Silent movies - The Lost World

In my childhood, we were just as crazy about dinosaurs as kids are today. We didn't have dinosaur toys that changed into vehicles, though, or from one dino to another. We had pictures in encyclopedias and had to walk to school 30 miles uphill through snow going up to our hips ... sorry, wrong record 🙃
Seriously, though, I mostly remember looking at or reading about dinosaurs in books at the library, and one of them was a novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Did you know that Doyle wrote a lot more than just Sherlock Holmes stories, in all kinds of genres? Essays, stories, plays, poems of genres from history over science-fiction to adventure, fantasy, and of course crime. He also drew and painted.
I got the Sherlock Holmes stories from the library more than once as a kid (and finally bought them in both German and English), and so I just grabbed the other book standing there as well - The Lost World which is the first one of the Professor Challenger series from 1912.

Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger
By unknown author - J. Willis Sayre
Collection of Theatrical Photographs,
Public Domain

I absolutely loved this book and can't say how often I read it.
Although I enjoyed re-reading it again for this post, the topic today is not the book, but the silent movie "The Lost World" from 1925.
Let's talk about alternate versions first, though.
Early movies often have the problem that prints differ from one another because parts of the movie were cut out or got lost which can make it difficult to restore them true to the original. The same happened to "The Lost World" which could only be seen in a 60 minute version for a long time.
At the moment, there are different prints available, the Eastman House print, which is said to have better flow, and the David Shephard print stringing everything together that could be found, not always helping the flow.
I watched the 104 minute version which is also available on Blu-Ray (this is the Lobster Films/Flicker Alley restoration) and I think that is also the version I had watched on German-French channel ARTE before.
You can find the 92 minute version on YouTube.

The plot of the film - who cares about the plot? There are dinosaurs, isn't that all that matters? No? Ok then, if you insist.
Ed Malone, reporter with the "London Record-Journal", wants to marry, but Gladys, his chosen one, will only marry a man who has faced danger.
Ed's chance comes when he attends a talk at the Zoological Society where Professor Summerlee calls out eccentric Professor Challenger on his "lies" about a lost world where ancient beasts have survived. Challenger invites the audience to join an expedition to that lost world. Three men agree to come along - Summerlee, Malone, and Sir John Roxton, a huntsman and sportsman.

Meeting at Challenger's house, Malone gets introduced to Paula White, daughter and assistant to Maple White (!) who found the lost world, a plateau in Brazil, but got left behind there when his helpers got scared and took his sick daughter back to civilization with them. The expedition is not only meant to prove Challenger's statements, but also to be a search party for White.
The group travels to Brazil, bringing along Challenger's butler Austin, a black helper named Zambo (Warning: blackface which I guess had to be expected, but at least he's a positive character and important for ... you'll see that later), and a monkey named Jocko, and reach the base of the plateau which they plan to reach the same way as White, by felling a tree on the pinnacle next to it to use for a bridge.

Once on the plateau, they are fascinated to see all the prehistoric animals such as Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, Triceratops, Pterodactylus, and more. They experience their lifes, fights, and deaths.

They also find out that they are being watched by an Apeman they think could be the "missing link" and who has tried before to kill them by throwing a rock at them. For some reason he's always in the company of a chimpanzee.

Unfortunately, a feeding Brontosaurus knocks down the tree bridge, so the adventurers are trapped on the plateau and get ready to get settled in.

During all this, Paula keeps looking a lot like this, by the way. For a woman who followed her father into the jungle as an assistant and joined the search party, they painted her as quite the drama queen which I think is rather unfair even if not unusual for the times. At least her fellow expedition members aren't condescending towards her. I will tell you something about her later, though.

Ed and Paula discover their love for each other and want to ask Summerlee, who used to be a minister, to marry them (gotta stay decent even in the wild, you know).
While exploring, Roxton finds the remains of Paula's father and brings her back his watch. When he hears of the planned marriage, he hides his own love for Paula.

Then the volcano on the plateau erupts and all the animals and humans try to escape from the fire and lava.
By now, Austin and Zambo have made a plan, however, how to get the others down off the plateau. They have made a rope ladder and let Paula call for Jocko, so he can climb up and bring them the rope to pull up the ladder. I think he's the hero of the movie.

Ed is the last one to descend, but the Apeman starts pulling the ladder back up. Only a shot by Roxton can save Ed.
Now that they are back in their world, Paula calls off the marriage due to the promise Ed has given Gladys.

