LGM Film Club, Part 259: This Day and Age

Cecil B. DeMille was a legendary director spanning a very long time, most notably producing two cutting edge productions of The Ten Commandments decades apart. But the switch from silent films to talkies was not a smooth one for DeMille. HIs 1933 film This Day and Age is outright horrible. The story is basically that a local thug gangster shoots and kills a couple friends of the local high schoolers and so they organize to get the gangster after the bought and sold courts let him off. The plot might sound like a cliche, but don’t let that get in the way because the dialogue is even more ridiculous. Between the characters just saying what is going to happen and the endless corny sayings that had to be corny in 1933 too, it’s a piece of work. This film has only one interesting thing about it–the high school kids turn into a frenzied mob and nearly lynch the gangster. DeMille was always good at the spectacle and turns this into a pretty scary force. Well, they would be scary if DeMille wasn’t telling the viewer to openly cheer for the guy to be lynched, or at least dropped into a hole filled with rats. Strange movie. Here’s the trailer.