The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sojin, Snitz Edwards

Produced by Douglas Fairbanks Pictures 

The streets of Bagdad bustle with activity.  Merchants ply their wares and the wealthy move from stand to stand.  Seemingly oblivious to it all, a young man sleeps on a ledge.  However, once one of the bazaar's well-to-do customers pauses before the sleeping man, his eyes open and his hand finds the rich man's purse.

The thief moves on to other adventures on the Bagdad streets.  He steals bread from a balcony.  He slips the ring off the finger of an aristocrat.  And he steals a remarkable magic rope that rises into the air like a pole with the slightest gesture.  At the end of his day, he takes his loot back to his home, an alcove in the bottom of a well that he shares with another thief.

The magic rope allows him to formulate a plan.  He can use it to scale the walls of the caliph's castle at night and steal some valuables inside.  His plan is successful until he is captivated by the beauty of the sleeping princess in the castle.  He is almost captured, but escapes with only one treasure, the slipper of the girl he has fallen for.

Soon, we find out that the princess is to marry and that princely suitors are arriving in Bagdad to win her hand.  The thief is not a prince, but he can steal some clothes to look the part.  He becomes one of four potential husbands for the girl.  And the princess is instantly drawn to our thief in his guise of Prince Ahmed.  She has to choose her prince and she chooses Ahmed.

Unfortunately, one of the princess' slave girls saw the thief the night before and recognizes him.  The slave also happens to be a spy for the Mongol prince who covets both the city of Bagdad and the princess.  The Mongol hopes to marry into the object of his desire, but is prepared to take it by force.

Ahmed reveals his criminal past to the princess, but not before the slave has ratted him out to the king.  Ahmed is captured, beaten and sentenced to death, but the princess helps him escape.

The king now forces the princess to pick another husband.  To draw out the decision, she decides she will wed the man who bring her the rarest treasure a week later.  The three remaining princes set off to find treasure and win the princess' hand.  Before leaving though, the Mongol prince begins bringing disguised troops into the city as a contingency plan.

However, our thief learns of a treasure that may allow him to become a prince.  He must set off on a quest through many trials to attain it, but at the end he can be with his love and earn happiness.

Will the thief succeed in his quest?  And what of the 20,000 Mongol troops who have snuck into the city?

In The Thief of Bagdad, we have another lavish Douglas Fairbanks production.  The biggest difference between this and his previous work?  The Thief of Bagdad is a massive spectacle filled with special effects and trick photography that provide thrills.  In Robin Hood, Zorro and The Three Musketeers, Fairbanks WAS the special effect.

The production here is appropriately massive in scale.  The action moves from the streets of Bagdad to the cavernous palace to the various trials the thief must complete and all of them are impressive.  The production design is one of the great strengths of the film.

The last third of the film provides a perfect template that numerous other films and video games have followed.  The thief must complete a series of tasks, earning mystical items along the way to help him complete future trials.  And each of the tasks is more thrilling than the previous ones.  Among the items he uses in his inventory: a medallion that brings a tree to life, a flying horse (a crude but really effective special effect), and a cloak of invisibility.

His ultimate prize is a chest that will allow him to conjure whatever he wishes; it operates like a magic lamp without an annoying genie or an arbitrary limit on the number of wishes.  The way the thief uses the chest are pretty obvious, but also perfectly realized.  In order to fight the Mongol forces, Ahmed conjures his own army from the sands.  The effect of the puffs of smoke as each soldier is created is simple, but again perfect.

The primary issues I had with the film come in the first half.  I hated the first half hour of the film.  It was repetitive, overly-long and had that acting style that causes people to be turned off by silents.  Once the thief meets the princess, the movie switches gears from annoying to dull.  The audience knows where it is all going, but the movie plods along to get there.  Once the thief sets off on his quest, the set pieces take over the film and elbow out the opportunities for overacting by Fairbanks and the rest of the cast.

In a film with several bad actors, Fairbanks is actually the worst for me.  His every arm gesture and look reminded me of a bad Vegas magician.  Think Gob from Arrested Development.  He reminded me of something Will Smith said when he moved from television to the big screen: actors on a large canvas can communicate more with small movements; on the small TV screen, you need bigger movements to communicate with the audience. 

Fairbanks does every movement with a flourish.  It's frustrating to watch.  I know some claim that this type of overacting was typical of the silent era, but I have seen too many examples that shatter that myth to give Fairbanks a pass here.  Fortunately, the spectacle and story take over the latter half of the film and Fairbanks has less opportunity to mug for the camera.

There are a couple of actors whose performances were fantastic.  Sojin as the Mongol prince always conveyed that aura of menace without moustache twirling (and he certainly had the moustache to twirl).  Anna May Wong as the Mongol spy was brilliant.  You could always see there was more going on behind her eyes than she was letting on.

There is one plot point that bugged me.  SPOILERS AHEAD.  All three of the other suitors find magical items as their rare treasure to present to the princess.  The Mongol prince finds a magical apple that can restore life and health to someone who is dying.  The other two procure a flying carpet and a crystal ball that shows events in other places.  To give himself a leg up, the Mongol prince sends someone ahead to Bagdad to poison the princess so he can swoop in and restore her to health.  I thought that was a diabolically clever plan.

Sadly, he executes it by asking the one prince to look into the crystal ball to see that the princess is dying and then all three use the magic carpet to speed to the princess' rescue.  Once the princess is saved, they all have a legitimate claim to having saved the princess.  Why didn't he just head to Bagdad on his own?

