The Gold Rush (1925)

Mmmmm... shoe....

Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Mark Swain and Tom Murray
Produced by Charles Chaplin Productions

It's the Alaskan Gold Rush at the end of the 19th century and a lonely prospector (who looks suspiciously like Charlie Chaplin's tramp) has set his sights on fortune and glory. He crosses paths with a fellow miner and a fugitive while taking shelter in a cabin during a snowstorm. Hijinks ensue until our lonely prospector heads off to meet his fate.

Destiny has love in mind for the tramp and he finds it in a small town. The girl's name is Georgia and she's a dancer at a bar. She's interested in Jack who in turn is interested in anything with a skirt. Can our prospector win the girl?  Or will he have to find his fortune in a gold vein in the Alaskan mountains?

You know the excitement you feel when your baseball team is down by one run with one man on and your team's slugger steps to the plate?  That electric sense of all the possibilities?  How about the crushing disappointment when that same batter strikes out looking at a fastball down the middle ending the game?

That encapsulates my feelings about The Gold Rush.  Complete excitement as I hit play on the TV.  Utter frustration as the last frames flew by.  How could one of the most powerful and creative people in Hollywood, someone whose previous work was the sublime The Kid, release this?

First, let's talk about the good stuff. Chaplin the actor is fine here. He's the same tramp we know and love. He shows us his sadness and his joy. He is at his earnest best as he savors every bite of a boiled shoe for his Thanksgiving dinner.

There are also bits that work. Chaplin trying to walk out of the cabin against the wind. His humorous reaction to "winning" a fight. His gleeful destruction of the cabin after his dream girl agrees to dinner. And of course, the dance of the dinner rolls.

But the structure of the entire movie is essentially a series of bits around a loose narrative. And none of the bits are quick. So when one falls flat, it sits there for minutes. For example, there is a scene where Chaplin and Jim are trapped in the cabin as it teeters over a cliff. It's played in part for laughs and in part for thrills. It accomplishes neither. And it takes forever to reach what is an inevitable conclusion.

The loose structure of the movie set against the Alaskan Gold Rush is at best threadbare and at worst ridiculous (and not in the good, humorous way).   You have two movies going on here. One is the tramp struggling against the elements and other prospectors. The other is the tramp seeking love in a small town. The third act is the violent collision of those two movies. All that you can do is survey the damage.

The movie gets its characters wrong.  One of the central issues in the film is the tramp's infatuation with Georgia. We are supposed to root for them to get together.  So let's look at her arc:

• She doesn't even notice tramp when he stands next to her the first time
• She dances with him to make another man jealous
• She bumps into him as he is cabin-sitting
• She realizes he loves her and agrees to dinner as a goof
• She blows off dinner then goes to the cabin hours after the missed date to mess with tramp
• She feels bad when she sees the dinner she blew off laid out on the table of the cabin
• She feels so bad that she apologizes and professes her love... to another man because she was moody about the missed dinner
• She randomly bumps into him on a boat and assumes he is a stowaway
• She kisses the tramp

Okay, so she's nothing but terrible to the tramp for the entire movie. We are really expected to cheer for them to get together?

Even the much lauded dance of the dinner rolls sequence loses something in the context of the movie. He's performing the dance to impress Georgia. And he is wildly successful... in a dream sequence.  The movie's best moment has little impact on the world of the film other than to demonstrate what a great performer Chaplin the actor is.

It's human nature to compare and contrast things to understand them. The Gold Rush probably deserves to have more moments on the Chaplin highlight reel than The Kid, but the latter is a far superior film.  I like the highlight reel that is scattered throughout The Gold Rush, but I do not like this movie  I cannot begin to express how disappointing that is to write.

** out of *****

Read More

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Directed by Rupert Julian
Starring Lon Chaney's makeup, Mary Philbin and Noman Kerry
Produced by Universal Pictures

A ballet graces the stage of the Paris Opera House as a business deal is consummated in one of its back rooms. Two men purchase the famed Parisian landmark.  However, as the sellers leave, they caution that the new owners may hear something about a ghost who lurks in the catacombs beneath the building.  The men laugh off the claim, until a mysterious cloaked figure appears then disappears from one of the theater boxes.

The entire company of the house is gossiping about what the Phantom might look like.  Christine Daae, one of the singers, is about to find out more than she ever dreamed about the legend.  It turns out a mysterious voice has been coming to her and making her focus on her craft, to the detriment and consternation of Raoul, her love.

The Phantom wants Christine in the lead role of Faust and crashes the great opera house chandelier onto the stage to encourage Carlotta, the current lead, to step aside.  Soon the masked apparition is leading his protege into the chambers beneath the building.  He lets her know his one rule: do not remove my mask... which she almost immediately breaks.

Can Christine escape the clutches of the Phantom and find love with Raoul?

Sometimes a movie is like a pile of old car parts.  Not much to look at individually, but put them together and you've got a legend.

There are elements of The Phantom of the Opera that should be bad.  The acting is amongst the worst examples of over-the-top winking and nodding I have seen from the period.  The melodrama is amongst the most maudlin yet.  And there are subplots that feel like filler.

Yet somehow, when you put it all together with the fantastic central performance by Lon Chaney's makeup and the sumptuous production design it all works.  The overwrought melodrama fits.  I can't imagine more nuanced performances taking the place of anyone here.  And you need the disconnected subplots to take a break from the central tale of lust and envy.

Lon Chaney's makeup plays the title character as equal parts menace and pathos.  He is so disconnected, so yearning for a relationship, he will literally level buildings to get his way.  He shows moments of compassion and then becomes unhinged.  Lon Chaney's makeup easily gives the best performance in the film.

It also gives us the first truly iconic moment in monster movies.  I have seen Christine unmask the Phantom a thousand times.  It's an indelible piece of movie history.  Yet it is always simply a trick of makeup when taken out of context.  Within the frame of this story, with these actors, it becomes a genuine moment of suspense and shock.

The sets here suit the epic perfectly.  The opera house is massive and elegant and that chandelier has weight and mass.  So when it crashes, you feel it.  The catacombs beneath the structure are labyrinthine and ominous.  It's an imagined nightmare brought to life.


That's not to say there are not missteps.  While some subplots provide us the breath before the next plunge into madness, others are just extraneous.  The two owners in the beginning pretty much disappear after completely dominating the first ten minutes of film and the ending...

Well, let me just say SPOILERS.  We end with the Phantom seemingly realizing that Christine loves Raoul and saving him from certain death.  The Phantom looks at the lovers embracing, seems to soften a bit and then... an angry mob chases him through Paris, corners him, beats him and tosses his corpse into the Seine.  What, what, what?

More than anything, what stays with you after watching The Phantom of the Opera is the foreboding  mood.  Something is always hanging over our heads, around the corner, joust outside of your mind's eye.  The mood and those iconic images: the chandelier, the Phantom in his Red Death costume on the roof of the opera house and, of course, the unmasking of a monster.

