Long thought lost like so much of the silent era, a copy of the 1924 thriller-melodrama The Signal Tower was eventually discovered in 16mm. Directed by Clarence Brown before he became famous for his handling of several women’s melodramas in the 1930s, The Signal Tower is a simple, brisk, and effective piece of work. You can watch it in rather muddy quality on YouTube, but since it’s made the rounds at a few film festivals, I’m hoping it will be available in a nicer home media edition soon enough.
The plot is quintessential home invasion material. In need of some extra income, railroad worker Dave (Rockliffe Fellows) gives new co-worker Joe (Wallace Beery) a room in his own home. Dave’s wife Sally (Virginia Valli, whose greatest claim to fame now is playing the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature, The Pleasure Garden) isn’t too happy about Joe’s presence. He’s a shameless playboy for one thing, flirting with Sally’s visiting cousin and hitting on Sally herself repeatedly. Dave ignores Sally’s misgivings about Joe. However, one night, when a possible collision on the railway requires Dave to do his duty, Joe sets his sinister intentions on Sally, forcing her into fight or flight mode. The couple’s young son (Frankie Darro) escapes to inform his father of the attack, forcing Dave into a classic trolley problem scenario.
The threat to home and hearth links The Signal Tower with earlier suspense dramas like Griffith’s The Lonely Villa and Weber’s Suspense, but being a feature film, the characters are fleshed out a bit more. There is some tension between husband and wife– she voices her suspicions about the new lodger, while her husband laughs them off. As critic Paul Cuff points out in his review, “The film is about a man whose duty it is to see danger, but who spends the first half of the film ignoring the warning signals from his own family.” Similarly, Joe is under the impression that he is catnip to women and often interprets any “no” as a case of playing hard to get. His sense of entitlement escalates from being merely annoying to outright disturbing.
The film is ultimately a handsomely mounted slow-burn thriller that kicks into high gear within the last third. Even in the crummy YouTube version, The Signal Tower‘s breathtaking location footage shines through. The editing of the climax where Joe makes his final assault on Sally and Dave’s home is nail-biting stuff, the physical threat Joe represents absolutely palpable. While it doesn’t hit the highs of Brown’s more famous silent work like The Eagle or Flesh and the Devil, The Signal Tower is still a marvelous work and worth checking out for silent film fans.
In the grand context of silent era Hollywood, Marion Mack’s film career was a minor one. Her onscreen credits are few and her writing credits number about the same. As it sometimes happens, she found a kind of screen immortality because of a single movie role: that of Annabelle Lee in Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General.
When people discuss why The General is considered one of the greatest comedies of all time, Marion Mack doesn’t often come up. We discuss the film’s thrilling stunts, narrative symmetry, Matthew Brady-inspired visuals, attention to historical detail, and exhilarating blend of action and comedy. Mack’s performance can get lost in the critical shuffle. This is a shame because she is one of Keaton’s most distinctive leading ladies.
My appreciation for Mack was shared by Raymond Rohauer, the film distributor who helped reissue Keaton’s work in the midcentury. In his foreward to Richard Anobile’s Film Library book on The General, Rohauer described Mack’s performance as more active than the usual Keaton heroine: “Since she does not just passively wait but helps to effect much of her own rescue alongside him, there is more interaction between them than between the protagonists of any other Keaton film… Thus, Marion came closest to making a flesh-and-blood girl out of a Keaton leading-lady role, and the only one whom we might believe capable, at the end of the film, of actually bringing him down to earth.”
Now, I think Rohauer’s statement Keaton’s other great leading ladies like Kathryn McGuire, Dorothy Sebastian, and Sybil Seely. While some of Keaton’s heroines are merely decorative “breathing props” for the hero to win by the final reel, others serve as comic partners who take an active role in the narrative and the gags. Mack is among that latter category.
But who was Marion Mack?
A glamor shot of Mack in a 1922 issue of Screenland. During this period, she was performing under the name “Elinor Lynn.” Image source: Wikipedia
Marion Mack was born Joey Marion McCreery in 1902. Her childhood in Utah was marked by her parents’ divorce when she was still a toddler. Like many teenagers in the 1910s, McCreery was mad about the movies. Perhaps hoping to emulate her comedienne idol Mabel Normand, McCreery wrote a letter to the Mack Sennett studio, asking for work and including a few photos of her in a bathing suit in the envelope. The studio wrote back that she could secure an interview if she managed to make it out to Hollywood. Though her father was wary of his daughter taking on movie work, McCreery’s stepmother agreed to act as chaperone.
In true “only in the silent era” fashion, McCreery’s interview secured two offers: one from Sennett and the other from producer Thomas Ince. She had already accepted Sennett’s offer before Ince’s and was soon working for $25 a week. Shortly thereafter, McCreery met Louis Lewyn, a movie producer. The two hit it off quickly and would quietly marry in 1920. Unlike most Hollywood unions, the Lewyns’ would last for a lifetime.
Around this time, McCreery’s career shifted from Sennett comedies to two-reel westerns at Universal. McCreery would change her stage name twice in the next few years. First she rechristened herself “Elinor Lynn” (perhaps meant to evoke the famous scribe of steamy romance novels Elinor Glyn), then changed it to the punchier Marion Mack.
Lobby card for Mary of the Movies. Image source: Wikipedia
Mack’s most significant pre-General release was Mary of the Movies, a comedy about a country ingenue who journeys to Hollywood in search of a lucrative career. She struggles to find acting work, settles for a waitress job, then gets her big break when a star falls ill and a last-minute replacement is needed. Mack did more than play the titular lead—she also co-wrote the script with her husband, basing much of it on her own experiences as a young movie actress.
While the contemporary reviews I’ve come across are lukewarm, Mary of the Movies was still a hit. The big draw appears to have been the numerous star cameos sprinkled throughout. Zasu Pitts, Louise Fazenda, Wanda Hawley, Bessie Love, Carmel Myers, and Barbara LaMarr are a few of the notables who made appearances. Mary of the Movies exists in only partial condition today and I could not find a second of it available for viewing. Mack must have been proud of her work in it though because when she was brought to Buster Keaton’s attention for the leading lady part in The General, she had it screened for him.
As fans of The General know, what initially brought Mack to his attention was not her acting but her hair. Keaton wanted his Civil War epic to be “so authentic it hurt” and this included hair length. Keaton grew out his own hair to better embody a mid-Victorian man and he sought a leading lady who hadn’t yet bobbed her hair as any fashionable Jazz Age woman was likely to do. Percy Westmore, Mack’s make-up man from a drama titled Carnival Girl, told Keaton’s sister-in-law Norma Talmadge that Mack had kept her locks long and curly. However, by the time Talmadge related this to Keaton and he had the chance to reach out to Mack, she had sheared her hair. Ultimately, Mack managed to secure the role in spite of the bad timing, apparently impressing Keaton during a meeting following his screening of Mary of the Movies.
When she arrived in Cottage Grove, Oregon for filming, Mack’s initial impression of Keaton was that he seemed aloof. However, she soon realized this had more to do with shyness than anything else and Keaton opened up the more Mack got to know him. This opening up involved plenty of pranks both on and off the set.
Among the first of these pranks involved Mack getting hung upside down by some of the crew at Keaton’s insistence. Once she got back down, Mack punched Keaton in the face, giving him a black eye that postponed shooting for a week. (To be honest, I would probably react the same way to suddenly being hung upside down.) “This was before I understood that he meant no harm,” she later said, as she came to learn Keaton regularly played practical jokes on co-workers and friends.
If anything, Keaton appeared to have a great deal of confidence in Mack’s comic abilities and physical resilience. While she was initially told she would be doubled for more strenuous sequences, Mack ended up doing many of them herself, such as a scene in which Annabelle, hidden in a burlap sack, is accidentally stepped on by Johnnie. Mack said in an interview with Raymond Rohauer (also printed in Richard Anobile’s study of The General), “I didn’t get mad at [Keaton] that time, I must say he knew just how to do it so it wouldn’t hurt me. I guess it was his vaudeville training.”
One of Keaton’s most elaborate pranks stayed in the finished film. It occurred during the scene where Johnnie and Annabelle stop to take on water as they rush back to the southern lines. The two accidentally dislodge the spout from the water tower, resulting in Annabelle’s being soaked through when Johnnie pulls the wire connected to the structure. Mack was under the impression that she would only be present for part of the scene and ultimately doubled for that moment, so her alarmed onscreen reaction was genuine. Said Mack, “It really knocked me down. It’s a good thing we didn’t have sound movies at the time!”
