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Nomads of the North (1920) A James Oliver Curwood Mountie Silent!

4/14/2017

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This is the first silent film Mountie review on Phantom Empires,  I'm pleased to report.  There are apparently quite a number of these,  but sadly,  most of the Mountie-themed silents are now lost.  Such a crime.  When I think of how many silent films are lost in general,  it creates a hard knot in my guts that lasts for days.  The greatest artistic loss in modern history, in my opinion.  I'm profusely glad, and extremely grateful for the silents that survive for us all to enjoy and learn from.

NOMADS OF THE NORTH is a 1920 adaptation,  produced and with a script written by the man himself,  of James Oliver Curwood's fan-tastic novel of the same name.  For them that are unaware,  Curwood is to the Mountie novel what Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are to the Private Eye tale;  his stories evoke the frozen north quite as well as anything that Jack London ever put to paper,  but without the accompanying fame.  Tragic.  Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, Flaming Forest, Honor of the Big Snows, & Valley of the Silent Men are some of his other excellent Mountie titles.  I particularly enjoy the first on that list.  Full of adventure and action, which is what we all enjoy,  wot?

This is a wonderful film,  and a clean, decent adaptation of the novel (with minor omissions and changes).  It deals with a commercial town in the wild north called Fort O'God (yep, O'God),  run by the stern Duncan McDougall,  the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company..."a tiger of the old regime, still ruling his primitive domain with a hand of iron and a heart of stone".  McDougall's son,  the slimy Bucky McDougall, "A serpent polished with the veneer of years spent in Montreal, the deadliest and most treacherous of all the McDougal race",  is in love with the lovely local flower Nanette Roland (played by Betty Blythe),  who is unavailable,  waiting for her lover, Raoul Challoner (played by the miraculous Lon Chaney) to return from the wild...but is a year overdue.  With a little unethical convincing,  though, Nanette is convinced to marry Bucky, and in a moment of ironic chance,  the long-gone Raoul makes his appearance at the wedding.  Bucky is outraged,  fearing the loss of his long-awaited prize, and in the ensuing fight,  his seedy underling Marat is mistakenly killed by Raoul, which sends him on the run.

It becomes the duty of the stalwart Corporal Michael O'Connor of the R.N.W.M. Police (played by Lewis S. Stone, who is most well known to me as Judge Hardy in the Andy Hardy films) to hunt Raoul down and to bring him to judgement!

This was an amazingly pleasant adventure.  The acting really opened up that wonderful feeling of narrative space common to most of the best silents,  and even between the inter-titles the story stayed even and fresh.  The story was clear from beginning to end,  which isn't always certain from silents from this early date.  James Oliver Curwood's involvement was,  I'm sure,  the reason for this;  a master of a strong streamlined plot.  Typical of early silents,  it had that wonderfully stagey melodramatic flair (which always reminds me of  THE PERILS OF PAULINE, for some reason),  with all those (sometimes amusingly) unambiguous and simple facial expressions that make the emotions of each character quite certain.

I recommend this for silent film fans.  Though it might not be the best to begin your silent film journey with this one,  it's good enough that you'll still enjoy it with no background in the silent art.  The Mountie content is plentiful, too.  Lewis S. Stone really projects all the fairness and devotion that one has come to expect from the classic Mountie myth.

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William Boyd ~ The Yankee Clipper (1927)

11/18/2015

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(This is a look-back review...I was thinking about it, so I thought I'd repost!)

It, ladies and gentleman,  is the birthday of one of my favourite actors;  the man behind the legendary Hopalong Cassidy,  William Boyd!  Well,  as most people already know the storied history of that great cowboy character,  I thought I'd talk about one of his early,  pre-Hoppy jobs.

It was a toss-up between two films, actually.  The first that occurred to me was the fan-tastic 1929 talkie High Voltage,  with a young and nubile (and not yet famous) Carole Lombard.  It was indeed a struggle!  High Voltage is one of my fave early talkies, a Pathe' production,  and Boyd really is against type in it...or against the type that would come a decade or so later.

In the end,  the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille-produced silent picture won the day.  Why?  Well,  because it's Bill Boyd in a silent movie!  It's one of those rare and wonderful moments,  when you see an actor that, over your lifetime, has become somewhat of a chum,  then you see him in a cool, and completely different context.  Pure magic.  Actually, that's a great way to describe Bill Boyd in general.  Magical.  That grin lights up a room (or a saloon, or a prairie),  and he seems like the sort of chap that one could depend on in a righteous scrap.

The Yankee Clipper Starts in England,  and Queen Victoria, still quite young (played by the lovely Julia Faye, a bit player who had a small role in my last birthday review, Gary Cooper's North West Mounted Police HERE),  gives the Lord Huntington a mandate:  beat the Americans to China, and secure the tea trade of the powerful Chinese merchant, Louqua (wonderfully played by James Wang).  Of course, his nibs takes on the challenge;  his ship,  the Lord of the Isles, can surely conquer any snail-like tub that the Americans can produce!

Apparently the US President at the time, Zachary Taylor, has other plans.  He enlists the aid of Boston shipbuilding legend Thomas Winslow for the job,  with his stalwart son Hal (played by our birthday boy William Boyd) as the skipper.  The Winslows have a secret weapon in the new-made ship, The Yankee Clipper!  The president shakes hands with the duo;  after all,  those Bostoners know a little something about the British and the tea trade, wot?