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

Read More

Cobra (1925)

Valentino and Naldi

Directed by Joseph Henabery
Starring Rudolph Valentino, Nita Naldi, and Casson Ferguson
Produced by Ritz-Carlton Pictures

Meet Count Rodrigo Torriani.  He's a man of contradictions.  He wines and dines the ladies, but operates from an estate deeply in debt.  He has the courage to bed a young woman, but sneaks out the back door when her father shows up.  His loverboy lifestyle has made his villa a dangerous and frustrating place to be.


So when he befriends an American visiting his village in Italy, his prayers are answered.  His new friend is Jack Dorning, an antiques dealer who has noticed Rodrigo's knowledge of and affinity for the treasures in his home.  Jack offers Rodrigo the chance to come to America and help him appraise Italian antiquities.  It's a fresh start for the lothario.

Of course, we immediately see this isn't going to be easy.  The count is not even off the boat and he's noticing the legs on the female passengers instead of being struck by Lady Liberty.  Once he's in his new job, "Rod" takes an interest in Mary, Jack's secretary.  And he becomes more intrigued when she does not reciprocate. 

He does resolve to give up his womanizing ways and makes a serious effort, rebuffing Elise, the daughter of one of the antiques house patrons.  Elise gives up her pursuit of Rod and settles for Jack.  The two soon marry.

But Elise, married or not, still has her eye on our Italian count, who is in love with Mary, who is in love with Jack.  Did you get all that?  How will it all turn out? 

Movies like The Sheik and Blood and Sand are considered the definitive Rudolph Valentino films.  His typical playbook sees him in sprawling, epic romances set against exotic, picturesque backdrops.

So why did I enjoy Cobra so much more than any of his other works?

The opening of the movie works on a meta level in explaining my appreciation for it.  Rodrigo is a count who gets all the woman and occupies the cavernous estate set in a idyllic Mediterranean village.  He's the Valentino we are used to seeing.  Except he quickly reveals all of that to be a sham.  He's really living in a poverty that requires him to sell off family heirlooms to get by.  Ultimately, he literally and figuratively leaves that typical Valentino movie behind in Italy and comes to America where he finds a tale more suited to his talents.

Valentino's Rodrigo is a complicated guy.  He wants to blame his lust on genetics.  Or other women.  But he shows us that's not the truth.  He's pursuing the women and loves the game.  He just hates all of the consequences of playing.  The movie at some level is about the count growing up, even as Elise is tempting him to go back.

The movie has a comedic undertone through most of it that suits Valentino much better than the overwrought drama he's typically acting in.  The way he evades the father of one of his conquests is clever.  And the punchline in a flashback scene where he plays his ancestor made me laugh out loud.

NOTE: Spoilers ahead

If there is a misstep in the movie, it's the handling of Elise.  Nita Naldi absolutely nails the role and she's almost successful in seducing her target, but he succeeds in resisting.  So, the movie kills her.

Yes, you read that right. She dies in a fire off-screen.  Her only purpose was that moment of temptation, entreating the count to betray his best friend and her husband.  Once he passes the test, she deemed unnecessary and discarded.

Now, there are ways that may have worked, but up until this point, the movie had been a pretty light romantic drama.  The weight of her death drags the movie to the ocean floor and it never resurfaces.

We do get some moments of eye-rolling overacting by Valentino, but this is the type of role I want to see him in. In dramas like The Sheik, he's playing everything too big and broad.  Here, he uses his intrinsic appeal and charisma while trying to fight women off.  Not a perfect movie, but the best use of the legendary romantic leading man I have seen to date.

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

NOTE: This apparently got remade in 1986, except instead of an Italian count, it starred an Italian stallion.  And instead of lust being the disease, crime was the disease.  This guy was the cure.

Photo from Silent Era

Read More

The Seven Chances (1925)

Directed by Buster Keaton
Starring Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes and Snitz Edwards
Produced by Buster Keaton Productions

Boy meets girl one summer day. They connect. He wants to say he loves her but can't get the words out. He cannot express his feelings in the fall, or the winter or even the spring. He seems to be a commitment-phobe.

Of course, that's not the boy James' only problem. He and his business partner were tricked into a bad financial deal. At a minimum it will ruin the firm. At worst?  Jail.

Fortunately, a lawyer arrives with the will of James' uncle. At first, the business partners put off the messenger, fearing he is delivering a different legal summons. But the lawyer tracks them to their country club where he convinces them to read the document. And it's a doozy. James has been left $7 million...

...providing he marries someone by 7:00 in the evening on his 27th birthday. And as movie luck would have it, James turned 27 that very day. He needs a bride and fast to get the money and save the firm.

So James races off to the obvious choice, the aforementioned-mentioned girl Mary. He arrives, but still can't propose straightaway. He sits on a bench and practices what he might say.  The girl overhears and excitedly says yes, surprising her guy. Then, he ruins it by explaining the money and how he has to marry "some" girl. Mary is not just "some" girl or "any" girl. James heads back to the country club brideless.

His business partner and lawyer (who has seemingly become invested in the outcome of the day) soon hatch a plan. They scan the dining area of the club and recognize seven single women. He'll propose until one says yes. Simple, right?

Not quite. The first rejects him before a laughing crowd, the second does the same. He throws a note to a third on a balcony who returns her answer in a rain of confetti. His partner proposes to the fourth on his behalf in an unsuccessful way. The fifth and six decline as he ascends and descends a staircase. The seventh?  No thanks in a phone booth.

So the trio move onto plan C. The partner and lawyer will try to find a bride on their own. While James continues looking for one himself. They'll meet at the church at 5:00.

James approaches a few more women at the club before taking to the road. After striking out multiple times, he heads to the church which he finds empty.

Dejected and exhausted, James slumbers in the first pew. But then, a bride walks in. Then three more. Soon, James awakens to a church full of willing wives-to-be. It turns out his partner explained their dilemma in the local newspaper.  It also turns out there are a lot of women interested in a guy with $7 million.

The brides decide they were the victims of some practical joke and aim their ire toward James whose photo appeared in the paper. James is soon evading a mob of bridal veils in the streets of his small town.

Will James make it to the altar on time? And will he find out that Mary has reconsidered marrying him?

The Seven Chances is staggering. Truth be told, in evaluating movies of this era, I tend to compare the movies against each other more than to modern films. Part of it is the result of immersion in the time period and part of it is that the movies of today are just so different. Not better or worse, just different.

The Seven Chances is now one of my favorite comedies. Not of the 1920s, but of any period.  It's a marvel of structure, characters and technique. Oh and it's actually funny too.

Structurally, the film is all about momentum. The beginning is barely a comedy. It's got some humorous bits.   We get a clever minute long trip through a year in the life of our lovebirds, the passage of time shown through the aging of Mary's dog. We get the set up of the firm's struggles and the introduction of the lawyer.  Not a laugh to be found. But things start to feel a little off. The lawyer can't keep his glasses on. There's an odd synchronicity to James and his partner's movements. There's something off, but we are only being given hints.

When reach the "seven chances" portion, the comedic ball really starts downhill, but slowly at first. The first two reject him embarrassing ways. Then the third releases the confetti and the comic timing and editing of the moment is so perfect, it's the first legitimate laugh out loud moment. The next where his more debonair partner starts proposing to a woman who wants the partner and not James is funny with a great punchline. The remaining three are great visual gags, punctuated by one of the funniest movie lines I have ever read.

