Silent movies - Falling Leaves

I had planned to look for some autumnal silent movies, but only found this one to have a vague connection to the season.
Actually I had heard about this film before because it's one from the Solax Studios directed by Alice Guy-Blaché - "Falling Leaves" from 1912 (original title: Les Feuilles chéant).

This is the plot (with spoilers).

First, we meet bacteriologist Dr. Earl Hadley who "exhibits the result of his wonderful cure for consumption" by showing off patients he has cured.

Then we're with the Thompsons. Winifred, the older daughter, is sick with consumption. When she collapses, the doctor is called in and the news are not good.
He lets the parents know that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away".

Little Trixie is very worried and tries to think of a way to help her sister. Suddenly she has an idea.

She takes a ball of string, goes outside in the garden, and starts tying the fallen leaves back up to the branches because, if the leaves don't fall, Winifred will get well again, right?
Just at that moment, Dr. Hadley walks by and asks her what she's doing. She explains and he tells the family that he can help with his "wonderful serum" which he happens to have on him.

Three months later, Winifred is so much better that she eats with appetite again which makes all of them happy, also Dr. Hadley who comes by to check on her.
Trixie happily pulls their parents out of the room.
As the "Moving Picture News" put it "The doctor restores her lungs, but takes her heart".

The movie is said to be inspired by O. Henry's short story "The Last Leaf", but if it was, only that leaf stayed and the fact that a young girl is sick, those are the only similarities. Maybe only the title was the inspiration?
The young artist in the story has pneumonia and is convinced that she'll die when the last leaf falls, but her old neighbor paints a leaf on the window to give her hope.

It's a cute film (even if we might not be used to the actors delivering their speeches to the audience a lot, especially Trixie can't seem to resist having a look).
Who wouldn't be touched by little Trixie and her idea? Well, and the happy ending of course.
Okay, the idea of letting a stranger coming in from the street injecting your child may seem a little suspicious to us, but we believe a lot of things in movies, so why not that?
Although it looks as if Trixie isn't a fan of needles ...

Tuberculosis was a very real problem at the time (it'll come up again in a post later this year). I'm sure people would have wished for such a miracle serum.
How lucky Winifred was to have her little sister, too.
I'd recommend watching the film even just for "The Solax Kid".

I have written about Alice Guy-Blaché before. She's one of the big film pioneers (female and male) and was almost forgotten, but she's worth knowing about, really.

Silent movies - Teddy at the Throttle

I know that this isn't a Halloween movie, but I had to make a last minute change. At least we have a villain!

You may know Gloria Swanson not so much as the silent movie star she used to be, but from the movie "Sunset Boulevard" in which she plays a former silent movie star.
Anyway, today I'll be talking about "Teddy at the Throttle" from 1917.

First the plot (with spoilers).

Gloria Dawn, her trusted four-legged friend Teddy, and her sweetheart Bobbie Knight live in the same building.
As does evil Henry Black. He's Gloria's guardian and Bobbie's estate manager (until he's married) diverting money to his own account. He wants his sister to marry Bobbie to hide that which would suit Bobbie's aunt who doesn't approve of Gloria but thinks Black's sister will help her climb the social ladder.

And Bobbie indeed falls for her immediately - he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer - despite just having given Gloria a ring.
Although Gloria reminds him of that, Bobbie can't resist "his new girl" and starts neglecting her, yes, he even tells Gloria to give the ring back when the sister demands it. 

Then Black is informed by Bobbie's lawyer that a new will has turned up saying that Bobbie only gets the money if he marries Gloria. If he doesn't, the money will go to Gloria.
Black is delighted to see Bobbie and his sister together and decides to marry Gloria himself to get to the money.

There's only one problem. Gloria doesn't want him.
At a ball, however, Bobbie leaves his love on the dance floor (after a hilarious dance) because he just can't stay away from Gloria.