Both ships charge toward their Celestial (HERE) destinies,  with a little surprise in store;  Lord Huntington has brought his beautiful daughter, Lady Jocelyn Huntington (played by the aptly-named Elinor Fair) on the trip.  Her Ladyship is affianced to a British 'gentleman' living in China, a slimy toff, whose predatory sexual dalliance with the innocent Chinese girl, Wing Toy, shows us his true dastardly nature from the start.  The Lord of the Isles does indeed make it to China first,  but our Yankee Clipper was hot on it's proverbial tail.  As the American ship pulls into dock, the crews and passengers on both ships eye each other, hooting and hollering.

Our jaunty captain Hal sees the luminous Lady Huntington through the lens of his nautical telescope, and folks,  that's all she wrote!  The race is certainly on,  but from that moment it has little to do with ocean vessels!

I thought that The Yankee clipper was amazing.  It had the typical melodrama that one looks forward to in a silent,  but it also had an excellent sense of humour.  William Boyd was good as one would expect,  but honestly,  I thought he went over and above requirements here.  He was a very charismatic presence in every scene,  and it seems obvious to me that everyone must have been aware that they had a future star on their hands.  His character had depth far beyond the 'written' outline,  for sure;  Boyd interjected little bits of genius in every scene.  The way he smiled, stood, grimaced, shook hands...all worth watching for their own sake. 
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Hehehe...
I'd also like to point out that the race roles in the film, while possibly not passing the Malcolm X test,  were seriously sympathetic for the time;  the black cook was actually quite strong (his little Caucasian buddy was the clown here),  and the Chinese were (excepting Wing Toy) mostly played by (gasp!) actual Asians!  Imagine the most powerful character in a 1927 film being Chinese, and being played by a Chinese actor...that's pretty great.

To me, this was the perfect choice with which to celebrate William Boyd's birthday.

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Not to ignore Hoppy on this special occasion,  here's something special for Mr. Boyd's birthday!  A 1951 episode of the Hopalong Cassidy radio show!  Hoppy was Williams Boyd's bread and butter for the bulk of his adult life;  movies, radio, comics, pulps, TV, the whole nine!  Enjoy...it's a good'un!
hoppy_-_death_crosses_the_river.mp3
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This amazing feature is just one of several on the collection Under Full Sail: Silent Cinema on the High Seas.  This is worth every dime;  every print is crisp,  and the theme just can't be beat.

You can buy it HERE for a very good price!
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Haldane of the Secret Service ~ Harry Houdini (1923)

5/31/2014

12 Comments

 
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Harry Houdini.  It seems that everyone knows that name;  it evokes images of mystery and magic,  of locks, and chains, and daring.  It has always been a magical name for me.  I've been a Houdini fan since childhood,  and honestly,  in the beginning, at least,  I can't remember why.  I must have seen one of those incredible posters,  or maybe one of the many shorts about his fantastic escapes.  In any case,  he's always been a hero of mine, and I'm not alone.  

Houdini, for the one or two people on Earth who might be unaware,  was a master escape artist.  He was chained and put in iron boxes,  handcuffed and thrown off bridges into rivers, and sealed inside water-filled glass canisters ~upside down~,  and always managed to escape.  He was challenged by police stations to escape the most modern cuffs,  and, perhaps most famous of all, was put into straight jackets,  each time only to escape,  with that trademark Houdini grin...that was seemingly half-grimace.

He was just about the most popular entertainer on Earth at the peak of his career,  and it was inevitable that at some point that a figure of his gravitas would break into the new medium of film.  Houdini made five pictures between 1919 and 1923,  and Haldane of the Secret Service was the last of these.  Produced and directed by the man himself,  Houdini played the stern Heath Haldane, a "sworn servant of the Dept. of justice". The setting is
Chinatown ("A place not visited by sightseeing parties"), and Haldane is on the trail of the mysterious Chinese supervillain Dr. Yu, and the brutal gang of counterfeiters who murdered his father, "silent Saunders" Haldane. *

PictureHeath Haldane
"Silent Saunders",  as described by the main gangster (the slimy Joe Ivors), was the "slickest bull that ever took our trail", and was murdered to get him out of the way. A critical mistake for the Chinatown gang!  From there our Magician/Agent/hero gets numerous chances to use his fantastic escape skills in various exciting scenarios (and even a little Ju-jutsu!),  until the final, shocking conclusion...in which we are offered a chilling surprise.  Like all of Houdini's movies,  I enjoyed Haldane quite a bit.  It's the most plot-heavy of the five,  with a strong dime novel feel throughout.

Honestly, I wish it had also been released in that format!

Apparently the Houdini films didn't take the world by storm on their release.  Perhaps the world wasn't ready to see him on screen,  or perhaps, in an era with so many amazing films,  his were unremarkable relative to the rest of his career.  Personally,  I think if you take them on their own merits,  guided by the uniqueness of their existence as Houdini memorabilia, they have a fun magic all their own.  I recommend Haldane of the Secret Service for fans of silent films, dime novels, and the legendary magician.


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You can buy this film in the amazing Houdini film set by Kino quite cheaply HERE. Besides the five dramas (it has The Grim Game's existing 5-minute fragment), it contains many escape performances, as well!  A MUST for any Harry Houdini/Silent film fan!

*"Silent Saunders", incidentally, is a reference to a character in a popular western novel by H. H. Knibbs, called Overland Red. Feel free to download this public domain novel here for your Kindle! It was also made into a 1920 film with Harry Carey (now lost), and also the 1924 silent, The Sunset Trail.  The name also appears in the May 1923 issue of Western Story magazine, in the story,  “Silent” Saunders Pays for Two.  It's a very cool and varied world we live in!
overland_red.prc
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This is one of my picks for the Snoopathon, a Blogathon of Spies!  A nod to our Blogathon host, Movies Silently!  Click the banner to the right to see some of the other blogs and their picks!

I also reviewed Robert Donat's 1943 Pulp film The Adventures of Tartu for the Blogathon HERE.
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