George Bancroft & Fay Wray in Josef von Sternberg's "Thunderbolt" (1929)
Thunderbolt Jim Lang (George Bancroft), wanted on robbery and murder charges, ventures out with his girl, "Ritzy" (Fay Wray), to a Harlem nightclub, where she informs him that she is going straight. During a raid on the club, Thunderbolt escapes.
His gang shadows Ritzy and reports that she is living with Mrs. Moran (Eugénie Besserer), whose son, Bob (Richard Arlen), a bank clerk, is in love with Ritzy. Fearing for Bob's safety, Ritzy engineers a police trap for Thunderbolt. He escapes but is later captured, tried, and sentenced to be executed at Sing Sing.
From the death house, facing execution, he successfully plots to frame Bob in a bank robbery and killing. Bob is placed in the facing cell, and guards frustrate Thunderbolt's attempts to get to his rival.
When Ritzy marries Bob in the death house, Thunderbolt pretends his criminal repentance, confessing his part in Bob's conviction. He plots to kill the boy on the night of his execution, for being in love with his former girlfriend, but instead death-row convict's hand falls on Bob's shoulder in a gesture of friendship.
A 1929 American pre-Code proto-noir film (a/k/a "At The Gates of Death") directed by Josef von Sternberg, produced by B. P. Fineman, screenplay by Sternberg and Herman J. Mankiewicz, story by Jules and Charles Furthman, cinematography by Henry W. Gerrard, starring George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall, Eugénie Besserer, James Spottswood, Robert Elliott, Fred Kohler, E.H. Calvert, George Irving, Mike Donlin, S.S. Stewart, William L. Thorne, and Mosby's Blues Blowers. Screen debut appearance of Debut of Theresa Harris.
Bancroft was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, his only Oscar nominated performance, though nominations were not official that year.
This was Sternberg’s first film using synchronized sound technology. Two versions of the film were produced, including a silent version for theatres that had yet to be adapted to sound.
The technical innovation of synchronized dialogue in the film raised concerns among directors as to its potential influence on the visual techniques available to directors. Internationally, filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Alfred Hitchcock, and Dziga Vertov wished to avoid oppressive forms of ”theatrically-influenced dialogue” even as audiences clamored for the novelty of naturalistic speech.
Sternberg welcomed sound as a means to achieve complete control over his picture - "no longer at the mercy of movie house organists," and eschewing any "atmospheric" or background music. This, as well as his next three sound films, used source music that arose directly from the mise en scène.
Sternberg experimented with asynchronous sound effects which served to augment or supplement the visual effects, or as he framed the process, “To be correctly and effectively used, the sound had to bring to the image a quality other than what the lens included, a quality out of the range of the image. Sound had to counterpoint or compensate the image, add to it – not subtract from it.”
Throughout this film, Sternberg uses sound to paint audio images through complementary and contrapuntal juxtaposition. Rather than the external and complementary musical accompaniment of silent films, Sternberg’s scores arise organically with the mise-en-scène and form a key component of the film.
The music off-screen does not recede in deference to the on-screen dialogue, but competes with it. Off-screen, voices comment on the visual action, but are not identified visually until later in the film sequence, contributing to an “unrealistic cadence” that characterizes the film’s dialogue.
A startling experiment. Sternberg's use of sound and music for mood effects, and the very unreality of his style seems to justify the unusual density of his sound track. Sternberg also uses sound expressionistically, such as the erratic start-stop of a sewing machine or the “sinister” squeaking of a dog’s ball toy, squeezed by the condemned criminal in the hours before his death.
Soundtrack music:
"Thinkin' About My Baby" - Written by Sam Coslow
"Daddy, Won't You Please Come Home" - mWritten by Sam Coslow, performed by Theresa Harris with Curtis Mosby and His Orchestra
"Roll, Jordan, Roll" - Traditional spiritual
"Rock-a-bye Baby" - Traditional nursery song, performed by a male chorus in the prison
"(Here Am I) Broken Hearted" - Music by Ray Henderson, Lyrics by Lew Brown and Buddy G. DeSylva, performed by a male chorus in the prison
German filmmaker Ludwig Berger contacted Sternberg via telegram with lavish praise: "I saw your film Thunderbolt and congratulate you with all my heart. It is the first fully realized and artistically accomplished Sound film. Bravo!"
Sternberg's return to the gangster genre he had invented and made popular is a musical comedy plot striving to masquerade as drama. There is no denying the skill he employs in assembling the various elements of box-office entertainment.