Director: Irving Cummings
Distributor: Fox Film Corporation
Top Billed Actors: Edmund Lowe, Warner Baxter, Dorothy Burgess
Won 1 Oscar:
Best Actor - Warner Baxter
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Picture - Fox
Best Director - Irving Cummings
Best Writing - Tom Barry
Best Cinematography - Arthur Edeson
Plot: Three people with terrible accents won't shut up.
Distributor: Fox Film Corporation
Top Billed Actors: Edmund Lowe, Warner Baxter, Dorothy Burgess
Won 1 Oscar:
Best Actor - Warner Baxter
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Picture - Fox
Best Director - Irving Cummings
Best Writing - Tom Barry
Best Cinematography - Arthur Edeson
Plot: Three people with terrible accents won't shut up.
The time period for the 2nd Academy Awards saw the transition from silent films to 100% talkies. In Old Arizona (1928) is considered the first talkie shot outdoors and, unfortunately, this film demonstrates the transition was anything but smooth. I now know that these early sound films in this transition period will be some of the toughest to get through. If Warner Baxter's performance won him an Oscar and the film was nominated for three more of the major awards, then the standards of excellence in film-making are much different. Quite honestly, I think producers and directors were banking on the sound in film technology as the main selling points of their movies. Little attention was paid elsewhere.
I understand these filmmakers were dealing with severe technical limitations. That doesn't stop me from cringing through the entire movie. I usually reserve this second paragraph for my praises of the movie. It is really difficult to do that here. In Old Arizona does present an alright character with Baxter playing The Cisco Kid. I did enjoy the scenes in which people are talking about him and he is on screen. However, the execution of these scenes and everything else in between is poor at best.
This movie is almost unbearable. The early technology made it impossible to add a score to the movie so each scene featured a heavy amount of silence if a character wasn't talking. However, this silence becomes sought after as each character is as annoying as their accents. Baxter, a man from Columbus, Ohio and Dorothy Burgess, from Los Angeles, play Latino characters and absolutely fail at their accents. This severely diminished any credibility in their acting. Edmund Lowe features a thick New York accent as well. I would rather hear a room full of crying babies mixed with the sound of nails on a chalkboard than listen to those accents again. The characters, aside from The Cisco Kid towards the end of the film, are shallow and unlikeable. The directing is poor as well. There are no alternate angles in dialogue sequences; it seemed like Irving Cummings was going for a play caught on film, except with poor acting. Everything seemed so scripted, it pulled you out of the lavish scenery of the Old West.
Overall, don't watch this movie unless you are interested in the first Western talkie. Limited technology and limited actors make this one of the worst films I have ever seen.
My Score: 3/10
I understand these filmmakers were dealing with severe technical limitations. That doesn't stop me from cringing through the entire movie. I usually reserve this second paragraph for my praises of the movie. It is really difficult to do that here. In Old Arizona does present an alright character with Baxter playing The Cisco Kid. I did enjoy the scenes in which people are talking about him and he is on screen. However, the execution of these scenes and everything else in between is poor at best.
This movie is almost unbearable. The early technology made it impossible to add a score to the movie so each scene featured a heavy amount of silence if a character wasn't talking. However, this silence becomes sought after as each character is as annoying as their accents. Baxter, a man from Columbus, Ohio and Dorothy Burgess, from Los Angeles, play Latino characters and absolutely fail at their accents. This severely diminished any credibility in their acting. Edmund Lowe features a thick New York accent as well. I would rather hear a room full of crying babies mixed with the sound of nails on a chalkboard than listen to those accents again. The characters, aside from The Cisco Kid towards the end of the film, are shallow and unlikeable. The directing is poor as well. There are no alternate angles in dialogue sequences; it seemed like Irving Cummings was going for a play caught on film, except with poor acting. Everything seemed so scripted, it pulled you out of the lavish scenery of the Old West.
Overall, don't watch this movie unless you are interested in the first Western talkie. Limited technology and limited actors make this one of the worst films I have ever seen.
My Score: 3/10