Overall, Mack’s memories of the shoot were positive. Keaton turned out to be a great director to work with and Mack even contributed to the creation of some of the film’s gags. However, The General would be the high point of Mack’s onscreen career. By the late 1920s, she swapped focus from acting to writing due to her husband’s concerns about their being apart so long while she filmed on location. Since Mack preferred writing to acting anyway, it was not a large sacrifice.
Her personal life was eventful in the meantime. During the 1930s, she would help out personal friend and former screen star Clara Bow, who found a temporary home with Mack and Llewyn when she needed to sell her Beverly Hills home. The two women remained lifelong friends until Bow’s death in 1965. By the 1940s, Llewyn’s health declined, prompting Mack to leave the film business altogether. Mack pivoted her career to real estate, which sustained the couple until Lewyn’s death in 1969.
Mack’s retirement years coincided with The General‘s gradual rediscovery by movie fans and critics. As a result, she was in demand for appearances at screenings. Mack was surprised but delighted by her resurgence of celebrity and happily discussed her memories of the film at screenings all over the world. She lived to be 87 years old, finally passing away in 1989.
Mack as Annabelle Lee
Mack’s performance in The General reflects the film’s preference for reserve over easy sentimentality. There is no mugging, no overemphasis on emotional reactions like one would expect from a silent comedy. Critic Tim Brayton’s words on Keaton’s performance– “a lot of situational humor [is] made all the better by [Keaton’s] incomparable discipline, refusing to mug for added yuks when simply inhabiting the role and playing it honestly and as straight is both funnier and more human”– can also be applied to Mack’s work in the film.
After being introduced in a daugerrotype Johnnie keeps framed in his engine interior, Annabelle enters the scene in a charming way, trailing an oblivious Johnnie as he marches to her home to court her. Johnnie is already followed by two young admirers who are directly behind him. Annabelle gets to the back of the line. The parade of characters evokes a train on a track, prefiguring the chases to come. The moment also pulls double-duty in establishing characterization: it shows how Johnnie has almost literal tunnel vision (a characteristic which contributes to much of the trouble Johnnie often finds himself in) and that Annabelle has a playful, mischievous side that complements Johnnie’s stoic earnestness. Of course, this mischievousness just as easily curdles into cattiness when Annabelle believes Johnnie is a coward. She side-eyes him in public then gushes over her brother’s medals, all to spite him.
While rewatching The General recently, I could not help but compare Mack to Kathryn McGuire, who also played some of Keaton’s more active heroines in Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator. Both get to be comic partners to Keaton, but their demeanors are different. McGuire eludes cool aristocratic reserve while Mack seems more vulnerable, particularly when she is a prisoner of the Union raiders. While there is never the sense that her Union captors intend her any harm, Mack makes Annabelle’s distress and uncertainty palpable without going over the top.
Another element which distinguishes Mack’s Annabelle from other Keaton heroines is how much rough-housing she endures. Though introduced to the audience as the stereotypical southern belle who must be protected by her menfolk, Annabelle gets caught in a bear trap, stuffed into a sack, tossed onto a train, stepped on, and drenched with water. In the BFI Film Classics analysis of The General, critic Peter Kramer sees an element of vengeance in the way Annabelle is treated in the latter part of the film. (He also reads sexual meaning into Annabelle getting doused with water which is… a take.)
I don’t think it’s quite that mean-spirited. Keaton liked subverting typical movie conventions, one of them being the ever-pristine appearance of Hollywood leading ladies, no matter the scenario. As Keaton said in a 1965 interview at the Venice Film Festival, “Oh God, [Mack] had more fun with that picture than any film she’d made in her life! I guess it’s because so many leading ladies in those days looked as though they had just walked out of a beauty parlor. They always kept them looking that way – even in covered wagons, they kept their leading ladies looking beautiful at all times. We said thunder with that, we’ll dirty ours up a bit and let them have some rough treatment.”
A punitive reading of Annabelle’s ordeals also ignores how game she proves to be once the race back to the southern lines kicks into high gear. She confidently climbs onto the engine, ignoring Johnnie’s offer of giving her a boost, and comes up with some traps for their Union pursuers on her own—goofy plans admittedly, but they end up working!
The dynamic between Annabelle and Johnnie is at its most amusing in the second half. In the early scenes, Johnnie is worshipful and Annabelle glows from the attention. But once the two are in harm’s way, they interact with mingled stress and affection throughout the pursuit. Both are bumbling figures, with Johnnie trying to appear heroic while he’s barely a step ahead of the obstacles in their path and Annabelle often more concerned with aesthetics than practicality. They take turns showing who might be the most dopey between the two. Annabelle throws out potential firewood for the engine when it has a knothole. Johnnie– still disguised as a Union soldier– doesn’t get why the Confederates are firing at him when they cross back into southern territory.
Some of Annabelle’s more harebrained moments elicit hilarious frustrated reactions from Johnnie, like when she tosses him a pathetic bit of wood to help build a fire and Johnnie angrily throws it back at her, or when he sarcastically offers her a twig to use as kindling in the wood-burning engine and Annabelle happily throws it onto the flames. Johnnie proceeds to playfully throttle then kiss her. The latter of these scenes was largely improvised between Mack and Keaton, and it remains a high point in a movie filled to the brim with memorable moments.
It’s easy to boil a classic’s success down to one or two broad factors, but when you take a close look at any work which has stood the test of time, there are a million smaller components that contribute to the heavy lifting. Mack’s performance is one such factor in the success of The General. While she never became a major star, her performance here is the right blend of funny, dramatic, and charming. If anything, it’s a shame she never went on to further screen work as a comedienne. At the very least, she made her mark in one of the great film comedies of all time and we can still enjoy her work today.
Sources:
Ankerich, M. G. (1993). Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 silent film stars. McFarland & Co.
The Fan is rarely anyone’s favorite Otto Preminger film, but it happens to be mine. I admit it is neither the best nor most groundbreaking movie he ever made, yet it is the one I am always the most eager to revisit. There’s something comfortable about it for me.
Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play Lady Windemere’s Fan, it focuses on a series of misunderstandings and near-scandal in the world of late Victorian England. Mysterious adventuress Mrs. Erlynne (Madeleine Carroll) makes a splashy entrance into high society. Strapped for cash, she convinces young newlywed Lord Windemere (Richard Greene) to supply her with the needed funds to pay for her lavish lifestyle and entice potential suitors. However, Windemere’s generosity becomes fodder for gossip and the salacious rumors soon reach the ears of his principled (some might say uptight) wife, Lady Windemere (Jeanne Crain).
Believing her husband is having an affair, Lady Windemere is tempted by society bad boy Lord Darlington (George Saunders) who has long harbored a grand passion for the pure young woman and seeks to convince her to run away with him. However, Mrs. Erlynne is not what she seems. Ultimately, it is up to the so-called bad woman to prevent personal tragedy and social suicide for all involved.
I first heard of The Fan when I came across critic Imogen Smith’s IMDB review from 2008. She gushed about the movie, describing it as a mature but sparkling melodrama/comedy-of-manners hybrid that deserved more attention. This take was quite the opposite reaction to most other reviews of The Fan— from the 1940s onward– which struck a universal chord of underwhelmed and annoyed. Wilde fans think the film gutted the wit and humor, everything they admire about Wilde as an artist. Even Walter Reisch, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ross Evans and none other than literary giant Dorothy Parker, felt the final product was an uninspired drag.
Au contraire, The Fan always struck me as a poignant, charming piece of work, beautifully shot and packed with good to great performances, especially those of Madeleine Carroll and George Saunders, who breathe humanity into their roguish characters. Wilde’s original text walked the fine line between melodrama and comedy, and the film version excels at this balancing act as well, all without falling victim to tonal whiplash. Maybe that is because there is a persistent strain of melancholy throughout the movie that keeps it feeling consistent, no matter the content of the scene.
It probably helps my appreciation for the film that I do not view Lady Windemere’s Fan as sacred scripture. I admit I might be bothered more by the film’s excision of much of Wilde’s dialogue if I were a Wilde devotee. I’m a fan of Wuthering Heights, so trust me, I understand that loving something makes you a bit more particular when it comes to adaptations that play fast and loose with a cherished text. However, as with the better film versions of Wuthering Heights, I can at least appreciate when an adaptation is good on its own merits despite unfaithfulness to its source. That is certainly the case with The Fan.
The largest (and arguably most controversial) change to the original play is one of my favorite things about The Fan. The screenplay writers added a framing story set in the post-WWII present where an octogenarian Mrs. Erlynne is trying to reacquire Lady Windemere’s old fan from an auction of unclaimed property. To prove she is the true owner of the coveted item, she has twenty-four hours to find someone else who can vouch for her. She tracks down Lord Darlington, whom the years have transformed from a dangerous drawing room rouge to a crotchety “museum piece” young women find amusing rather than alluring. The Windemeres are nowhere to be seen. We quickly learn from Mrs. Erlynne that they were killed during wartime bombings, so the fan is all she has left to remember them by.
The framing device lends an air of wistful nostalgia to the main 1890s plot. As Smith notes in her review, “The frame gives the costume-drama portion a wistful edge; instead of the usual Hollywood gloss, here the past gleams through nostalgia like a flower buried in a paperweight.” The gulf between the elegant but repressed world of the Victorian past and the industrialized but relatively less tightlaced world of the mid-twentieth century is compelling. What results is a multifaceted film that strikes me as far more interesting than a straightforward, faithful rendering of Wilde’s original play would have been. It’s a real gem and I hope more people give it a fair shot.
The real Mata Hari during a performance in 1905. Image source: Wikipedia
NOTE: This post is packed with spoilers for the 1931 films Mata Hari and Dishonored. If you want to see either of those films without spoilers of any kind, don’t read until you do.
For a relatively minor figure in the grand context of the Great War, Mata Hari looms large in the collective memory. In legend, she is a seductress and spy garbed in exotic costume, luring men to their doom with her charms. In reality, her offstage name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, she was a popular foreign entertainer living it large in France, likely not a spy at all, and made an ideal scapegoat during the cruel realities of wartime. Convicted as a spy for the Germans, she was killed by a French firing squad at age 41. However, as it was said in John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend!” Hollywood has long opted for the legend of Mata Hari.
There have been Mata Hari-inspired films before and after 1931, but I find it interesting that two takes on the Mata Hari legend released that year, each starring one of the great female stars of the age. Marlene Dietrich appeared as an Austrian Mata Hari-inspired spy in Josef Von Sternberg’s Dishonored and Greta Garbo played the woman herself in MGM’s Mata Hari. Two films based on the (legend of the) same woman and yet they make a great case study for how two different teams of artists can approach the same basic plot in wildly contrasting ways.
Garbo’s Mata Hari is seemingly a woman from nowhere, with curious spectators guessing at what they assume are her exotic origins. Dietrich’s Marie is a war widow turned sex worker persuaded into patriotic service for Austria during the war. Mata Hari seems to be in it for kicks, while Marie possesses some genuine patriotism. Each woman approaches her work the way an actor might prepare for a part, complete with the proper wardrobe.
Mata Hari dresses herself in outrageous costumes. Bejewelled skullcaps, off the shoulder tops, large chandelier earrings– all of these would have screamed “exotic” to an American Depression-era audience. She makes herself an object of fascination and desire to lure powerful men– and their state secrets– to her bed. She’s pretty flashy for a spy, but then again, her pursuers are most frustrated by a lack of concrete proof of her espionage. She operates in plain sight and delights in how little they can do about it.
Dietrich’s Marie is more of a chameleon, dressing as the scenario requires. For such a minor film in the Dietrich canon, the role of Marie allows her to essay multiple parts within the part, the most famous of them being a mousy hotel maid. In that sequence, Marie pretends she is being seduced by a worldly Russian officer all the while she is seducing him with her exaggerated innocence. Marie is a role that runs the gamut from seductive to tragic to hilarious, and I don’t think Dietrich gets enough credit for just how good she is in all those registers.
Both performances take on a playful quality. Mata Hari and Marie are having a good time outsmarting the men they deceive. Mata Hari gets a kick out of the sexual games, while Marie comes off as more mischievous, with a kinky, absurd quality to her antics. The pleasure taken in spy games slightly disturbs the government superiors of both characters. After all, sex in service of one’s country is supposed to be a duty, not a pleasure.
For all the flag-waving, both films have an ambivalent attitude towards the relationship between the individual and the state. Patriotism is touted as a virtue in theory, yet Dishonored and Mata Hari elevate human connections above fealty to any government– specifically in the form of romance. Well, “romance” may be a hard word to use in relation to whatever is going on between Dietrich and her leading man in Dishonored, but still. The conventions are there.
The romantic plot in Mata Hari is more straightforward. Mata Hari is a worldly spy who leads men to their doom and Ramon Novarro’s Alexis Rosanoff is an innocent, puppy dog cute Russian pilot who adores her with a quasi-spiritual fervor. He goes as far as to extinguish a devotional candle before an icon of the Virgin Mary when Mata Hari demands it as a condition for their lovemaking. After all, he says he loves her above everything. How could religion ever compete?
Of course, this is in part a game for Mata Hari. After their night of passion, she relights the candle with a wry smile, almost silently telling the Holy Mother her blasphemous prerequisite was all in good humor. However, Rosanoff’s guileless adoration changes her. By the end of the film, she takes on Madonna-like qualities herself, not so much embracing as cradling her young lover when he returns injured from a mission. Protective love for Rosanoff transforms her from a seduction machine for the state to an earthly, erotic Madonna. Sex becomes sacred, romantic love redeems.
By contrast, the romance in Dishonored is bizarre and often a turn-off for viewers. The pre-code era had plenty of charismatic leading men, but Victor McLagen as the dangerous Russian spy Kranau is certainly… a choice. The one feature that eclipses any other on his face is his teeth, always bared in a sneer. When he and Marie meet, it’s mutual lust and distrust at first sight. Don’t expect the same tender declarations that characterize Garbo and Novarro’s lovemaking in the MGM film. Hell, don’t even expect the animal magnetism between Dietrich and Gary Cooper in Von Sternberg’s Morocco.
Other than sex and work, what do these two see in each other? Isn’t that the question. Viewers none too fond of Dishonored don’t get it and wish Gary Cooper had been the leading man as originally considered. It’s easy to imagine a woman dying for Gary Cooper. But McLagen?
He first shows up in THIS clown outfit too. Irresistible.
Marie and Kranau seem reluctantly drawn to each other, even resentfully so. The love scenes involve cat and mouse posturing and stiff, almost rote repetition of the kind of lovemaking you expect in a pre-code film. The first time I saw Dishonored, this came off as awkward. On rewatch, it seemed more deliberately ironic, a case of the characters indulging in roleplay– or at least trying to stay in the realm of roleplay before their finer feelings intrude.
I find Dishonored‘s central “romance” easier to swallow when I view it as a case of two professionals awakening to the horrible dehumanization required by their jobs rather than two people falling in love and hoping to marry. Marie and Kranau begin to see each other as human beings, not cogs in the war machine. This is what proves Marie’s downfall. She helps the captured Kranau evade execution by “accidentally” dropping her weapon, a compassionate act that lands her a treason conviction and a spot in front of the firing squad.
Marie and Mata Hari become martyrs for love, though the way that martyrdom is depicted differs. Garbo’s costuming before her death evokes an androgynous ascetic in their cell. Her hair is slicked back and her body is cloaked in a black cape that desexualizes her. The nuns tending to her in prison weep over her fate, finding sympathy in the tragic fate of this femme fatale. Once again, she plays the Madonna to her lover, consoling him with lies of an impending operation, not execution. As she walks off to her destiny, Rosanoff prays that if his love dies on the operating table, he wants to be taken too. It is both a melodramatic declaration of devotion and an implication that these star cross’d lovers may indeed be united in death, transcending the war machine that brought them together and tore them apart.
Garbo’s costuming evokes the sacred, but Dietrich’s evokes the profane, even the contemptuous. Dietrich’s character opts to die in the flashy clothes she wore when she was a streetwalker. Kranau is not present before her death as Rosanoff is for Mata Hari. While Marie is technically dying on account of sparing Kranau, it doesn’t feel as though she is dying exclusively for love OF him. There is a greater sense of weariness and disillusionment as Marie sits before her judges and marches before the firing squad, as though she wants out of the whole rotten game. Perhaps execution is preferable to suicide, the fate of one of her fellow sex workers at the story’s opening.
