Chaney Table Scraps Taste Just Fine
What's Left Of Lon Is Cinevent Highlight
Back from Columbus
where I saw what survives of two Lon Chaney features, Triumph and The Road To
Mandalay. They're frankly a mess, reels missing with steeple-jump narrative as
result (explanatory titles fill potholes). Here's the thing, however: I don't
care ... because it's Chaney ... and I'll take him hobbled as freaks and
humpbacks he so-oft played. We should rejoice that any of this stuff made a
ninety years' count, for how much of silent cinematics exist today, let alone
so much of Chaney? Somehow it seems appropriate to view him through moldered
nitrate. Getting through these is what separates hard-core from dilettante
fan-ship. To seize on sterling LC moments is like grab of lightning
bugs on a summer's eve: they go by fast and blink but briefly. He
self-sacrifices yet again, in both pics, taking a murder rap in Triumph, then offing Mandalay villainy to save a daughter who stabs him for the effort (except she
doesn't know he'd Dad, and thinks he's trying to kill her betrothed, and ...
well, let it go). Lon has a white eye and decorative scar in the latter that I could and did draw to accuracy at age ten, thanks to frequent
Famous Monsters placement (was there an issue that didn't feature Chaney?). LC
is Mandalay-intro'ed as summit of badness, softened
by clergyman brother Henry B. Walthall and aforesaid offspring Lois Moran. Was
Chaney the first, if only, major star who could (so frequent) die at the end of
his movies and still let us leave satisfied?
More of LC at Greenbriar Archives: Lon Chaney Shall Not Die!: Part One and Two, Phantom Of The Opera, Tell It To The Marines, and The Black Bird.
I saw a good version of THE ROAD TO MANDALAY (also known as EL TUERTO DE SINGAPUR) in the Manes and Peña show, which continues and can be seen online for free despite Manes's sad death a few months ago, several years ago when I was occasionally in Argentina.
ReplyDeleteThe print came directly from Peña's own 9.5mm print well transferred to tape with titles in French.
Before I got a different VHS version of lesser quality with optional Spanish subtitles that I later translated to English so a friend could actually see the movie.
I don't agree at all with you that at least this film in its surviving form is a mess. In fact, I feel that not really much is lost. The story does not make much sense even in the available scenes. But Lon Chaney's performance is excellent as usual and he alone compensates for the weakness of the film.
It's only been the last year or two I've seen Chaney movies other than Phantom and Hunchback, and he always knocks me out. That so little of his stuff exists in its entirety is a crime.
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