Michael_Elliott The Runaway Bride (1930)* 1/2 (out of 4) Early talkie has Mary Gray (Mary Astor) eloping with Richard Mercer (David Newell) but as the two are looking over their new apartment she realizes that she's made a horrible mistake. Richard locks her up in the apartment and leaves her when later a detective comes pounding on the door. He finally gets in and for some reason at the same time a criminal climbs into the window and kills him. Fearing what to do, Mary gives the maid some cash in exchange for an employment card where Mary goes to hide as a cook for a rich man (Lloyd Hughes) but soon gangsters come after her.THE RUNAWAY BRIDE is a really, really awful movie that is so incredibly bad that you can't help but be caught up in how bad it is. If you're a fan of these early talkies then you already know that more times than not the director and cast members were more concerned about the voices getting recorded than anything else. That's certainly the case here because there's absolutely no style to mention and it's clear that director Donald Crisp was just filming scenes without putting too much logical sense into them. As you can tell from my plot description, the story is about as stupid as you can get and I only revealed half of it! The first ten minutes of this movie are downright insane as one illogical thing after another happens. For starters, why does Mary lie to the detective when he comes to the door? Why does she really need to run? What did she see in this guy to begin with? Why are the gangsters so stupid? There are so many logical issues with this movie that you can't help but think they weren't working off of a screenplay and if this was from an actual screenplay, you've gotta wonder what powder was going around RKO at the time. The story is so insane that it actually keeps you glued to the screen just so you can see how much worse it gets.Astor, as you'd expect, is good in her role but you somewhat see her struggling to make anything out of the character because she has nothing to work with. Hughes is good in his role as is Paul Hurst as the cop trying to figure everything out. Sadly, the actors just can't overcome this horrid screenplay and in the end THE RUNAWAY BRIDE really is one of the worst films from this period.

blanche-2 Mary Astor is "The Runaway Bride" in this early talkie directed by Donald Crisp - and not very well, I might add. The young and beautiful Astor is Mary Gray, who is eloping with her fiancée (David Newell). He drives too fast, is wealthy, and doesn't want to work. Mary wants a husband who will make something of himself. For unexplained reasons, Mary doesn't seem to realize what this man is like until they elope.Mary breaks off the engagement, and he leaves the suite they've rented to make arrangements for the wedding because he's determined to marry her. While he's gone, a robber enters her room and, unbeknownst to her, hides $80,000 worth of stolen pearls in her purse. He's killed by someone else, and then the police show up. With the help of a maid, Mary makes a run for it and winds up as a cook in the home of a wealthy bachelor (Lloyd Hughes). But the gang still wants their pearls.Convoluted and directed in a meandering fashion, this film suffers from ETS (early talkie syndrome). The dialogue is said slowly, with pauses in between, throwing the rhythm of the film off. I just saw "Paid" from around the same time, and for some reason, that film doesn't suffer from this. But so many early talkies do, with the actors not used to speaking.Dated, draggy, and predictable, this film is only worth seeing for Astor, who in spite of the problems, manages to do quite well. Actually the performances aren't bad. But the story! Ouch.

MartinHafer Wow...this is one of the strangest first half hours of any film I have ever seen. Believe it or not, the first 15 minutes of the film have just about NOTHING to do with where the film goes next--and in the process, it strains credibility WAAAY past the breaking point! The film begins with Mary Astor being driven by a fiancé who is an irresponsible thrill-seeker. Again and again, he nearly gets them killed by his reckless and super-high speed driving. Yet, despite this, she STILL plans on marrying the jerk--which irritated me quite a bit.Eventually, Mary starts to have doubts about following through with the marriage--but his driving (oddly) didn't seem to be the final straw. Here is where things get really, really contrived--and rather crazy!! The fiancé steps out of the room they rented and Mary somehow gets locked in the place. In the meantime, a detective stops by and demands to be let in--and she lies that she's not dressed when all she really needed to say was she couldn't get out of the room! And, by the way, did he stop by and why did she lie?! This made no sense--nor did it make sense when, out of the blue, a criminal climbs into the room between the time the detective knocks on the door and before he returns with a pass key!! What are the odds?!? And, in the process, the criminal shoots a cop who is chasing him!!! So, Mary is locked in a room, a detective stops by BEFORE there is a crime committed, a real crime is then committed and the criminal chooses this particular room for a hideout, the crook shoots and kills another cop before he is also shot dead, but before dying he hides the loot in Mary's bag!!!! If all this doesn't sound utterly ridiculous, it gets worse! After the detective leaves but before he returns with the pass key, the maid arrives and lets Mary out of the room. Now what would any SANE person do? Well, according to this film, you pay the maid a fortune (for 1930) and take a job the maid was going to take in another part of town--going undercover to avoid the cops even though you'd done NOTHING (other than appear in a bad film). All this mess involving the police occurred in only about eight minutes in the film!! The next portion of the film is like yet another film crammed into one very, very busy movie. Mary is now a cook and the bachelor for whom she is working is very taken by her--and it's PAINFULLY obvious that they will fall in love by the end of the film. Why couldn't they have just kept the first portion of the film with the irresponsible fiancé and this section where she becomes the cook for this swell guy? After all, the intervening portion is just too goofy and stupid...and really undoes the entire film. Overall, the impact is very poor--and a movie that isn't really worth your time unless you LIKE 3rd rate films with occasionally bad sound (which was not terribly uncommon for an early talking picture). It's a bad film for so many reasons...but rarely is it boring!!

tmpj I didn't see this film from the beginning. If you miss the first few minutes of most films of this vintage, you're lost from then on. This film is worth watching, not because it is a good film or has a good cast. The only one worth seeing here is Mary Astor, and she's a far cry from her Brigid O'Shaugnessey days still to come. This film is worth watching from a filmmakers' vantage point. The plots and characters are virtually negligible. However, Leo Tover's expressionistic photography and angles are exceptional for the period. There are lots of dark images a la Welles ( though still a few years prior to his appearance). The images are silhouetted in this pre-Citizen Kane vehicle, and there is even an early attempt at 'deep focus', which was said to be fathered by Toland, but Tover stops just short of deep focus 1930 in several scenes. The situations are somewhat steamy...there's one scene where the villains are looking for loot that's worth $80,000. Astor has to stand for an off screen frisk at the hands of these desperate men, and the result also suggests that the frisk is full of sex, with the moans and groans and Astor's pleadings off screen suggesting that which cannot be judged otherwise. Not a thrilling movie, nor necessarily a great watch. But viewing can give you insights into where movies were headed as of 1930. Artistically, not a great watch; technologically a worthwhile and informative watch.