Not allowing the plan to go wrong, the Blacks quickly separate the lovebirds again, but Gloria finds out about the new will and calls the lawyer for help. 
Meanwhile, despite a huge storm, Ms. Black and Bobbie elope by car, followed by Gloria who's followed by Mr. Black. As the car is stuck in the mud, Gloria manages to catch up with them and she shows Bobbie the letter. Of course, he changes his mind once again, but Gloria has enough and tells him to marry the sister.

Unfortunately, Black catches her, and to save himself from prison he chains her to the tracks to be run over by the train in which the lawyer is sitting (which they of course don't know).
Again, this is a comedy and if you want to read more about one of the most prevalent ideas about silent movies - the villain tying a damsel to railroad tracks - I have three posts for you on that trope in the sources below.
Gloria can't escape by herself and whistles for the true hero of this film - Teddy!

That must be some powerful dog whistle.

When Teddy arrives, Gloria gives him a note to take to Bobbie.
Both come to her rescue, but the chains are too strong.

Teddy leaps into the train with the note and the engineers stop the train, but not in time. Bobbie jumps out of the way, but Gloria is right under the train which snaps the chains under its wheels.

Gloria Swanson insisted on doing this dangerous stunt
of disappearing into a hole just in time herself!

Bobbie pulls Gloria out from under the train.
Black tries to escape when he sees that his plan has failed, but once again we can trust Teddy to do the right thing.

Black gets arrested and Gloria and Bobbie get their happy ending!

Ok, ok, I'll admit it. Of course, I chose this film mainly for Teddy.
That doesn't mean it's not interesting in other ways, even dark if you know the background of some scenes.
First, we have a spoof of the damsel on the tracks. Like the idea that there was nothing subtle about silent movies - keyword "overacting" - many of us probably have that trope in our heads. I really enjoyed reading the posts below telling me more about it.
Second, not unusual for early silent movies there are some rough scenes, but the ones with Swanson and Wallace Beery as Mr. Black are not all play. They were married at the time, but Beery had been abusive, so the marriage had already fallen apart. It makes watching those scenes harder knowing Swanson's fear and Beery's abuse are in fact real.

Nevertheless, this is a charming comedy and not as chaotic as the plot might suggest. My favorite bit is the over the top dance scene.
Honestly, I'm not sure if I would still want "fickle-hearted" Bobbie in the end, but he might grow up under Gloria's strong hand - she really knows what she wants and what not!

Now let's get to the really important stuff.
Teddy the Dog or Keystone Teddy (after Mack Sennett's "Keystone Film Company") was a 42” tall, 145-pound Great Dane who was in at least 60 movies, mostly shorts, from 1916 to 1924. He died in 1925 at the age of 14.
Wasn't he gorgeous?

Public domain via Wikipedia

Sources and further reading:

Article on Teddy:

Larry Harnisch: Mary Mallory / Hollywood Heights: Teddy the Dog, Mack Sennett's Best Friend. On: The Daily Mirror, July 6, 2015


Articles on the "Damsel tied to the tracks trope":

1. Fritzi Kramer: Teddy at the Throttle (1917) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, December 12, 2021
2. Fritzi Kramer: Silent Movie Myth: Tied to the Railroad Tracks. On: Movies Silently, March 12, 2013
3. Lea Stans: The “Damsel Tied To The Railroad Tracks” Trope Revisited. On: Silent-ology, September 29, 2026

Silent movies - The Haunted House

Hold on to your seats, ladies and gentlemen, it's going to get really scary now.
Please welcome Mister Buster Keaton in "The Haunted House" from 1921!

Are your nerves ready for the plot (and spoilers)?

Keaton is a bank teller.
And one of his co-workers is a crook who deals with counterfeit money and plans to rob the bank together with his gang and then hide in a "haunted house" in spooky disguises.
The morning goes by with business as usual, that is if you count getting money and glue mixed up.
Now if you think that isn't scary, you seem to have forgotten my toxic relationship with glue. I swear I yelled out loud when I saw this! 😉

Glue, glue everywhere,
hands, floor, bottoms, pockets, and hair!

