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New Prints!
Directed by Walter Lang
Bert Lytell tackles dual roles as orphaned twins separated at birth in dual versions of director Walter Lang’s Brothers. A top star throughout the 1920s (he originated the character of Boston Blackie on the big screen), Lytell was unable to build a career in the sound era. Films such as Brothers probably didn’t help. With a potboiler of a plot that the New York Times, in reviewing the sound version, found “not at any time even mildly probable,” Brothers harkens to cinema’s past rather than heralds its future. After one twin is adopted by a wealthy family and the other by a laborer, the pair meet again when the wealthy twin defends his brother in court for a murder that he committed. Identical plot holes aside, the structural differences between the two versions are striking, particularly in the open sequences where the order in which the twins are adopted is reversed, shifting responsibility for their separation.
Columbia Pictures Corp. Based on the play by Herbert Ashton, Jr. Screenwriter: Sidney Lazarus, John Thomas Neville, Charles R. Condon. Cinematographer: Ira Morgan. Editor: Gene Havlick. Cast: Bert Lytell, Dorothy Sebastian, William Morris, Richard Tucker, Maurice Black.
35mm, b/w, 60 min. (International sync music and effects track version), 86 min. (Full sound version).
Please note: The sync version will be shown first.
