John Ford Retrospective - The Shamrock Handicap (1926)

THE SHAMROCK HANDICAP (1926)

Starring:  Janet Gaynor, Leslie Fenton, Willard Louis, J Farrell MacDonald, Claire McDowell, Louis Payne, George Morris, Andy Clark, Ely Reynolds

Writer:  Peter B Kyne (story), John Stone (scenario)

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman

Music:  SILENT (piano solo score by Philip Carli)

B&W, 1h 06m.  1.33:1 presentation.

Released on:  May 2, 1926 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube

The Shamrock Handicap is a smaller scale movie than John Ford's most recent work at the time, and while very simple in story (as many of his movies at the time were), it was far more entertaining than I had expected it to be.  It is, in fact, more of a comedy than anything Ford had done, at least since Bucking Broadway.  I believe this is the first story to indulge Ford's Hibernophilia.  Much like his previous surviving film, Kentucky Pride, it all comes down to a horse race.  The one here is easier to follow, thanks to insert shots that keep us in the race rather than watch at a distance.  More of which, later.

We begin our story in County Kildare in olde Eire (west of Dublin) where wealthy landowner Sir Miles O'Hara (Louis Payne) presides over his estate and employees, who include his handyman Con O'Shea (J Farrell MacDonald) and his wife Molly (Claire McDowell), and his horse trainer Neil Ross (Leslie Fenton), who has eyes for O'Hara's daughter, Lady Sheila O'Hara (Janet Gaynor).  Ross' feelings are reciprocated by the boss' daughter, but when wealthy American Orville Finch (Willard Louis) comes to town looking to buy some horses, Sir Miles (who is starting to owe money in estate taxes) has no choice but to sell some of them off, including his prize-winning favourite, Dark Roseleen.  He also offers Neil a job with him in America as a jockey.  While sorry to be parting, Neil promises Sheila he'll come back with money to help save the estate and win her hand in marriage, natch.  

Neil's time in America starts off with a bang, as he gets into a fight with a fellow jockey, Chesty Morgan (Andy Clark).  While that bout is successful, he subsequently breaks his leg in his very first race, and Sheila and her father come to America themselves (having sold their property in Ireland to afford the trip).  Con and Sir Miles get jobs digging ditches to earn money, while Neil mopes about feeling sorry for himself.  Finch comes back into the picture with Dark Roseleen, and everybody pools their resources to back the filly in the Shamrock Handicap, a $25,000 steeplechase race at 20 to 1 odds.  But when Dark Roseleen takes a fright and throws his jockey Ginsburg (George Morris) off, breaking the man's leg, it's left to Neil to man up and "win his feet," as the doctor said.

Reading the plot summary on IMDb and Wikipedia, I figured this would be a story about class, and that the title Shamrock Handicap would be about the struggles of the Irish.  While to an extent this is true, the title is effective on multiple levels.  Firstly, the main race is called the Shamrock Handicap.  As well, a handicap in horse racing is basically horses carrying different weights based on their rating.  But it also nods to Neil Ross' situation, in which he becomes not just physically but for a certain amount of time emotionally handicapped as well.  

Ford never needed any persuasion to indulge in his love of sentimentality.  We see this from the beginning, as all the scenes in Ireland are filled with pastoral simplicity and are shot suffused with hazy borders, as if in remembrance of a long-forgotten dream.  It's a nice set up into the world of the film, and a good contrast with the scenes in America, in which the full image becomes clearer and the scenery is much less romanticized.  The sentimentality remains fully present, however, and Ford mixes it very nicely with some fairly hilarious comedy.  Case in point:  a little girl who Sir Miles sponsored to come to America with her father when her mother passed away recognizes him as he's being insulted by a couple of goons at the worksite, and it's a truly heartbreaking moment -- leading to hilarity when her father (now a policeman) comes by and begins assisting Sir Miles and Con in putting those same goons in their place.  The stakes of comedy are then raised when the cop tells them there are a few family members who would love to say hi -- quick cut to Sir Miles, Con and the little girl surrounded by about twenty police officers, followed by a title card in which a half dozen names (O'Conor, O'Reilly, O'Flaherty, etc) come onto the screen in successive order.  It's a great way of incorporating title cards for comedic purposes.

