Fairbanks finale
Feb. 8th, 2009 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersI've now finished the Douglas Fairbanks - A Modern Musketeer set from Flicker Alley. There are eleven films in the set, ten of them feature length, and it was an eye-opening experience for me to watch them all. I got into silent movies via the expressionist films of Weimar Germany (Lang, Murnau, Pabst), and I wasn't initially all that interested in Hollywood films of the era. Within Hollywood, I've been interested in some of the more exotic directors like Maurice Tourneur and Josef von Sternberg. Of least interest in many ways were the four titans who started United Artists: DW Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. Of those four, Pickford and Fairbanks were of the very least interest. I haven't seen any of Pickford's films, and I'd only seen two of Fairbanks' epic swashbucklers: Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924), which were mostly interesting to me because of William Cameron Menzies' production design. Having seen these eleven early films, I now find him a lot more interesting than before, even if he still represents a kind of mainstream film-making that will never been my main interest. In fact, these films are a good way to watch Hollywood, which really only got on its feet around 1915, evolve and become more sophisticated.
The last two films in the set chronologically (and I watched them all in chronological order) are The Mask of Zorro (1920) and The Nut (1921). The Mask of Zorro was his first full-on costumed swashbuckler, and he made The Nut afterward in case his fans weren't willing to make the transition to a different Doug. So The Mask of Zorro marks a new direction, while The Nut is very much in line with the modern day romantic comedies of the other films in the set.
What's interesting about coming to Zorro after watching a bunch of the earlier comedies is that you can see how it is still playing off those earlier characters, except now instead of the brash dolt character, you have him pretending to be a languid dolt in the form of Don Diego while revealing his true athletic heroism in the form of Zorro. The dual identity allows him to refine on his earlier character, which I realize now is also true to a certain extent of Robin Hood, where he plays the double character of a nobleman and brigand. Fairbanks' acting chops in The Mask of Zorro are quite good, particularly his playing of Don Diego, who is not so much foppish as enervated and eternally weary. He barely moves a muscle, in sharp contrast to Zorro, who practically explodes across the screen. As one wag commented on this set, it's pretty clear that Fairbanks (or his stunt double) was the inventor of parkour. He is forever climbing walls, diving through windows, and leaping from roof to roof.
The Nut is an extremely silly movie indeed, and a lot of fun. Fairbanks plays an eccentric inventor (what a nut!) who tries to win the hand of his beloved by helping her with a plan to place slum kids in wealthy households for their betterment. Everything he does goes wrong, and chaos ensues. The movie opens with the nut being awakened, bathed, dried, and clothed by a sequence of his inventions along a conveyor belt. This could have almost come out of a Gernsback story, and it's very funny. (Interestingly, Gernsback in his Munchausen on Mars stories compares Martian telepathy to the way information is conveyed wordlessly in silent films.) There's also a hilarious and furious chase sequence in which Fairbanks keeps making leaping tackles on somebody whose pants are on fire. Fairbanks ends up on fire too. The gags don't really add up to much, but the sheer frenetic physical energy is fascinating in itself. A lot of clever thought went into the construction of these sequences, and the editing is brilliant. On a technical level all these films are superb and represent the cutting edge of the new industry.
I've seen several people argue that when Fairbanks moved on to swashbucklers, the slapstick go-getter niche he had created was filled by Harold Lloyd. Makes sense to me, from what little I've seen by Lloyd. Comedy may have been Hollywood's true genius in this period. Even Cecil B. DeMille's marriage problem films of this era, while not slapstick, are very funny and wry. Well, there's still a lot I haven't seen, so I should refrain from general statements. I guess one of these days I'll have to buckle down and take a serious look at the other United Artists titans. The prospect seems like less of an ordeal than it did before I watched this set.
The last two films in the set chronologically (and I watched them all in chronological order) are The Mask of Zorro (1920) and The Nut (1921). The Mask of Zorro was his first full-on costumed swashbuckler, and he made The Nut afterward in case his fans weren't willing to make the transition to a different Doug. So The Mask of Zorro marks a new direction, while The Nut is very much in line with the modern day romantic comedies of the other films in the set.
What's interesting about coming to Zorro after watching a bunch of the earlier comedies is that you can see how it is still playing off those earlier characters, except now instead of the brash dolt character, you have him pretending to be a languid dolt in the form of Don Diego while revealing his true athletic heroism in the form of Zorro. The dual identity allows him to refine on his earlier character, which I realize now is also true to a certain extent of Robin Hood, where he plays the double character of a nobleman and brigand. Fairbanks' acting chops in The Mask of Zorro are quite good, particularly his playing of Don Diego, who is not so much foppish as enervated and eternally weary. He barely moves a muscle, in sharp contrast to Zorro, who practically explodes across the screen. As one wag commented on this set, it's pretty clear that Fairbanks (or his stunt double) was the inventor of parkour. He is forever climbing walls, diving through windows, and leaping from roof to roof.
The Nut is an extremely silly movie indeed, and a lot of fun. Fairbanks plays an eccentric inventor (what a nut!) who tries to win the hand of his beloved by helping her with a plan to place slum kids in wealthy households for their betterment. Everything he does goes wrong, and chaos ensues. The movie opens with the nut being awakened, bathed, dried, and clothed by a sequence of his inventions along a conveyor belt. This could have almost come out of a Gernsback story, and it's very funny. (Interestingly, Gernsback in his Munchausen on Mars stories compares Martian telepathy to the way information is conveyed wordlessly in silent films.) There's also a hilarious and furious chase sequence in which Fairbanks keeps making leaping tackles on somebody whose pants are on fire. Fairbanks ends up on fire too. The gags don't really add up to much, but the sheer frenetic physical energy is fascinating in itself. A lot of clever thought went into the construction of these sequences, and the editing is brilliant. On a technical level all these films are superb and represent the cutting edge of the new industry.
I've seen several people argue that when Fairbanks moved on to swashbucklers, the slapstick go-getter niche he had created was filled by Harold Lloyd. Makes sense to me, from what little I've seen by Lloyd. Comedy may have been Hollywood's true genius in this period. Even Cecil B. DeMille's marriage problem films of this era, while not slapstick, are very funny and wry. Well, there's still a lot I haven't seen, so I should refrain from general statements. I guess one of these days I'll have to buckle down and take a serious look at the other United Artists titans. The prospect seems like less of an ordeal than it did before I watched this set.
