Tol'able David (1921)

Originally posted to Facebook on 3/9/2017

Tol'able David was our second film from 1921, and also the second film we’ve seen in which Richard Barthelmess plays the male lead. He’s the title character, and tol’able apparently is a contraction for “tolerable”, although it doesn’t seem like a word that’s used often enough to really warrant a contraction. He’s the youngest son in a farming family, who are depicted as having an idyllic if tenuous rural life. However, a series of tragic events occur, forcing him to grow up and shoulder more responsibility. The film was paced and executed decently well, but I thought Barthelmess overplayed his character’s boyishness in the earlier portions in the film. This was presumably to create a contrast with the later portions, but Barthelmess was too obviously a full-grown adult for it to seem credible. He also had patches of overacting, in particular a scene in which he told his quasi-girlfriend (Gladys Hulette) that he didn’t want to see her anymore, and then dramatically turned his head and marched off. This made the kids laugh significantly more than any of the deliberately comic scenes.

Next up is The Phantom Carriage, our third film from 1921, and the fourth film we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Way Down East (1920)

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/18/2017

Way Down East was our fifth and final film from 1920, our fourth feature directed by D.W. Griffith, and our second starring Lillian Gish. As with his other features Griffith is at least as interested in hammering you over the head with a moral lesson as he is in making a movie, but at least this time his moral lesson is not perversely wrong-headed. The story concerns Gish, who is seduced by a womanizer, and gives birth out of wedlock. Needless to say, this is scandalous, and calamitously impacts her life, whereas her seducer suffers no immediate consequences at all. She eventually ends up as a servant for a family which includes the male lead, played by Richard Barthelmess. The moralizing -- even in a good cause -- is still annoying, but the more serious flaw with this film is that its two-and-a-half-hour running time is needlessly padded with superfluous sequences, including not just a secondary but a tertiary romantic couple. The scenes with the other two couples are intended to be comic relief, but comedy, like so much else, is not Griffith’s strong suit. The early scenes, too, could have been trimmed to focus more exclusively on the circumstances that result in Gish being conned, rather than introducing a raft of other characters whom we never see again. (Lowell Sherman, by the way, who plays the seducer, went on to direct Mae West’s first starring role in She Done Him Wrong, and Katherine Hepburn’s first Oscar winning role in Morning Glory.) Despite its various flaws, it is probably fair to say that this is the most polished and cohesive feature we’ve seen by Griffith, but of his four features that we’ve seen 1916’s Intolerance is still the only one with a non-negligible chance that I might someday watch it again.

So that ends 1920. Next week we begin 1921 with The Kid, our third Charlie Chaplin feature. I’ve also added the films planned for 1922 to our list, which, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT