In Old Arizona

The challenge that I knew that I would face in reviewing In Old Arizona is how best to deal with the fact that this 1929 film is from an era closer to the birth of cinema than to today. It's not that I'm necessarily blind to the accomplishments of films made in the early part of the twentieth-century, simply that in reviewing In Old Arizona, the difficulty is in presenting this film amongst movies only recently released without drawing an unfavourable comparison.

In some respects, given that film is almost as old as the automobile (1895 with Lumiere's invention of the first motion picture camera to Daimler/Maybach and Benz's cars in 1889), the comparison would be to stepping out of a Ford Mondeo into a 1929 Model A. With all due care given to the Model A, it may look like a car but in terms of what we have come to expect, it's a world away.

Similarly, watching In Old Arizona feels like stepping back through the ages to the birth of the talkies, which is exactly the era from when the film dates. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson had been released two years earlier and its impact was so great - exemplified by The Duelling Cavalier being turned into The Dancing Cavalier in Singin' In The Rain - that studios rushed to release talking films. Indeed, 1929 saw the completion of Queen Kelly, which starred Gloria Swanson but that, as a silent movie in an age of talkies, was left unreleased. For the Fox Film Corporation, In Old Arizona represented a new milestone, that of a talkie being filmed outdoors, specifically in Bryce Canyon, the San Fernando Mission and the Mojave Desert. With microphones hidden within props, the film was shot during 1928 and released in early 1929 and was met not only with commercial success but with an Oscar for Warner Baxter, playing the Cisco Kid.

Deep in the southwestern United States, the Cisco Kid is a famous bandit with a $5,000 price on his head. Famous for holding up stagecoaches but never robbing the individuals onboard, the Cisco Kid only wants to make enough to return to Portugal, the country he left when he was only a boy and for which he has only good memories, something that he shares with his girl, Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess). Unfortunately for the Cisco Kid, the last job that he did attracted the attentions of a tough sheriff, who sends Sgt Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) after the Kid. The Cisco Kid thinks he may have the measure of Sgt Dunn but when it looks as though Tonia may have found a new man capable of offering a life in New York, the Cisco Kid must act quickly before someone finds themselves $5,000 richer.

Regardless of the age of In Old Arizona, the question over its merits should be whether or not it can be enjoyed without looking upon it as a lesson in the history of films. In that sense, it is largely successful but with one criticism - In Old Arizona feels very, very long and much more so than its 99 minutes. In looking first at the positive aspects of the film, it is entertaining with a nice line in comedy both from the Cisco Kid as well as Mickey Dunn and the scene in which they compare the size of their guns is one that clearly slipped by a censor more naive than this reviewer. Both actors manage to raise some genuine laughs, particularly when the Cisco Kid tells one eager woman, "Uhh...the other pretty lady" after he demands that the pretty one on the stagecoach step forward. Similarly, Dorothy Burgess as Tonia makes the most of her part, succeeding in making the young woman both seductive and manipulative, best seen in how she has Mickey Dunn denying his girl back home in a scene that, regardless of the age of the film, is erotic.

In Old Arizona also does a better job of portraying the immigrants who came to the United States in its formative years than did many later films. In particular, I loved the minor character of an Irishman set for returning home who declared, as many Irishmen do, that the stage was a fine bus - even were the space shuttle to do a tour of Ireland by road, many would declare, "Yon's a quare big bus, now!" There aren't, however, enough such small roles in the film, which leads to the biggest criticism of In Old Arizona, that of the Mickey Dunn/Cisco Kid/Tonia Maria relationship simply not being enough to sustain the entire film. When In Old Arizona works, it does so by presenting life outside of this trio but in the main, the film can be very dull. Indeed, there's roughly about twenty minutes that could have been cut without affecting the flow of the film at all and, as a viewer, I longed for something other than wisecracks from Mickey Dunn to lead me through the second and longest half hour of the film.

As for Warner Baxter, should you find yourself unable to look past his sounding more Russian than Portuguese, In Old Arizona could be a tough watch. And that's not even mentioning Edmund Lowe overacting wildly throughout nor the meaningful glances cast to the left of the camera that are a hangover from the casting of silent-movie actors in talkies. In the end, however, much of In Old Arizona is simply old-fashioned entertainment and although long, is a nice little western with neither high aspirations nor even a hint of complexity. It does end beautifully as all of the cast's double-crossings pay off, leaving the Cisco Kid alone in the night. It's there that Baxter justifies the Oscar although you might think that it ought to take more than a great final scene.

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Transfer

Watching In Old Arizona, you get the impression that, no matter how historically important this film was both for the success of talkies and for Fox, it's looked upon more as a museum piece rather than a film that Fox actively promotes. As such, the transfer onto DVD looks like one associated with a film that is shown only rarely in public and on which the remastering of the picture is not enough to hide the damage to the print.

To be fair, the 1.20:1 picture is very stable within a 1.33:1 frame, which is indicated on the screen shots in this review, but wear-and-tear is obvious - occasional frames are missing, the contrast is variable and dust, specks and lines appear throughout the film. Unless, however, the viewer is particularly intolerant about image quality, you do get used to the damage on the print within minutes. Regular viewers of films from the early part of the twentieth century will not, I suspect be surprised at the quality of the print but there is a vast difference between In Old Arizona and something like the Warner Brothers' restoration of The Adventures Of Robin Hood, released only ten years after this film.

As regards the soundtrack, In Old Arizona has been transferred with its original mono soundtrack intact but Fox have also included a restored mono soundtrack. Whilst the latter does remove the noise and hiss from the original soundtrack, it has also reduced the top end of the audio track as well as background noise. As an example, early in the film a stagecoach pulls into a small western town - on the restored soundtrack, nothing is heard until the stage rounds a building but on the original track, the clatter of hooves can be heard before seeing the coach. As a result and in spite of the hiss, I found myself watching the film with the original audio track rather than the restored one.

Either way, the use of subtitles is occasionally called upon as the dialogue from the main characters can dip beneath chatter and background noise.

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Extras

There are no bonus features on this release of In Old Arizona.

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Overall

It's a difficult film to entirely recommend given that even those fans of westerns who frequent the site may find it too early a film to satisfy their thirst for tales of the old west. Even those viewers who have an interest in the film due to its importance in demonstrating that talkies could be made on location shoots will no doubt find that it is of limited interest.

All that said, I did enjoy it but I'm not sure that I'd ever go back to it. I would love to drive a 1929 MG M Type but I know that my enjoyment of the drive would soon be tempered by heavy steering, a complete lack of safety features and a engine that would struggle to push the car up anything but the slightest of inclines. Whilst I don't doubt that a drive in the MG would be interesting, I know that it's not the car that I'd choose to drive home. Similarly, watching In Old Arizona was akin to an entertaining history lesson in film but I'm unconvinced that there's enough in its stagey dialogue, late-silent/early-talkie-era acting and slow plotting to get that much from.