The Sunday Intertitle: Ready for Teddy

Ugh. It turns out I have a DVD of Monta Bell’s LIGHTS OF OLD BROADWAY starring two Marion Davieses, but it is of unwatchably poor quality. Good thing we saw a beautiful print of it in Bologna.

The juvenile Teddy Roosevelt who makes a cameo is replaced by a faceless radioactive golem, which is a lot less funny. He just makes the whole thing creepy. Throughout this blurry nightmare, anyone who’s not in tight close-up loses all their facial features except for eyebrows, if dark, and mustaches, if present. So, obviously Marion is the big loser here.

Balanced atop a tower of tables, our star is transformed from a feisty Irish colleen to a terrifying, flour-encrusted zombie out of a Lucio Fulci movie. Don’t bootleg, kids! Home taping is killing music — and it’s illegal. Although, if you want to experience an analog of extreme autism, watching a silent movie populated by faceless cyphers might, I suppose, be illuminating.