Chicago: THE FLYING ACE (Richard E. Norman, 1926) - 1/30/13

[buskeat]

At the Portage Theater, 4050 N. Miilwaukee Ave., Chicago. Never heard of this one either!

Wednesday, January 30 @ 7:30pm
THE FLYING ACE
Directed by Richard E. Norman • 1926
With live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren!
Jacksonville, Florida was once “The Winter Film Capital of the World,” providing year-round sunlight to beleaguered East Coast moviemakers. By 1926, most production had decamped to Hollywood, but the Norman Film Manufacturing Company remained, making low-budget “race films” for exhibition in segregated theaters across America. White entrepreneur-director-distributor Richard E. Norman lured noted Harlem actor Lawrence Criner to Jacksonville for the title role in The Flying Ace, an aviation drama with an explicit agenda of racial uplift. Criner stars as Captain Billy Stokes, a World War I hero who turns detective when the railroad paymaster goes missing. It’s a measure of The Flying Ace’s effectiveness as a tried-and-true crowd-pleaser that we don’t even care that Norman skimped on the aerial stunts, with all the flying sequences playing out against a hastily painted sky. Beautifully restored by the Library of Congress, this vital piece of regional cinema will leave you giddy. (KW)
65 min • Norman Film Manufacturing Co. • 35mm from the Library of Congress
Serial: Captain Marvel: “The Scorpion Strikes” (John English & William Witney, 1941) – 35mm – 16 min

[Rodney]

At the Portage Theater, 4050 N. Miilwaukee Ave., Chicago. Never heard of this one either!

Wednesday, January 30 @ 7:30pm
THE FLYING ACE
Directed by Richard E. Norman • 1926
With live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren!
Jacksonville, Florida was once “The Winter Film Capital of the World,” providing year-round sunlight to beleaguered East Coast moviemakers. By 1926, most production had decamped to Hollywood, but the Norman Film Manufacturing Company remained, making low-budget “race films” for exhibition in segregated theaters across America. White entrepreneur-director-distributor Richard E. Norman lured noted Harlem actor Lawrence Criner to Jacksonville for the title role in The Flying Ace, an aviation drama with an explicit agenda of racial uplift. Criner stars as Captain Billy Stokes, a World War I hero who turns detective when the railroad paymaster goes missing. It’s a measure of The Flying Ace’s effectiveness as a tried-and-true crowd-pleaser that we don’t even care that Norman skimped on the aerial stunts, with all the flying sequences playing out against a hastily painted sky. Beautifully restored by the Library of Congress, this vital piece of regional cinema will leave you giddy. (KW)
65 min • Norman Film Manufacturing Co. • 35mm from the Library of Congress
Serial: Captain Marvel: “The Scorpion Strikes” (John English & William Witney, 1941) – 35mm – 16 min

This was shown at the S.F. Silent Film Festival a while back, and is well worth seeing. As noted, the flying sequences are kind of lame, but the acting is just fine, and the story flows along at a good pace. And from the racial angle I've never seen anything like it. The film makers take the unusual attitude that race shouldn't matter at all, our heroes act like any other heroes, our comic relief characters are like any other comic relief characters. There's some "Black" dialect in the supporting characters' dialog titles, but the hero speaks perfect English. Were there really any Black WWI flying aces? Well, in this film it's just given that Billy Stokes was one, no further comment needed. Similarly, there's a one-legged comic relief character who lets nothing get in his way, even using his crutch to ride a bicycle in an emergency. I found it inspiring, and I can't imagine what it would have been like to a Black American in 1927 to see this simple vision of a more utopian world.