Once the trio separates, the movie picks up more momentum. James tries and fails to find a bride multiple times. My favorites: the hat check girl's simple no (another joke that exists all in the timing), the proposal while driving and the barbershop attempt.   When he finally gets to the church, he's exhausted and we need the break.

Of course, then we get one of the movie's best visual gags as brides start trickling into the church. Then it becomes a downpour.  Then a flash flood.  When James awakens to a packed church, the look on his face when he realizes what is happening is perfect.

He escapes momentarily and tries to get the time at a clock shop. He looks at the clocks in the window and every one bears a different time. He asks the shop owner who pulls his pocketwatch, furrows his brow, and begins repairing it.

Not the comedy is speeding toward it's conclusion. We get the iconic image of Buster Keaton being chased down the street by hundred of brides. He escapes them by running down a mountain pursued, not by suitors, but by boulders. As he reaches the bottom and sees the women waiting for him, he stops, thinks for a moment, then turns to face the rockslide.

Throughout it all there is a consistency to the character of James that serves the film well. He's introduced as someone who can't say I love you and the will hits him right where he is weakest. He stumbles through a proposal to the girl he loves, not because he doesn't want to say it, but because he does not know how. He's always the romantic though. He never uses the money to leverage a "yes" to any of the proposals. His partner does that.

Technically, this movie does big and little things right. It's shot in a way that parallels the momentum of the tale. It's static cameras until James leaves the country club. The we get some camera movement following his car. Then some subtle dolly moves following him down the street. By the end, the camera is in full gallop right along with James as he avoids the mob.

There are the signature camera tricks here as well. The best and most obvious is the car that travels without moving. James enters the car at the country club, the background dissolves and he is at Mary's house.  And the avalanche in the climax is fantastic.

The Seven Chances is that rare 1920s movie that combines structure, character and cinematography to tell a compelling and funny story. It's a leap forward for comedies of the time and is now one of my favorites ever.

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

Read More

The Black Cyclone (1925)

Directed by Fred Jackman
Starring Rex the Wonder Horse, Lady and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams
Produced by Hal Roach Studios

A youth, orphaned by a tragic accident, gets by through pluck and resolve.  But Mary Pickford is nowhere to be found.

A rogue who uses cunning and strength to win the heart of the girl.  But no sign of Douglas Fairbanks.

No, this is The Black Cyclone.  And The Black Cyclone stars Rex the Wonder Horse.

Really.  That's his name in the credits.

The main story of The Black Cyclone is this: Rex, a black horse, is left alone in the world when his mother is bitten by a rattlesnake.  He learns to survive and becomes a powerful steed who falls in love with Lady.  He helps Lady get out of a tight jam or two, but ultimately she is taken by The Killer, a merciless, evil horse who kills the leader of a herd and takes it as his own.  Rex is drawn to a human who has suffered a similar fate (separated from his love, driven from his town).  Ultimately, the pair team up to take down their respective enemies.

Of course, this is a movie starring horses in 1925, so it's so much more than the above.

As always, we start with the good.  And for about the first twenty minutes, it's very good.  The editing of the scenes weaves a tale that is simple and timeless as we see Rex lose his mother, try to copy a bear in retrieving honey (it does not go well) and meeting his soulmate.  The horse can't emote, but it can hit its mark and gallop against some gorgeous scenery.  The title cards fill in the rest.

Then, the humans get involved.  And things go spectacularly off the rails.  We meet Jim Lawson who is in love with a girl named Jane.  Trouble is, the local bad guy likes Jane too.  He ambushes Jim one night in what has to be one of the most poorly staged gunfights ever filmed.  They literally run around in a circle while seemingly firing into the ground.

Miraculously, Jim somehow manages to shoot his foe, but this only "stuns" the villain who has a posse to back him up.  So off Jim goes to hide in the wilderness.

Jim and Rex cross paths when Rex gets caught in quicksand and the cowboy saves him.  Nevermind that the quicksand was pretty clearly knee deep water and that the trick Jim uses to free Rex is completely unexplained.  Rex decides this human is the one to help him retrieve Lady.

At the same time, Lady manages to escape from The Killer and head off to find Rex.  The couple reunites and Rex wants to introduce Lady to his human friend.

Here, we get the signature moment of the film.  Jim is sleeping.  A mountain lion sneaks up, ready to pounce on the vulnerable hero.  Rex rides in to save the day, squaring his debt to Jim.  At least that's what the film is trying to convey.

Instead, we get Jim sleeping in front of a campfire.  Cut to a mountain lion which looks to be on a different set in a different country.  Cut to Rex and Lady arriving through a shot that is repeated from one used earlier in the film.  Rex and the mountain lion stand off from their completely different backgrounds.  And then?  Stop motion animation!  From out of nowhere, we get this bizarre moment of stop motion animation cut with close ups scenes of Rex doing... something.  And it works out as Rex prances the mountain lion to death.

The closing of this is where it veers into complete Mystery Science Theater 3000 territory.  The bad guy is looking for Jim in the wilderness and sees Jane going to meet him.  So he gives chase.  We get repeated uses of the same close up.  We get jerky camera movements and images completely out of frame.  And, in my favorite so-bad-it's-good moment, we see the two riding toward the camera when a third person on a horse inexplicably rides across the screen in the background.  I guess that was the best take?

The final dual fight sequence is bizarre as both Rex and Jim confront their enemies.  Jim cements his status as worst cowboy ever in a terrible fight sequence.  And the horsefight (yes, I just used the word horsefight) shows Rex and The Killer throwing hooves at each other and doing other things until... well, a title card tells us Rex has won.  Nothing on screen would actually indicate that, but omniscient narrators are rarely wrong.

The Black Cyclone is a tough one to judge.  The novelty and fairly tight editing of the first act are wondrous.  The middle act is a meandering snoozefest.  And the last act is a choppily edited trainwreck.  It would work as a short film, but it doesn't work as a feature.  The last bit is almost worth a watch because it's terrible enough to be humorous, but the middle third is just dull.  If you can find it, the first twenty minutes are good for a viewing.  Other than that it's barely:

** out of *****

Read More

Sally of the Sawdust (1925)

Directed by D.W. Griffith
Starring W.C. Fields, Carol Dempster and Alfred Lunt
Produced by Paramount Pictures

Sally is a circus performer who was raised believing that fellow carny "Professor Eustace McGargle" is her father. The two work together both on stage and off, protecting one another as they run afoul of both "rubes" and the law.

Of course, the professor isn't really her pop. Her mother was the daughter of Judge Foster who kicked her to the curb because she married a circus performer. After, giving birth to Sally, the woman died, entrusting her young child to McGargle.

McGargle is an honorable man (at least when it comes to Sally) and doesn't want the circus life for the girl. So the pair jump a train and ride to Green Meadows to try to reunite the girl with her grandparents. Unfortunately, while Judge Foster has regret, he still is deeply suspicious of circus folk. McGargle decides to keep Sally's parentage a secret.

