The Voice of the City (1929)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Pretty bad crime picture about a man (Robert Ames) who escapes from prison after he was found guilty of killing a cop and sentenced to twenty years. Since he's innocent he breaks free and stays in the attic of a friends house hoping that his innocence will be proved and he can quit hiding from both the police as well as a mob boss. THE VOICE OF THE CITY will be of interest to those, such as myself, who enjoy early talkies. Sadly, like most early talkies, this one here spends way too much time talking instead of doing anything else. Watching the early talkies today is rather interesting and it's also funny to see how quickly Hollywood would change within a few years. One thing to notice here is that the camera rarely moves and instead of moving the actors around the set, everyone pretty much stays within the frame and never moves. There are a few scenes where four or five actors will be crammed into the frame for no reason or importance to the story but instead just so the camera can get them all! There are other instances where you will notice the actors sitting around and basically leaning forward to deliver their lines, which tells me they wanted to make sure the audio was recorded. These bits and pieces are historically interesting to fans of this era of filmmaking but at the same time it also makes for a very poor movie. Willard Mack ended up being the writer, director and actor in the picture so I guess we can give him credit but sadly he just doesn't have much to work with here. There's never any real movement to the story because we basically just get people sitting around talking...and talking...and talking even more about rather boring things. The movie just doesn't contain any flare or energy and at just 81-minutes it's pretty hard to sit through it. The performances aren't much better including some really awful supporting performances. THE VOICE OF THE CITY is about as bad as they come and should only be viewed by those interested in this era of filmmaking.