It’s a bit shocking how subversive Marie’s execution is. As she crosses herself then strikes a pose before the firing squad, one of the men refuses to give the order to fire upon a woman. This young soldier is a character who appeared earlier in the film, showing Marie around military headquarters and trying not to succumb to her charms. However, being asked to kill her is too much. Weeping hysterically, he reproaches the entire war machine which turns human beings into mere pawns. And yet, Marie is not moved by the chivalrous, idealistic speech. Instead, she uses the brief reprieve to reapply her lipstick, knowing the protestations will fall on deaf ears.
I think the final gestures of the two women speak volumes about the worldviews these movies. Garbo gazes upward and blows a tearful kiss to heaven. Dietrich adjusts her hose and makes sure her make-up is just right.
There is no substitute for seeing a movie for the first time all over again, but watching a film you’ve only seen at home in a theater is as close as any.
I have watched Stanley Kubrick’s great noir The Killing multiple times on Bluray. It is a sharp, punchy heist film executed with gorgeous monochrome visuals and Kubrick’s usual dark humor. While Kubrick had made several short films and two features before The Killing, it’s not hard to categorize his third feature effort as his first truly great film or at the very least, the first one to show his full promise as a filmmaker. I got to see The Killing in a theater last week. The combination of the large screen and engaged crowd brought out The Killing’s many strengths anew for me.
The story revolves around a group of criminals out to rob two million dollars from a race track. The ringleader is recently released convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), hoping this big score will allow him to live a comfortable life with his girlfriend Fay (Coleen Gray). The rest of the team is comprised of the race track’s mousy cashier George Peatty (Elisa Cook Jr.), the race track’s bar tender Mike O’Reilly (Joe Sawyer), crooked cop Randy Kennan (Ted de Corsia), Johnny’s partner-in-crime Marvin Unger (Jay C. Flippen), philosophically-minded wrestler Maurice Oboukhoff (Kola Kwariani), and eccentric sharpshooter Nikki Arcane (Timothy Carey). Each has their role to play. So long as the roles are played well and on time, nothing can go wrong.
As one expects in crime films of this type, everything goes wrong, but I won’t spoil how. The fun comes in watching it all play out. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, which increases the suspense and sense of doom over the proceedings. While this is ultimately a pulpy piece of entertainment, The Killing is suffused with a quiet sense of dread and fatalism. Things get ugly as the scheme hums along and when wrenches are thrown into the different phases of the plan, the criminals’ attempts to quickly improvise only cement their fates.
The cast assembled here is nothing short of fantastic. However, it’s Marie Windsor who steals the show as George’s duplicitous wife Sherry, the femme fatale with “a great big dollar sign… where most women have a heart.” She had the audience in the palm of her hand at my screening. What amuses me most about Windsor’s Sherry is how unlike the great femme fatales, she is so bad at lying. With the exception of her husband, she is too gleefully smug to be able to trick anyone. She’s scheming, vain, and ruthless, but oh so fun to watch.
The Killing is rarely listed near the top of any “best Kubrick movies” list, but it has been a firm fixture in my personal top five of the director’s films. Seeing it in a theater only solidified my adoration. I’m not alone in my love for The Killing. Quentin Tarantino claims The Killing as his personal favorite of Kubrick’s work. It’s not hard to spot the film’s influence on the nonlinear criminal plots in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
I don’t rewatch the Val Lewton horror canon as often as I should. Cat People I have seen plenty of times, but everything else tends to fall by the wayside, which is a shame. The world of Lewton is a beguiling, melancholy one. The horrors within these low-budget treasures are almost cosmic. This isn’t the camp goth of the Universal Horror movies, the Victorian sensationalism of Hammer, or the sleazy blood and guts-ridden universe of slasher films. Lewton’s movies are like winter rain, clinging to your soul long after the final fadeout, the chill not fading so easily.
I had intended to rewatch all the Lewton films last October, but time did not permit. However, I was able to shove a few into my schedule. One revisit particularly intrigued me because it changed my mind on a film I didn’t care much for when I first saw it long ago. That film is I Walked with a Zombie, a transcendent and atmospheric bit of brilliance saddled with a stupid title. Zombie was conceived as a retelling of Charlotte Bronte’s Victorian classic Jane Eyre, a coming of age novel with gothic touches and romance. Lewton’s movie is not a play by play repeat of the original story, but a riff on its character types and themes.
Canadian nurse Betsy (Frances Dee) is hired by the brooding plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to care for his invalid wife at their Caribbean estate. Betsy is at first awed by the tropical beauty of the island, but matters take a disturbing turn by degrees. The Afro-Caribbean inhabitants of the island are descended from the slaves brought there long ago, and the trauma of such bondage still haunts the population. Paul Holland is handsome but dour. His half-sibling Wesley Rand (James Ellison) is friendly and flirty with Betsy but resentful of his brother. And then Betsy’s patient Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon) is not merely sick, but basically catatonic and without willpower, though she can walk if commanded.
The Holland family is a gothic buffet of drama. Jessica became as she is due to a fever, but before that, she was a passionate woman who cuckolded her husband with Wesley. Now Betsy is caught in a love triangle between the two brothers, though she favors Paul. Realizing Jessica’s presence means she can never have Paul as a husband, Betsy decides to do her best to cure her to make Paul happy. When modern medical science doesn’t do the trick, she resorts to the Voodoo practices of the islanders after a recommendation from Alma (Theresa Harris), one of the Holland family servants. But will this actually work?
WARNING: I will be free with spoilers. If you have not seen this film but want to, please watch it first then come back to this piece.
When I first saw I Walked with a Zombie, I was disappointed that the main character seems to lose relevance as the runtime ticks down. At first, it seems the main thrust of the plot is the Betsy/Paul romance and Betsy’s desire to see her patient restored. Betsy is an active narrative force until she tries taking Jessica to a Voodoo ritual, only for her plan to seemingly end in failure. She learns Paul and Rand’s mother Mrs. Holland (Edith Barrett), a skeptical doctor’s assistant, seems to be running the Voodoo show like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. She pretends to be possessed by spirits so the islanders will take her medical advice, making it initially appear as though the magic and rituals were a sham. But from here on, things actually become less clear and explainable– and far more disquieting.
The greatest Lewton movies lean into mystery. The worst horror of all is not in bloodshed, but in the unknown. Modern people think they are masters of nature and all understanding, but we are often controlled by forces we do not comprehend. Mrs. Holland belittles her Black patients for not being Christian or “civilized” enough, mocking their religion as nonsense. And yet, we learn Mrs. Holland participated in the Voodoo rituals and was so emotionally involved in them that she put a curse on Jessica to turn her trouble-making daughter-in-law into a zombie. She immediately felt remorse after, but the next time she laid eyes on Jessica, the woman was suffering with the fever that claimed her agency.
In addition to Jessica’s zombified state, the history of the movie’s setting also ties into ideas about free will. San Sebastian was a slave colony. The Black population there still feels the pain of that history, even as their strong community and commitment to Voodoo offers some healing. The original figurehead from the slave ship (an image of St. Sebastian writhing in torment) that brought the first Black inhabitants to the island is preserved as a memorial to the pain and humiliation of slavery. Nicknamed “Ti-Misery,” it is the film’s most potent symbol of generational trauma, even if the island’s White population tries to forget it ever happened or was as bad as described. Early in the movie, when a Black coachman taking Betsy to the Holland home shares the sad past of San Sebastian, Betsy tries putting a sugared spin on the story, saying, “[The slavers] brought you to a beautiful place, didn’t they?” The coachman warily replies, “If you say so, miss.”
Zombie boasts a shockingly anti-colonial perspective for a Hollywood product of the 1940s. In this light, the continued practice of Voodoo on the island takes on a note of cultural defiance in the face of the colonizers and their desire to make the population conform to the beliefs and customs of the likes of the Holland family– who are hardly exemplars of Christian virtue themselves, with their proclivities for adultery, drinking, and vengeance.