So now the king has to decide.  So the Mongol prince states he will bide his time.  And apparently, in Mongolia, "bide your time" translates to "unleash your army of 20,000 soldiers on the city" because that's what happens immediately after he says it.  I can't help but feel like there are scenes or lines of dialogue missing to explain this.  I acknowledge I am nitpicking, but I was impressed enough with the villain's initial plan that the way it failed felt like a cheat.

I almost turned off The Thief of Bagdad a half an hour into its running time.  I'm glad I stuck with it.  The entertainment value of the second half of the film is off the charts and the special effects are fantastic in a "how did they do that in 1924?" kind of way.

*** out of *****

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The Iron Horse (1924)

Laying the rails for Western expansion

Young Davy Brandon loves his life in Springfield, Illinois in the mid 1800s. His father is a local surveyor and he plays games pretending to be a surveyor with his best friend Miriam. However, when his dad decides to find his fortune by going west to survey the best route for a hypothetical railroad, Davy packs up and heads off with the same grim determination his father displays. Their friend Marsh thinks the Brandons are crazy, but a neighbor named Abe admires their tenacity.

One night, they come across a pass through the mountains. Davy's father is excited to find the shortcut as it will save time and money in traveling by rail. His satisfaction is short-lived however; Indians descend upon the camp site, killing the senior Brandon while his son watches, hidden in the bushes. Davy's father's killer? A white man with two fingers who has cast his lot with the natives.

Years pass. Abe is now President of the U.S. (what? Like there could have been a different Abe from Springfield, Illinois?). President Lincoln signs a bill authorizing the construction of two railroads: one starting from Sacramento, California and going east, and the other from Omaha, Nebraska headed west. Marsh is now working to build the railway and his daughter Miriam is engaged to her father's chief engineer Jesson.

The life of a worker on the railway is tough. The men sing songs to pass the time and, when the Indians perform their hit and run attacks, the workers pick up their rifles and return fire.

Managing the railway work is a precarious juggling act. One fierce Indian attack robs the pay train, meaning no wages for the workers. The men are about to strike, when Miriam steps in and appeals to the workers' patriotism to keep them on the job.

Marsh is running low on money and has to find a new passage through the mountains for his railroad. The powerful Bauman owns the the land along the more expensive route so he maneuvers Jesson to prevent any deviation from the longer, but more expensive path.

One day, as Marsh is inspecting the railway by locomotive they find a Pony Express rider being attacked by Indians. They save the man and discover it is Davy Brandon all grown up. Davy is thrilled to see Miriam, but disappointed to learn she is engaged.

Marsh explains his need for a shorter path to Brandon and Davy remembers the pass his father showed him when he was a boy. Brandon agrees to locate the pass and heads out with Jesson, but Bauman has convinced the engineer that life would be better if Davy never returned from the trip.

Will Bauman succeed in his plans? Will Davy or Jesson end up with Miriam's hand? And will Brandon discover his father's murderer?

Movies are tricky. There are so many variables that go into whether or not a film works. The right cast, a good script, casting the right actors, getting a good crew. When you add locations and hundreds of extras to the normal issues, there is the potential for disaster.

All of which makes the achievement of John Ford's The Iron Horse all the more remarkable.

Ford has crafted a 2-1/2 hour epic that functions as drama, melodrama, historic documentary and propaganda, with healthy doses of comedy and romance.

The Indian attack on the Brandon camp is a study in editing and camerawork, dripping with suspense and perfectly executed. The way the father becomes suddenly serious, his eyes darting around as he grabs his son. The close-up on the feet of the Indians as they creep toward the camp. Ford knows how to get your heart pumping.

The Iron Horse also features some amazing shots of the American landscape. There's the opening shot of a flock of sheep being herded. Numerous shots of horses sweeping over the plains. Epic views of a massive cattle drive. All gorgeous and perfectly shot.

However, when the scene calls for movement, Ford's camera flies with kinetic energy. My personal favorites are the numerous tracking shots following horses in full gallop, though there are also ones mounted from the train's POV and even one where the train rides over top the camera (a common shot today that must have been jarring to the audience of the time).

For comic relief, we get a trio of soldiers working on the railroad. Corporal Casey, Sargeant Slattery and Private Schultz are the movie's self-proclaimed "three musketeers," and their banter is both fun and character-revealing. Halfway through the film, their appearance on-screen becomes enough to elicit a smile. Their interactions demonstrate a relationship that has existed long before the cameras started documenting it. In the end, they prove their mettle as much more then a set of clowns.

The casting throughout is spot-on. Everyone looks the part. You believe the cast of rugged adventurers and grizzled soldiers. The most movie idol looking actor is George O'Brien in the lead, but he's big enough and good enough that he sells it.

There are some remarkable moments of American history here. I was particularly struck by the way the headquarters for Union Pacific would move along the railroad as it was being built. Seeing hundreds of people pack up their homes and stores to caravan to the next location was astonishing, raising practical issues from my country's history I never considered. How accurate is the movie? No idea, but it has me asking questions I never thought of before. And that is worth a lot.


The film crescendos into a finale that resolves all of the film's major plot points. The Union Pacific workers face off against the Indians over the path of the railway. Davy confronts his father's murderer. Even the massive cattle drive we've got documentary-like glimpses of becomes a minor plot point. Characters we have come to love do not survive. It's high drama and great action.

That's not to say the movie is perfect. It isn't. Miriam is a weak character. Her rousing speech to the troops is not particularly rousing and she remains more a plot device than a character throughout.

The movie also has a moment where one additional sentence would have resolved a massive conflict. Davy promises Miriam he won't fight Jesson. When Davy walks into the saloon, he tries to reconcile with his rival, but Jesson refuses. Then, when Davy tries to leave, Jesson tries to shoot him in the back. They get into a fight (which is poorly choreographed but brutal). When Miriam enters and tells Davy he broke his promise, it comes off as silly.  And Davy never points out that her prince of a fiance tried to kill him.

