John Ford Retrospective - Born Reckless (1930)

BORN RECKLESS (1930)

Starring:  Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Frank Albertson, Marguerite Churchill, William Harrigan, Lee Tracy, Warren Hymer, Ilka Chase, Ferike Boros, Paul Porcasi, Joe Brown, Ben Bard, Pat Somerset, Eddie Gribbon, Mike Donlin, Paul Page

Writer:  Dudley Nicholas (based on the novel "Louis Berretti" by Donald Henderson Clarke

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman

Editor:  Frank E Hull

B&W, 1h 22m.  1.20:1 ratio.

Released on:  May 11, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set

What a difference a year makes.  On May 8, 1929, John Ford's film The Black Watch was released, and while an entertaining film, the dialogue registers today as very stilted and slow.  Why?  Sound film was in its infancy, and studios were trying to figure out how listening to dialogue would affect an audience.  It was thought that actors needed to enunciate slowly and clearly, and often loudly -- playing to the back row, in theatre parlance -- in order for moviegoers to accept talking pictures.  What filmmakers hadn't counted on was the fact that when the faces were looming large on the screen above, audiences had no problem telling the emotions of characters.

A year later, on May 11, 1930, Born Reckless, also directed by Ford, was released into a world that, like the film industry, was very much in tumult.  America and the world had been plummeted into what would become known as the Great Depression, which would last the better part of ten years.  Hollywood was forging ahead with its new experiments in sound film, and even two-strip Technicolor.  All this is to say, that Born Reckless must have been seen as a new breed of cinema to those curious early 1930 cinema audiences.

The interesting thing for me is that Born Reckless was released in 1930, a year before Little Caesar and The Public Enemy -- which are universally acknowledged to have kicked off the gangster film -- came out.  It is the type of film that seems like it could have been written for James Cagney.  The dialogue is quick and snappy, and full of early 20th century slang.  The pace slows after that, but as in a Baz Luhrmann film, the energy of the first quarter of the film for the most part carries us through the slower parts.

Our protagonist is Luigi "Louis" Berretti (Edmund Lowe), a hoodlum in New York in the late 1910s, just before America entered the war.  He lives at home with his mother (Ferike Boros) and father (Paul Porcasi, an Italian-born actor whose use of the Sicilian dialect is used to comedic effect that probably would have gone over the heads of at least three quarters of US audiences back then), and his sister Rosa (Marguerite Churchill).  He and his gang, including Big Shot (Warren Hymer), Good News Brophy (William Harrigan), Joe Bergman (Ben Bard), Duke (Pat Somerset), and Bugs (Eddie Gribbon), get in trouble for trying to rob a bank, and are called before District Attorney Cardigan (Roy Stewart).  With the help of local reporter Bill O'Brien (Lee Tracy), Louis is able to swing a deal to get sent overseas and serve in the army.

While in training camp he meets Frank Sheldon (Frank Albertson), a rich young man whose uncle Jim (Edwards Davis) and sister Joan (Catherine Dale Owen) are able to visit before they go overseas.  Ward Bond and Jack Pennick appear as scowling sergeants here.  When they do get overseas, the movie gets very Fordian, as the director spends about fifteen minutes indulging in raucous masculine hijinks, including Louis' flirtation with a French waitress (Yola d'Avril).  Upon returning home, sans a few comrades thanks to the unseen Battle of the Argonne, he reconnects with his family, folks from his old neighborhood, and gives his respects to Joan, who is set to marry Dick Milburn (an uncredited Randolph Scott).  He starts a nightclub which soon becomes the hottest spot in town, but being in the same place, his past is never far behind him.  Can he keep his nose clean?

While Lowe is good in the role, Cagney would have been dynamite.  Lowe has charisma for sure, and nails the physical part of the role (could it be Cagney stole some of his Cagney-isms from Edmund Dantes Lowe?).  Like the Count of Monte Cristo he was named for, Lowe is just a little too well put-together and soft-spoken not to mention being a bigger, more lumbering person than the five foot five Cagney, whose movements were informed by both his scrappy childhood growing up in the Bowery and his training as a professional dancer.  It's unfair of me to compare Lowe to James Cagney, I know ... but one can't help but wonder what the Warner Bros. star would have done with such a role.  Warren Hymer is great as Big Shot, bringing a likeability to what is essentially a villainous role.  I was impressed by Marguerite Churchill, who brings a nice intensity to the role of Rosa, Louis' sister.  And Lee Tracy was just fine as the fast-talking, wisecracking reporter Bill O'Brien.  

