Ramona (1928) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: May 21, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Edwin CareweRelease Date(s)
1928 (May 13, 2025)Studio(s)
Inspiration Pictures/United Artists (Kino Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: B-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Ramona stars the radiant Dolores Del Rio in the third silent screen adaptation of the 1884 novel by Native American author Helen Hunt Jackson.
Set in 1850s California, the film begins at the hacienda and sheep ranch of the widow Señora Moreno (Vera Lewis). A proud woman of Spanish descent, the Señora rules every aspect of the working ranch with an iron hand and adopted Ramona (Dolores Del Rio) as an infant when her parents died. Ramona has grown up on the ranch with Señora Moreno’s biological son, Felipe (Roland Drew). The Señora is all motherly love toward Felipe but unkind and often cruel to Ramona. The reason for the Señora’s severity toward her ward is revealed later.
The siblings grow close playing together. Ramona loves Felipe as a sister but his feelings run deeper. At sheep shearing time, Indians led by their chief’s son Alessandro (Warner Baxter) arrive to do the laborious task. Alessandro and Ramona fall in love and wish to marry, but the Señora stands in their way, aghast that her ward would wed an Indian. With the help of her beloved brother, Ramona elopes with Alessandro. The couple make a good life together among his tribe and eventually they have a daughter.
They live happily for several years until the little girl is wounded in a racist attack on the village, a doctor refuses to treat her because she’s Indian, and she dies. Despondent, Ramona and Alessandro move to the mountains to get away from rampant bigotry but a white settler, falsely claiming that Alessandro has stolen his horse, kills him. This is too much for Ramona. She has a nervous breakdown and loses her memory.
This scenario, with its heavy melodrama, two men in love with the same woman, violence, plot twists, and amnesia, would be right at home in a TV soap opera. What distinguishes the film is its sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans. Ramona and Alessandro are the victims of intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and ignorance. They seek only happiness and bother no one, yet white society treats them as undeserving of respect. They’re easy targets, and fall prey to sinister racism.
Del Rio has a burden to carry, playing a carefree teenager, a lover, a mother, and a victim. Her early scenes are played broadly, as she prances around, her large, shining eyes radiating youth and innocence and her girlish pranks showing a charming example of her spunk. But there are so many of these scenes that they lose their impact. Later, Ramona hardens, yet retains her optimism until even that is dashed by events. Del Rio’s acting is typical of silent performance, with emotions exaggerated, but her face is so expressive that her Ramona comes off as authentic.
Del Rio is considered the first female Latin American crossover star in Hollywood. Apart from starring in American films in the 1920s and 1930s, she was a significant figure in Mexico’s Golden Age of cinema. When sound came to movies, she appeared in a variety of genres, including crime melodramas, musical comedies, and romantic dramas. In the early 1940s, when her Hollywood career began to wane, she returned to Mexico at a time when the country’s film industry was at its peak.
As Alessandro, Baxter is stiff and awkward in his scenes with Del Rio, and there’s little screen chemistry between them. In an early scene, we see him topless and his chest for some reason is shiny, and not terribly muscular for a man who earns his living at tough, manual labor. In his attempt to convey protectiveness for Alessandro’s family, Baxter is disappointingly weak. True, Alessandro is limited by his race and low-man-on-the-totem-pole status, but more ruggedness and determination in Baxter’s performance would have made his character more believable.
Drew’s character is also weakly conceived. In fact, it makes you wonder at Ramona’s taste in men. She appears drawn to ineffectual, sensitive types when she could use a stronger guy by her side. Felipe woos Ramona through song, rather than deeds, and she’s transfixed by his music and voice, both impossible to judge in a silent picture.
Vera Lewis, dressed all in black, is the film’s resident villainess, whose bigotry is manifested in coldness toward Ramona. Lewis has a stony face that instills respect and fear in her workers. Though she disappears a third of the way through the film, her strong performance is felt throughout.
Director Edwin Carewe provides scope to the film with some breathtaking photography of the landscape and balances the melodrama with some well-staged action sequences, including an attack on an Indian village and the burning of Ramona and Alessandro’s house. The pace slows periodically, but there are big jumps in years. For example, shortly after Ramona and Alessandro leave the ranch, we see them with a young child. The passage of time isn’t clear, and transitional scenes would have improved narrative flow.
Ramona was shot by director of photography Robert B. Kurrle on 35 mm black & white film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.20:1. The Blu-ray contains an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This edition was restored by the Library of Congress from color-tinted 35 mm materials preserved by Gosfiolmofond of Russia and the Narodni National Film Archive of the Czech Republic. The major problem with the print is lighting that varies with a pulsating effect. There are light scratches, a few heavy scratches, a visible splice, and periodic white specks. This isn’t unusual for a film that’s nearly a hundred years old. There are a few artistic double exposures in which a character and what he/she is reacting to are shown simultaneously. The old-fashioned iris framing is used in a number of scenes. Some scenes are subtly tinted, except for a deep red tint that highlights scenes of Indian structures on fire. English intertitles reveal what characters are saying and set the scenes.
The soundtrack is 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. Ben Model composed and performs the score on the organ with the film’s theme, Ramona, dominating. The song was the second most popular tune of 1928, with recordings by Gene Austin, Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, Ruth Eating, Scrappy Lambert, and Dolores Del Rio herself. The song has a wistful quality that serves as the title character’s leitmotif.
The only bonus extra on the Blu-ray release from Kino Classics is the following:
- Audio Commentary by Anthony Slide
Film historian Anthony Slide starts out by referring to the title song, which he notes has stood the test of time. Dolores Del Rio recorded the song from her home in Los Angeles, and through a special hook-up, it was recorded in New York. The film begins with an idyllic version of old California. Vera Lewis, who plays Señora Moreno, was usually cast as an unpleasant character. She seems to have only one expression—a solemn one. The Señora is sanctimonious, and the servants fear her but also ridicule her behind her back. A supporting actress playing a servant wears dark facial make-up to suggest she’s Mexican. Slide provides an expansive career overview of Dolores Del Rio, tracing her acting career mostly in Hollywood, beginning with her role in What Price Glory (1926). She was a member of the Mexican-European aristocracy, yet often faced racism. At one point, she was “seriously involved” with Orson Welles. Warner Baxter’s movie career is discussed. He played the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona and several sequels, but was versatile and took on a number of varied roles. Much of Ramona was filmed in Zion National Park with some scenes shot in the San Bernardino mountains. Both the novel and the film seek sympathy for Native Americans. During its initial four-week run in New York, tickets to Ramona cost $2 each, a hefty sum at the time. A positive New York Times review of the film is quoted. The message of the film indicates that Ramona was never meant to be with Alessandro. As Ramona says when she returns to the hacienda, “It is just as though I’ve never been away.”
Ramona shows its age in the mannered performances of the actors, but the plot is interesting and offers an unusual slant on the romantic triangle theme. Dolores Del Rio is absolutely beautiful and draws the viewer in with her sweet innocence. Ramona certainly has her share of tragedy yet perseveres, making her a far cry from typical female roles of the period. The film represents Native Americans as human beings rather than stereotypical savages, and deals in a forthright manner with racial bias.
- Dennis Seuling