The trumpet case Everything in this film is wrong, from the translated title to the designated genre. "The blow of the pipe" suggests thoughts of disassembly in the alley. We are talking about worthy members of society. Mexican.
In our time, Old Hollywood is not scolded only by the lazy: for many years, if there were foreigners among the actors, the dream factory managed exclusively on its own. Unless the Russians – Misha Auer, Maria Uspenskaya, Leonid Kinski, Grigory Ratov – played themselves. And even then in the ranks of our compatriots managed to visit Lionel Barrymore, Claude Raines, Greta Garbo, Laurence Olivier, Peter Lorre, Charles Bouillet, Ava Gardner, Bela Lugosi, Claudette Colbert, Basil Rathbone, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor and many other stars of the first magnitude.
But it was particularly interesting with Asians. A classic example is Marlon Brando in Tea Ceremony (1956). He and Peter Lorre, who played in the series about the detective Mr. Moto, are the most famous Japanese in Hollywood. To these can be added Sylvia Sidney – trembling Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly, 1935). Chinese military leaders were visited by Akim Tamirov, Lee J. Cobb, Leo Genn; Dowager Empress Qi Xi is one of the best roles of the great Flora Robson (55 days in Beijing, 1963). And there were also Mongolian leaders – Orson Welles (“Black Rose”, 1950) and, it is terrible to say, John Wayne – Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror” (1956).
George Raft, an ethnic German, often played Italians. It's understandable. Raft became famous in the roles of gangsters, and in the States “Italian” is synonymous with the mafia. There is a Chinese on his account (Limehouse Blues, 1934), which also does not cause complaints: thanks to the almond-shaped cut of the actor’s eyes, makeup does not look too pretentious.
But with "The Trumpet Blows" (I would translate "The Pipe Calls") came a miss. And not even because the film, where George Raft and Adolph Menjou play Mexicans, and even brothers, categorically can not be a drama. It's just a very bad movie.
Raft recalled how he, an aspiring artist, was woken up one night in the middle of the night and brought to a room with Adolf Menge – both stayed in the same hotel, and the movie star wondered if the young man really dances as well as everyone says. And here this pompous turkey got the role of Pancho Montes - the patron of the grey and destitute, whose prototype was the "noble bandit" Pancho Villa. Our Pancho – who Menjou – staged his own death, and from time to time comes to “his” grave to hear grateful people praise his exploits. Pancho has a younger brother, Manuel, who dreamed of becoming a bullfighter since childhood. Instead, he had to go to America and study non-stop at one university after another. Pancho sprinkles the names of the cities where Manuelito studied, and I begin to be tormented by vague doubts: I love Raft very much, but it is still difficult to believe that his hero is so erudite. Although, on the other hand, millions of viewers around the world accept Tom Hanks as an intellectual professor, and nothing.
Manuel escapes the clutches of knowledge and returns home. However, Pancho has new plans for him: his brother needs to get married. There are a lot of beautiful girls around, but the bride Manuel is selected such that it becomes simply indecent to pass off “The Trumpet Blows” for drama. But no, the unfortunate artists continue to play the animal seriously. And I, looking at the scene of the bride and her strict mother, involuntarily recall an episode from the Bat by Jan Fried, where Glykeria Bogdanova-Chesnokova teaches Olga Volkova female tricks.
It is not that Manuel is excited about the prospect of marriage, and he is not particularly asked. But then he meets Chulita (a heavily made-up beauty actress with a pirate pseudonym Frances Drake), after which events take a very dramatic turn.
It's not Golly, it's Bollywood at its worst. The masked sufferers depict Mexican passions. Mixed in a bunch of bulls, sombrero, singing to the guitar, sultry dancers, forbidden love. All this is seasoned with a fair amount of "psychology": Pancho fears for Manuelito and therefore inspires his brother that he is a coward, and the coward has nothing to do in the arena.
The terrible thing is the contract system. On the one hand, she gave actors and directors guaranteed jobs. On the other hand, they were denied the right to choose. What to play, who to put – everything was decided by the studio management. Few allowed themselves to rebel, too strong were the grip and serious consequences.
From under the gray color of this review clearly appears red, but I have already written that I really love George Raft. And he was already unlucky: after “Scarface”, “Night by Night”, “If I Had a Million”, “Bowery”, “Midnight Club” and “Bolero” – to star in such obscenity.
5 out of 10