Shorts (1920-1922)

For our penultimate week covering the 1920s, we watched six shorts from 1920-1922. All six were in the 18-26 minute range, and all were from the three canonical film comedians of the 1920s: Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd.

In the first short, One Week (1920), Buster Keaton and his new wife (played by Sybil Seely) struggle to build a mail-order house. Having the house as the focus of most of the bits makes this one of the more focused comedy shorts we've seen, although, like a Road Runner cartoon, people are injured and things are broken that are completely fine in the next scene. It is solid and consistent and amusing, and strikes me as a good portal into Buster Keaton for a newcomer.

In Neighbors (1920) Keaton courts a woman (Virginia Fox) who lives in the house behind his. Both sets of parents forbid them from seeing each other. Keaton's father in the film is played by his real-life father Joe Keaton, and Fox's father is played by Joe Roberts, who is in all three of the Keaton films we saw this week. The short unfortunately features a quasi-blackface sequence, which seems for a second as if it is going to be a bit of social commentary -- as a policeman only pursues Keaton when his face is blackened. But that tack is never really developed, and there is additionally another racist scene in which a black family is scared of Keaton under a sheet, believing him to be a ghost. This material is particularly disappointing because there are some really astounding sequences with three men (including Keaton) standing on each other's shoulders in order to reach the upper stories of Fox's house.

The last of the three Keaton shorts we saw was The Goat (1921), and it was the most scatter-shot of the three. The first half is dominated by Keaton trying to evade the police, eventually fleeing to another town. (It is a little strange how police were such consistent punching-bags in silent film; if someone made a comedy today where the main character spent an entire film knocking policemen down and throwing things at them, it would probably be remarked upon.) The second half is kicked off by the iconic scene of Keaton sitting on the front of a train as it pulls in very close to the camera. In the new town, however, he is mistaken for a wanted criminal, and also falls in love with the police chief's daughter (Fox again), while trying to avoid her father (Roberts again.) None of this makes much sense, but it ends strongly, with a solid last five minutes in which Keaton's creativity and athleticism are on full display.

The next two films we saw starred Harold Lloyd. High and Dizzy (1920) was the first, and mostly involved Lloyd and a friend (played by Roy Brooks) wandering around drunk. Mildred Davis, Lloyd's frequent co-star and future wife, appears briefly at the beginning where it is established that she is a sleepwalker -- so that it is only slightly random when she shows up in the last third and sleepwalks along ledges that through fake perspective appear high above a city -- in an early iteration of the famous Safety First scenes. The movie was agreeable and didn't wear out its welcome, but didn't aspire to be much more than a collection of middling gags.

Fake perspective also featured in the second Lloyd film, Never Weaken (1921), in which Lloyd spends the last third navigating a series of ostensibly high-up girders -- for no particularly good reason. His co-star in this film is again Davis, and he spends the first third trying to scare up business for the osteopath for whom she works, and then the second third trying to kill himself (in what seems like an extreme overreaction) after misapprehending that she is going to marry someone else. This film is much of a piece with the previous one -- in that it is essentially a string of gags -- with nothing particularly distinctive besides the perspective trick.

The last film was a Chaplin short named Pay Day (1922), the first portion of which chronicles his working day, and the last portion of which shows him trying to enjoy his evening after work while avoiding his wife, played in a thankless role by Phyllis Allen -- who was 28 years his senior (though she doesn't look it.) His regular co-star during this period, Edna Purviance, shows up as well, but in only a minor role as his foreman's daughter during the first and most enjoyable section of the film. That portion also has one memorable sequence with workers throwing bricks up to Chaplin perched above, and him catching them acrobatically. This is transparently accomplished by running the film backwards, but it nonetheless has a striking effect. The second section is marred by the ugly stereotype of the shrewish wife, but is otherwise a typical sequence of visual jokes -- in this case revolving around him going out and getting drunk, trying to get home, and, as above, trying to avoid his wife's wrath. It also is the source of the meme of Chaplin looking at a passing young woman while his wife glowers at him.

Next week we'll watch another selection of shorts from the 1920s, and then move on to the features of the 1930s.

The ongoing list of films remains at https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.

The Cameraman (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 8/5/2018

The Cameraman was our sixth film from 1928, and the third feature we've seen from Buster Keaton, after 1926's The General, and 1923's Three Ages.

