Shorts (1915-1917)

Originally posted to Facebook on 12/14/2016

This was our first of two weekends watching shorts from the teens. We saw five films:

The Tramp (1915)
A Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916)
Teddy at the Throttle (1917)
The Immigrant (1917)

Three of them were Chaplin shorts, the best of which was The Immigrant, which included a brief scene that I half-recognized from somewhere, specifically a few seconds in which Chaplin is half-walking / half-hopping in order to keep his balance on a rocking boat. The Immigrant is split into two parts, the first of which takes place on a ship bringing immigrants to the United States, including their sighting of the Statue of Liberty (which, as I believe I mentioned when discussing 1915’s The Italian, had been built just thirty years earlier.) The second section takes place mostly at a restaurant, once Chaplin and his co-star have settled in America. The best scenes are on board the ship; things slow down a bit once he comes ashore. His costar in all three shorts is Edna Purviance, who was also his co-star in 1918’s Shoulder Arms, which we saw several weeks ago. (The distinction between shorts and features during this period is a bit arbitrary; The Immigrant was half an hour, while Shoulder Arms was only forty-five minutes.)

A Burlesque on Carmen was interesting in that it was a direct parody of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 version of Carmen, which we watched back in May. The sets and costumes and plot points were quite similar, though the jokes were mostly shoehorned into the plot, rather than constituting any real satire of the earlier movie.

The Tramp was the earliest of the three, and probably the least inventive, with most of the jokes consisting of people being hit with bricks or poked with pitchforks or having things fall on them.

Fatty and Mabel Adrift starred Mabel Normand (who we last saw in 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance, with Chaplin) and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The villain was played by Al St. John, Arbuckle’s nephew. His acting in this short was extremely broad, even by the standards of early silent comedies, but apparently he went on to a long career as a Western sidekick in the thirties and forties, including many B movies with Buster Crabbe. This movie was basically about Arbuckle and Normand’s characters' romance and eventual marriage, and St. John’s jealous attempts at sabotage.

Teddy at the Throttle starred Gloria Swanson, whom we saw a few weeks ago in Male and Female. Her costar was Bobby Vernon, who was only an inch taller than Swanson at 5’2. The main villain was played by Wallace Beery, who was married to Swanson at the time. Like her, he bridged the gap between silents and talkies, winning a Best Actor Oscar in 1932. He was also famously referenced in Barton Fink (“Wallace Beery. Wrestling Picture. What do you need, a roadmap?”) The plot of this was similar to a few other films we’ve seen, in that Swanson and Vernon are due to inherit some money if and when they are married, and Beery and his sister attempt to use this information to enrich themselves.

I can’t say any of these films really struck me as worthy of recommendation, but The Immigrant and Teddy at the Throttle were probably the best of the bunch. Next week we see four more shorts, and then move on to features from the 1920s. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

The Italian (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/9/2016

The Italian was our fourth and final film from 1915. It was about a young Italian couple (George Beban and Clara Williams) who emigrate to the United States, and struggle to adjust to life in New York. As I mentioned last week, I was a little worried about how stereotypical the portrayals would be, and I am happy to say that it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The male lead is not portrayed as the brightest person on the planet, and some of the title cards present his dialog in an exaggerated Italian accent, but I don’t recall anything else that was obviously objectionable. At one point an Irish politician uses a derogatory word for Italians, but it is made pretty clear that this is the character’s bigotry and not the film’s (though I would have preferred the kids’ vocabulary hadn’t been expanded in this particular fashion.) I enjoyed most of the movie, which was mainly about the day-to-day lives of the main characters, until about the last fifteen minutes when it became much more plot driven and less believable. Additionally the film began with a strangely extended and totally unnecessary scene of the lead actor opening a book called “The Italian”, and then ended with him closing it and looking contemplative. It also spends a rather long time setting up a situation in Italy that ends up being the spur for the move to the United States. On the positive side, it made repeated use of flashbacks to events that had happened earlier in the film. I don’t recall if we’ve seen this device previously or not, but we’ve certainly never seen it used this extensively. There is also an interesting shot from an arriving boat of the Statue of Liberty, which had been constructed just thirty years earlier. Interestingly there were a few untimely deaths associated with this film -- both of the leads were dead by the end of the twenties, and the writer and producer Thomas Ince famously died after a trip with Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies on board William Hearst’s yacht. This was the subject of various conspiracy theories, and was the basis for the plot of the 2001 movie The Cat’s Meow.

