The Sea Be No Place For Sissies

The Code of the Sea (1924) Turns Rod La Rocque From Mouse To Man

Top-most code of the sea in Paramount's 1924 silent is not to show yellow when gales blow or masts need climbing. Rod La Rocque chickens out on both, plus crisis of girlfriend Jacqueline Logan's crinoline catching fire to his helpless reaction. That moment's a chiller for our recalling how Para actress Martha Mansfield died horrifically from a same on-set incident only a year before Code of the Sea came out. The real-life tragedy had to have inspired its recreation here, or were such deaths common among fashionable 20's women? Ms. Logan is rescued, but barely, and not by Rod, who for umpteenth time in Code of the Sea buries face in hands to cry like a baby. When guys played coward in those days, they really played it. Redemption comes of a whopper storm and La Rocque finding nerve in wettest circumstance imaginable (Ann's remark on glancing up from her laptop: They must have been miserable making this). Thing that wins latter-day admiration: All of action done for real in adroit concert with ship miniatures, and looking realer than if they had access to our CGI (should modern fakes be better called animated features?). Code of the Sea is strictly a programmer, but of interest because Victor Fleming directs along virile groove, and the DVD from Grapevine derives from lovely tinted Kodascope. An hour long, so doesn't overstay welcome. Film students of last several decades may recognize Code of the Sea as example of 20's-era storytelling cited in detail by David Bordwell and Janet Staiger in their must-taught text, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (1985).