This 1930 film is at best a document worth watching if only because it is an vivid record of what is was like when Hollywood was learning how to make the transition from silent to sound. Directed and written by the Englishman Edmund Goulding, it is paced like a 1920s Broadway or West End high-comedy with almost all the actors projecting their voices and playing broadly to the last row. Only Edward Everett Norton, of all people! Seems to understand he is playing for the camera. Fairbanks, one of the great stars of the previous decade, overacts terribly, as does Bebe Daniels. Most of the time. A silly story attributed to Irving Berlin with only one song..
Review of Reaching for the Moon
