Sherlock Holmes(Albert Parker, 1922) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective (consulting) given the silent treatment with John Barrymore in the title role, based on the William Gillette play (which Gillette re-wrote after not liking Conan Doyle's original—and after reading Gillette's version, Doyle agreed!) that was the defining presentation of the character for folks who had never read the early stories. First things first, Barrymore is great, looking the very image of Holmesas seen in the original Sidney Paget drawings that accompanied the first publication of the cases in The Strand Magazine. His Holmes is cunning, contemplative and very rarely wears a deerstalker. The story presents a complicated tale (actually several mysteries in one) spanning years of evil deeds perpetrated by Holmes' nemesis, Professor Moriarty (played by an actor with the wonderful name of Gustav von Seyffertitz) on the more young, innocent members of British society (including a young William Powell—this was his first film). It's up to Holmes (and to a much lesser extent, Roland Young's Watson) to get to the bottom of the case.
Powell and Barrymore in the '22 Sherlock Holmes
It's based primarily on the first Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia" (which presents Holmes in full flower and deals with the one opponent he could not best and whom he came to admire, Irene Adler. But that's all changed here. There's no Adler, but instead the Faulkner sisters, both of whom Holmes becomes infatuated with, first in his youth at the the time of his first encounter with Moriarty, and later, after the one's sister's death, and the other sister's possession of her love letters that could result in scandal and repercussions for a European King's reign. But, it is Moriarty and his network of thugs and assassins that want to seize the letters. The extant Faulkner sister is merely keeping them hidden. And Moriarty is set on both getting the letters and assassinating Holmes, the latter done in rather melodramatic ways, luring him into a trap, or shooting him at 221B Baker Street.
It's a silent film, the particulars told in title cards, which is problematic as Holmes, once coerced to reveal the methodology of his deductions, can be a verbose creature. So it falls on the title card authors to show the process in a kind of dense short-hand. Those moments are few and far between. Mostly, it's standard melodramatic fare, without the Doyle back-stories that tie everything together, and explain the gears that set the whole thing in motion (This is done at the beginning and inserting Holmes into it). It's all pretty surface-stuff, befitting a stage presentation (although Parker manages to cross the Victorian era and motor car era in his production design), with Barrymore's performance—he was 40 at the time— breaking the silent tradition by being more interior, more cerebral, setting Holmes' detective apart from the usual over-emoting that was the tradition and chief weapon in communicating emotions during the silents.
Granada's Holmes, Jeremy Brett, used to talk about a conversation he'd had with Robert Stephens, who played the role in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where Stephens commented "There's nothing there inside the character, just a big empty space that you must fill any way you can." Essentially, he's right. There are lots of Sherlock's who are bland and impenetrable—in fact, the BBC had a rough time with a revolving door of actors who couldn't live up to Brett's version, even when the actor was deathly ill, and didn't until the character was revamped in modern times and played by Benedict Cumberbatch. A "silent" Holmes makes the portrayal even tougher to pull off, as Holmes' theatricality is easiest portrayed with his voice and phrasings, weapons not available in silent films. But Barrymore still manages to make a memorable Holmes, if slightly diluted by a tendency to become romantically involved with his clients. Gillette did so in his play to win audiences and make Holmes a more romantic hero. And although it's slightly unnerving to see, Barrymore makes it acceptable.
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler(aka Dr. Mabuse, der Speiler) (Fritz Lang, 1922) Of all the megalomaniacs and criminal masterminds that have beset celluloid heroes, there is one that inspires them all. Save for Sherlock Holmes' Professor Moriarty or Fu Manchu, Mabuse seems to be the father of all the spiders at the center of so many movie-webs. He is the fictional wet-dream of all conspiracy theorists, the movie's personification of the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the New World Order, and the Military-Industrial Complex (you know, the "Usual Suspects"), a schemer so brilliant (and preternaturally competent) that he could pull off a grand scheme and remain under the radar and undetected by traditional law enforcement methods, by officers who do everything in a "traditional" and dogged and frustratingly, seemingly incompetent, method, looking for such old-hat things as "evidence" and "intent" and "motivation." That last one is particularly frustrating to conspiracy-theorists because they already know what the "motivation" is: it's a saliva-sputtering, eye-bugged response of "Evil! Pure and simple from the eighth dimension!!"*
(Yeah, well, except for the "eighth dimension" part, but the rest of it is completely accurate). If the criminal master-plan of Mabuse isn't epic, the movie containing it certainly is; Dr. Mabuse, der Speiler runs 4½ hours in length in two parts—"The Great Gambler: A Picture of Our Times" and "Inferno: a Game for the People of our Age". In them, a criminal mastermind, plays havoc among the rich and powerful in Berlin, manipulating the strata of society for his own ends. Although notably intuitive and machiavellian, Mabuse knows himself so little (maybe because he loses himself so much in his talent for disguise) that he is vulnerable to be noticed by the common behaviors that connect his many persona's; make-up is only skin-deep but hubris goes right to the soul.
