I haven't been here for a while. Here is a grab bag of films for early November.

He Who Gets Slapped (1924), directed by Victor Seastrom. This film marks the first appearance of the MGM lion. It is a melodrama starring Lon Chaney as He – the circus clown who gets slapped hundreds of times to the delight of the circus audience. Before he was He, this fellow was Paul Beaumont, a scientist working on the origins of mankind. He discovers this origin, but when he goes before the prestigious assembly of scientists to present his findings, his benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) steals the show and presents Beaumont’s findings as his own. When Beaumont protests, Regnard slaps him and the assembled greybeards laugh uproariously. Next Regnard proceeds to seduce Beaumont’s wife, who also slaps him. Beuamont retreats to the circus where he becomes the clown, He – who gets slapped. Here he falls in love with the circus trick rider, Consuelo (Norma Shearer). She, however, is in love with her riding partner, Bezano (John Gilbert). You can see how things get complicated. Consuelo’s father sells his daughter to the slimy Baron Regnard. He knows Consuelo does not love him, and he sets out to rescue her from a marriage she does not want with the Baron. How he does this is to arrange for the Baron and Consuelo’s father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall), to be mauled to death by a circus lion. (Is this the MGM lion at work? I do not know.) Production values are excellent, and Lon Chaney has never been better at eliciting the audience’s sympathy. This is a fine example of silent cinema.

Hot Water (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. This one is a turkey! Well, let me rephrase, this one has a turkey in one of its extended scenes. It also has a "ghost" sequence. Here's how Wikipedia describes the plot:

"Episodic in nature (effectively three short films merged into one), the first episode features Hubby winning a live turkey in a raffle and taking it home on a crowded streetcar, much to the chagrin of the other passengers. The second features Hubby grudgingly taking the family en masse out on his brand new Butterfly Six automobile, and the third is an escapade with his sleepwalking mother-in-law. The third segment almost qualifies the film as a horror movie, as in it, Hubby mistakenly believes he has killed his mother-in-law, and when she starts sleepwalking later, he thinks she's a ghost haunting him."

Girl Shy (1924), directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. The film has Harold Meadows (Harold Lloyd) working for his father in a tailor shop. Harold is painfully shy and has a terrible stutter. Only the sound of a whistle can stop the stutter. Harold is also an aspiring writer; he is writing a book that recounts his many love affairs and his various methods for seducing women. He is the Cave Man with Flappers and the Nonchalant with Vamps. Anyway, he finds himself on a train sitting beside a beautiful young woman who has a small dog she has to keep hidden because the train line does not allow dogs on board. You can imagine the gags that ensue. As always, the biggest set piece comes at the end, and here it is Harold's mad dash in as many conveyances as you can imagine to get him to the young woman's palatial house where she is about to be married to a cad who is already married to another woman. The ending is reminiscent of a somewhat later film, The Graduate. Those who have seen The Graduate will have an excellent idea how Girl Shy ends.

Continuing our Harold Lloyd festival, we watched Dr. Jack (1922), directed by Fred Newmeyer. In this film, Dr. Jack believes less in medications and more in physical activity and positive thinking to restore his patients to health. And his least concern is receiving money for his services. He manages to get two old fellows from the doldrums by boxing and with music. He rescues a doll from a well. He cures an ill boy who does not want to go to school. He perks up an elderly lady by getting rid of her medicines and bringing home her grown son. He also drives a car, gets out of it while it is running, and walks in front of it to clear cattle before getting back in. He rides a bicycle that lacks its chain. Anyway, you understand. The plot has him cure the Sick-Little-Well Girl and also fall in love with her. In order to remove her from the clutches of the sourpuss doctor who has prescribed medicines and total rest, something akin to what we have in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," Dr. Jack brings some excitement into the young woman's life. He does this mostly by assuming the disguise of a hunchback, fanged, long-haired, and black cape clad robber who flits about the premises causing mayhem. All this is amusing, if not hilarious. It reminds us of a time when doctors made house calls and put health before profit.

