Review - Robin Hood (1922)

 October 9, 2023
 
Robin Hood – U.S., 1922
 

It is said that the script for Douglas Fairbanks’s 1922 film Robin Hood consisted of just a few sentences scribbled on a piece of scratch paper. While I imagine scenes were more carefully planned out later on, the lack of foreplaning may account for the jarring sudden shift in tone midway through the film. After all, this is a film that for more than an hour seems much more like a drama than a comedy. It’s as if halfway through production someone ran what they had filmed so far and insisted on the insertion of humor and tights. So jarring is the switch that it makes you wonder if the man formerly known as the Earl of Huntingdon had suddenly developed amnesia regarding the degree of suffering being experienced by the residents of Nottingham.
 
Robin Hood begins with a feast celebrating King Richard’s soon-to-be-embarked upon mission into the Holy Land, more commonly known as the beginning of the Crusades. This is presented as a cause for pomp and celebration and as the fulfillment a personal mission. Current students of history may watch this and roll their eyes, especially at the rather positive view of a historical figure who ordered the massacre of 500 unarmed prisoners, yet it’s also easy to believe that at the time many people considered not only the Crusades to be worth fighting but also the men going off to fight it to be heroes. King Richard (played by screen legend Wallace Beery) places Prince John (Sam De Grasse) in charge during his absence, andit is a mistake of astronomical proportions, as the prince quickly raises taxes, seizes household possessions when people cannot pay, reinstates execution, and tortures women who spurn his advances. It’s truly brutal stuff.
 
The first half of the film also contains the first meeting of Huntingdon (Douglas Fairbanks) and Lady Marian (Enid Bennett), and this is portrayed much less romantically as later versions. Instead of linking eyes and feeling the early pitter-patters of love, Huntingdon spies Prince John stalking Marian as she flees upstairs to escape his unwanted and potentially violent advances. After saving her from a potential assault, he is surprised by her humble and soft-spoken manner, and soon the two are gazing into each other’s eyes, theirs faces adorned with the kind of expression that enthusiastically whispers, “Can you believe this is happening to us?” It’s hokey, but it works.
 
Director Allan Dwan does an excellent job of building up the tension, cutting between scenes of Prince John’s increasingly belligerent nature and the men’s blissful ignorance of what is going on in their absence. Dwan plays up Marian’s innocence in a series of close-ups that reflect both the hopefulness of a someone in love for the first time and the naïve practicality of someone who believes that a few sound words of advice are all a tyrant needs to be able to change his ways. Dwan also knows how to film Fairbanks, and his camera is frequently placed at the ideal angle to capture Marian’s and Huntingdon’s torn expressions and looks of concern. I would also be remiss in my duties if I did not mention the impressive sets.
 
By the end of the first half of the film, one character is thought dead, while another is heartbroken and hell-bent of revenge. Perhaps this is why what follows felt so jarring. We suddenly see that Huntingdon has taken on the name of Robin Hood and become known for his habit of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Now there are a number of ways one could convey the commitment Robin feels both to help the people survive and to get revenge on Prince John. Unfortunately, Fairbanks and Dwan opt to make Robin Hood a character that leaps practically every other moment, stops and laughs mid-escapade, and grins while engaging in pretty deadly swordplay. In other words, he’s now a comic character in a swashbuckling adventure, the kind whose duels inspire both wonder and fun and fill you with amazement at the skills involved in his physical deeds, such as climbing up a long castle drape and fighting off gangs of Prince John’s men the way martial arts heroes do their legions of enemies. It can be argued that, seeing as how this is a Robin Hood film, the shift was necessary. However, the change in tone is too jarring, and it hurts the rest of the film.
 
As the Earl of Huntingdon, Fairbanks is simple amazing; as Robin Hood, while he certainly gives it the old college try, he’s less so. Sure, he does some remarkable stunts and impresses with his physical prowess, yet all of this comes at the expense of the film’s emotional pull. It is hard to remain concerned about the lives of a population living under a brutal regime, while simultaneously being asked to marvel at a character’s acrobatic wonders. Again, this is fault of the script, not the performers. This is not to say that the second act does not contain a certain level of charm, but it makes the film escapist rather than dramatic, something easily forgotten, rather than pondered on and analyzed. In the end, Robin Hood is two films – one cinematic and the other pure Hollywood, and I simply preferred the former. (on DVD and Blu-ray from Cohen Film Collection)
 
3 stars
 
*Robin Hood is a silent film.
*Playing Little John is none other than Alan Hale, better known as the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island.

