We Faw Down (1928)

The Laurels and Hardys are enjoying a nice, quiet evening at home together. At least the wives are. The men are chomping at the bit to get out. It's poker night and their friends are waiting.

When Oliver gets a call from the poker game, he sees an opportunity. He pretends the boss is calling with a job at the Orpheum Theater. The guys leave their wives behind and head out.

On their way to the game, they pass two women, one of whom has lost her hat underneath a parked car. Ever the gentlemen, our heroes push the car out of the way to retrieve the hat. Unfortunately, they slip and fall into a puddle left by a passing street cleaner.

The women feel guilty and invite Laurel and Hardy back to their apartment to dry their clothes. Things are going well until the husband of one of the women arrives home. Our heroes quickly throw on their clothes and head out a window.

Meanwhile, the wives have received the newspaper announcing that the Orpheum Theater has burned to the ground. Realizing that their husbands have lied, they set out to find the men.

Laurel and Hardy are having problems of their own. In their hasty exit, they've accidentally put on the wrong pants. Their efforts to correct this situation attract the eye of a policeman. Soon the pair are being chased around the town and to the top of a construction site.

Can Laurel and Hardy escape from the situation they find themselves in? Will their wives believe a word they say? And how does a pincer-happy crab figure into the situation?



I couldn't leave 1928 without introducing myself to what's considered one of the great comedy teams of all time. I'm only passingly familiar with Laurel and Hardy, so this is definitely one of those blind spots in need of correction.

And having seen We Faw Down, it's easy to understand the duo's appeal. Their characters are perfect foils for one another. They are physically different, but with very complimentary personalities. It's a formula we've seen in Hollywood from its beginnings and it works brilliantly here.

That said, I probably see more promise for the future in We Faw Down than a classic film. It's smile inducing, but never hysterical. The punchlines can be seen a mile away in most cases. It's entertaining to be sure, but never as funny as it thinks it is...

...Until the last shot. The last shot is so shocking and funny, I won't spoil it here. It ties so well into a moment earlier in the film and provides a great source of irony for our beleaguered couples.

We Faw Down is a good solid entry from Laurel and Hardy and a fine introduction for a neophyte like me. Not a home run, but a nice single. Looking forward to tracking them in future years.

*** out of *****

Photo from Wikipedia

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Educational Films of 1928: When Nature Calls Edition

Today, we have three educational films from 1928. All three have an environmental theme. Let's get into it shall we?



The first deals with conservation and reforestation. It opens with some striking images of a lush green forest that is quickly juxtaposed against some clear cut forests. We soon learn that the images are part of a movie being shown to a classroom. The students decide they should reforest an area and the rest of the film is a field trip showing them digging and planting evergreens.

As someone with some environmental background, the most surprising moment comes near the end. The students finish eating their box lunch, dig a hole, place all the trash in the pit and light it on fire. Of course, this is before the age of plastics, but it is still surprising to see.



The second film deals with fish hatcheries. Most of the film is taken up by seeing a microscopic view of how fish mature from an egg. I'm sure there are modern versions of the same thing, but I found the film fascinating.It cannot be embedded so click here to view it.



The final is the most bizarre. It's a health and the environment piece that spends the first two-thirds showing pictures of daily life and asking "What is lacking here?" over and over again. At the end it starts telling us to get out and get fresh air. I'm sure this was intended to be used by teachers in an interactive lesson plan, but it's very oddly put together. It also has a moment of unintentional hilarity as a girl overacts the hell out of waking in her bed.

I like taking a few moments to watch these. They are little time capsules of what people were wearing, what life was like and what they were thinking about. On the last point, not a lot has changed.

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The Last Command (1928)

Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Starring Emil Jannings, William Powell and Evelyn Brent
Produced by Paramount Pictures

In an anonymous Hollywood office in 1928, a director prepping his next production pours over head shots in order to cast extras in his next movie. He's making a Russian war epic and bemoaning the fact that the current crop of Tinseltown actors look so inauthentic.

Then his eyes fall onto a picture of an old man. There's a glimmer of anticipation and even familiarity. He tells his staff to cast the man as the general in the film.

The old man receives the call and heads to the studio and waits with hundreds of others outside the gates.   As the lot opens, the potential extras push and yell at each other, trying to ensure their acting spot. The "general" navigates through this with a grace and dignity that none of the others can match.

When he finally dons the uniform, the general reaches into his case and produces his own medal to complete the outfit. The actor next to him asks where the man got the medal and the response is from the czar himself.

We flash back to 1917 and see the man without the world-weariness as General Dolgorucki of his cousin's army. He is trying to win the war, but he also has to make political maneuvers. When the czar visits the encampment, he pulls a division from the front lines to parade in front of the ruler. Never mind the fact that the men are desperately needed at the front, he has a czar to appease.



The general also must deal with a couple of actors who are really spies for the enemy. One of the spies, Leo, is the director from the opening scenes.  Dolgorucki whips him and locks him away. As for Leo's partner Natalie?  Well, the General takes a liking to the beautiful yet fiery woman and keeps her around as his consort.

Natalie still harbors a hatred for the government, but her time with the general leads her to respect the man's love for Russia. When her chance comes to kill her former enemy, Natalie cannot bring herself to do it.   The seeds of a romance are sown.

Unfortunately, the relationship never gets time to bloom. The train carrying the general and his men is hijacked by rebels and Natalie gleefully joins her former allies. The army officers are executed on the spot, but the general is spared so he can be hanged publicly. They send their captive to shovel coal into the train's furnace.

