This movie, "The (not so) Greatest Love of All", was written, produced and directed all by one man, who also stars in the leading role. This sort of one-man bandsmanship was much more commonplace in the silent-movie era than in talkies, when the higher cost of film production discouraged independent movie-makers.
The would-be auteur here is George Beban, an actor(?) who specialised in playing Italians and Italian-Americans. He appears to have been of Italian descent, having anglicised his name. He's not handsome, but nor is he ugly: he fails to make any real screen impression at all.
Beban here portrays Joe, an Italian immigrant iceman in Manhattan. In the pre-Frigidaire era when people actually had iceboxes requiring regular deliveries of ice, popular culture sexualised the iceman: he was a big brawny guy who entered private residences when the housewife was home alone.
Joe appears to be attracted to Trina, daughter of a cobbler in Little Italy, and Trina is definitely attracted to Joe. But then Joe tells Trina that his "sweetheart" will arrive soon aboard a ship from Italy. Trina is crestfallen, until it turns out that Joe's sweetheart is in fact his Italian mama. (In that role, Maria di Benedetta does a lot of distracting gesticulation while speaking her dialogue.)
Even though Trina must compete with Mama for Joe's affections, the cobbler's daughter immediately hits it off with Mama. The two women get jobs as laundresses in the posh residence of Mrs Godfrey Kelland, wife of the district attorney.
So all's well, then? No. Mrs Kelland's wee bairn Baby Evelyn innocently drops Mrs Kelland's diamond bracelet into old Mama's washbasket. The snobbish Mrs Kelland assumes that this poor immigrant woman intentionally stole it, and straight away Mama is on trial for theft. Mrs Kelland's husband will personally prosecute.
SPOILERS SOON. Thus far, this inept movie has been tolerable. But the depiction of Mama's trial is ludicrously inaccurate, bearing no semblance to any real courtroom proceeding. A courthouse scene in an outright comedy like "Duck Soup" or "Bananas" can violate reality ... but this bathetic movie is a drama, and its perception of due process is howlingly bad. Either Beban was hugely ignorant of court protocol, or he just didn't care about accuracy.
It gets worse. Joe, who wasn't present during the alleged theft and therefore can't be an eyewitness, takes the stand as a character witness for his mother's defence. Mama mia! If a witness testified under oath that his own mother is a thief, I would sit up and take notice. But Joe offers a stirring tribute to his dear mother's probity, and nobody sees fit to mention that the witness might be less than totally impartial. Mama is acquitted on her son's testimony!
The dialogue in the intertitles is wince-worthy throughout this movie, made worse because the Italian immigrants speak in Chico Marx dialect. Many of Hollywood's silent films (before the Production Code) featured "damn" in the dialogue, usually elided as "dam'" or otherwise euphemised. In Beban's big courtroom speech, he relies heavily on a couple of "dam'"s for theatrical effect.
If this movie's cast list is full of actors you've never heard of, guess why. Most of them are inept. Fair-haired Mary Skurkoy is mildly pretty but no actress. She seems to be on hand as the romantic interest, yet it's clear that iceman Joe's affection really is for his elderly mother.
As a director, Beban shows no talent at all for guiding actors nor for framing and pacing his camera set-ups. The pacing is awful: I could easily cut ten minutes out of this movie without abridging the plot. By far, the most interesting virtues here are the location shots of Ellis Island (entry point to the United States for European emigrants in 1924), Manhattan's Little Italy district, and swank Van Cortlandt Park where the fictional Kellands reside. No cameraman is credited for these shots, and indeed the photography is more than slightly lacklustre. The shot-matching throughout is poor, with several continuity errors.
I'll admit that I'm not especially keen on paeans to motherhood, but this movie is a lot sappier than it needed to be, and woefully inept in almost all departments. Beban might possibly have done a better job here if he'd shared his labours with a co-director or producer instead of spreading himself so thin. But from what's on offer here, his problem seems to be too little talent rather than too much work. Even this movie's title annoyed me. I'm being generous in rating it 3 out of 10.
