Buster Keaton at the LAMB!

This month's featured actor at the LAMB is Buster Keaton.  Lots of great stuff over there for you to check out! 

I of course managed to miss this but you can find my Buster Keaton articles here.

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City Girl (1930)

Directed by F.W. Murnau
Starring Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan and David Torrence
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

Lem Tustine works on his family's wheat farm. They are getting by, but just barely. His father sends Lem into Chicago to sell the wheat harvest. His dad has calculated to the penny what the wheat needs to sell for in order to avoid financial ruin.

The bad news for Lem is an oversupply of wheat leads the price to start dropping right after he arrives. If he sells immediately, the price is less than what his dad commanded him to get. But if he waits much longer, the price may be even lower. He chooses to sell.

The good news for Lem is he meets a cute waitress at a diner in the city. Kate hates her job and romanticizes what a life in the country would be like. She and Lem connect immediately and when he stands up for Kate against a rude customer? It's love.

The two marry and return to the farm in Minnesota. Lem's mom and sister love the new arrival, but his father is not pleased. At all. He sees a son who allowed a woman to distract him from his job and a woman only interested in the family's money.

Kate and her new father-in-law have an argument and he slaps her. Lem can't bring himself to confront his father and a devastated Kate withdraws from her hubby. He takes to sleeping in the loft with the farmhands.

One of the farmhands begins flirting with Kate, giving her a potential way out. Will Kate leave Lem and her life on the farm? Will Lem stand up to his father? And can the family and farmhands pull together to harvest the crop before a devastating hailstorm arrives?


City Girl is the tale of a boy and a girl in love and a romance that is threatened by family and duty. It's a tale as old as time, a melodrama that people have seen play out on stage and screen ad nauseum.

The difference here of course is that this tale is told by F.W. Murnau.

Murnau never does anything traditionally. He's not one to set up a stationary camera and call "action." So his camera swoops across a trading floor board to show its scope. When Lem is alone and overwhelmed by the city, the camera pulls away, seemingly swallowing him in the bustle of urban life.

The film quickly moves through Lem and Kate falling in love and it works for the most part. I buy the romance and, while the wedding feels like a rash decision, it's a telling one, building the character of the newlyweds.

The arrival of the married couple at the farm provides the most beautifully cinematic moment of the film. Kate is overwhelmed by the fields of wheat and begins running and skipping through the landscape with Lem racing behind her. The camera moves with them and you truly get a sense the characters have arrived at their own Shangri-La.

City Girl features some strong character work from a group of actors I was previously unfamiliar with. David Torrence (Ernest's brother!) is particularly good as Lem's father. He is clearly the heavy of the piece, but he never becomes cartoonishly evil. His performance keeps the character grounded which adds to the tension of the final act.

As good as many aspects of the film are, City Girl does feel a bit rudderless in its middle act. Farmhands are introduced and characters just wander through the farmhouse, bumping into and away from one another. Characters are angry with one another, but nothing happens. It's not until the film's climax when the stakes are really raised.

The farmhands are interesting characters, but their motivations seem to change according to the whims of the script. Some of their decisions feel contrived, not earned. At one point, their are given a sort of ultimatum by Lem's father and their response makes no sense.

Despite the slow middle stanza, there is a lot to like here. In comparison to Murnau's earlier work, the plot and themes are slight, but that doesn't prevent the director from creating a memorable film.

**** out of *****

Photos from Brandon's Movie Memory

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1930: So, the Great Depression Was... Wait! Someone Invented Chocolate Chip Cookies?!

Time to kick off decade number three on the site. Obviously, the event that will dominate and inform film and beyond was the Great Depression. Movies become even more prominent as a cheap form of entertainment as people struggle to get by.

There's a lot of interesting pop culture news (Constantinople becomes Istanbul), but the invention of the chocolate chip cookie has to dominate, right? I mean, is there a better mainstream dessert? (That's a rhetorical question because the answer is "no.")

In the film world, the big news for me is the first appearance of Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes label. While the initial offering features a character named Bosko, it's nice to know Bugs and the Road Runner are coming soon.

In other film news, Little Caesar is released as the first real gangster film. Greta Garbo appears in her first talkie and unknown Marlene Dietrich stars in The Blue Angel. Film dubbing debuts for foreign markets, presaging an age of Kung fu films. And silent screen great Lon Chaney, Sr. died at the age of 47.

