Battling Butler (1926)

Directed by Buster Keaton

Starring Buster Keaton, Sally O'Neil and Walter James

Produced by Buster Keaton Productions



Alfred Butler is a well-to-do, but foppish young man.  His every need is taken care of thanks to his parents and his loyal servant Martin.  Alfred's father decides that his son could stand a toughening up and sends him to live in the wilds for a time.  It's up to Martin to "arrange" it.



And arrange it he does.  Alfred lives at a campsite that features a full kitchen and a massive tent featuring a brass bed, a bathtub and a bearskin rug.  Roughing it indeed.



Alfred tries his hand at hunting.  Unfortunately, when he turns right, waterfowl emerge from the bushes behind him.  When he turns left, it happens again.  The only thing he successfully finds in the woods is love.



A young mountain girl finds Alfred and his valet and takes a liking to the man.  She comes over to his cabin for dinner and they are so infatuated with one another, they do not even notice the dinner table sinking into the mud.  At the end of the night, the gallant Alfred walks her back to her home, but needs a little help finding his way back.  



The next morning, a newspaper is delivered to the camp and Alfred notices a boxer with the name Alfred "Battling" Butler is fighting for the lightweight title.  Odd that the man should have the same name as our hero.



Alfred soon dispatches Martin to "arrange" a wedding with the mountain girl.  Unfortunately, the father and brother will only marry her off to a real man and they think Alfred is too much of a dandy.  The valet then tells them that his employer is really "Battling" Butler the boxer.  If our hero Alfred wants the girl, he's going to have to pretend to be a pugilist.



How long can Alfred keep up the charade?  And what happens when the real Battling Butler gets wind of our hero's scheme and decides he'd much prefer to let another man take the punches for him?





Here's my quick guide to the Battling Butler: fun set-up, dull payoff, terrible ending.



For the set-up, the movie is ingenious.  The site gags and pratfalls come one after the other as Alfred navigates the world of the wilderness.  The tent and campsite are one laugh piled on top of another.  The fun of his initial hunting attempt, followed by his ill-fated attempt to shoot a duck from a boat go on just long enough.  Keaton has this uncanny sense of comic timing and it shines in the early going.



However, once he assumes Battling's identity, the movie falls apart.  It's the same joke over and over.  There is only so much of Keaton running from a sparring partner in a boxing ring that a man can take.  It's tedious and unfunny.  Adding to the problems is that a clothed Keaton looks every bit the wimp, but when he's standing in a sleeveless shirt, it's apparent the guy is muscular.  One look at him and you know he's not a weakling.



SPOILERS! And the ending?  Alfred is preparing to defend Battling's championship when they reveal it was all a ruse to teach Alfred a lesson about assuming another man's identity.  Could have ended the film there, but they add a final reason for Battling and Alfred to fight in the dressing room and, after getting pummeled, our milquetoast hero fights back.  He knocks Battling to the ground.



I'm with the movie to this point. The last fight is a little contrived, but that's okay.  After Alfred knocks the boxer down, he picks him up and hits him again.  Down goes Battling.  So Alfred picks him up and knocks him down again.  There's a brutality and mean streak to these final moments that is both uncharacteristic and makes me hate Alfred.  I'm sure that's not what they were going for, but still....



As to the acting, Keaton is Keaton.  He plays these well-to-do man-child characters as well as anyone ever did.  The only other notable is the always reliable Snitz Edwards as Martin, the servant.  He gets some great moments and reaction shots to the insanity that surrounds him.



All in all, Battling Butler is an okay film, ruined for me by its last minute.  A good one for Keaton completists, but others can skip it.

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

Read More

Geheimnisse Einer Seele, or Secrets Of A Soul (1926)

Trippy

Directed by G.W. Pabst

Starring Werner Krauss, Ruth Weyher and Ilka Grüning

Produced by Neumann-Filmproduktion



An apartment.  A husband and wife have a normal everyday conversation.  He is shaving, she asks if he can trim some of the hair from the back of her neck.  As the razor goes to make its first cut, a cry of "Murder!" is heard outside the window.  It seems a neighbor has been killed during the night.  The startled man looks down and sees he has left a small, superficial wound on his wife's neck.  It's an accident, so no big deal.



Or so you would think.



The husband named Martin soon begins having strange dreams.  He is flying and a man in a tree shoots him out of the sky.  A city pops up on a hillside as though made of cardboard.  A bell tower spirals from the ground adorned with three ringing bells made of women's faces.



That's not all.  He develops a fear of knives.  The phobia is so bad, he cannot even go to the barber for a shave, let alone wield a razor himself.  What's worse?  He has an urge to kill his wife.  



Will Martin give into his psychosis and bloodlust? Or will he... wait a minute... what's this?  Oh, he met a psychoanalyst who takes Martin under his care for several months, divining the source of his phobias and urges and curing him.  The end.



Huh?



Did that just happen?



Did a movie that could have been about a murder mystery or a protagonist's slow descent into madness really just turn into a high school science reel titled "Psychoanalysis and You"?



Wow... just... wow.



Secrets of a Soul does a fair job early on of building a sense of foreboding with Martin's behavior.  The dream sequence is a visual treat, appropriately surrealistic and unsettling, the true stuff of nightmares.  You feel him cracking and you are waiting for either him to snap or even for him to take an interest in the murder in some way.



Of course, neither of those things happened.  We are told in a quick exchange that the murderer has been caught.  And Martin bumps into a psychoanalyst who starts walking him through his phobias and dreams.  The dissection becomes clinical and staid with the actors confined to a room talking to each other.  