Review - White Tiger (1923)

December 27, 2020

White Tiger – US, 1923

Tod Browning’s White Tiger is a curious thing. It begins by setting up a tale of revenge, then switches to a crime drama, returns subtly to its original theme, and then ends with a strange message of redemption and love. More on that later. Interestingly, it employs as one of its narrative devices a chess-playing automaton, an obvious reference to the Turk, a bogus machine constructed in the late 18^th century and touted by a series of owners as a legitimate form of early AI. Believing they were playing a bona fide machine, the Turk attracted players such as Napoleon Bonaparte, who apparently made several attempts at cheating, and Benjamin Franklin. In White Tiger, we find it being used to lure customers to a famous wax museum. 

Its operator is a young man named Roy Donovan (Raymond Griffith). When we first meet him, he is a young boy playing with his sister, Sylvia (later played by Priscilla Dean), near his father, Mike Donovan (Alfred Allen), whose premonitions of danger have made him a nervous wreck. Also, in the room with them is Hawkes (Wallace Beery), Hawkes is impatient about something, so after Sylvia goes off to bed peacefully, he convinces Roy to follow suit in such a violent fashion that the boy turns back and, in a rather heavy-handed bit of foreshadowing, voices his hope that Hawkes is alive long enough for Roy to exact revenge.

What follows is a bit confusing, but the result is that the elder Donovan is shot, while Sylvia is shielded by Hawkes, who tells her that both her father and brother are dead and that her silence is essential if the two of them are to avoid joining them. The film then flashes forward twenty years, where we find Sylvia a seasoned thief, having been raised by Hawkes, and Roy a master chess player whose skills have somehow escaped the notice of the general public. There are several problems with this new reality. If Hawkes was responsible for Donovan’s death, why wouldn’t he know that Roy was still alive, and if he is as deceitful and loathsome as he is portrayed, why wouldn’t he have abandoned Sylvia at an orphanage and just went about his thieving ways? He’s hardly someone you’d picture doing those everyday activities that go along with raising a child. 

Sylvia and Roy have somehow developed a platonic relationship. (Roy puts us at ease by immediately announcing that she’s like a sister to him.) One day, he happens to see her talking to Hawkes and recognizes him. Normally standard film narratives would call for him to begin planning his revenge, but White Tiger surprises by having Hawkes recruit Roy. See, he sees the wealth to be gained by taking the automaton to America, and since Roy is already a con man, he readily agrees. Perhaps readily is the wrong word. First, he reveals his identity and tells Hawkes of his desire to avenge his father. Hawkes simply shrugs off the allegation, and the two strike up a bargain, a development that likely provoked a collective forehead slap by audience members in 1923.

From here the film becomes immensely interesting, as it begins to focus on the natural aftermath of three people working together without ever having formed a bond based on trust. After all, success and fortune can only pacify division and distrust for a little while, and it is when their uneasy pact collapses that White Tiger is at its finest. Alas, its final few minutes will have you shaking your head and wondering why so many films of this era insist on presenting the rosiest outcome possible, especially when they have put their characters in a situation ripe for tragedy. It is almost as if a studio head looked at the final product and demanded that a way be found for love and family to triumph without presenting the audience with any moral complications. And find one they did. Actually, they found two: Dick Longworth and a litter of cute kittens under a remote cabin – and yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. 

The film is well-directed. Browning gets excellent performances from Dean and Beery, whom he had worked with earlier that year in Drifting. Dean has that steely look that makes her the perfect choice to play femme fatales and criminals. Here, she is also asked to play tender, and her scenes with Griffith have a pleasant ease to them, the kind you’d normally expect to see in an adult pair of siblings. As Hawkes, Beery does what he has to. He is conniving, driven, and rather ruthless in his financial pursuits. It is not his fault that the script restricts his character, never allowing us to sense any regard for Sylvia or concern that Roy will put all of the pieces together. In a better script, the character would have been conflicted. As is, he’s the kind of character that is easily disposed of, one that not even the woman he raised for sixteen years sheds a tear over. It makes you wonder just what the film could have been with an extra thirty minutes and an ending that demonstrated a backbone. (included as a Special Feature on Kino’s DVD and Blu-ray of Drifitng)

3 stars 

*White Tiger is a silent movie.

