John Ford Retrospective - The Black Watch (1929)

THE BLACK WATCH (1929)

Starring:  Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy, David Torrence, David Rollins, Cyril Chadwick, Lumsden Hare, Roy D'Arcy, David Percy, Mitchell Lewis, Claude King, Walter Long

Writer:  John Stone (based on the novel "King of the Khyber Rifles" by Talbot Mundy); dialogue by James Kevin McGuinness

Cinematography:  Joseph H August

Editor:  Alex Troffey

Music:  William Kernell

B&W, 1h 33m.  1.20:1 ratio.  

Released on:  May 8, 1929 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube

I'm currently reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, and upon watching this, John Ford's first talkie, I can only say that it is a tale of two movies -- in more ways than one.

Visually it's astounding, especially considering he was working within the parameters of early sound technologies.  For many films of the 1929-1931 era, the clunky, noisy cameras put great restraint on the formerly burgeoning cinematic techniques of the late silent period.  The Black Watch, however, is a visual delight, and is, at least to me, the type of movie that pops to mind when imagining a summer escape from reality in Depression era America (although to be honest, this movie was released about a half year before the markets crashed in late October 1929).

On the auditory side of things, however, it's painfully clear that we're watching an early talkie.  Things would improve over the next couple of years, and by 1932 things would be more natural, but in early 1929, when The Black Watch was released, dialogue was delivered very slowly and enunciated very clearly, as it wasn't assumed that audiences would easily be able to follow along.  Dialogue never overlapped, and there were pauses of as much as two or three seconds between when one character would end their speech and the next would begin.  Seen at a distance of 94 years, it seems incredibly archaic and prevents one from fully immersing themselves in the film.  At the time, however, it was all perfectly normal and just another growing pain of a quickly advancing new medium that, forty years earlier, had not even existed.

The plot is somewhat complex, at least for a film of that era.  Our protagonist is one Donald Gordon King, a British Army captain of the Scottish Black Watch regiment, who is assigned by the Field Marshal (David Torrence) to go undercover in India due to his having been raised in the Raj and speaking the multiple languages of the area.  Problem is, this is quite literally the beginning of World War I, and because this is a secret mission, to the rest of the regiment this looks like King bailing on the brotherhood in order to escape the war.  The colonel of the Black Watch (Lumsden Hare) and his assistant, Maj. Twynes (Cyril Chadwick) turn their backs on King, who is only defended by his younger brother, Malcolm (David Rollins).

Upon arriving in the Raj, King is assigned by the General in India (Claude King) to the Khyber Rifles, where he will work with Mohammed Khan (Mitchell Lewis) to infiltrate the inner circle of Yasmani (Myrna Loy), who is gathering quite a following and seems likely to set the natives rising in revolt (you don't say) against the tyranny of the British Empire.  Yasmani's sidekick Rewa Ghunga (Roy D'Arcy) and the leader of the "hillmen," Harrim Bey (Walter Long) are set against this.  A supposedly drunken King assaults and supposedly murders a fellow officer, and somehow escapes from jail to join up with Yasmani's crew (with Mohammed Khan and selected members of the Khyber Rifles in tow) to rescue King's old friend MacGregor (Ford's brother Francis) and other British soldiers who have been captured by them.  All hell breaks loose, the "good guys" win, and King gets to rejoin the Black Watch with his pride and dignity intact.

I've already mentioned the dichotomy between image and sound in this film.  Another thing that sticks in the craw, at least to modern eyes, is the usage -- very prevalent at the time, and not to change for the next fifty years or so -- of obviously Caucasian actors to play characters who are anything but.  Whitewashing, in other words.  And while the performances of the actors in the roles -- Mitchell Lewis is simultaneously amusing and fearsome, Roy D'Arcy plays sinister and deceitful very well -- are fine enough, it's always a bit strange seeing these white British and American actors play ethnic roles.  Mohammed Khan greeting King by calling him Kingsahib is also kind of cringey.  

