Daddy Long Legs (1919)

Mary Pickford does precocious better than anyone

Directed by Marshall Neilan
Starring Mary Pickford, Milla Davenport, Percy Haswell, Fay Lemport
Produced by Mary Pickford Company

Jerusha "Judy" Abbott (Pickford) is a young orphan girl who gets her name from a phone book and a gravestone.  At the age of 12, she finds herself the leader and guardian of the hard-scrabble youth of the John Grier home.  And protection is something they constantly need.  The matriarch of the orphanage is an overbearing dictator who burns children's fingers on the stove for misbehaving.

Judy attempts to organize a strike against the hated prune, accidentally finds herself drunk, steals a doll to provide a literal moment of happiness to a dying child and defends the children from the dictatorial trustees.  One of the trustees takes a liking to the precocious Judy and convinces a new trustee to sponsor her for college.  The trustee wishes to remain unknown to Judy.  She only catches a glimpse of his elongated shadow and nicknames him Daddy-Long-Legs.

Once at school, Judy sets out to write the great American novel so she can pay back her anonymous benefactor.  She also finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between the young Jimmie McBride (Neilan) and the older Jarvis Pendleton (Mahlon Hamilton).  Will she find love with either of the men?  And who is John Smith, her mysterious sponsor.

The good news first: Mary Pickford is predictably solid as Judy.  She is humorous and sympathetic, sometimes in the same moment.  She shines during the orphanage scenes, where she is initiating a lot of mayhem with a mischievous smile and a gleam in her eye. 

The other stand out performance is Davenport as the head of the orphanage.  It's a one dimensional part, but she takes it and runs with it.  There's a moment where Judy thinks she's gotten away but the headmistress knows right where she is.  Davenport gives this evil smile, anticipating capturing her tormentor.  Well done.

That said, this movie is a tonal and structural mess.  Judy is 12 years old and an orphan.  Then she's in college with a grey-haired man pining for her.  She an uneducated orphan who can't pronounce half of the words she uses.  Then she's a published author.  It's possible some time went by, but there is no hint of that in the movie.

The movie also downshifts without a clutch between humor and tragedy.  After Judy cleverly steals the doll and brings into her dying friend, the next scene is the child actually dying.  There's no transition between these moments.  They just happen.

Daddy Long Legs spends a lot of time establishing that Judy is the only reason these orphans have any joy in their lives.  Then she heads to college... and completely forgets about them.  Oh, that is until she writes a book about her orphanage experience.  It seems odd that the girl wouldn't use her position at the end of the film to help the other orphans.

The other recurring theme in Pickford movies is present here: creepy old men love Mary Pickford.  Pendleton looks like he's in his 50s.  Judy is at most in her teens. When he professes his love for her, she points out he's more suited to be her grandmother.  The film even knows this is weird.  So why does it keep pushing the romance?

There are a lot of plot threads that pop up randomly and are dropped.  Jimmie is accused of running someone over with his car and taken off at gunpoint.  Never referenced again.  A girl falls down a well.  Did she ever get out?  Pendleton breaks a tail light on his car.  No reason for that to have been in the script either.  And what is with the random appearance of the honest-to-goodness Cupid?  It's an out of place moment of fantasy.

Finally, Neilan has no sense of pacing in this movie.  There's a scene where Judy and another orphan are drunk.  There are amusing moments, but it goes on WAY too long.  There's a moment in the scene where a dog ends up drunk as well.  We spend over a minute of screen time just watching the dog stumble around.  It was funny... for the first ten seconds.

This is not a bad film, but it's not a great one either.  It's another solid performance by Pickford in an okay story, but terribly put together.

** out of *****

Watched on DVD through Netflix

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Another View of... 1919

A look at other sites' takes on the "current" year.

The Oyster Princess by I Shoot the Pictures
This one gets a "highly recommend" from a fellow LAMB and I may need to make time to see it.  The premise sounds like a great comedic set-up, and the screenshots definitely have me intrigued.


Spiders, Part 1 by Silent Volume
Chris Edwards provides a great recap of the first Fritz Lang movie I caught in my marathon.  The opening of his recap shows he had a similar reaction to the awesomeness that is Kay Hoog.

Broken Blossoms by Movie Feast
Doug Tilley enjoyed this one from D.W. Griffith in his short capsule review.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Film Forager
Alex enjoyed this as I did (mainly for the visuals and mood).  So why read her review?  Three words: German. Crispin. Glover.

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Sunnyside (1919)

I have no idea what is going on here...

Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Tom Wilson
Produced by First National Pictures

Charlie is a farmhand we can all relate to.  He's woken in the morning for work, but just wants five more minutes.  He waits impatiently for a hen to deliver his breakfast (directly into the pan no less).  And when he should be paying attention at work, he's day dreaming (with predictably catastrophic results).


The only person that keeps his full attention is the village belle.  But when a city slicker comes rolling into town, Charlie finds himself in competition with the newcomer for the girl's hand.  Will he win her hand?  Or was it all just a dream?

Seriously.

Was it all just a dream?  Because I'm still confused.  This feels like an experiment from Chaplin, but it's one gone awry.  It's not funny.  It's not interesting.  It just meanders about for the first half and then turns into a convoluted mess once the romance is introduced.


There are moments that feel like they should be funny, but they just don't go anywhere.  The only truly funny sequence in the story is the opening as the farmer tries to get Charlie out of bed.  From there it is all downhill.

One other scene worth discussion is a moment where Charlie is knocked unconscious and dreams of four fairies dancing about him in the woods.  It feels out of place and doesn't give you any direction as to how to feel.  Is it meant to be funny? It seems like it's trying for whimsy, but not quite getting there.

By the end, I lost track of whether we were in a dream or not.  Actually, I think I just stopped caring.  And that's the first time I've said that about a Chaplin film.

*1/2 out of *****

Photo from Observations on film art

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Spiders, Part 1 (1919)

Kay Hoog is way cooler than you

Directed by Fritz Lang
Starring Carl de Vogt, Ressel Orla, Georg John
Produced by Decla-Bioscop AG

Kay Hoog is the handsomest, most awesome man in the world.

He's Indiana Jones.  He's James Bond.  He's got a dash of Chuck Norris.  He's the ultimate adventurer playboy.

During the party that opens the action, all of the guests are wondering when Kay Hoog is going to arrive.  Will he win the big yacht race against Japan tomorrow?

Hoog arrives with a message in a bottle.  It's from a missing professor with a map to an Incan city of gold in Peru.  He's not racing any yachts tomorrow.  He's got a treasure to find.  If any of the attendees hoping to see a boat race are put out, they are not letting on.  Every man at the party wants to be him and every woman wants to be with him.

All except one, that is.  Lio Sha leads the mysterious Spiders who also have designs on the Incan gold.  They break into Hoog's mansion and steal the map.  That does not sit well with our hero.  He asks a friend to take him to Peru by balloon and parachutes from the basket.  You get the sense he travels by balloon not because it makes sense, but because he needs to choose the most dangerous path.  Hoog walks into the bad guys' lair and steals back his map (and another treasure map).  A chase ensues, but of course our lead gets away.  He's Kay Hoog!

Ultimately, Hoog and the Spiders descend upon the Incan city.  Hoog rescues a priestess from a snake and she is immediately smitten.  Why?  Because he's Kay Hoog.  That's why.

Sha is captured and about to be sacrificed, but Hoog saves her.  Our hero escapes the city with his priestess, while Sha and the Spiders try to get the gold.  But could a curse await the greedy, shadowy organization?


Spiders, Part 1 is silly, but a ton of fun.  Lang keeps the action moving throughout, never allowing his camera to stay on one scene to long.  Sometimes his editing is too frenetic and, particularly during the film's climactic showdown, you lose track of who is who.

Still, as a light adventure romp this was very entertaining.  None of the actors have much to do, but that somehow seems okay.  The film ends on a cliffhanger of sorts that leads to Part 2, released in 1920 (Spiders was originally to be a four part series, but only the first two were made).

Lang is a director on my shame list so I am anxious to see more of his work.  There's a lot of promise here, but the execution is uneven.  That said, Spiders may have been my most fun experience watching a 100 Years film yet.

*** out of *****

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Photo from The Silent Era

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A Sammy in Siberia (1919)

Lloyd up a tree... you'd think that would be funny...

Directed by Hal Roach
Starring Harold Lloyd, 'Snub' Pollard and Bebe Daniels
Produced by Rolin Films

An American soldier in Russia becomes separated from his troops through his overwhelming in eptitude.  While lost in a Siberian forest, he crosses paths with a woman who has escaped from the Russian soldiers that have invaded her home.  Can the American protect the woman and her family from the invaders?

Another Harold Lloyd comedy and this one is a tonal mess.  In the opening scenes as the woman's home is attacked, her father is shot.  He falls over.  He seems dead, but this is a comedy so a couple of minutes later he is up and walking around like nothing happened.  Still having the old man seemingly killed is not the best way to get the funny bone going.

