The Finger Points (1931)

The Finger Points (1931)Although Clark Gable is in this movie, he's not the star of it, although he steals every scene that he's in. Fay Wray is so hot in this movie, that it's worth you watching this film just to see how beautiful some 1930's actresses were. This is a morality tale and gangster movie. Lee Breckenridge (Richard Barthelmess) is a naive southern boy trying to get a job at a northern, big city newspaper. There he meets fellow reporters Charlie 'Breezy' Russell (Regis Toomey) and Marcia Collins (Fay Wray).His first assignment is to check out the opening of an exclusive club that is believed to be a gambling joint. There he meets Louis J. Blanco (Gable) and the club owner. His story breaks and the cops bust the club on the opening night. All of a sudden Lee is higher up in the paper, but he manages to get beat-up by some thugs and put in the hospital. Naturally the paper doesn't feel the need to help Lee out with his hospital bills, forcing him to be more creative in how he writes his stories in the future.He joins forces with Louis, basically extorting gangsters wanting to get a speak-easy or gambling joint started in their town. Lee is able to break a story about the ones that don't pay up, making him successful and richer. Marcia, who has found out that he's socking away pay-offs, doesn't like what Lee has become. Can Lee get out of this without getting killed, change his ways, and marry Marcia? Well, you know that crime doesn't pay. :-)

This is perhaps the creakiest of all crime or journalism films, a yawner that was passed by the snail one way and a turtle the other way. It isn't the year it was made, simply the slow-moving recitation of the dialog (except by some newcomer named Clark Gable) with deadly pauses. This is a situation where the plot is actually quite interesting but the majority of the acting deadly dull.It is the story of a novice reporter who slowly moves up the ranks at his New York newspaper reporting on corruption in the city and eventually the mouthpiece for a racketeer whom he betrays to his own detriment. Richard Barthelmess, still utilizing a silent movie acting style, is terribly unconvincing, and Fay Wray is nothing more than eye candy for the camera. Regis Toomey tries to add on some humor (including a cute toy duck) but even his jokes are delivered as if the soundtrack was deliberately slowed down. This is surprising coming from Warner Brothers in the same year of "Little Caesar", "The Public Enemy" and "Five Star Final" which took similar themes and moved them along with wild fire.What is refreshing here is the performance of Clark Gable as the racketeer who gives Barthelmess all sorts of scoops in exchange for protection from the press. His character may be amoral, but his performance is dynamic. If you must suffer through this for almost 90 minutes, be aware that the last few minutes of the film take the film up a few notches with its sudden verve, but the egg has already been laid.

Good story, but you can tell it was made in the early years of talkies - very slow, deliberate movements, and LOTS of dark eye makeup on everyone. The supporting cast is the strength of this movie - Fay Wray (2 years before King Kong) plays the love interest Marcia Collins. Clark Gable (eight years before Gone with the Wind) is the antagonist-designee Louis Blanco, who is helping to cover up the naughty things his boss is doing. Blanco is trying to convince reporter Breckenridge Lee, played by Richard Barthelmess to help them cover up the naughty things going on in this fair city. I love the line by Fay Wray that she can tell he's from the South from his accent, although the only accent I can hear is some dropped R's, (since he was raised in New York). Unfortunately, Barthelmess, who is very wooden and stiff, being used to working in the silent movies, is the main character and the weakest link here. Note in his list of films, he made about sixty silent films prior to 1930, but very few after that - probably his best known talkie would be "Only Angels have Wings" with Cary Grant.

This is typical of the social dramas, or hollywood gangster films of the thirties, except its protagonist is a newsman, who gets no thanks for being a good reporter, (he gets beat up, and his bosses refuse to foot the hospital bills) and thus decides to be a finger pointer for the mob, while being fed stories by one mob to knock off the operations of its rival mobs. Certain scenes are overplayed and dreary while others are quiet with a lot of pathos to it. The once great star of silent cinema, Richard Barthelmess, was not great at delivering dialogue and is much the same here. But you've got Gable playing a gangster and a last fifteen minutes where given no dialogue, Bartelmess gets to shine and show us the actor he was. Overall, a good gangster flick dealing with the stories of the time that the press had been infiltrated by the mob to withhold harmful stories against them. It also was a hit, if that's a plus.