Golden Dawn (1930)

I've seen quite a few varied things lately. I'd heard all sorts of things about Neil Young's "Greendale" project, but it turned out to be really good. As a narrative, the movie didn't make much sense, but as a song cycle, it kicked ass with Neil and Crazy Horse in great form.

I've seen two very strange thigns in the last few days. The first was a Japanese cartoon called "Super Milk Chan". This was the most disorienting, bizarre thing I'd seen for a while. The art style was much thicker and more primary than most anime, and the plot, such as it is, was a bunch of barely connected non-sequiters between a five year old "super hero", some sort of president who barely seems comptent, and a creaky robot. I'm not sure what to think about it but damn if there aren't eight DVDs worth of this mess available. I'll see at least one just to find if this insanity runs throughout the series.

This morning I saw a film which no doubt looked completely normal when it was released in 1930 but seems like something out of the Fifth dimension in 2005, a jungle picture called "Golden Dawn". This movie was an operetta set among British soldiers stationed in Africa during World War I and one particular guy who was in love with a native girl who was not all that she seemed...in spades.
What was weiird here? For openers, how about a "native" girl who is not only obviously white but has supposedly lived in the jungle all her life but doesn't even have a light tan. The hero is Walter Woolf King who would later be the villain in "A Night At The Opera", there are all sorts of music hall style song and dance numbers including one of those creepy tunes where a woman sings about a man who will prove his love for her by socking her in the chops. Then most whacked out of all, there is ace bad hat Noah Beery shoe polished up as a bullying black villain and sporting an accent that sounds like he's planning to meet the Kingfish at the Mystic Knights of the Sea lodge hall. When Paul Robeson did stuff like this, you could get into it but this? Hoo-hah!