Ultimately, the Holland family’s sins come home to roost. Jessica’s zombified state is initially given rational explanations, but it could also be seen as an ironic punishment, not only for Jessica’s adultery but for the island’s history of Black enslavement. However, exclusive scientific assessment goes out the window when one of the Voodoo practitioners sticks a sword in Jessica’s arm and she does not bleed.
As the film goes on, it appears that the Voodoo practitioners are drawing Jessica to her death with their rituals, but she is murdered by Wesley. Still in love with Jessica, Wesley sees his act as a mercy killing. But was this a free act or something beyond Wesley’s control? (Crimes in the Lewton canon are commonly ones of passion, with the killers claiming there is a power beyond themselves that made them act as they did. See the murderer in The Leopard Man or even the tragic Irina of Cat People for earlier examples.)
The climax draws Wesley– carrying Jessica’s murdered body– to the coast as he is pursued by the haunting figure of Carrefour, the man who guards the Voodoo rituals. Carrefour appears menacing with his staring eyes and great size, but as he follows the panicked Wesley, his intentions are unclear. In her analysis of the film, film blogger Nitrate Diva observes, “…the images could be interpreted in several different ways: is Carrefour trying to save the sinners as he reaches for them… or push them into the sea?”
I Walked with a Zombie ends on a note of glooming peace. The character of Ti-Joseph does not gloat over the deaths of Jessica and Wesley, but prays that their sins be forgiven. He suggests Jessica was a zombie even in her pre-illness life because she allowed her baser impulses to drive her actions. The prayer combines both Voodoo and Christian ideas, suggesting the possibility of wholeness and harmony for the population of San Sebastian. And yet, the film’s final image is not that of reunified lovers Betsy and Paul, but of the Ti-Misery figurehead. The past lingers, unwilling to be ignored in favor of easy platitudes.
Nitrate Diva calls I Walked with a Zombie modernist in its shifting perspective. My own realization of the purpose of that shifting perspective– from Betsy to the greater story of the San Sebastian population– is what made the movie’s genius finally click. Betsy is decentered because the story is bigger than her individual viewpoint. Zombie is less a tale of frustrated romance and more about Faulkner’s old adage that the past is never truly past.
We live in a time when so many horror films feature the idea that “the real monster is trauma!” but they execute this in rather blunt ways that do not stir the imagination as Lewton could with his ambiguities and willingness to pose uncomfortable questions about humanity. I Walked with a Zombie can be enjoyed as a spooky yarn, but it is so much richer when one takes into account its insinuations about free will, redemption, and the weight of colonial exploitation. I now consider it one of my top three Lewton films. If you didn’t take to it on a first watch, I recommend a revisit. It might just surprise you.
NOTE: Normally, I include screencaps from my DVD/Bluray editions of the reviewed film in my posts, but there were technical issues that prevented me from doing so today. My apologies.
Come the new year, I like to take a look back at the box office hits of a century ago (at least, box office hits in North America). Did viewers have better taste? Did they also like slop? Among the big hits, you’ll always find a mix of good, bad, and mediocre. Sometimes, beloved classics are right there. Oftentimes, you’ll find films that have been hidden in the sands of time—sometimes for good reason, sometimes not.
Nineteen-twenty-six is a kind of calm before the storm in terms of film history. As I mentioned in last year’s series on the hits of 1925, silent film never experienced much threat from the concept of sound films despite flirtations with the technology as early as 1895. Problems with amplification and image-sound synchronization made exhibition of talking pictures a pain and audiences showed little interest, so studios had no incentive to pursue further development of the talkie, as it came to be popularly known.
And then along came Warner Bros. and the Vitaphone system, soon to upend an entire industry and art form practically overnight.
New York moviegoers queued up to see John Barrymore in Don Juan, the first feature film to use the Vitaphone technology that helped usher out the silent era. Image source: Wikipedia
By 1926, the four Warner Brothers– Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack– had been in the movie business since 1910, yet their studio was not among the top tier of the industry. Matters did not seem likely to change either, as the motion picture industry was experiencing a slump. Radio made a dent in the entertainment marketplace, drawing audiences away from the theaters just as television, video games, and streaming would in the decades to follow.
Sam Warner was fascinated by radio and this interest became a gateway to a further interest in the possibility of synchronized sound on film. His brothers were less enthused, but they were willing enough to take a chance on sound if baby steps were taken. In 1926, Warner Bros. produced a series of short films of vaudevillians and musicians with the Vitaphone sound-on-disc process. This process involved the sound being recorded on a record, then played in sync with the projected images. Compared to attempts at “talking films” in the past, the Vitaphone system provided superior amplification and fidelity due to using electrical recording rather than the mechanical recording and playback of former systems.
Warners also put Vitaphone to use on a feature film, the John Barrymore vehicle Don Juan. However, the technology was only used to pre-record a musical score and sound effects, not spoken dialogue. Images and intertitles were still the order of the day in communicating vital narrative information to the audience. For the time being, this appeared to be the way “sound films” would manifest in the years to come. As Harry Warner said, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” It was not so different from what motion pictures had been. The future was manageable… for the time being.
My usual note: It is difficult to get 100% accurate box office information from the silent era and this list is based on the top ten films offered up by Wikipedia as the big hits of 1926. Box office numbers can vary depending on the source (and here, I just stuck to the Wikipedia numbers for consistency’s sake; Wikipedia often cites research done by H. Mark Glancy on studio grosses based on studio ledgers for Warner Bros. and MGM), so just keep that in mind as we forge ahead.
Sources:
Eyman, S. (2015). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster.
Captain Ahab (John Barrymore), that hunky, charming dreamboat sailing the seven seas (no I’m not joking), is excited to reunite with his girlfriend Esther (Dolores Costello). Their relationship is challenged by Derek (George O’Hara), Ahab’s jealous brother. During an encounter with the infamous Moby Dick, a white whale that has destroyed many ships and eluded capture, Derek shoves Ahab into the sea in the hopes of eliminating romantic competition. The plan doesn’t go as planned since Ahab survives, but he loses a leg in the process. Humiliated by Esther’s horrified reaction to his disability, Ahab returns to the sea to vent his anger on the whale. Will his quest bring him inner peace or destroy him?
Hermann Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick was not always the academic darling it is now. Released to poor sales and often baffled reviews, it languished in obscurity until the 1920s. Around this time, a Melville reappraisal ongoing from the 1890s culminated in rediscovery of this epic work. Naturally, such rediscovery was not lost on Hollywood, always looking to legitimize itself by adapting the classics.
The Sea Beast was the first cinematic adaptation of the novel. It should shock no one that the property was properly Hollywood-ized during the transition from page to screen. I have not read the book yet (it was assigned reading in high school, but my English teacher said it was “the one book I absolutely loathe” so she had us read something else instead), but from what I do know, there isn’t a love triangle. Here, the whale is secondary to Ahab’s romantic problems.
I admit it’s hard to properly evaluate The Sea Beast as cinema when all the copies I could find look awful and washed out. The film is begging for a proper restoration, especially since the whale hunting scenes and special effects appear to have been a big draw for audiences at the time. However, one can still appreciate Barrymore’s central performance, which is astonishing.
During this period, John Barrymore was a beloved matinee idol enjoying success on stage and screen. Aside from Rin Tin Tin, he was the biggest star asset Warner Bros. possessed. In 1926, he would appear in two movie megahits: The Sea Beast and Don Juan. Interestingly, both play with Barrymore’s romantic appeal by complicating it. Don Juan sees its hero driven to womanizing due to witnessing his mother’s infidelity and his father’s misogyny. The Sea Beast features a conventional romantic hero who becomes pathologically obsessed with avenging his sense of masculinity after he is disabled.
The film is best viewed as a reflection of post-WWI masculinity than any kind of engagement with Melville. As Dominic Lennard observes in his chapter-length analysis of The Sea Beast in Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen, Ahab is initially presented as a romantic ideal. Handsome, playful, and sensuous, it isn’t hard to see why Esther swoons over him. Their first love scene in a moonlit garden rivals anything in Valentino’s vehicles for sheer sexual charge. However, after Ahab loses a leg to Moby Dick, his relationships to Esther and society at large are challenged.
Ahab is no longer seen as a human being, but as an object of horror and pity. Even Esther recoils from him, though she tries to check her disgust with compassion. This was undoubtedly a sentiment understood by soldiers who returned from the First World War blinded or without limbs. While medical technology had evolved to make quality of life better for injured soldiers by the 1910s, society still held onto negative attitudes that painted disabled people as helpless—and disabled men in particular as emasculated.
