Hollywood was in a state of complete upheaval in 1929, with everyone from actors and directors to producers and distributors forced to reckon with the challenges of sound filmmaking. For one, the era’s bulky new audio equipment often necessitated that actors stand still and speak loudly and clearly so that their voices could be picked up by nearby microphones. This often resulted in the sort of awkward staginess roundly mocked in Singin’ in the Rain. But this early period of talkies, marking the dawn of the pre-Code era, also found more adventurous directors experimenting with new methods of using sound for much more than having recorded dialogue be in sync with the images on screen.
One such pioneer was Josef von Sternberg, who in 1929 made his first sound film, the remarkably strange and surprisingly funny Thunderbolt, a loose remake of his own silent 1927 gangster film Underworld. The director’s sonic inventiveness is apparent from the opening scene, which ends with the young Ritzie (Fay Wray) getting into a cab after sneaking away from a late-night rendezvous with her lover, Bob (Richard Arlen), only to be greeted by the authoritative voice of an off-screen police officer, who yanks her into the back seat before the car pulls off. It’s a small touch to have a yet unseen character be heard on screen, but it’s a decision that foretells von Sternberg’s restless desire to find unusual and challenging ways of both melding sound and image and using the two as distinct counterpoints.
One of the film’s most remarkable scenes occurs not long after Ritzie is hauled off for questioning and meets up with the eponymous Thunderbolt (George Bancroft) at the Black Cat Cafe. As Ritzie struggles to break up with her tough-guy boyfriend, the soundtrack fills with live jazz music from the nearby stage—including a memorable rendition of “Daddy Won’t You Please Come Home?” performed by Theresa Harris—and a cacophony of sounds of waiters shuffling about and an array of off-screen comments and conversations. This strategy of heavily overlapping dialogue and allowing background ambience to fill out the soundtrack wouldn’t become an accepted norm in Hollywood until the 1940s, yet these methods leave such an indelible mark here not only through their innovativeness. The narrative functionality of this technique is quite clever as well, helping to define the Black Cat Cafe’s seedy milieu as a space that functions both as a hideout for criminals and a bastion for African Americans, who are seen here not only as musicians and bar staff, but respectable patrons as well.
The central story of Thunderbolt is no great shakes, primarily focusing on Thunderbolt’s unquenching need to destroy Bob’s life for stealing his girl. But von Sternberg spins this familiar yarn in odd, unexpectedly funny, and thrilling directions. When Thunderbolt shows up at Bob’s house, looking to knock him off, the gangster is distracted by a scrappy mutt on the stairway, whom he tries to quiet by getting down on all fours and repeatedly wiggling his butt. It’s a moment that diminishes his heretofore established hard-nosed image, all the more so when he’s caught in the act by a flirtatious but homely tenant. That this little distraction causes Thunderbolt to be caught by the cops, and almost immediately tossed into death row, is both an ironic twist typical of von Sternberg and the type of jarring swing in tone that would become more widely embraced throughout the pre-Code era.
Von Sternberg saves his most outrageous theatrics for the film’s second half, where an ongoing feud between Thunderbolt and Bob in prison is backed by the musical stylings of a gospel-singing pianist and barbershop quartet of prisoners also awaiting their fate on death row. There’s a gleeful perversity to the synthesis of vaudeville and the macabre as Bob, who winds up in the cell across from Thunderbolt after the latter has him framed for killing a cop, is forced to reckon with the price of messing with a gangster. The tension between the constantly quarrelling men is both intensified by the mise-en-scène—endless reconfigurations of prison bars and the shadows they cast—and undercut by the singing of the restless crooners, whose light-hearted renditions of songs like “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and “Rock-a-Bye Baby” exemplify the cognitive dissonance that comes to define this doom-filled setting.
Thunderbolt’s acerbic wit and biting irony reach their peak when the warden (a hilariously twitchy Tully Marshall) earnestly pleads for the prison doctor to save the life of a badly injured prisoner: “Do something. I’ve got to execute him tonight.” And before long, the prison is housing both a wedding and an execution. If the plot mechanics of the film are occasionally a bit rote, its unusual intermingling of lighthearted comedy and dead-serious drama lends it a mood that’s all its own. And in some ways, it prefigures the cynical, ironic tone that would play a large part in von Sternberg’s legendary collaborations with Marlene Dietrich.
Even the iconic moment in 1931’s Dishonored where Dietrich’s Austrian secret service agent reapplies her lipstick before being executed finds its genesis here, with Thunderbolt making his way into the death chamber and cackling uncontrollably upon learning the name of one of the guards. This unforgettable moment, redolent of more than a few von Sternberg classics, blurs the lines between life and death, love and hate, comedy and tragedy, and obsession and destruction to the point that they become almost indistinguishable.
Image/Sound
As expected for a film of its age and rarity, Kino Lorber’s transfer of Thunderbolt bears a fair bit of noticeable damage, mostly in the form of vertical scratches, and the image is a tad soft at times. Still, aside from the edges of the frame, the detail is relatively strong, and there’s no discernible flickering of the image, so the results are as good as one could hope for. As for the audio, the film’s layered sound design is beautifully preserved here, with a fantastic separation of sounds, enhancing the expressionistic qualities of the more chaotic scenes.
Extras
The lone extra here is an audio commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton, who gives Thunderbolt all the admiration and attention it deserves, highlighting its more unusual, experimental flourishes. He provides context for the rapid changes that occurred during the transition from silent to sound cinema and offers up numerous examples of movies like this one from around the same time that actively worked against the tendency to resemble filmed theater. Pinkerton rounds out his time discussing Josef von Sternberg’s dynamic framing and use of shadows and touching on the backgrounds and careers of all the film’s major players.
Overall
Josef von Sternberg’s strikingly idiosyncratic gangster film, the auteur’s first sound production, gets its long overdue home-video debut from Kino Lorber.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