Complicating matters, Sally falls for young socialite Peyton Lennox. His father is a friend of the Fosters do the judge contrives to have the carnies arrested.

Will love win out in the end?  And will the secret of Sally's birth come out?

Sally of the Sawdust is silly, melodramatic and maudlin, but totally worth people's time for one reason:

W. C. Fields.

This is my first exposure to the vaudeville legend besides the parodies of the character you see in other movies and entertainment. But the man is a star. He commands the screen. His physical abilities and comic timing are great, but in the quiet moments of the film, he is brilliant. His every facial tic tells you exactly what he's thinking, but there's a subtlety to his craft.

As Sally, Carol Dempster is good. Her facial expressions and mannerisms are so different from other stars of the era. She also goes from goofy and comedic to dramatic and heartbroken as well as most. That said, she does occasionally contort her face a little too much. And, while the extras in the movie may love her dancing, I thought she looked she was having a seizure.

The rest of the cast is straight out of central casting and they work well enough. The one exception was Judge Foster's wife. There managed to be both too much of her and not enough of her. The camera lingers on her grief for uncomfortable stretches of the film. These scenes could have been edited down, but she's clearly the best actor besides Field in the film and could have had some other moments to shine. We never get a sense of how her relationship with the judge has evolved since the death of their daughter.

There are a number of great comedic moments throughout Sally of the Sawdust. in particular, I loved the big fight scene early on where some rubes who lost their money to McGargle come demanding their cash back. Soon, the entire circus, elephants and all, is engaged in the donnybrook. Fields physicality and facial expressions are perfect throughout.

I have not mentioned D.W. Griffith and that's because he is largely anonymous in the film. It's hard to draw much distinction between his direction here and the efforts of William Beaudine in Little Annie Rooney. The only real directorial flourish is the occasional close-up of the man Foster charged with following the carnies, but that's more distracting than purposeful.  The rest of Hollywood has caught up to Griffith and he has no more tricks up his sleeve.

I didn't talk about the romance.  That's because there's not much to it.  Lennox and Sally see each other, they fall in love and then... Lennox is sent away by his father until the last frames.

There are elements that don't work (what happened to the criminals that kidnapped McGargle?), but Dempster and especially Fields propel the movie along with comic energy and pathos.

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

Read More

Little Annie Rooney (1925)

"I'm supposed to be how old?"

Directed by William Beaudine

Starring Mary Pickford, William Haines, Walter James

Produced by Mary Pickford Company

In a small neighborhood of New York, a young woman in her 30s suffers from a mental condition that makes he believe she is still 12 years old. She lives with her father and brother and they do their best to indulge Annie's fantasy. In fact, it seems like the entire neighborhood is willing to go along with the charade. However, soon the streets erupt in violence and Annie begins falling in love with one of the gangsters. Will tragedy be enough to shake Annie from her fantasy?

Okay, I lied.

The film is really about a 12 year old girl. She has an older brother and a father she lives with. She engages in some battles with other children.

And the 12 year old girl is played by 32 year old Mary Pickford.

Pickford's been just barely able to get away with it in previous films, but here the age discrepancy is just embarrassing. She's a foot taller than the other kids. Every close up shows you the face of a mature woman.

However, the Pickford formula is the Pickford formula and it shall be applied without deviation. If she can get the curls in her hair tight enough and make enough ridiculous facial expressions, she can be a teenager forever, right?

Wrong. And the results are creepier here than in any of he previous work. On the one hand, she's in love with Joe Kelly, a relationship that as scripted is completely inappropriate.  She's 12 and he seems to be in his 20s. On the other hand, a young boy is pining for Annie, which means a 10 year old has to act like he's attracted to someone who is in reality three times older.

The woefully miscast lead is not the only failing here. We have yet another silent that dramatically shifts its tone in a jarring way. It's light and comedic and then... Annie's policeman father is gunned down. It's a shocking turn and the mood never lightens again.

The film does have one of my favorite awful plot contrivances ever. Annie's brother Tim mistakenly thinks Joe killed Pa Rooney. So Tim shoots Joe, then Tim confesses to the police. Annie races to the hospital to give Joe a blood transfusion. Why?  Well, if Joe dies, then Tim will go to jail. But if Joe lives, it becomes okay that Tim shot him on a crowded street and then confessed to his crime?  Apparently, because not only does Tim avoid a cell, the epilogue shows he is now a policeman himself!

There are some good aspects to the movie. The supporting cast is great, especially Gordon Griffith as Tim Rooney. They also fill out some of the gang with great looking character actors. It's well paced with the exception of an over-long opening fight in the streets between the child gang members.

It's just so hard to get past the distracting lead performance. I wish the alternate take I describe in the opening paragraph was the real movie. It would both make for a satisfying film and provide a commentary on Pickford's career. She believes she's Peter Pan, never to grow up while the cameras are rolling. Unfortunately, reality is different.

*1/2 out of *****

Read More

More Alice Shorts by Walt Disney (1925)

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

In Alice Solves the Puzzle, Alice is having trouble with a crossword puzzle when her cat convinces her to take a break and go to the beach.  They go for a swim, but when Alice returns, a bear named Pete insists that she give him the puzzle.  Pete, it turns out, is a collector of rare puzzles.  Alice refuses and Pete chases her into a lighthouse.  Her cat shows up at the end to make the save.

In Alice's Tin Pony, Alice and her cat use a train to deliver a big payroll.  One of Pete's gang gets wind of the loot and informs his boss.  The gang plots to capture the train and steal the loot.

In Alice Chops the Suey, Alice is kidnapped by a Chinese gang.  Her cat rescues her, but from there they are on the run from the villains.

As silly, fanciful pieces of entertainment, Alice Solves the Puzzle and Alice's Tin Pony work.  The point of these is never plot.  It's all in the simple animation and the cleverness of how Disney uses it.  The cat is seems able to use his body to solve any situation.  He can weaponize his tail or pull his eyes off to create a bike.  Surreal, but interesting.

Alice Chops the Suey is godawful.  The short opens with a blatant ripoff of the Out of the Inkwell series with an animator's hand drawing the animation.  Then Alice is kidnapped and thrown in a bag.  The cat rescues her from stereotypically racist villains and then we get a pretty repetitive chase sequence.  Bad, bad, bad.

The big change from the 1924 Alice shorts is that are live action main character exists entirely within a cartoon world now.  In the previous two shorts we reviewed, there was a real world sequence bookending the animation.  Here, the actual actress only appears in the cartoon world.

Beyond that, with each short, Alice is there less and less, and the cat really comes forward as the star.  In Alice Solves the Puzzle, she and the cat have equal screen time.  In Alice's Tin Pony, she barely in it.  And in Alice Chops the Suey, she's kidnapped in a cartoon bag and spends almost the entirety of the short in that sack.  The series feels like it's starting to sideline its lead which makes the films just animated shorts without the cleverness of Alice's interaction with the cartoon world.

