Beggars of Life (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 9/18/2018

Beggars of Life was our tenth film from 1928, and the first film we've seen starring Louise Brooks. The screenplay was adapted by Benjamin Glazer, who also wrote the screenplays for 1927's 7th Heaven and 1926's Flesh and the Devil. It was directed by William Wellman and costarred Richard Arlen, both of whom we encountered in 1927's Wings. It also prominently features Wallace Beery, who has popped up in several films we've seen.

Arlen plays a hobo who enters a house looking for food, and finds a recently murdered man. He also finds Louise Brooks, who admits to the killing, though in self-defense. The two quickly leave, with Brooks disguised (not terribly convincingly) as a boy. They try to put some distance between themselves and the dead man while avoiding trouble, and eventually meet up with a band of other hobos, including Wallace Beery.

This depiction of homeless transients treated in a serious way feels new compared to the other American films we've seen as part of this project, certainly as embodied in a big-budget film with name stars. This film in fact felt to me like a premonition of the end of the twenties, and the beginning, in some sense, of the thirties, when poverty and hunger and hand-to-mouth existence became much more focused in the national consciousness. It has a grittiness and a danger to it -- up until the point, about halfway through, where the hobos, led by Beery, decide to hold a mock trial, which devolves into a series of limp jokes involving misuse of legal terminology. The film to that point had seemed basically naturalistic, but the artifice and theatricality of the trial broke the spell (for me at least), and though the film eventually rallied, it never quite recovered.

Beery gives the most charismatic performance in the film, dangerous but charming and mercurial. Arlen and Brooks play their parts as worried, fearful, and increasingly dependent on one another -- less vivid than Beery, but completely appropriate to their roles. There is, also, interestingly, a black character named "Black Mose", played by Blue Washington, who is given a significant amount of screen time. He is played and written stereotypically, but, as I discussed with the kids, I am genuinely unsure whether this is better or worse than the complete absence or extremely minimal roles for black actors which has been the general practice in the vast majority of the films we've seen to this point.

Next week we'll see Road to Ruin, our eleventh film from 1928. 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

Robin Hood (1922)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/4/2017

Robin Hood is our fifth film from 1922. It is the fourth film we’ve seen starring Douglas Fairbanks, but the first swashbuckling costume drama -- which is the type of film for which he is probably most famous. It is also the first that is not explicitly a comedy, though it is certainly light-hearted. It also stars Wallace Beery (whom we last saw in the 1917 short Teddy at the Throttle) as King Richard -- and Alan Hale as Little John. Alan Hale, in addition to being the father of Alan Hale Jr. from Gilligan’s Island, reprised his role as Little John sixteen years later in Errol Flynn’s 1938 version of Robin Hood.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this film is how long it takes Fairbanks as the Earl of Huntingdon to become Robin Hood. The first half of the film depicts his adventures in the service of King Richard, including jousting tournaments, wooing Marian (played by Enid Bennett), and accompanying Richard as he leaves for the crusades. Fairbanks is his normal athletic, exuberant self -- which is perhaps appropriate to our received image of Robin Hood, but a little odd when you consider that by the time he becomes Robin Hood he has lost everything from his former life -- or has every reason to think he has, in any case. This is the kind of movie where there are an awful lot of people throwing back their heads and laughing flamboyantly -- which as I think about it is something I don’t recall ever actually having seen happen in real life. Overall I probably would have preferred the movie to either be more dramatic, or more genuinely funny, and perhaps done a little bit less coasting on Fairbanks’ charisma -- but it had a professional sheen, and was intermittently enjoyable in a broad crowd-pleasing way.

Next week I’d planned to see our sixth and final movie from 1922, but I haven’t received it yet, so until it arrives we are going to move on to our first film from 1923: Scaramouche. I’ve also added our planned films from 1924 to the list, which can be seen 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