish and fascinating, but unfortunately tacky in many aspects that would make many classic film fans turned off by it.

Star Victor McLaglen comes off fine in the leading role, later played by the very different Tyrone Power who starred in the remake that used the original novel title, "The King of the Khyber Rifles". Rising starlet Myrna Loy would have to wait a few more years to escape from the unfortunate roles she was being cast in, this one rivaling "The Mask of FuManchu" in poor taste. As the most un-Indian looking of Indian princesses, Loy gives a jaw droppingly bad performance, speaking so slowly that her most lyrical of voices is painful to listen to.

As a curiosity, it's definitely worth watching just once, and had I been around in 1929. I probably would think of this as a masterpiece, which it is in that era's terms of what made a good picture. Some of the elements are very similar to later day silent films, the dialog cheezy in a way that reminded me of the early sound films within the plotline of "Singin' in the Rain", so I wouldn't be surprised if the more serious critics and filmgoers made fun of it. The direction and technical aspects get praise here regardless of how poor it comes off as in modern terms.

Yasmani, That's My Baby

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 21 November 2007]

Most of the time criticism about film remakes will usually run to 'not as good as the original' and most time it isn't. In this case the 1953 remake of this story that Henry King did starring Tyrone Power was miles superior to this early sound feature.

Later on Victor McLaglen got back to colonial India in better features like Gunga Din and Wee Willie Winkie also for John Ford. The only distinction this film has is it is John Ford's first talkie and it's a good thing someone decided to give him another chance.

Neither film is true to the original novel by Talbot Mundy. This version takes place on the eve of World War I as the famed Scottish Black Watch Regiment is in their mess having a last blowout before leaving for the front. During the course of the good times, Captain Victor McLaglen is sent for.

He's been brought up in India, knows Hindustani, Pushtu, and all the languages of that key area of the Khyber Pass. They've got an assignment for him. He's to let it get around that he used some pull to get that transfer to India so that folks will think him a coward. Then when he gets to India with the rumors flying, he's to desert and infiltrate the camp of a nasty group of rebels who are being led by a white Princess Yasmani, played by Myrna Loy.

So with trusty Moslem aide Mitchell Lewis, McLaglen does just that and of course Loy falls for him in just about the same way that Madeline Kahn fell for Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles. In fact this film didn't need John Ford, it could have been a Mel Brooks triumph if it had been worked right.

But it wasn't a comedy, or at least an intentional one. By the way Loy is a descendant of Alexander the Great and because she was white it would be OK for McLaglen and her to do some kanoodling. Got to think of that southern market. She's also got Roy D'Arcy and Walter Long in her camp panting good and hard after her also, but when she sees McLaglen, it's just like Little and Kahn.

By the way, I couldn't quite figure out what these rebels were. They seemed to have aspects of both the Moslem and Hindu religion there. Certainly in Islam you wouldn't have a woman at the head of things in what is a traditional Islam movement. I attribute that to incredibly sloppy research.

John Ford gets his innings in during the Scottish Mess Hall scenes at the beginning and end of the film. Otherwise you'd hardly know it was a film of his.

And the biggest story of the film is the early sound recording picked up McLaglen saying Loy's character name of Yasmani as Yes, Minnie. Purportedly they edited it out because of the hoots it got during the premiere. I did hear one Yasmani come out of McLaglen and it could have been a Yes, Minnie. Myrna and her friends thought it was hilarious for the next 64 years of her life, her good friends called her Minnie.

John Wayne and Randolph Scott are supposed to be extras in this and they could have been. But I searched in vain for them.

Better their names not be attached to this one.

Poor, poor Donald...the poor dear doesn't get to go to France to get his head blown off!

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 2 April 2022]

By 1929 standards, "The Black Watch" is a decent film. When seen today, however, it seems very stilted and slow. But you cannot fault the movie for being so static and stagey, as in 1929 filmmakers were still struggling to integrate sound into movies...and it took them another year or two to get it right. In this case, it was the first sound film of John Ford...and it shows.

When the story begins, the officers of a Scottish Highlands regiment are having a party and toasting to their success in WWI...which has just begun. They see it as a chance for glory and fun and all that rot, but John Ford filmed this section with great sentimentality...as if to glorify the godawful mess that the war would soon become.

During this party, Captain Donald Gordon King (Victor McLaglen) is called to talk to his commander. He's ordered to go to India for an undercover mission instead of just getting his head blown off in France with his friends. And, because the film shows such patriotism and gung ho attitudes, Donald is sad to not get into the action!

Once in India, he's expected to insinuate himself into the inner circle around a strange and charismatic woman named Yasmani (Mynra Loy) who is plotting a rebellion in British India. To do this, he is publicly disgraced and runs to Yasmani's camp...hoping that she and her men won't realize the whole disgraced thing is a sham. What's next? See the film and find out for yourself.

Technically, this is a very good film. The cinematography is exceptional and the sound for 1929 is excellent. The sets also are pretty amazing.

On the other hand, the film has a few deficits. None of the 'Indians' in the movie look the least bit Indian...with the likes of Walter Long and Myrna Loy playing natives!! Such silly casting wasn't unusual back in the day and Hollywood was still trying to figure out what to do with Loy...even casting her as a Chinese lady in "The Mask of Fu Manchu" only a few years later. In addition, although the sound quality is good, the acting combined with the sound isn't so hot. It's incredibly stilted and the acting stagy as well...not unusual for 1929 but obvious by the standards even of 1930-1932. Some scenes look as if they were from a silent movie, stylistically speaking. This is especially true when the Captain was pitching woo with Yasmani....the acting of both (particularly Loy) was truly awful!! As a result, the scope and excitement that should be in the story are sadly lacking at times. Overall, well worth seeing but probably a bit of a disappointment for Ford fans. My score of 4 might seem a bit high, but it is watchable and I tend to cut the films of 1927-29 some slack because of changing technologies and styles.