The Iron Horse is a movie of big ideas and small moments, told on an expansive canvas with American history as its compelling backdrop. Ford shows himself to be a masterful storyteller. More than the narrative though, what sticks with you is the portrait of America as a place where, working together, people can move heaven and earth. Is this slice of Americana propaganda? Absolutely. And I mean that it the best way.

***** out of *****

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Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924)

Directed by Yakov Protazanov
Starring Yuliya Solntseva, Igor Ilyinsky and Nikolai Tsereteli
Produced by  Mezhrabpom-Rus


Engineer Los is a good Soviet.  He believes in the cause.  And thanks to a mysterious message he is convinced emanated from Mars, he is building a spaceship.

Los and his wife Natasha are compelled to take on Ehrlich as a tenant by the government.  Ehrlich longs for the good old days when he had plenty.  Living in a society that rations food is cramping his style.  So, he works the black market to procure luxuries like sugar.

Ehrlich gets the attention of Natasha through chocolates and other forbidden goods.  One day, Los comes home and catches his wife being affectionate with Ehrlich.  He loses it and shoots his wife.


Los moves outside Moscow and adopts the persona of Spiridinov, a colleague of Los who could be his twin save for a beard and shaggier hair.  He works feverishly to complete his rocket ship.

Through it all, the mysterious Queen Aelita is watching Los from Mars through a telescope designed by a Martian scientist.  She catches a glimpse of the scientist and immediately falls in love.  The emperor of Mars Tuskub prohibits her from looking through the device, but she sneaks a peek whenever she can.

Los and Aelita are destined to meet of course.  Will it be love at first sight for the alien and the human?  Can Los help Aelita overthrow the totalitarian Martian ruler?  And if she succeeds, will she be a better ruler?

Aelita, Queen of Mars is the first Soviet science fiction film.  It's sci-fi, but it is also an historical account of early Soviet life, a melodrama and a propaganda film.  So how was it?

Absurd.  Silly.  And half of it is a lot of fun.

The overall story is the weakest link.  The first half of the movie focuses primarily on the day-to-day existence of the denizens of Moscow and it's pretty boring.  The same themes are repeated over and over.  Los looks ineffectual as his wife falls for the profiteer Ehrlich.  The guy's not much of a hero to center the film around and any heroic notions you have about him evaporate when he pulls a gun and shoots his wife.

From that moment on though, the movie is goofy fun, particularly for a modern audience.  Los disguises himself and finishes construction of the rocket.  An idealistic soldier named Gusev gets married to a nurse, but is quickly bored and signs onto the mission to go to Mars.  How does he do this?  He walks into the warehouse where they are building the rocket and asks to go.  Moments later he's professing to his wife how excited he is to go to Mars tomorrow.  Goofy fun.

Meanwhile, an inept police non-detective (they never really explain what he is) named Kravtsov investigates the murder of Natasha.  He does this by having a dog sniff a glove at Los' home in Moscow and then follows the animal directly to the rocketship and the disguised Los.  More goofy fun.

The ship takes off with some impressive-for-their-time special effects.  There are miniatures and other slight of hand that sell the experience.  Obviously, today we know that three guys building a rocket in the country and taking a day trip to the next planet over is patently silly, but that only adds to the charm and fun of it.

Soon, we are on Mars and the spectacle completely supplants the plot.  It does not really matter because the production design of the alien planet is visually captivating.  It's a series of M.C. Escher staircases, sliding doors and angled walls.  The queen sports a hair style that would make Princess Leia say "Now, THAT is over the top."

The martian society is under-developed on screen, but is interesting in its own right.  There is an upper ruling class and a lower worker class.  The worker class wear dehumanizing boxes on their head.  At one point, the emperor decrees that a third of the workers shall be frozen.  We get a striking image of workers entering a revolving door-like machine that spits out their lifeless bodies on a conveyor belt.  The bodies are stacked in piles underground.  Crazy ideas and imagery, but the director doesn't dwell on them much.

We also see one of the first tropes of many a science fiction film: the assembly of the spaceship crew.  Let's see, you have the scientist, the muscle and the comic relief.  How many times have we seen that combo in movies over time?

Can you find the Soviet symbolism hidden in this frame?

In the end, the queen and Los lead an uprising of the workers. The propaganda elements of the film, which have been drifting just below the surface, emerge like Shamu through a flaming hoop.  There's literally an image of a buff, chained guy hammering a strip of metal into a sickle.  Subtle it is not.

The mix of melodrama and sci-fi never quite congeal to provide a coherent tale or point.  The plot ultimately lurches from point to seemingly-contradictory-point. The final images of the film call into question everything that came before.  If it's propaganda, doesn't the epilogue eliminate the point of the battle and struggle on Mars?

In the end, it does not really matter as long as you go for the ride and don't think too hard.  The final half of the Aelita, Queen of Mars is cinematic junk food wrapped in sci-fi candy shell.  The propaganda?  That's just a slightly bitter aftertaste.

*** out of *****

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Shameless Self-Promotion: LAMMYs

So it's that time of year again!  And by "again," I really mean for the first time (for me, anyway)! 

This is my first year as a LAMB, so it's the first time 100 Years of Movies is eligible for the LAMMYs.  If you are a LAMB and like what you are reading here, I'd ask you to consider voting for the site.  For what you ask?  How about for:

- Best Classic Film Blog
- Best New Blog



I'm pretty new to this blogging game, but if you think the blog is the funny or intelligent, I am a) flattered, and b) appreciative of votes there as well!