During one of the dinosaur fights, a Brontosaurus has fallen from the plateau into the river mud. They find it trapped but alive and with the help of a group from the Geodetic Survey who has turned up the plateau after seeing the eruption (very handy), they manage to put it on a ship and bring it home to London where Challenger wants to present it during another talk.
Things go wrong during the unloading, the Brontosaurus escapes and roams the streets of London until coming to Tower Bridge which collapses under its weight (am I the only one wondering what they fed him on the ship, by the way?).

Ed approaches Gladys who informs him that she hasn't been waiting for him, but married a store clerk instead, which means the way is open for his and Paula's love. Roxton congratulates them taking the loss like the sportsman he is.
Challenger, however, breaks down seeing his Brontosaurus swim off into the ocean.

I think it's easy to agree on the dinosaurs being the real stars of the film (although I have to say there was good acting both on the dinosaurs' and the humans' side).
Without them it would just have been a bunch of tough men heading out to do tough things, hacking their way through a jungle, impressing the world (there is definitely colonialism hanging in the air, also in the behavior towards the "inferior" Apeman who's really just defending his territory) - and women (that's for you, Ed, wasn't that a bit of a rash decision?).
How impressive would they have been without the dinosaurs, though? Not more than the guys of the Geodetic Survey who obviously had no problem to find the plateau, either.

Ed was lucky to have Paula instead of Gladys who couldn't even wait a year to marry a very un-adventurous man (I know that isn't a word), but you know ... spoiler alert, here's a quick look at the differences in the book, so don't read on now if you want to read the book!

Maple White didn't die on the plateau, but in a native village where Challenger found him and his diary. They later find the remains of an associate of White. There is no Paula, though. I guess they introduced her because movies needed some love interest with a happy ending at the time.

There isn't one Apeman living on the plateau, but two tribes - the big Apemen and a indigenous tribe of smaller humans who fear the others for their cruelty. The explorers save a few of the humans from their enemies, among them the chief's son who later helps them escape the plateau via a cave tunnel.
Yup, no Jocko, either.

Challenger doesn't bring home a Brontosaurus, but has Roxton catch him a young Pterodactylus which then escapes and flies through London.

Ed in fact does come home to a married Gladys, her husband is a solicitor's clerk.

Roxton reveals to his friends that he has found diamonds in the lost world and will of course share with them. Challenger wants to build a private museum, Summerlee wants to retire from teaching and classify chalk fossils.
Roxton assumes Ed will get married, but when he announces he wants to form an expedition to go back to the lost world himself, heartbroken Ed says he will join him.

It's a shame, but Zambo isn't mentioned anymore after the group gets back to England, a shame because he was the one holding out at the base of the plateau after the others of the crew (no Austin, by the way) left and climbing that pinnacle more than once as the outside contact. I thought he was an important part of the expedition.

There is definitely more action in the book than in the movie, but that's okay because, erm, have I mentioned we have cool dinosaurs in the movie?
For those we have to thank Willis "Obie" O'Brien whose employer had the film rights to Doyle's work. Obie was a special effects and stop-motion animation pioneer (whose protégé was Ray Harryhausen, by the way) and "The Lost World" was his first feature film after several shorts.
While his first models were made from clay, these dinosaurs were made with a rubber skin over metal armatures and had a bladder inside with which breathing could be simulated - one of my favorite effects.

In the sources I've added just a few of the blog posts and articles I read for you to see extra pictures from the film if you maybe need a little incentive to watch it. There are for example also more information about the prints or the new score from 2016 (which I had to turn down in volume because it was a bit overwhelming).
Again, keep in mind if you watch the movie that this was 100 years ago.

This is how the novel and the movie start and I think it says it all.
"I have wrought my simple plan
   If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who's half a man,
   Or the man who's half a boy."
Doyle liked to write adventure novels and the movie is an adventure. For boys.
And still I had my fun with it, too. Dinosaurs!

Sources:
1. Arthur Conan Doyle: The Lost World. 1912. On "Project Gutenberg"
2. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" - a page with a lot of information around both the novel and movies and series and merchandise and more
3. Lea Stans: Thoughts On: "The Lost World" (1925). On "Silent-ology", September 9, 2019
4. Kristin Hunt: The 1925 Movie That Paved the Way for King Kong. On "JSTOR Daily", October 10, 2019
5. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell: THE LOST WORLD refound, piece by piece. On "David Bordwell's website on cinema. Observations on film art", October 2, 2017
6. Leonard Maltin: Before King Kong: A lost world found. On "Leonard Maltin", October 1, 2017