A few silent films.

The Son-of-a-Gun (1919), directed by Gilbert M. Anderson (i.e. Bronco Billy Anderson). Bronco Billy rides into town, buys drinks for everyone except for a kid who happens to be in the saloon with his Dad’s ranch foreman, an unsavoury fellow who is leading young Buddy Brown (Paul Willis) astray. The townsfolk come to think of Bronco Billy as a detriment to their community and they drive him out of town and to the next county. There Bronco continues to buy drinks all round. Back in Bronco’s old country, Buddy’s Dad has to sell cows in order to get money to pay for his daughter’s medical treatment. Dad sends Buddy to the next county with the foreman and some cows. Once Buddy sells the cows and has money, the foreman begins once again to lead Buddy astray, this time so he can get the money from him. A crooked poker game causes Buddy to lose the money, but Bronco arrives to save the day. Bronco takes the money and Buddy back home where Buddy’s father promptly shoots Bronco. The end. This is not a particularly distinguished silent western.

 

The Monster (1925), directed by Roland West. A mix of horror and comedy (mostly comedy), this Lon Chaney film is fun. Chaney plays Dr. Ziska, an inmate of a “sanitar-rium” who has, with other inmates, taken over the place. Into this grand and spooky old house come three innocents, Johnny Goodlittle (Johnny Arthur) would be detective, Amos Rugg (Hallam Cooley), and Betty Watson (Gertrude Olmstead). The plot has something to do with Dr. Ziska’s mad plan to transfer a woman’s soul to a man so he can find the secret of life. Helping him are an assortment of crazies. The film has lots of atmosphere, with a howling wind and pelting rain, and shadowy rooms and secret doorways and useful dumbwaiters, and more curious of all, the large mirror that slides down onto a road from an overhanging tree. This mirror serves to frighten drivers into crashing off the road. Those who are unfortunate enough to crash (Betty and Amos, for example) find themselves abducted and carried away to the sanitarium. An allusion that appears more than once here is to Fuseli’s famous painting, The Nightmare (1781). Perhaps a tad slow, the film nevertheless is entertaining. Tubi has an excellent print.

 

The Prairie Pirate (1925), directed by Edmund Mortimer. This is a well-made western melodrama that will strike some viewers as pleasant precisely because it is so dippy. Harry Carey stars as Brian Delaney who returns home one day to find that his cabin has been ransacked, and his sister Ruth (Jean Dumas) is dead. She has left a note behind saying she was being attacked by bandits and she would not allow them to take her alive. We have seen all this earlier. The bandit Aguilar (Fred Kohler) and his men break into the cabin and find Ruth. She manages to shoot two of the bandits before climbing into the crawl space beneath the cabin where she takes her own life. Aguilar has all this time been lighting cigarillos, taking a puff or two, and then twisting what is left before dropping them. When Brian returns to find the ransacked house and his sister, he also finds the tossed twisted cigarillos. He takes these as a clue to the identity of the person responsible for his sister’s death, and he sets out to find this person. In order to find the criminal, he takes on the identity of the “Yellow Seal” and goes about robbing saloons, taking only their ashtrays so he can locate the twisted cigarillo butts. For some reason, this makes him a bandit worthy of a $1,000 bounty. Dippy. Anyway, the rest of the film has to do with a slimy saloon owner Howard Steele (Lloyd Whitlock) and his hold over the compulsive gambler, Don Esteban (Robert Edeson). Steele wants either to take over Don Esteban’s ranch or marry the Don’s daughter Teresa (Trilby Clark). Meanwhile, the Yellow Seal has saved Teresa from being assaulted by another bandit, and in saving her, he of course finds himself attracted to her. Then we have Steele in cahoots with Aguilar, and some riding, some impressive stunt work, a bit of shooting, and the Yellow Seal saving Teresa from an unwanted marriage. All of this is fun, if rather unbelievable. But heck, it is a movie.

