ACROSS TO SINGAPORE (1928)

Second of three films taken from Ben Ames Williams’ novel ALL THE BROTHERS WERE VALIANT (also 1923, now lost, and 1953 - https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/10/all-brothers-were-valiant-1953.html).  Oddly, only one of its four seafaring brothers turns out to be valiant, the others either lost at sea, lost in the plot or lost in the Mysterious East (from unrequited love or a fortune in stolen pearls).  Only the youngest valiant.  With plot tweaks to match different casts, this one has Ramon Navarro (29, but looking a decade younger) perfectly cast as the teenage kid who’s grown into a young man (delicate, but sturdy) while his older brothers were at sea.  Eager for a first voyage, he’ll miss his girl (22-yr-old Joan Crawford), only to be emotionally waylaid when alpha-male brother Ernest Torrence (50 and looking it) forces an engagement on the terrified girl.  As if that’s not enough, the voyage under stress from storms and a First-Mate who takes advantage of Torrence’s monumental bender, leaving the lovesick man for dead in Singapore (actually he’s leaving him with Anna May Wong!), and commandeering the ship.  Once home, Navarro takes the rap before stealing off with Crawford to find his big brother and clear his name.  Nicely directed by William Nigh (a prestige silent helmer who steadily lost ground when sound came in), though the first two reels of forced roughhousing between the boys before they ship out are a pain.  Thankfully, it’s shot by the great John F. Seitz, a transformative lenser for Rex Ingram, Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder.  Serious print deterioration means you’ve got to squint thru a lot, but much remains in pretty good shape.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Torrence’s claim to film immortality came earlier in 1928, playing enormous, disappointed Dad to Buster Keaton in STEAMBOAT BILL, JR./’28.  Then, later in ‘28, repeating the characterization note for note against another son, John Gilbert in THE COSSACKS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/steamboat-bill-jr-1928.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-cossacks-1928.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  1928 was such a phenomenal year for silent cinema.  And Early Talkies generally so stiff.  (In round numbers: 1928 80% siient/20% Talkie; 1929 20% silent/80% Talkie.)  It’s easy to see what was being mourned/what was being lost.

LOVE (1927)

Greta Garbo’s silent version of ANNA KARENINA always considered something of a travesty, starting with that title.  Plus, no cheering section for Anna without Dolly, Kitty or Levin; no pregnancy; no drug addiction or suicide attempt; no insufferable forgiveness from cuckold husband; no train!  No wonder Garbo tried again, now with sound, in 1935.  So, why is this infamous iteration, taken on its own terms, so satisfying?  That notorious happy ending?  Seems just right in Edmund Goulding's well-directed production.  Perhaps because even at its most M-G-M idiotic, the film all of a piece.  Very well cast, too, with top-billed John Gilbert as love-struck Vronsky.  (The orchestral soundtrack on the official DVD release from Warners recorded live, so you hear the audience gasp & laugh at his initial reaction to Garbo.)  The real hero here (along with regular Garbo lenser William Daniels) may be Hollywood’s highest paid scripter Frances Marion, here credited only for ‘continuity,’ who chose to make the film as a series of ‘set pieces.’  Snowy meet-cute, ballroom gossip, race track disaster, mother-love reunion, renunciation², etc; and who put them in order.  Simplified into an awkward love triangle for Garbo not between Gilbert’s military officer and VIP husband Karenin (a one-note Brandon Hurst), but between Anna’s love for Vronsky vs. her love for her little boy.*  Her fourth Hollywood film, but first to take her beyond temptress mode.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Advantage 1935 in both these roles with Basil Rathbone’s chilly husband a far more dangerously attractive/formidable obstacle; and, fresh off DAVID COPPERFIELD, the wistful charm of Master Freddie Bartholomew, the other love of Anna's life.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/anna-karenina-1935.html

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1920)

On the cusp of revolutionizing Shakespearean acting in America with B’way openings of RICHARD III in 1920 and HAMLET in’21*, John Barrymore also got serious about film.  (Not something you could count on other than during his miraculous run of 1932 - 1934,)  The reason was likely his love of grotesquerie, a passion handsomely serviced by this more or less faithful adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novella.  Directed by John S. Robertson in stiff, poetic ‘prestige’ style as a series of romantic or ghastly tableaux vivants which can now make a proper effect thanks to an early 2000s restoration.  (Try the KINO edition.)  The story is much as you recall: brainy doctor tries to isolate man’s good side from his bad with a potent potion, then can’t find the OFF switch.  With a decent cast and standout perfs from BAD companion Louis Wolheim (in real life a ‘working man’ with a concave face Barrymore discovered and got into acting), and from BAD wench Nita Naldi.  Successfully pitiable.  But who are we kidding?  You’re here to watch Barrymore, still a youthful 38, transition au naturale, without camera tricks or makeup from handsome/saintly Jekyll into hideous villain Hyde.*  Makeup and camera dissolves will be used later, but the initial change remains both wild and impressive.   The later ones also have their charms; especially in a print where you don’t need to squint to see it happen.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *See Michael A. Morrison’s JOHN BARRYMORE: SHAKESPEAREAN ACTOR for details on Barrymore’s Bard influence.  Or simply watch Laurence Olivier’s HAMLET/’48, loaded with Barrymore touches as well as something like Barrymore’s highly Freudian ‘cut’ of the text.  Right down to what soliloquies were dropped.  (Olivier saw the Barrymore production in London 25 years before as an impressionable 16-yr-old.)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:   *Barrymore repeated his one-shot transformation trick (now shown going in both directions) with better/closer framing in DON JUAN/’26.

