Pack Up Your Troubles (1929) - A loud, weird little time capsule

If you are looking for a gritty war movie with explosions and deep plots, please stay far away from this one. You will hate it within thirty seconds.

But if you like looking at old footage and wondering what people in 1929 thought was 'entertainment,' it is actually kind of a trip. It is really just a filmed stage act where soldiers pretend to be in a trench while singing their hearts out.

The whole thing is about ten minutes long. It feels like a musical postcard sent from a version of WWI that only exists on a studio backlot in Hollywood.

Douglas Stanbury is the lead here, and man, the guy has some lungs on him. He sings like he is trying to be heard by someone in the next town over without using a microphone. 🎤

There is this group called The Lyric Quartet backing him up. They all look very polite and very clean for men who are supposed to be living in mud and barbed wire.

I noticed that the set looks incredibly flat. Like, you can almost see where the painted background ends and the floor begins if you squint at the corners of the screen.

It reminds me a bit of the static feeling you get in other early sound experiments. It is a huge jump from the visual energy of something like The Eagle which felt much more like a 'movie' movie.

One soldier in the background keeps adjusting his helmet. He looks like he is genuinely uncomfortable or maybe just bored of holding that heavy rifle while the tenors hit the high notes.

The sound quality is that specific 1920s hiss. It sounds a bit like someone is frying bacon in the room next to the recording studio, but it adds to the charm, I guess.

There is no real story. They are just there, they sing the famous song, and then it is over.

I find it funny how they try to act 'tough' while singing in perfect four-part harmony. It is the least intimidating army I have ever seen on film.

It is weird to think this came out the same decade as something like The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln. The technology was moving so fast back then that nobody really knew what to do with the cameras once they added sound.

The camera in this short barely moves at all. It just stares at the guys like it is afraid it will break if it turns left or right.

Stanbury has this very theatrical way of gesturing. He points at his 'kit-bag' like he is performing for the people in the very back row of a massive theater. 🎭

Is it worth watching today? Only if you are a nerd for early Vitaphone shorts or you really love old-timey singing. It’s not 'good' in a modern sense, but it is fascinating as a relic.

I keep thinking about the extras. They probably got paid a few bucks to stand in a fake ditch and hum along to a song they had already heard a thousand times during the actual war.

It is definitely more interesting than some of the drier stuff from that era, like maybe A Modern Musketeer, just because the sound is so aggressively 'present' here.

The ending is very abrupt. They finish the song, and the movie basically just gives up and stops.

I dont think I would ever watch it again, but I’m glad I saw it once. It’s a nice reminder that movies used to be allowed to just be one simple idea executed in ten minutes.

If you have ten minutes to kill and want to feel like you are sitting in a 1929 movie house, give it a go. Just dont expect any character arcs or, you know, a plot. 🪖