Keaton in this film plays a struggling photographer, selling on sidewalks. After taking the photo of a young woman, played by Marceline Day, he becomes infatuated with her, finds that she works at a newsreel organization, and attempts to join the staff. As with many of the films we've seen from the famous silent comedians, this film uses its loose plot as a device on which to hang several not-terribly-connected sequences. For instance there is a long piece where Keaton goes on a date of sorts with Day to a communal swimming pool, and shortly after that there is a long sequence where he is filming gang warfare in Chinatown. The latter sequence is obviously fraught, although it does appear that the actors engaged in the gang warfare were mostly Asian, rather than white actors made up as Asians. Additionally, just prior to the brawl, Keaton acquires a monkey sidekick, the result of him running into an organ grinder's monkey, after which the organ grinder exclaims "Now, see! You kill-a de monk!" though of course the monkey turns out not actually to be dead. When I read that title card aloud, Ben sort of laughed, and then explained, "I just thought it was funny that your voice got kind of sad when you realized how racist it was." But whatever you think of the presence of organ grinders and Chinese gang members, it did seem a little funny to me that somebody might have left a theater for five minutes while Keaton was at the pool with Day, and come back to see Keaton's character trying to film brutal gang violence while a small monkey mans a machine gun next to him -- and perhaps wondered exactly what they'd missed in those five minutes.

The movie has a few of the iconic Keaton scenes that are regularly excerpted when people are showing clips -- for instance the scene of him atop a wooden structure that collapses as he's filming. I laughed a few times during this film, and enjoyed it probably about as much as Three Ages. It wasn't as good as The General -- in part because watching The General didn't summon up the image of an exhausted room of writers grasping for ideas, with somebody eventually pitching, "Maybe a monkey joins him?"

This was one of his last silents -- and will probably be the last feature of his that we watch. There's a completionist side of me that has a desire to sit down and watch all of his films -- but I also have a strong desire to move this project out of the twenties, where it has been lodged since early 2017. We are, however, planning to watch some of his short films between the planned features from 1929 and 1930.

Next week we move on from Keaton to Chaplin, watching The Circus, our seventh film from 1928, and our fifth by Chaplin. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

The General (1926)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/10/2018

The General was our second feature starring Buster Keaton, after 1923's Three Ages, and our second film from 1926. It's also one of the handful of films from this period that I'd seen before we began this project.

Keaton plays an engineer during the Civil War who becomes involved in chasing and recovering a stolen train. This is apparently based on an actual event, but only very loosely. What this film has in common with a lot of the better silent-era comedies is a certain precision and timing, which is striking even when it is just coordinating a few performers in a mundane setting, but really achieves a type of impossible grace when it is performed with multi-ton trains that are being choreographed with a such a seemingly light touch. This is all enormously impressive, but I have to admit I did not find it as funny as I'd remembered, perhaps because I was too familiar with so many of the sequences. The thing I found the most amusing this time around was Keaton's character's frustration with his leading lady, Marion Mack, who is given a little more comedic business than many of the female leads in the comedies that we've seen thus far. Interestingly the kids made vocal observations about Keaton playing a Confederate, jokingly booing when he succeeded at this or that. The film itself is not political (except in the sense that being apolitical is political), and Keaton could easily have been playing a Union soldier with a change of uniform and one or two title cards -- but the kids still found his allegiance off-putting, at least enough to joke about. I'm not sure how funny they found the whole thing, but then I never really am. Allison, after seeing the famous scene where Keaton throws one railroad tie at another to knock it off the track, remarked "skillz", so I think she was at least a little bit impressed by the athleticism and scale of the movie.

Even though I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped, it is clear that this is just objectively a better film than Three Ages, to the extent that objectivity means anything when talking about films. For the bulk of the movie, the jokes serve the story and are not shoehorned in arbitrarily. One could perhaps criticize the romance for being perfunctory, but the main body of the film flows naturally, rarely dragging and without much fat or obvious exposition.

Next week we'll see Flesh and the Devil, our third film from 1926, and our first starring Greta Garbo. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Three Ages (1923)

Originally posted to Facebook on 8/7/2017

Three Ages was our third film from 1923, and out first feature starring Buster Keaton, though we had previously seen him in the 1918 Fatty Arbuckle short The Bell Boy. Keaton is probably my favorite of the silent era comedians -- the least corny, and the most single-mindedly comedic. It isn't entirely a typical feature, because it is broken up into three intercut sections, each set in an historical era (Stone Age, Roman, and "modern" -- i.e. the 1920s), and each starring Keaton as the protagonist, Margaret Leahy as his romantic interest, and Wallace Beery as his rival. We've seen Wallace Beery a few times previously, most recently in 1922's Robin Hood. Margaret Leahy, on the other hand, appears to have made her first and last film appearance with this movie.

