The years 1928 to 1930 were perhaps the crappiest couple of years in movie history. This is the period during which films transitioned from silent to sound and the learning curve was steep for most. "Weary River" is one of the better transitional films, as it actually feels like a movie and not a sound stage-bound play.
This film is actually part silent and part sound, though the ratio is about 80/20 talking to silent. Richard Barthelmess and Betty Compson prove themselves to be decent talking actors, though neither went on to have substantial careers in the new medium. The material they're given is still of the melodramatic silent movie kind, so they can only do so much with it. But the film bucks some of the trends that make other early talkies such bores. For one, the camera actually moves, whereas most early talkies find the actors standing in one spot with a stationary camera planted squarely in the middle of the frame. Also, this film has nearly constant underscoring like a silent film would have, which reduces the amount of dead air that plagues many early sound films and causes them to have such stilted pacing. The silent/sound hybrid is weird to watch -- there's no narrative reason for some parts to have titles while others are spoken -- but it's like the fact that this film couldn't quite commit to being a complete talkie made it a better sound film than it would otherwise have been.
The title of the film comes from a song that Barthelmess's ex-con character makes famous and that launches his reformed life as a radio singer, a song which I hope you like because Barthelmess warbles it in its entirety for what feels like a dozen times.
"Weary River" was one of three films that brought Frank Lloyd a Best Director Oscar nomination in the 1928-29 award year, the other two being "The Divine Lady" and "Drag." This was a weird year for Oscar. Technically, there weren't any nominations; at the awards ceremony, only winners were announced in each category. I'm not sure how people knew to show up for the ceremony if they weren't officially nominated, but that's something to figure out some other day I guess. But historical documents have since suggested what films were being considered in each category, and "Weary River" was included in Best Director. Frank Lloyd did win, but he won only for "The Divine Lady," as it seems that, though an artist could be nominated for multiple films, the voters were able to show preference for what film actually went with the award.
A bit of trivia -- Lloyd was only the second and last person to win a Best Director Oscar for a film not also nominated for Best Picture (Lewis Milestone was the first, for "Two Arabian Knights" from the previous year, though the first Oscar ceremony included two Best Director awards, one for dramatic films and one for comedies, so it's no an exact comparison).
Grade: B-