It's too bad because Pabst clearly has a flair for the visual medium.  The opening shot of Martin shaving his wife knows just when to punctuate a mundane scene with a closeup to build a sense of dread.  The dream sequence and his childhood memories feel like dreams and memories.  It's a shame it's all in support of an infomercial for psychology.



While watching Secrets of a Soul, my mind wandered to all of the more interesting places the movie could have gone.  It becomes boring and monotonous in a way that makes you imagine the better unmade films this could have been.  It's an infomercial with a beautiful dream sequence in the middle.  Do yourself a favor: seek out the dream sequence and skip the rest.



*1/2 out of *****

Read More

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

A bugle sounds announcing the start of a new day on a military base in Germany.  Men pour out of the bunks and begin to change into their uniforms.  One of the men, Ulrich, is a little slower at leaving his bunk.  He delivers a kick to the bed above him to wake its occupant and finds it... empty.  His friend Leo has spent the night out on the town again.

Ulrich quickly arranges Leo's bed to make it look like someone is in it.  When Leo is missed at roll call, Ulrich announces that he is ill.  The commander goes to investigate, pulls the covers and...

Leo is sleeping in the bed.  The commander leaves and the friends celebrate pulling one over on the officer, until the officer returns and finds the sick Leo dancing.  They are both sent off to shovel dung out of the stables.

A few months later, the two friends head for home.  At the train station, they are met by Leo's mother and Ulrich's sister Hertha, who clearly has her eye on Leo.  However, Leo's eyes are drawn to another, a beautiful woman exiting the train.

He asks his mother who the woman is.  She does not know but speculates the woman is in town for the ball.  We know where Leo is headed next.

At the ball, Leo rebuffs the advances of Hertha and looks for the mysterious woman.  He finds her across the floor and sweeps her onto the dance floor.  The pair soon are walking from the hall into a secluded part of the garden.  There is a cigarette.  They kiss...

Cut to them waking up in the woman's bedroom.  All is right with the world.  Until her husband arrives.  He challenges Leo to a duel the next morning, a duel which Leo wins.

However, because he has killed a man, he must spend five years at a military outpost in Africa.  Before he goes, he asks his friend Ulrich to look after the young widow.

Ulrich gets Leo out of the service a couple of years early and the exile returns to find his friend has married the love of his life.  Ulrich believed the duel was over cheating at a card game and not the stunning young woman.  He had no idea Leo had designs on her.

Will the three overcome these new obstacles or will their passion erupt in violence once more?

We've all seen movies with a love triangle, right?  Except when you think about it, rarely is it a love triangle.  More like two lines that meet at one point.  When there are two guys and a girl, it's not usually a question of whether the two guys will end up together.

Flesh and the Devil is a true love triangle.

Leo loves the woman.  Ulrich loves the woman.  And Leo and Ulrich love each other.

Yes, you read that right.

Sure it's not overtly romantic.  Except for the way the embrace.  And look into each others' eyes.  And speak to each other.  They even get married (sort of).  In 1926, there is only so far the movie could go with these themes, but it's hardly subtext.  More like supertext.

The film excels at showing us instead of telling us about these relationships.  We see Leo and Ulrich's friendship.  We see Leo fall hard for Greta Garbo's Felicitas.  And we feel every bit of the betrayal Leo feels when he returns to find Ulrich and Felicitas married.  You believe these relationships.  Leo and Ulrich feel like they have known each other forever.  Which makes the knife twist all the more painful.

The direction by Clarence Brown made me sit up and take notice.  Despite having seen two of his previous features, it was like I was seeing him for the first time.  The camera is always right where it needs to be and every zoom and movement has a purpose.  Really virtuoso stuff here.

There are a lot of great uses of light and shadow.  The ethereal light that bathes Garbo in a glowas Gilbert goes to light her cigarette.  The shadow of Garbo's husband stalking the young lovers before he enters the room.  The ominous silhouettes of the duel.   Gorgeous.

The symbolism is heavily slathered onto this movie, but that suits the melodrama perfectly.  We see the statue of the two "friends" in the beginning.  After their relationship fractures, we see it again, this time overgrown with vines with a literal branch growing between the figures.  The lake that surrounds the Isle of Friendship freezes over as their relationship turns chilly.  

The acting here is all around perfect.  Gilbert's Leo has a mischievous streak, but also a loyalty to those he loves.  His eyes allow you to see his love and lust, his seething rage when Felicitas is taken from him and his sad sense of defeat when he sees no escape from his feelings but death.

Lars Hanson's has a Ralph Fiennes look as Ulrich.  He does not even realize he has betrayed his friend and Leo's distance literally wears him down.

Garbo is less a person here and more a device to bring the friends into conflict, but she fills her character's empty vessel with just the right sense of mystery and sensuality.  She's Helen of Troy and with one look she can send men off to die for her.

I have a few years yet to go, but I will be shocked if Flesh and the Devil is not near the top of my Best of the 1920s list.  It's brilliantly filmed, superbly acted with a story that's both simple and timeless.  A must see.

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

Read More

Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)

Directed by King Vidor

Starring John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman and Roy D'Arcy

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Bardelys is the ultimate ladies' man in King Louis XIII court.  He's bedding the wives of other men, then casually dueling them until they relent and leave.  It's all a lark to him and he's having the time of his life.



There is something he cares about though: honor.  And when his rival Chatellerault is rejected by the beautiful Roxalanne, the man plays on Bardelys pride.  Chatellerault bets Bardelys that he cannot win the hand of the maiden.  Bardelys at first laughs off the bet, but having his romantic prowess questioned in public shames him into accepting.



The bet is immediately complicated when the king prohibits his court from leaving due to the growing civil unrest in the surrounding countryside.  Bardelys, with the bet and his honor on the line, defies his monarch and heads off to find Roxalanne. 