However, Natalie's alliance with the revolutionaries was only a ruse. She frees the general and he jumps from the train.  He can only watch in horror as the locomotive careens off of a bridge, killing the woman he loved.

Which brings us back to the present and the general's nascent acting career.  Will Leo exact his revenge?  And can the general lead his army of actors to one last victory?


Casual movie fans have doubtless heard of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton before. More serious cinephiles will recognize Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Lon Chaney.

How on earth Emil Jannings does not merit similar consideration is beyond me.

I had never heard of him before this marathon and shame on me.  If there is an Emil Jannings Fan Club, sign me up. I will gladly pay those dues.

In The Last Command, Jannings is required to pay two roles: a proud and physically imposing general and a frail, put-upon, would-be actor. He is fantastic in both roles and almost unrecognizable when you compare the two. He's impressive throughout, but when the finale requires him to transform from the destitute old man to the fierce battlefield commander, he pulls it off without the benefit of a special effect.

The rest of the actors here are good. I'd note William Powell's performance as Leo in particular. He's fine, but there's is little that hints at the leading man status he'd achieve in the next decade.

Beyond the acting, the script here is the real strength. The film sets up the central mystery of what happened to this once proud man and pays it off in spectacular fashion. It's a captivating story that gives all of the players a lot to work with.

The Last Command is about as great a drama as you'll see in the silent era. Jannings took home the first Best Actor Oscar and it could not have been more well-deserved.

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

Photo from mubi.com

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In Old Arizona (1928)

Directed by Irving Cummings
Starring Warner Baxter, Edmund Lowe and Dorothy Burgess
Produced by Fox Film Corporation

In an old western town, a mismatched group of people await passage on a stagecoach to take them across the desert. As the passengers board and set out, there are jokes and jibes. All of that frivolity is forgotten however when the stage is set upon by the notorious Cisco Kid.

The bandit disarms the drivers and demands they throw the strongbox down. The robber is not without honor and refuses to steal from the individual passengers. Even when a piece of jewelry worn by one of the travelers catches his eye, he doesn't just take it; he pays her in cash for the trinket.

We soon learn why he needs so much cash and jewelry. The Kid is in love with Tonia, a local girl who likes nothing more than to be treated like a queen. She oohs and aahs over everything her beau brings her. He thinks it's true love, and she is more than happy to let him think that. Of course, as soon as the Kid leaves, Tonia is entertaining a new gentleman caller.

In order to deal with the Cisco Kid once and for all, the army dispatches Sergeant Mickey Dunn to bring him in dead or alive. Dunn catches the eye of the lawman and, at first, protects her paramour. Of course, once she hears the Cisco Kid is worth $5000, her allegiance shifts quickly.

A scheme is hatched and a trap is set. Will Dunn and Tonia bring down the legendary outlaw? Or will the Cisco Kid turn the tables on his foes?




If I give my child a new toy car, he's going to be so excited, he won't know what to do. He'll race that car down a track. Across the floor. Up a wall. Around his brother's head. As a parent, you can correct him, but you also know the shine will wear off that car and your child will move on to the next thing.

I've reached the point with sound where I am waiting for Hollywood to lose interest.

In Old Arizona is rightfully recognized as an historic achievement. It's the first film to feature sound recorded outdoors. Actors are no longer limited to performing on soundstages indoors. Directors can capture their movements and their voices anywhere. When you consider that two years earlier, sound films were almost nonexistent, this a big step forward.

Of course, you hand that kind of new toy over to the wrong guy and...

This film is a full-on sonic onslaught.

The director is so fascinated with sound, he forgets how to be quiet. Every scene has some constant source of noise in the background. The guitars of a mariachi band. The singing of a barbershop quartet. The rhythmic tapping from a telegraph. If there are only two people in a room, turn on the phonograph. One person trying to sleep?  Queue the wailing infant.

What could be impressive with a modicum of restraint becomes mind-numbing. Once the sound hits during the overture, it almost never stops.

There are some more forgivable and unintentionally amusing aspects of this first foray into sound. A gunshot in a canyon produces a muffled thump. Wagons sound pretty much the same whether they are five feet or five hundred feet away. And horse hooves make the same clopping sound on hard scrabble ground and a stream.

Warner Baxter is fun as the Cisco Kid. He has a swagger and charm that immediately has the audience rooting for him, despite being an outlaw.

On the flip side, Edmund Lowe's portrayal of Dunn constantly brings the film to a screeching halt. Part of it is in Lowe's blustering performance, but a lot of the problem comes down to the script. We know Dunn is a gambler and a womanizer because we spend a lot of time watching him do those things in a boring, obvious way. We don't know why he'd be a danger to our hero. We are told by others that he's the Army's best shot, but we never see any evidence of it.

As for Dorothy Burgess' Tonia, I hated the performance. It was by turns over the top and wooden. One moment she's a flurry of activity and the next a statue with her emotion chiseled onto her face.

On the whole, In Old Arizona remains an important step in the development of filmmaking technology. That and an engaging lead performance from Baxter are all this has going for it.

** out of *****

Note: Baxter won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance. As much as I like his work here, I have no idea why he won an Oscar.

Photo from Alt Film Guide

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Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

Directed by Charles Reisner and Buster Keaton
Starring Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire and Ernest Torrence
Produced by Buster Keaton Productions and Joseph M. Schenck Productions


William Canfield's business is in trouble.

He runs a paddleboat on the Mississippi River.  His boat lacks passengers and is starting to fall apart around him.To make matters worse, the local business mogul has launched his own luxury riverboat to compete with Steamboat Bill's Stonewall Jackson.

Bill does receive one happy bit of news:help in the form of a son he never met is on the way.  Junior is coming from college in Boston and, with such a gargantuan, muscular father, the son must be the second coming of Paul Bunyan.  Right?

Wrong.  Off the train steps a rail-thin young man in a beret who couldn't be less like his father. His father works to toughen his son up, exchanging his beret for a manlier hat and encouraging him to throw a punch at the rival riverboat captain.  Try as he might though, Junior's apple clearly fell a little farther from the tree.



Complicating matters is the presence of Junior's girlfriend in town.  She's also home from college and is (of course) the daughter of Steamboat Bill's chief rival John King.  Both father's forbid their children from seeing one another.

When the Stonewall Jackson is condemned by the local officials, Bill loses his temper and is thrown into jail.  Can Junior save the family business, spring his dad from prison win the girl and survive the devastating cyclone that whirls through town?

If there was any doubt that Buster Keaton was the king of silent comedy, if you had some notion the Charlie Chaplin might be the true master of slapstick and pathos in the 1920s, Steamboat Bill Jr. doesn't just slam the door on such thoughts.  It drops a house on them.  Literally.

The film features Keaton's most famous stunt: he's wandering through the streets of a town that is disintegrating before his eyes.  He stops in the middle of a street and... the entire front of a house collapses on him.  The only thing that saves him?  He is standing in the precise spot where the open attic window of the house lands.  An inch to the right or left and our hero and the actor are crushed.

It's a few seconds, but it is an amazing moment in its ambition and execution.  It's serves as such an astounding crescendo to the climactic cyclone sequence, it's easy to overlook the rest of the action.

Which is almost (stressing "almost") a shame because Steamboat Bill Jr. really is Keaton at his perfect best.  We see his stone-faced expressiveness as he searches for his father when he arrives in town.  His comic timing when he delivers tools to his father in jail or when he's attempting to sneak onto the rival ship.  His athleticism as vaults from deck-to-deck on the Stonewall Jackson.  And his fearlessness as he clings to an uprooted tree as it flies across town.

And that's what Keaton's characters are about time and time again.  He gets by on luck and pluck.  He sets his sights on the girl and hurls himself through every obstacle God and man place before him.  He's a hero, plain and simple.

The rest of the cast is good, but Ernest Torrence is great as Steamboat Bill Sr.  He brings the same menacing presence to this comedy that we saw in his villainous turn in Tol'able David.  Here, he's a hulk of a man, stubborn and set in his ways, the perfect foil to his weak son.

Steamboat Bill Jr. is about as flawless as comedy gets.  Laugh-out-loud moments and death-defying stunts all build to an ending sure to leave you happy.

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

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The Love of Jeanne Ney (1928)

Directed by G.W. Pabst
Starring Édith Jéhanne, Uno Henning and Fritz Rasp
Produced by Universum Film (UFA)

War is coming to Crimea and everyone is choosing their sides. Some, like Andreas, are covertly laying the groundwork for the Bolshevik invasion. Others, like Alfred Ney, are collecting the names of rebel agents for the government.

And some, like the villainous Khalibiev, play both sides to make a quick buck. So what if the list of agents he gives to Ney are random names from the phone book?

Andreas gets wind that Ney has a list of Bolshevik spies and heads off to retrieve the document. During their confrontation, Ney is killed. This puts a damper on the blossoming romance between Andreas and Ney's daughter Jeanne.

The Bolsheviks attack and Jeanne escapes to Paris to live with her private detective uncle, Raymond. Her uncle is not thrilled to see his niece, but allows her to stay when his blind daughter Gabriella insists.

Jeanne's escape proves to be short-lived. Khalibiev follows her to Paris, concocting a scheme to marry Gabriella and get Uncle Raymond's money. Andreas is also in Paris hoping to recruit new soldiers and rekindle his romance with Jeanne.

Throw in a "stolen" diamond and a train ride and all of the elements of a suspense thriller are present. Does Andreas win back the hand of Jeanne?  And can Khalibiev get away with his schemes?



When someone describes a film as "Hitchcockian," certain ideas come to mind: suspense, horror, intrigue. Sure there may be the occasional indelible image like birds on a kids' playset or a shower scene, but for the most part, when you think of Hitchcock, you think about mood.

So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the master I suspense has been aping G. W. Pabst this whole time.

Don't get me wrong: nothing in The Love of Jeanne Ney comes anywhere close to the cinematic perfection that is Rear Window, Vertigo or North by Northwest. But Pabst film shares more than a little in common with Hithcock's work.

We see ordinary people drawn into large political battles. Intrigue as characters act in their self-interest and inflict pain upon those they love. And that feeling that every character's next decision may be the one that dooms him.

Pabst knows how to build tension from scene to scene. Characters enter a room and the camera switches to their point of view, quickly darting across the room. There are no slow camera movements here, the camera is always nervously surveying everyone within the frame.

At other moments, Pabst lingers on a moment until we feel uncomfortable, waiting for something to happen.  The director gets a lot of mileage from Edith Jehanne's face in the title role and I found myself flashing back more than once to Kim Novak in Vertigo.

