This isn’t exactly a review, because I try to limit reviews, as such, to things our readers can actually buy or rent. The only place I know of where you can access the 1928 movie, The Viking, is on the web site where the friend who lent me the DVD he’d burned found it—and I won’t link to that site because it’s, frankly, mostly porn.
The Viking isn’t porn, though. What it is, is an interesting artifact of movie history—if I understand it right (the explanations on web sites are a little confusing), the first full technicolor movie with a sound track. Mind you, it’s not a dialogue sound track. Just music—the old black dialogue cards tell you what people are saying. Although MGM distributed it, it was actually made by the Technicolor Company, in order to demonstrate their new process (did you know there was technicolor before there were talkies? I didn’t). The color process hasn’t been perfected yet—the yellows and greens aren’t right—but it must have been pretty impressive at the time.
The story is about Leif Eriksson (spelled Ericsson here), very loosely based on the Icelandic Vinland sagas. Leif (played by Donald Crisp, who would eventually become one of Hollywood’s most successful and long-lived character actors) seems to be the lead character, although (somewhat awkwardly for the plot) he doesn’t get the girl. Continue reading Film report: "The Viking" (1928)