Review of Laughter (1930) by Mitchell W — 19 May 2015

Every now and then, good 35mm prints have been screened, but otherwise, this has never been made legitimately available on DVD or VOD. (Bootlegs tend to be of poor quality.).

Frederic March as the composer is very charming and a major reason why "Laughter" is often described as a prototypical screwball comedy, but the film as a whole doesn't quite crystalize into one, partly because it's a profoundly melancholy film. It's thoroughly disillusioned by the emptiness of material wealth, and much of the film goes by with little, if any, attempt at humor. Even when it's there, it's usually brought down by a measure of sadness.

Production design is classy and often wonderful to look at, and except for a few spots, the limitations of early sound films seem to have been overcome. (There's even a striking echo that occurs in one long shot when Frederic March walks into the background...perhaps the result of necessity than a planned effect, it does remind one of similar moments in "Citizen Kane.").

Not quite a masterwork, it hasn't aged as well as, say, Ernst Lubitsch's work from the same era, but it's very good and certainly undeserving of its obscurity.