Underground (1928) YIFY - Download Movie TORRENT

Reviewed by runamokprods 8 / 10

Strong, entertaining silent comedy/melodrama. Well worth seeing.

It's ironic that Anthony Asquith spent the lion's share of his long career thought of as an excellent director of wordy, sometimes outright theatrical pieces like "Pygmalion", "The Browning Version" or "The Importance of Being Ernest". A look at his early silent work like "A Cottage on Dartmoor" and "Underground" show a director deft with visual storytelling, using expressionistic lighting, muscular camera movements and inventive editing to combine with mostly impressively restrained and naturalistic performances to create films quite different than one might associate with him. Indeed, in "Underground" - which starts as a light, comic romance, and gradually grows into dark melodrama – there's a limited use even of title cards. The images and the actors faces and body language often tell us everything we need to know, even when watching a fairly lengthy conversation."Underground" is delightfully well made, and very effective – funny without trying too hard in its lighter moments, thrilling and tense in its later scenes, which include a sophisticated chase/fight/stunt sequence. If there's a flaw, it's that this story of two lovers ripped away from each other by a conniving, jealous suitor and the besotted young woman who will do whatever the bad guy asks, is far to reliant on corny coincidences and obvious plot turns to quite escalate to great movie status for me. But it's still highly enjoyable and effective.I wasn't crazy about either of the two score choices on this visually excellent Master's of Cinema recent blu-ray restoration. One 'score' is really a bed of mostly naturalistic sound effects for each location and situation, which was interesting, but didn't add much emotionally. The other - the 'main score' - went too far the other way. The orchestral score felt a bit too florid, dramatic and insistent, often overstating the emotions of a moment, and occasionally becoming distracting. Asquith did a great job of getting some psychological complexity into his silent characters, and having music that can sometimes swamp that subtlety isn't a help. The score also felt annoyingly 'modern' to my ears, in that it often sounded like nothing so much as the score to a Hollywood melodrama from the 1950s or 60s. That too felt distracting at times, as the image and music seemed forced together from different eras.But those were minor complaints. Overall I was wonderfully surprised – now for the second time – at just how strong Asquith's silent films were.

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Reviewed by christopher-underwood 7 / 10

Fascinating to see those old picture postcard streets go by

A rather simple tale of two girls and two guys, both of whom are after the same girl. Although the tale itself is rather melodramatic and not very interesting, the local colour, streets, traffic and particularly the bus ride are marvellous. There is not as much action in the underground system as i had expected but there are glorious shots (and sequences within) the Lots Road power station - the very one that provided the power for the system. All participants are more or less working class, with one guy working on the underground railway and the other at the power station whilst one of the girls is a shop assistant (Selfridges?) and the other seemingly a seamstress working in her room. Fascinating to see those old picture postcard streets go by and even more on the extras provided on the BFI Blu-ray disc. Great watch.

Underground

1928

Action / Drama / Romance

Underground

1928

Action / Drama / Romance

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Movie Reviews

Strong, entertaining silent comedy/melodrama. Well worth seeing.

Fascinating to see those old picture postcard streets go by

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