Ten minutes into the film, we are witness to a horrific performance by some street singers in London.  I have a thought that this was John Ford's way of pulling one over on the new sound audiences.  You want sound in your films, he asks.  Be careful what you wish for!  The film, for all its faults, is not without humor.  The stiff upper lip nonchalance of the British military is lampooned in lines such as, when a character apparently fractures his skull in a fall.  "Awful mess" is the hilariously subdued reply.  And Mitchell Lewis as Mohamed Khan, as mentioned before, is one of the more amusing parts of the film.  He prays, "For all the violence I have displayed towards my fellow man, may Allah forgive me," and promptly assaults somebody else.

There is one performance that grates on me, that of David Rollins.  In Riley the Cop he impressed with his boyishly handsome good looks, but in The Black Watch he opens his mouth to speak and ... well, it's obvious why some people's careers ended with the talkies.  Myrna Loy is another story.  From a visual standpoint one can understand why there's a cult of personality around her character; she's lit fantastically and wears the most lusciously shimmering sheer gowns.  It's hard to believe this is the same person who ten years later was known as America's favorite housewife, but yes -- Myrna Adele Williams from Radersburg, Montana had quite a career in the late 1920s and early 1930s being typecast as a sultry exotic beauty.  Soundwise it's a different story -- her.  lines.  are.  delivered.  so.  so.  soooooooooo.  slowly -- and damn near puts you to sleep.  

For me, the best parts of the film are when King is in India.  The bookend scenes at the Black Watch regiment I found quite stagy and boring, and Ford overindulges in sentimentality here, especially when the troops march off to war in France and leave King behind, a scene that lasts over eight minutes that could have been done in one and a half, or better yet, not at all, as we don't really get to know any of these people.  For this very reason, the one scene from World War I (set in a forest, apparently, not the trenches) is a bit awkward, and seems shoehorned in there.  

Viewed from a lens of 94 years in the future, there is a lot in The Black Watch that makes it a difficult watch.  While I can't recommend it to everyone, if you are able to place yourself into the mindset of someone from the late 1920s, it's quite entertaining and visually stunning, despite its faults.

Five and a half ornate occupiers out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Riley the Cop (1928)

RILEY THE COP (1928)

Starring:  J. Farrell MacDonald, Nancy Drexel, David Rollins, Louise Fazenda, Harry Schultz

Writers:  Fred Stanley & James Gruen

Cinematography:  Charles G. Clarke

Editor:  Alex Troffey

Music:  Erno Rapee (musical director) & S.L. Rothafel (music arranger)

B&W, 1h 8m.  1.20:1 presentation.

Released on:  November 25, 1928 by Fox Film Corporation.  

My experience:  YouTube

Well, I guess I was wrong about Hangman's House being John Ford's final silent film, as while Riley the Cop was made at the beginning of the sound era and has a musical score, it is still a silent film, of the sort Chaplin made in the 1930s (I'm specifically referencing 1931's City Lights and 1936's Modern Times).  Reflecting on it, I am reminded that I should leave preconceived notions at the door, and accept films for what they are.  I like to think that I do this anyways but at times I'm afraid I do fall into the trap on the odd occasion.

To wit, this viewing.  Having recently watched a few films in which John Ford playing in the cinematic sandbox, utilizing expressionism, light and shadow, and his usual masterful camera placement, I was originally quite disappointed with Riley the Cop, which started off well enough with an interesting shot of the titular policeman's shadow on a cement sidewalk.  I settled into my chair expecting a police drama with lots of chiaroscuro lighting and was a bit perplexed when it turned out to be a character comedy.  No cinematic tricks, not much of a storyline to speak of.  I was, quite frankly, disappointed.  My original thoughts were that Ford must have been a director for hire on this one, and just phoned it in whilst in the midst of one of his drunken stupors.  But something in the film stuck with me, and upon reflection I realized I was bringing my own preconceptions to the table.  While nobody will mistake Riley the Cop for a masterpiece, it is a decent enough comedy and Ford seems to be enjoying focusing on the comedic elements rather than the technical.

Many of Ford's films are populated with side characters who serve as comic relief from the main storyline.  Now imagine a film ignoring said main story, and focusing its gaze on the side characters for a whole movie.  That, essentially, is what Riley the Cop does.  In fact, one of Ford's favourite character actors, J. Farrell MacDonald, who he cast in many of his films in comedic sidekick roles over the years, is the titular Riley, which further hammers home this theory.  Riley is the type of cop who does the least amount of work possible, content to walk his beat talking to people, playing stickball games with young kids (and running away after breaking a window), and encouraging bylaw breakers to move to another cop's beat.  This bothers the sticklers in his squad, such as Krausmeyer (Harry Schultz), to no end.  In fact, Riley hasn't made an arrest in twenty years of service.  He encourages the romance of a young couple on his beat, Davy (David Rollins) and Mary (Nancy Drexel).  

When Mary goes to Europe to visit her aunt for the summer, and Davy -- who works at a bakery -- follows her, having somehow come up with the $5,000 necessary to make the trop -- Riley is dispatched and tasked with bringing him back home on suspicion of misbegotten funds.  While there, he meets Lena Krausmeyer (Louise Fazenda), a woman working at a bierhalle, and goes on an adventure -- prisoner in tow -- from Berlin to Paris, involving in his escapades a Parisian taxi driver (silent comedy star Billy Bevan).  All is right as rain in the end, as these things go.  Boy and girl are reunited, Davy is proven innocent, Riley keeps his job and his German liebchen (and gains an unwelcome brother-in-law), and everyone leaves the theatre happy.

There are some pretty funny moments in Riley the Cop, which I only appreciated when I had taken off my "John Ford is a serious filmmaker and visionary genius" glasses, and seen the film for what it is:  Ford indulging his comic side.  Understandable, after a couple of quite serious efforts in Four Sons and Hangman's House.  While Riley's lack of effort on the job still annoys me, it's still somewhat amusing.  What I really appreciated was that the film went off in directions I wasn't expecting, namely the 1920s style European Vacation back half of the flick.  While Riley is ostensibly the cop and Davy his prisoner, a running gag has the suspected embezzler being the lackadaisical policeman's minder, trying to get him to focus on doing his job rather than larking around the continent.  Another hilarious situation occurs in a hotel room in Paris, in a scene that would not have had a chance of playing six years later, in which Riley wakes up in a hotel room with two attractive females, only to have Lena walk in.  Turns out they were undercover cops escorting their American counterpart back home after a bender at a Parisian nightclub, but the comedy involving Riley, Lena, the two ladies and the cab driver is handled quite well.

At the end of the day, Riley the Cop is both an unusual yet quite Fordian entry in John Ford's filmography.  If you're expecting a piece of cinematic genius like The Searchers or The Grapes of Wrath, you'll be sorely disappointed.  If you take it as what it is, a lighthearted silent comedy, you'll be entertained.  How much is entirely up to you.  YMMV.

Six procrastinating policemen out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Hangman's House (1928)

HANGMAN'S HOUSE (1928)

Starring:  Victor McLaglen, June Collyer, Earle Foxe, Larry Kent, Hobart Bosworth

Writer:  Philip Klein, from a scenario by Marion Orth (based on the novel by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne)

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman

Editing:  Margaret Clancey

Music:  SILENT (contemporary score by Tim Curran)

B&W, 1h 11m.  1.33:1 presentation.

Released on:  May 13, 1928 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set.

Hangman's House is a bit of a transitional affair for John Ford.  It was his final silent feature film before Hollywood went all in for sound (his previous film, Four Sons, had a music and effects track but that was done after filming ended).  It's entertaining enough, and has some nice touches from the master, who is obviously enjoying being able to portray his beloved Ireland once more.  I wasn't able to fully immerse myself in this one as I had for his previous venture.  It's a short film at just over 70 minutes, and while it held my attention for the most part, I did find myself checking to see how much longer it was until the end of the film.  

