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5.4/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.4/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Carnival Boat remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Should you watch Carnival Boat today? Honestly, that depends on your tolerance for 1930s melodrama and how much you enjoy watching early Hollywood try to figure out how to film stuff on a boat. If you’re a fan of old-timey river vibes or just want to see a very young Ginger Rogers doing her thing, you might get a kick out of it. If you need tight pacing or a story that doesn't feel like it’s being held together by duct tape, stay far away.
The whole thing feels like it was filmed in a bit of a rush. There’s this one scene where the dialogue just sort of drifts off into the wind, and I’m pretty sure someone behind the camera coughed during a close-up. You can really feel the creak of the sets, which honestly, is kind of charming in a weird, dusty way.
It’s funny comparing this to something like Wine, where the stakes feel totally different. Here, the drama is all about Buck’s dad being a stubborn old goat, and for a solid chunk of the runtime, I found myself just staring at the background extras. There is a guy in the third row of the crowd who clearly forgot where he was supposed to be looking, and he just stares right into the lens for a solid five seconds.
The romance is… well, it’s a romance. It exists. They do the whole pining-for-each-other thing, but it lacks that spark you’d see in better pictures from the era. It feels less like a grand passion and more like they just needed a reason for the boat to stop at the next town.
I found myself thinking about The Ghost Talks while watching this, mostly because of how stiff the acting gets whenever they aren't on the deck of the boat. Once they step off the boat, the movie sort of loses its legs. The transition from the river scenes to the land scenes is jarring, like they suddenly ran out of budget or ideas.
There is this one moment with a rope ladder that goes on for way too long. I think they wanted to show off the physical stakes, but it just looks like they’re having a mildly difficult time moving equipment. You can almost hear the director yelling, "Just keep climbing, we'll fix it in the edit!" They didn't fix it.
Is it perfect? Absolutely not. It’s messy, a bit lopsided, and the script feels like it was written on a napkin during a lunch break. But there’s a genuine grit to it that makes it better than some of the more polished stuff from that year. Sometimes you don't want a grand masterpiece. Sometimes you just want to sit on a virtual boat and watch people argue about nothing in particular. 🛶
IMDb —
1922
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