Watch List for 11/4/2024

 

Watched: The Iron Horse, The Johnstown Flood, The Virgin Queen, and Desire

THE IRON HORSE (1924) and THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926) --- What made people migrate west, leave homes and hearth and better still, comparative safety, to venture into unknown where privation and perhaps sudden death await? The Iron Horse explains via men of few words who made up pioneer stock, Abraham Lincoln in recurring cameo to speak for history and why it was necessary to move and keep moving all the way to a next ocean. The Iron Horse seems more and more like found footage off the real thing, which it sort of was for being made not so long after facts portrayed. Think of 1924 viewers who experienced trek west that could speak to authenticity on screens, this part-why it was vital to get details right and make events so vivid they’d hurt. Knowing eyes were watching, plus younger generations schooled on noble mission that was breaking trails, for among other things, there'd be no Hollywood if not for brave souls who got there first. The Iron Horse and The Johnstown Flood pair well for bringing past periods alive, melodrama to salt sagas and instill interest other than this-and-that having happened on that-or-those dates. Who’s to say there were not men like George O’Brien, plenty of men like George O’Brien, all beef and ready to guide us across, quell savages, the daunting rest. Is there even one George O’Brien left to headline narrative like this? The Iron Horse is all over You Tube in surprisingly crisp editions, some off DVD’s no doubt, others derived from Killiam version which once was an only way enthusiasts could experience The Iron Horse. One of these has William Perry’s fine piano score from, what, fifty years ago?, his my pick of horses to YT ride, afterward perusing John Ford books on how the director did it. Seems making The Iron Horse came near ordeal of decade spent laying rails over thousands of treacherous miles.

Re-creation stuff is stunningly done, commercial concession O’Brien avenging a father’s death and linking back with childhood love Madge Bellamy, these a western trope before and long after The Iron Horse, drama always reliable to backdrop march of happenings and lend structure to them. We must tell a story to anyone sat two hours in front of a screen, save if it's documentary, which The Iron House comes close at times to being. Silent features now that they're all Public Domain are turning up en masse at You Tube, which I call a good and progressive thing. There would be more but for archives adhering to donor restrictions. Good thing I don’t administer these places, as I’d be shoveling stuff out front and back doors so fans could see them, just like collector days when rules were made to be bent. Of authorized content, and on Blu-Ray, there is lately released The Johnston Flood, restored off a single surviving print at the George Eastman House, and multi-tinted, nicely scored by the Mont Alto Orchestra. The actual flood happened in 1889, me struck by how modern life was way back then. They had telephones and even a primitive kinetoscope to amuse bar patrons. Developing story shadows, or rather overshadows, the disaster which won’t come till a final ten minutes, but tension builds toward it like with the Titanic, constant worry, warnings, and the like, that we know dire things lay ahead for safety measures not observed and business interests ignoring threat that is rising waters and constant rain. Flood differs from earthquake in that we don’t see latter coming, thus surprise in a film like San Francisco where being absorbed in narrative makes one forget a quake awaits. Fact the Johnstown flood actually happened enhances the sit, plus ensnare by lovely locations and image to boost them, presto sixty-eight minutes gone plus peruse of extras which include 3-D images of real-life Johnstown in horrific aftermath of the flood. Robert A. Harris and James Mockoski restored and put the splendid show together. I’m for supporting such labor of love and fullest dedication as here. Pre-talk film yet thrives so long as champions like these are around to nurture it.

THE VIRGIN QUEEN (1955) --- Everyone stood at opposite poles of the wide, wide screen and me seated comfortably center, perfect vantage from which to see fifties Fox Cinemascope, but how we suffered for long years before these were properly encoded for home screen play. There is joy in ping-pong voicing, addressing one another from wings as if surrounding us, a fifties marvel novelty to make movie houses resemble live theatre at its liveliest. NBC in 1964 broadcast The Virgin Queen as their Monday primetime movie, undoubted agony for those who submitted. What we are heir to is wide and HD at Vudu/Fandango, which I saw last night and noted how expanse exposes economies, The Virgin Queen done for modest at the time $1.6 million, much of décor, maybe costumes too, borrowed from Fox storage back to Forever Amber and no telling how earlier. Release was mid-1955 and that was late enough for Cinemascope to have run through sure-thing juice, result a million lost. Being ninety minutes makes for energy more than when Bette Davis last played Elizabeth, then opposite Errol Flynn, here tilting with Richard Todd, whose touch is light in accordance with décor at minimum and perhaps his embarrassment at being so extensively doubled for a cramped fight scene with Robert Douglas where it’s clear both actors were elsewhere occupied while doubles did their dueling. Chicanery at court plays mostly for fun, The Virgin Queen sample of how well a fifties thing can register if you’re seeing to full advantage what watchers got in 1955. This like all of Fox from that period was hobbled enough by broadcast abuse to make us assume the pictures were as bad as all of them looked, time ideal to sift lesser of the lot, like The Virgin Queen, and realize how enjoyable it and others as obscure can be given accurate representation. Unless I’m wrong, Vudu is sole place to make that happen, though there is a Region Two Blu-Ray from off-shores.

DESIRE (1936) --- Crime committed by a role model movie star during the Code era was not just discouraged, it was for most part forbidden. To emulate a popular film figure was common currency. If they smoked, which most did, then likely so would we, especially ones of us most impressionable. Marlene Dietrich’s was glamour largely unattainable. To copy her look or mannerisms was to risk ridicule. Like with Garbo, imitators were largely for comedies or cartoons, yet audiences took the genuine article seriously in melodrama, as they would Dietrich up to a point of … was it boredom or exhaustion? Desire began her ramp down, The Garden of Allah hastening the slide. Dietrich however could reinvent herself and survive. Desire shows a sort of beginning for that with her humorous much of time, an opening reel jewel theft depicted in detail with MD putting one, actually much more, over on a series of suckers. Crime mustn’t pay said Code authorities, but Desire makes it seem to, Dietrich not acknowledging wrong of her act till a tail end and then spanked but barely for tie-up where loot is returned, her having received an offscreen “parole.” We don’t even see arresting authorities. Studios could slip like eels past barriers where negotiation with Code reps was friendly enough, sleights-of-hand not uncommon depending on individual relationships. I suspect producing Ernst Lubitsch and director Frank Borzage had panache and social skill enough to finesse Breen or associates to give Desire leeway, not to large degree, but by subtle means a knowing viewer could recognize and feel for once he/she was not being addressed as a child. Desire isn’t Jewel Robbery or Trouble in Paradise, but it will do for its year and offers insight to how artists could temper, if not overcome, a thicket of regulations that lesser talent was too often overwhelmed by. Kino has a nice Blu-Ray of Desire.