Barrymore’s Ahab fights against the emasculation label by transforming himself into a tyrannical avenger. While he feels he has lost Esther, he reorganizes all his energies into destroying the white whale. Revenge allows him to salvage his public masculinity. The transition from dreamy youth to embittered experience goes beyond a change in make-up. Barrymore makes the character’s mental evolution feel credible, even though the difference between all the phases of Ahab’s life seem as dramatic as his turn as Jekyll and Hyde in 1920.
Unfortunately as I said, it’s hard to fully appreciate the performance when the available prints look so terrible. There are moments where Barrymore’s body language is discernible but his expressions are not, which is so frustrating. What I can see, I enjoy immensely though and I hope a restored version becomes available someday.
Sources:
Lennard, D. (2018). “Keep Back Your Pity”: The Wounded Barrymore of The Sea Beast and Moby Dick. In Murray Pomerance & Steven Rybin (eds.) Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen (pp. 59-70). Edinburg University Press.
Years after the original Sheik film, Ahmed and Diana’s adult son embarks on adventures of his own. Named for his father, the young Ahmed (Rudolph Valentino) is romancing a spunky French dancing girl, Yasmin (Vilma Banky). The relationship is imperiled by Ghabah (Monatgue Love), a bandit who desires Yasmin for himself. Seeing a lucrative payday, Ghabah uses Ahmed’s affection for Yasmin to lure him into a trap. He tortures Ahmed and holds him for ransom, but the young man manages to escape with the help of friends. Believing Yasmin to have been complicit in his kidnapping, Ahmed sets out to avenge himself on the innocent woman. But when he learns the truth, can their relationship survive his vengeance?
Sequels were not the bread and butter of Hollywood output back in the 1920s, but they could be lucrative indeed when following up on the heels of a mega-blockbuster. The Son of the Sheik was an eagerly anticipated sequel in its day. Its predecessor The Sheik was not just a box office hit, but a major touchstone for the Roaring Twenties zeitgeist. Ladies men were called sheiks, their female counterparts “shebas.” Desert romance became a hot genre on page and screen, with everyone from Norma Talmadge to Ramon Novarro trekking the silver sands of the movie screen to find adventure and eros. And of course, The Sheik became the film to catapult longtime bit and supporting player Rudolph Valentino into superstardom after he already drew massive acclaim as the lead in Rex Ingram’s WWI epic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
While proud of his work in Ingram’s film, Valentino was embarrassed by The Sheik, which was something of the Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. Valentino’s nostril-flaring, teeth-flashing performance is certainly far from his best and he knew it. For the next five years, Valentino tried his best to secure better roles and scripts with middling success. A two year absence from the screen due to disputes with Famous Players-Lasky (later known as Paramount) threatened to quench his screen career as soon as it began. However, by 1924, Valentino was appearing in movies again and slowly regaining steam. His appearance in Clarence Brown’s charming swashbuckler The Eagle was a hit and hopes were high that his next vehicle would be an even bigger one: The Son of the Sheik.
Conditions were favorable during the making of the sequel. Valentino had long wanted to work with director George Fitzmaurice and now he would be directing him in Son. Delicately beautiful Hungarian actress Vilma Banky, who had played so well beside Valentino in The Eagle, returned as his leading lady. Though the desert scenes were shot in the 110 degree heat of an Arizona desert, Valentino enjoyed himself immensely, riding on horseback and performing his own stunts. The Son of the Sheik appeared as though it would be a return to form for its star. Instead it would be a swan song. Valentino died of peritonitis at age 31, just a few weeks after the movie’s premiere.
Conventional fan wisdom deems Son a superior effort to its predecessor. It’s not a hard argument to make. The sequel is better paced and laced with a more knowing sense of humor about the desert romance genre. The action is amped up considerably, taking a page from the Douglas Fairbanks playbook with chases, breezy humor, and sword fights. Son shares a production designer with Fairbanks’ Thief of Bagdad, the great William Cameron Menzies. It also cribs a few tropes from Fairbanks’ Don Q, Son of Zorro, most notably the device of the lead actor playing both father and son in a dual role.
Quite unlike Fairbanks is Son‘s sadomasochistic fantasy aspect. Despite its reputation as racy, bodice-ripping excitement, the original Sheik film had to tiptoe around all matters sexual for fear of the censor’s shears. Released as the glories of the permissive pre-code era were coming into full flower, the sequel doesn’t bother. We get a scene of Valentino tied up and whipped by the villains, and then the film’s famous “ravishment” sequence with Valentino circling Banky like a bird of prey in his tent. These are scenes that indulge the darkest fantasies of the audience and must have been like an electric shock even in the more liberated 1920s.
But what do I think of Son? I’ve seen it multiple times since I was a teenager in the 2000s and back then it was once one of my favorite films, but to be honest, my response has become more mixed. I like the breezy action and more self-aware humor. The visuals are beautiful as are Valentino and Banky. However, a few things bother me more than they did when I was a kid.
Obviously, the rampant orientalism of both films is something that bothers me as a modern viewer, though it would have been taken for granted by a 1920s audience. I also don’t care for the comic relief of Karl Dane as the young Ahmed’s confidante. There’s delightfully over the top and then there’s exhausting obnoxiousness, and I felt Dane veered more towards the latter. The film’s humor works much better when it arises from the conflict between father and son. In fact, Valentino shows off his comic chops as the older sheik, making his characterization more blustery and energetic in a manner that recalls his more histrionic characterization in the original. It’s a performance that gently kids the first film while also building upon it. I actually think this generational conflict thread is the strongest part of the movie and wish we had more of it.
In general, the plot is quite thin, even compared to the original Sheik and a runtime that barely outpaces an hour. Yasmin and Ahmed’s relationship is imperiled by simple misunderstanding, rather than the war of wills between Ahmed Sr. and the independence-minded Diana in the original. Not that The Sheik constituted Ibsen-esque drama and I must stress it is very silly, but it is a bit more robust than what we see in Son. And before anyone complains, I get it— no one in 1926 was lining up for a great story when they bought a ticket to The Son of the Sheik. They wanted adventure and sex, and they got it. Old Hollywood star vehicles were designed for particular personas and not necessarily to create high art. However, some such films happen to have good storytelling and interesting characters while also banking on a star’s image. I don’t think The Son of the Sheik does this so well. A Letterboxd review from user Lasse Galsgaard puts it like this: “Emotional arcs are underdeveloped, with characters functioning more as narrative placeholders than as fully realized individuals. The film’s dramatic momentum is driven less by evolving relationships than by the need to position Valentino within a series of expressive and visually striking situations.” Maybe if the film didn’t have its more serious dramatic moments, this would not bother me quite as much. I don’t know, but it just didn’t satisfy me as a story the way it once did.
The Son of the Sheik excels as a showcase for Valentino’s exceptional star qualities: the smoldering sensuality, the touches of self-deprecating humor, the physical action, the emotional and sexual undercurrents of sadomasochism. For these reasons, it operates well as a swan song to Valentino’s screen image, but I think Valentino appeared in better films than this one: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Blood and Sand, and The Eagle make a decent case for being such. An unpopular opinion, but you can’t like every beloved film.
Sources:
Leider, E. (2003). Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Faber and Faber.
Bumbling but jovial British infantryman Old Bill (Sydney Chaplin) and his sidekick Alfie (Jack Ackroyd) experience and perpetuate a series of hijincks during World War One. Then they discover the major (Charles K. Gerrard) in their regiment is none other than a notorious double agent for the Germans. More hijincks ensue.
Charlie Chaplin looms so large over collective memory of the silent era that it’s easy for even silent movie geeks to forget his half-brother Syd also had a lucrative film career. Syd Chaplin is often remembered as the younger Chaplin’s supportive older sibling. The two soldiered through a hard childhood marked by poverty and the mental illness of their mother, Hannah. Following a stint at sea, Syd went into show business as an actor and music hall performer. When Charlie Chaplin became a major film star in the 1910s, Syd appeared in several of his brother’s movies, such as A Dog’s Life and Shoulder Arms. However, he was able to carve out a smaller but still successful movie career for himself as a solo performer. In the 1920s, Warner Bros. featured him in five films, the most lucrative of them being the WWI comedy The Better ‘Ole, an adaptation of a musical about popular comic strip character “Old Bill.”