I think part of the issue I had was that Ford chose to devote equal attention to our three leads, and the divided attention, at least for me, led to difficulties in fully immersing myself into the plot.  The story, such as it is, consists of the following:  French Legionnaire commander Hogan (Victor McLaglen) is an Irish patriot who has a bounty on his head at home (it's not stated outright, but it's pretty clear he's a top man in the IRA).  Upon arriving at base camp after a patrol he is given a letter, and after reading it hightails it back home ... to kill a man (buh buh BUM!!!).  After this prelude, we are introduced to erstwhile lovers Dermot McDermot (Larry Kent) and Connaught O'Brien (June Collyer), whose father Lord Justice O'Brien (Hobart Bosworth) has presided over many hangings and is hated by the local populace.  He who has spent his life judging others finds himself inching closer to his own Judgment Day, as he only has a short while to live before he expires.  

Before he shuffles off his mortal coil, he basically gaslights his own daughter into marrying John D'Arcy (Earle Foxe), a supreme douchebag who is only in it for the O'Brien fortune and is known throughout Ireland as an informer.  Hogan returns back home only to be ratted out to the British constabulary during a horse race in which D'Arcy has bet everything against Connaught's horse, The Bard.  If we didn't know D'Arcy was no good, we now find out as he shoots the horse down in cold blood after it wins the race.  From thereon in our three male leads are on a collision course with destiny, and everything comes to a head at the titular mansion.

Hangman's House may be most famous nowadays for being the earliest featured appearance of John Wayne in a Ford film, and indeed he can be seen during the St. Stephen's race, whooping and hollering up a storm.  It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it part approximately 39 minutes in, but even then his onscreen magnetism draws your attention.

As to the film proper:  there are some really nice cinematic touches, and the photography is sublime, yet it almost seems as if Ford half-assed this film.  Parts of it are superior, and then there are times when it seems as if the master is directing in his sleep, with some scenes seeming as if they were filmed by your average journeyman director who is solely in it because that's what the studio assigned him to.  Or perhaps I'm wishing too much for every Ford feature to be "classic Ford" -- an assumption which is entirely unrealistic.  

At any rate, we start off nicely in the O'Brien mansion, as we see Lord Justice O'Brien sitting in front of a fire, experiencing pangs of conscience after realizing his time on Earth is ticking away.  We see him from behind the fire, with the flames flickering before him (a cinematic representation of the hellfire he will soon find himself subsumed in?).  Masterfully, Ford has chosen to have over the character's shoulder a painting of him in full Lord Justice regalia, staring intensely down at his living avatar as a constant reminder as to what got him in this position.  When we change camera angles, we view the fire from O'Brien's p.o.v., and what he sees is horrifying indeed, as we witness a very expressionistic impression of a hanging in silhouette, followed by floating, disembodied, blindfolded heads of some of the men he sent to their deaths, and ending in a montage of the screaming, jeering crowds of the families by whose hand he has destroyed.  This combination of both expressionism and Eisensteinian montage show Ford at the top of his game, and deftly keeping up to date with, and putting his own distinctive stamp on, what was then the latest in cinematic technique.

Later in the film, Ford films O'Brien's death in a simple yet effective way.  We see O'Brien sitting in front of the fire again, this time in profile with his hand on his walking stick.  As he expires, the frame is blurred out with the exception of an iris around the chair in which he sits.  His movement slows, then stops.  His handkerchief drops from his hand, followed by the stick, and in short order his hand.  A man who gave no thought to the deaths of others in his life has his own existence snuffed out impersonally and without anyone seeing his face.  A wonderful cinematic expression, and a fitting end to his character.

Ford also makes nice use out of shadows and fog, first when Hogan returns to Ireland, crossing the fields, and later on when Dermot McDermot (that name, though!) and Connaught make their way through the marshes to Hogan's hideaway.  These marshes, by the way, look like they could very well have been reused sets from F.W. Murnau's 1927 masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.  If so, this would mark the second straight film for which Ford reused Murnau's sets (actually done by Rochus Gliese); in Four Sons, the New York City street was used (and shot in much the same way as it was in the German director's film).  Another thing I noticed about Hangman's House is that it used many more closeups than usual for a Ford film, as the director usually preferred long shots, moving in to medium when he felt the situation called for it.  He was able to work with some wonderfully expressive faces in this film, so perhaps that played into it.  The climactic scene, which involves a burning mansion, is well done (with the exception of the fact it was obviously shot at night and some reaction shots look to have been filmed during the day).  