Alice Solves the Puzzle ***out of *****
Alice's Tin Pony **1/2 out of *****
Alice Chops the Suey * out of *****

NOTE: Alice Solves the Puzzle features the first appearance by Disney's longest running animated character Pete.  Here, he's a bear but in his later iterations he's a dog or a cat.  He most recently appeared in the game Epic Mickey.

Read More

Chess Fever (1925)

Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky
Starring Boris Barnet, Vladimir Fogel, and Natalya Glan
Produced by Mezhrabpom-Rus

Russia is abuzz with an international chess tournament and one young man has caught chess fever. And it's a bad case. He sits in his apartment playing a grueling match. Against himself.

Suddenly, he realizes the time. It's noon, and he was supposed to be at his fiancée's at ten. He fights his way through his other apparent obsession, a room full of felines, and heads off to meet her.

His fiancée is the opposite. She hates chess and does not understand the obsession. The boy arrives to beg forgiveness. He places a handkerchief on the ground, drops to one knee and... uh oh. The handkerchief has a checkerboard pattern. The boy looks at it, reaches into his pocket and produces a couple of chess pieces. May as well try out some moves while he's down here.

His girl is not amused. She so upset in fact that she heads off to kill herself. The boy, now despondent, climbs to the top of a bridge. The girl heads to a chess-obsessed apothecary who gives her a vial of poison. The boy, realizing the error of his ways, decides to give up chess and throws his books and guides away. He races to save his fiancée.

The girl goes to take the poison and... even the vial is shaped like a chess piece! A man approaches her and soon they are bonding over his lack of interest in chess. Of course, the man is in reality Capablanca, the world chess champion. The boy, just missing the girl, decides to head to the chess tournament.

Will the boy be able to cure himself of chess fever? Or might the disease be more contagious than we realize?

Chess Fever is both a slight comedy, but also an examination of a ubiquitous human failing: obsession. Eighty-five years ago in Russia it was chess, but today it could just as easily be sports (have you listened to sports radio) or the Internet (we welcome you, our Facebook masters).

So here we have a hero who has an unhealthy relationship with a board game. He not only plays the game and follows the tournament, but his hat and clothing have chess elements to them. Is it weird to wear your obsession about town? How many of us own paraphernalia from our favorite hockey team? Like a Philadelphia Flyers t-shirt or six (of course, I am just speaking hypothetically)?

Yes, Chess Fever is an old, silent, Russian comedy, but it's very contemporary in its themes. Is it funny? Sort of.

It's not rolling on the floor laughing. It's amusing throughout. It's so over the top, it's hard not to at least smile. The image of the boy pacing back and forth between both sides of the chess board is so earnest it's funny. Then he goes to leave and is literally pulling cats from every piece of clothing he tries to wear, from shirt sleeves, from shoes, from pockets. He kneels before his love, but then he starts eyeing that handkerchief. It's a humor that will help your mood, but not elicit a chuckle.

There's also a subversive element to the whole thing. Chess is a game of individual achievement and the film fetishizes the game's champions as rock stars. There is an element of the collective here as everyone seems to be in love with the game, but it struck me how much this movie emphasized the needs of individuals. The boy's obsession and the girl's "chess or me" ultimatum are hardly socialist ideals. That aspect of the film stood out, but it may have as much to do with my recent viewings of Battleship Potemkin and Aelita.


Chess Fever is a short, quirky, fun little comedy. If it were made today, it would be about a movie-obsessed geek ignoring his girl while sitting in his basement in his underwear debating why the upcoming Smurfs movie didn't set its tale in Smurf village instead of bringing six of the little blue men to New York. And seeing how that road of discourse starts to hit a little too close to home, I'll stop and give Chess Fever a:

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

Read More

The Eagle (1925)

Directed by Clarence Brown
Starring Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky and Louise Dresser
Produced by Art Finance Corporation


The Eagle is about a Russian officer named Dubrovsky assigned to the court of Catherine II. During a military ceremony, rifles startle a pair of horses sending a carriage careening out of control. Without hesitation, the officer jumps onto a horse and saves the carriage and its two grateful occupants. One of the women inside clearly has an attraction to Dubrovsky, but the czarina also falls for the man's bravery. Dubrovsky is called to the czarina's palace where she makes advances to him, promising him a post as general if agrees. He bumbles and fumbles around, but ultimately escapes from the czarina's bed chamber, but she issues a warrant for his arrest. The Dubrovsky finds out his father is dying and...

Okay, let's try that again.

The Eagle is about a young man named Dubrovsky. His father dies after a man named Kyrilla conspires with a local judge to steal the Dubrovsky estate. Angry and grief-stricken, Dubrovsky swears to avenge his father's death. He dons a black mask and becomes a Robin Hood-like protector of the innocent against Kyrilla's men. At one point, Dubrovsky's men take Kyrilla's daughter Mascha prisoner, but Dubrovsky falls for the girl and releases her. Dubrovsky later shares a carriage with a man from France who has been hired to be Kyrilla's daughter's French tutor, Dubrowski trades places with the man and....

(*sigh*) All right, one more time...

The Eagle is about a young man who pretends to be a French tutor both so he can be near Mascha (the woman he loves and) possibly get revenge on her father Kyrilla. He becomes a part of the inner circle of Kyrilla, but when his ruse is exposed, he is chased by the tyrant's men. The thrilling escape ends when he is captured by the czarina's forces and...

Oh, for the love of God!

Look, Rudy (Can I call you Rudy?). I watched The Eagle. I get it. You have appeal among women, but you are seeing Douglas Fairbanks and thinking "how can I get a piece of that box office?". So you are trying to grab elements of what you do and plot points from what he is doing and combining the two.

The problem is you cannot just stick a bunch of plot elements into a cinematic blender, hit puree and hope that goes well. That approach doesn't lead to a great or even good film. It leads to wet, soppy mess.

You can't both be the bumbling, humorous rogue character and the dashing suave one. You can't bounce from scene to scene and essentially be playing a different guy in each case. It doesn't work.

Let's take the opening of the movie. He rescues the carriage so the czarina calls him to her palace for dinner. He is awkward and clumsy throughout the exchange. It's played for laughs. Both Valentino and the czarina are comedic figures. Next moment, he's escaping her room and being warned by another officer that he'll be killed if he leaves. You can't have a borderline slapsticky moment lead into an exchange meant to put the audience in fear for our hero's mortal life. At least, this movie can't.

Then, The Eagle becomes a completely different movie. He becomes Robin Hood... er, I mean the Black Eagle. He needs to keep his identity secret so he dons a disguise. Then he sends Kyrilla a note telling him the Black Eagle's going to get him. And signs it Dubrovsky. So much for secret identities.

It's never clear what he is trying to do as the Black Eagle. What kind of power does Kyrilla really have and how is he using it? Is Dubrovsky robbing from the rich and giving to the poor? And if that's the case, why exactly do his men kidnap Mascha (while leaving behind her portly, older companion)? What exactly were their intentions?  They don't seem honorable, that's for sure.