THE FLYING ACE (1926)

All-Black ‘Race Film,’ the credits tout an ‘Entire Cast Composed of Colored Artists,’ but that’s in front of the camera.  ‘Behind’ is led by White producer/director Richard E. Norman.  And probably the rest of his crew at this ‘Pop-Up’ Florida studio.  Lots of unusual elements here, good ones, starting with it being what we’d now call a dramedy.  Most race films, made for bookings on the Black Film Circuit or as a Special One-Night Screenings in non-race houses, were either comic burlesques, educational, or for social/religious uplift.  This one’s just entertaining, especially once the action gets up to speed in the third act.  (Even more unusual, it’s come down to us in good physical condition.)  Classic cops & robbers stuff, it opens when a handsome young payroll man for the railroad comes to town a day early with $25 thou in cash, and without his usual guards,  Overheard by three shifty locals: a layabout; a corrupt cop; a high-flying bootlegger (literally high-flying, he does his rum-running by plane).  But, after stopping to see the railway station master, the one with the pretty daughter, he and the payroll go missing and the station master is blamed.  Enter the Flying Ace, a World War One hero, back on his old job as chief railroad investigator.  A regular Sherlock Holmes at figuring out crimes, he’s also not afraid to use his fists or his skills in the air when that booze smuggler takes off with the station manager’s daughter and tries to rape her while flying in his two-seater.  Yikes!  And no auto-pilot!  Double Yikes!  Naturally, payroll is saved, station master & courier cleared, now only the daughter must choose between two upstanding men.  This touch of romance cleverly shot by Norman who holds on their legs; a neat bit of mise-en-scène.  And not the only one in here.  One qualifier, the use of the lightest skinned actor in the film as the WWI hero.  Was it noted by Black audiences at the time?  On the other hand, a more welcome idea sees his assistant, played by a War vet amputee, a one-legged wonder who uses his crutch as a weaponized limb.  Bashing bad guys, pedaling his bike, making instant U-turns, and more or less stealing the pic.

LINK:  Here’s the excellent high-def Library of Congress restoration:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSE-WksQwIg 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Other than a bit of Schubert at the end, the film score has been skillfully arranged from classic film music cues from the late silent era.  Hear them on ’The Pioneers of Movie Music’ on CD and many music streamers.

FLESH AND BLOOD (1922)

Typical Lon Chaney vehicle from 1922; ten films that year, moving him up from support to top-billed.  (Mostly, naturally his Fagin in OLIVER TWIST puts him below child phenom Jackie Coogan’s Oliver.}  This one something of a template for much of Chaney’s career: Wronged years ago by some powerful man, he nurses a grudge before returning in disguise for his chance at revenge.*  Here, framed by a wealthy businessman via forged signatures, he finaly breaks out of prison after hearing of his wife’s serious illness . . . too late!  He watches from afar as her coffin is carried out of a tenement apartment before spotting his daughter, now a young woman who has no memory of him.  Complications?  ONE: the entire police force on the hunt for the escaped prisoner, so he’s forced to hide in plain sight disguised as a twisted cripple, sheltered by Chinatown Tong Lord Li Fang (Noah Beery!) while hunting down the true guilty party, that businessman.  Complication TWO: his daughter is about to be engaged to the son of that very man, the villain Chaney plans to take down.  Yikes!  Alas, three major obstacles hold the film down.  ONE: Chaney’s oddly ineffective disguise as a cripple with twisted legs and crutches.  (Likely more uncomfortable for Lon to play than for us to watch.)  TWO: Irving Cummings’ duller than dull direction.  (Cummings peaked in the ‘40s with light fare at 20th/Fox.)  And THREE: sadly subfusc surviving picture elements.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT:  *Chaney was one of the fortunate few who went to M-G-M and was paired with a series of truly outstanding, visually oriented directors..   Tod Browning, George W. Hill, Benjamin Christensen, Herbert Brenon (far better in silents than in Talkies) and Victor Seastrom whose HE WHO GETS SLAPPED/’24 (co-starring Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Tully Marshall) is a paradigm of the standard Chaney narrative formula.