Of course, whether you vote for me or not, the important thing is to vote!  And you can do that by going to the LAMB's LAMMY page!  Voting is open until May 9, 2011.

Sadly, there is no category for blog post with the most exclamation points!

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Michael (1924)

The master and his model

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring Walter Slezak, Benjamin Christensen and Nora Gregor
Produced by Universum Film (UFA)

Claude Zoret is a master painter, having made a fortune off of his portraits.  His paintings are in high demand, none more than those featuring his adopted son Michael as the model.

However, there's more going on between Michael and the Master.  The way Zoret's face lights up when the young man enters the room.  The way Michael rubs the older man's feet.  The hand holding that lingers a few seconds more than a friendly greeting.

Their relationship is upended by the arrival of a destitute countess.  She's looking to bilk someone out of some money.  Zoret wants nothing to do with her, but agrees to paint her portrait.  Michael on the other hand falls for the temptress.

Zoret finishes the painting of the countess, but cannot get the eyes right.  He lets Michael try to paint the eyes and he does an expert job.  He does so well in fact that the reviews come in identifying the eyes as the only good part of the painting.

Zoret discovers his masterpiece The Victor, which he gave to his young lover as a gift, is being sold.  Michael is selling the piece to get some cash for the countess.  Rather than confront Michael, Zoret purchases the painting back and returns it to his former lover's apartment.

Will Michael return to Zoret?  Does the Master have one more painting in him?  And how far will Michael go to make a buck for his new love?

Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael is my first introduction to the German director's oeuvre.  I have had some experience with the German expressionists, but this is a more straightforward drama.

And one I did not care for.

The story does not work very well as a love triangle story.  As I described above, Zoret and Michael's relationship is implicit, while Michael and the countess is on the back burner for much of the movie.

I think Michael is more successful as a rumination on art.  Zoret is not a successful painter until he meets and falls in love with his young model.  That passion is what inspires Zoret's pen, and when he loses Michael, he loses his muse.  However, in the end, he is able to produce his ultimate masterpiece, born not out of love, but out of suffering.  A work featuring a man lying in pain on a beach with a background of skies inspired by his sketches from Algiers, sketches completed during a trip with Michael.

What does not work is the way this story is told.  The editing is incredibly choppy in moments, followed by 90 seconds of characters giving each other knowing looks and stares.  The movie plays like Soap Opera Acting 101.  Look angry, look hurt, look confused.  Perfect!  Now, hold that for a minute.

The result is a pace that moves like a snail on Ambien moving through molasses.  The camerawork is beautiful throughout, but the tale could have been told as effectively in half the time.

Benjamin Christensen is great playing Claude Zoret.  He provides you a map of his pain and suffering throughout that grounds the story for the viewer.  The rest of the cast is unremarkable.  Walter Slezak's Michael in particular seems to exist not as an actual person, but as a concept in the movie.  You never really feel much sense of why he's doing what he is doing.

There's a subplot in the film involving another love triangle, but it is not terribly well-fleshed out and exists as a counterpoint to the central relationship.  The editing means we violently lurch into the tale and just as quickly exit it throughout the film's runtime.

Some good camera work and a fine central performance, but other than that, Michael is a chore.  Watch it for a few minutes for the sense of atmosphere, then move along.

** out of *****

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Formative Experience: Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet died last week.

The man was a giant and many pixels have been displayed on the web this week celebrating him.  Everyone has their own remembrances, most focused on Network or Dog Day Afternoon.  And rightfully so.

For me, my love of older movies starts with the man.

As I was growing up, I ate a steady diet of current family and adventure movies, but (like most kids) I had an allergic reaction to anything black and white or dramatic.  I'm turning through channels one weekend afternoon and on comes 12 Angry Men.  I'm about to dismiss it when my mom offers that I should give it a try, I may like it.  This is of course the standard approach to having a child try a new vegetable, but for whatever reason, I started watching it.

For those unaware, 12 Angry Men is a drama about a jury's deliberation during a murder trial.  Twelve men enter a room, all but one of them convinced of the defendant's guilt.  That's it. 

I was totally transfixed.

The thing that staggers me about the movie is how opposite it is of everything I knew about Hollywood.  Instead of color, it's black and white.  Instead of being shot in a series of locations, it's all in one room.  The characters don't even have names, being identified only by their juror number.  And most importantly, within minutes, I knew where the movie was going, but the ride is so captivating, you don't care.  You need to see how they get there.

While I had seen black and white film and television, this was the first time I was aware of the lack of color as a positive thing.  The shadows and light of that jury room become a character in a way you could never have in a color film.  When Lee J. Cobb is making his pitch for the defendant's guilt toward the end, the way the other faces sit in judgment... it's an effect you never see anymore, with an impact that stays with me.

The movie was originally a play of course, but Lumet makes this completely cinematic.  We explore every corner of the deliberation room and every emotion on our characters' faces.  I have never seen a stage version, but I cannot imagine this as anything but a film.

For example, check out the scene below.  Lumet uses a long take to make us as uncomfortable as the other 11 jurors during the diatribe.  He pulls the camera back both to show us the room, but also to make the prejudiced juror smaller; his camera alienates the man the same way the rest of the jury does.



There are so many moments that stay with me.  The look on Henry Fonda's face before reaching into his pocket for the knife.  Jack Klugman fretting about getting to the baseball game.  E.G. Marshall's coolly analytical visage melting as he realizes he may be wrong.  

12 Angry Men was a gateway drug that pulled me away from the New Release section of our local video store.  I started watching older B&W and color movies.  I became hooked on Sean Connery's Bond and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. 

