When it first appeared, Reaching for the Moon disappointed the public. Made far more as a musical, it was - like many others of its ilk - cut and reshaped when the musical vogue appeared to be over. (Many films of the period were even being advertised as "Not a musical"!) Almost all of the songs disappeared, and the lovely title number remains only as theme music and as the tail end of a dance number. Then too, with Fairbanks' big swashbucklers so fresh in the memory, its severely limited acrobatic seemed tame. Today however, when we can look back on the very early 30's with new perspective (and realise how fresh and cinematic this film when compared with so many of its contemporaries) and too when we judge Fairbanks by his whole career and not just by his cloak-and-sword special of the 20's, it takes on a whole new set of values.
For one thing, Doug is back in his old stride again. He has all the zip and pep that he had in his early modern comedies - those thirty odd lively satirical and acrobatic comedies that he leaped and grinned through as The All-American-Superman between 1916 and 1920, when he turned impresario as well as performer, doubled the length and size of his film and halved their vitality. This Reaching for the Moon is a logical extension of the film of the same title (but not the same plot) that he made in 1917, the passage of time being emphasised only by the fact that Doug is now a brash self-made millionaire instead of a super-optimist on the way to becoming one. Even his voice seems just right for this character -- it may not have the Colman ring that one would expect of a talkie D'Artagnan, but it has the perfect youthful ebullience and inoffensive bombast of the millionaire who never grew up! The restrained acrobatics disappoint, true, but only because they're not really needed. Doug gives the film all the dynamics it needs in voice and gesture; the odd leaps are merely added punctuation. One would like to see Doug the athlete at his full powers or not at all, but this is a small quibble when the film has so much else to offer quite apart from the aplomb of Doug and the beauty and vivacity of Bebe Daniels. There's Edward Everett Horton in one of his funniest roles, getting away with blue jokes and outrageous innuendoes right and left. There's a youthful Bing Crosby in a spirited number, and some beautiful but mannish girls to add to the dominance of off-beat sexual humor which is often as blatant as that of What's New Pussycat?, but is far funnier and more tasteful. And far from least, there are the spacious, modernistic sets by William Cameron Menzies (five years before he made Things to Come), whose bizarre penthouses, ship interiors and non-moving seascapes add a deliberate touch of determined unreality that offsets the then very topical grim reality of the depression. Suicide and financial ruin are plot ingredients of Reaching for the Moon, but Doug and Mr. Menzies prevent your ever taking them too seriously. But they do ask you to take the occasional sentiment seriously. Audiences at the film's last exposure (some 12 years ago at the 5th Avenue Cinema) did laugh at some of the film's honest sentiment - but Doug's own on-screen remark "You're laughing at me - that's cruel and despicable!" soon put those heartless wretches in their places.
Many Fairbanks fanciers tend to look down their noses at Reaching for the Moon, and prefer to pretend it doesn't exist. I'm not one of them. If some inhuman destiny one day decreed that all but six Fairbanks films would have to be consumed by flames, this is certainly one I'd save at the expense of a Robin Hood or a Don Q.
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Preceding Reaching for the Moon, and as an example of its exact opposite - the musical with plot eliminated - we'll be showing you Paree Paree, A Warner Brothers New York-filmed two-reeler of 1934, directed by Roy Mack, and starring Bob Hope. In 1931 they had filmed the hit musical comedy Fifty Million Frenchmen with Olsen and Johnson, turning it into one of the rawest and healthily dirtiest comedies ever seen on the screen. But with musicals now boxoffice poison, ALL of the-delightful Cole Porter numbers - "You've Got That Thing" etc. - were dropped, except as background music. The situation reversed in '34, and musicals very much back in vogue, Warners got added value for their money with this spotlessly-laundered version in which the numbers fairly tumble over one another!
--- William K. Everson
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