The rest of the cast is fantastic. Uno Henning manages to capture both the romantic leading man and the passionate revolutionary roles perfectly. Brigette Helm's blind Gabrielle fumbles through life at moments almost zombie-like, subjecting herself to the whims of the men that surround her. It's a stark contrast to her roles in Metropolis, but she is equal to the task.

The true standout here though was Fritz Rasp as Khalibiev. Every look and movement just oozes sliminess. When he is on screen, you can see the wheels turning in his head, examining every angle and detail to his own lecherous advantage.

As good as Rasp is, Adolf Licho is just too over-the-top cartoonish as Raymond. When Jeanne first arrives in Paris, he recoils as though a vampire just arrived. Later, as he is imagining a big payday, he starts hugging and dancing with his safe in ways that were... uncomfortable.

The other issue in the movie is Jeanne herself. She's beautiful, but she's not terribly active. Stuff simply happens to her. Her one moment of action toward the end allows her to identify the real criminal, but she really just blunders into that moment. There's not much to root for with our heroine.

The Love of Jeanne Ney has all the trappings of a Hitchcock tale, but without its scope. Pabst seems to be bridging the gap between the silent era and what is to come. Definitely recommend.

**** out of *****

Photo from ithankyou

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The Wind (1928)

Directed by Victor Sjöström

Starring Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson and Montagu Love 

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer (MGM)

In a barren desert landscape, a train navigates the rocky terrain, buffeted on all sides by wind and sand.

Within a passenger car sits Letty, a single woman on her way from Virginia to stay with her cousin Beverly and his family on a hard-scrabble plot of land in Texas. A cattle rancher takes an interest in Letty and there are some sparks before the wind intrudes, blowing through an open window in the car.

Once at the station, Letty disembarks and is escorted to her cousin's house by the rancher Wirt Roddy and two cowboys, Lige and Sourdough (because really what else would you name cowboys?).  Her cousin is thrilled to see her and his kids take an immediate liking to her as well.  Beverly's wife?  She sees Letty as a threat and starts pushing her rival out.

After demurring at first, Letty accepts Roddy's proposal to take her away from this wind-beaten patch of wasteland and moves out of her cousin's house. Of course Roddy decides that is the moment to reveal he already has a wife. Without a home or any prospects, Letty must marry either Lige or Sourdough. She goes the younger route and she and Lige get hitched.

Lige quickly realizes Letty does not love him and promises to save money to send her away. Complicating this plan is the unrelenting wind and desert which are killing off the cattle. Can Lige take Letty away from this spirit-crushing existence?  Or will Letty finally learn to live with her lot in life?



 I have admired a number of melodramas during my marathon. If there is a thread that connects those I have enjoyed, I'd say it's that as overwrought as the emotions became, the characters were consistent and their actions came from a place I could understand (if not agree with).

I don't get any of the people that populate The Wind.

The film is a series of characters making bad decisions. I started out wondering why the hell Letty would want to move to this barren landscape. By the end, I couldn't figure out why anyone lived there.

Letty moves in with her cousin and his family. Beverly's wife clearly doesn't want the outsider there. And not in a passive-aggressive dropping the occasional hint way. More of the in-your-face, "get out of my house now!" way.  You'd think maybe that issue would have come up before Letty got on the train.

So Letty marries Lige and she seems shocked when her new husband expects her to love him. Shocked that the husband expected his wife not to be repulsed by a simple kiss.

Later, Lige heads out to the range to survey the dead cattle with some other ranchers. First off, the cattle are dead because the ranchers are trying to graze them in the middle of the $&%#*@$ desert. Second, Letty insists that she cannot stay alone at home with the wind so she rides off into the middle of this constant sandstorm with Lige. And she gets thrown from her horse. And then she rides with Lige on his horse and that horse throws her. So she has to go back home anyway.

None of this would be terrible if the characters' motivations didn't seem so arbitrary scene-to-scene.  The film careens from one moment to the next with each of the players suffering from an amnesia that makes them forget everything they previously said or did.

The completely asinine story gets better acting than it deserves from the two leads. Lillian Gish is reliably great here as the woman being driven mad by gusts of wind. And Lars Hanson manages the trick of taking Lige, a character that begins as simple comic relief, and turning him into a fully formed, sympathetic human being.

There are some fantastic choices made by director Victor Sjöström. He builds the tension after an argument between the newlywed couple by focusing the camera on the husband's and wife's feet as they pace back and forth across the cabin, until Lige decides to break the stalemate.  We then follow his shoes until they reach Letty. The film's conclusion ratchets up the suspense and features a haunting shot of a dead body being buried by the wind blown sands.

While there are some positives here, it's not enough to save The Wind. The fundamental setup is so flawed and the script has the characters make increasingly stupid decisions.

** out of *****

NOTE: The titular weather from The Wind was produced using eight airplane engines.

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Steamboat Willie (1928)

Mickey Mouse pilots a steamboat down a river, merrily whistling along to the music of the ship's steam engines. Mickey is not the captain, and when the real pilot shows up he angrily kicks Mickey out of the cabin.

The boat pulls into a dock and loads up on farm animals. Minnie Mouse arrives too late to board, forcing the quick-thinking Mickey to snag his squeeze with the boat's crane.

When a goat eats Minnie's sheet music and guitar, the mice are forced to improvise. Can Mickey still put on an impromptu show?  And what does the ship's captain think of this?