The would-be auteur here is George Beban, an actor(?) who specialised in playing Italians and Italian-Americans. He appears to have been of Italian descent, having anglicised his name. He's not handsome, but nor is he ugly: he fails to make any real screen impression at all.
Beban here portrays Joe, an Italian immigrant iceman in Manhattan. In the pre-Frigidaire era when people actually had iceboxes requiring regular deliveries of ice, popular culture sexualised the iceman: he was a big brawny guy who entered private residences when the housewife was home alone.
Joe appears to be attracted to Trina, daughter of a cobbler in Little Italy, and Trina is definitely attracted to Joe. But then Joe tells Trina that his "sweetheart" will arrive soon aboard a ship from Italy. Trina is crestfallen, until it turns out that Joe's sweetheart is in fact his Italian mama. (In that role, Maria di Benedetta does a lot of distracting gesticulation while speaking her dialogue.)
Even though Trina must compete with Mama for Joe's affections, the cobbler's daughter immediately hits it off with Mama. The two women get jobs as laundresses in the posh residence of Mrs Godfrey Kelland, wife of the district attorney.
So all's well, then? No. Mrs Kelland's wee bairn Baby Evelyn innocently drops Mrs Kelland's diamond bracelet into old Mama's washbasket. The snobbish Mrs Kelland assumes that this poor immigrant woman intentionally stole it, and straight away Mama is on trial for theft. Mrs Kelland's husband will personally prosecute.
SPOILERS SOON. Thus far, this inept movie has been tolerable. But the depiction of Mama's trial is ludicrously inaccurate, bearing no semblance to any real courtroom proceeding. A courthouse scene in an outright comedy like "Duck Soup" or "Bananas" can violate reality ... but this bathetic movie is a drama, and its perception of due process is howlingly bad. Either Beban was hugely ignorant of court protocol, or he just didn't care about accuracy.
It gets worse. Joe, who wasn't present during the alleged theft and therefore can't be an eyewitness, takes the stand as a character witness for his mother's defence. Mama mia! If a witness testified under oath that his own mother is a thief, I would sit up and take notice. But Joe offers a stirring tribute to his dear mother's probity, and nobody sees fit to mention that the witness might be less than totally impartial. Mama is acquitted on her son's testimony!
The dialogue in the intertitles is wince-worthy throughout this movie, made worse because the Italian immigrants speak in Chico Marx dialect. Many of Hollywood's silent films (before the Production Code) featured "damn" in the dialogue, usually elided as "dam'" or otherwise euphemised. In Beban's big courtroom speech, he relies heavily on a couple of "dam'"s for theatrical effect.
If this movie's cast list is full of actors you've never heard of, guess why. Most of them are inept. Fair-haired Mary Skurkoy is mildly pretty but no actress. She seems to be on hand as the romantic interest, yet it's clear that iceman Joe's affection really is for his elderly mother.
As a director, Beban shows no talent at all for guiding actors nor for framing and pacing his camera set-ups. The pacing is awful: I could easily cut ten minutes out of this movie without abridging the plot. By far, the most interesting virtues here are the location shots of Ellis Island (entry point to the United States for European emigrants in 1924), Manhattan's Little Italy district, and swank Van Cortlandt Park where the fictional Kellands reside. No cameraman is credited for these shots, and indeed the photography is more than slightly lacklustre. The shot-matching throughout is poor, with several continuity errors.
I'll admit that I'm not especially keen on paeans to motherhood, but this movie is a lot sappier than it needed to be, and woefully inept in almost all departments. Beban might possibly have done a better job here if he'd shared his labours with a co-director or producer instead of spreading himself so thin. But from what's on offer here, his problem seems to be too little talent rather than too much work. Even this movie's title annoyed me. I'm being generous in rating it 3 out of 10.
