The Right of Way (1930)

One of my all time favorites.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Right of Way, The (1931) ** (out of 4) A hot shot, loud mouth and obnoxious attorney (Conrad Nagel) is beaten and left for death. A fisherman finds his body, takes him home and soon the attorney recovers but he can't remember who he is. With the help of a nurse (Loretta Young) he learns how to be nice but will the past catch up with him? This is one of those early talkies that talks way too much. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that this 65-minute movie had more dialogue than a three hour movie of its time. Another major problem is the casting of Nagel who delivers a very bad and embarrassing performance. Young isn't given much to do either. Previously made in 1915 and 1920.

I like a lot of the early '30s "pre-code" films but this was just drivel with poor dialog and some poor acting. I only watched it to see Loretta Young, who was a real beauty in her younger days.The dialog and some of things in here are so dated, so sappy and so overly-melodramatic with the lead character, played by Conrad Nagel, that it's almost laughable. What lawyer interrupts his closing speech to pick up a hankie from a woman in the audience, and then whisper something, kiss her hand and leave the courtroom? The guys nickname is "Beauty," and he sure is that! I wonder if audiences in the early '30s actually took this character and dialog seriously....or were they enamored to have "talkies."Well, at least Loretta looked super, and sounded like a normal person but how many could people today watch this and stick around long enough to see her? She doesn't appear until almost a half hour, which is almost half the movie!

Not to be disrespectful of the early days of talkies, but if you see this one listed on TCM, skip it. It absolutely creaks with age. Set in Quebec, "The Right of Way" is a melodrama about a rather mean attorney nicknamed "Beauty" (don't ask me why) who gets involved in a bar fight when he goes to see his thieving brother-in-law in a bad part of town. As a result of the beating he takes, he develops amnesia and is brought to a rural area by a man he defended. When he regains consciousness, he remembers nothing, and takes the name Charles Mallard. He falls in love with the lovely daughter of the postmaster, played by Loretta Young. Young, radiant and beautiful, was about 18 when she did this film. Except for a naturalistic Young, the acting is outrageously bad, intensely melodramatic, with many lines said with tremulous voices. As is often the case in the early days of sound, the actors weren't used to the medium yet so their timing is off. And the French Canadian accents - horrific. I can't agree with one of the posters about Conrad Nagel - yes, he was over the top, but so was his atrocious dialogue. He at least didn't drag the pace.Not good.

This movie was a waste of time. The acting was awful and the plot was thin.In Quebec, Canada a snobbish lawyer who dislikes his wife is beaten and left for dead on the waterfront. He is found by the man he had recently represented in Court and won an acquittal. But he sort of lost his memory after the beating and takes a job with the local tailor. While in the rural area of Quebec, he falls in love with "Rosalie" but cannot marry her because he sort of remembers that he is still married to the woman he dislikes. I suggest that you watch the first 10 minutes of this movie and the last 5 minutes. That seems to be enough to know what happened without wasting all of your time.