So here we have a piece of movie history. Walt Disney's first short to feature a synchronized soundtrack was actually Mickey's third foray onto the screen. Steamboat Willie was not the first film to use the new technology, but it was the most popular and launched a movie studio as well as a media and merchandising empire.

The technology is front and center here. Films like The Jazz Singer used "sound-on-disc" technology. The music and dialogue would play independent of the film. This worked wonderfully as long as neither the sound or the film skipped or changed speeds.   The technology required someone to constantly monitor the presentation.

"Sound-on-film" technology eliminated the synchronizing issue. The sound is on the same reel of film as the images so if the projector is at the wrong speed, the sound still plays with right frames of film.

As I said, Steamboat Willie was not the first to use "sound-on-film," but it was the film to popularize it.

So is the film any good?



It is, but it still has some of the issues we've seen in Disney's previous work.  Mickey as a character is a lot of fun here. He's mischievous and looking for a good time on his boat. His humor and playfulness are infectious in a way Disney failed to reach with his previous creations Julius and Oswald. It's easy to see how the mouse became an icon.

The other big boon to the story is the sound and it is a real achievement. After watching almost 20 years worth of silents, the contrast between those and Steamboat Willie is staggering. Every movement by each character produces a whistle or a grunt or a song.

In fact, there are moments where the novelty of the sound becomes an issue. In a couple of scenes, the film lingers only to show off the sounds being made. It's the equivalent of a 3D film constantly jamming foreground objects in your face. The filmmakers understand the novelty of what they are doing and show off a bit.

The other problem here is the way some of the animals get treated. Mickey plays a cat as an instrument by swinging it around by its tail, turns a duck into a bagpipe and pulls a half dozen piggies from their mom before playing the sow by pulling her... well, you get the picture.

The only thing that saves these sequences is their brevity and the fact that we've already built up some goodwill toward our hero. It's a minor quibble, but it's there and unfortunately distracting from this landmark film.

I've probably seen the opening 30 seconds of Steamboat Willie a hundred times, but this was the first time seeing all seven plus minutes. It remains a fun and impressive achievement. Flaws and all, this is definitely required viewing for film fans.

 **** out of *****

Photo from DisneyWiki

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The Circus (1928)

Directed by Charlie Chaplin
Starring Charlie Chaplin, Merna Kennedy and Al Ernest Garcia
Produced by Charles Chaplin Productions

The circus has come to town and our starving and poor, but ever loveable Tramp is checking out the festivities.  He gets mistaken for a pickpocket and ends up running from the police taking refuge in a mirrored fun house and posing as a mechanized mannequin before finally ending up in the center ring of the circus.

The Tramp's exploits make the audience howl with laughter when the circus' own clowns could not.  The ringmaster gives our hero a tryout, but soon realizes the Tramp is only funny when he's not trying to be.  He brings the poor guy on as a janitor, but always makes sure he finds himself in the center of the action.

The Tramp doesn't even notice.  He's too smitten with the ringmaster's step-daughter.  Our hero thinks he has a shot at happiness with this girl until the new tightrope walker Rex enters the picture.  The girl instantly falls for this new and hunky performer.

Can the Tramp win the girl?  And will he survive his own walk along the high wire long enough to find out?



That's more like it.

It's been three years since The Gold Rush, a classic that felt all wrong to me.  I've been looking for the Charlie Chaplin I loved in The Kid and his early shorts.

While not The Kid, The Circus does a much better job of balancing the humor and pathos that have come to define one of cinema's most iconic characters.

The opening few minutes are hilarious and inventive as Chaplin accidentally ends up with a wallet stolen from another man by a pickpocket.  Both Chaplin and the pickpocket end up on the run and keep running into one another throughout the carnival surrounding the circus.  The chase through the mirror maze is funny, Chaplin's posing as a mechanized animatronic is hysterical and the entire chase crescendos on a revolving platform in the center ring of the circus.  It's fun and it gets our plot going.

The one-sided romance between Chaplin and the girl is sweet, but never overbearing.  It's also carried out in a realistic way with the Tramp performing small acts of kindness for his potential love. It's genuinely heart-breaking when the Tramp (and the audience) learn she has fallen in love with Rex.

Of course, the circus setting provides Chaplin with no end of set-ups for comedy bits and a few deliver.  My favorites were his interaction with a slumbering lion, his cheering for Rex to fall from the tightrope and of course the brilliant climax where the Tramp cheats a bit to perform his own routine on the tightrope.

There are a lot of bits that fall flat as well.  The use of the magician's booth was a bit too obvious. His racing around inexplicably kicking people due to his happiness just felt wrong.  But these are moments and they pass.

The ending of the film was pitch perfect, reminding me of the character's portrayal in his early shorts.  I won't spoil it here, but it's definitely the Tramp we all know and love in the end.

The Circus isn't perfect, but it's much better, tighter and funnier affair than The Gold Rush.  If you are a fan of Chaplin's other works, you should check it out.

**** out of *****
Photo from the Museum of Modern Art

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Felix the Cat Shorts (1928)

Comicalamities, Astronomeus and Outdoor Indore

It's 1928.  Time for another round of Felix the Cat shorts!

In Comicalamities, Felix enlists the help of the artist who draws him to woo a female cat.   In Astronomeus, Felix harpoons a bicyclist on Saturn and gets booted to Mars which he repopulates with thousands of cats.  Outdoor Indore features our hero falling prey to a firehose accident which fires him halfway around the world.