Comic strips were a more significant part of the popular culture during the twentieth century. I think it’s safe to say that between the 1910s and the 1960s, most “comic adaptations” conjured up associations with newspaper funnies as opposed to superheroes. Old Bill was created by British cartoonist Bruce Bainsfather in 1914. The characters of Bill and his sidekick Alfie were enormously popular during the war years. A stage musical adaptation titled The Better ‘Ole followed in 1917. Ironically, this musical was made into two silent films, the first being a now-lost feature from 1919 and the second being the Sydney Chaplin vehicle of 1926. Old Bill would continue his onscreen existence throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
The origin of The Better ‘Ole’s title comes from this 1915 Bainsfather comic. Image source: Wikipedia
Owing to its origins in comic strips, The Better ‘Ole is an episodic lark rather than a unified narrative despite the consistent threat of a double agent. Depending on how much you take to the comedy, this is either going to be a lighthearted romp or an aimless drag. One cannot help comparing The Better ‘Ole to Shoulder Arms, a wartime comedy made by Charlie Chaplin while the conflict was ongoing but near its end. That film has a bit more bite to it and a surreal, cartoony edge that makes a fascinating juxtaposition with its portrayal of the miseries of life in the trenches. Made almost a decade later, The Better ‘Ole is more polished and reserved in its approach to wartime life– and to my mind, less interesting.
I first saw this film years ago but remembered little to nothing of it when I rewatched it for this series. On my second viewing, I found the film likable but not especially memorable. The scene that sticks out most is one where the main characters run around in a hilariously fake horse costume, evading German soldiers who have launched an attack during a camp performance. From that point forward, the film gathers steam, but the first half is so underwhelming that I think The Better ‘Ole would have been more enjoyable as a two-reeler than a feature. I feel bad that I don’t have more to say, but I suspect for all the film’s original success, its charms were best enjoyed by the 1926 filmgoing audience.
The Better ‘Ole is a significant film in other ways. It was the second feature to use Vitaphone sound technology. As with its predecessor Don Juan, the sound here is largely limited to a score and sound effects. There are no instances of spoken dialogue, though debate rages over whether or not a character says the word “coffee.” (I personally don’t hear it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.) This little bit of spoken dialogue signifies a slight advancement from the first Vitaphone feature Don Juan, which only had music and sound effects, but otherwise, The Better ‘Ole remains less in the memory than Don Juan. With or without Vitaphone, Don Juan is a rousing adventure that would still be remembered as an enjoyable silent yarn, while The Better ‘Ole sans Vitaphone would be more of a footnote than it already is.
Sources:
Eyman, S. (2015). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster.
NOTE: There are slight spoilers in the last paragraph. If you have not seen the film and that bothers you, please refrain from reading. Thank you.
It’s always nice to revisit a movie you haven’t seen in a long time and get to feel as though you’re watching it for the first time all over again. Foreign Correspondent is not the most famous Hitchcock movie, but it is among his best work in the 1940s. Not quite to the same level as Notorious nor as iconic as Rebecca, but still a worthy entry in the Hitch canon.
The film follows a reporter with the hilariously American name of John Jones (Joel McCrea) as he moves into work as a foreign correspondent in Europe. His initial assignment seems tame enough: attend a luncheon where Van Meer, a noted Dutch diplomat, plans to speak. He manages to catch a ride with the man in question, only for them to be separated when arriving at the event itself. Matters become stranger when the old man fails to appear once the luncheon begins.
When John encounters Van Meer again at a conference, the diplomat does not appear to recognize him. Before John can try to figure out why, Van Meer is assassinated before his eyes. John spots the killer and gives chase, kickstarting his discovery of a political conspiracy and spy ring that prove all the makings of a great scoop. Aided by an intelligent peace activist (Laraine Day) and a fellow reporter (George Saunders), it’s up to John and company to foil the spies’ plot as Europe quickly descends into total war.
Foreign Correspondent is a strong, enjoyable thriller with a dash of wartime propaganda. In many ways, it feels like a spiritual successor to that most famous of Hitchcock’s British films, The 39 Steps. You have an everyman hero thrust into the rumblings of a potential war, a whirlwind romance, and plenty of political intrigue. But while the potential war in The 39 Steps is vague and ultimately thwarted, the real life stakes were all too high by the time of Foreign Correspondent‘s release in 1940. The US had yet to enter the war, as isolationist sentiments were still strong among the American public, but that would change soon.
While the fascist threat is emphasized in Foreign Correspondent (and this sense of menace would be escalated in 1942’s Saboteur), it is still a relatively lightweight adventure yarn until its final act. The casting of Joel McCrea in the lead helps that point. McCrea always had an easygoing and laconic demeanor that suited the adventure and thriller genre, and he handles both the comic and dramatic elements of the story well. His love interest is played by Laraine Day, who is charming and affable, but he has way more chemistry with George Saunders. The two banter well and their interactions are often hilarious. I actually enjoy Saunders more here than I do in the more well-regarded Rebecca. The scene where he drives a car in the most nonchalant way during a chase is pure comedy gold.
But the film ends on a note of urgency. McCrea makes a radio broadcast in London while the bombs begin to fall, hoping to make clear the stakes for his fellow Americans. It is a bold, dramatic way to end the film, allowing reality to creep out of the escapism of the movie screen, but it works brilliantly.
This post was written for the Film. Release. Repeat Blogathon hosted by Hamlette’s Soliloquy and The Midnite Drive-In. Check out their blogs for more articles on remakes both good and bad.
In 1998, filmmaker Gus Van Sant offended all that was sacred when he chose to remake Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. While shot in lurid color and set in the 1990s, the Van Sant Psycho was virtually shot for shot and line for line the same as the 1960 original. However, what resulted was not another great movie. Quite the opposite. The new actors lent different (and often awful) line readings of the same Joseph Stefano dialogue, giving the movie a distinct feel. Where the old movie inspired dread, the newer one played more like a trashy comedy.
In a 2005 interview with the New York Times, Van Sant admitted his Psycho remake was an artistic failure, but as an experiment in adaptation, the results were intriguing:
“”You can’t copy a film,” he said. “If I hold a camera, it’s different than if Irving Penn holds it. Even if it’s in the same place, it will magically take on his character. Which was part of the experiment. Our ‘Psycho’ showed that you can’t really appropriate. Or you can appropriate, but it’s not going to be the same thing.”
You probably wonder why the hell I’m starting off a review of You Can’t Run Away From It— a remake of It Happened One Night— with information about the infamous Psycho remake. That’s because the Van Sant Psycho and the 1956 musical remake You Can’t Run Away From It have more in common than you’d think.
They both illustrate the same point: even the closest remakes of a classic can never capture what made the original so special. Different directors, different actors, different eras—they all add up to something new. You Can’t Run Away From It is a perfect example of that principle. While it is close enough to the original in terms of plot beats and dialogue, it doesn’t come close to recapturing the proverbial lightning in a bottle.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in the immortal It Happened One Night. Image source: IMDB
It Happened One Night is one of the great popular successes of the 1930s. Despite being headed by a pair of stars who had to be forced into making it, Frank Capra’s 1934 romantic comedy was a critical and commercial darling. Not only did it rake in money and awards, it also became the Ur text of the screwball comedy genre which flourished in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
The story follows Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert in the 1934 film, June Allyson in the 1956 remake), a spoiled heiress kidnapped by her overprotective father after she elopes with a gold-digging scoundrel. Though locked up on a yacht, Ellie escapes and hits the road with the intention of reuniting with her husband. Though clever enough to evade the police her father has sent after her, Ellie has been sheltered her entire life and has a hard time dealing with life as it is experienced by working class people.
Enter Peter Warne (Clark Gable in 1934, Jack Lemmon in 1956), a down-on-his-luck reporter who sees in Ellie a chance for the hot scoop that could revive his career. He’ll help her reunite with her husband if she gives him a lucrative interview about her experiences on the road. The two become reluctant allies as they hide from police and potential informers out to turn Ellie in for the reward money from her anxious father. And of course, they fall in love along the way.
