What's The Last Silent Movie You Watched? [2020]

[boblipton]

Padre aka The Palace of Flames (1912): Ermete Zacconi's business is strangling his, so Giovanni Casaleggio hires Dante Testa to burn down Zacconi's factory. Zacconi is imprisoned for starting the fire to collect the insurance. More than a dozen years later, he escapes and returns to the town, to discover that Casaleggio has taken Zacconi's daughter into his house, and she and his son are in love.

This early, short (30 minutes) feature is set up for the big ending, with a huge fire. While the visuals are not neglected, the story is told via titles, and the acting is very large. Clearly, the art of the feature movie had a long way to go.

Bob

[silentfilm]

Castles for Two (1917), Ed Lorusso's restoration. Marie Doro is a rich American visiting Ireland. She wants to mingle with the "little people", so she instructs her secretary to pretend to be her. Marie will be the poor maid. Meanwhile, everybody hates Brian O'Neil (Elliott Dexter) because they are dirt poor and he always wants his rent money. Doro's character meets O'Neil, but he also appears to be a poor lad, so they become friends. Later, he aids her after she is scared by a cow, and discovers his true identity. His sisters insist that he meet and woo the rich American, so that they can keep the large estate running.

It's nothing that we haven't seen before, but Doro is charming and beautiful and makes it work. She actually looks better dressed as a maid than as a rich heiress. I don't know if it is her eyebrows or her chiseled face, but she has a modern beauty.

Director Frank Reicher stumbles a bit spinning the plot. Dent Gilbert was apparently a good cinematographer, as numerous double exposures are used to show fairies with our leads. There are about three short sections in the last reel that suffer from nitrate decomposition, but the rest of the cinematography is nice. Dave Drazin's piano score is excellent.

[boblipton]

It's not just Miss Doro who looks better in plain clothes. There's a Norma Talmadge movie from the early 1920s, I think it's The Sign on the Door, in which she spends the entire play in her family's apartment, scrubbing and cooking and washing. She wears a plain outfit with an apron all the way through, and she never looked better.

Fashionable clothes are meant to display wealth, but often they wind up drawing attention from truly beautiful women. That's what Chanel's little black dress was so revolutionary.

It applies to men, too. Cary Grant liked to quote his father: "Always let them see you, not the suit."

Bob

[R Michael Pyle]

"Ace of Cactus Range" (1924) stars Art Mix, Virginia Warwick, Clifford Davidson, Harvey Stafford, Dorothy Chase, Charles Colby, and a couple of others in a Western full of old "B" Western tropes all done on the cheap...BUT!!!!

Yes, I said "Art" Mix, not Tom Mix, and, no, they're no relation. For a guy who made so many really bad films later, especially when he was the star - not often - in the middle 30s - this film is actually very, very good. I'll begin by thanking Jack Hardy at Grapevine for having the guts to even release this. There's so much nitrate deterioration after the first reel that it might put off anybody from even continuing - but then about half way through the fourth reel or so it's fine again till the end, although there are one or two crucial scenes that seem to be missing...sorry. But we have this example of Mix as a cowboy - actually a US deputy marshal - and he's an actor with talent. This film has performers who really are quite good! Unlike so many "B" Westerns where some actors and actresses couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, the performances here are all first rate. The direction is tight for the most part, too. Photography? Well, Jack Fuqua (11 cinematographer credits - ending in 1933) tries to do a number of different things, just for variety's sake, but he's only mediocre at best. His traveling shots of horses being ridden across the desert look as if he's in an automobile next to the action and simply staying up with it. Story certainly holds the viewer.

This one is about diamonds. One finds that out almost five minutes from the end. Before that, we know there is a group of baddies. Exactly what is going on...well...?? We know that Virginia Warwick and her father are being manhandled and threatened, but we're not sure why. Enter Mix...he's here to do something, but we're not sure what. He helps Virginia Warwick escape from the very lecherous and mean clutches of Bull Davidson, played by Clifford [yes] Davidson. Davidson's boss, played by Harvey Stafford, throws a hissy fit when he finds out that Warwick's now missing. Most of the show is the good guys escaping the clutches of the bad guys' pursuit. It's very well done - even exciting. The opening five minutes or so have residual toning that must have been beautiful at one time.