Ford loved his secondary characters, and indeed throughout his filmography he sometimes seems more amused by what the sidekicks and supporting players are doing, rather than the leads.  In The Shamrock Handicap, while we get to see Leslie Fenton as Neil a lot (since he's at least in name the linchpin the story hangs on), he's pretty much a cypher, with only the most basic emotions; smile grandly, or look despondent.  The romantic lead, Janet Gaynor, is almost a nonentity in this one, which surprised me, as I am more familiar with her work in more meaty roles, such as The Wife in FW Murnau's Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans and Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester in William Wellmans' 1937 A Star is Born.  

While the leads in this one (and some of Ford's future endeavours) are somewhat nondescript, the supporting characters are given their moment in the spotlight.  Ford once again features one of his favourite (and mine) character actors, J Farrell MacDonald, who in this one keeps up a running gag with his pet gander Brian Boru (the name itself perhaps a reference to the famous Irish king, who saved the land from being invaded by the Vikings).  MacDonald is also given a little bit of room to stretch his dramatic muscles, and bounces back and forth between comedy and pathos with the greatest of ease.  

Another one of the supporting players is Ely Reynolds, who plays Virus Cakes (that name, though!), a member of Finch's entourage who becomes close with Ross.  While he is stuck in the type of stereotypical "darkie" role that was all too prevalent in classic Hollywood films, he is almost able to transcend that role with a performance that is both hilarious and somewhat eerie.  In fact, this is one of the earliest produced films I've seen that leaves the main story all together and follows the travails of a supporting black character.  We literally see things from his point of view for a portion of the film, and the scenes in the hospital and later in Roseleen's training montage (which culminates in Reynolds' character thinking up a brilliant way to train the horse in a true LOL fashion), while somewhat tangential to the plot, are literally about him and his experiences.  That is very rare for a film of this vintage, and while some of the mannerisms can be chalked down to a product of their time and age, and even though it's only for comedic effect and for a few minutes at a time, I still must commend Ford for attempting to put the audience in the shoes of a black man all the way back in 1926.  Historical note, however:  these scenes would have been drastically edited or entirely omitted in the Deep South.

The Shamrock Handicap is shot fairly straighforwardly, and while there are no grand, epic shots that knock you off your feet, each frame is painterly in the positioning of its characters within the scenery.  I have mentioned the hazy effect around the borders in the Ireland-set scenes of the film, but there is a beautiful shot when Ross and Sheila are saying their farewells shortly before he leaves for America that is glorious in its pastoral romanticism.  The two lovers are positioned against a waist-high brick wall, framed on either side by the low-lying limbs of an oak tree, while sheep roam a field in the background.  The aforementioned scene in the hospital with Virus Cakes features firstly some experimental darklight photography, leading into some blurred visuals, followed by an extended shot in slow motion, in which the camera would have been cranked at twice the speed as usual to achieve the effect.  There is another innovative use of title cards when the Jewish jockey Ginsburg falls off his horse and the title card appears in Hebrew.  A judicious use of swearing, perhaps?  I'm not familiar with the language so I can't say (please feel free to comment if you do know the language), but surely it would have gotten a laugh in 1926.

The race itself was filmed with inserts of the riders, which allows us to become more personally involved in the race instead of standing back watching horses run around from afar.  Ford would take this lesson and in his future Westerns use it to great effect.  It's funny that Kentucky Pride and The Shamrock Handicap, released eight months apart, featured horse racing as their theme.  Perhaps Ford was going through a bit of an obsession with equestrian sport, or perhaps his intent was to tell a similar story from two sides of the same coin (the former from the horses' point of view, the latter from the humans').  Either way, I found The Shamrock Handicap quite a bit more entertaining than I had expected, and would recommend it heartily.

Seven frenetic fillies out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Kentucky Pride (1925)

KENTUCKY PRIDE (1925)

Starring:  "Us Horses" -- Virginia's Future, Negofol, Morvich, Confederacy, Man O'War, Fair Play, The Finn.  Also starring:  "Those Creatures Called Humans" -- Henry B Walthall, Gertrude Astor, Peaches Jackson, J Farrell MacDonald, Belle Stoddard, Winston Miller, Malcolm Waite, George Reed

Writer:  Dorothy Yost

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman, Edmund Reek

Music:  SILENT

B&W, 1h 10m.  1.33:1 presentation.

