Michael Morrison Director Bryan Foy, of the famous family, directed this, supposedly the first all-talking feature film."All talking," although there were inter-titles used by way of narration and introductions, and very non-intrusively.Foy went on to be the head of the Warner Brothers B picture unit and made some very good movies."Lights of New York" is by no means a perfect movie, especially to viewers more used to camera mobility and varied angles. But for its time and as a pioneer in sound production, it is remarkable.The actors were understated, a style that was not exactly in vogue until later. In fact, Jimmy Cagney mentions in his autobiography how he and some of the others of the Warner stock company were praised for that very characteristic.Since even Warners, the sound pioneer, was still learning how to use microphones and how to avoid sounds from everything but the actors, Foy deserves all the plaudits he can get for this effort.The story is about small-towners conned by slicksters from New York and tricked into involvement with bootleggers -- who are also killers. (Alcohol prohibition caused crime, a well-known phenomenon -- well-known today. Yet that lesson has not yet been applied to drug prohibition, despite the fact that this country has the highest incarceration rate and numbers in the world, mostly because of drug laws. We need someone to sing "When Will They Ever Learn?")Helene Costello plays the girl who left the small town earlier to get into show biz, and she was a truly lovely young woman. Apparently she had personal problems that seemed to contribute to her not making more movies, and I think that a loss for us, as well as for her.Most of the rest of the cast, with the particular exception of Eugene Palette and the slight exception of Wheeler Oakman, never achieved much by way of fame, but all were acceptable or better in this pioneering movie.Leonard Maltin, who knows a little about movies, rates it 2.5 out of four stars, which proves he's pretty smart because he almost agrees with me."Lights of New York" might be historically interesting more than purely entertaining, but it is that and I hope movie lovers will get a chance to see it. I believe it is on DVD.

binapiraeus When talking about the first 'soundie', almost everybody automatically thinks of "The Jazz Singer" - wrong; it was only a part-talkie. The first ALL-talkie is a now almost forgotten little gangster drama called "Lights of New York" - and whoever's lucky enough to get the chance to watch it, won't even believe that it was made in 1928, when all the other movies were still silent or at the most contained some experimental sound sequences. The sound quality is so good, and the music numbers so lively, that you may think that this is one of the 30s' gangster movies that tried to recreate the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties (and not one of the better ones, because the actors were still somewhat stiff and clumsy - no wonder, for they were for the first time acting in front of a camera AND talking!) - but this is the REAL thing: an immeasurable treasure of a time document made up as a movie drama...The story is simple and not very inventive: a young small town boy wants to hit the big city to make something out of himself - and unwittingly becomes the stooge for a couple of bootleggers whose boss runs a speakeasy where the lad's girlfriend works as a dancer; and so, instead of getting somewhere the decent way (which seems impossible in New York in the 1920s), he ends up with a load of 'hot' illegal booze on his hands and the gangster's men on his heels...Yes, it DOES sound like an old B movie (and unfortunately, that's what most people, i.e. the ones that at least KNOW it, seem to mistake it for today) - BUT in 1928, it was a sensation: for the FIRST time, the audience could hear the actors speaking and the music playing throughout the WHOLE movie! No need to mention, of course, that it was an enormous financial success back then...And for us today, it's BETTER than any documentary on the "Roaring Twenties": here, in this little melodrama, you can catch LIVE the atmosphere of the days of Prohibition, the speakeasies, the flappers with their bobs and fluffy dresses, the dance and music numbers of the time - for almost an hour, "Lights of New York" REALLY turns on the time machine for you and takes you back into the 20s. After witnessing THIS, any classic gangster movie of the 30s, as magnificent as it may be, looks just like a mere recreation of the REAL thing, no matter how 'amateurishly' directed and played it may seem to us today...

theglasscharacter I love to catch early talkies on Turner Classics (the only place I can ever see them), and the earlier the better. Usually 1929 is the best I can do. I saw one called Tanned Legs that featured stilted dialogue spoken by people clustered around potted palms. Well, this one isn't much better, folks, but as an unintentional comedy it works quite well. The thing is, no one moves in this thing, except for a few chorus girls who are trotted out from time to time. The felt-hatted gangstas sit so close to each other that their foreheads are almost touching. In fact, everyone gets up-close and personal in this thing, maybe because they're afraid to move or the mic won't pick them up. It's been described as "stagey", but it's more like "nailed in place", so static that the characters begin to resemble cutouts glued onto popsicle sticks and moved around only when it's time to change microphones. I'd see it, however, if you're curious about how sound film developed. This was a quick cash grab and it worked, though the critics soon buried it. Within a couple of years we'd have Garbo asking for "whiskey, baby. . . and don't be stingy." Guess they had to start somewhere.

tom.hamilton Fascinating and amusingly bad, Lights of New York is the first all talkie feature and one that almost never saw the light of day. Two naive barbers (Eddie and Gene) from out of town get involved with bootleggers and end up fronting a speak. When a cop is shot by one of the bootleggers the police start to close in, and the Hawk (who shot the officer) decides to pin the murder on Eddie instructing his henchman to "take him for a ride". But it's the Hawk himself who takes the bullet in a twist that will surprise few.Shot in one week at a cost of $23,000, "Lights" was originally meant as a two reeler but Foy took advantage of Jack Warner's absence to extend it to six. When Warner discovered this he ordered Foy to cut it back to the original short. Only when an independent exhibitor offered $25k for the film, did Warners actually look at the film, which went on to make a staggering $1.3 million.Seen now this is an extremely hokey piece, with acting that ranges from the passable (Eugene Pallette) to trance like (Eddie's Granny in a particularly risible scene) and much of the playing is at the level of vaudeville. Since it's an early talkie (4 part-talkies preceded it) that's about all the characters do, and very slowly at that. The script feels improvised, visual style is non existent (apart from the shooting scene done in silhouette) and scenes grind on interminably. Title cards are intercut which redundantly announce characters and locales.Despite all this "Lights" is a compelling experience, as we watch actors and crew struggling with the alien technology, and changing cinema for ever.Catch it if you can