What makes It Happened One Night so special? Robert Riskin’s witty, well-paced script (based on a short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams) is certainly a major contributor to the movie’s classic status, but it isn’t alone in doing all the heavy lifting. Colbert and Gable are an iconic movie couple: funny, charismatic, and sympathetic. They’re half lovers, half mischievous partners in crime (metaphorically speaking). Capra’s characteristic populism pervades the movie’s depiction of Depression-era America, summoning up a “we’re all in this together” sentiment that is very comforting (and one you wish was more prevalent in real life). The black-and-white cinematography is luminous, emphasizing a romantic realism, as contradictory as that sounds.
You Can’t Run Away From It was not the first remake of It Happened One Night. It wasn’t even the first musical remake! Columbia cranked out a 1945 musical remake of the Capra classic under the title Eve Knew Her Apples. I have never seen that one so I cannot comment on it, though a quick look at a plot summary shows the details of the story were changed. The leading lady is no longer an heiress on the run from her meddling father, but an overworked radio star running from her manager. You Can’t Run is much closer to its source, changing very little save for updating the time period, relocating the road trip from the east coast to the west, and making Ellie the daughter of a Texas-born tycoon. Directed by Dick Powell (yes, THAT Dick Powell!) and using Robert Riskin’s original script mostly intact, what could go wrong?
You Can’t Run is part of a peculiar postwar Hollywood trend of remaking earlier, black-and-white romantic comedies as glossy, color musicals. The Philadelphia Story becomes High Society. The Women becomes The Opposite Sex. Ball of Fire becomes A Song is Born. While some of these remakes have gone on to have dedicated fanbases of their own, today’s subject is not among them, despite the star wattage before and behind the camera.
It isn’t hard to figure out why.
I don’t feel compelled to give you another plot summary because this is largely a beat for beat retelling of Capra’s original. The setting is moved to the 1950s and there we have our first big diversion from what makes It Happened One Night so special. It Happened One Night is a quintessential Depression era film. Ellie’s ridiculous wealth and her out of touch relationship with reality as it is lived by the millions of Americans impacted by the Depression contributes a great deal to the film’s poignancy. The working-class Peter Warne becomes her guide into the messy world of trailer parks, night buses, and the dusty countryside. Ellie goes from a spoiled heiress throwing an expensive steak onto the floor with nary a thought to a vagabond having to make do with raw carrots.
This “rich person gets a wake up call” quality is absent from the remake. In prosperous postwar America, Ellie having to rough it on the road doesn’t hit the same way. You don’t have the scene where a hungry mother faints on the bus as her child weeps in panic as in the 1934 movie, for instance. There is a distinct lack of the class bitterness that gives the Capra movie its bite. The sense that these characters are roughing it is also subdued. The scene with Ellie trying to cut the line for the shower is gone, as are other charming scenes, like the one where Peter teaches her how to properly dunk a donut.
Ellie is the character who generally suffers the most in this version. Claudette Colbert brought a compelling blend of aristocratic aloofness and thawing warmth to the character. She could be a spoiled brat, but she was ultimately much smarter and sweeter than she initially appeared. The adventure brought out the best in her and allowed her to grow as a person.
Allyson is just plain miscast as Ellie. For one thing, she’s not convincing as a young ingenue and as a result, when she makes poor decisions, it doesn’t come off like a sheltered young thing making mistakes. It just comes off as a mature woman being foolish. When her Ellie starts to loosen up, she doesn’t become vulnerable so much as clownishly shrill. I hate to crap on Allyson because I find her charming when she’s in the right part. Her Jo in the 1949 Little Women is a delight—and even there she was technically much too old for the role—but here, she just isn’t at her best.
Jack Lemmon acquits himself somewhat better as the down to earth Peter Warne, but even he suffers when compared to Gable. A great deal of Lemmon’s issues come from what the script cuts. Because while it is true that this film is largely just a rehash of Riskin’s script, some of Peter’s best moments are left out. I already mentioned his donut dunking lesson being axed, but the remake also cuts his imitating a gangster to scare off a potential pursuer or his extended demonstration of how to thumb a ride before Ellie flashes her leg.
When people talk about Clark Gable in the original It Happened One Night, much is made of his inherent sex appeal, but what most distinguishes his Peter Warne for me is his trickster nature. He is constantly improvising and bluffing his way through life. Anytime I see Gable in that film, I think of the part in Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part 1 when Bea Arthur calls Brooks “a bullshit artist,” because that’s what Peter is—an exquisite artiste in BS-ery. I’m sure Lemmon would have done well with this element of the Peter character, but a lot of it is cut. As a result, his Peter is rather bland in comparison to Gable.
Between an irritating June Allyson and a tepid Jack Lemmon, there is no chemistry to speak of. Capra’s film sizzled with the tension between Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. It was apparent in every scene, especially when “the walls of Jericho” divided their pajama clad bodies to different ends of a cabin. These same scenes feel so prim and sexless in the remake, partly because there is no spark between the leads and partly because the direction and staging are so impersonal, as though director Powell was at a loss at how to compose an interesting shot in widescreen.
Oh, and then there’s the music. Almost forgot I was reviewing a musical, didn’t you? So was I because there are only a handful of songs and they are all utterly forgettable, both melodically and lyrically. I cannot remember the melody from any of them.
Let’s go back to the walls of Jericho scene I was just discussing. A musical number called “Temporarily” occurs during this scene, illustrating how annoyed Peter is that he has to share space with this spoiled, snotty heiress and how aghast Ellie is that she has to pretend to be the wife of this boorish newspaper man she thinks may just take advantage of her at night. Her only comfort is that the charade is temporary. Oh, and apparently they’re kind of physically attracted to each other too, I guess.
Powell’s blocking of the scene has the actors circling the “walls” as they each undress and then having to constantly readjust their placement as they go about their nighttime routines. There is the occasional saucy bit of business, like Ellie throwing her stockings over the wall and the nylons hitting Peter’s head, but the two actors don’t seem all that flustered by each other. The palpable tension between Colbert and Gable is gone, replaced by a mechanical sense of just going through the motions of budding tension.
“Nitrate Glow, you’re being unfair! You need to judge the remake on its own terms!” I hear a hypothetical voice shout.
The issue is even if I could wipe the original from my mind, You Can’t Run Away From It is still a forgettable experience. It’s a mediocre musical and romantic comedy that would be even more of a footnote than it is if it weren’t connected to a classic. Nothing about You Can’t Run Away From It is an improvement on It Happened One Night. It just feels mechanical and perfunctory, the kind of remake that gives remakes a bad name. I wouldn’t call it the worst movie I have ever seen as it’s competent enough, but it is a pointless exercise. I can only recommend it as a curiosity for classic film fans.
Has something ever made you laugh so hard you doubled over as your lungs screamed in agonizing mirth? Only a handful of films have ever done that to me, chief among them The Fatal Glass of Beer.
What is The Fatal Glass of Beer? It is a WC Fields short film lampooning all sorts of melodramatic tropes from the past century’s worth of popular culture. Set in the wintry north, it involves WC Fields recounting the tragedy of his wayward son Chester, who left for the city and subsequently became an alcoholic criminal jailed for theft. The prodigal returns to his parents weeping contrite tears. At first sympathetic to the boy, Fields asks if he still has the money he stole and when he says no–and that he plans on living off his parents for the rest of his life– Fields approaches the situation with something less than parental charity.
The Yukon setting was a popular choice for stage and film in the 1910s and 1920s, from romantic adventures like Tiger Rose to comedies like The Gold Rush to sensational dramas like The Trail of ’98. The anti-drink messaging and Christian moralizing was common in temperance melodramas of the Victorian era like The Drunkard. However, when you pair such sentimental, ripe material with the misanthropic world of WC Fields, the result is comedy gold.
Comedy is hard to analyze without sounding like a pretentious killjoy. All I can say is that The Fatal Glass of Beer is hilarious to me because it portrays its melodramatic parody in such a nonchalant way. The sets feel half-assed as though the merest nudge from any of the cheaply costumed performers onscreen would send them toppling over. Fields’ repeated cry that, “T’ain’t a fit night out FOR MAN OR BEAST!” is constantly greeted with a handful of fake snow to the face. Obvious phony stock footage makes repeated appearances. There is a meta quality to the whole short that makes it seem very modern.
Can’t really say much more than that. Gotta go milk the elk.
nitrateglow 
