The Toll Gate (1920)

Originally posted to Facebook on 11/27/2018

The Toll Gate is the last film of our chronological detour before we return, next week, to 1929. It's our sixth film from 1920, and the second time we've seen William S. Hart in a starring role, after 1916's Hell's Hinges. We've also previously seen Anna Q. Nilsson, the female lead, in 1915's Regeneration. Lambert Hillyer directed (and wrote) this film, as well as over a hundred more, mostly westerns, from the teens up through the late forties, and then moved on to television in the fifties.

Hart plays Black Deering, the leader of a group of bandits, who is betrayed by a member of his gang after deciding to go straight. While on the run, he comes upon Nilsson, who lives alone with her insufferably adorable son. As in Hell's Hinges, Hart is supposedly an anti-hero, but his misdeeds are mostly mentioned in passing, or presented with some kind of mitigation. His heroism on the other hand is shown on-screen, or in the form of unsolicited praise from other characters. (The most cringe-inducing example of this occurs when he is told, "They may call you Black Deering, but, by God, you're white.") The film distinguishes itself from a generic western due to an intermittent grittiness and Hart's screen presence, but the characters are mainly archetypes, and have very little life beyond what the plot demands. We haven't really seen what I would consider a solid western as yet (unless you count The Wind) though that may just be due to our particular selection of films.

Next week we return to the main chronological through-line, and see our second film from 1929 -- Asphalt, directed by Joe May, and starring Gustav Fröhlich, whom we previously saw in 1927's Metropolis. The list, as always, is 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