More than any other movie, 12 Angry Men means something to me not because of what it is, but because it showed me what movies could be.  And once you get that feeling of euphoria, you are always looking for your next fix.

Godspeed, Mr. Lumet.  Thank you for setting me on my cinematic path.

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A Couple of Disney Shorts (1924)

Directed by Walt Disney

Starring Virginia Davis

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

As I thought about approaching my first Walt Disney-created footage, I reflected on the animator's place in film history.  There are obvious cinematic pioneers like D.W. Griffith, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese... but I think Disney has got to be in the conversation at least.  He was a pioneer of not just animation, but musicals and camera movement (albeit drawn at 24 frames a second).  Half a century later, he is still the producer of the definitive versions of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio.  Seeing how I can't get my kids interested in anything over 12 hours old, that's a feat.

All that as prologue to say how disappointed I was in my experience watching these Disney cartoons.

In Alice's Day at Sea, an alarm clock comes to life to wake up Alice's dog, who dresses himself and wakes up Alice.  The dog then drives Alice (yes, you read that right) to the beach where she talks to a sailor and falls asleep in a boat.  She awakens to discover her boat has been whisked out to sea where it sinks to the bottom of the ocean.  She interacts with animated fish and a menacing octopus, before waking up to discover it was all a dream and she's still on.

In Alice's Spooky Adventure, she's playing with a group of kids when their ball flies into the window of a spooky old house.  Alice is the only one with the courage to go and retrieve the ball.  Once in the house, she encounters a box that moves on its own (thanks to the black cat inside it).  She ends up covered in a sheet, looking like a ghost, before pulling off the impromptu costume and having a ceiling collapse on her.  Unconscious, she dreams of an animated haunted town where she is being chased by ghosts.  One of the ghosts asks her to "take it off" (minds out of the gutter, people!) and under the sheet is a black cat.  Alice and the cat successfully battle the ghosts and the cat professes his love for her, kissing her hand.  Alice awakes to find the black cat from earlier is licking her hand.  She finds the ball and runs out to find a policeman who noticed the broken window.  The officer takes Alice to jail for the crime.

First, the good.  I think some of the live action sequences that bookend the cartoons are interesting and humorous.  There are some subtle and innovative animation and effects incorporated into those sequences that work.  Disney takes Alice's dog and makes him a real character (in fact, he's a lot like a real life version of Mickey Mouse's pet Pluto).  I found myself wishing the cartoons were about the dog and not Alice.

The animated sequences that are the meat of the films come off as a pale imitation of the Fleischer Brothers' Out of the Inkwell series.  Where that series has some truly remarkable interaction between the cartoon and real worlds, here Alice basically stands around looking cute in the middle of the animated environment.  There is not a lot of physical contact between the worlds and when they do touch, it's not a great effect.  It seems like a step backward.

Virginia Davis (Alice) looks the part, but is not that great an actress.  When she stretches after waking up, it looks exactly like someone telling a kid to pretend they are waking up.  Of course, for most of the film, she's just pointing and laughing at things going on around her so it's not like there is much heavy lifting.

The narrative here is just an excuse to get to the animation.  And the animation is that style that annoys me.  I get why in the early days of the medium they had a lot of repeated movements (you can reuse the same drawings), but it makes me impatient watching it.

Overall, these feel more like exercises in film-making than actual short films.  I loved everything with the dog, but that was about it.  I'll probably check out more in future years to see if there's a progression, but so far I am underwhelmed.

Alice's Day at Sea: ** out of *****
Alice's Spooky Adventure: *1/2 out of *****

NOTE: While Alice's Day at Sea was the first released short, it was not the first one Disney made.  He created Alice's Wonderland with Davis in the lead role while heading up Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, MO.  The studio went bankrupt, Disney moved to Los Angeles where he raised money to get a fresh start and he asked Davis' family to relocate.  The rest is history.

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Happy Birthday Charlie!

To celebrate Chaplin's 122nd birthday, the Google doodle became a Chaplin-inspired YouTube video.  CNet has the article here.

The video is below:

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1924: Greed Is Good... but Can You Cut It to Two Hours?

Cut my film? You amuse me...

Welcome to 1924!  This is the year we raise a glass for the start of Toastmasters International.  Huzzah!

In world news, Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin campaigns for the leadership spot in the Soviet Union.  And by "campaigns," I mean brutally kills anyone else with designs on the job.  In the Summer Olympics in France, Johnny Weissmuller wins three gold medals, instantly qualifying him to be Tarzan.  Because you remember what the last Tarzan looked like, right?  This is also the year that brought us the founding of IBM and the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (now becoming a movie representing the new nadir of creativity in Hollywood).

In the film world, Walt Disney begins pumping out short films centered around a character called Alice.  The Fleischer Brothers produce animated films with soundtracks and audience participation (leading directly to cross-dressing at midnight showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show).  MGM is born out of the merger of three other studios and Columbia Pictures gets its name (it was previously called the far less catchy CBC Film Sales Company).

One of the other big stories was the production of one of Erich von Stroheim's masterpieces, Greed.  The film was originally ten hours long, but MGM demanded it be cut down to two hours.  The director disavowed the film.  I would love to report that this is the first use of Alan Smithee as a pseudonym, but that sadly does not occur until 1968.  The unedited version is lost, though there is apparently a four hour version out there.  Bottom line: MGM demands a cut of a film called Greed to make more money with no sense of irony.

