Originally posted to Facebook on 11/1/2016
The Outlaw and His Wife was our third film from 1918, and also the third film we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström. He stars as well, just as he did in 1917’s A Man There Was. This is a more conventional film than the earlier one -- but it is surprisingly grim. It’s a little amusing to see the stereotype of gloomy Swedish films played out this early, especially since that stereotype is most often associated with Ingmar Bergman, who was born the year this film was released. Given the title, I think I can say without spoiling anything that the central character is an escaped outlaw, who begins working on a large farm under an alias, and there falls in love with the proprietress (played by Edith Erastoff) before his true identity is discovered. They decide to get married, and flee the authorities -- and things do not go well. It is apparently based on a play about a real couple from the eighteenth century. The movie, though, is anything but stage-bound, and has many scenes of majestic outdoor vistas. I don’t know that it is completely psychologically realistic, but it certainly tries to wrestle with human desperation in a sincere way, which shows more ambition than most of the films we’ve seen.
The next film we’ll see is our last from 1918, and is called The Bluebird, and looks quite eccentric and surreal. Our list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Shoulder Arms (1918)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/27/2016
Shoulder Arms was our second film from 1918, and also the second time we’ve seen Chaplin. Chaplin’s brother Sydney has a significant role in the movie as well, and this is the first film in which we’ve seen Chaplin’s frequent female co-star Edna Purviance. The plot concerns an American GI during WWI, training and eventually fighting overseas. This is the the first movie we’ve seen in which WWI is explicitly referenced, though we have previously seen it generically alluded to. This film is still not what I would think of as laugh-out-loud funny, but it made me smile intermittently, and was more creative in its set-ups and much more methodical about presenting actual jokes than the first Chaplin film we saw, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, which was basically just a long parade of characters kicking, hitting, and throwing things at each other. The trenches in this film, for instance, turn out to be the basis for a lot of creative set pieces, including one brief tracking shot that reminded me of the similar but more elaborate scene from Paths of Glory. The ending was a bit of a let down, and I imagine a cliché even in 1918.
Our next film from 1918 is The Outlaw and His Wife, the third feature we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström, and the second one in which he is also the lead. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Shoulder Arms was our second film from 1918, and also the second time we’ve seen Chaplin. Chaplin’s brother Sydney has a significant role in the movie as well, and this is the first film in which we’ve seen Chaplin’s frequent female co-star Edna Purviance. The plot concerns an American GI during WWI, training and eventually fighting overseas. This is the the first movie we’ve seen in which WWI is explicitly referenced, though we have previously seen it generically alluded to. This film is still not what I would think of as laugh-out-loud funny, but it made me smile intermittently, and was more creative in its set-ups and much more methodical about presenting actual jokes than the first Chaplin film we saw, Tillie’s Punctured Romance, which was basically just a long parade of characters kicking, hitting, and throwing things at each other. The trenches in this film, for instance, turn out to be the basis for a lot of creative set pieces, including one brief tracking shot that reminded me of the similar but more elaborate scene from Paths of Glory. The ending was a bit of a let down, and I imagine a cliché even in 1918.
Our next film from 1918 is The Outlaw and His Wife, the third feature we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström, and the second one in which he is also the lead. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Stella Maris (1918)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/14/2016
Stella Maris was our first film from 1918, and our second (after 1917's Romance of the Redwoods) starring Mary Pickford. Pickford plays dual roles: Unity Blake -- a poor friendless orphan -- and Stella Maris -- a rich girl who is unable to walk. Both end up falling in love with John Risca, played by Conway Tearle (birth name: Frederick Levy), who is already married (though separated.) Both of Pickford’s characters are impossibly good-hearted, and the only true antagonist in the film is Risca’s wife, played by Marcia Manon. The plot has a few twists and turns, and veers between being overtly sentimental to surprisingly violent. The movie also finds time for a strange subplot about two dogs that don’t get along very well. Pickford playing dual roles was interesting, but seemed like more of a stunt than an essential element (though apparently a remake eight years later starring Mary Philbin adopted the same approach.) Certainly having a second actress play one of the roles wouldn’t have changed the film in any material way. The two characters were rarely on screen together, but on those occasions when that occurred, the double exposures -- or whatever methods were employed -- were basically seamless. Not surprising, I suppose, since George Melies was chopping people's heads off and throwing them across the room twenty years earlier. But it was interesting to see special effects used unobtrusively at this stage in film history.