He comes across a dying man named Lesperon and, after a brief exchange and the man's death, Bardelys assumes his identity.  Later, Bardelys encounters some of the king's soldiers.  Because he is a fugitive, he passes himself off as Lesperon.  Bad move.  It turns out Lesperon was the leader of the rebellion against the king.  Bardelys battles the men and escapes, but is wounded.  He collapses outside of Roxalanne's estate.



The woman nurses the man she believes to be Lesperon back to health.  They fall in love.  There's a boat ride through a willow tree.  However, when the moment comes to marry his love, Bardelys cannot bring himself to do it.  The relationship is built on a lie.  Angry, the woman summons the soldiers to take "Lesperon" away.



Bardelys is brought to trial before a panel of judges that includes Chatellerault.  The villain refuses to correct Bardelys true identity and he is sentenced to death.



Can Bardelys escape the executioner?  And will he win the hand of Roxalanne?



Let's get this out of the way: the plot is really silly.  Bardelys is a regular in King Louis' court, but nobody recognizes him?  The supposed leader of the rebels is off convalescing with Roxalanne and he is still considered the leader of the rebels?  Roxalanne and her dad (who are both sympathizers with the rebellion) never ask their guest whether he should be off, you know, rebelling?



Here's the thing though.  Bardelys the Magnificent has a momentum and proficiency that captivates you while you are watching it.  Crucial to this is the acting and magnetism of John Gilbert in the lead.



Gilbert elevates the material through his nuanced portrayal of the lead character.  The changes that wash over his face throughout sell the tale and pull the audience along.  There are so many big moments that he sells with his performance.  His awkward attempts to laugh off the bet.  The change in his eyes as Roxalanne professes his love and he feels the weight of his guilt.  The relief and then horror as he slowly realizes Chatellerault is betraying him in the court.  They are scenes that need no dialogue cards to express what is going on.



Eleanor Boardman is perfect as the object of Bardelys desire.  She is fiery, but tender.  Most silents fall into the trap of making their women a cipher or a plot device.  Boardman's Roxalanne is a person.  She has her own political views and she doesn't bow to any man.  



The other star of note is Roy D'Arcy as Chatellerault.  He's a cunning villain, taking full advantage when opportunity presents itself.  He is also terrifically over the top, particularly in the court scene.  He doesn't just play that he doesn't recognize Bardelys; he does so with a knowing wink at his rival that twists the knife further.  



The direction by King Vidor is one of constant motion.  There are two scenes that show the director's mastery over different types of emotion.  First is the boat ride through the willows.  This is pure paperback romance.  They sit across from each other as the willow branches touch them.  They embrace, him kissing her, her writhing in pleasure.  It's foreplay and consummation, as close to sex as you'll get in 1926.



The other is Bardelys' escape attempt from the executioner.  It's the first time I can remember seeing action choreography married to cinematography in such a compelling way.  We get point of view shots as Bardelys slides down some long handled axes.  We get a perspective looking down on the actor as he swings from a banner.  The scene is endlessly inventive in how he uses the setting and its weapons to create a getaway.



The climax between Bardelys and Chatellerault gets a little too melodramatic for my tastes.  The whole set-up of the scene seems like a way to both have a satisfying duel and keep the blood off of our hero's hands.



In the end, Bardelys almost out swashbuckles Douglas Fairbanks.  In many ways the film is superior to Fairbanks' productions because it actually pays attention to the female lead and writes her as more than a prize to be won.  Of, course others' mileage may vary, but Bardelys the Magnificent is a pleasant and welcome surprise.



**** out of *****

NOTE: Bardelys the Magnificent was considered a lost film until 2006 when a nearly complete print was found.  The film is missing the third reel.  The available version of the movie includes production stills and dialogue cards in the place of the missing scenes.

Read More

The Bells (1926)

Directed by James Young

Starring Lionel Barrymore, Caroline Frances Cooke, and Gustav von Seyffertitz

Produced by Chadwick Pictures Corporation 

Mathias and his wife Catharine run an inn and a mill together.  They both have their ambitions.  Catharine wants to succeed as an innkeeper and is mindful of ensuring that their patrons pay for the drink.  Mathias however wants to be the town Burgomaster and if he needs to ply the townspeople with alcohol on credit that never gets paid, so be it.



The problem with Mathias' approach is that they owe the local banker for the money they used to purchase their businesses.  And Mathias' approach to the balance sheet has had an unfortunate impact on the balance sheet.



Enter a traveling merchant.  Not just any merchant, but one with a heavy money belt.  He relaxes at the inn for an hour, but Mathias sees an opportunity.  He sets off after the man and with a swing of an axe, the innkeeper's money troubles are over.



He pays off the inn and the mill.  He even has a nice dowry for his daughter to marry the local lawman.  And Mathias becomes the Burgomaster.



If only that were the end of things.  The murder has been discovered and the merchant's brother arrives in town demanding justice.  For help, the victim's kin has hired a mesmerist to ascertain the guilty party.  As Burgomaster, Mathias must lead an investigation.  Meanwhile, he is haunted by the ghost of his victim and the sounds of the man's sleigh bells.



Will Mathias be discovered?  Or will the madness of his crime consume him?



The Bells has a fantastic central concept in an ambitious innkeeper being haunted by his crime.  It also has actors that make one prepare for greatness: Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff.



If only the script was worthy of the effort.



There is certainly some good stuff here.  For most of the film, Barrymore plays Mathias' descent into madness in a relatively understated way.  He never really flies off the handle.  It's all wild-eyed stares and disheveled hair.  He both has the weight of his guilt hanging over him and conceals his crime from the town.  Barrymore is certainly up to the task of playing a virtuous man whose ambition leads him into some bad choices.