The film itself gives a fine representation of a New York neighborhood, and very much captures the vibe of the period (in fact, one might say that the pre-World War I scenes are a little too modern from a historical point of view, but that was the norm in Hollywood at that time).  The backlot set is very much like that which would be seen in countless gangster films over the next decade or so, from The Public Enemy all the way through to 1939's The Roaring Twenties (my personal favourite gangster film of the era).  The scenes overseas in France run a little too long, however.  They don't add character, as we already know who these people are; the film would be little over an hour without these scenes, though, so perhaps they were added to prop up the runtime?

Regardless, when we return to America after the wartime interlude, the pace of the film quickens.  In a series of episodes we see a decade pass over the course of perhaps ten minutes.  The climax of the film involves the kidnapping of a child of the well-to-do, and I had assumed it was a take on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, but upon researching it later I realized that the Lindbergh kidnapping didn't happen until 1932, two years later.  Ford, who while indulging his buffoonish tendencies during the sequences in France, has heretofore kept his cinematic prowess fairly restrained, lets out the stopper during the last reel of the film.  Louis' approach of the criminal compound on Long Island is blanketed with some great smoke machine work, which gives the film something of a film noirish tinge about fifteen years before the term was coined.  This mood continues when, upon returning to his nightclub for a showdown with Big Shot, the swinging doors are suddenly covered with his profile in shadow, seconds before he enters the frame.  There is also a shockingly abrupt dolly pullback between those same swinging doors after shots are fired, which serves the dual purpose of enhancing the shock caused by the loud gunshots and put the viewer on edge, while at the same time quickly pulling away from any actual violence being shown on film.  While the Hays Code wouldn't go into effect for another four years, censorship was still very much a thing in 1930, albeit left in the hands of government censors of the states and provinces.  The movement also makes us crane our necks in anticipation of who exactly won the duel.

Born Reckless is not a perfect film, but it is a surprisingly good early gangster film.  There had been others in the past (Fritz Lang's epic four and a half hour saga, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, Von Sternberg's 1927 masterpiece Underworld) and would be countless more going forward, but in terms of sound films out of Hollywood, I was surprised, pleasantly so, to discover that this early prototype of a soon to be ubiquitous genre can still very much hold its own.

Seven and a half generous gangsters out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Men Without Women (1930)

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1930)

Starring:  Kenneth MacKenna, Frank Albertson, J. Farrell MacDonald, Warren Hymer, Paul Page, Walter McGrail, Stuart Erwin, George LeGuere, Charles K. Gerrard, Ben Hendricks Jr, Harry Tenbrook, Warner Richmond

Writer:  Dudley Nicholas (based on a story by John Ford & James Kevin McGuinness)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Walter Thompson

Music:  Carli Elinor

B&W, 1h 17m.  1.37:1 ratio.

Released on:  January 31, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube Movies & Shows

Apparently there was a John Ford Universe 78 years before the term cinematic universe entered the mainstream.  Remember Salute, the last Ford film I reviewed?  Remember Midshipman Albert Edward Price (played by Frank Albertson), the jokey roommate of Paul Randall?  Well, he shows up in this movie, and he's an ensign now.  He shows up in Shanghai to accept his first post on US submarine S13.  Also on board the sub are Chief Torpedoman Burke (Kenneth MacKenna), Jenkins the radioman (Stuart Erwin), and the usual gang of plebs and roster-fillers, such as the elder statesman of the sub, Costello (J. Farrell MacDonald), Kaufman (Warren Hymer), Handsome (Paul Page), Murphy (Ben Hendricks Jr), Joe Cobb (Walter McGrail), Curly Pollock (George LeGuere), and Dutch Winkler (Harry Tenbrook).  Soon after it leaves port, it collides with another ship in a storm (filmed in a rare mis-step for John Ford with obvious miniatures).  Soon, it is up to a British ship led by Commander Weymouth (Charles K. Gerrard) and Lieutenant Commander Briddwell (Warner Richmond) to try to save them before their oxygen runs out.  Not all make it.  Oh -- and one of the crewmen of S13 is not who he claims to be.

This is a fascinating film for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's an amalgamation of different styles of film.  While it was filmed and released as a sound film, only portions of the recorded dialogue remain, as the only extant copy is of the international sound version.  For those unfamiliar with such a term, let me explain.  In the days of silent cinema, films were easy to send to other countries for international presentation; all that was needed was to exchange the English intertitles with those in the language of whichever country happened to buy the print.  