The next film on the list, Shoulder Arms, is our second film from 1918, and also the second film we've seen starring Charlie Chaplin, following 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Stella Maris was our first film from 1918, and our second (after 1917's Romance of the Redwoods) starring Mary Pickford. Pickford plays dual roles: Unity Blake -- a poor friendless orphan -- and Stella Maris -- a rich girl who is unable to walk. Both end up falling in love with John Risca, played by Conway Tearle (birth name: Frederick Levy), who is already married (though separated.) Both of Pickford’s characters are impossibly good-hearted, and the only true antagonist in the film is Risca’s wife, played by Marcia Manon. The plot has a few twists and turns, and veers between being overtly sentimental to surprisingly violent. The movie also finds time for a strange subplot about two dogs that don’t get along very well. Pickford playing dual roles was interesting, but seemed like more of a stunt than an essential element (though apparently a remake eight years later starring Mary Philbin adopted the same approach.) Certainly having a second actress play one of the roles wouldn’t have changed the film in any material way. The two characters were rarely on screen together, but on those occasions when that occurred, the double exposures -- or whatever methods were employed -- were basically seamless. Not surprising, I suppose, since George Melies was chopping people's heads off and throwing them across the room twenty years earlier. But it was interesting to see special effects used unobtrusively at this stage in film history.
The next film on the list, Shoulder Arms, is our second film from 1918, and also the second film we've seen starring Charlie Chaplin, following 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
A Man There Was (1917)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/7/2016
A Man There Was was our last film from 1917, and the second film we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström, the first being Ingeborg Holm, from 1913. In some ways that earlier film seemed more like a conventional feature than this one -- even though it was made at the very beginning of commercial feature films. This one is based on a poem by Ibsen, and the title cards are apparently excerpts from that poem -- a rhymed translation into English in the version we saw. It is set during the Napoleonic wars -- fifty years before the poem was written, a century before the movie, and two centuries from the present day. The lead character, played by Sjöström, is a sailor who, I hope I can say without spoilers, suffers tragedy and seeks revenge. It reminded me a little of a Griffith short we saw earlier this year called The Unchanging Sea (also based on a poem), but is significantly darker and more intense. In some ways this movie is closer to an illustrated version of the poem than what one might expect from a feature, and as a result it is fairly single-minded about telling its story, with few extraneous details, and a running time of less than an hour. It has some strong imagery as well, of the sea and the coast, and the aging protagonist. It is perhaps a bit melodramatic, but with a certain sense of heightened reality.
Next week we begin 1918 with Stella Maris, our second film starring Mary Pickford. I’ve also added our planned films for 1919 to the spreadsheet, which is linked here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
A Man There Was was our last film from 1917, and the second film we’ve seen directed by Victor Sjöström, the first being Ingeborg Holm, from 1913. In some ways that earlier film seemed more like a conventional feature than this one -- even though it was made at the very beginning of commercial feature films. This one is based on a poem by Ibsen, and the title cards are apparently excerpts from that poem -- a rhymed translation into English in the version we saw. It is set during the Napoleonic wars -- fifty years before the poem was written, a century before the movie, and two centuries from the present day. The lead character, played by Sjöström, is a sailor who, I hope I can say without spoilers, suffers tragedy and seeks revenge. It reminded me a little of a Griffith short we saw earlier this year called The Unchanging Sea (also based on a poem), but is significantly darker and more intense. In some ways this movie is closer to an illustrated version of the poem than what one might expect from a feature, and as a result it is fairly single-minded about telling its story, with few extraneous details, and a running time of less than an hour. It has some strong imagery as well, of the sea and the coast, and the aging protagonist. It is perhaps a bit melodramatic, but with a certain sense of heightened reality.
Next week we begin 1918 with Stella Maris, our second film starring Mary Pickford. I’ve also added our planned films for 1919 to the spreadsheet, which is linked here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Wild and Woolly (1917)
Originally posted to Facebook on 10/1/2016
Wild and Woolly was our third film from 1917, and the second we’ve seen starring Douglas Fairbanks. Like The Matrimaniac, it is set more or less in the present day (i.e. 1917.) Also like that film it is a light comedy with some mild stunt-work. The plot is unusual and seemed promising: Fairbanks plays the rich son of a railroad magnate. He idealizes the West, and is sent to Arizona, imagining it to be as represented in novels and movies, despite the fact that by 1917, the Wild West is essentially gone (though still within living memory.) The town, however, is aware of his misconception, and decides to play the part in an attempt to curry favor with him (and his father). However, this premise never lives up to its potential for a few reasons. First, and most significant, was the portrayal of Native Americans as the main antagonists, in the broadest and most unsympathetic way. At one point, when a group of Native Americans are terrorizing a bar, snarling and theatrically drinking liquor, I considered calling it quits, like we did for Traffic in Souls, and finding a replacement film for the following week. But by that point we were near the end, so we managed to finish it up. Thankfully I didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining everything to the kids -- they were fully aware, and we’d had a similar conversation when we’d watched The Perils of Pauline a few months back. But even aside from that problem, there were other major issues with the film. For one, Douglas Fairbanks’ character doesn’t come off as charmingly misinformed; rather, he appears to be psychotically deluded, and a bit of a bully to boot. And he never really receives the kind of comeuppance you might expect the spoiled rich businessman’s son to receive in a film like this. He does give a speech at the end, where he acknowledges the error of his ways, but it’s not clear why, since his delusion is more or less what saves the day. The romance, with a town resident played by Eileen Percy, is also basically pro-forma -- not strongly motivated or convincing. Definitely a disappointment. Interestingly the director (John Emerson) and one of the writers (Anita Loos) were later married, and were also credited as writers of The Matrimaniac. Anita Loos, particularly, had a long and bizarre life that is worth Wikipedia-ing, and continued writing for the movies up through the forties, as well as writing the book and musical upon which Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was based.