Review - Drifting

December 20, 2020

Drifting – US, 1923

I believe there is a tendency to give films a pass if they happen to be made by or star someone whose work we generally admire. If the director – say Hitchcock or Chaplin - is the object of approbation, the work might be labeled “lesser” or undergo a “reevaluation” by a generation much more willing to declare any of that person’s creations a masterpiece. If it’s the actor or actress who is esteemed, potential viewers are usually urged to ignore any disappointment that the direction or script may inspire and focus on a performance, the impression being that it is worth any eye-rolling or long sighs that the film inspires as a whole. I mention this because the 1923 film Drifting is likely to be praised for the wrong reasons: It was directed by Tod Browning, whose later film Freaks is often referred to as a masterpiece, and it features a young woman who went on to achieve legendary status, Anna May Wong. So, yes, the film will have its defenders from the get-go.

And yet, let’s imagine a dinner party thrown by the film’s lead characters, Cassie Cook (Priscilla Dean) and Captain Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore), years after the events depicted in the film. Undoubtedly, one or more of the guests would be unfamiliar with the story of their pairing, and soon, attention would focus on the couple as they set the way-back machine to colonial China during the years opium had a grip on its population. I suspect the retelling would go something like this:

Cassie:           See, I was in Shanghai working… 

Guest:            (cutting her off excitedly) Oh, that’s marvelous! I have so wanted to go there. What did you do, if you don’t mind my asking?

Cassie:           Uh… (awkward pause) I was in sales. Anyway, I…

Guest:            You were a businesswoman? How intriguing! Whatever did you sell?

Cassie:           (clears her throat and lowers her voice considerably) Opium. (At regular volume) Anyway, after blowing all of my money at the tracks, I decided to go to Hang Chow.

Guest:           (still startled by the admission that Cassie used to be a drug dealer; looks at the Captain, who pours himself a drink and quickly gulps it down) Excuse me for interrupting, but how did you get there if you didn’t have any money?

Cassie:           (visibly flustered) Um… I’m not sure exactly. (Turning and breaking the fourth wall) That wasn’t really explained in the film, was it? (turns back to the guest) Anyway, after my arrival in Hang Chow, I was putting away my things when I heard this god-awful noise…pardon my French… outside my room. I opened the door, and there was…

Guest:           Pardon the interruption, but what made you go there? I mean, from what I hear, it is hardly a place for tourists.

Cassie:          (after another uncomfortable pause) Well, that was where my husband had been sent to try to crush the opium trade.

                        (Guest looks stunned and confused)

Cassie:           (with an understandably dry throat) See (clears her throat) I went there to put a stop to his foolish campaign. He was threatening my business and costing me money, after all. I was also asked to cozy up to him and eventually betray him. I even stole a report he wrote and made him think that a sweet young woman who ratted me out was lying.

(Guest, mouth agape, looks at the Captain, who is already on his fifth drink)

Cassie:           (trying to reassure her guest) Look, I know how it sounds, but we fell in love. Honestly, we did. (breaks the fourth wall again) I know we didn’t know each other all that long and that we never had a single scene together in which we talked to each other with our hearts. I know I put him in mortal danger and was mean to all the kids who looked up to him. I know it didn’t make sense that I was dining with my enemy or that he would also lose all the money he had in the world on the same horse. I know the final battle between the villagers, the mountain people, and the colonial army was incomprehensible and that my husband’s friend was way too old to be pursuing fifteen-year-old Rose Li, and I acknowledge that her fate fit a pattern of Asian characters conveniently stepping out of the picture so that the Caucasian leads live happily ever after. But darn it, the picture needed a happy ending and… (breaks down and sobs)

Jarvis:            (walks behind his wife and gently massages her shoulders; looks straight ahead) Don’t worry, dear. It was directed by Tod Browning and features Anna May Wong just before her star-making turn in The Thief of Bagdad.  Critics will surely give it a pass. (Drifting is on DVD and Blu-ray)

2 and a half stars (and yes, I’m being a bit generous with the extra half star, but what can I say – I like Anna May Wong)

Review - The Lost World (1925)

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

Review - Beggars of Life

May 4, 2018

Beggars of Life – US, 1928

To say that Wallace Beery commanded the screen would be an understatement. His face gave the impression of having been in the game for ages, and this added a layer of credibility to his performances. He was such a physical force that it was believable that his character could intimidate even the most menacing of rivals, and he had a swagger about him that made moments in which he stares down someone pointing a gun at him much more authentic than they might otherwise have been. In other words, he was a cinematic force to be reckoned with, and his name in the marquee ensured that the film had at least one thing going for it. It seems logical therefore that he acted steadily from 1913 to 1949, the year of his death.

