Movies at East Sydney - Lucky Star (1929)

With live music accompaniment on grand piano (Mauro Colombis), 100 minutes.
Tickets: $30/$25  
General seating 
(T 0419 267 318)

Stephen Robertson, cinephile and loyal supporter of the sessions, will introduce the classic.

“This beautiful and unforgettable film, rich in Frank Borzage’s warm and sensitive sentimentality, features two great stars of the era: Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, who were 'America's Favorite Lovebirds' making a dozen movies in seven years.  Their successful onscreen partnership began with Borzage’s silent masterpiece, Seventh Heaven (1927), and continued well into the sound era until 1934.

The film was the third Gaynor-Farrell film that Frank Borzage directed, and it is obvious that the qualities that made Seventh Heaven such an outstanding film have been refined and expertly crafted into another special cinematic experience.

Borzage was a pioneer of the soft focus look, allowing him to capture love at its purest and most romantic through sentimentally framed images rather than the spoken word. Together with carefully painted settings and backdrops also shot in soft lighting, the effect becomes magical, as if stepping inside a classical painting and experiencing a life-like dream; or perhaps an old-fashioned fairytale picture book.

The farmhouses in particular are similar to those in Sunrise, one of silent cinema’s great classics for which Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1927.  Its director F.W. Murnau was inspired by the artistic Expressionist style from his home country, Germany, and his production of Sunrise inspired other directors to use similar backdrops, sceneries and techniques.

While Charles Farrell plays the straightforward honest, good guy here, the talented and petite Janet Gaynor took on a more challenging role, namely that of Mary, the poor, uneducated and hard-working farm girl.  She is just a mischievous teenage tomboy when she first meets Tim (Farrell) and his co-workers, who are called to war shortly thereafter. 

In fact, The Great War intruding upon deep and romantic love in its purest form is a recurring theme for Frank Borzage, and it is carried right through to his famous sound picture, A Farewell to Arms.  In Lucky Star, the tragedy of war is always present in the form of Tim sitting in a wheelchair, his legs crippled in action on the front in France.

Unable to work, he has plenty of time on his hands to reform the loutish and unwashed tomboy Mary, who often visits him, and in the course of trying to make a young lady out of her, they fall in love.  Believing it to be hopeless and without a future, it takes certain dramatic circumstances to reveal what is in each one’s heart, making for some surprisingly intense and thrilling scenes at the climax.

At the end, viewers are deeply moved by the transforming power of true love as they once again experience the romantic beauty so eloquently on display in this silent masterpiece from Frank Borzage.”

Barbara Underwood.

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