So what are we watching? Murnau had a release (City Girl) so... definitely. My dive into The Marx Brothers continues with Animal Crackers. The Blue Angel, Anna Christie and All Quiet on the Western Front will definitely find their way onto the list.

One last note: long time followers of the site may have noticed I am spending a lot more time in each film year. That of course is driven by regret that I rushed through some early years. So I do plan on going back and catching some older films I missed the first time. The focus will still be on the "current" year's films, but don't be shocked to see some older titles start showing up.

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Final Thoughts on the 1920s

Two decades down.

Eight to go.

It's been a fun two-plus years covering twenty years of Hollywood history. I've learned a lot. So before I leave for the 1930s, let's drop some final thoughts....

Sound: The Best (and Worst) Thing to Happen to Film

It's hard to overstate the way The Jazz Singer altered the cinematic landscape. In just a couple of short years, everyone was hopping on the talkie bandwagon and movies changed forever.

Obviously, we know how the leap to sound turns out just by heading to any multiplex screen. And the change is undoubtedly a good thing. However, I cannot help but be a little sad.

Beyond the loss of a very specific type of film, sound created a couple of unfortunate side effects. First, film regressed. When you look at the films of the last half of the decade, cinema was pushing boundaries. Dramatic camera moves, quick cuts and almost dialogue free productions produced some of my favorite images. Sound forced the cameras to be still again and actors had to stay near the stationary microphones. The cameras had to be enclosed in booths so the mics would not pick up the sound of the film rolling. It was a step back until the technology could catch back up.

More than that, sound really created the foreign film and the baggage that goes with it. When you had to "read" every movie, it did not matter what language the actors were speaking; you just slap the right intertitles on the film. Cinema was a universal language. And some of the best films were foreign. With sound, now the language matters and a lot of filmgoers to this day stop going to see films they have to read.


Germans rule

In light of the above, it's fascinating that most of my favorite directors were foreign. Specifically, German.

F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang captured my imagination like no other directors in the 1920s. Murnau moved from Gothic horror to an epic tale of a doorman to a romance that blossoms when a husband decides not to kill his wife. Lang gave us the goofy fun of an adventurous playboy, the shadowy world of an omnipotent criminal mastermind and a vision of a future city and its technology. I loved them all. I'm happy to see more of Lang's work, but knowing I'm nearing the end of Murnau's filmography is depressing.

Buster Makes Charlie Eat His Shoe

If you'd asked me coming into the 1920s whether Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin had the better decade, I would have had to go with The Tramp. But Chaplin underwhelmed in his few offerings while Keaton was both prolific and consistently great.

Where Did All the Teens Go?

The 1910s were dominated by D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Douglas Fairbanks amongst others. Where are they a decade later? Fairbanks had a decent decade, but the rest were at best mediocre. Pickford was almost embarrassing, continuing to play children long past her prime. And seeing how far Griffith fell from a decade in which he defined what film should be is downright depressing.

Disney Is Odd and Other Toon Observations

One of the things I was most excited for was to track the early career of Walt Disney. Having watched a fair bit of the Alice comedies, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and (of course) Mickey Mouse, I have come to one conclusion:

Walt Disney was a weird dude.

I won't go into all the details here, but his toons tended to feature some inventive animal torture and at their worst, racist.

The easy retort is that Disney reflected the style of the time, but you do not see the same type of characterizations in Felix the Cat for example. Disney was seemingly on his own here, or at the very least, in limited company.

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Top Ten Films of the 1920s

Well, we've reached the end if another decade. A little over two years and I'm 20 percent through my hundred years.

Below is a list of the top ten essential films from the decade. If you went through these, you'd be getting a pretty darn good highlight reel of what was happening in the twenties.  These are of course based on the films I saw; there may be others out there waiting for me to discover.

Without further ado:



10. Tol'able David

A beautifully rendered melodrama, Tol'able David tells a story of the death of childhood innocence. It revels in the quiet moments that make you appreciate the idyllic existence of David and his family. Richard Barthelmess is fantastic in the title role and character actor Ernest Torrance provides a memorable villain.

9. The Iron Horse

John Ford. Western. Enough said, right? The strange thing about The Iron Horse's plot is that it's the least interesting aspect of the film. Where the film shines is in Ford's detailed observations about how life on the railroad progressed. He creates an American mythology I find fascinating.

