Category: This Film Is 100 Years Old

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Playhouse (1921)

In The Playhouse, Buster Keaton is trapped in a theatre and must perform for us all, forever (until the end, where he gets married for some reason).

Apparently Buster Keaton made this one with a broken ankle, so relies more on his vaudeville background than any particularly elaborate stunts, with the majority of the film having the feel of an episode of The Muppets, with Buster’s various acts going increasingly wrong to the consternation of the cast and crew and the amusement of the audience.

A lot of this is very similar to the previous Buster Keaton/Fatty Arbuckle film, Back Stage, which is also set in a theatre and has an incredibly similar back stage set. But Fatty Arbuckle never sets his fake beard on fire, so I think this one’s probably better overall.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots come from this youtube version.

2. The bit at the end of this, where an obvious mannequin comes flying out of the shattered mermaid tank, is strangely reminiscent, in a sort fo reversed way, of the bit at the end of A Nightmare On Elm Street, where an obvious mannequin gets pulled backwards though a window.

3. The first section of this, in which Buster Keaton plays ever actor on stage, every musician in the orchestra, and every single person in the audience, is pretty astonishing.

4. The multiple exposure stuff is flawless, and technically amazing considering that they still used manually hand-cranked film cameras at the time.

5. It sort of makes my head hurt thinking about how painstakingly accurate they must have been to make it work this well.

6. But also there’s some black face in this bit, I’m afraid.

7. But it’s not too egregiously monstrous, fortunately.

8. Weirdly though the entire section where he’s playing a monkey (orangutan) playing a human genuinely horrified me in ways beyond even the misidentification of the orangutan (an orangutan) as a monkey (not an orangutan).

9. Possibly the mild illness delirium I watched this through is to blame.

10. I do not know.

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Film Information

Title: The Playhouse
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1921
Duration: 22 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Hayseed (1919)

In The Hayseed, Fatty Arbuckle plays a postman who woos a local girl, who is also being pursued by the corrupt local Sheriff. To spoil the plot somewhat, Fatty prevails.

This was another fairly slight Fatty Arbuckle short, in that there’s not much here that’s especially inventive or funny. But what it does have is a kind of charming sweetness that you definitely don’t usually get with Fatty Arbuckle at all.

Also there’s plenty of Luke the Dog, and Buster Keaton does some magic tricks, which he’s, unsurprisingly brilliant, like he is at literally everything else he ever did.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray agai. Stills taken from here, which isn’t the best quality copy, I’m afraid.

2. It’s hard to see on that youtube version, but I also very much liked the sign on the side of the shop that says “There’s no end to our pretzels.”

3. Which is a pretty good joke.

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Film Information

Title: The Hayseed
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1919
Duration: 21 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History (1921)

Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History is the rather hyperbolically titled official footage of the 1921 FA Cup final between Wolves and Spurs at Stamford Bridge, which Spurs won 1-0.

But first, a copyright warning.

It’s good to know that that’s not changed in the last hundred years, at least. Although I am surprised that “Topical Budget” haven’t initiated a takedown notice yet to protect their IP.

There’s some good footage of fans arriving at the stadium, everyone bedecked in flat caps and heavy coats, pipes and cigarettes, even a replica cup or two. All the classics really.

Yet not a replica kit in sight. You have to wonder if these are real fans at all.

The match itself is gloriously wet and muddy, as all old football should be, an endless replication of the football pitches of our youths, just with 60,000 flat capped men watching on excitedly, rather than two furious fathers and a passerby or two walking their dogs.

At the end, in the biggest proof that football has changed beyond all recognition in the last 100 years, (apart from Wolves playing in red and white stripes, as if they used to be Stoke) Spurs win the cup and everyone goes home smiling, even the losers. Even the King.

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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI Player

2. But it’s also on youtube if that’s easier to view.

3. Also I tried in vain to find the Harry Enfield/Mr. Cholmondley-Warner 1990s Liverpool versus 1930s Arsenal match on youtube, but it no longer seems to be there

4. So you’ll just have to imagine that all over again

5. Like I am right now

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Film Information

Title: Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History
Year: 1921
Duration: 7 minutes
Watch: BFI Player ; youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Elsie And The Brown Bunny (1921)

Elsie And The Brown Bunny is an 8-minute advert for Cadbury from 1921, which slightly surprisingly combines two of my favourite things – Alice In Wonderland and documentary footage of industrial processes.

