Desert Nights (1929)

Very disappointing...

Pretty Good

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Of all the major American studios, MGM was the slowest to switch from silents to talking pictures. The studio head, Louis B. Mayer, insisted that talkies were just a fad...and so they continued making silent films up through 1929. Other studios had pretty much gone all talking by 1929. One of the later silents, and John Gilbert's last silent, was this dandy film "Desert Nights".The film is set somewhere in Southern Africa. You aren't sure of the country but you know that the Kalahari Desert is in the region. This desert plays an important part because the boss of a diamond mine, Hugh Rand (Gilbert) is kidnapped and a fortune in diamonds is stolen by some clever crooks. However, Rand turns out to be the clever one as he ends up taking the crooks for a strange adventure.There really wasn't anything I didn't like about the film. Gilbert is good, as always and the film is well written and exciting. Additionally, the end if smart and works well. Surprisingly, I don't think this film was ever re-made as a talking picture and with such an interesting plot, it should have been.

John Gilbert is an elegant and aplomb man; in this movie, he leaves little of that screen presence to great longevity. It's decent in parts, like how the woman's father plays the piano and it actually does manifest in the score; but really this movie is terribly old fashioned even for that time and it leaves little revolution. Is it entertaining? Well, yeah sometimes it can put you into the tracking field of what its intent is.William Nigh tries to intertwine avarice in the stages of love which is contrived. It's not like in Michael Curtiz' "Casablanca" where Rick actually is spiteful to Ingmar but there is a deep and rather oozing love that is poured into it; in this, John Gilbert is enamored, scoffing about how it's going to be a crooked old woman and having this completely changed, feels to me as if his character is sort of a pessimistic, which could bring an interesting dichotomy if it wasn't embedded into this movie with this type of old age romance.Though to be fair, the themes are already there from the get-go; it is supposed to be escapist. The problem is that in the Calihari you see no reason for the attachment between Mr Randy and Nolan's character; he is a derisive character, of course, only used for their greedy and rapacious thirst for the diamonds, using him as part of the experience. He so delightfully embraces Nolan, the only hiccup being her Dad's disapproval of the whole affair. "Oxen must not go loose or it will kill" - I don't actually recall seeing one but that's kind of irrelevant. The dehydration and murky desert atmosphere give it a real sense of the desert, though still pretty old fashioned theater for that point.William Nigh must have perspired as well as the whole cast (while not a lot) of this film; that also makes it feel genuine.The ending is actually rather bittersweet; still John Gilbert's performance did give this movie a certain weight. I don't think I have ever seen a movie with this type of cast and it made it feel a bit different, of course onwards there have been movies like this but I mean where the desert felt so small, yet feel like the sphere of it in such a short movie.Anyway, I do think it's a shame for Gilbert subsequent from this; that line "Your lips told me so, your eyes told me so..." and so on is the greatest travesty in the devolution of sound cinema and it's a shame to see an actor under the wing of the producer Irving Thalberg to die so young and be panned like that... So while it's all in all all right, I'll give this movie a 5 for the effort and toil that was most likely put into this movie. However, "The Jazz Singer" would have most likely snobbed its box office revenue at that point, seeing that it was a pretty big movie and got raved about for most of that year; I do understand that MGM's reluctance with Sound may have been the reason they showcased this movie at ease and so I don't really blame them for it; as we know the vitaphone was the failure to John Gilbert's career.

Good-looking diamond miner Jack Gilbert (as Hugh Rand) shows visiting dignitary "Lord Stonehill" Ernest Torrence (as Steve) and his daughter around the South African "Crown Diamond Mines" before taking them out on a hunting trip. While looking forward to seeing a white woman, everyone expects "Lady" Mary Nolan (as Diana) to be unattractive, but she is unveiled as a beautiful blonde. As you might expect, Mr. Gilbert and Ms. Nolan are mutually aroused...All is not, however, as it seems...Nolan is revealed not to be the daughter, but the lover of dastardly "father" Torrence. The criminal pair plotted to abduct the real Lord Stonehill, and rob Gilbert at gunpoint. Succeeding in their deception, Torrence and Nolan take Gilbert hostage, and flee across the hot Kalahari desert. Then, "Desert Nights" becomes a tale of greed and desire, as the three struggle to survive with dwindling water in the hot sands. Gilbert's last "silent" is a fairly sound production.****** Desert Nights (3/9/29) William Nigh ~ John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, Mary Nolan, Claude King

If Desert Nights had come out in 1926 instead of 1929 people would be far less critical of it. I thought it was a super sexy melodrama and romance, with great performances by John Gilbert, beautiful Mary Nolan, and Ernest Torrence, the perfect villain with a touch of humor.My favorite scene is in the beginning, before the trouble begins, when Ernest is playing the piano and the young couple, played by Mary and John, waltzed on the front porch. John Gilbert could have been a professional dancer, he was that good.The story is about a bunch of jewel thieves caught in the desert, but you really won't care. Just watch it for the stars, and to see just how gorgeous John Gilbert still looked in 1929. Sigh.9 out of 10 stars.