HIS PICTURE IN THE PAPERS (1916)

Stealthily game-changing light comedy uses a handsome leading man in a role typically cast with a physical comedian or even a slapstick grotesque.  But since that leading man was Douglas Fairbanks, in his breakout film*, it paved the way for dozens of Cary & Hugh Grant types to play these roles in the future.  (Come 1920 - ‘21, Fairbanks moved on to the large-scale period adventures he’s best known for.)  John Emerson, an actor who really wanted to direct (yep, even in 1916), found a cache of story treatments submitted to Triangle Studios by a young Anita Loos (they soon married) and a young actor (Fairbanks) no one thought could act running out his option.  The knockabout farce they made follows Doug, the scion of a health food mogul, who prefers steak & cocktails to plant-based goop, but tries to make good and get his picture in the paper to placate Dad.  No less than D.W. Griffith though it unfit for release (Could they cut it down to a short?) and only the delayed delivery of a new feature for its big NYC premiere got this on the screen as temp substitute.*  An immediate commercial & critical hit, the Fairbanks, Loos, Emerson team made half-a-dozen like it in 1916 alone.  The ones that survive all fun, if in various states of repair.  FLIRTING WITH FATE from a few months later, in much better physical shape, and much better directed by Christy Cabanne.  But its storyline (despondent Doug hires a hit man on himself . . . than changes his mind) less original.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *As yet, Doug is ‘stash-less’ which gives his face an ‘unfinished’ look.

READ ALL ABOUT IT :  *Anita Loos tells the whole unlikely story herself in A GIRL LIKE I.  Loos now best known for GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, but as a writer in the early ‘30s, she was Hollywood’s IT girl.

LE RAILWAY DE LA MORT / THE RAILWAY OF DEATH (1912)

Director Jean Durand amassed over 250 credits, mostly shorts/mostly for Gaumont, peaking in the pre-war years and out of the biz by his mid-40s before sound came in.  He must have been a handy guy to have around in those early days, churning out comedies that mixed Mack Sennett clownish eccentrics with Georges Méliès technical trickery (and nearly as tiresome); adventuress romances courtesy of daring wife Berthe Dagmar, who liked to work with wild/exotic animals; serials (none seen here); and tales of the untamed American West filmed in France (Pommes Frites Westerns?), as here.  Standing head & shoulders above anything else we’ve seen from Durand, and something of an astonishment for 1912, it’s a worthy precursor of the last two reels of Erich von Stroheim’s famously mutilated (but still phenomenal) GREED/’24.*  The two reeler (at least the 17minutes we have of it; 1912 two-reelers could last nearly a half hour using a slow cranking speed), opens in medias res, with a dying man discovered in a field by a pair of presumably prospecting partners.  His dying secret the exact location of a gold load, not ore, but a cache of gold nuggets.  Only problem, the 50/50 share the men had sworn to, lands in a notebook one of the ‘pals’ holds in the inner breast pocket of his jacket.  So the race is on, largely by train to claim the prize.  And the stunting (including fights on the roof  of a moving train) are gasp inducing.  No effects here, no cutaways or stunt doubles.  Just a couple of regular guys holding on for their lives before a nihilistic ending Stroheim would have okayed.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, the basic situation raised to the heights in GREED.   OR:  A selection of Jean Durand is out on a Gaumont Treasures DVD (Vol. 2/Disc 2).  But if you can deal with French-Only title cards, here’s a link to the same print of RAILWAY sans translation.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/greed-1924.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raWCzOg_X14

BLUE JEANS (1917)

Fascinating, frustrating, unmissable.  Frustrating in that the film’s in pretty rough shape, a dupe with severe nitrate deterioration.  The widely available George Eastman House print, free online, fortunately improves as it goes along.  Much better by the crucial last two reels where Joseph Arthur’s 1890 stage melodrama’s idea of tying the hero to a conveyor belt at a sawmill is filmed to stunning effect.  And note, it’s the guy on the belt and the gal who saves him in the nick of time.  (As if Snidely Whiplash threw the switch and Nell Fenwick saved Dudley Do-Right.)  But how’d we get here?  Briefly, under top silent scripter June Mathis*, hungry orphan Viola Dana meets-cute with handsome young Perry Bascom by stealing his lunch.  On his way to claim his late father’s sawmill from his Step-Uncle, he’s eager to marry Dana and settle down.  But when he gets involved in politics, a previous wife surfaces to denounce him.  She was already married to another, but can he prove it?  And now, Dana’s past is leaking.  Seems her mom ran off with . . . Bascom’s father!  These newlyweds are brother and sister!  Plus, her kindly landlords, who are about to throw her out, discover they are her actual Grandparents.  This but a fraction of the melodrama Mathis has to parse, which she does neatly under the clarifying direction of John H. Collins.  (The fourth of their five collaborations at Metro.)  Collins, who managed to make good films even at Edison*, shows flashes of brilliance here.  The pastoral courtship (though you have to squint) and even more in that sawmill climax.  What advanced editing, closeups and angles. His early death during next year’s Spanish Influenza Epidemic, only 29, a huge loss to cinema.  To Viola Dana, too, as they were husband & wife.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  *The late ‘teens/early ‘twenties saw female creatives squeezed out of the film biz.  The two most powerful women left were writers Frances Marion and June Mathis.  Mathis going on to discover Rudolph Valentino with THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE/’21 only to slip when she lost BEN-HUR to the newly configured M-G-M.  Then dying in 1927, only 40.  A new critical study, JUNE MATHIS: THE RISE AND FALL OF A SILENT FILM VISIONARY by Thomas J. Slater details the life & work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *More Collins from his Edison days.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/09/john-h-collins-edison-films-director.html

STRAIGHT SHOOTING (1917)

With only five two-reelers under his belt, novice director John (‘Jack’) Ford, and regular lead Harry Carey, got carried away on the sixth, shooting enough footage for a five-reel feature.  Naturally, Universal execs ordered it trimmed down to the contracted short, only stopped by Universal head Carl Laemmle who recognized a bargain.*  A rare survivor from Ford’s pre-FOX silent output, it’s a find that lives up to your hopes.  And, if less than mature Ford, it still displays an astonishment in Ford style, technique and themes, present & accounted for in this Homesteaders vs. Cattlemen Oater.  With heavy D.W. Griffith influence (lead gal Molly Malone like a brunette Mae Marsh and a big ride-to-the-rescue finish), but Ford’s use of landscape & framing already his own.  (Those backlit door-framed shots might be out of THE SEARCHERS/’56.)  The story is a lot like George Stevens’ SHANE/’53 (tropes already familiar in 1917?), but with Carey’s character a combination of Alan Ladd’s ‘good’ badman and Jack Palance’s ‘bad’ badman.  It takes a pivotal on-screen murder of a young homesteader to shame him.  Carey not only changing sides, but in a riveting shoot-out, taking down his drinking pal, the killer.  How to explain Ford’s filmmaking confidence?  How lucky to have it survive.*

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In silent days, a reel of film could run longer than the modern standard of ten minutes depending on the cameraman’s cranking speed.  You could get almost 15 minutes if you were as slow as D.W. Griffith’s Billy Bitzer.  Hence, Ford, with forgotten cinematographer George Scott and the great Ben Reynolds (later Erich von Stroheim’s go-to lenser) gets over an hour out of five reels.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:   *Avoid lousy subfusc Public Domain downloads.  Click the link to see a proper restoration.  This EUREKA! Edition Comes with a more recent Ford find, HELL BENT.  (not seen here)   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darotFrBNFM

LINDA (1929)

Fascinating on many levels.  If only it were a better film!  Directed by Dorothy Davenport, one of Hollywood’s few female directors at the time, the story, which has D.W. Griffith written all over it (not a plus in 1929) charts the sorry, if eventually triumphant, path of teenager Helen Foster, a kid from a penniless Appalachian family (wastrel dad, worn out mom, many siblings), bartered by her father into a loveless marriage with much older Noah Berry Sr., then blindsided when a previous wife and child show up.*  Yikes!  Pregnant herself, she gives birth before heading north to improve herself with help from a rich benefactress.  Finds love too, with the lady’s brother (no thank you) and the inner-city physician she’d met back in the woods (Warner Baxter, yes thank you).  Lots more in this vein.  Yet, as melodramatic and filled with coincidence as it is, Davenport was a natural behind the camera, and got lucky in cinematographer Henry Cronjager who knew the territory from his superb work on TOL’ABLE DAVID/’21.  (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/06/still-freshly-felt-moving-in-its.html)  And what a backstory on Davenport.  Not only the daughter of character actor Harry Davenport (kindly doctor in GONE WITH THE WIND; Grandad in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS), she’s also the widow of silent film star Wallace Reid (note billing as Mrs. Wallace Reid), a major Hollywood star who died addicted to the morphine Paramount got him hooked on to complete a picture in production.  Some things never change.  (NOTE:  LINDA has been successfully restored by The Library of Congress - though with a rather odd be-bop influenced score.  Find it here:  https://archive.org/details/linda_1929)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *When the first wife shows up with the kid she had with Noah Berry Sr could it be Noah Berry Jr, best known as James Garner’s Dad/sidekick on THE ROCKFORD FILES?  No credit listed, but he’d have been just the right age.  I’d put money on it.

THE AFFAIRS OF ANATOL (1921)

Remembered almost exclusively for big, bigger, biggest epics (mostly historical; secular/religious), Cecil B. DeMille began with Westerns (which he continued to make) before starting a series of signature OTT upper-crust social dramedies (which he didn’t).  From the late ‘teens to the early ‘20, these silents contain much of his best work, often seasoned with slightly nutty allegorical rhymed flashbacks to show how little things had changed since ancient times.  ANATOL, one of the largest if not one of the best, served as something of a farewell to past DeMille stars (Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Agnes Ayres, Bebe Daniels) and, if no flashback, particularly OTT sets & costumes from Paul Iribe, especially for Daniels who plays stage star Satan Synne.  Taken, rather loosely, from an Arthur Schintzler play about a playboy testing for tru-love, he 'tries out' three woman while on his honeymoon (in the play, he isn’t married) and is fleeced each time.  That’s really it for the story*, but DeMille loads in production value (as usual with deMille a poor substitute for style) and encourages a heightened acting that fits his purposes.  Reid & Daniels take acting honors, while brilliant cinematographer Karl Struss joins regular DeMille lenser Alvin Wyckoff in providing all sorts of opportunities for some elaborate color tinting effects.  Come 1923, Ernst Lubitsch would come to Hollywood and shortly take over these things with a humorous knowing touch and a level of cultural & visual sophistication unknown to C.B.