The first half of this is an Alice In Wonderland parody, with Elsie eating chocolates and daydreaming of bunny rabbits. She chases the slightly terrifying brown bunny down a hole. In thanks, he ferries her across the river to the industrial wonderland of a chocolate factory (which I like to think is perhaps an allusion to Orpheus’s descent into hell. Don’t look back, Elsie!).

Inside, Elsie gets a tour of the factory, looking at everything with the same baffling joy that presumably I exhibit while watching all this footage of conveyor belts and production lines and warehouses full of boxes neatly piled in endless rows.

At the end, things take a dystopian turn. The brown bunny shows Elsie the men’s and the women’s recreational areas. The men are all playing cricket and tennis in startling factory fresh whites, all smiles and laughter; the women are dressed in black, dancing and marching in unison in a tiny walled square, trapped in glorious worship to the great god of chocolate himself (a humanoid bunny rabbit).

Elsie, having looked back, wakes to a bunnyless world.

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Notes

1. I watched this over at the BFI site again.

2. It was only now, while watching this, that I realised Bournville was spelt Bournville and not Bourneville

3. Although as they probably haven’t included a Bournville chocolate in anything for 20 years now I can forgive myself this mistake.

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Film Information

Title: Elsie And The Brown Bunny
Year: 1921
Duration: 8 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Tai-ani: The West Gate (1921) / Foo-chow, China (1921) / River Scenery China (1921)

Tai-ani: The West Gate, Foo-chow, China, and River Scenery China are all hundred year old, one minute long, slices of real life from various places in China. Tai-ani: The West Gate and Foo-chow, China are both street scenes, while River Scenery China is footage from a busy river front somewhere. There’s not a lot of information to go with these, unfortunately, with the locations of the first and last one seemingly unknown, although the second one is, as the title suggest, from Fuzhou, but they’re still captivating (to my eye, at least).

It’s nice having the two different camera angles in the two street scenes, as each one provides a nicely different perspective on the events (or non-events) shown. The elevated perspective in the Foo-chow footage, especially, makes it feel like I’m idly watching this out my window while drinking tea/smoking/waiting for a delivery to arrive (delete as appropriate for current procrastination scenarios).

Both of those also feature the near universal constant in these sorts of films of various bystanders unapologetically and unselfconsciously watching the camera, which is another thing I always really like. (Nowadays all you get is studied indifference or reflexive performance).

This camera watching is mostly absent in the river scene, sadly, although there’s a bit of it halfway through. Maybe they’re too busy working to stare.

Or maybe they’re just watching the boats, because they’re beautiful.

I could look at them all day.

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Notes

1. I watched all these on the BFI Player, as usual: Tai-ani: The West Gate; Foo-chow, China; River Scenery China.

2. As I’ve said, I really like minute long shots of anything, pretty much.

3. Somehow, I doubt anyone will be watching any of mine a hundred years from now, though.

4. Unless for some reason my account on youtube is the only surviving artefact of our mysteriously lost civilisation.

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Film Information

Title: Tai-ani: The West Gate
Year: 1921
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title:
Year: 1921
Duration: 1
Watch: BFI Player

Title: River Scenery, China
Year: 1921
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Der Fliegende Koffer (1921)

Der Fliegende Koffer (The Flying Suitcase) is another lovely Lotte Reiniger papercut animation, telling the fairy tale story of a princess imprisoned by her father in a tower to prevent a prophesied curse, only for her imprisonment to be the cause of that curse (this is why time travel is bad).

Anyway, the moral of the story is never imprison your daughter in a tower.

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Notes

1. I watched this on Blu-ray (it’s an extra on the Adventures Of Prince Ahmed video).

2. But got the images from this version on youtube.

3. The disc version is music-less, if that makes any difference.

4. But I think I preferred it that way.

5. Another Lotte Reiniger film, Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens, was the very first thing I ever reviewed on here.

