"Dynamite" released in 1929, in the early days of sound film, has been shown on TCM a few times. Kay Johnson plays a woman who must marry within a certain time frame to inherit millions. She desires to marry her lover (Conrad Nagel) but he is already married. Out of desperation, she married an imprisoned man, who has been scheduled to be executed (Charles Bickford). The problems start when Bickford is freed from prison (he has been wrongly accused) and enters Johnson's life again. She is at first horrified; she has also made a deal to pay off the wife of her lover for a divorce. It all gets quite complicated, with Kay Johnson torn between marrying her lover and now a husband she doesn't know. Bickford gives a rough performance as a coal-miner, far from the wealthy jet-setting life Johnson leads. The film descends somewhat into silliness, as these two opposites try to live together. A word about the performances: Kay Johnson does an admirable job, playing a complicated woman, and seems to handle the new sound medium fine. What a shame she never had much of a career. Bickford is good, and he would go on to have a long career, playing pretty much the kind of working-class man he does here. Oddly, this film is directed by Cecil B. DeMille, and it seems to bear no resemblance to his previous epics. Perhaps he was struggling with the adjustment to sound as well. DeMille had gone to the newly formed M-G-M studio, and they were a studio just on the cusp of being the Tiffany of all the movie studios.