So, what are we watching?  Unfortunately, Greed is not available on DVD.  Disney's short is on YouTube (yeah!) with Dutch subtitles (ugh).  Netflix is streaming The Thief of Baghdad (featuring Douglas Fairbanks being roguish I imagine), Aelita, Queen of Mars (1st Russian sci-fi film ever? I am SO there!), Michael (a German drama) and The Gold Rush (by some guy named Chaplin... think he might be big some day).  There's also America from D.W. Griffith (been some time since we checked in with him), The Iron Horse by John Ford (which is a must watch for me), and The Navigator (Buster Keaton!).  So settle into your seats: we may be here a while.

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Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton is a victim of the villain's hospitality

Directed by John G. Blystone and Buster Keaton

Starring Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts, and Natalie Talmadge 

Produced by Joseph M. Schenk Productions

As if life was not hard enough in Appalachia, a generations-long feud between the McKays and Canfields ensures that members of those families will come to an early end.  Such is the lot of John McKay when James Canfield pays him a visit.  The two lock eyes in a downpour, fire their weapons and add two more casualties to the conflict.

James Canfield's brother Joseph has stayed away from the violence, but, seeing his brother gunned down, the man vows to raise his sons to avenge the Canfield name.  For her part, John McKay's widow sends their son Willie away to stay with an aunt in New York.  He is raised mercifully unaware of the blood feud between the families.

Twenty years go by and the time comes for Willie to claim his family's homestead in Appalachia.  He learns of the bloody history of his family name and leaves on an eventful train ride (with his dog following along) that finds him seated next to Joseph Canfield's daughter.  They don't know each other so they pass the time amicably dealing with the bumps and detours that an early train ride might bring.

Upon arriving at his birthplace, Willie encounters one of Canfield's sons, who recognizes Willie as his sworn enemy.  Canfield is unarmed however and can't find a weapon to borrow before McKay heads off to find his estate.

McKay's dreams of inheriting a mansion are blown to pieces when he finds the rundown shack his family called home.  He finds Canfield's daughter outside her home and she, still unaware of their family ties, invites the man to dinner.  Willie arrives for supper, but the elder Canfield and his two sons cannot kill him in their house as it would violate their rules of hospitality.

Willie overhears this and realizes that to leave the home is a death sentence.  So, he contrives ways to stay in the house and attempts to sneak out at various points.

Will Willie ever get out of the house and can he do it alive?  And what of the blossoming young love between McKay and Canfield?  Will it end better than Romeo and Juliet?

Our Hospitality is the answer to one of my complaints about many of these early comedies: stakes, or the lack of them.  With the exception of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid, none of the films I have seen have set up a world in which you feel like harm could come to our lead character.  Even as Harold Lloyd is scaling an 8-story building in Safety Last!, he's winking at the camera and you know it will all turn out okay.

Here, the stakes and the danger are real.  There is no humor in the opening melodrama that sees Willie's father killed.  You believe that these are families capable of killing you over your last name.  That opening is important to the rest of the film.

The next scene is an extended sequence on the train ride to his house and the scenes are humorous.  I smiled as a hillbilly threw rocks at the train and the engineer responded with a volley of firewood (which is apparently how the hillbilly gets his firewood).  I also liked how the train got around the donkey that had stopped in its path.  That said, Our Hospitality is really about Willie dealing with this feud and the train is an unnecessary diversion from that.

When the train finally arrives at its destination, the stakes go way up.  One of Canfield's sons offers to show the young McKay around, but he keeps stopping in shops to ask to borrow a gun.  Willie is unaware and the situation is both comical and full of danger.

There are some great set pieces of McKay eluding the Canfields, including a magically appearing waterfall that conceals our hero, but the movie really hits its stride once Willie arrives at the Canfield home.  As they are seated for the meal, a waiter drops a tray and McKay leaps to his feet mistaking the bang for a gunshot.  During the prayer before eating, Willie looks up to find all three Canfield men have one eye open and locked on him.

Fortunately for McKay, a sudden rainstorm (recalling how his father was killed) prevents the guests from leaving.  Willie takes the opportunity to settle into the Canfield's home as a semi-permanent guest.  At one point, when he needs to leave the home to retrieve something, he casually takes the gun from the Canfield son who is guarding him and fires it into the ground.  The time it takes to reload gives him the seconds he needs to exit.

Of course, ultimately our hero has to leave the safety of the house and we are treated to a fantastic chase sequence that is visually very imaginative.  There's a great tracking shot following McKay and his pursuers that may be a first for me during the marathon.

Then there is the climax.  McKay has escaped his enemies by improvised boat, but finds himself floating through some rapids toward a waterfall.  A rope that he had tied around his belly earlier becomes tied to a log which leads to him dangling precariously over the waterfall.  Meanwhile, Canfield's daughter ends up in the water herself trying to save him.  And she's now heading for the waterfall.  The stunt at the end blew my mind.

There's a lot to love here.  They sell the idea that in this place the Canfields could gun down Willie in the middle of the street with no repercussions.  I love the visual image of Willie's dream home literally exploding when he finds the estate he inherited.  There are some great sight gags (is that a woman or a horse?) and comedy beats that are perfectly timed.

Still, I don't think the film is completely successful at balancing the danger of McKay's situation with the comedy.  The jokes work best when they relieve the tension of a situation.  There are moments of slapstick for the sake of slapstick that feel out of place.

As far as the acting, Keaton is superb here.  His previous roles have not called on him to do much, but you can feel his fear and trepidation at every turn in Our Hospitality.  In addition, Joe Roberts is great and menacing as the Canfield patriarch and the rest of the film is populated with some great character actors.

Keaton's latest is my favorite of his to date.  As I said, it doesn't always manage its tone well and I could have lost some of the opening train sequence and not missed it.  This one was definitely worth my time and would be worth yours too.

****1/2 out of *****

NOTES: Keaton was apparently a big fan of trains.  Word has it he set the bulk of the movie in 1930 so he could build a replica of Stephenson's Rocket, one of the first steam trains.

