The Racket (1928)
0Tuesday 15 May 2012 by owlish
The Racket
(1928)
A Caddo
Company Film. Distributed by Paramount Pictures.
The Racket, released 1928, is kind of an odd one. It was presumed lost for a long while, and
was only rediscovered when the producer, Howard Hughes passed away. After that,
it was restored and aired again for the first time in 2004. In that way, it was
a pretty cool thing to be able to watch. The film focuses on young cop, Police
Captain James McQuigg (Thomas Meighan) who has a stand-off against local gang
overlord, Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim). In the process of this he ends up
uncovering police and government corruption. The film is pretty action-packed,
full of shoot outs, car chases and scantily clad ladies, and focuses on the
solid good-beats-out-bad trope.
It’s a tried-and-true formula now, but back
in 1928 this must have been a pretty exciting piece of cinema. Meighan’s great
as the stoic ‘good cop’ and has awesomely nuanced expressions (something I
learnt quickly in silent cinema is an actor’s the tendency to, you know,
over-express). Wolheim’s great too, and not just for his excellent angry turtle face.
He’s believably intimidating, domineering and nasty – a real black-hat, which
is something they show off pretty liberally here in the costuming.
It’s really Marie Prevost as the eye-rolling,
revenge-seeking nightclub singer, Helen Hayes, who steals the show though. Humiliated
by Scarsi early in the film, a lot of the events leading up to the climactic
standoff are implemented by her. She’s stupidly beautiful too with one of the
most expressive faces I’ve seen in cinema. Prevost is also one of those great
Hollywood tragedies that kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth (You can readup on it over here).
All in all, The Racket’s not a masterwork of cinema, but it’s a pretty
entertaining film for the duration. Especially if you’re a lover of
gangster-flicks, this is a great one for the repertoire.
Rating: 6.5 / 10
Director: Lewis Milestone
Writers: Bartlett Cormack
Producer: Howard Hughes
Cast: Thomas Meighan, Louis Wolheim & Marie
Prevost
Nominations: Outstanding Picture, Production.
Category 1928, 6.5, BW, Crime, Gangster, Noir, Nomination:Best Picture, Oscars01, Silent
About Me
- owlish
- Sophie Overett is a 22-year-old writer from Brisbane, Australia. She has a propensity for thermal singlets, white wine and making bios sound like terrible dating profiles. Her work has been published in Voiceworks and Writing Queensland. She’s also a fortnightly online columnist for Lip Mag where she writes about representations of women on TV. She has two cats and a blog. You should probably check out that last one.