This film turns out to be the source of a few recognizable clips which I've seen excerpted elsewhere. For instance this scene: (http://bit.ly/2ugktZC), and this one (http://bit.ly/2wjS55Y). There are a few other set pieces throughout, but the jokes are largely hit or miss, including unfortunately one slightly racist bit, which was thankfully brief. The only scenes that actually made me laugh were a section with Keaton and a lion during the Roman portion, but there were other amusing sequences too (as well as some lame bits -- e.g. His wristwatch is a sundial!)

I've seen some discussion of the idea that Three Ages was a parody or an homage to Intolerance. But, though the idea of switching between various historical periods may seem similar, this movie has a very different structure. Griffith's film had four basically different casts and stories, which paralleled each other only in that they ostensibly revolved around the same theme. Keaton uses the same cast in each of the three stories, and all three stories have a similar plot: Keaton as the underdog in competition with Beery for the affections of Margaret Leahy. If Three Ages directly references or mocks Intolerance in any overt way, it is only very minimally.

Overall this might not be the first film I'd recommend to someone interested in Keaton, but it's a decent movie on its own merits, and a pretty good signpost for where he was heading in his subsequent more ambitious films.

Our next film is our fourth and final one from 1923: The Extra Girl, which stars Mabel Normand, whom we last saw in the 1916 short Fatty and Mabel Adrift, and, before that, in 1914's Tillie's Punctured Romance. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Shorts (1918-1919)

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/1/2017

Last week we watched our second and last batch of shorts from the teens. They included:

A Dog's Life (1918)
The Bell Boy (1918)
From Hand to Mouth (1919)
Bumping into Broadway (1919)

All three of the canonical silent comedians are represented: Chaplin in A Dog’s Life, Keaton in The Bell Boy, and Harold Lloyd in the other two.

We’d seen three Chaplin shorts the previous week, and the new one was along much the same lines, including the presence of Edna Purviance as his leading lady. Quality-wise it was in the middle of the pack: not as good as The Immigrant, but better than The Tramp. Much of the plot revolves around Chaplin trying to obtain money and food, which is essentially the premise of the earlier shorts as well.

That basic plot is also the basis of Harold Lloyd’s From Hand to Mouth, though Lloyd is a somewhat more accessible leading man. Chaplin often has a slightly alien presence -- including his unusual appearance, and his ignorance or lack of concern with normal human conventions. Lloyd comes across as more of a normal human being down on his luck. His co-star in this film was Mildred Davis, who eventually became his wife of forty-plus years.

Bumping into Broadway was another Lloyd short from the same year, and had many of the same supporting cast, excepting his co-star, who in this case was Bebe Daniels, an actress whom we’d seen in a bit part in Male and Female, and who was active in movies and TV well into the 1950s. Interestingly both films end with dozens of policeman chasing people around, which conforms to a stereotype of silent comedies. Neither film was made for Keystone, so these weren’t technically Keystone Cops, but seem likely to be a derivative of some sort.

I’d taken the kids to see 1928’s Speedy back during the fall at the Alamo in Winchester, so this wasn’t their first time seeing Harold Lloyd. He’s a decade younger in these shorts, but his persona already seems to be basically intact.

The remaining short, The Bell Boy, was a Fatty Arbuckle picture, and co-starred both Keaton and Arbuckle’s nephew Al St. John, whom we'd seen in the previous week’s Fatty and Mabel Adrift. This is the first time we’ve seen Keaton however, and although he isn’t the star of the picture his talents are prominently on display, and you can see an athleticism and apparent willingness to endure pain for the sake of a gag that are unlike Chaplin or Lloyd. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, he reprised much of this short twenty years later in the sound era, with 1937’s Love Nest on Wheels, and also used a portion of it almost fifty years later, in a 1966 short called The Scribe. Like all of the shorts this week, this film has a lot of scattershot jokes, some of which are better than others. Interestingly there are some topical references to Rasputin and to Kaiser Wilhelm, making this and Shoulder Arms the only two films we’ve seen to directly reference World War One while it was actually occurring.

Next week we begin the 1920s, with our fourth film by Cecil B. DeMille, titled Why Change Your Wife?. I’ve also added a new set of films from 1921. As with 1920, I’ve failed to keep to my original plan of targeting four films a year, and have instead selected five. This should take us into early March. I’m definitely hoping to hit sound films this year, since I would like to finish this project before the kids go to college, but we shall see. The updated list is shared here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT