Tell it to The Marines (1926) - Region 2 PAL Import, Silent Film with English Intertitles

Review of the Warner Brothers Archive MOD DVD, R0 NTSC. Very nice picture quality throughout this film, very little print damage noticeable. Very good detail and grey scale makes for a highly watchable picture. The source material could be used for a higher resolution scan and a Blu Ray release, it's certainly good enough. The Robert Israel orchestral soundtrack is a delight and boots the film along nicely.A classic tale of a dumb and selfish boy who ends up in the Marines and a love triangle with his gruff but likeable Sergeant (Chaney) and the nurse played by Eleanour Boardman. The boy in question is played by William Haines, thankfully in less manic mode than his 1929 flick 'Speedway'. Haines has a touch of Paul Rudd about him in this feature and that is no bad thing at all.There are many mildly comedic moments as Haines stumbles through military training and adventures overseas, his love-hate relationship with Sgt Lon Chaney and on/off relationship with Boardman provide most of the hi jinks. With it's great picture quality and cracking score, it's easy to get sucked in to this film and you feel like you have seen various bits of it before, only when we see Navy bi-planes flying around are we reminded that this is 1926 and all those familiar scenes have in fact been stolen by movies that came well after this one.Things turn serious towards the end as our boys see action in China but overall this remains a comedy.Worth mentioning some great Navy scenes, look very much like they were filmed on the battleships of the day and we get to see them firing their huge guns and blowing vast smoke rings doing so!All in all - a real delight. The 100 mins+ of this film just evaporated and I would love to see it again on an HD transfer. Recommended.

Great

Service comedies were a comparative rarity in the silent era, but two major studios released two of them within a month of each other in 1926 and pretty much established the genre’s template for decades to come. Raoul Walsh’s What Price Glory? is probably the best remembered today, but Tell It To The Marines was the bigger hit – the second biggest of the year, in fact, as well as the most profitable film Lon Chaney ever made at MGM. Both revolved around bickering U.S. Marines who both have their eye on the same girl (and both Fox and MGM would bicker over who had the rights to use the word Marines onscreen, MGM having the edge by being the first film made with their full co-operation), but while Glory was set during the First World War, Marines was set in the present day and followed fresh (in every way) recruit William Haines through his training and misadventures in the Philippines and China under the disapproving eye of Chaney’s veteran sergeant. Naturally the Marine Corps makes a man of Haines and it’s not much of a headscratcher which one of the stars will win over Eleanor Boardman’s Navy nurse, nor that the rivalry between them will resolve into friendship when they have to rescue her from Warner Oland’s Chinese bandit (politically correct it’s not, one Leather Neck throttling a Chinese extra and telling him “That’s for all the punk chop suey I got in Omaha!”).It’s certainly formulaic, but the formula was still fresh then, and director George Hill keeps it moving along breezily and enjoyably. Haines’ conceited wisecracking character isn’t as irresistible as he imagines (“I’m America’s Sweetheart,” he boasts in one very ‘in’-joke) and even after he shapes up he doesn’t develop much in the way of charm, but as ever Chaney, using his own face as ‘the ugliest mut in the service’, is the main attraction. He may be playing the archetypal tough as nails D.I. with the heart of gold, but he’s absolutely convincing in the part – so much so that he was made a honorary Marine and granted a Marine honour guard at his funeral despite never having served – managing to add subtle shading and self-awareness to the role without ever descending into bathos. It’s a fairly slight, unashamedly crowd pleasing film, but Chaney’s performance gives it a strong enough heart and centre to remain engaging after 90 years of variations on the same theme.Warner Archive’s manufactured on demand US DVD-R of TCM’s print has excellent picture quality and an orchestral score by Robert Israel.

i read somewhere that this was the only film in which lon chaney attended the premiere. if so, i will take that as being a good sign as i always look forward to watching his films once they surface on dvd.