November 3, 2019
The Lost World – U.S.,
1925
Harry O. Hoyt’s The
Lost World just missed being the first “summer film” by three months. I say
this not because Hollywood had conceived of the modern-day concept of a summer
film at a time when studios were producing a film a week, but because The Lost World has so much in common
with what has come to be associated with a film released between May and August
– thinly-drawn characters, impressive special effects, and an action-packed
finale that, like King Kong eight years
later, brings danger to the streets of New York. And in an eerie sense of déjà vu,
its star bares a striking resemblance to Richard Attenborough, who played the
man responsible for bringing dinosaurs back in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park.
To some, this may seem like a put-down. I certainly don’t
intent for it to be. Instead, it is meant as an acknowledgement that Hollywood has
always been conflicted as to its overall purpose. Are movies meant to simply
afford the audience a venue through which to pass the time happily, or are they
meant to be bigger and better than that? Just two years later, this split was reflected
in the awarding of the first Best Picture award to two films – one, Sunrise, which was artistic and shed
light on the fragility and imperfection of regular people; and Wings, which told the tale of two pilots
in love with the same woman. This debate continues today in the current
arguments over whether superhero movies are cinema, which of course they are.
It’s just that they are in the vein of Wings,
well-constructed, but soon-to-be-forgotten crowd-pleasures, and many cinephiles
see that as an inferior genre.
So, The Lost World
does not aspire to be Intolerance or The Kid; not every film has to. What we
should therefore ask of a film like it is for there to be a story that makes
sense in its established reality, performances that make us feel as if the
events are really occurring, and characters whose fates we care about enough to
watch as they embark on an adventure that is – if we’re honest with ourselves –
fairly silly. Jurassic Park had this
in spades. The Lost World, on the
other hand, is hit and miss.
The Lost World
begins with a man named Ed (Lloyd Hughes) asking his long-time love, Gladys,
why she won’t marry him. She explains that the man she marries has to be daring
and make his own chances. In her words, “you can’t hold him back.” Immediately,
he dons a look of determination and sets off to ask the newspaper he works for
to send him on an assignment will enable him to prove that he is indeed a man
unchained. Soon we find him begging a professor (Wallace Beery), appropriately
named Challenger, to be included on an expedition to prove the existence of modern-day
dinosaurs in South America. He succeeds, of course, and even convinces his
employer to finance the operation under the guise of rescuing the father of a
young woman who became trapped in the land that Challenger claims is inhabited
by prehistoric beasts. It’s not long before he and four others are staring up
at the Amazon’s majestic tepuis and taking
in their first view of a living Pterodactyl.
As for the first of my criteria, a story that makes sense in
its established reality, The Lost World
is mostly successful. It is logical that most people would disbelieve a story
as crazy as Challenger’s, and many of the experiences of the explorers, from
the threat of being eaten to that of being trapped in that land for eternity,
are logical. Where the film falters is in the reactions of many of its
supporting characters. One member of the expedition is black, and like so many such
characters from films of this time period, he’s portrayed as a fool and a
coward. It also appears that he’s played by an actor in blackface. Another
character is a sixty-year old professor with an affinity for bugs. Normally,
there’s nothing wrong with that, but when he stops to comment on a bug in the middle
of a path rife with hazards, it stretches credibility. It was a reminder of how
many great films have been somewhat weakened by the addition of a superfluous comic
character.
The performances are generally good, yet they are slightly
undone by several questionable plotlines. The first involves the great hunter
in the group, John Roxton (Lewis Stone). While it is reasonable that one would be involved in
the voyage, the choice to make him part of the film’s love triangle is a
peculiar one, primarily because of the age difference between the hunter and
the woman he wishes to marry – at first glance, he could be her grandfather.
There’s also little chemistry between the two actors. One could argue that
those facts make it logical that she would fall for Ed, yet the two of them
share so little screen time together that when they began professing their love
for each other, I found myself sighing. They literally go from saying I love
you to planning their wedding in less than a minute.
And then there are the characters, and here is where the
film mostly finds its strength. Resonating the most are Challenger and Roxton.
It may be impossible for Beery to do wrong, and here he finds the perfect blend
of belligerence, leadership, humor, and bravery to make you believe that
Challenger would walk in the direction of animals that would look at him as
their next meal. Stone brings a great deal of gravitas and nobility to
the role of Roxton, and I loved the way the character reacts to the dinosaurs,
always keeping his rifle handy, but cognizant that the weapon would have little
effect on the enormous beasts. He also does better than most people could have
with the love angle. As Miss Paula White, the daughter of the missing man, Bessie
Love makes you believe her character is staring at the unthinkable, and Hughes is perfectly fine as Ed. Even Arthur Hoyt, playing Professor
Summerlee, the bug lover, does reasonably well with a role that could easily
have been removed from the film.
One other matter bears mentioning, and that is the number of
scenes involving either wildlife or dinosaurs. As with many other films from
the early days of cinema, viewers were not expected to have traveled abroad
much, so part of their interest in films or documentaries set it other
countries involved seeing the animals that roam those lands. Fortunately for
them, Hoyt gives them plenty to marvel at. However, seen today, these moments
drag, for they are not meant to establish an atmosphere or level of peril. (Hoyt
actually accomplishes this through some pretty interesting work with colors.) The
same can also be said of several scenes depicting battles between dinosaurs,
three of which involve a triceratops and an allosaurus. With all the time and
effort spent on their duels, I fully expected the allosaurus to factor in the
film’s climax. He doesn’t, though, and there is a lot less at stake in the
finale as a result.
The Lost World was
certainly a revelation in its time. Removed from that context, though, the film
suffers. Its love story is weak, its focus scattered, and its comedy only
partly successful. The film succeeds due to Hoyt’s impressive direction, and the
cast’s incredible commitment to selling the story and their characters. Seen
today, the film’s impact is unmistakable. One need only look at the climax of
Spielberg’s The Lost World to see the
debt it owes Hoyt’s film. And so what if it resembles much of what we now
consider a summer movies? There’s nothing wrong with striving just to
entertain, and I’m happy to report that The
Lost World, despite all its faults, continues to do that. (on DVD and
Blu-ray)
3 stars
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