The Valiant

Dir. William K. Howard 66 Minutes

USA 1929

Starring: Paul Muni, Marguerite Churchill, Johnny Mack Brown, DeWitt Jennings

**/***** Unremarkable early talkie that would probably have faded into oblivion if it did not remain a curio for being a) Paul Muni's film debut, and b) the film that garnered him his first, albeit unofficial, Oscar nomination for Best Actor at the second Academy Awards (no official nominations were announced that year). Based on a one act play, The Valiant begins with Muni committing a murder, immediately going to the police and giving them the assumed name of James Dyke (based on a calendar that he looks at in the station), and willingly going to prison. "Dyke's" lies are the result of him wanting to protect his family from the shame of their son/brother being a convicted criminal, but his mother becomes suspicious when she sees his picture in the newspaper and becomes adamant about solving the mystery.

The film has moments of interest through the structure of its screenplay, which happily leaves out plenty of gaps of information for the sake of the core drama at hand. For instance, no context is given as to why Dyke committed the murder, how he became estranged from his family, or, aside from a brief flashback, what his relationship with them was like. This would all distract from the dramatic crux that leads to the eventual climactic reunion between siblings, and the film thankfully does not play its entire hand in the first act. Director William K. Howard is fairly stagy with the visuals, no doubt hindered by the forced static movement of his actors at this point in sound technology, though the film surprisingly holds up in coherence of dialogue considering its age. And Muni's debut is interesting to watch as a character who is forced to outwardly express one thing while internally processing another. He already has a very magnetic presence, and the film is of especially great interest for Muni-completists since there are not very much films to take in. At slightly over an hour, The Valiant is not particularly time-consuming and, while not a very good picture by any stretch of the imagination, has a value attached to it where it at least remains interesting despite being a fairly mundane affair. October 9th, 2019