Our next film, and our last from 1917, is A Man There Was, which was directed by and also stars Victor Sjöström, who also directed Ingeborg Holm, from 1913, which is one of the more naturalistic features we’ve seen from that early period. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Wild and Woolly was our third film from 1917, and the second we’ve seen starring Douglas Fairbanks. Like The Matrimaniac, it is set more or less in the present day (i.e. 1917.) Also like that film it is a light comedy with some mild stunt-work. The plot is unusual and seemed promising: Fairbanks plays the rich son of a railroad magnate. He idealizes the West, and is sent to Arizona, imagining it to be as represented in novels and movies, despite the fact that by 1917, the Wild West is essentially gone (though still within living memory.) The town, however, is aware of his misconception, and decides to play the part in an attempt to curry favor with him (and his father). However, this premise never lives up to its potential for a few reasons. First, and most significant, was the portrayal of Native Americans as the main antagonists, in the broadest and most unsympathetic way. At one point, when a group of Native Americans are terrorizing a bar, snarling and theatrically drinking liquor, I considered calling it quits, like we did for Traffic in Souls, and finding a replacement film for the following week. But by that point we were near the end, so we managed to finish it up. Thankfully I didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining everything to the kids -- they were fully aware, and we’d had a similar conversation when we’d watched The Perils of Pauline a few months back. But even aside from that problem, there were other major issues with the film. For one, Douglas Fairbanks’ character doesn’t come off as charmingly misinformed; rather, he appears to be psychotically deluded, and a bit of a bully to boot. And he never really receives the kind of comeuppance you might expect the spoiled rich businessman’s son to receive in a film like this. He does give a speech at the end, where he acknowledges the error of his ways, but it’s not clear why, since his delusion is more or less what saves the day. The romance, with a town resident played by Eileen Percy, is also basically pro-forma -- not strongly motivated or convincing. Definitely a disappointment. Interestingly the director (John Emerson) and one of the writers (Anita Loos) were later married, and were also credited as writers of The Matrimaniac. Anita Loos, particularly, had a long and bizarre life that is worth Wikipedia-ing, and continued writing for the movies up through the forties, as well as writing the book and musical upon which Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was based.
Our next film, and our last from 1917, is A Man There Was, which was directed by and also stars Victor Sjöström, who also directed Ingeborg Holm, from 1913, which is one of the more naturalistic features we’ve seen from that early period. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tillie Wakes Up (1917)
Originally posted to Facebook on 9/17/2016
Tillie Wakes Up was the second film we watched from 1917, and was a sequel of sorts to 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance. In fact there was also an intervening Tillie film as well, but it is now mostly lost. As mentioned last week, neither Chaplin nor Mabel Normand are in this one, but Marie Dressler returns as Tillie -- though her presence and character name is literally the only thread connecting these two films. In this movie she is now married, unhappily, and living in an apartment building with a similarly unhappy neighboring couple. She decides to make her husband (Frank Beamish) jealous by going out with the similarly neglected husband of the neighboring couple, played by Johnny Hines. This cliched plot is redeemed by only two things: First, one of the places they visit is an amusement park -- either Coney Island or someplace very similar. I recently saw (but haven’t written up yet) Harold Lloyd’s Speedy, which was made a decade later in 1928, and this sequence makes me wonder if he was consciously emulating this earlier film. Certainly his version is significantly more sophisticated, with jokes that look like they were planned out in advance, whereas this movie mostly relies upon showing Tillie being discomfited by the various rides (all of which look very unsafe by today’s standards.) The most striking parallel between the two movies was a ride consisting of a disc in the floor, which spins its seated riders off to the sides as it quickly rotates.
