The Lion And The Mouse

With the introduction of sound, the studios scrambled to put together any film that would talk. Often these films were slipshod efforts that were poorly recorded and part silent as well. THE LION AND THE MOUSE is a classic example. The story is simplistic and the dialog stiff and formal. The actors, with the strong exception of Barrymore, cannot grasp the concept of talking and acting at the same time. The film starts off with speech for about the first third, then mysteriously reverts to title cards. It ends with sound, though, as with the first section, it's poorly recorded. The actors drift in and out of comprehensibility as they move around the microphones. The...