6. Which is nice.

7. I would have reviewed more if I could find any trace of the ones she’s supposed to have made in 1920

8. But I couldn’t, unfortunately.

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Film Information

Title: Der Fliegende Koffer/The Flying Coffer/The Flying Suitcase
Director: Lotte Reiniger
Year: 1921
Duration: 8 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

For some reason, 1920 seems to have been the unofficial year of Jekyll and Hyde, with this film, directed by John S. Robertson, and starring John Barrymore in the title role, one of four separate versions released over the course of the year (although there had been seven versions released prior to 1920, too, so maybe every year was the year of Jekyll and Hyde, to some extent, back then).

In this version, Dr. Jekyll is almost impossibly beautiful, his every expression one of such open kindness that, as he gets slowly sadder and more melancholy as the film progresses, his innocence slowly corrupted by his counterpart’s actions, it feels genuinely heartbreaking. Mr. Hyde, meanwhile, is a figure of leering menace and absolute malevolence, and the contrast between them is so great its almost impossible to remember, at times, that they’re both played by the same person.

And although John Barrymore’s portrayal of Hyde relies increasingly on his physical degeneracy into some sort of malign barely human goblin, the most impressive scene of the film is the initial transformation, where, through the simple power of acting (ACTING!), Jekyll’s beatific face contorts into Hyde’s malignant sneer.

The whole film, in fact, is stuffed full of classic horror images, though whether this film is the source of their the origin, or merely an early collation of such effective imagery, I don’t have the depth of knowledge to tell you. But I can at least show you a selection of stills, which should more than make up for my ignorance as a whole.

And though the film itself is slow at times (especially in the beginning), it is completely confident in its own direction, and also at times feels startlingly modern, such as in a flashback scene shown in sepia tinted hues, to indicate its age, in a black and white film, in 1920; or the unsettling surreality of a late nightmare, where a ghostly lobster (or possibly one of the microscopic mites Dr. Jekyll views under his microscope at the start, now grown to some monstrous size) climbs up onto the sleeping Jekyll’s bed and attacks him while he sleeps.

So yes, this is good. You should watch it.

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Notes

1. I watched this today on youtube.

2. Although I first saw it about 4 years ago at the Colchester Arts Centre, with a live soundtrack by Jason Frederick

3. Which can be bought here

4. If you’re so inclined.

5. (It’s worth it, because it’s great)

6. This doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, I suppose, but early on in this there’s this amazing interjection of unbroken cockney into the narrative, which left me wondering, once again, whether this addition of extra H’s, to make up for all the ones we drop, ever existed in actual spoken cockney, or was just a fabrication of the upper classes trying to mimic their speech (the 1950s book The Snow Goose is absolutely chock full of that sort of nonsense too, and that was definitely beyond the point where such a thing could ever have occurred, in so far as none of my relatives ever did such a thing, and they’d have been long alive by then).

7. The other three versions of Jekyll and Hyde from 1920 are: A satirical parody of this one, starring one of the Keystone Cops, and is now entirely lost; a version directed by J. Charles Haydon and starring Sheldon Lewis, that was released soon after this John Barrymore version, and was a huge failure (and although this version doesn’t appear to be actually lost, I failed to find a version online to watch for this article); and Der Janus-Kopf, a German adaptation directed by FW Murnau, starring Conrad Veidt (as both Jekyll and Hyde) and Bela Lugosi (as neither Jekyll nor Hyde).

8. That version is also entirely lost, which is heartbreaking, because presumably it was utterly perfect in every way.

9. I mean, just look at the poster

10. And then weep.
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Film Information

Title: Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Director: John S. Robertson
Year: 1920
Duration: 80 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Nude Woman By Waterfall (1920)

Nude Woman By Waterfall is a short film from 1920, directed by Claude Friese-Greene, featuring a nude woman by a waterfall, and the same woman, not so nude, upon a cliff top. I reviewed it earlier in the year (well, “reviewed” it), and really loved it. It’s beautiful, beguiling, mysterious, odd, sad. All the best things in film, really.

