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.
No comments:
Post a Comment