The baby in the prologue was Keaton's actual son, Buster Keaton, Jr.  Natalie Talmadge is Keaton's real life wife and Joe Keaton (Buster's father) played one of the train engineers. Gotta love nepotism!

Joe Roberts suffered a stroke during production and died shortly after filming.  He played the bad guy in most of Keaton's films to that point. 

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Merry-Go-Round (1923)

Directed by Erich von Stroheim Rupert Julian
Starring Norman Kerry, Mary Philbin and Dale Fuller
Produced by Universal Pictures


A count in pre-WWI Vienna enjoys the easy life.  He has servants that awaken him (though he is as eager to get out of bed as a teenager on the first day of school). He has his bath drawn and his meals brought to him.  He has a carefree attitude that allows him to joke around with his staff.  Everything is going well...

...except he is getting married and isn't thrilled about it.  He's not against the idea; he'd just like to put it off.  Unfortunately, the Emperor decrees that the union will happen and happen soon and the count has to go with it.

That doesn't stop him from enjoying life.  One night he goes out with his friends to a carnival where he impresses with his marksmanship in a rifle game, but he soon catches the eye a lowly (but beautiful) organ grinder.  It's her job to keep the music playing as the merry-go-round spins.  He strikes up a conversation with her and the mutual attraction is obvious. He lies to her about his background and claims to be a necktie salesman.  Their flirting is soon interrupted by Huber, the tyrant who runs the carnival and wants to see the organ grinder grind.

The pair see each other socially and the count meets the girl's father, a kind man who distrusts the aristocracy.  The count tries to get out of his upcoming nuptials, but once the emperor makes a decree, it's hard to get out of it.

The girl has her own problems.  Huber has designs on her and when she rebuffs him, she is beaten by the villain.  This is interrupted by her father who stabs Huber in the shoulder.  Unfortunately, the police only see the father's transgression and not Huber's so off to jail with the innocent man!

Who will the count marry?  What will become of the organ grinder and her father?  And how do World War I, a flower pot and an orangutan come into play?

So, the movie begins and I am completely captivated.  The count is a great character.  He's aristocratic, but you can see that while he enjoys the trappings of his social status, he's not taking them too seriously.  He likes his job as one of the emperor's confidantes, but he can take or leave the life he has.  He's geting married because... well, that's what counts do, right?

So when he meets the organ grinder, you can feel the attraction.  Their initial flirtation is well-played and the "meet cute" gets you invested in the outcome.  They also have set up the perfect obstacles to their relationship: the crushing expectations of the count's aristocratic life and the maniacal overlord of the carnival who wants to keep the girl for himself.

So how does such an awesome set up go so spectacularly off the rails?

First, the count becomes melancholy about his predicament which strips all of the life out of what was a very interesting character.  He spends the entire movie looking sad or ashamed about his every action.  Where the count in the first third commanded the screen, he shrunk into the background for most of the rest.

Beyond that, the movie begins to take find its drama not in the character's central conflict, but in a parade of escalating melodramatic incidents, each one more ridiculous then the first.  SPOILERS AHEAD!  After the father is released from prison, he and his daughter go to work for a rival carnival.  Huber crashes the carnival and drops a flower pot onto the father from a couple of stories up.  The orangutan that performs in the rival carnival is so incensed by this that it sneaks out of its cage, climbs through Huber's window, kills him and sneaks back into his cage.  Huber's death is never referenced again.

The silliness of the story wastes some fantastic production design and camera work.  The carnival sets are spectacular and give the viewer a great sense of place.  And the count's world is appropriately lavish.  There are also individual scenes in here that are so well shot that I couldn't believe the detail I was seeing on the screen.  Gorgeous.

Seriously, this dude keeps showing up for no reason.

I should note there is this bizarre framing device of a merry-go-round circling what looks to be the devil.  The demon seems very pleased with the spinning merry-go-round.  It's one of those touches that screams to the audience to take the movie more seriously than is deserved.  


Merry-Go-Round would be better titled as Roller Coaster. It takes you up to see how great it could have been, but, just as you get a glimpse, it hurtles to the ground.  I liked the first third which made the bitterness of the rest that much harder to take.

**1/2 out of *****

NOTE: The film was primarily directed by Erich von Stroheim, who is one of the most important directors of the next twenty years (though I have not seen his work yet).  Von Stroheim was fired toward the end of production and replaced by Julian.  I haven't a great sense of how much of what's on screen is von Stroheim versus Julian.

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Haldane of the Secret Service (1923)

Harry Houdini's one and only facial expression

Directed by Harry Houdini
Starring Harry Houdini, Gladys Leslie, William Humphrey
Produced by Houdini Picture Corporation

Okay, this is where I write my synopsis of what happened in this movie.  Only, I have no idea what happened in this movie.

There are counterfeiters.  There is at least one murder.  There's a passing reference to drugs.  There's a stolen piece of art that the Chinese care about.

Houdini plays an agent of some sort, but that's never spelled out very clearly.  He is the son of another slain agent, so he sort of wants vengeance.  He runs all over the world to track the mysterious Dr. Yu and his vaguely criminal ring.  We never really see them doing anything bad, but Houdini doesn't like them and that should be good enough.

There is also a love interest.  She's one of the bad guys.  Except that she's not.  But she goes with the bad guys to England and France in order to... Ow, my head hurts.

So narratively, this is a mess.  What else?

Title cards.  This movie has more dialogue than any movie I have seen.  I would guess out of 84 minutes of film, 30 are spent reading.  Most of the dialogue is pointless.  We get the mood and interaction from the actors.  We do not need it spelled out.