LINK:  Good print, if no score (provide your own!; I used Delibes ballet scores) via this link.   https://archive.org/details/silent-the-affairs-of-anatol

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *DeMille’s attempt to return to the genre in 1934 with FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE failed.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/four-frightened-people-1934.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Or is unless you read Elliot Dexter’s platonic pal for Swanson, whom Reid grows jealous of, as gay.  In the play, he’s the guy’s BFF.

TABU: A STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS (1931)

Of the four films F.W. Murnau completed after leaving Germany for Hollywood, three are masterpieces; one is lost.  This, the fourth, premiered shortly after Murnau died in a car crash.  Begun in collaboration with documentarian Robert J. Flaherty, hard to know just how much input Flaherty had.  A very slow worker, he left over ‘creative differences,’ but there’s nothing in the film to indicate a split personality, so let’s assign full authorship to Murnau.  A simple fable from Bora Bora in the South Seas, it opens in Paradise (see title card) as the island’s youth collect food from the sea and mates from gambols on natural water-slides.  (Real-life E-Ticket stuff.)  But when a modern schooner is spotted arriving, you know it means trouble in paradise.  Just not the trouble you’re expecting.  No white man corruption or domination of indigenous peoples, leave that to the guilt-ridden apologists of AVATAR or MICKEY 17.  A century back, Murnau allows these tribal societies to generate drama on their own terms.  Here with young lovers being separated by an ancient custom that chooses a Maid of Good Fortune, chaste & untouchable, TABU to the boy who loves her.  Rather than submit, the two break tradition and flee to a more developed island, in spite of no funds, the boy having carelessly signed away a fortune to Chinese merchants eager to trap the best pearl diver on the island.  To raise funds, the boy will dive for the gems in a spot so dangerous it’s marked TABU.  Technically silent, and wondrously shot by Floyd Crosby (Oscar®), it’s loaded with ceremony, ritual chant & dance for the new Maid of Good Fortune.  Presumably authentic, though the added soundtrack all South Seas musical clichés and Smetana’s The Moldau!*  Just where Murnau, recently dropped from FOX after refusing to add Talkie segments to CITY GIRL/’30 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/05/city-girl-1930.html) might have gone from here is anyone’s guess.  (NOTE:  Family Friendly label, but with a fair amount of 'National Geographic Nudity.') 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  A recent edition (not heard here) replaces the 1931 soundtrack with a more authentic ethnic music track, though whether it better fits Murnau’s period sensibility is debatable.  Have a listen and let us know your thoughts in the Comments.  (NOTE: Comments automatically come up on I-Phones, but need to be clicked open on laptops.)  

MOON OF ISRAEL / DIE SKLAVENKÖNIGIN (1924)

Most versatile of Golden Age Hollywood helmers (ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, THE SEA HAWK, THE SEA WOLF, YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, CASABLANCA, a mere sampling of just his ‘38 to ‘42 output), Hungarian director Michael Curtiz was already well-known in Europe when he went to Austria for this quasi-Biblical epic, a gloss on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/EXODUS story from adventure novelist H. Rider Haggard.  For Curtiz, the film became his American calling-card, in spite of suppression by Paramount who were protecting C.B. DeMille’s TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23.  But widely viewed within the industry, it made his rep.  Astounding & ridiculous in equal measure, the impressive physical production is technically similar to DeMille, but with a more sophisticated design and a style that's more D.W. Griffith than DeMille, specifically the Babylonian sections of INTOLERANCE/’16.  In Haggard’s telling, Egyptian Prince Sethi (Adelqui Migliar), fairminded heir apparent to the 80-yr-old Pharaoh, goes to Goshen to quash a Jewish slave revolt where he meets and falls for Merapi, The Moon of Israel (María Corda) in spite of being engaged to Pharaoh’s daughter.  As things play out, Pharaoh dies at the news; Sethi’s cousin takes his place next to Throne and Royal Daughter; those pesky plagues run their course; first born die (Sethi’s, too!); the Princess will demand extermination of the freed Israelites; and everybody races to pass thru the temporarily parted Red Sea.  Curtiz  brings his usual vigor to the proceedings. But much has to be taken on faith as film elements are . . . uneven.  (The best youtube edition isn’t so bad, but it’s been mastered as a small window within a letterbox, so sit close. –   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db94nsNHCyE), it’s worth squinting thru.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  It was a no-brainer for Warners to assign Curtiz to NOAH’S ARK/’28.  OR: See the DeMille take on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’23 where the Biblical tale of Moses gives way to a parallel modern story.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/noahs-ark-1928.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/ten-commandments-1923.html

THE INFORMER (1929)