But the way this plays out is baffling.  A merchant is murdered and the next day Mathias is rich.  The local constable points out that the victim's body can't be found and that it was likely burned in a lime kiln; Mathias points out that he has lime kilns.  He tries to put off the investigation by pointing out the scandal that a murder would bring to the town.  It does not take a Law & Order junkie to figure out the murderer.



Karloff gets top billing today, but in truth he is barely in it.  He glowers menacingly and smiles menacingly and performs all other manner of human movement menacingly, but he exists only to provide Mathias the threat of being discovered.



There is some interesting effects work here.  The way the bells hover over Mathias.  The ghostly hand that appears and then reveals a full ghost.  But the tone is never right.  It never feels dark or foreboding enough.  There's no real terror at the hauntings and the plot depends on those moments being dreadful.



SPOILERS AHEAD.  And then there is the ending.  Mathias is visited by the ghost again, but the murderer repents his sin and is forgiven by the dead man.  At peace at last, Mathias sees a halo develop around the religious shrine in his room and he dies.  It feels like the movie just ends.  Like it lost all of its steam and petered out.  The buildup of the movie was the threat the mesmerist posed to Mathias world order and that never really comes to fruition.



In the end, The Bells is a tale we have seen a million times.  It may be one of the first, but it's only a half-baked attempt.  It never decides what story it's telling and elements flit in and out without resolution.  There are great moments, but they do not add up to a whole film.



** out of *****

Read More

Felix the Cat in Two-Lip Time

Felix notices a mouse run a rope and chases after it.  Unbeknownst to our title character, the rope is attached to a boat, which soon heads out to sea.  After a bout of seasickness, the feline finds himself among the tulips of Holland.  He takes a liking to a young girl, but there's a boy who already had his eyes on her.  Can the cat win the hand of the maiden?

The latest Felix the Cat short has a breezy humor to it.  There are little sight gags, enough to make you smile, but nothing completely guffaw inducing.  There is a naïve simplicity to the tale that is a breath of fresh air, a safe harbor from all of the live action artistry and misogynistic Disney cartoons of the era.

There are some fun moments to be had.  Felix first corrals the girl by tossing his heart to her.  It circles her a few times before she snatches it from the air.  Cute.

Later, when a man tosses a shoe at the cat, Felix turns it into a boat, using an exclamation point from his thoughts as a paddle.  In the end, our resourceful hero uses his own tail as a handle for a windmill to blow away one of his foes.

It's sad that after my experience with Disney's Alice shorts I am giving points to a movie for being entertaining without offending, but so it goes.  We are in safe hands here watching Two Lip Time.  There is no ambition but to bring some happiness to the viewer for a brief moment.  And it succeeds at that in spades.

**** out of *****

Read More

Son of the Sheik (1926)

Directed by George Fitzmaurice
Starring Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky and George Fawcett
Produced by Feature Productions

A troupe of entertainers who prefer to be thieves sit in their camp outside of town, alternately cheating and accusing each other of cheating. Inside one of the tents, Yasmin, the daughter of the group's leader, sits dreaming of the handsome man she met earlier.

The man Ahmed is the son of a sheik (the title character of 1921's The Sheik). He has fallen for the dancer and is on his way to meet her in the ruins next to the criminals' camp.

Unfortunately, the entertainers learn of the lovers' secret rendezvous. They capture and torture the man, while planning to ransom him. Ahmed's right hand man Ramadan rescues him, but our hero believes that his love set him up.

When the troupe comes through the town where Ahmed is recovering, he kidnaps Yasmin to take his revenge. In the meantime, his father is growing impatient with his son's disobedience in recklessness.

Will Ahmed learn the truth about his love?  Can he earn the respect of his father and... wait, did our "hero" really just rape his captive?

I've seen movies overshadowed by a scene, both for good or ill. This may be the first I have seen where an implied scene almost subsumes the entire film.

Ahmed has captured Yasmin and is toying with her. He kisses her and shows her the helplessness of her situation. Then, she begins backing away from him and towards a bed. Fade out

The next time we see her, she is awakening in that same bed and her previous hatred is now boiling over. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what happened to her while the camera cut away.

It's a big and important moment. The movie wants us to root for our young lovers to figure out the earlier misunderstanding and get back together. But there are certain acts you can't take back.

The movie tries to keep us in the couple's corner. Yasmin has been promised to one of the other thieves. And he is a thug and a brute. Truly someone worth reviling. It gives Ahmed a foil to save his girl from. It gives Yasmin someone to run from and into the waiting arms of our hero.

But there are certain genies that just won't be bottled up. The movie comes close to making it work, but redeeming a rapist in the last twenty minutes is a hell of a hill to climb.

It's a shame too, because in most other respects, this is the Rudolph Valentino sweeping epic I have been waiting for. It's got action and romance and plenty of opportunities for Valentino to smolder.

Our lead actor is great in his dual roles as both Ahmed and his father (reprising an older version of his character from The Sheik). As the son, he shows a carefree side, a romantic side, and an angry, dangerous side. As the older sheik, Valentino flexes acting muscles I didn't know he had. He's regal and stoic, but softens when he sees a glimmer of his old self in his son.

Vilma Banky is that exotic beauty that you can see a ruler throwing away his throne for.  She's fiery and smart. And then, she's broken and filled with hate.

The supporting cast is equally good. Karl Dane managed to make Ramadan a memorable character with little screen time.  I get an Adam Baldwin vibe off of his performance.  Agnes Ayres is appropriately doting yet supportive reprising her role from The Sheik.

