Union Depot

1931’s Union Depot with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Blondell is another 67 minute example that movies don’t have to be long to be good.

This is set in a metropolitan train station and takes place over the course of one night. The opening sequence, although humble by today’s standards, is a brilliant piece of filmmaking as we see the various travelers, all with different backgrounds and purposes, meeting at Union Station.

This is a well-written, wonderful kaleidoscope of intersecting lives. The pacing and plot is tight and quite clever much of the time. Eventually two travelers, Chick Miller and Ruth Collins, meet in the depot. Chick is a good-natured tramp and lovable thief who is traveling with his rarely-sober companion played with rum-tinted luster by Guy Kibbee.

Eventually both Ruth and Chick get involved in someone else’s business at the station, and it is a serious business involving some crooks. But that’s all I’ll say about it because whether you subscribe to The Criterion Channel or not, this is a film worth searching out.

My only criticism is that the plot stumbles over itself at the end as it tries to be too clever by half. But you can forgive a film like this a bit of a slip. And what a relief that they didn’t take this 67 minutes of content and try to spread it out over 90 minutes or longer. In retrospect, a lot of movies that fail or flounder do so because they run on too long. This one didn’t need one second longer than it had.