Next week we begin 1916. I’ve chosen five films rather than the normal four, starting with the recently rediscovered version of Sherlock Holmes, starring William Gillette. I’ve also added films for 1917 to the list, which should take us out through mid-August. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Alice in Wonderland (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/3/2016

Alice in Wonderland was the third film we’ve watched from 1915, and the second adaptation of Carroll's book. Unlike the films we’ve been watching recently, this one seems to fall outside of the canonical through-line that you might encounter when reading about the history of film. Neither the director (W.W. Young) nor the star (Viola Savoy) appear to have done anything significant in the movies before or after. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an unusual story as to how and why this film was made, but if so it was beyond my researching capabilities (i.e. ten minutes of googling.) It has little or no camera movement, and surprisingly few special effects, especially for a film as suited to them as an Alice adaptation. The main visual interest lies in the costumes, which are extensive and obviously modeled on the famous Tenniel illustrations. I felt particularly sorry for the actors in the lobster costumes who had to crawl out of the ocean, possibly over multiple takes. If we had watched this film as part of our chronology from a few years earlier -- 1910 or 1911, say -- it would have stood out as being fairly innovative, for its long-form story; and for its large quantity of scenes, sets, shots, and title cards; and of course for the costumes mentioned earlier. But after Cabiria, and Regeneration, and some of the other films we’ve seen recently, it instead strikes me as a little old-fashioned. I think that’s partially influenced by our choice of films, but I think it’s also a reflection of how much films changed between 1910 and 1915. It is a fairly short film, at under an hour, and there are occasional jumps in the plot that would lead me to believe that we were seeing a somewhat incomplete version. It does a pretty good job of coherently telling the story of Alice in Wonderland -- hewing very close to the book, to a fault sometimes. (For instance I don’t think there’s any reason to memorialize a joke from the book hinging on tortoise sounding a little like “taught us.”) We watched this shortly before watching the 2010 Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland (and plan to see the sequel this weekend) and it was interesting to see all of the little parallels.

Next week we’ll watch our fourth and final film from 1915, ominously titled The Italian. When I informed the kids of the title Ben said, “I can’t wait to see how racist this one is.” I have some of the same trepidation, but it’s in the National Film registry, and the synopsis doesn’t sound too awful. I guess we’ll find out. The viewing list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Carmen (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 5/24/2016

We had a busy weekend two weeks ago, so we didn’t get around to watching our second film from 1915 until this last weekend. The film we watched was Carmen, and it is the first movie we’ve seen directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Like Raoul Walsh from the previous week, DeMille had a long career in both the silent and sound era, including Cleopatra (1934), and The Ten Commandments -- both the silent version in 1923, and the 1956 version with Charlton Heston that used to be shown every year on TV. DeMille also had a memorable role as himself in Sunset Boulevard. However, unlike Raoul Walsh, he is probably more identified with his earlier, silent work than his later films.

There were two versions of Carmen released in 1915, as well as a parody (or “burlesque”) by Charlie Chaplin. The other non-parody was coincidentally directed by Raoul Walsh, but it is now lost. This film was based roughly on the opera, and its lead, Geraldine Farrar, was a famous opera singer. The backing music on our DVD was taken from the opera as well, and, although I know very little about opera, it is well-known enough that I recognized several pieces. The movie was fairly short, lasting about an hour, so the pacing was brisk. It is set in Spain approximately 200 years ago (i.e. 100 years before the movie was made) The plot concerns a group of gypsy smugglers (portrayed as always with nuanced sensitivity), including Carmen, and a town guard (played by Wallace Reid) that gets mixed up with them. Without spoiling anything, I will just say that it does not end well. Like our previous film from 1915, I don’t think I could really recommend this to a general audience, but we do seem to be in a run of films that are at least competently made and able to tell a coherent story.

Next week we will watch our third film from 1915, a version of Alice in Wonderland. We had previously seen a ten minute version from 1903, but films have totally changed in those twelve years, so I’m expecting a far more sophisticated version this time around.

Our list of upcoming films is shown here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Regeneration (1915)

Originally posted to Facebook on 5/12/2016

This week we watched Regeneration, our first film from 1915. It was directed by Raoul Walsh, who had a long career in both the silent and sound eras. He was a protégé of D. W. Griffith, and played John Wilkes Booth in Birth of a Nation. He directed, among many other films, The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Roaring Twenties (1940), White Heat (1949), and continued directing up through the 1960s. The list of famous actors he worked with is too long to list, but it includes a few who are still alive today -- for example Olivia de Havilland, Sidney Poitier, and Joan Collins.

This particular film was his first, and it shows the continuing evolution of the movies. The type of camera movement that we first saw in Cabiria last week is used in this film as well, although a little less extensively. It also has an increased amount of cutting and cross-cutting. The plot concerns a young boy who is orphaned, and has a rough upbringing, on the streets and in abusive households. He grows up to be a young gang leader (played as an adult by Rockliffe Fellowes), but falls in love with a well-to-do social worker (played by Anna Q. Nilsson), and begins to feel divided loyalties. Some of the plot elements reminded me a bit of The Town, though that was a much more modern and textured film. I’m not sure I could quite say that this is a good movie. It is certainly melodramatic at times, but I enjoyed it more than some of the other films we’ve seen recently. It has a grittiness we haven’t seen before -- though A Child of Paris had a certain grittiness too (and also excepting Traffic in Souls which we had to stop watching after ten minutes.) Certainly seeing a film set in more-or-less contemporary times, as opposed to historical epics, gives it a greater immediacy. I also thought that the matter-of-fact depiction of the brutality of city life for people unfortunate enough to fall between the cracks was well portrayed.

Next week we move onto Carmen, our second film of 1915. It’s directed by Cecil B. DeMille, another director with a long career than spanned the silent and sound era. It will be the first film of his that we’ve seen. The link to our viewing plan is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT