saw a couple of 1930s movies on Turner this week. One took place on the Shanghai express and one was about a train of silk from Seattle to New York. Both had som.e good engine shots if they are rerun
Man, you oughta see “Danger Lights” from 1930, and if they don’t show it anytime soon on “Uncle Teds Movie Morgue” , that’s what we call Turner Classic Movies here at the “Festung Firelock”, see if you can find it on DVD. Great train movie!
I was in Miles City (where several of the scenes were filmed) and mentioned having seen the movie off the web (Internet Archive). She said she remembered her dad took her to see some of the filming, but she never did see the movie.
- Erik
My God, if the woman you spoke to saw the filming of “Danger Lights” she must be close to 90! That movie was done in 1930.
Hate to be morbid, but “Danger Lights” is a bit of a celluliod mausoleum. EVERTHING in it, from the actors to the railroad itself, are dead! Truly a look at a lost world.
She’s 86, my uncle, who she was married to, passed away a week ago at the age of 89.
The Milwaukee Road shops in Miles City are still mostly there, including the smokestack, but the track east to Terry is gone as well as almost all of the line west from there.
- Erik
from Wikipedia:
"Shanghai Express is a 1932 American film directed by Josef von Sternberg. The pre-Code picture stars Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook,Anna May Wong, and Warner Oland. It was written by Jules Furthman, based on a 1931 story by Harry Hervey. It was the fourth of seven teamings of Sternberg and Dietrich.
Hervey’s story was, in turn, loosely based on the May 6, 1923 incident in which a Shengdong warlord captured the Shanghai to Beijing express train, taking 25 westerners and 300 Chinese hostage. All of the hostages captured in the Lincheng Outrage were successfully ransomed.[1][2]
The film is memorable for its stylistic black-and-white&
Erikem, my sincere sympathies to you on the loss of your uncle.
Wayne
Wayne,
Thanks.
- Erik
A bit off-topic, but the black-and-white photography as practiced in Hollywood’s “Golden Age” is really a lost art. Watch, really WATCH an old film from the '30’s and compare it to the occasional black-and-white footage shot today and you’ll see what I mean.
The same can be said for some of the Technicolor films from the '30’s like “Elizabeth and Essex”, “Blood and Sand”, “The Adventures of Robin Hood”, and so on. Watch carefully and see how the directors “painted” the picture with the new technology given to them. Just amazing.
What was the name of the movie about the silk train?