Then the film careens into movie number three: Dubrovsky pretending to be a French teacher. This would work as a "being with the woman he loves" plot. It would also work as a "Robin Hood messing with Prince John" or "Count of Monte Cristo getting revenge" plot. Instead, it's a "Dubrovsky hanging around not doing much of anything" plot. At one point, one of his men from the Black Eagle days pops up to ask "hey, weren't you supposed to kill Kyrilla?" as if the movie is cosmically asking itself what it is doing.

There's a bizarre subplot here where Kyrilla enjoys randomly feeding men to a bear he keeps in his wine cellar. With his wine. Why? If the film knows, it's not talking.

Then the czarina's men show back up in the last ten minutes and it feels like three different movies collided and all that's left is for them to exchange phone numbers and insurance information.

Surprisingly, at points, the movie almost pulls off its lunacy and that's in large part because of the actors. Valentino's quick ascension as a star is legitimate and earned and he does his best with the whiplash changes in the plot, but there's only so many plates the world's best juggler can keep in the air before he's grabbing the broom and dustpan. The supporting actors are fantastic. Vilma Banky's Mascha is the type of woman you could fall in love with at first sight and James A. Marcus manages to be both intimidating and jovial as Kyrilla. Louise Dresser really stands out as the czarina. In just a few scenes, she makes an impression as both a woman of authority and a woman with needs.

Moments work. Lines of dialogue work. Acting works. However, it never comes together. Quite the opposite: the film and its script are locked in mortal combat. And that's a shame because the actors were certainly on board to deliver a fantastic film. I'm still waiting for the definitive Valentino performance. I can see the star quality there, but it's yet to be married to fantastic script.

*1/2 out of *****

NOTE: The Eagle was originally titled The Black Eagle, but they changed it when they heard Fairbanks was making The Black Pirate. Because the makers of The Eagle didn't want to be confused with a pirate film; they wanted to be confused with Robin Hood and Zorro.

Read More

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

Directed by Fred Niblo
Starring Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman and May McAvoy
Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

It is the time of Christ. Literally. We see the future messiah's birth in the opening scenes.  The inn, the star, the wise men, the shepherds: all here.  The film doesn't linger there.  It rockets years into the future where...

The Romans are oppressing the Jews.  Even under the iron fist of their rulers, the Jews have a hierarchical social structure and the House of Hur is right at the top.  The Hur family has a palatial estate and live well.  Still, the matriarch of the clan is getting nervous about their finances so she dispatches their servant Simonides to hide their fortune in Antioch.

The Hurs are visited by Messala, a Roman soldier who was the childhood friend of Judah, Ben-Hur, the son in the House of Hur.  Messala greets Judah, his mother and his sister warmly, but soon they are arguing about the state of affairs in Jerusalem.  Messala storms out.

Soon the new local dignitary is paraded through the city.  Judah, watching from his balcony,accidentally knocks a tile off.  It falls killing a Roman.  Messala storms into the Hur's home and accuses Judah of throwing the tile.  All of the Hur's are arrested.

The women are shuttled off to a secret prison underground.  As for Judah, he is sentenced to life rowing in the galleys of a ship.  There, he is more the firebrand than ever, driven by his desire for vengeance against Messala.  Will Ben-Hur escape and take his revenge?  On a chariot perhaps?  And how will Judah's life intersect with Jesus?  And I thought Chuck Heston was in this?

The obvious place to begin a review is with a comparison with a comparison with the 1959 version of Ben-Hur starring Heston.  It's been a long time since I saw the more well-known version, but all the storybeats are here: the initial arrest, the attack on the seas, the chariot race.  Jesus is here as well, though as with the 1959 version, he's a presence, existing just off camera.  We see a hand here and there, but that's it.

My memory of the specific moments of 1959 is hazy, so I won't try to compare the merits of the two (I'll get there in 34 years).  But I liked this movie.  A lot.  In fact, I think my lack of much memory or feeling about the Heston one really helped me appreciate this version.

The characters are well-realized and acted.  Roman Novarro's Ben-Hur is in almost every frame of the film and he carries off the complex emotions of the character perfectly.  Ben-Hur has to be both driven by revenge, but keep the inherent goodness that will propel him to save Arrius on the boat.  There are moments of over-the-top acting, but, particularly in these epics, that's not uncommon.

Ben-Hur is an epic with some impressive sets and locations.  The chariot race here is exactly as it should be.  It is just perfect.  The lack of sound doesn't diminish the feel of every whip, the grunt of every horse and the sheer brutality of a three-chariot-pileup.  Fred Niblo's camera gets right into the action and the actors sell what's at stake. The whole movie has been building to this and it doesn't disappoint.  In fact, it soars.  The race is one of my favorite silent movie moments.  Ever.

The other big set piece is a naval battle between the Romans and a pirate fleet and it works less well.  There are simply too many people on these boats to follow any of the action coherently.  Moment to moment, I had no idea who was attack whom.

There's a love interest introduced late in the movie, but you never really feel like there's a connection between Ben-Hur and Esther.  That aspect of the film feels more like the writers are checking off the romance check box than anything else.


The portrayal of Jesus in the film is amongst my favorite on celluloid.  My preference is for the more human portrayals of the messiah (think Willem DaFoe in The Last Temptation of Christ).  It's hard the resist a holier-than-thou portrayal of someone who is most definitely holier-than-thou, so I love the decision to keep Christ off-screen and simply see and feel how he is seen by others.

Oh, and by the way: color!  Whole sections of the movie are in color!  I was not expecting that at all.  At first I thought it was scenes with Christ, but then there is a colorized scene with only Ben-Hur halfway through the film, so I am unsure why the stylistic choice was made. It's that oversaturated technicolor you used to see on Turner Classic restorations, but it is still gorgeous.

Ben-Hur is highly recommended.  It's well-acted, has a great story and an epic feel. 

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

NOTE: It cost MGM $3.9 million to make Ben-Hur and the film made $9 million, the third highest gross for a silent film. Despite that, MGM lost money because of the deals they had to make to bring the book and play to the screen.

On the color, I had to look it up, but apparently the color was included in the original and was not some restoration house's work.  Again, just awesome.

Read More

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

The Odessa Staircase

Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein

Starring Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky and Grigori Aleksandrov 

Produced by Goskino

Aboard the battleship Potemkin, there is a clear division between the ship's leadership and the working class men.  The lower ranks are hearing about uprisings throughout Russia and can feel that change is in the air.  The ship is a tinderbox of revolutionary angst.  All it needs is the match.

The spark igniting the blaze comes from rotten meat rations being served to the crew.  The men gather around a maggot-infested carcass and complain.  The ship's doctor declares the beef to be perfectly safe.  The ship's captain has the men who refused to eat lined up to be shot for their treason.  

The working men appeal to the firing squad to rise up against the ship's captain and soon a full-scale mutiny is underway.  The men take the ship, but one of the revolutionary leaders is gunned down.  They take the fallen hero to shore and display his body in a tent.  Soon, thousands of men, women and children are paying their respects to the martyr, delivering food and supplies to the crew and building up the ship to legendary status.  But what will the people do when the tsar's army shows up and begins firing?  And can the Potemkin withstand an assault by the entire Russian navy?

