Today's edition of Dave-El's Weekend Movie Post is about 4 silent films I've seen and want to share about here.
As someone who aspires to be a good cinemaphile and expose myself to the full range and breath of film history, I will on occasion dip my toe in the era of the silent movie. I will be honest it's not always an era of film that I can really get into but the movies covered in today's post caught and (mostly) held my attention.
From 1914, we will start with The Last of the Line, a short silent Western film.
Chief Gray Otter had high hopes for his son Tiah to serve as bridge to the future, to honor the legacy and ways of his Native American heritage but also to learn to function and prosper in the ways of the white man's world. Which is why Gray Otter sent Tiah off to east coast to go college.
Tiah returns to the tribe a mess, a spoiled drunken womanizer who can barely stand up straight. Tiah is an embarrassment to his father, his tribe and looking pretty damn shabby to white men as well.
Chief Gray Otter makes a pact with the U.S. military that a gold shipment may pass through his territory without injury. Tiah catches wind of this and sets up a raiding party.
This goes badly and the Calvary are on the way to stop the raid. To maintain the peace he had negotiated with the army, Gray Otter races to beat the army to the site of the raid. There the chief kills Tiah's band of robbers and Tiah himself.
Before the Calvary arrives, Gray Otter positions his son's body against the wagon, making it appear he was defending it against the raiders.
The film ends with a despondent Gray Otter sits by Tiah's grave and mourns that he is "the last of the line".
In a remarkable bit of versimilitude, the role of Chief Gray Otter was played by Joe Goodboy, a real life Native American chief.
Not so true to life, the role of Native American Tiah was played by Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa.
Which brings us to movie #2...
The Cheat, a 1915 American silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille which also stars Sessue Hayakawa.
Edith Hardy is a spoiled society woman with a penchant for buying expensive clothes. Husband Richard asks her to go without buying new clothes for a god damn minute cause all their money is tied up in a stock investment but when it pays off, she can buy all the crap she wants.
Edith is also the treasurer of the local Red Cross fund drive for Belgian refugees, which holds a gala dance at the home of Hishuru Tori, a rich Japanese ivory merchant.
He is an elegant and dangerously sexy man, to whom Edith seems somewhat drawn; he shows her his roomful of treasures, and stamps one of them with a heated brand to show that it belongs to him. (This will come up again later.)
Edith gets a stock tip from a society friend that will double her money so shetakes the $10,000 the Red Cross has raised from her bedroom safe and gives it to the society friend.
Guess what? That stock tip was shit and Edith ain't got the dough to pay back the Red Cross. Edith goes to Tori to beg for a loan and he agrees to write her a check in return for her sexual favours the next day.
Uh oh!
But she agrees. After she puts back the charity money, Richard tells her the good news that his investment paid off and they're in the money.
Edith goes to Tori to buy her way out her debt to him with money but he doesn't want her money.
He uses his heated brand to mark Edith's shoulder. Edith grabs a gun and shoots Tori. Edith runs away but Richard enters. Tori is merely wounded, not dead and Richard confesses to shootingTori to spare Edith. Tori does not dispute Richard's account.
He's still looking to coerce Edith into having sex with him.
There's a big old trial (it's quite the scandal) and Richard is found guilty but Edith can't stand it no more, rushing to the front of the courtroom that she shot Tori "and this is my defense". She bares her shoulder and shows everyone in the courtroom the brand on her shoulder.
Tori narrowly avoids an angry mob, Richard's sentence is reversed as he lovingly leads a chastened Edith from the courtroom.
By the time the film was re-released in 1918, Hishuru Tori, rich Japanese ivory merchant was renamed Haka Arakau, rich Burmese ivory merchant. There were a lot of complaints from Japanese/Americans to prompt the studio to make a change in identity. Apparently there were fewer Burmese people to take offense.
Sessue Hayakawa who played Tori/Arakau was something of a hit with the ladies in the early 20th century movie going audience with his smoldering eyes and his "exotic" features. He was not so well regarded in Japan where his propensity for playing villians reflectedly negatively on the Japanese people.
We are really going back in time for the 3rd film of today's post, a 1912 epic called Cleopatra.
The infamous Queen of the Nile was portrayed by Helen Louise Gardner who was quite the hyphenate. In addition to being a actor of stage and screen, Gardner was also a producer, a writer and a costume designer. Cleopatra was made under the auspices of Gardner's own production company,
Cleopatra is one of the early six-reel feature films produced in the United States. It was promoted at the time of it's release as "The most beautiful motion picture ever made". The film was the first to offer a feature-length depiction of Cleopatra.
In a series of elaborately staged scenes and sequences, Cleopatra depicts the Egyptian Queen's love affairs such as with handsome fisherman-slave Pharon, then with Mark Antony.
I mentioned earlier today's post was about silent films that "caught and (mostly) held my attention". I'll admit Cleopatra was a bit of a slog to get through and I fast forwarded a few times. This is a long movie and there are only so many ways to convey falling into lust, giving in the lust and swooning dramatically over the consequences of lust.
Upon its release, Cleopatra played in opera houses and theatres. The film was also featured in a theatrical roadshow accompanied by a publicist, manager and a lecturer/projectionist.
In 1918, Gardner filmed additional scenes and re-issued the film to compete with the 1917 adaptation released by Fox starring Theda Bara.
Our 4th film for today's post goes back really far back in time, to 1902 for A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage Dans La Lune) directed by Georges Méliès. The film is inspired by a wide variety of sources, including Jules Verne's 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon and its 1870 sequel Around the Moon.
Méliès plays the main character Professor Barbenfouillis who leads a group of astronomers to the moon via a capsule shot into space by a really big cannon.
Reaching the moon, the team explores the surface of the moon as well as what lies beneathg, an underground society of lunar inhabitants known as Selenites. The professor and his team return to Earth with a Selenite in tow.
Don't look for much hard science this short film. In an iconic sequence, the Man in the Moon watches the astronomer's capsule as it approaches and it hits him in the eye.
Ouch!
The asgtronomers explore the moon without need of space suits or breathing equipment.
Other fantasy elements that occur:
- the Big Dipper appears with human faces peering out of each star
- old Saturn leans out of a window in his ringed planet
- Phoebe, goddess of the Moon, appears seated in a crescent-moon swing as she causes a snowfall on the moon.
Our intrepid explorers encounter the Selenites who are rather easy to defeat. The most modest blow from an umbrella will cause a Selenite to just go POOF! and vanish.
The astronomers return to Earth with a captive Selenite and quite frankly it's all very, very silly.
BONUS The video for the Smashing Pumpkins' "Tonight Tonight" was inspired by Georges Méliès
Since this is a post about silent movies, I will end this entry without saying anything.
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