 

Harold Lloyd's second sound film is Feet First (1930), directed by Clyde Bruckman. The story tells of likeable young man, Harold Horne (Lloyd). He is something of a milquetoast. He works in a large shoe store, and is trying to move from stock boy to salesperson. His superior at the store says he needs more "personality," and so he takes a six month course in Personality. He also meets the daughter of the company he works for, although at first he does not know who she is. We have a series of mishaps that follow familiar sight gags of silent cinema until Harold finds himself in Los Angeles on the side of a building high above the busy city street. If this sounds familiar, it is. The last long sequence in the film reprises the famous sequence with the clock high on a building in Lloyd's Safety Last (1923), possibly his most famous film. Here there is no clock, but there is a painter's platform with two burly painters on the roof pulling the platform up and letting it down, all the time Harold rolls, falls, clutches, scrambles, and so on to save himself. He gets amusing assistance from a person he calls "Charcoal," and this part of the wild sequence is the most unfortunate part. Enough said. Frances and I kept focusing on Harold's right hand, knowing that he had lost a good part of it in an on-set explosion some ten years or so earlier. His physical agility is quite amazing, and the high-on-a-building sequence remains thrilling. Of the three most prominent comedians of early cinema - Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd - Lloyd made the most normative move into sound film. Feet First is amusing and shows a distinct connection to the films that went before.

We have been watching Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin comedies on Friday evenings, and last evening we decided to watch a few of Buster Keaton's short films. We watched The Boat (1921), and The Paleface, The Electric House, The Blacksmith, and The Frozen North, all from 1922. At this same time Keaton made a few of his genuinely funny and creative films such as Cops, The Balloonatic, and Seven Chances. These three films are among the best silent comedies ever made. The five we watched, however, are not among Keaton's best - by any stretch. They do have their interest. For example, The Frozen North is a surreal parody of the likes of William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, although its casual violence strikes me as unsettling. Or take The Paleface, a film that makes an attempt to present Native people in a positive manner, but cannot overcome the White man saves natives plot and the familiar stereotypical presentation of Indigenous people. The Paleface makes for uncomfortable viewing. The Boat gives us a variety of gags that stem from Buster's attempt to take his family on a boat trip. The boat, like the engine in The General, provides Buster with a location for his antics and he wrests as much humour from this location as he can. But somehow what we have is not nearly as inventive as Buster's work in The General. The Electric House has its moments, in a Chalpinesque way, with Buster playing an electrician who fixes a large house with electronic gadgets. And finally The Blacksmith in which Buster creates a shock absorbing saddle for a horse, a device that is as ugly as it is ungainly. Buster also fits the horse for shoes, using a brannock device.

 

Friday night Chaplin: from Keystone, Between Showers (1914), Recreation (1914), Cruel, Cruel Love (1914), and from Mutual, Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), The Rink (1916). The first three from Keystone show Chaplin at the beginning of his film career and the films rely on mayhem, pratfalls, punches, and general rowdiness you would expect from the studio responsible for the Keystone Cops. The humour is more than broad and crude, but there are flashes of what is to come. While Chaplin worked for Keystone, he also in 1915 signed with Essanay and later with Mutual. The second of the three films here are from the Mutual period when Chaplin worked with Edna Purviance and Eric Campbell. These films show a marked change for the better in both plots and action. Chaplin is now perfecting his choreography and timing, and experimenting with his character. For example, in Easy Street the Tramp joins the police force, and he single-handedly cleans up the constant brouhaha that takes place outside the Easy Street Mission. We are also seeing a more pointed commentary on both the working class and the wealthy class. In The Cure, a well-to-do Chaplin, taking a trunk full of booze, enters a rehab centre for the rich. You can guess what happens once that trunk is opened. Chaplin often plays a tipsy character. In these two films Chaplins looks at both ends of the economic spectrum. In The Rink, the classes come together in that Charlie's Tramp character finds himself among the wealthy crowd enjoying a skating party. In The Rink we see his balletic prowess on roller skates, something he will reprise much later in Modern Times (1936).