I won't say everybody will have the patience to get through what remains here. But it shows a talent that never really got anywhere. Kind of a shame. For those wanting to understand the genuine Hollywood: Art Mix appeared in over 230 known pictures. He did have a career. But he certainly wasn't the star for long. His last starring feature was in 1934, a picture called "A Rawhide Terror", and Edmund Cobb's the co-star. It has been compared to "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

For silent Western aficionados this is a rare treat. Unfortunately, to get through all the nitrate deterioration (probably as much as a reel and a half of what remains of five reels) you'll need to be forgiving and patient, but it's worth it. For the record, the title has nothing to do with anything whatsoever except for the cactus desert that does appear in the plot. On location shooting is very good and Art Mix an outstanding horseman and stuntman - truly outstanding in both!

[R Michael Pyle]

"Romance of the Wasteland" (1924) stars Art Mix, Alma Rayford, Wilber McGaugh, Virginia Marshall, Clifford Davidson, and Neola May. Nicely written by Milburn Morante and directed by Victor Adamson, the latter a man whom some consider the worst director and producer before Ed Wood; yet here he does a creditable job all around in a cheap "B" Western that's definitely worth the watch. At first we have plot line after plot line, but all with the same characters, though sometimes with an addition: so, we have character development continuing. Then all the plot lines converge into an interesting story, one of them finally solving a mystery that has probably baffled the viewer: does Alma Rayford have a husband? Was she ever married? Who's the father of her young daughter? Of course there are the baddies. One of them is genuinely a real baddie, Clifford Davidson (evidently part of the Adamson coterie in 1924, as he appears in other films directed by him, all which starred Art Mix). Young Virginia Marshall plays Rayford's daughter. She's cute as a button, but she's not a very good actress, not that anyone will care that much. Unfortunately, whole scenes are missing, and a couple of them are plot-worthy. Whether they are missing because of wear or whether they were cut to make this seemingly cut-down version (re-released a couple of years later) is a mystery possibly past solving. This is on the same Grapevine release with "Ace of Cactus Range" (1924), also starring Mix. Worth the watch if you're a silent "B" Western fan.

What is more interesting yet is learning about Victor Adamson. His alias was - oh, yeah, Art Mix. NO, though, NOT the same as the actor who played the cowboy; who, by the way, was really George Washington Kesterson! There were two other Art Mix people who ended up in Hollywood, too. Both were given these nom de plumes by - yes, Victor Adamson. If you're confused, imagine what Tom Mix thought about it. His team sued Adamson. Art Mix, the cowboy actor, continued to use the name for a while, but eventually began using his real name later. Adamson kept going as director, actor, you name it. He appeared in nearly 300 films, mostly uncredited until he died at 82 in 1972. Some of the worst films ever made appeared under his name or with his name as one of the actors, but he made a fair living, sometimes appearing in 25 films a year as a "barfly", a "henchman", you name it. This film, "Romance of the Wasteland" was a masterpiece for Adamson, and it remains quite watchable. I would have called it "Romance IN the Wasteland" because it takes place next to a cactus desert (same one that appeared in "Ace of Cactus Range"), and the romance takes place in shacks in the desert and in a little desert town next to the desert, but I didn't write the story. Ex-vaudevillian and silent short comedian Milburn Morante wrote the scenario from his own story. Because this film was probably never a first run film in a major city, but only released in the rurals, we can only hope someone made a dime out of all this. Very nice desert location shooting. It was probably cheap as can be to film in because the snakes, rocks, and scorpions didn't charge for use of the property.

One little extra: there's a scene where young Virginia Marshall sees a very, very young boy (probably no older than 2, and drags him bodily down to a river to wash him. He's been playing in the muddy dirt and is filthy. She tries to drag him into the river, but he gets up and runs away. It's obvious that he's had an enormous bowel movement in his white long underwear he's in... Whether or not this was left in for amusement or wasn't seen by the cameraman is a question that isn't worth pursuing, but the scene breaks away quickly to something else as though the film broke at this point or it was hurriedly cut for the cut-down version.

[drednm]

Sawdust and Salome (1914) is a curio and not much else because it has Norma Talmadge in the cast. Leo Delaney is the scion of a snooty family. He falls for Norma who is a circus performer. When he brings her home, the snoots turn up their noses. She is upset by their rebuke. As she leaves the house, the snoots are having a costume party and are delighted by the daughter's portrayal of Salome as she does a belly dance routine. Not much can be developed in a 1-reeler like this.