Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (1919)

Originally posted to Facebook on 11/20/2016

Hawthorne of the U.S.A. was our third film from 1919. It starred Wallace Reid, whom we last saw in a leading role in Carmen, from 1915. There are a variety of other familiar faces as well: Lila Lee, the female lead, and Theodore Roberts both appeared in Male and Female, from just a few weeks back, and Charles Ogle we’d seen as far back as 1910 playing the monster in Frankenstein, and also more recently in Romance of the Redwoods. Also present was Harrison Ford as the protagonist’s best friend, or as IMDB calls him, Harrison Ford (II). I’ve been vaguely aware that there was a silent film star with the same name as the modern actor, but this was the first time I’d seen him in an actual film. The film itself is based on a play, and is essentially a romantic comedy, though with a slight satirical tinge. It begins with Reid winning a fortune at Monte Carlo, and making some vaguely anti-monarchical statements. This encourages some revolutionaries from the fictional country of Bovinia to draw him into their attempts to overthrow Bovinia’s king. Once he arrives in Bovinia, he ends up falling in love with the king’s daughter, and gets involved in various other intrigues. Overall it is a lightweight, occasionally amusing film, with no serious political points to make, excepting possibly the out-of-style viewpoint that the solution to foreign instability is just a good dose of American common sense. The revolutionaries even today seem reminiscent of the Bolsheviks, and certainly must have seemed that way to the audiences of 1919, but the source play was performed on Broadway in 1912 (and, as an aside, starred Douglas Fairbanks), so 1917 is presumably not the specific satirical target.

Next week we watch True Heart Susie, our final film from 1919, and our third feature from D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish and Robert Harron. After that we’re going to take a couple of weeks to watch some shorts from the teens, and then move on to the 1920s. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

A Romance of the Redwoods (1917)

Originally posted to Facebook on 9/9/2016

A Romance of the Redwoods was our first film from 1917. As I mentioned last week, it’s the first one we’ve seen starring Mary Pickford, and the second one, after Carmen, that we’ve seen directed by Cecil B. DeMille. In another prominent role is Charles Ogle, who played Frankenstein’s monster in the sixteen minute 1910 version we saw earlier this year. This film is ostensibly a melodrama, but it has a strangely light tone not completely in sync with its plot. The initial contrivance that sets the film in motion is that Mary Pickford’s character, living in Boston, is orphaned, and decides to follow her uncle out to California. However, in the meantime her uncle has been killed by a group of Native Americans (or “Injuns” as one character calls them in a title card), and his identity assumed by a stagecoach robber played by Elliot Dexter. Since this movie is titled “A Romance of the Redwoods,” you can probably guess where this setup leads -- though the leads don’t have a particularly strong chemistry, and the romance is more announced than truly shown. But the plot has enough twists and turns along the way to keep it interesting, if not essential.

Next week we’ll watch our second film from 1917, Tillie Wakes Up, a sequel to Tillie’s Punctured Romance from 1914, minus Chaplin and Mabel Normand. Marie Dressler is still in it though, playing the title role. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1909 - 1910

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/9/2016

This week we watched films from 1909 and 1910, specifically the following:

Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy
The Devilish Tenant
The Sealed Room
A Corner in Wheat
A Christmas Carol
The Unchanging Sea
King Lear
Frankenstein

Running lengths continue to increase. The eight films' total running length this week was 96 minutes, longer than any previous weekend, and 1910 was the first year where none of the films we watched were less than ten minutes. There was only one George Méliès film this week (The Devilish Tenant), but three by D.W. Griffith, and two by J. Searle Dawley, at Edison.

The Devilish Tenant is very much in line with many other George Méliès films we've seen -- lots of camera tricks, interior or painted sets, and with a supernatural tormentor, another Méliès trope. However, although it had familiar elements, it was a fairly polished example of its kind. Princess Nicotine, although not by Méliès, shows his influence, and is driven by camera tricks also.

The two Edison films (A Christmas Carol and Frankenstein) both draw on familiar plots to assist in the storytelling, which is a common theme of this early period. The actor, Charles Ogle, who plays Bob Cratchit also plays the monster in Frankenstein, though he is so heavily made up in the latter that it is impossible to tell. A Christmas Carol is the more traditional telling of the two. The three ghosts have been downsized to one, who has to shoulder triple the workload of presenting past, present, and future. Also there is a subplot I don't recall from any previous telling, in that his nephew can't marry because of his financial situation. Other than that, all of the normal plot points are hit fairly economically in the eleven minute running time -- though this is perhaps overstated because the version we saw did not appear to have the speed corrected properly, and the movement was faster than it should have been. Frankenstein, on the other hand, took many more liberties with its well-known source, and the ending was a bit arbitrary and under-explained.

The other film with a familiar plot that we saw was King Lear, which was an Italian production. I told the kids the basic story ahead of time so that they could follow the film better. (Ben asked if it had a happy ending. I told him it doesn't. He also pointed out -- and I'm paraphrasing a bit -- that deciding who should run a kingdom based on who you think loves you the most is not a good system of governance.)

The three Griffith films each told a relatively lesser known story (though a few were still adaptations), and did so without using the audience's background knowledge as a crutch. The stories were mostly clear, either through the direction, acting, or title cards. A Corner in Wheat and The Unchanging Sea were on fairly realistic sets or set locations, and The Unchanging Sea managed to telescope twenty years into its running time, which, excepting maybe Joan of Arc and Ben Hur, is the first time we've seen that on screen, and certainly the most effectively. I can't really recommend any of them as great masterpieces, but they are all interesting and clearly told stories.

Next weekend, because of increasing film lengths, we will only be watching four films, all from 1911. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT