Smashbomb

"W. C. Fields, with wife, mother-in-law, child, daughter, and son-in-law, played by the wonderful Grady Sutton. All this is pure enjoyment. When were movies ever more alive than in the thirties, when the great performers from the musical and vaudeville stage entered films? W. C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Maurice Chevalier, Fred Astaire, Marie Dressler, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland, among so many others. They were the real authors of their films, needing little help from their directors. American films began with audiences wanting to see performers, not directors, and this, perhaps, continues to separate American films from European films, but we’re lucky to have both, and who’s to say which is really better."

Source

Kudos

Awix (3310 KP) rated Mrs Lowry & Son (2019) in Movies

Sep 10, 2019 (Updated Sep 10, 2019)

It's Grim Up North

Biographical drama about the artist Lowry (he of matchstalk this-and-that fame); based on a stage play and it really does show. Middle-aged clerk Lowry works by day, tends to his clinging, unsympathetic mother in the evenings, and paints at night. Not entirely unlike a variation on Steptoe and Son, only without any jokes.

Well-played, naturally, and well-staged, naturally, but the scenes of the two of them in a small room together, with her crushing his dreams and obsessed with petty social concerns, quickly become repetitive: the brief sequences with Lowry articulating his thoughts on his art, occasionally recreating his paintings, are much more interesting. Watchable but a bit dull; doesn't really do Lowry's art justice.