OldieMovieFan
Joined Jun 2022
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OldieMovieFan's rating
Ginger Rogers made 2 movies with William Boyd, neither of them really great, but 'Carnival Boat' is by far the better of the two and in fact is a really good movie on its own, one of director Albert Rogell's best in a long career of B movies.
The logging scenes are terrific, some of the stunts are amazing, and the runaway train is thrilling even in 2025. Hobart Bosworth is forgotten today but he was a great star in the earliest days of film; he had the lead in the very first movie ever made in Hollywood, a short from 1909 called 'In the Sultan's Power.' The entire film industry had enormous respect and admiration Bosworth and, in an interview decades later as her film career was winding down, Rogers said she had considered it a great honor to play across from him, if only briefly.
Boyd's fight scenes are amatuerish, even for 1932, but he makes up for it with a dynamic screen presence. Ginger's vaudeville act is a lot of fun (watch how she glides to one side of the stage to introduce her chorus line - very professional) and even though she is only onscreen for a few minutes, she dominates all of her scenes, easily matching Boyd and Bosworth as a forceful personality even while 'keeping it light.'
Definitely worth watching 'Carnival Boat'.... just keep in mind that it's an inexpensive film from 1932, not from 2022.
The logging scenes are terrific, some of the stunts are amazing, and the runaway train is thrilling even in 2025. Hobart Bosworth is forgotten today but he was a great star in the earliest days of film; he had the lead in the very first movie ever made in Hollywood, a short from 1909 called 'In the Sultan's Power.' The entire film industry had enormous respect and admiration Bosworth and, in an interview decades later as her film career was winding down, Rogers said she had considered it a great honor to play across from him, if only briefly.
Boyd's fight scenes are amatuerish, even for 1932, but he makes up for it with a dynamic screen presence. Ginger's vaudeville act is a lot of fun (watch how she glides to one side of the stage to introduce her chorus line - very professional) and even though she is only onscreen for a few minutes, she dominates all of her scenes, easily matching Boyd and Bosworth as a forceful personality even while 'keeping it light.'
Definitely worth watching 'Carnival Boat'.... just keep in mind that it's an inexpensive film from 1932, not from 2022.
Funny thing about this movie and it's message... if it had been released just a couple of years later, when #metoo movement appeared, it would have been a monster mainstream hit.
It only slightly pre-dates that time, when vast numbers of men all across the country categorically refused to be alone with women in rooms, cars, elevators, offices, or anywhere else, and traditional dating just fell off the map. At first glance, the reasoning of the movie appears to be different from the reasoning behind #metoo but actually the logic is identical; only the perspective is different.
The difference in cultures that looked so stark, suddenly, for a moment, became mainstream.
It only slightly pre-dates that time, when vast numbers of men all across the country categorically refused to be alone with women in rooms, cars, elevators, offices, or anywhere else, and traditional dating just fell off the map. At first glance, the reasoning of the movie appears to be different from the reasoning behind #metoo but actually the logic is identical; only the perspective is different.
The difference in cultures that looked so stark, suddenly, for a moment, became mainstream.
It's fascinating to watch the up/down voting on the reviews of this particular movie; they're clearly agenda-driven rather than based on any special insights into the acting, performances, direction... or the editing, cinematography, sets, or scenes... or anything else that goes into film-making. If a critic likes the film, their review gets shelled; if they don't like the film, they get rewarded with up-votes.
Very much the opposite of reading and watching commentary on the Golden Age of Hollywood, although this same sort of .... tribalism or in-group/out-group in-group voting.... has been creeping in even to that older era. A recent remake of 'snow white' has met a similar fate (possibly from a different tribe?). Public film critics have long been derided for doing these kinds of things. It's a sort of spamming or ratio-ing that is quite out of proportion to the reviews themselves, or for that matter, to this low-budget film.
Cage is easily a top 5 actor of the modern era; his range is outstanding, as is his ability to show emotion; at his best, he regularly runs laps around guys like Chris Pine or Al Pacino (both great actors), and he's been doing it mostly on shoestring budgets. Just one example within this film: while his wife walks the straight and narrow, he knows that he's broken a whole bunch of Commandments... when the main event happens, and his logic remorselessly takes him to the inescapable conclusion of what has just happened.... the agony in his eyes is practically unmatched in all of film. It's a moment of an actor reaching the heights of Clara Bow in the late 1920s. It is rarified air up there where he takes that scene.
It takes some level of courage for such a talented actor to engage in a film with subject matter like this one, that he HAD to know would wreck his reputation with studios and producers.
And.... There's an art to building films without gigantic budgets. Were we expecting 'Avengers' level special effects from a film with a total budget roughly equal to Iron Man's salary?
Very much the opposite of reading and watching commentary on the Golden Age of Hollywood, although this same sort of .... tribalism or in-group/out-group in-group voting.... has been creeping in even to that older era. A recent remake of 'snow white' has met a similar fate (possibly from a different tribe?). Public film critics have long been derided for doing these kinds of things. It's a sort of spamming or ratio-ing that is quite out of proportion to the reviews themselves, or for that matter, to this low-budget film.
Cage is easily a top 5 actor of the modern era; his range is outstanding, as is his ability to show emotion; at his best, he regularly runs laps around guys like Chris Pine or Al Pacino (both great actors), and he's been doing it mostly on shoestring budgets. Just one example within this film: while his wife walks the straight and narrow, he knows that he's broken a whole bunch of Commandments... when the main event happens, and his logic remorselessly takes him to the inescapable conclusion of what has just happened.... the agony in his eyes is practically unmatched in all of film. It's a moment of an actor reaching the heights of Clara Bow in the late 1920s. It is rarified air up there where he takes that scene.
It takes some level of courage for such a talented actor to engage in a film with subject matter like this one, that he HAD to know would wreck his reputation with studios and producers.
And.... There's an art to building films without gigantic budgets. Were we expecting 'Avengers' level special effects from a film with a total budget roughly equal to Iron Man's salary?