It's tough to view a film like Battleship Potemkin objectively.  As you watch and evaluate it,  critics whisper "This is important!" and the staircase sequence from The Untouchables (directly inspired by the film) plays on a loop in your brain.

And that staircase sequence of Battleship Potemkin is THE reason to watch this film.  The Odessa Staircase segment legitimately provided something I had not seen in any of the previous 100 Years movies.  Other movies use edits, but Eisenstein doesn't just cut between long, medium and close-up shots.  His camera moves down the stairs with the people as they flee.  He juxtaposes images and cuts between subjects in a scene.  He uses the edits to show the results of violence.  And most of all, he uses it to build tension.  

There are amazing moments here.  The woman shot through the eye.  The woman going back for her dead child.  But most of all, the baby carriage.  A woman stands frozen on a landing of the staircase with the carriage unsure what to do.  She is shot and starts falling.  The carriage's wheels rock precariously close to the edge of the step.  Then her body sends it careening down the stairs.  Eisenstein's camera floats above the baby as the carriage rolls amongst the violence on the staircase.  It's unlike anything seen in the other films from this era.  

Even during this bravura sequence though, I see the baby carriage start going down the staircase and my mind goes to that shootout with Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia.  I can't unwatch the contemporary movie so it's creeping into my viewing of Battleship Potemkin.  I can feel that influence and I try to ignore it, but it's there all the same.  I admire the cinematic achievement of the Odessa staircase sequence with the cold detachment of a cinephile, not with any connection to the characters.  There's tension to be sure, but I'm never invested in the fate of the characters (well, except that baby).

Beyond the staircase sequence, there are moments and images that stand out.  We see a line that stretches to the horizon of people waiting to pay their respects to the fallen hero.  The film provides excruciating detail of how various elements of the battleship work, from its engine to its dining tables.  And don't sit down for a meal while watching as you'll be treated to an extreme close up of maggot-infested meat.

As far as the story, it's a propaganda piece.  There are no stars or individual heroes.  Instead, we get a ship full of people rising up.  A nameless Tsarist enemy.  A mob of people.  I can understand why the story unfolds this way (after all, when your propaganda piece is focused on the people rising up, you don't want to make it about any one person).  However, without it being any one individual story, there's nothing to ground the story emotionally.  It's technically incredible, but, as a narrative, it's not timeless.

The ending is a big bit of anti-climax.  As the Potemkin steams toward the rest of the fleet, we sit with bated breath as the ship's crew prepares for battle.  They signal to the other boats to join them in their revolutionary cause.  And...they do.  Immediately.  Without any sense that there was any struggle amongst people on the other ships.  It's just everybody on deck waving.  The end.

I liked Battleship Potemkin.  I can appreciate it the way one can appreciate the Rosetta stone.  The stone allowed for an understanding of languages, cultures and stories that were previously inaccessible.  The film provides an important point on the timeline of cinema on why images get juxtaposed the way they do.  It allows for an understanding of how film has evolved and has a breathtaking sequence, but it never really works as a story.  Still, having watched Battleship Potemkin, I know I will watch movies with a different, sharper eye.  

Oh, and everyone should watch the Odessa staircase sequence at least once.   

*** out of *****

NOTES:  Battleship Potemkin was initially banned in West Germany, Great Britain and France out of fear it would incite a revolution.

In 2010, Empire magazine ranked Battleship Potemkin as third in "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema".  It was also included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Jay Schneider.

In 2004, the Pet Shop Boys composed a new score for the movie.  Because when I think black-and-white, Russian propaganda, landmark film, I think "West End Girls".

The film inspired the name of one of my favorite film-related podcasts: Battleship Pretension.

How big a deal is this movie?  "Potemkin" doesn't trigger spellcheck in Microsoft.

Read More

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925)

Put it on a postcard

Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Produced by Paramount Pictures 

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life is a great movie. 
 
I feel like I need to get that out of the way up front.  See, it's a silent documentary.  It's hard enough to get people interested in documentaries.  Add the word "silent" and you may as well be spraying mace in their face while dropping a safe on their foot.  But there is a great argument against that line of thinking.  And that argument is: Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life. 
 
The film is about Bakhtiari tribe in then-Persia (northern Iran today) as they make one of their twice-a-year migrations over a harsh wilderness to find grazing fields for the livestock. They migration includes over fifty thousand people and a half a million animals.
 
Within the last century, during a time when my grandparents were alive, during a time when people were driving cars and going to the movies, there was a tribe in the Middle East that would spend a month and a half migrating to greener pastures.  They would cross a raging river either by swimming or by floating on make-shift rafts made buoyant by inflated goat skins.  They would ascend vertical cliffs hundreds of feet high.  They would cross a snow covered mountain in bare feet.  They did all of this while carrying and dragging goats and cows.  And then they would reach their pasture land.  Not all would survive.  And a few short months later they would travel back by the same route all over again.

As a viewer, you sit there in amazement at what these people go through.  Perhaps most shocking of all is how matter-of-fact the whole affair is treated.  This is their life.  There is no moaning or groaning about how hard they have it.  They simply set out to accomplish the tasks that need to be accomplished.  The men dig trenches in the snow.  The women carry babies in baskets on their backs.  It's the way things are.

During the migration, the documentary filmmakers stay back and use title cards to either set the stage or point out details viewers might otherwise miss.  They will tell helpfully tell you to look for the woman carrying a calf on her back as she scales a mountain in the center of the frame.  The title cards substitute for voiceover or special effects that would focus your attention in the frame.

The filmmakers have a knack for knowing exactly where to point the camera.  The imagery throughout the documentary is picturesque and they take full advantage of the sprawling landscape their subjects provide them. They manage to convey both sheer scale of the endeavor and the individual travails of members of the tribe. 

The small black dots? Animals being swept down river.

There are moments that stick with me.  Calves and goats being swept down river by crushing currents.  The tribe placing a calf on a raft in the hopes that the mother will swim across after it.  The men of the tribe shedding what little footwear they have to dig a path through the snow for the rest of the barefoot tribe.   

The migration itself is the latter half of the film and by far the better part.  The first half deals with the documentary crew's travel from Angora (modern day Ankara) to the tribe.  They encounter everything from sandstorms to the local police force.  There are aspects that were interesting but you feel the filmmakers' presence more in this half. 
 
Some of the moments in the early going feel staged.  There are kids shown standing in a market who run off-camera.  Then the scene cuts to (presumably) those same children running across the path of our documentary crew.  It feels like someone is yelling "action!". 
 
We are introduced to a local constabulary and witness a "policeman's ball" that takes place at night.  We know it's night because of a blue tint on the film, but doesn't that mean it was filmed during the day and tinted?  I don't know enough about camera technologies for filming at night in the middle of the desert in the 1920s, but it seems unlikely the events transpired exactly as advertised. 
 
Even then, we get moments that tell us something we didn't know before.  For me, it's a shot of a baby on a cradle with no sides who is tied to the base of the bed.  I had never consider where a baby might sleep in a desert tribal setting. Or the scene of a hunter clutching a kite-like device with eye holes cut through it.  The mechanism is colored to camouflage him against the rocks.  How would a hunter sneak up on prey in this environment?  Again, not something you think about.
 