At that moment, the gang turn up and thanks to the glue Keaton almost manages to thwart the robbery, but when the manager sees him with the gun, they all run after him.
He manages to escape and unknowingly hide in the "haunted" house, but he's not the only one. A theater troupe flees the stage after royally messing up "Faust" and being pelted with vegetables - guess where they end up.

So now we have Buster, the theater people, and the gangsters in the house, scaring and getting scared.
It doesn't help that the stairs keep turning into a slide so Buster has to find ways of avoiding falling down again and again.

GIF by nishaane on Tenor

This isn't the only surprise in the house, though. We have the exploding candle, a trap door, the "living" chair, and of course ghosts, skeletons building a real man, and the devil (Mephisto from the theater)!

Keaton runs and jumps and climbs and falls, but then he finds out that the "ghosts" are just men in sheets.
And finally the bank manager and police have also made it to the house. They fall through the trap door into the basement and arrest the whole gang thanks to Buster who has disguised as a ghost himself by now.

Before being taken away, the boss hits our hero on the head, though, and he's dead.
Two angels show him the long stairway to heaven which he walks up ...

... where he's refused entry by Saint Peter who pulls the lever and turns the stairs into a slide ...

... right into hell.

A helper devil gets to work poking Buster with a burning fork ... which wakes him up as it has just been a dream, but the fire is real!
The bank manager's daughter is very happy to see that he's alive and they embrace.

The two-reeler (runtime 24 minutes) is clearly divided into two parts, the bank and the haunted house.
While there are some fun gags in the bank, such as Buster's clothes being caught for hours in the door of the time locked safe (why didn't he try to take them off?), that part is quite repetitive with the different glue shenanigans.

"After searching everywhere else
the police found him where he was."

The second part, however, was hilarious thanks to Buster Keaton's energy. There were some great pratfalls and jumps, and I liked the choreography of the characters meeting or missing one another.
The main protagonist beside Keaton (and the glue) was of course the stairs/slide combo whose heavenly version may look familiar to you if you have seen the 1946 movie "A Matter of Life and Death" with David Niven (which I can recommend, by the way).

I loved the different ways Buster tries to avoid the fall down the slide by jumping up the last few steps, trying to slide down while it's still stairs, sliding down the bannister, even running up the slide!
So while it wasn't the funniest Keaton film I have seen so far - you also have to keep in mind this was one of the earlier ones - I still enjoyed it.

I hope I didn't scare you too much 😉

Silent movies - The Monster

I really put some time in today's movie by investing two and a half minutes! Talk about attention span, people ...
The short I have for you is "The Monster" from 1903 and is by Georges Méliès, so you may know what to expect. It's a kind of magic .... (admit that you sang it)

Here's the very short plot full of spoilers 😉

An Egyptian prince and a priest meet in front of the Sphinx during a full moon.
 

Please note that the Sphinx still has its nose 😉

The priest brings a decorated chest and takes out a skeleton which makes the prince turn away in distress.
Next the priest wraps the skeleton in fabric and it starts a strange dance during which it distorts, gets smaller and taller.

The priest wraps more fabric around the skeleton and when he takes it off again, it has been revived to a beautiful young woman. The prince can't believe it, he reaches out for her longingly ...

... but the priest wraps her up again, lifts her, and throws her at the prince who's shocked to find she has turned into a skeleton again, drops her, and runs after the fleeing priest.
 

Last week, I boldly claimed that the narrative probably wasn't the important part in these films. Yes, there is a "but" now.
BUT obviously there was more to the story. This film was supposed to have a spoken narration (remember that I mentioned a "benshi" or film narrator in the post on "Namakura Gatana" as well?) which is known from Méliès's catalogs (see the source) and which tells us that the skeleton is the prince's wife.
Has anyone seen "The Mummy" with Boris Karloff? He also tried to revive his love almost 30 years later and didn't succeed, either.
Let this be a warning to you.

People have been fascinated by the old Egypt for a long time and they still are today, in literature, art, movies, science (and I haven't been completely immune to it myself how one of my jewelry pieces inspired by Khepri shows (I hadn't planned it that way, but it's still one of my personal favorites)).