Between 1918 and 1923 Chaplin's films all came from his own studio, First National. Shoulder Arms (1918) is perhaps the most noteworthy of the films produced at First National, but on the whole the First National films are not my preferred Chaplin. In any case, we watched four of these films last evening: Sunnyside (1919), A Day's Pleasure (1919), The Idle Class (1921), and Pay Day (1922). Highlights are the brick catching scene in Pay Day (amazing), the dream sequence with the nymphs in Sunnyside (clever and very funny), the inebriation sequence in the rain in Pay Day (Chaplin had played tipsy since his music hall days and he does so in many of his films; his performance while supposedly under the influence is always good for a laugh), and the road tar sequence in A Day's Pleasure (slapstick at its most graceful). In The Idle Class Chaplin plays two roles, something he did in a few films. All four films pit the working class against the wealthy, and we know where Chaplin's sympathy lies. 1923 marks the end of Chaplin's shorter films.

A couple more Chaplin films: A Dog's Life (1918) and The Pilgrim (1923), both directed by Charlie Chaplin, and both for First National (the first and last films for this studio). A Dog's Life co-stars Scraps. The title of the film may refer equally to Scraps the dog or to the Tramp since both lead a dog's life, scrapping for bits of food wherever they can get them. Edna Purviance also co-stars as Charlie's love interest. This film offers laughter with a tear, Chaplin's signature tone. Much of the action takes place in a speakeasy where Edna sings and flirts with men to relieve them of their money. Of course she is not made for this kind of life. As for The Pilgrim, this also co-stars Edna Purviance, her final film with Chaplin. Here Charlie is an escaped convict who steals the clothes of a fellow who is swimming in a river. The clothes prove to be those of a pastor and, you guessed it, Charlie makes his way to Texas where he arrives in a town whose denizens are expecting their new pastor. Charlie thinks to abscond with the Church collection, but he meets Edna Purviance and he reforms, even thwarting another thief from making off with Edna's mother's mortgage money. The local sheriff thinks twice about arresting Charlie and instead takes him to the Mexico border where he encourages Charlie to stay in Mexico. Charlie straddles the border as the film ends. Along with these films, we watched How to Make Movies, a short film Chaplin made to introduce and celebrate the creation of his own studio, First National.

Wolfblood (1925), directed by George Chesebro and Bruce Mitchell. What caught my eye was the name George Chesebro, Here he is leading man and director. I know him from the hundreds of B westerns in which he played the bad guy or a member of the bad guy’s gang. I was also intrigued to see that this was a werewolf film. Well almost. The story is set in “the vastness of the Canadian forests,” and has many stock shots of lumberjacks going about their business. Dick Bannister (Chesebro) is foreman of a lumber business that is experiencing trouble from its rival Consolidated Lumber. The owner of Bannister’s outfit, Edith Ford (Marguerite Clayton), comes to the forest with her doctor fiancé Eugene Horton (Ray Hanford). To simplify: Edith finds herself attracted to Dick, Eugene is jealous, Eugene finds Dick wounded one night (he has been attacked by villainous Frenchman Jacques Lebeq (Milburne Morante), Eugene saves Dick’s life by giving him a blood transfusion using a wolf for the transfusion, the result is that Dick is now thought to be the Loup garou. He is not. So much for the werewolf theme. The film is competently organized, but contains nothing particularly noteworthy aside from the crazy blood transfusion, and this comes halfway through the film. It is, however, interesting to see George Chesebro as the romantic lead.

The Matinee Idol (1928), directed by Frank Capra. It is the time of year for a Capra film, although this is not the one you might expect. This early Capra is about a Broadway star, Don Wilson (Johnnie Walker) who meets a country girl while he is on vacation. He mistakenly finds himself taking part in the theatricals of a small group of thespians called the Bolivar players. Ginger Bolivar (Bessie Love), daughter of Jasper Bolivar, the head of this troupe, soon catches Don’s eye. He has introduced himself as Harry Mann (!), and so we set out to have a play of disguise and mistaken identity. The country troupe of actors prove so inept, they endear themselves to Don’s friends who produce the Broadway production in which Don stars in Blackface. He is something of an Al Jolsen figure. Once we get past this uncomfortable reminder of the ugliness of racism, we might find aspects of this production interesting. One of the country players is clearly gay. The unfortunate thing here is that another character makes fun of the gay person. I might also add that, despite Capra’s interest in the small-town person, here he makes these people amusement for the, ostensibly, sophisticated New York audience. The Capra sympathy for the common person is clear, although not quite without its down side. And Bessie Love in the main female lead is engaging, spunky and independent minded. All in all, this is not a film without its problems, but as an early Capra, it has its interest.