We need to talk about Earle Foxe for a moment.  I had not heard of him before I started going through Ford's oeuvre, and after a quick scour of IMDb, apart from a small role in Mary of Scotland and uncredited roles in The Informer and My Darling Clementine, he never worked with Ford again.  In fact most of his film roles after 1928 were miniscule.  I'm not sure if his voice didn't pick up well by early microphones, or if it was because he founded and was president of a military academy from 1928 onwards (Foxe was a veteran of WWI), but regardless, in the three Ford films in which he starred, he was fantastic.  I mean this in the best possible way, but he makes for a great villain in that he had the kind of face you just want to punch.  In Upstream, he plays an egotistical, untalented actor who lets fame go to his head; in Four Sons, a smaller role, he is a cold and sadistic military man; and in Hangman's House he plays a dissolute, petulant, cowardly man whose inner life shines on his face.  It's a fantastic silent film performance.

This is the first surviving John Ford film in which Victor McLaglen appeared, and there would be many more to follow.  Here he is almost a revelation, being young, sturdy and full of life, a far cry from his Oscar-winning Gypo Nolan from The Informer just seven years later.  POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR A 95-YEAR OLD MOVIE:  for those who are wondering why Hogan looks sad and defeated at the end of the film, after defeating his enemy and seeing the good guy get the girl, this is my take:  he finds fleeting joy in this, but realizes at the end of the day that nothing he does will ever bring his sister back.  END OF SPOILERS.

After sitting with this film for a little bit, I'm inclined to give it more leeway than I had previously.  While I still think the film's focus is somewhat scattered, and parts of it look phoned in, Hangman's House -- while still a minor entry in the Ford canon -- is still a solid silent film with more to recommend to it than your average pre-Vitaphone melodrama.  Ford appropriates some key silent film techniques like expressionism and montage, and delivers a decent enough time-waster.

It was with the arrival of sound that Ford truly came into his own and began forging new paths as a director.  While there would be growing pains, he was well and truly on his way to becoming John Ford.

Six and a half vile villains out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Four Sons (1928)

FOUR SONS (1928)

Starring:  Margaret Mann, James Hall, Charles Morton, Francis X Bushman Jr, George Meeker, June Collyer, Earle Foxe, Albert Gran, Frank Reicher, Archduke Leopold of Austria, Ferdinand Schumann-Heink, Jack Pennick

Writer:  Philip Klein (based on the story "Grandmother Bernle Learns Her Letters" by I.A.R. Wylie)

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman, Charles G Clarke

Editor:  Margaret Clancey

Music:  Christopher Caliendo (modern score, replacing original music and effects)

B&W, 1h 40m.  1.20:1 presentation.

Released on:  February 13, 1928 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set

There would be a few more clunkers going forward, but this, to me, is where John Ford really started to come into his own as a film director.  He takes a very simple story, imbues it with a sense of nostalgia and foreboding, and more than a touch of sentimentality, and comes up with something that almost transcends the time in which it was filmed.  While set in the years before and after (and including) World War I, its themes are unfortunately very much relevant today.

Mother Bernle (Margaret Mann) is a widow living in the German village of Burgerdorf, in Bavaria.  Her four sons are all distinct personalities:  Franz (Francis X Bushman Jr) is a gung-ho cadet in the military; Joseph (James Hall) is an affable country farmer; Johann (Charles Morton) is a steelworker; and Andreas (George Meeker), the youngest, is a shy homebody who spends his time shepherding in the fields.  

The film opens up with the whole village getting together to celebrate the birthday of Mother Bernle.  The village is a close-knit community, with everyone supporting and getting along with each other, including the postman (Albert Gran), the schoolmaster (Frank Reicher) and the burgomeister (August Tollaire).  The balance starts shifting when the sadistic Major von Stomm (Earle Foxe) is posted to the town.  On his first day he takes offense to some straw falling on him from atop Joseph's cart, and physically vents his anger on the young man.

