Reiner's film is a very superficial concoction. It doesn't even scratch the surface of helping us understand or enjoy or care about its main character, Billy Bright.
The script presents the fictional Bright as a self-serving egotist, an unrepentant alcoholic, an unfaithful husband, and an absentee father. Meantime, the viewer is told ad nauseum that Bright is a brilliant silent-screen clown. The problem with the last claim is that we are exposed to many examples of Bright's onscreen "brilliance," and they are woefully unfunny. Please, watch the original films featuring the original clowns. All of Bright's antics are merely lifted from original silent-screen comedies. One of Bright's onscreen bits of business consist of correcting his blind girlfriend's (later his wife's) attentions using dog whistles or violent head twisting! Funny? NO! Not funny even in the '20s. See Chaplin's "City Lights" for a funny, respectable treatment of blindness.
Also, the film contains many weak stereotypes about Hollywood itself. Stereotypes that credible filmmakers should be loath to perpetuate.
One thing missing from the treatment a the "work" angle. You are never given a sense of the very hard work, and many long hours that were devoted to making silent movies. Bright leaves vaudeville, spends a few days making his first film short, beds his leading lady, gets married and then incorporates a motion picture production company featuring himself and his wife!!!!! WOW!!! It took Chaplin, Pickford, Hart, Lloyd, and Ray years, and years, and years, and...you get the message.
Van Dyke works hard throughout the film, and I'm confident his heart and soul are devoted to the subject, but the result is mere pablum. Lee is fine as the suffering wife. Her character might have been a better movie subjet. Rooney is simply one of the many stereotypes.
The script presents the fictional Bright as a self-serving egotist, an unrepentant alcoholic, an unfaithful husband, and an absentee father. Meantime, the viewer is told ad nauseum that Bright is a brilliant silent-screen clown. The problem with the last claim is that we are exposed to many examples of Bright's onscreen "brilliance," and they are woefully unfunny. Please, watch the original films featuring the original clowns. All of Bright's antics are merely lifted from original silent-screen comedies. One of Bright's onscreen bits of business consist of correcting his blind girlfriend's (later his wife's) attentions using dog whistles or violent head twisting! Funny? NO! Not funny even in the '20s. See Chaplin's "City Lights" for a funny, respectable treatment of blindness.
Also, the film contains many weak stereotypes about Hollywood itself. Stereotypes that credible filmmakers should be loath to perpetuate.
One thing missing from the treatment a the "work" angle. You are never given a sense of the very hard work, and many long hours that were devoted to making silent movies. Bright leaves vaudeville, spends a few days making his first film short, beds his leading lady, gets married and then incorporates a motion picture production company featuring himself and his wife!!!!! WOW!!! It took Chaplin, Pickford, Hart, Lloyd, and Ray years, and years, and years, and...you get the message.
Van Dyke works hard throughout the film, and I'm confident his heart and soul are devoted to the subject, but the result is mere pablum. Lee is fine as the suffering wife. Her character might have been a better movie subjet. Rooney is simply one of the many stereotypes.