8. The Seven Chances

I tried to avoid including more than one movie by the same director in my top ten, but Buster Keaton is the exception to that rule. The Seven Chances may be the funniest film I saw in the 1920s. Keaton needs to get married or forfeit an inheritance and the crazy turns this story takes never fail to make me laugh.

7. The Unknown

It's not surprising to me that a Lon Chaney film ended up on my top 10. I would have never guessed The Unknown would be the pick. This tale of a fugitive on the run posing as an armless circus performer features Chaney in one of the best performances I have ever seen.

6. Flesh and the Devil

Flesh and the Devil is a film that was not on my radar at all before I caught it as part of this marathon. Now, that I've seen the film, I cannot get its imagery out of my head. The inventive lighting in the opening scenes. The picturesque island surrounded by ice. Most of all, it stands as a melodramatic examination of the love amongst three people.

5. Greed

Erich Von Stroheim's adaptation of the novel McTeague is filled with repulsive and grotesque characters, each with their lust for more. Every character and beat is exaggerated. The downward spiral that these characters ride and Stroheim's visual flair create a beautiful paradox of a film, an epic that remains intimate.

4. The Kid

For the most part, Charlie Chaplin disappointed me this decade. The Kid is an absolute exception to that. The Tramp's touching yet funny tale of a vagabond and his adopted son never plays a false note. And watching "the kid" momentarily ripped from the only parent he has ever known is one of the most heartbreaking scenes ever committed to celluloid.

3. Metropolis

If not the best film of the 1920s, Metropolis may be my favorite. Fritz Lang's epic tale of a future world is on its surface a triumph of artistic design. But below the film's slick veneer, a tragic revenge story plays out and tough (yet prescient) political questions are asked.

2. The General

I have officially come full circle on this. After struggling with my own preconceptions that this was a comedy (it's much more), two additional viewing have completely won me over. Keaton (again) both directs and stars in the Civil War-era tale of a man, a girl and a locomotive. It's endlessly inventive with epic action scenes and yes, a fair bit of humor.

1. The Last Laugh

F.W. Murnau's story of a hotel doorman whose role (and world) are stripped from him is about as perfect as film gets. The blending of Murnau's expressionist imagery and Emil Jannings' performance produce some of the purest and most compelling visual storytelling ever.

Honorable mentions include Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, The Jazz Singer, The Last Command, Sherlock, Jr., Steamboat Bill, Jr., Nosferatu, Steamboat Willie, Safety Last and Beyond the Rocks.

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Decade Wrap Up: Top Actors and Actresses of the 1920s

Our wrap up of the 1920s continues with a look at the decade's best performers. A couple of basic rules: the performers listed had to be in multiple films I watched and obviously they had to be good (at least in my opinion).

I had originally planned separate actor and actress lists, but in going back through the movies I saw, the female list was a bit sparse. I don't know if this was a function of the films I selected or a lack of solid female roles. I'm curious what others think and would love to hear the case for some people I missed.

On to the list!


10. Brigette Helm
She's good in The Love of Jeanne Ney, but Helm shines in dual roles in Metropolis. Her Maria is a virginal beauty looking to change the world for the better, while her faux-Maria works to tear it down. It's a tricky juggling act, but the actress is perfect in her first big screen role.


9. Charlie Chaplin
Some may think this is too low a placement for The Tramp, but I found his work to be uneven in the 1920s. He has the perfect blend of comedy and tragedy in The Kid, but I did not like The Gold Rush at all and thought Chaplin was at best okay. He was good in the 20s, but others were better.

8. John Barrymore
I watched three of Barrymore's films from this decade. In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the actor is absolutely perfect in both roles. As the title character in Beau Brummel, Barrymore is the only thing good in a tale where a revenge scheme pivots on the hero's fashion sense. And in The Beloved Rogue, Barrymore is so over-the-top bad he is great as the swashbuckling hero in a silly action film. Barrymore is always great, even if the material around him is trash.

7. Ernest Torrance
Torrance is a bad, bad man. Or at least, he plays one on the screen. In Tol'able David, he plays the meanest, nastiest member of a trio of fugitive that takes refuge in the title character's pristine hamlet. And you just know its not going to end well. More amazing though, Torrance takes that same gruff film persona and uses it to perfect comic effect as Buster Keaton's dad in Steamboat Bill, Jr. Cinema needs its character actors and Torrance was among the best.