The use of Valentino's two roles is a technical marvel.  I've seen split screen in earlier films, but here it really seems seamless.  He finds ways to make the characters interact that are ingenious.

Son of the Sheik is a great film overwhelmed by a narrative misstep.  Ahmed could have been cruel.  He could have just slapped Yasmin.  But rape?  Ugh.  The movie wants Yasmin to choose between the hero and the villain.  But how does she know which one is which?

Read More

The General (1926)

Directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton
Starring Buster Keaton, Marion Mack and Glen Cavender

Johnny Gray is a man with two loves: his girl Annabelle and his train named The General. When shots are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist in the Confederacy, but the recruitment office decides he is more valuable as a conductor.   Annabelle assumes he is a coward and refuses to see him until he is wearing a uniform.

A year later, Johnny is still working on his beloved train and still loves Annabelle from a distance.  Union soldiers steal The General to use as a Trojan Horse in a campaign against the confederates.  Johnny is soon in pursuit in another train.  To raise the stakes, Annabelle has been captured on The General by the Union army.
Can Johnny recover both of his loves?  Can he warn the Confederate Army of the coming danger?  And will it all be enough to win back the hand of his girl?

Okay, confession time: I really struggled with this review.

I turned on The General with pretty high expectations. It's generally acknowledged as a classic. I knew of the movie from a slew of "Best Movie Ever" type lists, but I didn't know anything about it.

It took some warming up for me to like this movie. I don't love it, but I like it.

Maybe it's the burden of expectation. Not that it would be the greatest film ever, but that it would be funny. I mean that's what a Buster Keaton film is all about, right?  My expectation was a stitch-busting comedy in the vein of his previous work.

It's not funny, or at least that's not principally the focus. Call it an action film or a chase film, but it's really not a comedy.

Once I accepted the movie on its own terms, I started to really enjoy it.

The General has two big things going for it: an interesting premise creatively executed and the complete fearlessness of its star.

At its core, this is a chase movie between a couple of trains. Think about that for a moment. A chase. Between two trains. On the same track. How interesting could that possibly be?

In the right hands, it turns out it can be enthralling. The film constantly wrings drama and tension out of the situation and it's endlessly inventive in creating new obstacles for the trains.

We see debris thrown onto the track. Rail switches used to dramatic effect. Rail cars set on fire and released. Wood dropped from an overhead rail onto the train passing below. Keaton and his crew understand the world of the train and squeeze out all of the dramatic possibilities.

Of course, to realize the drama and humor of the script, you need a star who is game for anything. And Keaton is audacious.

The danger to the star throughout the film only really hit me during a quieter moment. Keaton is standing on one of the cars chopping a piece of wood. My brain says: " man, he is awfully close to the edge... [pause] ... Oh my God, he is doing all of these stunts himself on a moving train!"

When today's Hollywood actor performs a dangerous stunt, the studio makes damn sure you know it in a "Wow, that really is Tom Cruise climbing the mountain" kind of way. The General never does that. It never underlines the peril the hero is constantly in.

Whether he is absent-mindedly moving up and down on a tender or sitting on the cowcatcher of a moving train, you never feel like it's a stunt. He races across train cars, jumps on and off moving engines and sits next to steel wheels that could crush him, but it's all second nature to Johnny Gray  It simply what the character has to do to clear the next hurdle.

That highlights one of the slight issues I had with the film. That constant danger never feels... well, dangerous. Keaton is so at ease in racing around that train that it undercuts a bit of the tension of his situation. If he had almost fallen or if we'd seen something crushed by the train, it may have amped things up. 




The movie features an ending action sequence that makes you scramble for Google.  Yes, Keaton really crashed a train surrounded by all those extras.  What today would be a moment of CGI trickery involved tons of steel and iron providing real human peril.  Remarkable.

I liked The General. A lot, but I didn't love it. That said, I am anxious to revisit it so I can experience the film without my prior preconceptions. It's a remarkable achievement to create a chase film between two trains, let alone one that has both tension and humor.

**** out of *****

Read More

Alice Comedies of 1926

Disney and KKK-like killers

Produced by Walt Disney Productions

I recently watched Alice's Mysterious Mystery, Alice's Little Parade, and Alice's Orphan. The experience allows me to say without hesitation:

Walt Disney was a messed up guy.

Of course, I say that as a modern viewer revisiting these. I am sure they are "of their time," but I just do not get it.

Let's start with Alice's Mysterious Mystery. I figured a fun detective comedy would be a way to forget my issues with the 1925 shorts. Man, was I wrong.

The "mystery" is solved pretty quickly as Alice and her cat follow footprints to a bird with shoes. But that leads them to a mouse and what-I-am-assuming-is-a-bear are operating a dog catching racket where they capture canines and ship them to a sausage factor.

How do they do this?  By donning KKK outfits, sorting the dogs (grade A or B) and sending them to the death chamber. Especially disturbing was a scene where a dog is pacing on death row and a priest arrives to give the last rites. The dog begs for his life, gets dragged into a death chamber and moments later, is dragged back out as links of sausage.  For a viewer in 2011, it's hard not to view this short through the eyes of World War II Germany.

In a similar vein, Alice's Big Parade has a misleading title. It's actually about preparing and executing a war.  Alice is the general, but her cat is the recruiter/field commander. As in previous shorts, the feline can remove his tail to use as a weapon. As they battle the mice, the cat stations himself at one end of the enemy's trench and leaves a slice of cheese.  As the mice are drawn to the smell, the cat clubs them over the head with his tail.

Alice's Orphan is about an orphan cat that Alice and her pet take care of. There were again some cringe-worthy moments. Early on, the cat is watching a female cat ice skate when she falls into the lake. He makes the save and she instantly falls in love with him.  But there's a problem: she's ugly. So the cat throws her back into the hole and seals it up (presumably drowning her). Later, when he unsuccessfully tries to get the orphan to sleep, our cat hero resorts to using a mallet on the child. Not funny. Not even smile-inducing.

The shorts continue the trend of completely sidelining the title character. She's slightly active in Alice's Mysterious Mystery, but in the other two, she's a non-entity. In Alice's Orphan she is barely in it and does nothing. I thought part of the appeal of these was the interaction between live action and cartoon characters?

I have never watched anything by Disney and felt like I needed to shower afterward. Until these Alice shorts. They are an historical curiosity but nothing more.

Alice's Mysterious Mystery: * out of *****
Alice's Little Parade: ** out of *****
Alice's Orphan: *1/2 out of *****

Read More

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

Directed by Lotte Reiniger
Produced by Comenius-Film GmbH

The caliph is holding a celebration and people from all over have come with wonders never seen in order to win the ruler's favor. There is one item the caliph sees that he simply must have: a flying horse presented by an African sorcerer. The caliph offers gold and the sorcerer refuses. The magician says he wants something else and the king quickly decrees he can have anything as trade for the horse.

What the magician wants is the caliph's daughter Dinarsade. Her brother Prince Achmed comes to her defense and the sorcerer apparently gives up. He offers to show the prince how to fly the horse and off Achmed goes. Unfortunately, he never shows Achmed how to land the horse so up, up and away goes our title character.

Achmed eventually figures out there is a lever by the tail to descend and lands on Wak Wak island, the home of the beautiful Princess Peri Banu. Our hero is smitten and takes her away with the Wak Wak spirits in pursuit.

The prince must save the princess and defeat the sorcerer. His quest will take him to China. He'll battle snakes and bats and demons.  He'll meet Aladdin and the Fire Mountain Witch along the way. But will he find love and vengeance?  Or death?

Here we have The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the oldest surviving, feature length, color animated film. Usually, in my film review, this is where I talk about characters and plot and scenes. We'll forgo that for the most part and focus on one aspect: the experience.

First, let me explain the animation. This is not hand-drawn cel animation or CGI (obviously). It's cut out animation. The creator took thousands of cardboard cut out figures and filmed them, moving them one frame at a time. The aesthetic is akin to watching South Park if the characters were composed entirely of black cardboard.

Except in Prince Achmed it's incredibly more detailed. Your watching a movie narrative, but your mind keeps marveling at the effort and skill that must have been required to make water shimmer or creatures transform.

Your assumption going in is that these flat silhouettes without the benefit of detailed faces would fail to captivate. But the mind is a funny thing. It fills in the gaps that are not on the screen. The shadowy versions of the figures become blank slates for your brain to draw on. And your imagination provides smiles and scowls that aren't really there. 

There is also a hypnotic effect to the animation style. It flows over you in a way that animation can but rarely does. It's gorgeous to look at.

That's not to say it's perfect. The animation often has a fluidity that is breathtaking, but there are also moments where the frame-to-frame transitions become jittery. Not unexpected for its time but the transitions between smooth and staccato animation are noticeable because they so often are juxtaposed against each other.

I could critique the story and characterization, but that never seems to be the point of The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Simply put it on and let it wash over you.

**** out of *****

NOTE: I think most people assume Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) was the first feature length animated film. Obviously, that is not the case. Beyond that though, Prince Achmed itself was pre-dated by The Apostle (1917) and Without a Trace (1918). Both of those are lost films so The Adventures of Prince Achmed gets the slightly awkward to say "oldest surviving animated feature-length" crown.

Read More

The Temptress (1926)

"You should see the other guy..."

Directed by Fred Niblo
Starring Greta Garbo, Antonio Moreno and Marc McDermott
Produced by Cosmopolitan Productions

During an exotic masquerade ball, the beautiful Elena runs from the dance floor to escape her would-be suitor Fontenoy.  Her flight takes her right into the arms of Manuel Robledo and as often happens in Hollywood the two fall in love.  She refuses to share her name, but Robeldo soon discovers she is the wife of his friend, the Marquis de Torre Bianca. 

Yes, Elena is a married woman, but her husband enjoys living beyond their family's means. So, he rents out his wife to the wealthy Fontenoy. Sadly, Fontenoy is a bit over-indulgent and bankrupts himself by showering gifts upon Elena.

To forget his love, Robeldo heads to the Argentine to work as lead engineer on a dam project. The escape doesn't go to plan as the Marquis and Elena soon join him.  And as if Robeldo's trouble with love wasn't enough, a local gang leader wants to take out Robeldo and his dam.

Will Robeldo escape the evil Manos Duras and find love?  Will anyone with an XY chromosome not immediately start acting like an idiot after meeting Elena?

The Temptress is a romantic drama, but it's one of those romantic dramas.  You know, a film where every guy falls all over themselves to please the woman.  And Greta Garbo's Elena is the woman.

We've seen this act before, most notably with Theda Bara in A Fool There Was.  Unlike Bara's vamp character though, Garbo just seems to be a beautiful woman whose men suffer from bad luck once they are under her power.

That's not to say she's not culpable.  She indulges the men and clearly loves the attention.  When she moves to the Argentine, she dons an elegant dress for their frontier dinner and gets called out for it.  But she's not changing her dress or her ways.  When the fish are biting, why mess with the bait?

As for the bad luck of her men, Elena qualifies as her own natural disaster.  Through her involvement, Fontenoy is bankrupted and commits suicide, her husband is shot and killed, one of Robeldo's friends is killed by another of his friends and the dam gets blown to smithereens.  There are hurricanes without that kind of resume.