Not the 1935 John Ford classic (Dudley Nichols script; Joseph August D.P.; Victor McLaglen lead), but an earlier British version of Liam O’Flaherty’s very Irish novel on ‘The Troubles,’ shot silent before gaining a primitive soundtrack with Talkie elements.  Luckily, all original silent negatives surviving for this fine BFI restoration.  American-born German director Arthur Robinson (his only British production?) pulls off superb atmosphere, re-creating a stylistically believable, studio-bound 1920s Dublin.*  Check out the painted chimney shadows when we hit the rooftops of the city, an illusion all-of-a-piece with the film’s two international leads Lars Hanson (Gypo) and Lya De Putti (Katie).  He’s the jealous Irish Republican National who informs on his best pal when he thinks his girl (De Putti) is steppin’ out with him.  She’ll mirror the mistake in the third act, believing he’s been unfaithful with a girl he’s barely met.  These matching jealousies the main motivating difference between the two film versions.  In Ford/Nichols, motivation lies more with the ‘forty pieces of silver’ (actually £20)  Gypo is paid to inform on his BFF, the man who shot & killed the British Police Chief.  Just as big a difference comes in casting: Hanson’s Gypo no hanger-on, but falling down when he misreads the romantic situation; McLaglen more a tough enforcer, and thick as a brick.  Equally surprising, it’s Ford, not Robinson, who piles on UFA-style German Expressionism.  (A holdover from working at FOX when F.W. Murnau came to town?)  Both films now look a bit deliberately paced, afraid we’ll lose the thread of the story, but in their own way both significant achievements.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  While the basic plot has inspired many films, official remakes come from Ford in ‘35 and, in Jules Dassin’s intriguing, if uneven, Black take in UPTIGHT/’68.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/10/uptight-1968.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *No doubt, the superb, and very un-British, ‘finish’ to the photography due to Robinson bringing in German cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl.  Sparkuhl soon off to Hollywood, with great credits, mostly at Paramount, in the ‘30 and ‘40s.

DON Q SON OF ZORRO (1925)

Wisely, Douglas Fairbanks dialed back on production values after the gargantuan levels seen in THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24.  Now, merely deluxe.  Unwisely, he twisted an unrelated Spanish romancer into a sequel of sorts to his own THE MARK OF ZORRO/’20.  And while it’s charming, exciting, fun (with loads of the signature Fairbanks bounce), it also pegged Doug as something of nostalgia act to sophisticated Roaring ‘Twenties Youth; a slide from avant to devant garde that only escalated over his last three (superb) silent features.  Fairbanks, lithe as ever at 42 (check out the torso in those tight, high-waisted Spanish pants!), gets away playing twenty-something heir to Zorro’s California estate.  (Fairbanks as son and repeating as Papa Zorro.)  In Spain as a sort of family tradition finishing school, he falls for 19-yr-old Mary Astor, aristo daughter of Papa Zorro’s old BFF, but finds romance blocked by rival Donald Crisp (he also directs*), and by lower-class striver Jean Hersholt, blackmailing his way up in politics.  A foreign diplomat’s murder, a frame-up for the killing, a faked suicide leap, an innocent man returned to prove he’s not guilty, Papa traveling back to Spain from Cali to fight alongside his son.  Not much is missing here, but not much particularly memorable, either.  And now, it’s a little too smooth, with all the bumps ironed out of every story beat.  The film’s running gag (and gimmick) has Doug, that wild American kid, using a long bull whip as his weapon of choice.  Entertaining as far as it goes, but better/fresher things await just ahead.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Standard Fairbanks recommendation is THE THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24, though our top two picks remain WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY/’19 (Victor Fleming’s superb/very Buster Keatonesque directing debut); and THE IRON MASK/’29, Doug’s farewell to silent cinema, both touching & exhilarating.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/thief-of-bagdad-1924.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Best known as a great supporting actor, right up thru the ‘60s (Oscar’d for HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY/’41), Donald Crisp was a busy silent film director with over 70 credits, including Buster Keaton’s THE NAVIGATOR/’24.  Presumably, with more input on this one.  Keaton said he mostly hung out with the writers in the gag room.

ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921)