The advent of sound technology presented a problem to filmmakers.  All of a sudden films with dialogue were limited to audiences familiar with the language in which they were filmed.  So in the late 1920s and early 1930s producers and studios usually went one of two routes.  One, they filmed simultaneously (usually at night on the same sets as the main production) with different casts and often a different director (well-known examples of these include the 1931 Spanish version of Dracula, the 1930 German version of Anna Christie -- which kept Garbo as its star but replaced the rest of the cast -- and the English and French versions of Fritz Lang's 1931 masterpiece, M).  The other way to distribute films to other countries was to produce an international sound version, which is what we have here.  In such an edit, the dialogue is removed for the most part and replaced with intertitles in the language of choice, while music and sound effects were generally kept.  To modern eyes and ears, this appears quite jarring, and if a viewer were unaware of the history behind the international sound version of any given production, said film would seem to be quite the train wreck.  Even armed with such knowledge, it does take a while to get comfortable and attune to the rhythm of the piece.

History lesson over!

As mentioned before, this was quite a surprise, especially coming off of Salute, and especially because the first ten or fifteen minutes, with the sailors carousing around bars in Shanghai, are generally unfocused and seem to have no point.   Bear with it, because this portion of the movie builds the characters and personalities.  In many war movies, the characters are either stock stereotypes or interchangeable; in Men Without Women, they are all a piece of the whole, and the film would be lesser without any of them.  The title, by the way, references the fact that the majority of the film is set on a submarine, and the cast (with the exception of some ladies of the night in Shanghai) are all men.  

John Ford is known for his epic westerns, his vast landscapes and painterly images.  What a shock it was, then, to watch this intense, claustrophobic film set in basically one room for more than half the picture.  The tension is palpable, and there are some great insert shots, especially of a wooden boat that a crewman carves which has a callback later in the film.  This is not a perfect film, and aside from the military connection and the first fifteen minutes (which scream John Ford), it could easily have been filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, such is the harrowing tension at times.  Trivia note:  apparently John Wayne appears in the film as an extra, but I couldn't place him.

Seven suffering submariners out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Salute (1929)

SALUTE (1929)

Starring:  George O'Brien, Helen Chandler, Joyce Compton, William Janney, Stepin Fetchit, Frank Albertson, David Butler, Lumsden Hare, Clifford Dempsey, Ward Bond, John Wayne (uncredited)

Writer:  James Kevin McGuinness (based on the story by Tristram Tupper & John Stone)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Alex Troffey

B&W, 1h 24m.  1.20:1 ratio.

Released on:  September 1, 1929 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Internet Archive

It's a tad frustrating going through this period in John Ford's filmography, as there are some flashes of brilliance in certain films (Four Sons, The Black Watch), and yet others can't seem to hit their mark.  This is true especially for ostensible comedies (The Blue Eagle, Riley the Cop).  I don't know if Ford was in the doghouse at this time, or whether the masculine, very American bonding sport that is college football held a sort of attraction for him, but this is definitely not the sort of film you would expect to see John Ford making.  It's like watching Steven Spielberg make a movie about video gamers.  On second thought, hmmmm ....

Our protagonist is Paul Randall (William Janney), a young man who descends from a long line of military and sporting heroes.  His father, Rear Admiral John Randall (Lumsden Hare) and uncle Major General Somers (Clifford Dempsey) are at or near the top of their respective divisions, and his brother John Randall (George O'Brien) is a star football player at West Point (for the uninitiated, Annapolis is the Navy training college and West Point holds the same place in the Army).  Family friend Marian Wilson (Joyce Compton) tends to play each brother off the other, adding to the friendly rivalry between the two siblings.  

Attended by his family's butler/servant/racist stereotype Smoke Screen (Stepin Fetchit), Paul heads to Annapolis and immediately befriends one Albert Edward Price (Frank Albertson) and begins a slow flirtation with local lass Nancy Wayne (Helen Chandler, whose claim to fame would be playing Mina Harker in the 1931 Dracula).  He gets into trouble with upperclassman Harold (Ward Bond) and his two sidekicks (John Wayne & Ben Hall).  This was Wayne's first speaking role -- though uncredited -- in a Ford film.  He would have many more in the future, especially after his star-making turn in Stagecoach ten years later.  Some hijinks at a dance ensue, and the undersized Paul tries out for the football team (the coach is played by David Butler, a one time silent film stalwart who became a serviceable musical comedy director in Hollywood's golden age; this was one of his last roles before transitioning).  Will he be able to get into the game, and make a name for himself in sport?  Have you ever seen a film?