All three of these are more inventive than anything Walt Disney has put out to this point in history.  My personal favorite was Comicalamities which is clearly influenced by Max Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell shorts.  The artist becomes a character himself, first drawing Felix then adding a tail to his impatient creation.  When Felix comes across a lady cat, he has the artist give her a makeover.

Beyond the connections to Fleischer's earlier work, the animation here is beautiful. Unlike most cartoons, Felix actually moves in three dimensions here, swimming toward and away from the camera during an underwater sequence.  I particularly love the ending of this one which is both surprising and totally consistent with the previous set-up.

While Comicalamities was the best of the three, the other two are fantastic.  Some of the ideas present here are out-of-this-world brilliant.  From the creature design on Mars to Felix' use of a tiger's stripes as a ladder to him charming two snakes to turn into a bike, there are animation ideas here I love.  It's fun and whimsical if not laugh-out loud funny.

I knew nothing of Felix the Cat cartoons before starting 100 Years of Movies, but they are becoming one of my favorite stops during each year of cinematic history.  Not as funny as the Warner Bros. cartoons I grew up, they are fun diversion and impressive in their animation style.

Comicalamities: ****1/2 out of *****
Astronomeus: **** out of *****
Outdoor Indore: ***1/2 out of *****

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Sadie Thompson (1928)

Directed by Raoul Walsh
Starring Gloria Swanson, Lionel Barrymore and Raoul Walsh
Produced by Gloria Swanson Pictures

A small steam ship pulls into port at Pago-Pago, an outpost on an island in the South Pacific most notable for its constant, torrential downpours.  Five passengers disembark: a strict reformist couple looking to bring the Lord to the island natives, a friendly married couple, and the beautiful and mysterious Sadie Thompson.  For Sadie, the island is a way station on the route to starting life over.

The passengers soon learn they are stuck on the island due to a small pox outbreak.  The marines stationed at Pago-Pago take an immediate interest in Sadie, but she begins falling for one in particular, Sargent O'Hara. 

The reformer, Mr. Davidson, also takes an interest in the woman, but for entirely different reasons.  He suspects Sadie is immoral and will convert her or force her to return to San Francisco and her old life.

Will Sadie repent?  And will it be enough to keep her from returning to the U.S. where a prison cell awaits?



There is really one reason and only one reason to see Sadie Thompson: Gloria Swanson.  She's put through just about every emotion a movie can demand of an actress and is equal to the task again and again.

She starts as a sultry temptress, moves into the shy beginnings of a romantic relationship, becomes arrogant about her ability to outwit Davidson, frustrated and angry when the tables get turned and docile and penitent when she gives up.  You believe her at each and every moment.  She's a force of nature in a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination.

Swanson's bravura performance really is the only thing this film has going for it though.  The primary conflict between Swanson's Sadie and Lionel Barrymore's Davidson just never reverberated with me.  Barrymore is too cartoonishly evil.  His demands of Sadie are irrational and inconsistent. One moment she has to repent to be allowed to go her way.  The next, the only way to repent is to go back to San Francisco.  If we were given some idea of what was motivating him, that would help.  But the film just makes him an obstacle in Sadie's path.

I would have a little more sympathy for Sadie's plight if there was a little more to demonstrate she was trying to become good.  The film however leaves her as someone on the run from the police who protests her innocence, but there's never really any proof that she's not guilty.  In fact, it feels like she's not owning up to her transgressions.

From a directing standpoint, there's not a lot going on. The camera set ups are pretty traditional and other than lots and lots of rain, the production design doesn't feel real.

Swanson is great, but there's not much else to recommend here.  The film hits the same notes over and over until their dull monotony fills your brain.  If you want to see the future star of Sunset Boulevard, by all means check it out.  Otherwise it's...

** out of *****

NOTES: The last reel of Sadie Thompson is missing.  To make up for it, Kino reconstructed the scene from stills, production notes and even from footage in a later remake.  I actually thought I knew what happened, then read on-line synopsis which showed I got it wrong.  Sad that the ending is lost.

The film was controversial in its time.  The movie is based on a book and play (the latter called Rain).  The play Rain ended up on an unofficial blacklist amongst Hollywood studios due to some racy content.  Swanson worked clandestinely to make the film which was almost not released.

Photo from Ferdy on Films and Lolita's Classics

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The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring Maria Falconetti
Produced by Société générale des films

The court room is abuzz with motion and whispers as the tribunal prepares to try the leader of a rebellion. The tension builds until the leader enters under guard and is revealed to be...

... a waifish 19-year old girl with close cropped hair.

The trial is not so much a judicial proceeding as an effort to extract a confession from the charismatic Joan of Arc. When questioning fails, the interrogators are not above a little torture.

Will Joan confess? Can she live with herself if she does?

The Passion of Joan of Arc has a technical virtuosity that instantly separates it from most 1920s films. It feels like it was cut and edited by Michael Bay's great-grandfather.

Of course, instead of special effects like explosions, alien robots or Nic Cage, Dreyer gives us one of cinema's most indelibly perfect images: the face of Maria Falconetti as Joan.

We live almost entirely within Joan's face for over an hour. The extreme closeups bring us into her terror, her uncertainty, and ultimately her resolve.

Indeed, the only time we seem to leave our heroine's face is to see her accusers. And once again Dreyer's camera brings us right into their grotesque features. No bead of sweat or unsightly wart goes undocumented. Dreyer's camera looks up at Joan's tormentors, making them larger than life.

