The Red Mill (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/24/2018

The Red Mill was our ninth film from 1927, and our second starring Marion Davies. It was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under the pseudonym William Goodrich, which he used after his career was virtually destroyed in 1921-1922 by the famous scandal and subsequent trials. The Red Mill was one of the more high profile films he made in his post-scandal career, though at the time of his death of a heart attack in 1933, his fortunes had begun to improve, and he had even begun acting under his own name again.

This film is essentially a romantic comedy, unusual only in its foreign setting. Marion Davies stars as a servant in a tavern who falls in love with Owen Moore, a well-off visitor to Holland. There are a variety of shenanigans and misunderstandings, and a prominent secondary plot about another romantic couple played by Louise Fazenda and Karl Dane. Dane looked familiar to me, and, looking him up afterwards, I realized that I recognized him as one of John Gilbert's friends in 1925's The Big Parade. He apparently was also in 1926's The Scarlet Letter, which we saw at the Packard Theater in Culpeper, but I have less clear memories of him in that. He has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page that tells the cheerful story of his career decline during the sound era -- due to his Danish accent -- and subsequent depression and suicide in 1934.

There is not much surprising in this film, excepting maybe a slightly suspenseful ending sequence. Dane and Fazenda play their parts a shade broader than Moore and Davies, but nobody in this film is pitching their performance at any great level of subtlety. Davies is as charming as you would expect her to be, given that this is essentially a vehicle for her, as was the previous film we'd seen her in, 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower. That too was a romantic comedy, but it also had some aspirations as a period piece, and depicted events that vaguely lined up with the historical record. This movie has no such aspirations, but is in the main pleasant and agreeable.

Next week, before finishing up 1927, we're going to skip ahead to 1928, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, our second film from that year, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti. The list of upcoming films, 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

Shorts (1915-1917)

Originally posted to Facebook on 12/14/2016

This was our first of two weekends watching shorts from the teens. We saw five films:

The Tramp (1915)
A Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916)
Teddy at the Throttle (1917)
The Immigrant (1917)

Three of them were Chaplin shorts, the best of which was The Immigrant, which included a brief scene that I half-recognized from somewhere, specifically a few seconds in which Chaplin is half-walking / half-hopping in order to keep his balance on a rocking boat. The Immigrant is split into two parts, the first of which takes place on a ship bringing immigrants to the United States, including their sighting of the Statue of Liberty (which, as I believe I mentioned when discussing 1915’s The Italian, had been built just thirty years earlier.) The second section takes place mostly at a restaurant, once Chaplin and his co-star have settled in America. The best scenes are on board the ship; things slow down a bit once he comes ashore. His costar in all three shorts is Edna Purviance, who was also his co-star in 1918’s Shoulder Arms, which we saw several weeks ago. (The distinction between shorts and features during this period is a bit arbitrary; The Immigrant was half an hour, while Shoulder Arms was only forty-five minutes.)

A Burlesque on Carmen was interesting in that it was a direct parody of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 version of Carmen, which we watched back in May. The sets and costumes and plot points were quite similar, though the jokes were mostly shoehorned into the plot, rather than constituting any real satire of the earlier movie.

The Tramp was the earliest of the three, and probably the least inventive, with most of the jokes consisting of people being hit with bricks or poked with pitchforks or having things fall on them.

Fatty and Mabel Adrift starred Mabel Normand (who we last saw in 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance, with Chaplin) and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The villain was played by Al St. John, Arbuckle’s nephew. His acting in this short was extremely broad, even by the standards of early silent comedies, but apparently he went on to a long career as a Western sidekick in the thirties and forties, including many B movies with Buster Crabbe. This movie was basically about Arbuckle and Normand’s characters' romance and eventual marriage, and St. John’s jealous attempts at sabotage.

Teddy at the Throttle starred Gloria Swanson, whom we saw a few weeks ago in Male and Female. Her costar was Bobby Vernon, who was only an inch taller than Swanson at 5’2. The main villain was played by Wallace Beery, who was married to Swanson at the time. Like her, he bridged the gap between silents and talkies, winning a Best Actor Oscar in 1932. He was also famously referenced in Barton Fink (“Wallace Beery. Wrestling Picture. What do you need, a roadmap?”) The plot of this was similar to a few other films we’ve seen, in that Swanson and Vernon are due to inherit some money if and when they are married, and Beery and his sister attempt to use this information to enrich themselves.

I can’t say any of these films really struck me as worthy of recommendation, but The Immigrant and Teddy at the Throttle were probably the best of the bunch. Next week we see four more shorts, and then move on to features from the 1920s. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT