The Squall

I give the film a lot of points for being a well preserved early talkie. It is very obvious that sound was very new to many involved, and the performance suffers from it.

Review from Variety, May 15, 1929 The Squall (ALL DIALOG)

First National production and release. Directed by Alexander Korda, based on Bradley King's arrangement of the Jean Bart play. Recorded on Western Electric disc system, with musical score credited Leo Forbstein. At Central May 9, twice daily, $2 top. Running time 104 minutes.

Nubi Myrna Loy

Josef Lajos Richard Tucker

Maria, his wife Alice Joyce

Paul Carroll Nye

Irma Loretta Young

Peter Harry Cording

Lena Za-Su Pitts

El Moro Nicholas Soussanin

Uncle Dani Knute Erickson

Niki George Hackathorne

"The Squall," on screen especially if not on stage could have been written around Harry Rosenthal's privately distributed little song, "When I Lay in the Hay." As a picture this First National will get its quota of money in the regular houses for it's full of make and hay. Otherwise it's too much padded and it's not $2. Of course not $2, so few are.

The hay thing is suggested by Myrna Loy as Nubi, the gypsy girl who blew the troupe, landing in a farm house, seemingly knowing every haystack in the territory. That's where she made her dates, on the sunnyside of a stack. And on the make she did a cleanup in the farmhouse, from the hired man to the son and his father. The only one Nubi muffed was the grandfather, and, from what the girl did do the old man would have been a pushover for her.

At the Central the picture ran past its logical ending. That should have been when Nubi had to go back to the gypsies and the horsewhip. She didn't bust up the home, after all, but she put several bad dents into it. For Nubi as a gypsy was a gyp out for jewelry, etc, probably the queen of the dirty-skinned gold diggers.

Miss Loy's overco...