Lloyd doesn't show up until about two minutes in.  He cannot keep his hat on and marches off in the wrong direction from his comrades.  He's chased by a wolf and ends up in a tree to escape.  The woman comes along and pets the wolf.  See?  The wolf that was chasing him through the forest was really docile.  Hilarious, right?

Of course, once Lloyd crosses paths with the enemy, he becomes a model of bravery and skill.  He singlehandedly dispatches a dozen men from the woman's home (despite his earlier ineptitude).

This is material handled with a much defter touch in Shoulder Arms.  The only real positive here is it is only seven minutes long so you can get through this short pretty quickly.

*1/2 out of *****

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Broken Blossoms (1919)

Barthelmess with the amazing Lillian Gish

Directed by D.W. Griffith
Starring Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Donald Crisp
Produced by United Artists

Cheng Huan leaves his native China on a mission to sow the tenets of Buddhism among those in England.  However, he soon finds himself as a shopkeeper in the Limehouse district of London, spending his days smoking opium.  His only joy comes from seeing the young Lucy pass by his store.  Despite her ragged clothes, Cheng sees her inner beauty and admires from afar.

Lucy lives a difficult life herself.  She is the daughter of a prize fighter, Battlin' Burrows, who thinks nothing of taking out his aggressions on the girl.  So miserable is Lucy that she literally must grab the corners of her mouth to force a smile.

After one particularly violent attack by her father, Lucy wanders from her home and collapses in Cheng's doorway.  The former missionary takes the girl in and cares for her.  Though clearly smitten, he never takes advantage.  Can the two find love?  And what will happen when Battlin' Burrows learns his daughter is with a foreigner?


Broken Blossoms seems like almost an experiment in movie-making from D.W. Griffith.  Can he take the techniques he used to tell the massive, epic stories in Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation to not only tell a much more intimate tale, but to make that story feel just as epic?

On this count, the movie almost entirely succeeds and even surpasses his earlier work.  The final act of the film is assembled into a dizzying array of close-ups, medium and long shots that feel very modern in their editing.  Toward the end, Griffith intercuts between Battlin's boxing match and a tender moment between Lucy and Cheng. The impact gives Lucy's scene even more tension as the action in both the ring and Cheng's apartment build.

The three main leads are fantastic. Gish brings a melancholy to the performance that no other actress could have matched.  In the end, as she tries to hide from her father, her terror becomes crazed beyond anything I have seen before.  You believe she is in fear for her life.  Barthelmess brings a dignity and nobility to his role and Crisp is menacing as the brutish antagonist.

None of that is to say the film is perfect.  There are moments that become tedious, particularly in the second act as Cheng cares for Lucy.  Although we are told she was with Cheng for only one night, the events of the film made it seem to stretch longer than that.

The other major flaw from a modern perspective is the treatment of the "yellow man" in the film.  While it's easier to look past the derogatory references to the minority characters as indicative of the times, having a white actor play Cheng was distracting.  In order to look Chinese, Barthelmess walks through the film with his eyes half-closed and his eyebrows pointing up.  He never struck me as Asian as much as he did sleepy.

Unlike the problems of racism in The Birth of a Nation, which structured its story as an argument for racism, the treatment of the Chinese is a minor quibble in what is an otherwise great film.  Definitely recommend.

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

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly (also available at the Internet Archive)
Photo from Another Nickel in the Machine

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Feline Follies (1919)

Tom and Kitty get their groove on

Directed by Otto Messmer
Produced by Paramount

A cat named Tom is hanging out in front of his house when he hears a "meow" from down the street.  His curiosity piqued, he runs off and meets Miss Kitty White and immediately professes his love.  Tom prepares for a night out on the fence with his new girl and woos her with his guitar by the trashcan.  But is he prepared for the consequences of his new relationship?  And what mischief will the mice cause while Tom is out on his dates?

Don't let the name fool you.  This is the first of the Felix the Cat cartoon shorts.  Tom will get a name change in later episodes.  This is the episode that kicked off a series of cartoons that ran from 1919 until 1936.

So is it any good?

Not really.

Feline Follies is the first animation during the marathon to remind me of The Simpsons episodes that show classic Itchy and Scratchy cartoons.  It has that repetitive style that I find grating.

As far as the story, there aren't any laughs throughout. There's nothing inventive from a modern audience perspective.  Every gag has been done better on episodes of Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes.

SPOILERS! And the ending!  The closing shots are of Tom arriving to find his girl with a dozen kittens running around with our hero as the apparent father. Tom runs away to the gas plant, places a hose in his mouth and turns on the gas.  Fade out.

