Bridge Too Far

Late Roscoe Arbuckle. Directing under the name “William Goodrich.” I could have tormented your retinas and imaginations with WINDY RILEY GOES HOLLYWOOD, which is also late Arbuckle and furthermore late Louise Brooks — two veterans of the silent screen washed up on the shoals of the talkies, but I decided to show mercy. The thing is hugely unfunny and his direction is as wooden as her acting — here we see the true reason old movies are flammable.

But BRIDGE WIVES fascinates. Arbuckle moves the camera with some of his former facility (he was a brisk, capable filmmaker) and if the thing isn’t exactly hilarious, it’s bizarre enough to be eye-catching. The homicidal and suicidal tendencies on display are also kind of interesting, in the context of Arbuckle’s life, and the “from poverty” aesthetic works in a vaguely REEFER MADNESS kind of way. There’s enough speed to stop it choking on its own cheapness, so the lack of production values just adds an endearing patina of decay.

I also dig the very high walls ~

By this time, “Fatty” had returned to the screen as star in some two-reelers, having been forcibly retired (officially banned by the Hays Office) for almost ten years. I can’t find any evidence that his directing pseudonym, William Goodrich, had a middle intial B at any point, making it stand for “Will B Good.”

The year after BRIDGE WIVES, he died.

Buy Fatty!

The Sunday Intertitle: When Buster Met Boris

Screened Keaton’s THE GENERAL for students, along with clips of Chaplin, Lloyd, Langdon, Charley Bowers and of course good old Raymond Griffith. And this time, projecting my Kino DVD on the big screen, I noticed something new –

That’s Boris frickin’ Karloff there, as a northern general! Front left.

I’m not the first to spot this: the IMDb has him down as “unconfirmed”, but after watching him carefully, I was pretty much convinced. Not only does the northern general have Boris Karloff’s face, but at one point he makes a Boris Karloff face. You know, one of those faces Boris makes when he’s acting. He has several.

That makes THE GENERAL the 11th film Boris made in 1926, including also THE BELLS, where he’s a sinister mesmerist. I find it apt that the great monster makes his one noted appearance in a silent comedy burning the hero’s elbow with a cigar.

Louise Brooks noted that one shot of Buster hiding under the table in this scene was so beautiful it took her breath away. She lost the ability to laugh for a good ten minutes, so awe-struck was she. “Why didn’t he cut the shot?” she wondered. But in fact, as Richard Lester pointed out, what makes THE GENERAL “a masterpiece of economy” is that you can’t remove a single shot without the sequence collapsing, nor a sequence without the story collapsing. What this means, of course, is that if a single shot had failed, Keaton would have no film. But then, he was working in an age when, if a shot didn’t come out right, you could just go back and do it again: everybody was under contract, so all it would cost you is raw stock and petrol.

Unless you want to do something like THIS –

Perfectly Frank

This is Frank Fay in GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN — he’s been told to avoid excitement or he may drop dead. Fortunately, Louise Brooks, Joan Blondell and Yola d’Avril are here to make sure that he’s kept calm.

Fiona and I have become big FF fans — his extremely camp manner is a surprise at first, but his movies play with this in a variety of interesting ways, and he’s a brilliant comic. My appreciation is now up at The Chiseler.

Here’s Frank Fay and Mrs Frank Fay. If you don’t know him, you may know her.