That's pretty much it, as there's not much of a story, more a series of vignettes.  Paul is shy and hesitant, his brother John is a confident go-getter.  A young but recognizable John Wayne is ordered by a visibly younger and near-unrecognizable Ward Bond to throw a pie at Paul.  Stepin Fetchit rambles around muttering gibberish while being patronized.  Ward Bond is the comedic highlight of the movie during the dance scene, which takes up almost a quarter of the 84-minute film ("My sister Susan).  Character actor Lee Tracy shows up in his first role (uncredited) as a football announcer.  And the last 15-20 minutes are devoted to a football game in which you can't tell either team apart, and Paul pulls a Rudy nineteen years before Daniel Ruettiger was even born.

This movie was released on September 1, 1929.  In less than two months, Black Friday would send the world spiralling into the Great Depression.  Thus, Salute occupies an interesting place in history, not necessarily film history but American cultural history.  It is set between the interwar years, in which the United States, after playing a key factor in helping the Allies win the Great War, had retreated into a very isolationist foreign policy.  The American military, therefore, was very much an afterthought in the minds of the general public, who were much more focused on having fun after the horrors of the previous decade.  When you think of the 1920s you think jazz, flappers, the Charleston, college spirit, sporting events, and odd novelty fads like playing the ukelele and flagpole sitting.  Even though Prohibition was in effect, the alcohol and good times were flowing, and speculation in the stock markets was running rampant, as people borrowed on credit with money they didn't actually own in order to finance their pleasures and dreams.  This would all come crashing down, of course, but at the point in time where Salute sits, it was a very "sky's the limit," optimistic time.  There's an innocence and unbridled joy that flows through the film, a pervading attitude that gives it a somewhat old-fashioned charm, which through the lens of history is tinged with a melancholy for what would soon follow.

Ford uses newsreel footage of parades and games (potentially ten minutes out of the runtime was borrowed by the master to tell his story), and it's impressive seeing the crowds of people turning out in the stands, and the amount of marching bands on the field.  Also pretty cool was seeing the cheerleaders of the time, who were actually spirit squads comprised of men to pep up the audiences at a game (the football cheerleading squads as we know them today were actually only introduced during the 1940s, when the majority of American men were overseas in World War II). 

Where there is good, there is often bad, and the most egregious portion of this film is Stepin Fetchit.  I get that his character is supposed to fill the role played by the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear, i.e. a seemingly stupid person who actually knows more than the other characters do, but it's cringingly embarrassing to watch his performance nowadays.  There are a few things from classic Hollywood movies that are outdated now, but most classic movie fans are able to put themselves back in time and accept the conventions for what they are.  Not so for racial "humour" such as this.  Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit's real name) made a career for himself playing this type of character, and eventually became a millionaire doing so.  It's just a shame that the culture and prevailing attitudes of the time encouraged this type of portrayal of non-whites in films for a very long time.

A less passionate gripe I have is with the way John Ford chose to end the football game.  I understand that, being pretty much the Michael Bay of his time (although better respected by film critics!), he didn't want to upset any portion of the American military, and thus chose to end the game in a tie between the Army and Navy.  As a viewer, however, we have been following Paul's story (George O'Brien, while top billed, is really only a supporting character in the film; his lead credit is due to the fact that he was the only major movie star in the cast at the time).  Thus, the ending of the game was a bit of a letdown, as the viewer has been preconditioned to cheer for the underdog Paul and his Navy teammates.  Also, is Helen Chandler the only woman on campus?  Not quite sure if she's the daughter of the dean or some higher-ranked official (we may have been told, but the explanation flew right past me if we were), but outside of the dance, or whenever Joyce Compton decides to show up, she's literally the only person onscreen without a Y chromosome.  Just found it odd, that's all.

Salute is intermittently entertaining.  While it's amusing to see a young John Wayne and Ward Bond throw pies at young recruits and make wisecracks like the kids they portray, and the atmosphere of the film leaves a strong impression, cinematically it could have been directed by anybody, and the vignette-style type of storytelling is a whole lot of episodic claptrap that ultimately leads to nothing of any consequence.  As a historical capture, it's quite interesting, but as a film, this falls short of the goal line.

Four pigskin punters out of ten.

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.