Not that he didn’t have a few good films left in him, but this was the last time D.W. Griffith was able to put together the old formula, the one that made him one of the founding fathers of narrative cinema in the ‘teens.  Needing to repeat last year’s big success in WAY DOWN EAST/’20, Griffith took Lillian Gish’s suggestion for an even older, cornier stage melodrama (THE TWO ORPHANS from the 1870s) that had great roles for her and sister Dorothy.  Using it as a sturdy framework for elaboration & spectacle, Griffith added to the simple Pre-French Revolution story of two orphans (one poor/one half-aristocrat) who become lost, adding post-Revolution Terror along with liberal helpings of Dickens & Hugo, plus Danton and Robespierre as hero & villain.  And working up a thrilling parallel edited ride to the rescue at the local guillotine to finish.  Like so much Griffith, at once ridiculous and magnificent; even better when it's both at once.  Here, even that roaring climax is topped by an earlier episode when those separated Gish sisters (one abducted/the other gone blind) find each other while four different narrative threads weave about them in an orgy of coincidence and fate.  Who but Griffith would have dared?  Who but Griffith would have gotten away with it?  Surely, no one else would have turned it into an anti-Bolshevik allegory!  (Don’t ask.)  But then, all the titles are ludicrous.  The film something of a fever dream you sweat out before you recover.  And even then . . . 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  In his American film debut, Joseph Schildkraut makes a striking aristo figure.  (Note the Young Napoleon hair style.  Abel Gance visited the set, might he have seen it?)   Naturally, he’s in love with Lillian’s orphaned commoner rather than Dorothy’s half-aristo.  And if he was exhausted, shuttling back & forth between Griffith’s Mamaroneck, Long Island studio and B’way where he co-starred on & off stage with the legendary Eva Le Galienne in Ferenc Molnár’s LILIOM, it doesn’t show.

DOUBLE-BILL:  (An aspirational Double-Bill.)  Generally, after early joint appearances and one film that Lillian directed (now lost), the Gish girls didn’t work as a pair.  Dorothy in light comedy; Lillian in drama.  But three years on, after splitting from Griffith, they went to Italy for Henry King’s ROMOLA with Ronald Colman & William Powell, a story of Renaissance Florence under Savonarola.  But as the film needs to be seen in good condition to make an effect (outstanding Italian craftsmen rebuilt a jaw-dropping Renaissance Florence), and though it survives in mint condition prints (color tinted & toned to fabulous effect), it’s only available to the general public in butchered subfusc editions.  If only the Gish estate would give their very generous annual cash award to themselves and restore it for digital showing

THE GREATEST QUESTION (1919)

Before heading back East for two more classics (WAY DOWN EAST/’20; ORPHANS OF THE STORM/’21), but mostly disappointment & mediocrity, D.W. Griffith, the most inconstant of our indispensable film pioneers, ended his initial California run with this slightly ridiculous grab-bag of favorite themes.  Essential viewing nonetheless, Griffith must have been trying to repeat the pastoral flow & charm of TRUE HEART SUSIE/’19* which also starred Lillian Gish & Robert Harron, his regular ingenues, in a story of marriage delayed; here without the gentle laughs, tears & tenderness.  Instead, plot & suspense relentlessly pushed at us right from the prologue where Gish’s character, six at the time, witnesses the murder of an immigrant girl; loses her parents; is taken in by Bobby Harron’s sweet/loving parents; learns of the death at sea of Harron’s brother Ralph Graves; hears how Harron’s mom spoke to Graves’ ghost before  they got the news*; gets hired as housekeeper to the odious couple who murdered that immigrant girl; is soon being whipped by the wife for breaking a dish and chased thru the house by her lust infatuated husband; and saves the Harron clan from eviction with the discovery of oil oozing from their farm land.  Yikes!  (You might say everything but the kitchen sink if only there wasn’t a kitchen sink in here!)  Also, one ‘Darkie’ for comic relief.  And will he think a thief hiding in the graveyard under a white sheet is a ghost?  Hell yes.  Will he be played by a White Guy in Black makeup?  Hell yes.  (Not stylized BlackFace either, but simply made up to play Black so he can do something comically inappropriate for a funny tag ending.)  Yet this chance to see Griffith in pastoral mode (Billy Bitzer handling the atmospherically charged cinematography) and Harron in his final film under Griffith before his early death; as well as definite intimations of Griffith’s masterful WAY DOWN EAST which had Richard Barthelmess in a role Harron could have played, shouldn't be ignored.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, the enchanting (and BlackFace free) TRUE HEART SUSIE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/02/true-heart-susie-1919.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In case you’re wondering, that possible communication with the dead is the eponymous Question.

SHOOTING STARS (1928)

Considering a largely justified rep as a straightforward adaptor of well-bred literary material in the safe/solid British tradition, Anthony Asquith’s silent film beginnings capture a rarely seen visual showman in near experimental mode.  Especially so in UNDERGROUND/’28 and A COTTAGE IN DARTMOOR/’30, but also showing in this debut pic.  A behind-the-scenes look at how The Movies test the marriage of cowboy star Brian Aherne (long, lean, very Gary Cooper) and temperamental co-star wife Annette Benson.  While she pouts and plays bored on set, Asquith uses the time to give us a technically dazzling high-flying tour of the place.   Benson only perks up when she spots studio top clown Donald Calthrop working his baggy-pants slapstick.  Let the canoodling begin.  But the fun comes to a stop once Benson notices her tube of lipstick is a perfect match for her husband’s rifle cartridges, setting up either an ‘accident’ waiting to happen or the perfect crime.  (Some things never change!)  And if the melodrama feels tacked on, it’s still fun to look behind the camera, circa 1928.  As the unfulfilled wife, Annette Benson tends to play only one emotion at a time (she didn’t last much past the silent-to-sound transition), but Aherne is in his youthful prime, stealing the show while a simple storyline gives Asquith (along with co-director A.V. Bramble) space to stretch his cinematic muscles via fancy crane shots, complicated camera crawls and tricky framing.  Everyone else quite vivid.  Too vivid in the case of an obese clown rival in a film-within-this-film.  His period one-piece bathing suit leaving little to the imagination.  Yikes!

