#we live again

[pinkmoonsun]

Spoiler alert!!!!

On going!!!

I won't say more!

Oh God!!! I can't believe it! It seems that I'll go broke 💰

[willglazing]

THE CURSE HAS BEEN BROKEN

[kalgalen]

OH MY GOD IT'S RAINING ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️

[costumeloverz71]

Jane Baxter - We Live Again (1934)

[cherylblossom]

[crzydemona]

Gargoyles Enamel Pin Project

Frozen in enamel pins by a magic spell!

Teaming up with my daughter to make some Gargoyles pins! I'm so excited!

[nitrateglow]

Thoughts on We Live Again (1934)

Quick plot summary: A Russian prince who briefly dabbled in socialist philosophy abandons his ideals once he joins the military and rubs elbows with decadent high society. He seduces and impregnates an innocent peasant girl, who bears his child alone. Eventually the two cross paths again when the prince is serving as a juror and the young woman is tried for a murder she did not commit. Guilt-stricken, he aims to redeem himself by saving her from hard labor in Siberia.

Here's another episode of "Nitrateglow is super curious about so-called Hollywood failures and has to investigate every one."

Most classic movie fans have probably heard of Anna Sten, but if you haven't, she was a Ukranian actress who made some Soviet and German movies in the 20s and 30s. She caught the attention of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who saw in her a potential successor to Hungarian silent film actress and talkie casualty Vilma Banky. He also saw Sten as a potential competitor for the likes of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.

Sten was hyped to the skies, but her Hollywood vehicles didn't click with the American public. Goldwyn released her from her contract after three films and she's become a footnote in movie history ever since.

But does she deserve to be? Opinion on Sten's acting ability seems to be divided among movie geeks. The writer of She Blogged By Night finds her performance in We Live Again, a Hollywoodized adaptation of a late Tolstoy novel, cringeworthy:

"Still, it’s difficult to feel sorry for Sten, because her inability to relate in an accessible way to the camera is astonishing. It’s as though she had no idea how the camera perceived her, and often moved in such a way that she looked silly, like a hilariously untalented little kid pretending to be an actor. Her line readings were consistently line-by-line, in that each line she uttered has a certain inflection and was matched with certain actions, but these actions were outsized and obvious, and there was no cohesion to her entire performance."

However, reviewing Sten's silent Soviet comedy The Girl with the Hatbox, Fritzi Kramer of Movies Silently feels Sten was a talented performer whose chances at success were unwittingly sabotaged by Goldwyn himself-- he forcefed her image to the public and made them tired of her quickly.

Having only seen We Live Again, I cannot make any definitive judgment of Sten as an actress. She is undeniably beautiful and charming, though I found her stiff and unconvincing in the big emotional scenes. I was far more impressed with her in the quiet moments, like when she is burying her infant son and finds herself unable to fill the grave with dirt. It's not a bad performance by any means though and I'd be interested in seeing more of her films.

The movie as a whole is fascinating. It's explicitly socialist and it carries over a lot of Tolstoy's subversive religious philosophy, which one would think would have been purged from the script before cameras rolled. I have the strong feeling the story works better as a novel than as a glossy Hollywood movie-- it's very interior. But director Rouben Mamoulian puts it over well and I left the movie feeling satisfied.

[retrogamelovers]

It's here! 😍