The second interesting thing about this film was the absurdly slangy title cards, which are impossible to capture without examples. One read, “They missed Mattewan because Officer 666 was too tired to make a pinch. He thought they were a couple of nuts!”, which I think means they weren’t arrested because the officer didn’t take them seriously. Another read “Tillie had never tasted anything stronger than orange Pekoe and J. Mortimer was a bug on Clysmic, but they fell off the wagon with a splash that scared all of the Mackerel out of the Harbor,” which I believe means they weren’t used to drinking, and ended up getting very drunk. There were dozens of cards like these, and some of them were so absurdly obscure I just had to guess when translating for the kids. They were the most amusing thing about the film, although we were laughing at them as much as with them. I do wonder, though, if they really dated from 1917 or had been revised in the twenties or later. Some of them seemed a little too irreverent and jokey for 1917, and we haven’t seen anything like them in the contemporaneous films we’ve been watching, certainly not in this kind of concentrated barrage. One bit of evidence for a later vintage was the use of the word “hep,” which may have been in currency in 1917, but is more associated with later periods. Also, Oscar Hammerstein was mentioned, who was young and not particularly famous in 1917. I thought this latter piece of evidence had clinched it, but after doing a little research it appears Oscar Hammerstein had a grandfather by the same name who was also a well known theatrical figure, and it’s possible they may have been referring to him. So it’s still an open question for me. With the exception of the title cards, the movie was probably about as funny as Tillie’s Punctured Romance (i.e. not very) but there was something slightly more charming about it, perhaps having to do with the fact that it was a decidedly lower budget and less meticulous affair.
Next week we’ll see Wild and Woolly, our third film from 1917 and our second film starring Douglas Fairbanks. This list is linked to here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tillie Wakes Up was the second film we watched from 1917, and was a sequel of sorts to 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance. In fact there was also an intervening Tillie film as well, but it is now mostly lost. As mentioned last week, neither Chaplin nor Mabel Normand are in this one, but Marie Dressler returns as Tillie -- though her presence and character name is literally the only thread connecting these two films. In this movie she is now married, unhappily, and living in an apartment building with a similarly unhappy neighboring couple. She decides to make her husband (Frank Beamish) jealous by going out with the similarly neglected husband of the neighboring couple, played by Johnny Hines. This cliched plot is redeemed by only two things: First, one of the places they visit is an amusement park -- either Coney Island or someplace very similar. I recently saw (but haven’t written up yet) Harold Lloyd’s Speedy, which was made a decade later in 1928, and this sequence makes me wonder if he was consciously emulating this earlier film. Certainly his version is significantly more sophisticated, with jokes that look like they were planned out in advance, whereas this movie mostly relies upon showing Tillie being discomfited by the various rides (all of which look very unsafe by today’s standards.) The most striking parallel between the two movies was a ride consisting of a disc in the floor, which spins its seated riders off to the sides as it quickly rotates.
The second interesting thing about this film was the absurdly slangy title cards, which are impossible to capture without examples. One read, “They missed Mattewan because Officer 666 was too tired to make a pinch. He thought they were a couple of nuts!”, which I think means they weren’t arrested because the officer didn’t take them seriously. Another read “Tillie had never tasted anything stronger than orange Pekoe and J. Mortimer was a bug on Clysmic, but they fell off the wagon with a splash that scared all of the Mackerel out of the Harbor,” which I believe means they weren’t used to drinking, and ended up getting very drunk. There were dozens of cards like these, and some of them were so absurdly obscure I just had to guess when translating for the kids. They were the most amusing thing about the film, although we were laughing at them as much as with them. I do wonder, though, if they really dated from 1917 or had been revised in the twenties or later. Some of them seemed a little too irreverent and jokey for 1917, and we haven’t seen anything like them in the contemporaneous films we’ve been watching, certainly not in this kind of concentrated barrage. One bit of evidence for a later vintage was the use of the word “hep,” which may have been in currency in 1917, but is more associated with later periods. Also, Oscar Hammerstein was mentioned, who was young and not particularly famous in 1917. I thought this latter piece of evidence had clinched it, but after doing a little research it appears Oscar Hammerstein had a grandfather by the same name who was also a well known theatrical figure, and it’s possible they may have been referring to him. So it’s still an open question for me. With the exception of the title cards, the movie was probably about as funny as Tillie’s Punctured Romance (i.e. not very) but there was something slightly more charming about it, perhaps having to do with the fact that it was a decidedly lower budget and less meticulous affair.
Next week we’ll see Wild and Woolly, our third film from 1917 and our second film starring Douglas Fairbanks. This list is linked to 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
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
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