It's also one of those films in its dialogue.  A sampling:

"I must have you alone - I have so much to say to you. I've waited so long - just for you - "


"All my life, I've been wishing to meet such a woman as you - on such a night as this!"

"Let us keep for an hour the glamour of romance.  I tell you this - I belong to no one else."

"Remember this of me- there were tears in my eyes when I said - - 'I love you!'"

All of these are from the first ten minutes of a 105 minute movie.  If you are like me, you'll need a doctor's visit to remove your finger from your throat.  And those hyphens are important.  They are the dramatic, One Life to Live pauses that are present in every line of dialogue.  Every -- line.

I have not said much about Garbo and frankly that's because there is not much to say.  Elena doesn't do much.  What we know about her comes more from everyone's reaction to her and not from anything she does.  Elena is a blank slate of eyes looking meaningfully at some off-camera horizon as men swoon.  That said, Garbo does inhabit the character in a way that you get the attraction.  The camera loves her and so does the audience.

I wish there was another character I liked.  Robledo is close to a hero, but he's a little too wimpy for most of the film.  Then at the end, as he is motivating his crew to try to save the dam, he threatens to shoot the first man to desert.  Then, he randomly shoots someone.  Your hero, ladies and gentlemen!

Niblo shoots the film well enough.  There are some truly beautiful shots throughout.  His images of Paris and the masquerade party are warm and beautiful.  His gauzy lens makes Garbo glow and there is nothing wrong with that.

There was one sequence that surprised me with its violence.  Robledo challenges Duras to a fight and after debating swords versus pistols, they settle on an Argentine fight.  The crowd drew a circle in the sand, handed the two men whips and let them go at it.  First one to leave the circle loses.  When Robledo finally wins, both men are a bloody mess.  The moment underlined just how dangerous this world was and heightened the stakes for the rest of the film.

The Temptress is predictable and features annoying dialogue.  Still, it's not without its charms, principally Garbo and the way the men who surround her are dispatched.  All of that gets us to:

** out of *****

Read More

The Black Pirate (1926)

Directed by Albert Parker
Starring Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove and Anders Randolf
Produced by Elton Corporation

It's a time when cannons and cutlasses reign supreme, when pirates ruled the seas and sailors shivered at the sight of the Jolly Roger.

In the midst of this, a nobleman marooned on a remote island vows revenge upon the buccaneers who murdered his father. Opportunity rears its head when pirates arrive to bury their treasure.

Our nobleman decides to pretend to be a pirate, join the crew and destroy it from the inside. He wins a duel against the crew's best fighter, then singlehandedly captures a merchant ship. The impressed pirates take on the mysterious Black Pirate as their leader.

The cutthroats aboard the pirate ship want to scuttle the captured vessel, kill its crew and make off with the loot. The Black Pirate convinces them to ransom the ship and it's crew instead. This is of course a ruse and he sends a note to the governor with one of the captives asking to send troops, not ransom money.

Complicating the Black Pirate's schemes are a damsel in distress who has been promised to one of the lead pirates. That pirate wants not only the girl, but the Black Pirate's job as boss. Can our hero navigate through the murky waters of piracy?  Or will he be found out and forced to walk the plank?

Here we have The Black Pirate, the great grandfather of every pirate movie since. You can see the DNA of Jack Sparrow in Douglas Fairbanks' performance. Everything you know and love is here: peg legs, the skull and crossbones, buried treasure, walking the plank, sword fights, all of it here.

However, more than that, The Black Pirate has some jaw-dropping set pieces. The standout moment is Fairbanks' singlehanded, bloodless assault on the merchant ship. The guile and skill of the character is on full display and you actually believe he could have pulled the feat off.

There is also a visually beautiful climax that includes an intentionally sunk longboat and a platoon of troops swimming underwater.   It's a legitimate "how'd they do that?" moment.

Less successful is an opening sword fight between Fairbanks and one of the pirates. It's good, but overlong and not much really happens during it. The finale of the duel is clever and allows are hero to win and not dirty his hands too much.

Another notable thing about the film?  Color!  Yes, the film was actually made in color. The technique adds a depth and character through it's muted tones. As someone who has been feasting on a parade of black and white, the change was both shocking and effective.

As with most Fairbanks' films though, the film has some significant problems. The actor is wonderful in the physical sequences, but awful at acting. He emotes in a way that makes him seem like he is screaming every line. And his gestures made me wonder if he was making a point or having a seizure.

There are plot elements that make no sense. The villains meet the hero on the beach and almost immediately offer, not just to bring him onto the crew, but to anoint him leader. I would not think pirates to be such a trusting lot.

There is also a pirate who helps Fairbanks throughout. Even when it becomes apparent the hero is not on the up-and-up. Why?  Who knows?

But really the plot is a series of contrivances to shuttle our lead from set piece to set piece. And on that level it succeeds. The Black Pirate is not a great movie, but it's fun enough for a watch and critical to an understanding of the pirate movie family tree.

*** out of *****

Note: Fairbanks' wife Mary Pickford prohibited her husband from kissing other actresses, even in character. So, we get an awkward moment in the middle of the film where Fairbanks just hugs his damsel for a while. When they finally kiss the girl's back is to the camera with her face hidden. Why?  Because Pickford stepped into the role to perform the smooch.

Read More

1926: Death of a Heartthrob

Crowds line Valentino's funeral procession route.

We've reached 1926.  NBC is established as a radio network, ultimately leading to The Cosby Show and Caroline in the City (they can't all be winners).  Route 66 is established and a legend begins. Dance legend Martha Graham gives her first New York performance.

In the film world, it's a year of notable premieres.  Alfred Hitchcock releases his first feature in the U.S. (The Pleasure Garden). John Wayne shows up uncredited in his first role as a football player in Brown of Harvard. Don Juan marked the debut of the Vitaphone, a technique that synchronized sound and effects with the movie (though there was no dialogue). 

This is also the year that sadly one of the icons of the silent era passed on.  Rudolph Valentino was 31 when he collapsed at a New York City hotel suffering from appendicitis.  Despite surgery and an initial optimistic prognosis, Valentino died on August 23.  His death sparked a mass outpouring of grief with almost 100,000 people lining up to pay their respects.  Valentino's death began a sad Hollywood ritual of celebrating the life of an artist struck down in his prime and wondering what might have been, a ritual we continue to practice right up to actors like James Dean and Heath Ledger.

As to the movie-watching, I guess I should make a note about 1925 and moving forward. The project started out watching three to five films from each year. For 1925, I watched 16 films. Crazy, but it does reflect a slight recalibration of philosophy. I decided that I am only walking this path once, so anything that strikes my fancy will get a watch. No more hard or even soft ceiling on what I'll watch.

What will the films of 1926 look like here? Well, I have become a huge Buster Keaton fan so The General is a natural. I am intrigued by Prince Achmed, the first animated feature length movie.  I am also planning on catching Douglas Fairbanks' The Black Pirate and F.W. Murnau's awesomeness in Faust.  I'm also planning my farewell to Valentino by watching Son of Sheik.

Read More

Greed (1924)

Mac is ready to attack

Directed by Erich von Stroheim

Starring Zasu Pitts, Gibson Gowland and Jean Hersholt

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn Pictures Corporation

Before moving onto 1926, we take one last backward look to 1924 and Erich von Stroheim's Greed. Widely considered the director's masterpiece, Greed is as much known for its tortured history as its critical praise. The film was originally ten hours long. The studio naturally cut it back to two hours and the eight hours lost is considered one of the great tragedies of the silent era. 

I can't speak to the value of the ten hour version or even the two hour version. I cannot imagine sitting down to watch a half day long movie. I also cannot fathom trying to get through a two hour film that was butchered from a film five times longer. 

The four hour restored version is a good compromise. It includes the two hour version cut together with production stills and intertitles that fill in the story gaps. The editors use the camera to zoom into and out of photos to focus our attention, an approach that works well. 

So how is the movie I saw?

In a word: brilliant. 

When the word "epic" is applied to movies, it usually means world-altering events, massive landscapes and larger-than-life characters. Greed is an epic, but it's an epic writ small. The movie alters the world of these characters in massive and tragic ways. 

At its heart, Greed is about three characters. McTeague is a simple man in both thought and desire. Marcus is his best friend, always looking for the next angle. And Trina is Marcus' cousin and the object of both men's desire. 

Marcus reluctantly steps aside for his friend "Mac" and Trina agrees to marry him, though it's clear she's not entirely in love with him. Then, a fourth character introduced: money. And the idea of cash wreaks havoc on their relationships. 

Trina wins $5000 in a lottery. She invests the money, but becomes a miser stealing from her husband at every opportunity. McTeague wants to spend a little more freely, which of course puts him at odds with his wife who is squirreling away every penny. And Marcus damns his own luck. If he had just ended up with Trina, he'd be the rich man. 

A creepy example of the gold tint used at key moments

Greed does not do the obvious Hollywood thing and let its characters become rich and addicted to an unrealistic, lavish lifestyle. The film is far more interested in the concept of money. Before the lottery win, none of the characters really knew what they didn't have. Once one of them gets a check, their entire existence becomes preoccupied with earning, stealing, or hustling the next dime. 

It's not accurate to say though that the money creates the characters' failings.  The money simply magnifies the flaws that were already there. Marcus was always looking for the latest fashion or coolest turn of phrase.  He used artificial means to make himself superior. When the lottery win shows him how little he really has, he has to lash out. McTeague has a gentleness to him, but an anger as well.  Our introduction to him is him throwing a man from a bridge during an argument over a bird.

McTeague rises above it for a while. But then he loses his dentistry practice (turns out you need to be licensed). And he can't hold down any other job. By the time Trina is refusing to give her husband a nickel for carfare to get to a job interview in the rain, we all know this is not going to end well. 

The stakes could not be higher. I'd say love is at stake, but true love was never in the cards for any of these people. We see where the high road leads in a couple of elderly neighbors who discover they're soulmates. And we see the path to hell in a craven junk dealer and his wife. And while the former is held out as an ideal, it is never a real option.

I love the tale spun here.  The movie is populated with some great dialogue and quirky characters supporting a tale of mankind's depravity. If this were being remade today, Joel and Ethan Coen would be behind the characters

The acting here is great. None of the players are inhabiting real characters. Rather, they are the personification of greed and goldlust, but that's exactly what the movie needs. As her desire for more cash takes over, Zasu Pitts plays Trina as completely unhinged. I particularly liked Gibson Gowland as McTeague. Even in his kindest moments, you can feel the rage bubbling below the surface. The secondary characters all perfectly execute what the script requires.

The real star is the director himself. The framing and editing are first rate. More than that, the film uses perspective to make McTeague feel larger than life. It's the type of camerawork Orson Welles turned into an art form in Citizen Kane. 

Greed is a tale of envy, stealing, murder and, well, greed. It tracks the way men and women can allow jealousy and sin to fester like a cancer until it consumes them totally. By the time McTeague is escaping into Death Valley, we know that's not just a place, but the inevitable conclusion to this epic morality play. 

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

Read More