Released on:  September 6, 1925 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  YouTube

Following The Iron Horse, this is a decidedly minor entry into the John Ford oeuvre.  Still, I found it quite entertaining in its own way, and while perhaps not quite as artful as other films in the Ford constellation, it's not phoned in by any means, and indeed Ford's big idea was to tell this story from the point of view of a horse!  Sounds silly, I know ... but darned if the film didn't win me over by the end.

The story, such as it is, remains fairly simple -- but not as straightforward as you might expect.  We are introduced to Virginia's Future, a young foal born into the racing stable of Mr. Beaumont (Henry B Walthall), a raffish gambler whose second wife (Gertrude Astor) seems to have taken up with their neighbour Greve Carter (Malcolm Waite).  Beaumont's horse trainer, Mike Donovan (J Farrell MacDonald) develops a special connection with Virginia's Future, which comes in handy after she breaks her leg in a race.  Mrs. Beaumont, all but twirling a moustache, orders Donovan to kill the horse, and officially takes off with Carter.  Donovan of course doesn't have the heart to do this, and manages to keep her from the glue factory.  Virginia's Future gives birth to Confederacy, who has been gifted the speed of his mother.  By this time, however, Beaumont (thanks to his gambling problem) has lost his money, his wife, and his reputation.  Obliged to sell his property, including the horses, at auction, he disappears, leaving his daughter Virginia (Peaches Jackson) in the care of Donovan and his wife (Belle Stoddard).  

Cut to a few years later.  Virginia's Future has been mistreated by her new owner, a junk dealer, and becomes a pack horse.  Donovan, in the meantime, has moved to the city and become a police officer.  Beaumont is still down on his luck and making sad attempts to gamble his way back into fortune.  The former owner and trainer reconnect in a meet-cute that could have easily gone the other way, and find out that Confederacy will be racing in the Futurity, a stakes race for trotters, with Donovan's son Danny (Winston Miller) as jockey.  They pool their money and place it all on Confederacy.  At the same time, a chance encounter alerts them to the whereabouts of Virginia's Future.  Will things end happily ever after for all involved?  Have you ever seen a movie?

There aren't very many reviews of this film online, but those that exist make much of the fact that the film, supposedly told from the point of view of Virginia's Future, contains scenes that the horse couldn't possibly be privy to.  To which I say, so what?  One can't expect a children's film from the 1920s to live up to the realistic standards we seem to want to impose on all our movies nowadays.  And that's just what this is: a children's story.  The narration by the horse is a clever gimmick to a) make the film stand out a little bit more from the rest, and b) keep the children watching engaged during some of the more grown-up centred parts of the film.  To their arguments, I say this:  Balderdash!!!

That's not to say that Kentucky's Pride is perfect.  Far from it.  There is some cringeworthy stuff in here, not the least of which is a stereotypical black butler (George Reed) who shuffles and bows and smiles as big as he can, all whilst the title cards outline his dialogue in the most racist way possible.  I realize that this may sound a little hypocritical coming after the previous paragraph, but I've seen hundreds if not thousands of films from the classic Hollywood era, and this is right up there with the cringiest stuff.  This stuff would have been considered over the top even in 1925 -- at least in more, shall we say, cultured circles.

While Ford the artiste takes a back seat to Ford the hired hand in this one, there are still a few things that caught my eye.  There is an interesting effect used for the moment Virginia's Future is born and begins to see, as the image starts out blurry and then becomes less so as the seconds tick by.  It's also noteworthy for its POV shot, as the camera -- in a rarity for a John Ford film -- is not locked in place but is supposed to be representing the horse moving her head around trying to look at things.  There is also some great cutting during the Futurity race; and even though in the print I watched there was no sound, I found myself caught up in the action, and even mesmerized at times.  

J Farrell MacDonald once again steals the show here with some really great acting: less over the top as compared to The Iron Horse, but some really heartfelt scenes.  I'm recalling specifically the scene in which Mrs. Beaumont orders him to kill Virginia's Future.  The emotions that he displays on his face are truly heartbreaking.  

Kentucky Pride is definitely a lesser work by a renowned master of his art, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't go unseen.  While the complete absence of a soundtrack may put many people off, the print is very good, and the film moves quickly enough that if you've trained yourself to watch silent movies, it's less of a task than might first be thought.

Five galloping geldings out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - The Iron Horse (1924)

THE IRON HORSE (1924)

Starring:  George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull, Cyril Chadwick, Will Walling, Francis Powers, J Farrell MacDonald, Jim Welch, George Waggner, Fred Kohler, James A Marcus, Gladys Hulette

Writers:  Charles Kenyon & John Russell

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman

Music:  SILENT (contemporary score by Christopher Caliendo)

B&W, 2h 30m (international cut); 2h 13m (US cut), 1.33:1 presentation.

Released on:  August 28, 1924 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

So goes one of the more famous quotes from classic cinema, uttered by Carleton Young in Ford's own elegiac 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  And that is precisely what Ford does in 1924's The Iron Horse.  He takes a historical setting and brings it to life; and while he plays with facts (as did almost all movies of that age), it is done in service of a mythologizing of the then-recent past, the Old West that had just begun fading into history.  

The film is an attempt to portray the moment in time when America became united, both as a people and geographically.  The former by Abraham Lincoln, whose goal was to bring the North and South together, the latter by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, who created a cross-continental train system.  Nowadays, we are aware of how this displaced hundreds of thousands of Native Americans and in the process destroyed countless valuable cultures.  At the time, however, it was a great engineering feat, and was considered part of America's "Manifest Destiny."  I am going through these films chronologically and trying to view them through the lens of their era, but it's hard not to notice certain jarring idioms of the past that no longer play.

At the beginning of the film we are plunked down in Springfield, Illinois, where surveyor David Brandon (James Gordon) dreams of forging a path through to the Pacific Ocean, scoffed at by his friend the businessman Thomas Marsh (Will Walling).  Brandon's son Davy (Winston Miller) and Marsh's daughter Miriam (Peggy Cartwright) are going through a little bit of puppy love, aided by local shopkeeper/future president Abraham Lincoln (Charles Edward Bull).  The two Brandons head west, but the elder Davy perishes at the hand of an Indian ambush led by two-fingered white man Deroux (or Bauman, depending on the print), played by Fred Kohler.  

Skipping a decade and a half or so, we find Lincoln in office as president, and Thomas Marsh now a fervent believer in uniting the country by rail (or at the very least, a fervent believer in profiting from it).  Miriam (now played by Madge Bellamy) is now engaged to one of Marsh's engineers, Jesson (Cyril Chadwick).  Out west, the railroad is being built by numerous Chinese workers and three Oirish Americans, who are what the film decides to focus on.  These men are formerly of the United States Army:  Sgt. Slattery (Francis Powers), Cpl. Casey (J Farrell MacDonald), and Pvt. Schultz (MacKay in the international version), played by Jim Welch.  There is also a traveling saloon keeper/judge named Haller (James A Marcus), a barmaid named Ruby (Gladys Hulette), who may or may not be a member of the world's oldest profession, and historical personalities such as Buffalo Bill Cody (George Waggner) and Wild Bill Hickok (Jack Padjan).  Chief John Big Tree, whose profile was used for the American Indian Head nickel, also appears uncredited as a Cheyenne chief (even though he was really Seneca ... but we'll get into Hollywood and racial casting at a later date).  He would later appear in Stagecoach, Drums Along the Mohawk and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon for Ford.

And then Davy, now grown (and played by George O'Brien) comes into the picture.  Deroux/Bauman is a land speculator who wants the railway to go through his property, and Davy knows of a pass through the mountains which can shave 200 miles off, which his father told him about shortly before his untimely demise.  Deroux/Bauman asks Jesson to make Davy disappear, but Davy survives the attempt.  What will happen next?  Will America be united?  Will Davy and Miriam be united?  Find out in ... The Iron Horse!!!

John Ford was now 30 years old and had dozens of short films and features under his belt by this time, but this was truly a step up for him.  He had done Westerns in the great outdoors, but this film is truly where his career really took off.  It is the type of film that you think of when you think of epic:  historical, fantastic landscapes, but keeps you engaged with the personal stories going on. 

There are two different versions of the film, the US theatrical cut, and the International version, which went out to Britain and the rest of the world.  The American cut is a quarter of an hour longer, although I couldn't think of any scenes that were out and out deleted.  Rather, Ford was emphatic about editing his films in camera, meaning he wouldn't let the studios fudge up his vision.  Therefore much of the international cut is made out of alternate takes and lesser footage.  So we have fewer of the insert shots that makes Ford films truly Fordian, and the establishing and linking shots are a lot shorter as well.  

Another thing I noticed is the naming of some characters, and what they signify.  The villain, played by Fred Kohler, is named Deroux in the US cut, and in the international cut he's called Bauman.  This plays in to the inherent racism (and their subtle differences) in the United States and elsewhere.  The American cut names its villain Deroux in the time-honoured tradition of derogating what was then called the half-breed.  A major stereotype of that time was the half-indigenous, half-caucasian, who often had a French last name, because of course he did (actually, it was probably because the French had done much of the discovery of the interior of the continent).  The international cut, however, gives the semitic name Bauman to its villain, perhaps in an attempt to tap into the subconscious (or in many cases at that time, the quite conscious) prejudices towards Jewish people.

The most noticeable change is that the American version worships at the altar of Abraham Lincoln.  The film is dedicated to him (in the international version it's dedicated to George Stephenson, known as the "father of the railways" in Britain), and there are numerous intertitles espousing his genius and brilliance.  

The story as a whole, however, remains unchanged.  After prostrating itself in the opening titles before the American God that was Abraham Lincoln, we are introduced to him somewhat innocuously, as an average man in Springfield, enjoying the interplay between two young people.  No mention, aside from his name, is made of what he would be in the future, and indeed even when we meet him later, we see less of him as a majestic presidential personality but rather as a normal man.  In fact, the international version has Lincoln walking through the White House in a ramrod straight manner, with people standing by respectfully as if he were a monarch; the American version has him shuffling, wiping his forehead, and people talking to him as he goes by, much in keeping with him as a man of the people.  In fact, when Miriam introduces him to her fiance Jesson, the side-eye and shade Lincoln throws him is epic.  It's like we just walked into an episode of Abraham Lincoln's Train Race!

The Iron Horse is chock full of John Ford's signature visual flourishes.  There is a beautiful use of closeups when Davy and Miriam part as children.  When the railroad builders are ambushed by the natives, the carnage is silhouetted on the side of a railcar.  And this is the film in which Ford perfected his storytelling.  We see a funeral by the side of the tracks, with a widow crying, but the camera is a fair distance away, and shows behind the woman the people of the temporary town picking up and moving on.  Life goes on, he seems to say, even while he indulges in sentimentality.  Again, Ford's duality is at play here.

The contemporary score on the Fox DVD is by Christopher Caliendo, who takes a page out of the master's books and peppers his score liberally with folk tunes of the ilk Ford would use in his later sound films, such as "Oh Susannah" and "Blow The Man Down."  The orchestrations are subtle in intimate scenes and rousing in the epic battle scenes.  It's a great modern-day score of a classic silent film.

As for the performances, two of them stood out for me.  This was a star-making turn for George O'Brien, and while he would continue to develop as an actor, both as a lead (FW Murnau's brilliant Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans) and a character actor (including many of Ford's later films), the energy he brings to this role is infectious.  And I cannot conclude this review without mentioning J Farrell MacDonald, who plays Corporal Casey.  It's a wonderful performance, ranging the gamut from rubber-faced comedy to tearful sentimentality.  Every time he was on screen I couldn't take my eyes off him.  The scene in the barbershop -- which could easily have been cut out of the film without changing anything -- is right up there with Chaplin and Keaton.  Apparently he did 25 films with John Ford, so I'm looking forward to seeing him in future Ford endeavours.  

There are so many wonderful moments in this movie that I'd still be writing tomorrow if I discussed them all.  Suffice it to say, this is the film that made John Ford a household name, and for good reason.  While parts of it have definitely dated over the past 98 years, it is as gripping and entertaining as it must have been a whole century ago.  For any film lover worth their salt, this is a must-see, not just for entertainment's value but to see a true master hit his stride.

Nine and a half exhilarating engines out of ten.