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  SHOOTING is a decent start for Asquith, but either UNDERGROUND or DARTMOOR make better intros into his imaginative silent film world.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/10/cottage-in-dartmoor-1929.html   

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  IMDb incorrectly lists a 70" running time; the restoration is more like 100".

A SAILOR-MADE MAN (1921)

With rare exception, Hollywood silent comedies were 2-reelers running between 20 and 26 minutes.*  Feature-length gaggers didn’t become a regular thing till Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and a bit later Buster Keaton switched to long form (five or six reels).  Sure, their movies were growing up, but there was also a big financial incentive.  (How frustrating to watch your two-reeler bring in the customers while some mediocre feature piggybacking on your popularity took home the lion’s share of the gross.)  What’s more surprising is that all three got there in two-steps, at first adding a reel or two to make what were essentially expanded ‘shorts’ before adding another reel, not only for length, but for complexity, essentially finding something new: The Shape of a comedy feature film thru story development and character arc.  So Keaton moves from THE THREE AGES/’23, basically a trio of cleverly intercut  two-reelers, to OUR HOSPITALITY/’23, a comic ‘feudin’ families’ melodrama.  Chaplin from the four reel WWI parody of SHOULDER ARMS/’18 to heartfelt human comedy in his six-reel THE KID/’21*  And Lloyd from this four reel knockabout slapstick to real emotion in the five reel GRANDMA’S BOY/’22.  That’s not to say that SAILOR-MADE isn’t a superior expansion of what he’d been doing.  It’s hilarious; with rich wastrel Harold wanting to marry the even richer Mildred Davis (as they would in real life), but first needing Daddy’s approval.  Get a job young man, he tells the boy.  Luckily, a Navy recruiting poster offers the chance.  And thru a series of challenges met & adventures on sea & land, Lloyd learns to swab the deck, throw a punch, even rescue Mildred from a harem (don’t ask).  Lots of fun, and with greater things to come as Lloyd’s less eccentric persona proved an even better match for features than it was for shorts.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *While a synch-sound reel runs about ten minutes, cranking speeds varied not only by cameraman but also by projectionist.  Cheap studios getting as much product on a single reel of expensive film as possible.  Grind slow!  Greedy theater owners trying to squeeze in an extra show per day.  Grind fast!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Chaplin’s evolution tricky to follow not only because he made two shorts between ARMS and THE KID, but because a deteriorating negative forced him to reedit ARMS down from about 45 minutes to about 35 minutes for re-release.  (A restored cut, sourced from various prints in various conditions in various archives currently being attempted.)

THE MANXMAN (1929)

Solidly made/location shot (coastal Cornwall subbing for The Isle of Man), Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate silent (BLACKMAIL/’29 was both a final silent and a first Talkie) was assigned rather than chosen; no doubt explaining Hitch’s lack of interest in discussing the film much in his many interviews.  (The classic conversation book, HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT, ticks it off in cursory fashion.)  Yet what a neat piece of filmmaking it is, showing Hitch working to great effect on the kind of romantic triangle story he was rarely drawn to (the unsatisfactory UNDER CAPRICORN/’49 may come closest) and a delicate subject matter (out-of-wedlock pregnancy) that often has to be indicated rather than confronted.   With situations only moving to melodrama near the end when the Hall Caine novel it’s adapted from goes all SCARLET LETTER on us.  Anny Ondra (Czech actress famous for being ‘live’ dubbed in BLACKMAIL) is the local beauty with a fiercely protective father being wooed by rough, manly fisherman Carl Brisson (a Lars Hanson/Charles Farrell type) and his upper-crust childhood pal Malcolm Keen, now on the fast track for county judge.  Affianced before his latest voyage, Brisson charges Keen to watch over Ondra, but she falls for the guy when Brisson is mistakenly reported killed at sea.  Returning very much alive, Brisson accepts the child as his own; it’s Ondra who wants out . . . permanently.  Charged with attempted suicide; brought before Judge Keen’s court; the secret of the child’s parentage revealed to a disbelieving Brisson; Hitchcock plays most of ths very close to the vest, helped by his regular cinematographer at the time Jack Cox.  All this drama successfully brought off with minimal surtitles which helps to hold down the temperature.  Hitch should have been proud of this road-not-taken effort.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Hitch’s previous film with Brisson, THE RING/’27, and his following one with Ondra, BLACKMAIL, both excellent.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-ring-1927.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/10/blackmail-1929.html   

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  One of Hitchcock’s greatest shots is hiding in here, but lasts only half a second.  (About 10 frames at silent speed.)  It’s when Ondra returns to take her child back from Brisson and their actions are watched by a crowd of faces looking thru a large window of many panes; one gossiping head in every pane.