The film starts (ala the James Bond series) with an action sequence where a much-anticipated business contract is stolen and hidden away via an elaborately circuitous route that transfers the goods from one conveyance to another to throw off any pursuers, of which there are plenty. The final transfer takes scheduling and exquisite timing, indicating careful yet daring planning. The stolen contract is enough to de-stabilize the German stock-market, all planned to make Mabuse—who manipulated certain stocks and arranged the contract heist—a very rich man.
Cue the villain: we see a hand of photos fanned like playing cards, but all the images belong to one—Mabuse (Rudolf Kleine-Rugge), doctor of psychology, master of disguise and the scourge of the Berlin underworld to all law agencies, who is working in his laboratory extracting venom from a cobra for some nefarious future scheme, perhaps...(or maybe, it's just something that he likes to do). He proffers the drained snake to one of his barely competent hench-men Pesch (another, Spoem, is a drug addict, but there are many others) and, having already made a fortune, prepares to make his next one. This one Mabuse chooses to perform personally, rather than rely on his network of "useful idiots."
Choosing another disguise, he goes to a Gentleman's Club for a bit of gambling. He selects as his victim the rich Berlin scion Edgar Hull (Paul Richter), who, though he's no slouch at the gambling table, begins to play ill-advisedly. Mabuse is also, among his many talents, a hypnotist able to control the mind of any poor mortal who dares look into his eyes. He is able to easily control the play of the young Hull, who loses a fortune to the disguised Mabuse. Maybe it's ego that allows Mabuse to come out of his lair to risk exposure by personally taking a hand, but for whatever reason, it is a lucky break for the authorities.
Don't look. No. Really! Don't...oh, too late.
Just as a Moriarty must have his Sherlock, so a player on the other side must come to the fore as sure as night confronts day; prosecutor von Wenk—Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) becomes aware of the troubles of young Mr. Hall, suspecting he is the latest in a string of prominent Berliners who have been fleeced, and begins investigating. He attends a game at a casino and comes face to face with Mabuse who, not suspecting he's dealing with the law, tries his mind-control powers on him. Van Wenk is disoriented, but resists, and Mabuse makes his escape, chased by van Wenk who is abducted by one of the mastermind's goons and tossed, adrift in a rowboat.
Mabuse learns the identity of his pursuer and that he is working with Hull to discover who he is. He decides to move against the two men, using his moll, the dancer Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen) to seduce Hull; she lures Hull to an illegal casino, expecting van Wenk to follow them, but the imperturbable lawmen orders a raid on the premises, instead. Mabuse is only partially successful—Hull is killed, but van Wenk captures Carozza and has her jailed and interrogated, but the woman, in thrall with Mabuse, is no help. Even recruiting his friend, the Countess Told (Gertrude Welker) and putting her in the same cell as Carozza, does not encourage any betrayal on the woman's part, despite there being no response from Mabuse and no attempts to try and spring her free. By the end of the first part of the film, Carozza is in custody and Mabuse sets his sights on destroying the Countess Told, driving her husband the Count insane and destroying van Welk utterly and forever. The chess-pieces are all in place; it's merely up to the chess-masters to move them to their final ends.
By this time, Mabuse has taken on a guise far more powerful than just a manipulator of minds; he is "The Great Unknown," master of his own fate and the fate of so many more. He becomes the personification of evil, a literal spell-binder, able to manipulate the suggestible and gullible to whatever end he so desires. A person of indomitable will (and ego) using the weak to carry out his handiwork, while he merely sits back and pulls the strings of his puppets, calculating advantages, anticipating set-backs, fine-tuning the mayhem, plotting...forever plotting. His only down-side is his own lack of self-awareness, his own hubris; he can't resist inserting himself into the machinery, putting himself at risk of exposure. Perhaps he thinks he is just too brilliant to be caught, and if he's discovered, then what of it? He will merely eliminate the discoverer.
That's the template: pernicious foe and implacable adversary. The bad guy creates the situation and a good guy must solve and resolve it; it's a bit backwards from the usual scenario as the bad guy is the focus and must be defeated—the hero is something of a cipher, far less interesting than the villain of the piece, but who is just very, very competent and tenacious. All of this is set up in the first part of the film, and Lang merely brings in additional victims and supporting characters to add more strength to the web of intrigue. They are mere complications, not even making things more difficult for either adversary, just adding to the mayhem...and the body-count.
Don't look. Really? I have to tell you this again?. I just can't convince you to NOT look, can I?
But, that ever-higher piling of bodies does serve one purpose: if the side of right and virtue is stymied by the machinations of one such as Mabuse, how can he, himself, be immune? Mabuse is not insane (not yet, anyway—there will be sequels) and, like many Shakespearean villains before him, he can be haunted, whether by his own conscience (if he has a conscience) or by the greater clockwork of the supernatural that keeps its own ledgers and calls them into account. Not even one such as Mabuse can have control over that, and he is just as susceptible to its rough justice, which is oftentimes more harsh than that meted out by the mortal and the terrestrial. Mabuse may think himself in control by design, but he's not in control of everything.
