In 1884, the novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain was published in the UK and shortly after in the USA.
Since then, there were numerous adaptations. The one that impressed me most, simply because it was the first one I ever saw, was one of the famous "Christmas four-parters" here in Germany, a German-French-Romanian coproduction from 1968 which I saw as a rerun (I had more a crush on the Huck actor than on the story, though).
We also had both books which are in my personal library now.
Today, however, I have the earliest adaptation for you, "Huckleberry Finn" from 1920.
I doubt I'll have to worry about spoilers much this time.
Here's the plot.
Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry have found a treasure and received some money from it.
The Widow Douglas and her sister Miss Watson take Huck in as his guardians. Huck isn't happy about having to behave, but stays to be able to be part of Tom's gang.
"Pap", his father, is after the money and abducts Huck to a remote cabin. After Pap tries to kill him in delirium tremens, Huck fakes his murder and escapes.
Seeing the townspeople putting bread with quicksilver in it in the river tells him that they think he's dead and he makes Jackson's Island his "kingdom".
One morning, he finds the sleeping Jim there, one of Miss Watson's slaves. Jim has run away because Miss Watson intended to sell him to a bad man. He can hardly believe Huck is alive and asks him if he can stay with him.
Huck goes into town for news disguised as a girl and learns that the townspeople suspects Jim of having murdered him before running away and that they want to go look for him on Jackson's Island.
So they take the raft that Jim built and go down the river where they meet two thieves running from some townsfolk.
One of them claims to be a born Duke and an actor (the other calls himself the King in the book), and in the next town they scam the audience with overpriced tickets for a stage performance.
Further down the river they meet a man asking the two thieves if they are the brothers of a Mr. Wilks who has died. When they hear that he left some property, they see their chance to cheat Mr. Wilks's three daughters out of everything.
Huck, however, falls for one of the daughters, Mary-Jane, and after a while he reveals to her that the "brothers" are crooks.
Then two men turn up and can prove that they are the real brothers by knowing about the tattoo on the dead man's chest.
Huck and Jim don't manage to take off without the two crooks, and when they reach the next town, one of them sells Jim to a man named Phelps. Huck decides to save Jim. When he arrives at the plantation, he's greeted by Mrs. Phelps who happens to be Tom Sawyer's aunt and thinks he's Tom.
On the way to Pikesville to fetch "his" trunk Huck meets Tom.
He tells him about his adventures and Jim and of course Tom immediately comes up with a plan. He'll pretend to be his brother Sid and they will help Jim to escape (which involves dressing him in a woman's frock).
When they sneak Jim out and head to the raft, the townspeople are after them and Tom gets shot in the leg (that footage is missing from the video). Although Tom wants to go through with the escape, Jim insists on Huck getting a doctor who has Tom carried back to the Phelps's house.
The next day Tom's Aunt Polly turns up and tells them that Miss Watson has died a month ago and has given Jim his freedom as Tom knows. When asked why he wanted to free a free man, Tom replies that it was for the adventure and that he wants to go on another one with Huck.
Huck, however, wishes Aunt Sally would adopt him, so he can become an educated young man and return to Mary-Jane.
And that's also what he tells Mark Twain at the end - that there's nothing more to write about him but maybe a love story some day ...
I'm not going to go into the controversy about the book itself. The movie had a few racist moments, but that has more to do with the source itself. The n-word is used just once by Jim himself. I don't know if that was on purpose.
William Desmond Taylor (more known today for his unsolvedn murder in 1922 and the following scandal) made three movies from the Twain books, "Tom Sawyer" in 1917, "Huck and Tom" in 1918, and "Huckleberry Finn" in 1920.
The movie had been considered to be lost until a print was found in a Danish archive in the 60s and restored in 2006. As mentioned above, there is footage missing which is explained in intertitles.
E. W. Kemble, the illustrator of the original edition, said that Taylor took his illustrations and brought them to life.
Indeed, the movie is also rather faithful to the book although things have been left out, for example how Jim finds Pap's body or the deadly family feud that Huck gets to witness.
Leaving those out makes it rather a gentle adaptation although the part in which Huck is held prisoner and threatened by Pap is quite violent.
I think it would have been interesting to see more of how the narrative around Jim has been handled which is unfortunately missing, for example the escape (shame on Tom for hatching a complicated plan just for the adventure instead of letting Jim know he's a free man). I would have preferred that to the story of the Duke and the King which was very slow.
Also the relationship between Huck and Jim wasn't explored much except for Huck's decision to save Jim after he had been sold.
Lewis Sargent made a convincing Huck, and it's notable that in a time where blackface was prevalent in movies, the part of Jim was not played by a white man, but by George Reed.
All in all, the film will not make it into my list of favorites for rewatching because I struggle with the story itself.
Sources:
1. David Kiehn: Huckleberry Finn. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Essay. 2011
2. Lorraine Lo: Huckleberry Finn (1920). On: TCM. Articles. October 10, 2011