Anyway, I rewatched it again today, because the always excellent Haiku Salut (who previously released/toured a live soundtrack to Buster Keaton’s The General) have released a new soundtrack for it, called Portrait In Dust.

Recorded as part of a project to re-score two films for the BFI (the other was 4 And 20 Fit Girls, from 1940, which they paired with Pattern Thinker), Portrait In Dust is a lovely piece of minimalist melancholy, which perfectly underscores the slightly unsettling ethereality of the film.

Anyway, it’s brilliant and I love it.

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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI Player, while simultaneously listening to Haiku Salut on bandcamp

2. Earlier in the year I made a re-edit of this film, using the track Messy Hearts by Moon Ate The Dark as accompaniment.

3. In which I used all of Nude Woman By Waterfall except the shots of the nude woman by the waterfall.

4. I had hoped to show it somewhere

5. Sometime

6. But I fear that now the chance has gone

7. For a variety of reasons

8. Not least because Haiku Salut’s soundtrack is perfect.

9. And also everywhere is closed.

10. And always now shall be.

11. Maybe I should just project it out into the night

12. Onto the bamboo at the end of the garden

13. As they rustle in the wind

14. And weep in the rain.

15. Anyway I’ve added it to youtube here if you want a watch, but have no idea who long it will stay there, if their copyright robots allow it to live.

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Film Information

Title: Nude Woman By Waterfall
Director: Claude Friese-Greene
Year: 1920
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: BFI; youtube (extract only)

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Adventures Of Felix The Cat – Frolics At The Circus (1920)

The Adventures Of Felix The Cat – Frolics At The Circus is an early Felix the Cat cartoon, directed by Otto Messmer and produced by Pat Sullivan, and released in 1920, which was a big year for Felix the Cat.

The first Felix the Cat film (Feline Follies, which I watched here) was released in 1919, and Felix starred in another two before the end of that year (and it was only in the third one that he was finally actaully called Felix).

But then in 1920 he was in 14 different cartoons, which seems a bit much. Everything was Felix the Cat, and always would be.

(Until 1930, at least, when he died forever).

So, anyway, in Frolics At The Circus, a mouse scares away an elephant, in time honoured fashion, and poor old Felix has to get the elephant back, which, without spoiling things too much, he does. Good old Felix.

Also he actually kills the mouse (in a fairly wonderful way), which as someone brought up on Tom and Jerry cartoons, was pretty shocking, I can tell you.

In animation terms, the whole thing is fairly basic, although with some nice little tricks here and there. It is slightly strange seeing the use of word balloons in this, I find, largely because they’re entirely superfluous, as are all the bits where they have to draw sight lines from the eyes of the characters to tell you what they’re looking at. The use of illustrated sound effects is better, though, especially the way some of these are put to good use by Felix.

And the elephant is very endearingly drawn.

So in conclusion, this cartoon made me laugh at least three times it was good I liked it. Also the twenty seconds at the start of the circus man happily stroking Felix are really wonderful, and it’s worth watching just for that.

(I wish I had a cat)

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Notes

1. I watched this on the British Pathe website

2. Although their version on youtube seems to be much better quality

3. So you should probably watch that version instead.

4. Also if you watch it on youtube you can speed it up to 1.25 playback speed

5. Which makes it much better

6. And less awkwardly slow.

7. British Pathe also says this is from 1930, but everywhere else says it’s from 1920

8. Which seems much more likely, given the stiltedness of the animation

9. Compared to later Felix the Cat cartoons

10. When Felix the Cat actually looks like Felix the Cat.

11. Also I can’t help but feel this cartoon should have been called Frolix at the Circus rather than Frolics.

12. Although that might have caused Philip K. Dick to sue from some time in the future.

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Film Information

Title: The Adventures Of Felix The Cat – Frolics At The Circus
Director: Otto Messmer
Year: 1920
Duration: 5 minutes
Watch: British Pathe; youtube

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

These Adverts Are Exactly 100 Years Old

Some more adverts, to go with yesterday’s ones, and these ones are all exactly 100 years old, instead of slightly older. I hope that is okay.