Now the question is - did the priest fail or did he do this on purpose? And who is the monster in this film? What do you think?


Source and further reading:

Fritzi Kramer: The Monster (1903) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, October 6, 2017

Silent movies - Legend of a Ghost

Heading towards Halloween, it seemed the right moment to start with some horror/fantasy movies.
Today I have a very early short for you. It's "Legend of a Ghost" from 1908.

Here's the plot (spoilers?).

A young lady sits at her spinning wheel when she hears something from the cemetery outside. Through the window she sees something flying and hears a curse.
Next we see her going outside to look for something in the cemetery.

Suddenly a group of skeletons surrounds her and a ghost emerges from a grave and sends her on a quest to "go and find the Devil, to challenge and vanquish him, so he'll give her the inextinguishable flame that she will take to the bottom of the sea to search for the black pearl and bring it back".

Don't be surprised, part of the movie has been
colorized, in amazingly vivid colors.

The skeletons and the lady turn into warriors.
They board a vehicle that takes them to the "lower regions".

Satan is warned, however, assembles his army and rides into battle in his own vehicle (while his army is, uhm, prancing and dancing and jumping a lot) ...

... before they finally stop the lady's vehicle and pull her into the Satanmobile (someone called it that in a comment and that's working for me).

Pick your vehicle! Both of them are quite cool,
modern cars are boring compared to them.

Then they have a fête together in the lower regions. Just bear with me, people, I don't understand what's going on, either.
There's more dancing before some demons jump into a lake. The cave wall is opening to admit the Satanmobile. They get out and Satan gives the lady the flame of life. Why? I have absolutely no clue, he doesn't look very "vanquished" to me. It might be a trap, though.

A frog is taking the lady to the bottom of the sea. Their travel is shown through different painted scenes opening up one after another, vertically or horizontally, a very neat effect.

They arrive and the Queen of the Sea (or whatever) makes a huge shell with a mermaid (or whatever) in it materialize, hands our lady the black pearl and takes her back up in her barge that is drawn by a horse (not a seahorse).

Unfortunately, Satan is out for revenge (probably because he noticed he wasn't vanquished after all?) and throws fire at them. The vehicle is gone, all the warriors are dead - except our heroine - and blue. And the inextinguishable flame has gone out (is there a money back guarantee?)!

Any excuse to show another picture of the vehicle ...

She returns to the cemetery, hands the ghost the black pearl, he drinks from it (weird, I mean it's not a coconut) - and turns into some kind of a prince!

Maybe she could/should just have kissed the frog?

Our lady, however, dies (exhaustion, the aftermath of Satan's attack or shock over this unexpected outcome, who knows) ... and we are in heaven and they have two children (again, don't ask me what's happening here)!

The End.
No, seriously, that's it.

I'm not the only who was confused, but you know something - it was still a fun watch! A very, very weird one and I might have thought I had a drink too much when I really had nothing but water with a bit of cordial, but a fun one.
Maybe a drink would have made it even funnier.

Segundo de Chomón is a new name to me, but it seems it's one to remember.
According to Wikipedia (as a first source), he was "a pioneering Spanish-French film director, cinematographer and screenwriter" and "regarded as the most significant Spanish silent film director in an international context". Like Méliès, he was known for his camera tricks and optical illusions and we have quite a few of these in this film which are very cool to watch.
As with Méliès (based on the very few films I know at this point, mind you), I had the feeling that the narrative wasn't the most important thing, but to try out what could be done with elaborate and beautiful sets and opulent costumes and of course cool vehicles, and some film magic.
Somehow it always makes me wonder how it was on set. "We need more people! Where are the lizard and fish people? We need dancers! We need more of everything! Splashing water, sparks, and the girls have to wave something! We need more, more, more of everything!"

"And we need an extra scene for the frog."
Absolutely. I'm a fan of the very jumpy frog (and was glad to see him star in another short).

A wild ride once more, my friends, but also very interesting 15 minutes.
Isn't that how we like our fairy tales?
More of everything!