The Virginian (1914), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Tubi has a pretty good print of this film, the first film version of Owen Wister’s novel. Things move along succinctly and smoothly here. The story is familiar, and the early cross0cutting between Molly, the Easterner, and the Virginian out west is effective. Outdoor shooting is good. The elements of the western are here with cattle drives and cattle rustling, lynching of thieves, saloon antics, cowboy romancing, Natives attacking, and, of course, the shootout between the hero and the villain, here the Virginian (Dustin Farnum) and Trampas (William ‘Billy’ Elmer). As early westerns go, this one is impressive. The compositions by DeMille are catchy. At one point, as the Virginian and his pal Steve reminisce, we have a superimposed image to let us see what they are thinking. We have seen superimposed images before in Melies, but not for purposes of letting us see into the minds of characters. There are also extended sequences, the longest having to do with Steve and the Virginian swapping babies while their parents take part in a party and dance. 

The Man from Beyond (1922), directed by Burton L. King. If you are looking for a silent film that will engage you, give this one a miss. The main attraction here is Harry Houdini who stars as the man from beyond, Howard Hillary, who has been encased in ice for 100 years. Thawed out, Howard comes back to civilization from the frozen north to find himself at a wedding. He notices the bride and takes her to be the woman he was to marry before he was iced over. Consternation. Thinking him out of his mind, his hosts have him incarcerated in an insane asylum. Of course, he escapes despite the straight jacket and barred windows. Meanwhile Felice Strange (Jane Connelly), the women who was to be married before Howard crashed the wedding, is on the run from her fiancé who has proven to be a cad. Felice takes a row boat on the Niagara River. Yes, you can see what’s coming. Howard comes to the rescue, but not before the two of them just about topple over the Niagara Falls. If all this sounds exciting, then I fear I have failed because, sadly, it is not. The whole thing is supposed to have something to do with reincarnation, the power of love and such balderdash. In its favour, the film is a curiosity.

 

 

 A few films to begin the new year.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), directed by Taika Waititi. This film is a mish-mash of such films as Rambo, Thelma and Louise, Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Searchers, and perhaps even Where the Wild Things Are. It has the feel of a good fairy tale. And it has two main characters who, despite their curmudgeonly demeanor, charm us. Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is the foster kid with an attitude who aspires to be a rap artist and who is forever making up haiku. He is overweight. He is, in short, charismatic. His fellow traveller in the New Zealand bush is Hec (Sam Neill), a misanthrope of few words and much scowl. Together they strike out against the establishment in a very satisfying manner. The look of this film is also worth admiring, awash in light and offering splendid vistas of the New Zealand outback. The film is funny and serious. It has a bit of Mr. Fantastic in it.

 

Jojo Rabbit (2019), directed by Taika Waititi. As A. O. Scott in the New York Times notes, this film is in the vein of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful. It takes on the same sensitive subject, and infuses it with charm and, for the most part, lightheartedness. The film does have shocking moments, and it also uses its humour for bursts of violence; for example, when young Yorki (Archie Yates), a butterball of a young soldier (11 years old), sees his friend Jojo and drops the bazooka he is holding effectively setting it off. The film brings Wes Anderson’s palette to the screen presumably to emphasise innocence, youth, and hope. Not everyone will appreciate the tone of this narrative of the Nazi horrors. Its focus on children and women, however, carries its own unsettling message. At the heart of the film is young Jojo’s relationship with his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler. Playing off this imaginary friend is Sam Rockwell’s burnt-out soldier who also happens to be gay. There is cleverness here. Aside from the main characters, others remain stereotypes, but this seems appropriate in a satire. I mention satire, and yes this film is satirical, but not in a militantly ironic manner. This is, after all, a comedy, and appropriately for a comedy, we have dancing to finish things off. I have not outlined the plot. Suffice to say we have a loving, and apparently single because of the war, mother who secretly harbours a young Jewish girl behind the walls of her apartment. Once this mother's young son, Jojo, discovers the secret, an uneasy friendship begins to develop.