There are flashbacks.  Houdini asks someone what happened and they recount the tale as we see it on screen.  Repeatedly.  I'm never sure if we are supposed to believe the retelling we are being shown.  Unreliable narrators can be a fun plot device (see Usual Suspects).  Here, the fact that any given narrator may be a liar never even occurs to the Houdini.

As for Houdini the actor, all I can say is he is a great magician.  He has one emotion through the entire film.  I would hate to attempt to characterize what that emotion is because I'm not sure anyone involved with the production knows.

The only good image of the film is a moment where the captured Haldane is strapped to a water wheel that begins churning.  The image of a man rotating around amidst the torrent of water is striking.  It's also a great metaphor for the film: the torture seems purposeless as he is not actually going underwater and the whole wheel soon falls apart, like the plot of this movie.

In the end, our hero is not even around for the climax and reveal of who the bad guy is.  I was genuinely surprised about the identity of Dr. Yu, though I can't decide whether that shock comes from the screenplay or my own complete disinterest in anything the movie offered during the previous 80 minutes.  Haldane does end up with the girl who is possibly already married to two different people and in league with an international cartel, but hey: details, right?

Haldane of the Secret Service is a terrible movie.  It's the world's most ineffective agent against the world's most incompetent criminal conspiracy.  In his last film role, Houdini proves he has one last trick up his sleeve: the ability to make an hour-and-a-half of my life disappear.

1/2 out of ***** stars

NOTE: The Kino DVD contained some archival footage of Houdini doing some escapes as well as part of a film in which he survives a plane crash.  Those are all far more interesting than this movie.  There is also a 1910 Houdini-inspired film Slippery Jim which is incredible in its inventiveness.

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Safety Last! (1923)

Really, was there another image I should have used?

Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Starring Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis and Bill Strother
Produced by Hal Roach Studios

"The Boy" is ready to make the leap to the big city.  Get a good job, make some money, bring his girl into town and marry her.  Sounds like a plan.  In fact "The Girl" likes this plan so much, she is positive "The Boy" will succeed.  The Boy of course starts feeling the pressure.

He hops a train (after accidentally carrying off a baby instead of his suitcase) and finds himself working the fabric counter at a department store.  The pay is not great.  He can't pay his rent, let alone make good on his promise to the girl back home.  So, he pawns his phonograph (much to the chagrin of his roommate) and buys some jewelry to send back home.

Of course, this only convinces the girl that she should head to the city to visit her successful boyfriend.  Faced with the choice between coming clean and developing a hair-brained scheme... well, we all know which option has the comedy gold.  The boy tries to convince the girl he has an incredibly important job at the store and begins bossing some very confused employees around.  He's exhausted from attempting to keep up the charade, but then he overhears his boss say he'll give a cool grand to someone who comes up with a plan that attracts people to the store.  The boy accepts the challenge because...

Earlier in the tale, the boy's roommate escaped from the police by scaling the walls of a building.  The boy figures he can just get his friend to replicate the stunt on the walls of the 12-story building his store is in, but this time with advertising.  Hundreds of people show up for the event.  Unfortunately, so does the cop who was chasing the roommate at the beginning of the tale.  The roommate can't get anywhere near the building or he'll be pinched.

The boy swallows hard and decides to climb the building himself.  And up he goes.  His friend is set to relieve him in the middle of the climb, but there are complications.  Will the boy survive the stunt?  Will he get the girl?

Safety Last! is considered the Harold Lloyd masterpiece.  While Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were carving their niches in the pantheon, Lloyd was working on a different level best described as "holy $%!&, did he really just do that!" cinema.  And staging the last third of your movie as a free climb up a 12 story building certainly falls into that category of movies.

The actual sequence in which Lloyd scales the building is thrilling.  I've seen the iconic image of him hanging from the clock hundreds of times, but when the moment comes there is a real sense of danger.  The movie is incredibly inventive in throwing up obstacles to Lloyd as he climbs and I won't spoil them here.  The camera placement throughout is perfect as we see Lloyd up close, but we also get long shots of him actually scaling a building.

The only issue I have with the sequence is... well, it's not very comedic.  That's not a problem per se, but when a film is advertised as a comedy and comes across as more amusingly thrilling then funny, it's worth warning people what they are getting into.

The rest of the movie is charitably hit or miss.  I loved the comic timing of Lloyd attempting to board the train at the outset.  The visual gag of how he and the roommate hide from the rent-seeking landlady is laugh-out-loud funny.  And some of the moments in the department store are at least worth a smile.  The camerawork and editing throughout are all top-shelf with some interesting dolly shots and a really great use of close-ups, medium and long shots.

However, there are also a lot of jokes that go on way too long.  The sequence where the fabric counter is invaded by bargain-seeking women could have been cut in half.  The moments where the boy is trying to convince the girl that he's a bigwig are just painful.

There's one moment in the film halfway through that took me completely out of the movie.  The boy has brought the girl to his boss' currently empty office and pretends it is his own.  He hears the boss coming so he has his girl sit down in the boss' chair, close her eyes and open her mouth.  When the boss enters, he explains to the boss that the girl fainted and he should run to get water.  But the girl hadn't actually fainted!  She could hear every word he said!  Why didn't she question him on this point?  It was like when he said close your eyes, she went into an actual coma.  Bizarre.

Still, my problems come in moments, in drips and drabs.  The whole of Safety Last! is justifiably a classic for its amazing final third. The movie's sole purpose is to propel Lloyd onto that building and give film lovers one of the most iconic sequences of any era.  Mission accomplished.

****1/2 out of *****
Photo from The Droid You're Looking For

Check it!  Full version of the movie embedded below!

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