Poor Little Butterfly (1928) Review: A Weirdly Loud Time Capsule

Is Poor Little Butterfly worth your time today? Honestly, only if you are the kind of person who likes digging through the attic of cinema history.

If you want a story with a beginning and an end, you will probably hate this. It is not really a movie in the way we think of them now.

It is more like a recording of a vaudeville act that someone decided to film because sound was the new, shiny toy in 1928. It feels like a fever dream from your great-grandparents' era.

The director is Roy Mack, who did a ton of these Vitaphone shorts. He basically just pointed a camera at a stage and told everyone to be very loud.

The singing is... a lot. It has that piercing, operatic quality that makes you wonder if the microphone was about to explode.

There is this one moment where the lead singer stares directly into the lens. It is supposed to be charming, I think, but it feels a bit like she is staring into your soul.

The sets are clearly just painted backdrops. You can see the wrinkles in the fabric if you look at the corners of the screen long enough.

It reminds me a bit of the technical awkwardness in Presto-Chango, where the special effects are just... there. No one is trying to hide the strings.

I noticed a guy in the background of one shot who looks completely lost. He just stands there for a few seconds before remembering he is supposed to be part of the scene.

The costumes are another thing entirely. They are so heavy with sequins and feathers that the performers look like they are struggling to stay upright while they dance.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Poor Little Butterfly (1930) through its definitive frames.

It is definitely not as polished as something like Ashes of Vengeance. That movie feels like it had a budget, while this feels like it was filmed in a basement over a weekend.

The audio has this constant hiss and crackle. It makes the whole experience feel like you are listening to a ghost tell you a joke you don't quite get.

I found myself looking at the floorboards more than the actors. They look so dusty and real compared to the fake 'butterfly' theme of the show.

The whole thing is only a few minutes long, but it feels longer because there is no plot to hold onto. It is just one performance after another without much breathing room.

If you compare it to a silent short like All Wet, you can see how much was lost when movies first started adding sound. The actors in All Wet are so expressive with their bodies, but here, everyone is stiff because they are worried about the mic.

There is a certain charm to how bad the 'butterfly' costumes are. They look like something a very dedicated mom made for a school play at the last minute.

I kind of love how the movie doesn't care about being 'cinematic.' It just wants to show you a show, and then it stops abruptly.

The ending is so sudden it actually made me blink. No fade out, no big finale, just the end.

It is a strange little piece of history. It’s not 'good' by any modern standard, but it is honest in its own clunky way.

If you have ten minutes and want to feel like you’ve traveled back to a dusty theater in 1928, give it a look. Just don't expect it to make much sense.

I still can't get over that one singer's face. She really was giving it 110%, even if the camera didn't know where to look.