Of course, the actual trial amongst men is only a small part of the drama. The real struggle is for Joan's soul. We see her torment writ large across her face. You never doubt what she's thinking.The dialogue intertitles are almost extraneous.

There's a courage in setting this entirely at this point in Joan's life.  Let's be honest: few saint stories have the cinematic potential of the life of this warrior saint.  Dreyer skips over the obvious, potentially cliched moments and instead wrings all of the drama of her short existence from a trial.

In case it was not obvious, I loved this film.  The Passion of Joan of Arc is the perfect melding of story, star and direction.  Highly recommend.

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

NOTES: This is Falconetti's only real credit.  She was in a couple of silents in 1917, but that was it.  Somehow her never acting again in another film role is simultaneously tragic and perfect.

Dreyer built massive and very expensive sets for the film... and we almost never see them.

Photo from The Baltimore Sun

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The Battle of the Sexes (1928)

Directed by D.W. Griffith
Starring Jean Hersholt, Phyllis Haver and Belle Bennett
Produced by Feature Productions

Businessman William Judson has done it again.

Splashed across the front page of the newspaper is his latest real estate deal, celebrating both the man and the sizable check he has coming.  His barber is suitably impressed as Judson arrives for his latest trim.

Unfortunately for Judson, the barber's not the only one taking note.  Gold digger Marie is sitting one chair over from the tycoon and begins hatching a scheme.  Working with her boyfriend Babe Winsor, Marie conspires to move into Judson's apartment building and seduce the man, taking him for all he's worth.

Her task will not be easy.  William is happily married and dotes over two teenage children.  That's not to say Marie has no hope.  As she's plotting a scheme to lure the target into her apartment as he passes by, she spies a mouse and shrieks.  The brave Judson bursts in to investigate, which is all it takes for Marie to sink her claws into him.

Soon, the husband and father is "working late" every night.  Life in the Judson abode is becoming strained.  The family matriarch takes the kids out to the new club where they run into the cheating couple. Mr. Judson moves out, his wife contemplates suicide and his daughter is desperate.

Can the girl bring her family back together again?  And will it take a... (*dramatic pause*) murder?

The Battle of the Sexes is one of the final films from D.W. Griffith, a true film pioneer whose work changed the way movies were made.  The Birth of a Nation.  Intolerance.  Broken Blossoms.  The man literally created the language of cinema and we still see his influence on the big screen today. 

He also seemed to lose his mojo in the 1920s. Way Down East. America. Sally of the Sawdust.  None of them are terrible, but they certainly seem a far cry from the ambition of his earlier work.

So where does The Battle of the Sexes fall?

Sadly, it's right down the middle.  It's an okay film, but certainly not great or even good.  Thought there are aspects of the old Griffith that peek through.

More than any other director of the silent era, Griffith told stories with strong women characters.  It takes a while to get going here, but when Judson's daughter Ruth finally emerges as our plucky heroine, she becomes the center of the story.  She's desperate to save her mother and bring back her father from his "sickness."

Even if that means killing the mistress.

Of course, when the moment comes and the gun is in her hand, she cannot pull the trigger.  She needs to act, but she's still a good person.  And her father's despicable actions cannot drive that out of her.

When it's Ruth's story, I like the film a lot.  Sadly, there's a lot of the tale that is William Judson and Marie's alone and that is where the cracks show.  There are pacing issues. One minute, the father has provided his wife a thoughtful gift, looking into her eyes to see the reaction as she opens it.  The next scene, he's falling for Marie.  There's no build to it.  We do not see a reason why he falls for her.  It just happens.

There are tonal problems as well.  Sometimes, the film does blend its comedy and pathos well, like when William buys a fat burning machine that provides us both a humorous and a pathetic image.  However, the last act of the movie wants to have a zaniness to it that is impossible when the emotions of Ruth are at the center of the situation and there's an attempted suicide hovering over the scene.

As to the acting, Sally O'Neil's Ruth was the only standout.  She a bit too cloyingly naive at the beginning, but her confusion and sadness upon seeing her father at the club are perfect.  So too are her panic as she prevents her mother's suicide and her turmoil when the moment comes to off Marie.  The rest of the actors here are fine in their roles.

Which is a good way to leave The Battle of the Sexes.  It's not bad.  It's not good.  It's fine.  You won't mind watching it, but you won't remember it in a year or even a month.  And if that sounds like damning with faint praise?  Well, it is.

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

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The Man Who Laughs (1928)

Directed by Paul Leni
Starring Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin and  Olga Baclanova
Produced by Universal Pictures

Usually movie reviews focus on the mechanics of a film: acting, directing, pacing, effects and how those elements combine to produce an emotional reaction in the viewer. It's about figuring out whether a film works, then taking it apart to get at the why.

With The Man Who Laughs, I throw most of that out the window. Why? Because the concept of the movie has so enveloped my brain, I have to focus my attention there.

Putting the film aside for the moment, imagine being the son of a man on the wrong side of the law. Your father pays for his crimes, but, as part of the bargain, you are disfigured. Not just scarred, but you're face is turned into a perpetual smile.

What do you do? How do you express yourself to another person? How do you earn someone's trust when they can't see what you really think by looking at your face?

I just think about the way I use my face to convey feelings and imagine that being taken away. What would that do to a man? How could you face the world?