6. Clara Bow
Adorable. Mischievous. Clever. Bow brings all of this and more to her roles. You root for her in It and Wings. The former movie is a showcase for her. The latter underutilizes her, but she's such a presence that you feel her even when she's off screen. I need to see more of her work.

5. Fritz Rasp
As I was putting this list together, I kept coming back to Rasp. So far, he's not an actor with a ton of range (he plays slimy characters, but occasionally dials it up to creepy), but I cannot imagine anyone else filling his shoes. From Metropolis to The Love of Jeanne Ney to the not-very-good Woman in the Moon, Rasp sets a mood that makes you believe something sinister is happening behind the scenes.

4. Lon Chaney
I'm not shocked Chaney finds his way onto this list. I am surprised that it's not The Phantom of the Opera that's on my mind as I write about him. As good as he is there (and he is great), he is perfect in The Unknown, playing an "armless" carnival performer.

3. Gloria Swanson
Swanson may be one of the first real movie stars. She rarely played women who were second fiddle to their men and was often the outright star of her films. She influenced which movies got made and even the fashions of the day. Beyond all of that, she was a terrific actress. She elevated every production she was in during the 1920s.

2. Buster Keaton
It may be fair to knock Keaton as being too high on this list. After all, he plays the same character from film to film, right? Wrong. While it is true his movies always place him in the middle of elaborate stunt sequences, there's always a twist to his character. From his regret at losing the girl in the first act of The General to his determined joy in marrying his love in The Seven Chances, there is always something more going on behind that stone face. And besides, how many actors allow a house to fall on them in pursuit of their art?

1. Emil Jannings
A lot of my choices were hard; this one was simple. Every time Jannings is on the screen, he just commands it. In Faust, he overpowers the movie's hero in a much showier role. In The Last Laugh and The Last Command, he lifts the films onto his broad shoulders and carries them to greatness. His Oscar win for The Last Command is well-deserved.

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Decade Wrap Up: Top 5 Directors of the 1920s

We've reached the end of our second decade of film watching.  Time for the obligatory look back at the last ten years... what we liked, what we didn't and what we've learned.  It will come as a shock to no one reading this blog that I love my directors more than actors or writers so I cannot think of a better place to start than with the men who set the vision for my favorite films of the twenties.

My top five directors are...



5. Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Passion of Joan of Arc.That's all that really needs to be said, right?  I mean has there ever been a marriage of bold direction and fearless lead performance like that film.  Dreyer also made Michael, which I did not care for (but direction was not its primary issue).  Still, The Passion of Joan of Arc gets this director a lifetime pass to the amazing direction club.

4. Fred Niblo
You need at least one crowd pleaser on a list like this and who better than the director who turned Douglas Fairbanks into an action star and who worked with Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand (well directed from a terrible script). Add in the fantastic early version of Ben Hur and you have a man who knows how to mix his action with his melodrama.

3. Fritz Lang
Lang may be my favorite director of the 1920s, which is not quite the same as being the best. He has the heart of a genre geek married to a modern filmmaking style. While Woman in the Moon may have been a slight misstep (in that is was merely okay), Metropolis, Dr. Mabuse and Spiders Part 2 all captured my imagination.

2. Buster Keaton
I came into 100 Years of Movies ready, willing and able to fall in love with the 1920s' most well-known comedy star. My mistake was thinking that star would be Charlie Chaplin. Keaton is a great actor, but as a director he is absolutely fearless. The logistics of shooting The General would be enough to break most directors. Keaton one-upped himself with the finale to Steamboat Bill Jr.

1. F. W. Murnau
Nosferatu. The Last Laugh. Faust. Sunrise.  If there's a director who had a better decade, I have not seen him yet. Even when he wasn't great (Faust), he was always visually fascinating. And no one jumped from genre to genre the way he did. Equally at ease in gothic horror and small drama, Murnau is easily my pick as best director of the 1920s. The tragedy is knowing his premature death in the early thirties means I am nearing the end of his oeuvre.