Having said all that, I must admit to having misgivings about his role in William A. Wellman’s 1928 film Beggars of Life. Like Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho, Beery’s character, Oklahoma Red, does not begin the film as its central character. Instead, the first half of the film focuses on two young people whom life has not been kind to. First, there’s Joe (Richard Arlene), a poor, down-on-his-luck wanderer trying to make his way to Canada. When we first see him, he is walking along a dusty road, desperate for food. He stops at a house that has the front door open, peers inside, and sees a man in a chair next to what to him must look like the most delicious meal in the entire world. He enters the house and offers to work for any food that the man can spare, only then realizing that the man is dead, the victim of a gun shot to the head. It is at this point that we meet the film’s other central character, referred to in the credits as simply the Girl (Louise Brooks). We learn that the deceased man had adopted her and that it is she who shot the bullet than ended his life. We also learn the reason: In her words, the man couldn’t take his hands off of her, and just before Joe’s arrival, he had gone even further in what was clearly an attempted rape. Soon the two of them are racing to the nearest train stop so as to get as far away from the law as possible.

I found this part of the film incredibly involving. Here we have two characters thrown together by fate. One has no option, but to run; the other can clearly sympathize, though we’re never told exactly why. The film is also brutally honest about the risks involved in a woman being a hobo and hopping trains. It is for this reason that she doesn’t trust Joe to be different than any of the other lecherous individuals we meet throughout the picture. In a scene in which the two of them seek refuge from the cold night air in the middle of a haystack, we see the Girl clutch her jacket defensively just below the neck. Later, Joe suggests that she pretend to be his younger brother, and this makes complete sense. In a particularly powerful scene later in the film, we see just how much the sight of a woman can bring out the worst in desperate people.

And then Oklahoma Red makes his entrance and changes the narrative. Now it is he that drives the story. It is here also that the film slightly loses focus, for having built Joe and the Girl up as survivors trying their hardest to make their way to the promised land, it suddenly makes Oklahoma the central character; Joe and the Girl begin to react instead of taking the initiative, and at several points when it would seem logical to flee, they stand around as if paralyzed with indecision. This leaves Joe to be whatever the film needs him to be, be that a protector or a bully.

Oklahoma’s presence also allows the film to veer into unfortunate comedy, and a mid-film scene in which he assumes the role of a judge and gives his henchmen the role of lawyers is a mistake. When faced with the possibility of physical harm and sexual assault, it’s awfully hard to laugh at a character’s zany antics, even if that character has the charisma of this one. Another result of Oklahoma’s larger-than-life presence is that the film does not have enough time to credibly establish Joe and the Girl’s blossoming feelings. As a result, the revelation of their feelings comes across as cheap and unearned, instead of sweet and moving,.

And yet, I rather liked Oklahoma’s character and all of his twists and turns. In another movie, one which followed him from the first scene to the last, they would have complemented each other and given audiences the impression of a truly complex character, one whose views of the world we would witness changing right before our very eyes. Given that extra time, his final actions would make absolute sense. Instead, they feel convenient, the result of a writer sticking too closely to established narrative structures which dictates that characters like Oklahoma can never be entirely bad. The film even has the heroine observe that much. I simply wasn’t convinced.

And this is a shame, for the first half of the film has so much going for it. Wellman, whose films often championed regular, everyday characters, brings to life a world in transition, one in which, like today, there is a clear separation between the have’s and the have-not’s, and one in which the weakest of society get very little empathy and are lent few helping hands. I liked this half a great deal; the rest I appreciated, yet couldn’t shake the feeling that it belonged in another film. In the end, Beggars of Life is hit-and-miss, but what hits is astonishing and what misses still has such style and flair that I feel utterly petty complaining about it. Credit that to Wallace Beery. (on DVD and Blu-ray)

3 stars