 

Blackkklansman (2018), directed by Spike Lee. This is a major contribution to the conversation about race in America today. Set in the early 1970s, the film manages to speak to conditions we see today and the continuing racial injustice in America. The final shots using contemporary news footage are chilling, disturbing, and powerful. Just as powerful are the clips from early Hollywood films such as Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind that point out the lengthy history of racial insensitivity in culture production. The narrative is a somewhat rambling account of a Black policeman in Colorado Springs, Colorado, who in the 1970s manages to become a full-fledged member of the Ku Klux Klan, even having extended conversations on the telephone with David Duke, grandmaster of the KKK. The film is funny, unsettling, and melancholy. The melancholy emanates from the clear understanding that what we are watching is both bizarre and yet actual. This is an important film.

Mapplethorpe (2018), directed by Ondi Timoner. This biopic of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe is a tepid affair, and Mapplethorpe himself has little depth and less likeability. The film glosses his relationship with Patti Smith, and she leaves the scene earlier than she did in actuality. We get the obligatory scenes of interaction with family, with lovers, with New York nightlife, and so on. We also get scenes of Mapplethorpe taking pictures, instructing his subjects to hold themselves tighter or spread their knees, or take their cocks out of their trousers. All this seems rather perfunctory. The photographs themselves, especially as the end credits run, are impressive. But the film gives us no insight into how the artist captured light or conceived of his subjects beyond compositional objects. Even the controversial aspect of Mapplethorpe's work gets thin treatment. Of course the Aids epidemic arrives near the end, but again, we have little in the way of the actual grimness of what transpired.

Another Mother's Son (2017), directed by Christopher Menaul. The film tells the story of Louisa Gould, a woman living in the island of Jersey during the Nazi occupation. With the aid of her family, she hides a Russian prisoner of war for about three years before quislings give her up and she ends in a concentration camp in Germany. The story is based on actual events and people. As you might expect, the action pulls at the heart strings. There is not much in the way of spectacular action; things move along at a quiet pace with much riding of bicycles. And yet the tension gathers and the characters resonate. The Russian soldier has to practice social distancing along with the others, except for close family gatherings. And so this seems an appropriate film to watch these days. The cast is uniformly good, the scenery lovely (although it was shot in and around Bath, not on Jersey), and the story compelling.

Jellyfish (2018), directed by James Gardner. This is Gardner's first film and it is sobering, to say the least. In the tradition of British realist film from the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, the film gives us a glimpse of a dreary life, the dreary life of Sarah, 15-year-old caregiver to her bipolar Mom and adult protector to her younger siblings. Set in Margate, the film gives us not only a life under duress, but also a place seeking an elusive improvement. The shots of a tawdry arcade and down-at-heel seaside and less than attractive abodes provide an unsavoury mise en scene. Margate here aspires to the condition of Brighton, an aspiration unlikely to be fulfilled while Sarah is there. Sarah's life is relentlessly downbeat, yet compelling. This is a noteworthy first film. Let's hope Sarah can harness all the anger and sorrow and become a stand-up comic.

Assassin (2015), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. This film looks as if it is going to be an example of wuxia, a martial arts film. However, it is something else indeed, a mood piece with a plot that is both simple and daringly opaque. Unlike most martial arts films, or films in general these days, Assassin moves at an excruciatingly slow pace, with moments, long moments, of silence and stillness. The few bursts of action punctuate the stillness forcefully. Mostly we have beautiful people in beautiful costumes placed carefully in beautiful sets or in beautiful landscapes. The plot has the eponymous character exiled in order to prove herself a ruthless assassin, and the film places the viewer in something of an exile too. Do we have the patience to see the film to its end? Well, we do, and we did. And the assassin, Nie Yinniang (She Qui) proves herself a woman with heart and compassion. She wanders off with the maker of mirrors.