Review for Night Birds

Those who love old movies principally because they’re old movies will certainly get a kick out of ‘Night Birds’, especially if early British talkies are your thing. It’s a film of its time and even though, from a modern perspective it miss-fires on almost every level , surely that’s part of the fun? Its jokes fall flat, its thrills fail to ignite and its leading man is just plain irritating – but somehow the whole thing is all worth watching if you remind yourself that this is a prime example of low budget populist cinema from (wait for it) eighty-five years ago.


This was the age before the internet, before telephones were in most homes, before television, video-games, iPads, Facebook and 3D. It was even the age before WWII. Yet 90% of what you see unfold here could be happening today. But it might go some way to explaining how a romantic hero from way back then could be so irritating today.


Although the plot is fairly convoluted in the way it plays out, if you unravel it, it really isn’t that complex. Scotland Yard is seriously concerned over the exploits of the notorious "Flash Jack" – a criminal gang-leader who preys on the wealthy ala Robin Hood style. At large in London, his criminal activities show no signs of stopping, and so Detective Sergeant Cross is assigned to the case, a man who will do whatever it takes to get his man, even if that means flirting with a gangster’s moll and then (literally) laughing at his wife for being bothered by that , the silly little filly.


Apparently the man who played Cross was something of a transatlantic heart-throb, though it’s difficult to see why. Irritating smart arse would be nearer the mark from a modern perspective. The film was one of several bi-lingual movies made by BIP using a partly German crew which, in the early days of the talkies seemed to make sense. After all, all the props, locations and crew were in place. All you had to do was finish a scene and then wheel in the foreign counterparts to do it all over again in German, somewhat easier when most scenes were fairly static, almost theatrical ones. Silent movies were somewhat easier to export as all you had to do was change the inter-titles so it’s no wonder than the early talkies were approached in this way. Even Universal did it with English and Spanish versions of ‘Dracula’ just a year later.


The film is set for the most part in a night club with dancing girls and illegal gambling afoot. Although the crooks are fairly sinister in their initial outing (wearing Top Hats they raid a wealthy dinner with guns and throwing knives as their weapons of choice) they soon descend to brutish and nonthreatening stereo-types. However, the tone lightens considerably with the arrival of a wise-cracking detective who figures that the way to the crooks is via their dancing molls.



One of the film’s problem’s is that virtually everyone in the film looks the same. All the men have mustaches although none of the women do so I guess it’s easy enough to differentiate the genders if not the central male characters.


There is something of a whodunit twist to the tale as Cross digs deep to find out who is master-minding the gang’s robberies. It transpires that it is not who you might think, although I won’t spoil that here.


For a film nudging its centenary, and a relatively low-budget and slight movie at that, it’s in remarkably good shape, though clearly not perfect. Some of the wide shot dialogue is a bit echoey and tough to decipher but audio is pretty good throughout.


If you want a glimpse into popular British film culture from eighty-five years ago then this could well be for you. If that’s of no real interest and you’re just looking for a decent thriller then there are plenty of better ones to spend your money on.