The film was made in 1922, so it presaged the rise of Hitler by seven years, but Mabuse's power to manipulate has been influenced by many charismatic figures (Rasputin, for example had died merely six years before) and, in the years since, there has been no shortage of Mabusian-type stand-in's at the center of conspiracy theories that try to explain events in a way that defies the concepts of randomness or coincidence. His influence extends even to this day, where fanciful bits of business are twined together on the walls of the deluded, looking so hard for connections that sometimes they miss the obvious. Conspiracy theories are the bread and circuses for those whose minds aren't more worthwhile engaged. And popular entertainments such as this and other "Napoleon-of-crime-stories" only seem to encourage such pursuits and flights of fancy. I always joke when things get hysterical in movies that those involve should "just get a good night's sleep." But, how can one sleep with so much rampant corruption occurring?
Mabuse is confronted, ala Shakespeare, by his ghosts...and his deeds.
Director Fritz Lang would revisit the character of Mabuse—in 1933 and, again, in 1960 for the last film he would direct—still finding ways that Mabuse could hold sway over an unknowing public and authorities always one step behind.
The Paleface(Edward F. Cline/Buster Keaton,1922) I've already done a piece on Buster Keaton's last silent film after selling his Keaton Studios to M-G-M, a move that would prove disastrous to his career. But, before I delve into that aspect of Keaton's work, a glimpse back at Keaton in his prime—a film that was probably "on the edge" when it first came out in 1922, but is far more potentially offensive now, while also deliberately taking a tack that is probably only offensive to the opposite end of the spectrum. This is a movie that might make liberals cry, when they should be laughing. It will also make capitalists burst a blood vessel, and not from chortling. Me? I love it. It is prime Keaton, at his best and his sharpest, and with an underlying point. The Crow Feet tribe is living an idyllic life in mountainous terrain by a lake, until the one appointed to buy a land lease is knocked over the head and the lease stolen by a lackey of the Old West Oil Company, whose boss, once the lease is in hand, orders the tribe to vacate the land in 24 hours. The Crow Feet Chief is incensed and orders the first white to enter their premises be killed. Guess who shows up?
Buster is wandering the nearby landscape, in rapt concentration collecting butterflies, oblivious to everything except the elusive lepidoptera, not even noticing that he has stumbled onto the Crow Feet land, or that, eventually, he is being followed by tribesmen, watching his every move. It is only when they make a concerted effort to burn him at the stake that he starts to pay attention to his circumstances—and the first of disguises and the first of chases begins.
Buster takes part in the very "war-dance" against him.
The film is only two reels—20 minutes—but it is packed with elaborate gags and amazing stunts, the majority of which are written, designed and performed by Keaton. He'd been an acrobat since a child when he performed with his parents' vaudeville act, where he'd nimbly performed the most alarming of pratfalls that some called into question the competency of his parents. His work here also provokes gasps along with laughter—I can't watch Keaton movies without the frequent use of my "Rewind" button to replay something that has made doubters of my eyes and boggled my mind. They are instantly rewarding in a way that distracts from things that, only in retrospect, might raise questions. All the natives are white guys. Not to make any excuses here, but practically everybody in Hollywood's silent movies is a white guy—except for the women—in the vast majority of films that have survived the era. Anybody looking for authentic ethnicity of any sort in The Movies' infancy will be sorely disappointed and can rightly be accused of being blinkerdly naive if expecting it (not only that...if you're going to take it that seriously, maybe comedy...even laughter...isn't your "thing."). No, "the injuns" are stereotyped, and the production probably did not hire any ethno-sociologists as consultants. The costumes aren't authentic and the behavior and customs are probably handed down from people who hadn't been within a thousand miles of a First Person, but just something "they heard" (ya know, like how people get their news these days in order to make an informed opinion?)—the dogma of the tribe. So, yeah, this one won't be headlining the film festival at the Snoqualmie Casino any time soon. Their loss.
**Harrumph**However...this is a case for not seeing the reservation for the trees; the stereotypes are front and center, the real message is in the story. Never mind the details, but, eventually, Buster is welcomed into the tribe, dubbed "Little Chief Paleface" (rather than, say, "Pratfalls with Wolves") and when he is told that the tribe must leave their land, his response is to fight it, saying "We indians have to stick together!" And although it sounds like a case of "Whitey Saves the Day" (as in the alluded to Dances with Wolves or Avatar), it is a group effort to stage an occupation of the oil company HQ before they do something like (oh, say) build a pipeline through their land.
As much as the tribe is stereotyped, they fare better than the white "job-creators" who are portrayed as cowardly, craven, entitled criminals who probably have great health care, which might even cover deep perforation by arrows.
So, okay, be offended by the slapped-together casting and the white guys in swarthy make-up, The Paleface has its palpitating heart in the right place, usually 30 paces ahead of a rapidly-advancing crowd of "mean-you-harms." It is ever thus in the curious and smartly charming films of Buster Keaton, fall guy.