Grass is not a good documentary for its time; it's a good documentary for any era.  As I casually commute to work in my Honda tomorrow, the harsh life of people half a world away will be first and foremost in my mind. And that's thanks to the visuals and storytelling of Cooper and Schoedsack.
 
**** out of *****
 
NOTE: In a bizarre coincidence, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the directors and stars of Grass, would direct King Kong eight years later.  Kong of course features animation by Willis O'Brien who played a major role in The Lost World, the previous 1925 film we reviewed.

Read More

The Lost World (1925)

Directed by Harry O. Hoyt

Starring Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, and Bessie Love  Willis O'Brien's dinosaurs

Produced by First National Pictures

Professor Challenger has a problem.  He has traveled to the Amazon and is convinced that dinosaurs exist in the middle of uncharted territories.  No one believes him and the scientific community has made him a laughing stock.  Undeterred, he sets out to put together a new expedition to prove his findings.

Ed Malone also has a problem though his is both smaller and larger than Challenger's (after all, what's bigger than love?).  He doesn't have the eyes of the scientific community on him, but he does have Gladys.  He wants to marry her, but she puts him off.  She wants a man who has faced death and danger, and Malone's boring life as a journalist doesn't do it for her.

Malone hears of Challenger's expedition and offers to go.  He needs to prove his bravery to Gladys and maybe get the mother of all stories.  Challenger hates journalists, but agrees once Malone gets his newspaper to finance the trip.

Along for the adventure are Sir John Roxton (the famous game hunter), Professor Summerlee (one of Challenger's biggest skeptics) and Paula White.  We soon learn that the trip isn't just to reclaim Challenger's status, but also to rescue Paula's father who has been stranded on the plateau where the fierce creatures supposedly live.

Off we go on the adventure!  The group travels to the Amazon and soon comes to the plateau where Challenger's alleged dinosaurs reside.  They climb onto the plateau, but are immediately stranded there.  Will they find the fabled beasts and clear Challenger's name?  Or will they be foiled by a random, missing-link-looking guy (don't ask)?  Will Paula find her father?  And will Malone end up falling in love with the young Miss White over the course of their travels?

The Lost World has problems, serious problems, and believe me I will get there.  But first, we have to talk about what works.  

The dinosaurs.

The dinosaur portions as realized by animator Willis O'Brien are epic and gorgeous.  There is some choppy moments of animation, but the dinosaurs all have character in their movements and facial expressions that exceed even the humans (more on that later).  We have an allosaurus that attacks anything that moves.  A triceratops that protects its young.  A pterodactyl that... well, doesn't do much of anything.  And a brontosaurus that is docile unless threatened.

There are set pieces here that thrill.  The allosaurus' fight with the triceratops is fantastic.  The allosaurus' attack on the human's camp is thrilling if a bit too brief.  The dinosaurs' frantic escape from an erupting volcano near the end is exciting, but a bit disjointed.

Nothing however beats the climax.  Challenger and his crew bring a live brontosaurus back to London where things naturally go horribly wrong.  The brontosaurus rampages through the streets of the city knocking over buildings and ultimately collapsing the Tower bridge.  The animation is perfect as is the combination of the creature with the humans.

So what doesn't work?  Almost everything else.

The acting is pretty ham-fisted with the exception of Wallace Beery as Challenger.  He has one note to play, one cantankerous, arrogant note, but he nails it throughout.  The rest of the cast is bland.  When Lloyd Hughes as Malone calls Challenger to inform him the creature has escaped, he is almost emotionless.  No panic. No urgency.  He may have been going over a grocery list.

The romance between Malone and Paula almost came as a complete surprise.  They were the only main actors who seemed like they were under the age of forty, so naturally, they need to come together.  But when Malone professes his love, it's not based on anything we've seen.  Paula wisely points out that Malone has a girlfriend back home, while Malone retorts that as long as they are lost together, they can have each other.  This makes sense to Paula for some reason, but when they do escape from the plateau, they go their separate ways.  Malone back to Gladys and Paula to Roxton. 

How do Malone and Paula get together?  Turns out Gladys married while Malone was gone.  So Malone walks over to Paula and Roxton, the older man gives an "oh well" shrug and off the lovebirds go.  Silly.

The impetus for the adventure is to find Paula's father.  So naturally they find him... dead.  No real discussion about it.  Just a pile of bones and a picture of his daughter.  Again, it's unsatisfying.

There is a subplot involving a Neanderthal/missing link creature who keeps trying throw a monkeywrench into the travelers' plans.  The missing link himself is more Larry Talbot than Encino Man.  And it's not clear why he cares what is going on.  Or why he has a chimpanzee for a sidekick.

But really all this plot stuff is just a device to get us to the spectacle.  When The Lost World is dull, it is painful, but when it soars, it's epic.  

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

NOTES: Yes, that really is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introducing the film in the beginning.

I watched the Image cut of this which runs over 90 minutes.  Apparently, there are 30 minute and 60 minute versions out there.  

I'm pretty sure this is the origin story for the Loch Ness Monster.

Read More

1925: Sit Back, Relax and Enjoy the First In-Flight Movie... About Dinosaurs Attacking Humans

Pic is actually from 1925 (with a horrible cut and paste by me)

Goodbye 1924, hello 1925!

Let's set the stage.  Calvin Coolidge takes the oath of office and becomes the first President to transmit his inauguration speech live over the radio.  3M invents scotch tape (it's designed for automobile paint jobs, but soon becomes the gift wrapping staple we know and love).  Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.  Fortunately, no one will ever listen to this guy, right?  And in monument news, Mount Rushmore is dedicated (and Alfred Hitchcock gets an idea, yay!) and the Sphinx in Egypt is opened (and gave Michael Bay an idea, boo!).

In Hollywood, the film industry is settling into a groove.  The year 1925 sees the formation of the Central Casting Corporation to supply extras for film productions.  I'm assuming that's where we get the saying "he's right out of central casting"?  Willis O'Brien provides the animation for The Lost World, a film where humans head to the Amazon to prove that dinosaurs still exist.  That same year, The Lost World is also the first in-flight movie ever shown on a London-to-Paris flight. Sci-fi disaster flick as in-flight entertainment?  Where do I sign up?

As far as movies I'll be watching, my mouth is absolutely watering at this line up.  We have the aforementioned The Lost World.  Chaplin's Gold Rush (yeah, I mistakenly said it was a 1924 film in my previous write-up).  Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera (Universal monster alert!).  Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (really cannot wait to dig into it).  Grass, a documentary about a nomadic migration (I know you are on the edge of your seat with that description, but I love documentaries).  Buster Keaton's Seven Chances.  Rudolph Valentino's The Eagle.  And that's just the stuff on Netflix Watch Instantly!  Beyond these, I'll be trying to see the original, non-chuck Heston Ben-Hur, The Black Cyclone (which, and I am not making this up, is a Western focused on a horse love triangle) and Little Annie Rooney (a Mary Pickford tale so I'm guessing I know what I'm in for already).

On paper, this is the strongest line-up of any year yet.  Can't wait to dig in!

Read More