The Love Gamble (1925) User Reviews

Not good, not bad!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 7 January 2018]

Grapevine's The Love Gamble (1925) would be almost as vapid as "Is Money Everything?", were it not for its marvelous climax with one of the most breath-taking stunts I've ever seen (and another that was obviously an unintended accident that the photographer managed to capture).

Far too old for the heroine, Lillian Rich does what she can with a role in which she is forced to way out-stay her welcome.

Robert Frazer is miscast as the hero, while Pauline Garon can do little with a nothing part in which she is given an elaborate intro and then virtually dropped.

On the other hand, we see far too much of Larry Steers, but he does seem to be doing his own cycling, so we'll give him three stars for that.

On another front, Edward Le Saint's direction is mostly stilted and slow, but suddenly comes alive at the frantic climax.

Starts off like a soap opera, but stick with it: it's a pretty decent potboiler

[mmipyle · 7/10 · 11 February 2021]

"The Love Gamble" (1925) stars Lillian Rich in a rôle that begins as one in a somewhat turgid soap opera, but by the end the film is a decently directed, well-written, and capably acted one. I ended up liking the show much more than I ever thought I would from the first five to ten minutes. One thing that is obvious about its sixty minutes of screen time: it not only has the living room, the bed room, a couple of private wink-wink rooms, but the kitchen is included, and then with it, the kitchen sink, including all the taps (made of good nickel) and drains. From near infidelity, to catty women, lovers and exes, fast motorcycles with spills, lovers who forget to wake up on time and remain overnight (oh, shame!!), and - ALAS AND ALACK! - murder...then on to court and trial and last minute this and that and this and that...rush, rush...

Well, you get the drift. It sure held my attention. It was cheap and quick. It was fun! Lillian Rich has Irene Rich's eyebrows, gorgeous eyes and features, and, with her hair down, looks like an early 30 year old Joan Bennett. She's good looking, a fairly decent actress, was born in Britain, married a Canadian pilot who set her up in Hollywood where she had some success, then faltered come the talkies, stuck around for a decade, gave up, then died at the age of 54. "The Love Gamble" was produced by Banner Films where directors like Edward LeSaint (who directed this film) and Phil Rosen worked on many of its 28 productions, and this one was distributed by Henry Ginsberg who ended up later as Paramount's production chief. He was known for his tightness of the wallet. Stan Laurel hated his guts. That ought to tell you about this production a bit, too. Maybe done on the cheap, but it played then and it plays now.

Besides Rich in the lead, others are Brooks Benedict as her cast-off lover, Robert Frazer as her new found love - but he's married!! What's a girl to do? What's a man to do? Bonnie Hill and Kathleen Clifford are in this one, too. But - the spunk that gets this rolling - and seems to keep it rolling every time she's on camera, which isn't enough - is Pauline Garon in a throwaway part that was beautifully done.

This little charmer is a Grapevine Video release, has a tad of nitrate deterioration at a few places, but is much better than you might think. Stick with it. Like I said, it has it all, including the kitchen sink - and a few extra light bulbs in case you just can't see enough...

It Was Surely a Man Who Led Her Astray

[boblipton · 3/10 · 12 May 2010]

This is a decent enough balanced work of feminism and murder mystery for the era -- and believe me, there were plenty of movies in both fields of the genre. However, there are also problems with making them as silent pictures. At least it is until the final couple of reels.

The problem with murder mysteries is that they require a lot of talk to justify discovering the murderer -- it's rarely enough to simply have the detective point his finger and have the assassin dragged away. All the red herrings and false clues have to be explained away. Likewise, unless you are going to show your feminist hero being brutalized -- and have the audience say "Why, no decent person would behave that way, so we can ignore that part of the story" -- you've got to have a lot of talk to explain the general dissatisfaction of the feminist character.

So this starts out as a doubly talky silent movie and it never manages to overcome those issues; and its net impetus as the story rolls along is utterly normative for the era -- don't take that inheritance and try to make something of yourself instead of marrying the boy next door! You'll only become the plaything of married men and get mixed up in murder!

Having said that much and if you're still reading, we can move to the work of the movie itself: it works in the beginning, anyway, because the talky aspects are set within a melodramatic framework, and melodrama works in silent pictures, particularly when the characters are decently played. The acting is fine and if Eddie Le Saint wasn't a great director, he was a capable enough one to handle stuff like that -- which is not intended to damn with faint praise. Lilian Rich is pretty and appropriately straightforward in her handling of the lead. Kudos to Pauline Garon who manages to play a character who has seen a lot more than anyone ever quite realizes. And huzzah for the cameramen who manage some very interesting shots at the right moments -- check out that corpse.

The meller aspects do overwhelm the story to point of idiot plotting as the guy never says "This is the name of the girl who was with me the night my wife was murdered", which would have the police off his back. Nor is it clear why the girl, on discovering that the trial is about to end, must get there before sentence is pronounced. Perhaps they would have dragged him to the nearest tree, slung a rope over a limb and done for him there, instead of arranging for at least a few weeks of appeals. And anyway, they discover who really did it while the jury would have been deliberating -- or at least using the men's room.

I'm afraid it's the poor plotting of the ending that overwhelms the mixture of good and indifferent pieces in the movie. Too bad.