Ford's first sound feature, underrated

[wadetaylor · 8/10 · 18 December 2007]

John Ford is in my opinion the greatest director that ever lived, and he rarely ever made a misstep. Many people have listed The Black Watch as a misstep, but in context I do not think that it is. It is true that it is dated in the way that the dialogue is spoken, but find me one sound picture from 1929 that is not.

The problem was with sound pictures themselves, the movies had developed into near perfection in 1927-1928. But then sound became all the rage, and it wasn't profitable anymore for the studios to invest in silent movies. So the masterpieces of the late silent era were put on the back burner for stagy dramas with too much dialog or musicals even more stagy than the dramas.

The Black Watch has Ford's German expressionism influenced photography that he started in the late twenties after meeting F.W. Murnau. It also has the Ford themes of Integration into a society, self sacrifice, and the bond between men.

The one major drawback is the extremely stilted dialogue. No one really understood at the time how sound should be recorded live, which led to really irregular ways of saying lines. With long pauses between each others lines, since they did not want to step on each others' lines, so as to overwork the early microphones.

Victor McLaughlin's acting wasn't his best, but he was much better than Myrna Loy who honestly seemed as though she had been hypnotized before going on the set. I thought the guy who asked forforgiveness for his violence towards his fellow man, who would then do something violent was funny.

Compared to all of John Ford's other films this is near the bottom, but compared to everything else made in sound in 1929 this is at the top of the heap.

The Black Watch is an ugly one.

[st-shot · 3/10 · 16 April 2022]

Victor McLagan, Myrna Loy and John Ford directing his first sound feature all fail miserably in this stiff and awkward effort from the early sound era trying to find its voice. Miscast and Islamic insensitive it's a hackneyed mess from the outset.

As WW1 commences Captain King (McLagan) of the Black Watch Brigade is given a top secret assignment in India interpreted as cowardice by his fellow soldiers. There he makes contact with rebel leader Yasmani (Loy), intent on ruling the world, but India will do for now.

Ford directs poor performances from both his leads while showing an obnoxious fondness for bagpipes and Irish tenors, nearly turning this turgid adventure yarn into a musical. McLagan and Loy are embarrassing as they spout insipid dialogue. Vic is simply not the leading man type and Loy in spite of some exotic hooded eye portraiture and posing is simply to All American to be an Indian Goddess. Together they display a cringing romantic interest that director Ford seems at a loss to rectify.

Ford, Mclagan and Loy (once properly cast) would go on to have excellent sound careers but here in their early days they come across as rank amateurs in this low adventure effort.

Secret mission

[dbdumonteil · 15 August 2010]

Is it because it's the beginning of the talkies that both McLaglen's and Myrna Loy's playing are almost ridiculous ?One should forgive the actress for her part of an Indian Joan Of Ark -but a maid who is fond of men,we are told- is not exactly what you call the part of her life.All that takes place in a pasteboard India looks like a poor man's "lifes of a Bengal Lancer"(which would appear six years later):even two names (Mohammed Khan and McGregor) are used in both movies.

On the other hand ,all that takes place in Scotland shows John Ford's touch :the manly camaraderie, the brothers in arm singing "Auld Lang Syne" before leaving for France (WW1),the officer wrongly accused of cowardice -his superior warns him:"you will be a pariah"-;and more prosaically ,the missus ' piece of advice to the private about his privates and the soldier confessing later that at least at war he was left alone.

The scene of the crystal ball almost predates the one in Mankiewicz's "Cleopatra" when Julius Cesar is murdered.

Silent Film with Spoken Word

[drewcoo · 3/10 · 28 December 2023]

As a talkie, this is a mess.

The pacing, the acting, heck, even the cinematography is just like a silent film.

But there are actors who pause for a long while, then read what seem like interstitial cards from silent films, then pause again. The voices are irritatingly loud, like stage actors who have never seen cameras.

And there is frequent, obnoxiously loud bagpipe music. Which is how it oughta be played if you ask me, but it is also not how things are done in talkies.

Myrna Loy acts in a way that makes you wonder if this is just how she was before she started drinking. Pro tip: drink more, kids!

Frankly, I was surprised that John Ford stumbled a bit as he tried to understand how talkies worked. In exactly that way, this film ought to be an inspiration to film students.

Please don't bother watching unless you're one of those film students. You can't even turn the sound off and pretend this is silent because there are only cards to read in some scenes not all.

Alternately, this film could easily become a drinking game. Watch at your own risk!

Early Myrna

[januszlvii · 9/10 · 17 April 2020]

The Black Watch from 1929, is John Ford's first totally talking movie, and is film 55 I have seen of Myrna Loy, and the earliest one I have seen where she plays a major role. It takes a half hour for her to show up, but when she does, she is as beautiful as ever. She plays Yasmani who is a direct descendant of Alexander The Great who is basically a Joan of Arc type out to lead her people ( it takes place in India) to defeat the British. For those who are not that familiar with her early work, she has played all kinds of interesting characters. Yasmani was actually one of the better characters she played. The person who is out to stop her and prevent a war is Captain Donald King ( Victor McLaglin), of the Black Watch ( a Scottish Military Regiment). Spoilers ahead: Yasmani and Donald do fall in love and she decides to change but she gets killed by one of her own people. McLaglin usually plays characters ( often Irish) who are messed us and love whiskey but here he plays the British Officer he was in real life. Is The Black Watch the best film of Ford, Loy or McLaglin? No but considering when it was made, I would certainly recommend it. 9/10 stars.