Count Your Blessings #3

 

CYB: Fairbanks, Kongo King Karloff, Minty Cartoons, and Lubitsch Doing Drama

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924) --- Blu-Ray to buy is Masters of Cinema Region Two from Eureka Entertainment, a stablest rendition I’ve seen from anybody. The Thief of Bagdad already a most amazing of silent spectacles now is among most luminous offered on disc. Look back to 1970 reveals Thief among offerings from “Griggs-Moviedrome,” home-based business of lifelong collector John Griggs. You needed $250 to acquire his 16mm print, $59 on 8mm, such money beyond reckoning in 1970. You could buy a television for as much, albeit used and certainly B/W. Those who remembered twenties filmgoing saw The Thief of Bagdad as apex of art. I more than get that watching today. Fairbanks was an only man  at the time who’d mount such pageantry, sets astounding, special effects good as could be conceived in 1924. Length at two- and one-half hours declared importance of the project. Fairbanks ought to be better remembered, but don’t we say a same about most of our favorites? Doug Jr. tried reviving his father’s work in the early fifties to cricket response, plus the films played awkward on TV. Thief is a must for theatres or at least home screens of size as available now. Kevin Brownlow ran Thief and other silents on 35mm to audiences during the early eighties, his a committed effort to stop parades from entirely going by. To have The Thief of Bagdad on such definitive terms is to get visual impact viewers felt when the show was new and setting new standard for spectacular. There really is nothing remotely like it, not even among Fairbanks’ own gallery of entertainments. He would himself protect the legacy by donating prints-negatives to the Museum of Modern Art in the late thirties, so thankfully we have quality access to this, his best and biggest, Blu-Ray ribbon-round to make The Thief of Bagdad a vanished era must.

KING OF THE KONGO (1929) --- Serial history made when Mascot brought sound to cliffhanging and shot at least backgrounds in far-away Cambodia (ancient temple ruins) to lend surface grandeur to chapters combining music/effects, some dialogue, and lots of beasts both real and faked, lizards enlarged, man/men kitted out in gorilla skins. I’m for low-crouched apes in what looks to be layers of fur overcoat, whoever inside sure to suffocate if crew doesn’t get his act in the can but quick. Producer/historian Eric Grayson climbed Matterhorn that was finding, restoring, compiling, mountain of prints, sound discs, disparate nips/tuck to pull ten chapters together and emerge with product a best we’ve seen this seminal serial look since 1929, saying plenty for here is not just jungle chasing, for who’s that chasing but first significant speaking on screen Boris Karloff, rapacious as we like him and never far from action. Dan Mercer and I once visited Richard Bojarski and he proudly showed off a Brownie shot from 1964 when he and NY boroughs pals gathered to watch a stack of Kongo reels just to see Boris in till-then elusive performance. We’d heard about King of the Kongo but till this point had not known anyone who saw it. Now of course we have it all and on Blu-Ray, this thanks to Grayson and age of miracles we live in. A chunk of King can be seen in Youngson’s Days of Thrills and Laughter under heading of wild/ wooly chapterplays, and there are glimpses too at You Tube, but see instead this Blu-Ray, it enabled by far-flung collectors plus the Library of Congress and for all I know bit/pieces dug from that Cambodian temple. Bravo to Eric Grayson for fruit borne of this ambitious project.

NEW LIFE FOR OLD CARTOONS --- Ignored for sixty years and for reasons understandable, three from 1937 emerge as extras with Warners’ Blu-Ray of The Prince and the Pauper, none I recall specific from Saturday mornings, but surely I saw them as Channel 12-Winston-Salem had bulk of the pre-49 WB’s and used same for ninety minutes per program, enough to numb the most dedicated plus all black-and-white we were limited to, Channel 12 sans Sat morning color during the early sixties. I’d trod through cat, dog, mice subjects hoping for Daffy or Bugs to show back up, me a cartoon devotee up to a point, but not like nascent historians that wrote down all of dates and credits they read off broadcast screens. Point today is how remarkable these play with color so splendidly restored. Did they really look like this in 1937? I bet not. What wizardry has been done with elements, digital it’s true, but how could even 35mm newly rendered improve upon it? Subject matter is not the object or even the point. What difference if Plenty of Money and You, Streamlined Greta Green, and A Sunbonnet Blue are “good” cartoons? They are made good, in fact spectacular, by what Warners has done with them here. Cartoons by the mid-thirties was for showing off color as much as animation, funny a lesser if not least priority. Warners by these examples seem still to be reaching for Disney’s crown. Even Tex Avery supervising A Sunbonnet Blue pulls punch to favor cute, effort saved for moments plus overall impact of color. I watch these and it’s like being born again to cartoon love. John Griggs of earlier mentioned Griggs-Moviedrome 8 and 16mm declared “Quality is Everything,” and I’m learning daily that he was right, only Griggs never dreamed there’d come times like now when film nearing ninety would astound viewers so. Never mind whether you want The Prince and the Pauper. Buy Warners’ Blu-Ray just for these extras.

THREE WOMEN (1924) --- Really more about two women, being Pauline Frederick and May McAvoy, with Marie Prevost later for siren duty. Three Women looks Lubitsch- promising for comedy till Lew Cody goes fortune hunting after vain and aging Frederick, us sudden to realize this all should be taken serious, what we least want from Ernst Lubitsch. I waited for him to tip hat toward humor, but no, this is melodrama and he’s for seeing it straight to trial and jury application of the “unwritten law,” this time woman’s work which is refreshing and I’m always game to see characters in movies get away with murder, especially where it’s so irredeemable a rotter as Lew Cody taking the fall. A wild opener party at the “Waldorf ballroom” sees fun seekers on a sliding board plus a carousel built full scale, which I’d wonder if the real Waldorf ever accommodated frivolity like this. Such is distraction for neglectful mother Frederick who values gigolo love over that of needy daughter McAvoy, herself lying down to unwed bed with selfsame gigolo, outcome of such muddle my dread. Lubitsch should have been ridiculing such stuff, but I grant pardon for this property being imposed rather than chosen by the master maker. Still beautifully crafted, subtleties as expected, performances excellent per habit from Lubitsch. I understand he played scenes for actors and told them to perform exactly as he did, am surprised they don’t light a Lubitschian cigar to accent mimicry. Key is a scene where middle-age Frederick is adjusting lamps in the room, shutting curtains, etc., to keep wrinkles in twilight, then here comes her oblivious date to switch all back on again. Such is what made Lubitsch a dean among directors. Three Women is available on Blu-Ray from Kino. They used 35mm from the George Eastman House for source material and it looks terrific. “Count Your Blessings” applies well here. Seeing silents delivered so gets us tantalizingly close to joy viewers knew when pictures like Three Women were new.