“Your Romance” (1920) / Candy Cushions (1920)

“Your Romance” is a (very) short cinema advert for a local jewellers (Herbert J. White’s in Frome), and is the sort of crap hyper local advert you used to get in cinemas, but sadly rarely do now, due to the tyranny of national chains with centralised advertising.

In the 3 seconds of actual film footage in the advert, a man gives a woman a ring, and then a kiss. THE END

Now the last time I went to the cinema, there might not have been any enjoyably amateur local ads, but there was at least an incredibly terrible advert for some new awful looking Slush Puppy style drink, that advertised itself as being “FROM AMERICA” because being from America is the way we know this is going to be the best possible food and/or drink item ever invented.

Anyway, that wasn’t anywhere near as exciting as Candy Cushions, which weren’t just the daintiest of creams, but also the latest novelty in American Sweets, 100 years ago today.

The height of this novelty was that they came in a little box with a free gift, like a piece of jewellery, or a tobacco pipe, or a razor, or maybe even some sort of switchblade, which is pretty wonderful, and certainly more fun that anything anyone’s ever found in a kinder egg.

I assume there was an American exclusive edition that contained a revolver, and was therefore not sold at the cinema, and only available in the import sweet shop round the corner, for several million pounds.

Transporting Loads, With Or Without Roads (1920) / A Dream Of Brave Men (1920)

Keeping up the comparison with the present, here are two 100 year old versions of modern staples of cinema advertising – an advert for some sort of off road vehicle you’ll never be able to afford, and would have no real need for if you ever could; and an excruciatingly long premium advert for some utterly mundane product (here: soap), that serves no discernible purpose at all to justify its existence.

Transporting Loads, With Or Without Roads is 6 minutes of footage of a Thornycroft off-raod vehicle, which looks pretty amazing, with a strange manipulable suspension system for the back two axles, as well as a pretty exciting mode where you can turn it into a miniature tank with a set of caterpillar tracks.

Let’s off road, etc, etc

There’s a scene in this, too, where the vehicle drives slowly down a hill, the landscape below sprawling out emptily towards the horizon, which I found oddly ominous, and which feels like some sort of eerie early version of Postman Pat, coming home from the war, his truck piled high with the bodies of a million dead.

A Dream Of Brave Men, meanwhile, is 6 minutes of absolute tedium, in which a maid gets some soap that’s so good she cleans the whole kitchen with it. Then she falls into a dream, where she cleans up a field hospital somewhere, too, thus winning the war.

The soap is called Pinkobolic, though, which is perhaps my favourite ever attempt at making some horrible industrial name into something nice and and totally unsinister sounding.

This entire advert is monstrous, obviously, but I did like the bit, where the title cards had been explaining the story, one short sentence at a time, in a nice big font, until suddenly they insert this one, with an entire novels worth of exposition crammed in, in a great big long sentence, with a hundred comma-separated clauses, in absolutely tiny letters.

Mr. And Mrs. Jones Visit To Bracing Sunny Rhyl, North Wales

Mr. And Mrs. Jones Visit To Bracing Sunny Rhyl, North Wales is a piece of local tourist office advertising, suggesting, hopefully, that “After you have seen this Picture you will want to visit this Popular Health Resort.”

This “Picture” consists of two minutes of Mr and Mrs Jones on the top of the bus, grinning maniacally, out of focus, dressed like some sort of folk terror clowns.

It is the most terrifying piece of footage ever unearthed and should not be watched under any circumstances.

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Notes

1. Again I watched these all on the BFI Player, and the links can be found above and below.

2. Herbert J. White’s jeweller store in Frome moved to Yeovil in the 1930s, and didn’t actually close down until last year.

3. I now want to visit Rhyl, the Popular Health Resort.

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Film Information

Title: “Your Romance”
Year: 1920
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Candy Cushions
Year: 1920
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Transporting Loads, With Or Without Roads
Year: 1920
Duration: 6 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Title: A Dream Of Brave Men
Year: 1920
Duration: 6 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Mr. And Mrs. Jones Visit To Bracing Sunny Rhyl, North Wales
Year: 1920
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player