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The Love Parade (1929)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Starring Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald and Lupino Lane
Produced by Paramount Pictures

Alfred Renard is the military attache for the small nation of Sylvania stationed in Paris. It's a great gig as he gets to wine and dine and bed French women to his heart's content. Life is great until he sleeps with the wife of the ambassador. For his transgressions, Alfred is sent to his home country to face the queen's justice.

Queen Louise has problems of her own. Her advisors, foreign dignitaries and her own countrymen are pressuring the monarch to marry. Her country needs a foreign loan and a husband may be enough to show the foreign markets that Sylvania's leadership is stable.

When Alfred is brought before her, Louise reads the report of his romantic exploits and is intrigued. She invites him to dinner and a household of spying servants moves into full gossip mode when their monarch leads the young suitor into her bedroom.

Soon, there is a wedding, but Alfred is not the "king." He's the prince consort. His only duty seems to be to save his strength for when the queen is ready for him (if you know what I mean).

Alfred begins yearning for his life back in Paris. Can the queen begin to trust her husband with affairs of state? Or will he escape the royal bedroom and jeopardize Sylvania's finances?


The Love Parade is billed as the first movie musical ever. Previous musicals like The Jazz Singer would include songs, but they were not critical to the plot. Here, Alfred and Louise are singing about their feelings and about their frustrations. It's character exposed by song.

The Love Parade is also supremely silly, moving its characters through a plot that makes no sense. If the foreign ambassador thinks Louise isn't happily married, he'll renege on the loan? A count who embarrassed queen and country is punished with a dinner date? Nonsensical.

Oddly though, it all sort of works in this light romantic romp. Helping things considerably are the two leads whose chemistry and mischievousness leap off the screen. Maurice Chevalier is particularly good as Alfred, milking the humor from every scene with a knowing smirk and a wink to the audience.

The songs are effective, but not terribly memorable. Alfred and Louise's duet "My Love Parade," describing how the queen has all the best parts of the consort's previous conquests, has the best chance of getting stuck in your head. The funniest song hands down is "Nobody's Using It Now," a lament from Alfred that he is not appreciated by his wife. It is slyly bawdy and Chevalier knows just handle the material.

The Love Parade's opening moments left me frustrated, but the charm of the leads won me over. The film was a pleasant surprise that fans of movie musicals should give a shot.

**** out of *****

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Captain Fracasse (1929)

Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti and Henry Wulschleger
Starring Pierre Blanchar, Lien Deyers and Charles Boyer

There are a lot of things that make a movie great. Great characters. Towering performances. A premise that captivates you and themes that leave you itching to talk about it with friends.

Captain Fracasse has none of these things.

A movie can still be good despite the lack of these elements. One great performance by an actor or a couple of great set pieces can keep you coming back for more.

Sadly, Captain Fracasse lacks these elements as well.

A film can be mediocre. If a director can get across a basic story in a comprehensible way and keep the actors in focus and in frame....

I think you know where I'm going.


Captain Fracasse is an astoundingly awful silent. This plot (a poor nobleman joins a troop of traveling actors, falls in love and must fight to save his girl) has potential as a comedy or an action film or even a mystery.

The film makes feeble grabs at each of these. But you cannot be a comedy with characters this dour and humorless. And you can't be an actioner when you only stage a couple of sword fights, and those consist entirely of the same three moves repeated over and over again. And you are certainly not a mystery if at the first opportunity, your disguised hero walks up to the villain and proclaims he can't wait to reveal himself later.

All of the above would be enough to make this an okay, but boring affair. However, when you couple it with inept direction and dialogue, the film moves to new kinds of terrible. It is as though the makers of Captain Fracasse have never actually seen a film before.

Shots are out of focus and subjects are out of frame. Not in artistic ways that may demonstrate uncertainty or man's divided nature. It's sheer ineptitude. And it's frustrating.

The final nail in the coffin of this dead-on-arrival effort is its dialogue. Silents are at their best when the intertitles are sparse and the action conveys most of what we need to know.

Here, the intertitles fill the screen with flowery language that adds little to the story. At one point, in the middle of a sword fight (!?), one of the combatants starts talking. And it goes on for three screens.

Captain Fracasse is a film that wears its ineptitude and plodding plot like boxing gloves and pummels its audience for the full 15 rounds. In the end, one of the bad guys is killed quickly as an act of mercy. If only the film offered its audience the same.

* out of *****

Photo from Dreamland Cafe

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