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 Kid Brother (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/1/2018

The Kid Brother was our fourth film from 1927, and the last we saw at the AFI's silent film festival last fall. It was our fifth film starring Harold Lloyd, and the third where his female lead was Jobyna Ralston, whom we'd seen just the previous day in Wings.

In this film Lloyd lives with his father, who is the local sheriff, and his two older brothers, all of whom are bigger and stronger than Lloyd. Ralston arrives with two shady partners as part of a medicine show, and becomes involved with Lloyd. Lloyd and Ralston have a decent chemistry, perhaps by virtue of having worked together so often, and in this film their relationship is depicted as relatively healthy, unlike, for instance, in Safety Last and Girl Shy, where Lloyd did an awful lot of lying to his female lead, or in The Freshman, where he was borderline delusional. His brothers and father are also depicted as somewhere in the vicinity of a believable family, and not just as comedic foils.

The plot meanders a bit, but eventually the other two figures from the medicine show end up stealing town funds with which Lloyd's father was entrusted, casting suspicion on him. The final section of the film shows Lloyd finding the thieves and recovering the money. This last sequence is surprisingly violent, with Lloyd at one point trying to hold one of the thieves underwater until he drowns.

Seeing a movie like this in a theater is obviously a different experience than seeing it on television. For silents particularly, the live accompaniment makes a difference, but also for comedies it is interesting to hear what people actually find funny. The kids were a little critical on the way home about what they saw as overly effusive laughter from the audience. Usually I'm in sympathy with this point of view, and it often seems like there's a certain amount of performative laughter when people are watching older comedies. But the particular scene they were criticizing involved Lloyd putting human sized shoes on a monkey in order to fool his pursuer about where he was -- which seemed kind of amusing to me at the time. In general, though, Lloyd's movies usually make me smile more than laugh, but they are reliably charming, and this one is in that same vein.

After our detour into 1927, our next film, The Scarlet Letter, is our first from 1926. It's the first Lillian Gish film we've seen in a while, and also the sixth Victor Sjöström film. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

The Freshman (1925)

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/4/2018

The Freshman is our sixth film from 1925, and our third starring Harold Lloyd (not counting 1928's Speedy.)

Many of the films we've seen recently don't particularly conform to the stereotypes associated with the twenties, but unlike those films The Freshman is filled with Jazz Age images -- college life, boozy parties, and the sort of cavalier attitude that is now shorthand for this period. Lloyd fits in well with this type of youth culture; though he was 32 in 1925, he passes for younger, and is not immediately laughable as a college student.

Lloyd in this movie is just entering college, and is determined to be a football hero and a generally popular figure on campus. Instead he ends up a target of mockery for his attempts to fit in. At the same time, he begins a tentative romance with his boarding house's landlady's daughter, played by Jobyna Ralston, whom we saw in our last Lloyd feature, 1924's Girl Shy. Though this film is more thematically linked than some of his previous films, it does have some long comic sequences, including a college party, and the football scenes for which this film is probably most famous. These latter scenes seem reminiscent of a similar sequence we saw in 1923's Three Ages with Buster Keaton, which was perhaps an influence.

Another interesting note about this film is that Lloyd came out of retirement in 1947 to star in an unofficial sequel named The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, directed by Preston Sturges. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see that film too, if the project lasts that long.

But next week we see our seventh and last film from 1925, an early Japanese samurai film named Orochi. The up-to-date list is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Girl Shy (1924)

Originally posted to Facebook on 9/17/2017

Girl Shy was our second feature from 1924, and second starring Harold Lloyd (not counting 1928's Speedy, which we saw separately.) He plays a young man from a small town who has virtually no experience with women, but who is nonetheless writing a book called "The Secret of Making Love." In it he details his methods of romancing various types of women. Two in particular are dramatized: The vampire (for whom acting indifferently is the strategy), and the flapper (for whom the strategy is to be a "Cave Man.") It was a little amusing that, even this far back, this kind of pick-up artist advice was already part of the culture enough to be a target for parody. Lloyd, though, delivers his book to a publisher, where it is roundly mocked by the various readers. One woman references 1921's The Sheik, which we saw earlier this year, exclaiming, "I'd love to meet the sheik who wrote that stuff." While in the big city Lloyd meets and becomes involved with the female lead, played by Jobyna Ralston, but, later, when he feels that he won't be able to provide for her, he lies to her and tells her that he was never really interested in her. (This kind of romantic-comedy behavior always seems like sort of a strange staple to me; a good chunk of 1923's Safety Last -- the last Harold Lloyd film we saw -- also involves him lying to his girlfriend as a result of his financial situation.) In any case, she ends up getting engaged to someone else, and the last section of the film is a long chase scene where Lloyd uses a variety of different modes of transportation to travel into the city and attempt to stop the wedding. This parallels Safety Last as well, in that the climax of the movie is most characteristic of the received image that people have of silent comedy.

All in all this is a good-to-decent comedy, but it probably ranks third for me in comparison to the other two Lloyd films we've seen, just because the plot and the comedy are both a bit thin, excepting the final sequence. However, it is true that the story in this film is more cohesive and less episodic than in either of the other two Lloyd films we've seen.

Next week we see our third film from 1924, entitled Die Nibelungen: Siegfried. This is the first of a two film sequence, which together will be the third and fourth films we've seen directed by Fritz Lang. The list as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Safety Last! (1923)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/9/2017

Safety Last was the second film we watched from 1923, and it was the first feature starring Harold Lloyd that we’ve seen as part of this project -- though we did separately see 1928’s Speedy last year at the Alamo in Winchester. Additionally we’d also watched a couple of Lloyd shorts prior to starting the 1920s, so the kids are pretty well familiar with him.

This film is most famous for the final sequence involving Lloyd precariously climbing the side of a skyscraper, and, at one point, in perhaps the most iconic image of the silent era, hanging from the hands of a giant clock. That sequence is definitely prominent, but occupies only the last quarter of the film. The bulk of the film involves Lloyd trying to get ahead in the city so that he can send for his girlfriend (Mildred Davis, to whom he was married in real life), who is waiting back in their small hometown. Like a lot of comedies we’ve seen from this period -- or from any period -- the plot isn’t all that cohesive -- there are a lot of random gags and sequences that are shoehorned in a little awkwardly, including the final sequence. The jokes are hit or miss, and I think it’s pretty understandable why the climbing sequence is the portion that still lingers on with something of a half-life in the popular consciousness, though there are some other interesting or amusing bits. One of the recurring sources for these bits -- and I am aware that this is a well-trod romantic comedy trope -- is Lloyd doing an awful lot of borderline pathological lying to his girlfriend about his level of success. This seemed a little wrong-headed to me, and it’s strange that this is so accepted in popular culture when it’s considered almost sociopathic in real life.

Our next film is our third from 1923, and our first feature starring Buster Keaton: Three Ages. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Summary 1910-1919

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/22/2017

Late last year we finished up our chronological viewing of the 1910s, and are now four films into 1920. I thought this would be a good time to single out the films that I most enjoyed or found the most interesting from that period. We watched nineteen shorts and thirty-one features, though the dividing line between the two was a little fuzzy at times, and included some ~45 minute "features." One of those shorter features that I liked was The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs [1912], directed by Léonce Perret and produced in France at Gaumont Studios. As I mentioned in the write-up, it could very easily have been adapted as an episode on the old Alfred Hitchcock show, and coming when it did at the dawn of features it seemed markedly more realistic than the shorts we'd been watching previously, which were largely melodramas or the tail-end of the Melies or Melies-inspired camera-trick films. Two other films, also from Gaumont, were the crime serials Fantomas [1913] and Judex [1916], both of which were over five hours in total length, and both of which were directed by Louis Feuillade. Judex is more consistent in tone, and is probably the better film; I could easily imagine it being rebooted for a modern audience. But Fantomas is more tongue-in-cheek, and more bizarre (for instance the drive-by attempt at murder via python, foiled only by the hero having the foresight to wear a python-proof suit.)

The two films that are likely on any in-depth film history curriculum -- and deserve to be -- are Cabiria [1914] and Intolerance [1916]. The shock of seeing the camera begin moving into a scene during Cabiria -- rather than just panning -- cannot be felt by a modern audience in the same way it must have been felt by a contemporary audience, but one can still apprehend that something new is happening. And it is has a number of elaborate and impressive set pieces as well -- including the dark and weird scenes where children are tossed into an oven embedded in the stomach of a statue of a local god. Intolerance builds upon Cabiria, and adds the famous Babylonian crane shots, as well as an insanely ambitious attempt to make a coherent movie out of four distinct time period. It doesn't completely succeed, and spends a lot of time burrowing down some weirdly misguided moral rabbit-holes, but it's an impressive film, both in its ambition, and in what it accomplishes. Both films are long, and periodically lose focus. Cabiria, though, at least, seems to always have entertainment on its mind, rather than trying to teach some questionable moral lessons.

Besides Feuillade and Leonce Perret, there were three other directors whom we saw more than once: D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Victor Sjöström. Victor Sjöström is the only one of the three all of whose films I liked. Probably the best of his three films we saw was Ingeborg Holm [1913]. Like The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs, it was markedly more realistic than the films we'd been seeing up until that point, and stopped short of some of the sentimental cliches it could have employed, at least up until the very end. It was Dickensian in a sense, in that it told a story about an individual's misfortunes, but also had a focus on the institutional failures that had played a role.

The final feature I'll mention was the one that I personally found the most entertaining from this period: the Douglas Fairbanks feature When the Clouds Roll By [1919], directed by Victor Fleming. It was the funniest of the various comedies we'd seen -- including the films we saw by the canonical three silent comedians -- Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. To be fair to those three, all of their greatest work came in the twenties, and only Chaplin was making features in the 1910-1919 period. Fairbanks, too, probably did his major work in the twenties, but by 1919 he was already well established, and this film features his typical athleticism along with some intricate stunts and some fancy editing. Also it helps that he and his leading lady actually seem to like each other, always helpful in a romantic comedy, and surprisingly missing in a lot of the films we saw from this period (and even today, really.)

As far as shorts are concerned, I can't say there was anything that really stood out for me. Griffith's The Girl and Her Trust [1912] was a good short from the period just prior to features becoming common. I understand there were several other versions with a similar story that Griffith and others shot, but this was the one we saw, and it was a good straight-forward western, sort of a natural evolution of The Great Train Robbery. The Immigrant [1917] was probably the best of the Chaplin shorts we saw, especially the first half which was set shipboard. From Hand to Mouth [1919] by Harold Lloyd was also intermittently amusing. Lloyd's films don't have the touch of obsesssiveness that Chaplin's and Keaton's do, but he does have more of an everyman quality that makes his protagonists a little more sympathetic.

So that's it for the teens for a while -- probably forever in that concentrated a dosage. I'm looking forward to the twenties quite a bit, because I'm expecting the films to be better and stranger and more ambitious, which certainly seems to be the case four films in.

Speedy (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/8/2017

Speedy wasn’t strictly part of our chronological movie viewing, since it’s from 1928, and we are just now reaching the 1920s, but it was certainly complementary. I saw it with the kids and my mom at the Alamo in Winchester, with a live band playing accompaniment. The film was enjoyable, if a bit fragmented. It really had four segments -- Harold Lloyd taking his girlfriend, played by Ann Christy, to Coney Island, then trying to keep a job as a cab driver, then a big fight scene between company goons and civil war vets, and finally a chase scene with Lloyd trying to drive his girlfriend’s grandfather’s horse-drawn trolley through various obstacles in order to beat a deadline. The last two are the most directly connected to the plot, while the first two are more extraneous. The Coney Island sequence, though somewhat isolated from the rest of the film, was interesting as a bit of a time capsule. The carnival rides were similar to modern rides, but a little different in style, and generally more dangerous looking. Several weeks later we saw Tillie Wakes Up, from 1917, and saw a similar visit -- possibly to Coney Island as well -- with a lot of the same (or similar) types of rides, but the comedic bits in Speedy were more sophisticated and better written. In the second section, Babe Ruth shows up as a terrified taxicab passenger for about five minutes. I imagine his scenes were shot in a day or two, but it was interesting to see them nonetheless, since Babe Ruth is one of the few figures from the twenties who is still a household name. In the third section, the mass fighting sequence was impressive in its scale -- dozens or hundreds of people fighting with improvised weapons. The trolley chase scenes were more familiar silent-movie territory, but still inventive. I don’t know if I really laughed during the film, but it was pleasant and engaging. The real highlight was the experience of seeing it in the theater with a live band. The band was made up of local musicians who had clearly studied the film beforehand, and chosen music appropriate to the on-screen action. I’m glad there are venues are still committed to presenting silent films in something approximating the manner that they were intended to be viewed, and I'm glad it was reasonably well-attended, so that hopefully similar opportunities will pop up in the future.

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