World War I breaks out in the fall of 1914, and all the men in the village are expected to join the army to fight for the fatherland.  While Andreas is still too young to serve, Franz and Johann do their bit for the cause, but Joseph refuses to follow von Stromm's orders and immigrates to America.  He makes a success of himself in the new world, founding a German delicatessen and soon finding a wife and business partner in Annabelle (June Collyer).  When America enters the war in the spring of 1917, Joseph and his friend, an iceman (played by Jack Pennick) join the US army.  

After the war, Mother Bernle is invited by Joseph to come live with him in America, but the old woman is illiterate and must learn her letters in order to pass through Ellis Island.  The villagers of Burgerdorf help her prepare, and farewells are said at the train station.  Once on the continent, however, difficulties arise which force Mother Bernle to stay the night in Ellis Island.  The matriarch escapes and finds herself wandering a huge, strange city trying to find Joseph.  Her son, meanwhile, is frantically combing the city trying to find her after the authorities inform her she has escaped.  All's well that ends well, however (this being a Hollywood movie, after all), and the film ends on a lovely image of grandmother and grandchild sleeping in a chair.

In Four Sons, we are immediately thrust into a wonderful, picturesque Hollywood "Old World" set that really places you firmly in the world it is attempting to create.  The characters and setting are stereotypes, to be sure, but everything is (at first) utterly charming.  The fhirtatious, charmingly bucolic postman played by Albert Graf, along with the schoolmaster and the burgomeister, act as a stand-in for the entire village.  The postman in particular echoes the darkness and loss of innocence that war brings, going from a over-the-top grandiose personality who finds the utmost joy in bringing his fellow villagers letters from afar to, at war's end, a hunched-over, deeply traumatized harbinger of death (there is a wonderfully expressionistic shot of the postman's shadow against the wall, stretching a trembling hand carrying a letter across its surface, a shot which carries a distinct reminiscence of Murnau's 1922 horror classic Nosferatu).  

Ford uses the interplay of light and shadow extraordinarily in Four Sons, which makes sense as much of the film takes place in Germany, which was the birth of expressionist film.  A few examples:  Mother Bernle blesses her sons before they go off to war, but it is filmed in such a way that the shadow of her hand lies heavy on their faces, like a harbinger of doom.  As the troops march off to war down the village's main street, the tombstones of the local cemetery are foregrounded.  After a character dies in the war, a member of their family sits in their bedroom on one of their beds, as the sun shines in an almost religious way on the place they once slept and never will again -- God's light calling them up to Heaven?  

There is an amazing double exposure shot in which Mother Bernle, whose children have either immigrated or gone off to war, is by herself making a dinner and we (and Mother Bernle herself) see her four sons sitting around the dinner table eating, as if they were ghostly visions.  And lastly, less expressionistic but no less effective, after the postman delivers some unwanted news, there is a shot of him standing by the river, with the church reflected upside down in the water (symbolizing the overturning of goodness and virtue).  He throws a rock and it violently shatters the tranquility of the placid waters, in a visual renunciation of God.

There are countless other shots that remain firmly etched in the memory:  a medium close-up of Mother Bernle's hand on a train window before it departs carrying her sons away; a shot in which Johann dips some molten metal into a barrel of water, seemingly filmed from under the surface; and a simple yet devastating shot while silently comments on the destruction war brings, in which, directly after the armistice is announced, some returning veterans file into a church, visibly disabled: the blind, the ones who have lost limbs.  It's a static shot, filmed from afar, but oh so heartrending.  

Unlike later in his career, here Ford experiments with the moving camera, as there are plenty of dollies and tracking shots, including a couple of "how did they ever do that" scenes filmed amongst a throng of people at the railway station.  This film feels alive in every way, something that wasn't always the case in late 1920s Hollywood cinema.

My one complaint would be about one scene set on the battlefield, in which two characters meet in a foxhole.  It's a moving scene, and filmed beautifully, but the situation in which it happens beggars belief.  It's the only false note the film hit for me.  The performances were solid, and even though the characters were pretty much stereotypes (the villain hacks at a cat with his sword, for goodness sake), and there's not much character development, this is not the type of film that screams for such a treatment.  

If you're looking for an old-fashioned wartime melodrama that tugs at your heartstrings, you would be hard pressed to find much better than Four Sons.

Nine sentimental siblings out of ten.