That's the powerful set up for The Man Who Laughs. Conrad Veidt plays a perpetually smiling sideshow performer Gwynplaine. His rebel leader of a father was captured and killed when Gwynplaine was a boy, but the king decrees the youth shall be disfigured and made to laugh at his father forever.

He grows up with a blind girl Dea (whom he rescued from death during a snowstorm) and his adoptive father Ursus. The three put on shows that take advantage of the public's fascination with Gwynplaine's face.

Queen Anne learns that Gwynplaine is the rightful inheritor of his father's lands, lands currently held by the Duchess Josiana. The queen loathes the duchess and decrees that she should marry Gwynplaine, primarily to embarrass her.

Gwynplaine loves Dea and can't bring himself to marry Josiana, setting our hero against the queen and all her power and propelling the film toward a finale I won't spoil here.

As overwhelming as the concept is, it's Conrad Veidt who really sells the situation. You read every emotion in his eyes despite his unmoving mandible. Throughout the film, he wears a device in his mouth that stretches it into a smile, making his acting feat doubly impressive: not only does he have to emote with only the upper half of his face, he acts despite wearing a prosthetic that looks painful.

I talked about mechanics earlier and there are issues here. Dea is a non-factor for most of the film. When they finally giver her something to do, it could not be more passive as she is literally dragged around by a dog and a couple other people.

The other big issue here is the pacing. The film has a fantastic, gothic opening, then takes forever to get to its climax and rushes through the final act.

However, every time Veidt lowers that scarf to show us that grotesque smile, all of the film's issues are relegated to the back of my mind. Ideas are powerful and the idea behind The Man Who Laughs is overwhelming.

**** out of *****

NOTE: It's completely obvious when watching the film, but Veidt's Gwynplaine was the inspiration for Bob Kane in creating the Joker, Batman's most famous villain.

Photo from Appiary and Dad's Big Plan

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Arsenal (1928)

Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Starring Semyon Svashenko, Amvrosi Buchma and Georgi Khorkov
Produced by VUFKU

It's 1918 Kiev and the workers are being oppressed and ignored by the government. Russian troops take liberties with the women and the men are shouted out of political gatherings. But when the workers take over the local munitions factory, it sets up a conflict that may ultimately change the nation.

I hated Arsenal.

Hated it. Hated it. Hated it.

There are some interesting images put on screen early on. I particularly like the soldier succumbing to the laughing gas on the battlefield. But the ideas are drawn out and the viewer is bludgeoned over the head with the imagery.

I get it. Move along.

Sadly, instead of picking up the pace, the movie's middle becomes a slog. We get a shot of a man staring. Cut to another man staring. Now cut back to the first man staring. Sometimes the men are angry or laughing. But there's always a lot of staring.

Okay, maybe there is a pinch of glowering in there too.

By the time, the film gets to the munition factory standoff, I just didn't care. Sure, I knew the Russians were the bad guys, but all I really got from the good guys was that they didn't like the bad guys. I never felt invested in their plight. When the film reaches its final moment, instead of being inspired, I laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the scene.

I'm sure in its time and place, this was effective propaganda. Some of the imagery here is frame-it-on-your-wall gorgeous. But Arsenal is ponderous, dull and repetitive. Unless you are a Russian historian or a masochist, stay away

* out of *****

Image from The One-Line Review

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1928: When Movies Were the Greatest Thing Since... Ummm....

Welcome to 1928!  The U.S. is still a year away from the Great Depression, but there is plenty going on in the world.  The first ever yo-yo factory opens in California.  A first class stamp costs two cents.  The home pregnancy test is invented.  And, in Davenport, Iowa, Otto Rohwedder invents the first bread slicing machine.  So, when someone says "That's the greatest thing since sliced bread," you now have fodder for a smartass response.

In Hollywood, we get the on-screen debut of Humphrey Bogart, Mutual Film Corporation becomes RKO Pictures, one of the major Hollywood studios, and the first appearance of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Plane Crazy.  Germaine Dulac directs the first surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, beating Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou by a year.  And Carl Theodor Dreyer's influential The Passion of Joan of Arc is released.

The big story in movies however remains the sound revolution.  If 1927 saw the pebble called The Jazz Singer thrown into the Tinseltown pond, 1928 is where we feel the ripples.  Paramount announces in 1928 it will no longer produce silents.  MGM released White Shadows in the South Seas, which (like The Jazz Singer) is part silent and part talkie, and we hear the studio's mascot Leo the Lion roar for the first time.  The studios agreed on a technology both to produce movies and to retrofit studios for sound.  Warner Brothers produces the first all-talking film.  Th list goes on.

Perhaps the biggest impact of sound was the ascension of Walt Disney thanks to Mickey Mouse.  After losing the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to Universal, Disney created Mickey.  The mouse's second feature, Steamboat Willie was released in November 1928 as the first cartoon with synchronized sound.  Audiences went crazy.  Over the next ten years, Disney would build an empire on short films and merchandise, culminating in his blockbuster feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 (we will get there eventually).

Watch list for 1928?  I'll be checking in with D.W. Griffith as he nears the end of his directing career with The Battle of the Sexes.  I will definitely be rewatching Steamboat Willie.  I also have The Passion of Joan of Arc, John Ford's Four Sons and Emil Jannings in The Last Command on tap.  And of course Charlie Chaplin is back with The Circus.  As always, if you have suggestions feel free to offer them in the comments below.

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