Is that supposed to be funny?  There are actually ways to pull off that joke, but you never get a moment to realize how Tom is reacting to the situation.  The dearth of laughs leading up to the final scene make the finale not funny, but horrifying.

The animation is okay (beyond my problems with the style) and it is only four minutes long, but I cannot recommend this one for anyone.

* out of *****

Watched on YouTube

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Out of the Inkwell: The Tantalizing Fly (1919)

Directed by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer
Produced by Max Fleischer

An artist sits down to draw his latest creation (a clown), but is constantly distracted by a fly in the room.  Perhaps his drawing can assist him in dispatching the insect?

There really is not much more to the plot than the above. This one may be the shortest film I have watched yet during the project, clocking in at under four minutes.

The fun of this is the interaction between the animated world and the real one.  The artist attempts to shoo the fly away, but the clown gets annoyed enough that he begins attacking the fly as well.  There's a sense of whimsy to the entire affair that will make you smile.

If The Tantalizing Fly were any longer I'd say to stay away, but at less than four minutes, it seems perfectly timed.  And it's an early animation by Max Fleischer who will create some amazing Superman cartoons!

*** out of *****

Watched on Google Video
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

Directed by Robert Wiene
Starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher
Produced by Decla-Bioscop AG

Francis and Alan are friends, but in love with the same woman.  A fair arrives in town featuring the mysterious Dr. Caligari and his amazing somnambulist, Cesare.  Alan asks Cesare for his fortune and the sleepwalker tells Alan he will be dead by dawn. When Francis' friend is found murdered the following morning, suspicion falls on Caligari and Cesare.

Francis begins his own investigation and discovers that the suspects are in their trailer at the fair during a subsequent murder attempt.  Who is the killer?  And what other secrets remain in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

This is the most visually stunning movie I have seen to date. It's surreal.  It's Salvador Dali through the eyes of Tim Burton.  Every wall looks like it is about to fall over.  Every door and window looks like someone has grabbed the corners and stretched them to bizarre proportions.  Jagged pathways that seem to stretch for a mile are only a couple of feet.  The town bureaucrats sit on stools five feet off the ground.  Even the ladderback chairs look like someone forgot when to stop adding to their backs.  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a wonder of production design.

If the movie were only the marvelous sets and imagery, this would be a good movie.  The interplay between the plot and the imagery is what makes the film soar.  At its heart, this is a mystery, and the plot continually shows viewers just enough to make them think the answer is obvious, just before violently yanking the rug out from under you.

The only misstep in the entire film is toward the end.  Much of the initial reveal of the killer and his methods are shown through characters reading books and placing the printed pages on the screen.  At this moment, the film slows to a crawl.  Obviously, in the sound era, it would have been easier to convey a lot of information quickly.

SPOILER!  The end of the movie shows that the surreal nature of the movie is not simply a stylistic choice, but an integral element to the plot.  Francis is revealed to be an insane asylum inmate and the entire movie is his fantasy.  Caligari is the institution's director and Francis' love is a delusional woman believing herself to be a queen.  Once you realize this is all Francis' imagination, the look of his fantasy makes a lot of sense.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a great film.  More than just an experiment in mood and surrealism, it has a plot that is well served by its setting.

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

Watched on Netflix Watch Instantly
Photos from The New York Times and

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1919: Artists of Hollywood... Unite!

The founders of United Artists

We are reaching the end of decade number one for the site and it's another year of changes for film.  The biggest film stars in the world, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (note to self: still need to watch some Douglas Fairbanks' films), form their own studio to exercise more creative control (and receive more profits).  The name of the studio is United Artists, a title still with us today as a subsidiary of MGM.

Animation also starts to become a more serious effort.  Two unknown animators named Ub Iweks and Walt Disney formed Disney-Iwerks Commercial Artists.  Max Fleischer premiered Koko the Clown as part of the Out of the Inkwell series.  And the Felix the Cat cartoons debuted.

Comedian Harold Lloyd introduced one of the more regrettable practices in Hollywood: the test screening.  Love how every film panders to the broadest possible audience?  Thanks Harold Lloyd!

As far as our film viewing, 1918 proved to be an invigorating year.  The Blue Bird, The Bell Boy, Shoulder Arms, The Sinking of the Lusitania... all of them were great.  I spent more viewing hours than normal in that year, but it was time well spent.

What are we watching in 1919?  Broken Blossoms, another D.W. Griffith film (that I mistakenly thought was released in 1918) will definitely be on the list.  The one I am crazy excited for is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a very influential German expressionist film.  Both are available through Netflix Watch Instantly.  I will also be watching Daddy Long Legs, Mary Pickford's first production credit.

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