In 1930, we find Myrna Loy at Fox as the female lead in Victor Fleming's "Renegades" (available on an excellent 9/10 VintageFilmBuff DVD). By Fleming's standards, Renegades, although most elaborately staged and produced, is not terribly filmic. It has its moments. The action scenes are great. But these are often swamped by long dialogue interludes in which hammy actors like C. Henry Gordon, Warner Baxter, Noah Beery, Gregory Gaye and George Cooper demonstrate their theatrical abilities to remember multiple pages of ho-hum speeches.
Oddly, the one actor to come out with some credit in this talkfest of interminable shouting and instant Foreign Legion information, is Bela Lugosi, of all people! Lugosi plays the villain with such comparative subtlety, he is almost overlooked.
Myrna Loy's role is equally evil, small yet super important. Like Lugosi, she holds her head up well.
"Renegades" was undoubtedly appreciated back in 1930 as a comparatively novel, fresh and even adventurously spectacular Foreign Legion epic in the tradition of "Beau Geste"; but today it lumbers awkwardly across the screen as an impossibly slow, static and over-loquacious dud.
Oddly, the one actor to come out with some credit in this talkfest of interminable shouting and instant Foreign Legion information, is Bela Lugosi, of all people! Lugosi plays the villain with such comparative subtlety, he is almost overlooked.
Myrna Loy's role is equally evil, small yet super important. Like Lugosi, she holds her head up well.
"Renegades" was undoubtedly appreciated back in 1930 as a comparatively novel, fresh and even adventurously spectacular Foreign Legion epic in the tradition of "Beau Geste"; but today it lumbers awkwardly across the screen as an impossibly slow, static and over-loquacious dud.