The renaissance of silent film rediscoveries continues with two new Blu-rays made possible by the Library of Congress’ preservation and restoration activities. From multiple sources, Undercrank Productions cobbled together The Craving (1918), a showcase for the career of the forgotten director Francis Ford, brother of the well-known director John Ford. From Kino Lorber comes MGM’s Lillian Gish epic Annie Laurie (1927) with a Technicolor sequence.
Silent films commonly divided the main scenario writer from the writers of the title cards. Lovett wrote the script for Annie Laurie, while the titles are by Marian Ainslee and Ruth Cummings, two other prolific writers who often worked together. All three women would soon work on Joan Crawford’s breakthrough, Our Dancing Daughters (1928).
Annie Laurie is one of many films from the married team of director John S. Robertson and writer Josephine Lovett, who were important throughout the ’20s. Robertson’s most famous film is John Barrymore‘s 1920 incarnation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He directs Annie Laurie with an eye for spectacle and an appreciation of the massive sets by Cedric Gibbons and Merrill Pye, as shot with ravishment by Oliver Marsh.
Silent films commonly divided the main scenario writer from the writers of the title cards. Lovett wrote the script for Annie Laurie, while the titles are by Marian Ainslee and Ruth Cummings, two other prolific writers who often worked together. All three women would soon work on Joan Crawford’s breakthrough, Our Dancing Daughters (1928).
John Wayne, when he was still Marion Morrison, is allegedly among the extras in Annie Laurie, but good luck finding him. Kino’s Blu-ray is transferred from a beautiful 4K restoration by the Library of Congress, which also provided prints of When the Tables Turned and The Post Telegrapher to the Blu-ray of The Craving. Let the restorations continue.
The Craving (1918) Director: Francis Ford
Who is Francis Ford? Unfortunately, the short answer for most film buffs is that he was the older brother of John Ford, who gave him many character parts as colorful old galoots. However, Francis was the more famous of the brothers during the silent era, both as a star and director. By bringing Jack Feeney (later called John Ford) to Hollywood and putting him to work on his big brother’s movies, Francis set John on the path to outshine him. Undercrank’s Blu-ray showcases work from each of Francis Ford’s phases.
Tall and handsome in his late 20s, Francis Feeney entered New York’s developing film industry long before anything was shot in Hollywood. Feeney took his acting name from Henry Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, a name calculated to associate the actor with the modern machine age and all things brand-spanking new.
As film historian Kathryn Fuller-Seeley explains in a concise visual essay, Ford found his feet at Star Film Company in San Antonio, Texas. The boss was Gaston Méliès, older brother of pioneering effects wizard Georges Méliès. There are lots of older brothers in this story. Georges’ trick films were so popular they were being pirated left and right, so Gaston was sent to establish a US arm of Star Films in New York to protect the brand.
Later, Gaston moved to San Antonio, where winters were warmer, and he could film lots of Westerns. He hired Ford and Edith Storey, who became his big stars, to play the leads in The Immortal Alamo (1911). That lost one-reeler is the first film to dramatize the historical event in American history, if with less than scrupulous accuracy.
A surviving one-reeler from the same year is included on the disc of The Craving. When the Tables Turned, directed by Emory Johnson, stars Belle Bennett in a modern comedy western. As part of a complicated practical joke, her character is kidnapped by Ford’s gang of cowboys pretending to be outlaws. A professional actress, she pretends to lose her mind, as indicated by letting her hair down, and holds them at gunpoint to make them play games. Then she forgives them by inviting them to get cleaned up and come to tea.
When the Tables Turned takes the common trope of associating the arrival of femininity with civilization, as expressed in Stephen Crane’s 1898 story “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky“, and combines it with another, already common trope of showing outlaw stereotypes as a put-on out of movies and dime novels. As is common for 1911 one-reelers, it adopts the style of having title cards summarize what we’re about to see in each scene and otherwise not bothering with them during the broadly mimed shenanigans.
By 1912, Ford was a director for filmmaker Thomas Ince in California. From that year, Ford’s ambitious two-reeler The Post Telegrapher represents this phase. Ford directs himself in the title role. His character climbs a pole to summon the cavalry when his post is attacked by Sioux on the warpath. Some shots make it clear that real Native Americans are among the dozens of extras, especially when we see a family parading by a teepee. One wonders what they thought about their part in the film. Was it all in a day’s work?
Just as his little brother would do, Ford emphasizes massive outdoor vistas. He likes long shots of action staged amid rolling hills for spectacle. Anne Little portrays a heroine who dresses in men’s clothes and jumps on a horse to join the action; as with Bennett in When the Tables Turned, she lets her hair down to signal this decision. It’s not especially practical, but the flowing hair seems to be a sign for things unlady-like.
A film like The Post Telegrapher gives insight to brother John’s career. We can see how lyrical compositions like the romantic couple billing and cooing to one side as masses of soldiers array across the screen’s background would reverberate, for example, in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). The later film is more coherent and successful, but Francis Ford’s impact on John becomes too clear to be overlooked.
Perhaps Francis Ford’s most famous era was his star-power partnership with Grace Cunard at the newly founded Universal Pictures. As a team, Ford and Cunard wrote, directed, and starred in a series of elegant films and serials in which they often played characters outside the law. For example, Ford and Cunard launched Universal’s first serial, Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery (1914). Representing the Ford-Cunard films on Undercrank’s Blu-ray is Unmasked (1917), which has been drafted into the National Film Registry.
In my opinion, Unmasked is the most delightful and sophisticated film on the disc. The bad news is that it’s a one-reel reissue cut down from a 1913 two-reeler called The Black Masks, so this lovely tinted print from George Eastman House is all that remains of the complete film. It makes us wish for the whole thing.
The good news is that the cut-down plays well from its wonderful opening closeup of an elegant woman’s exposed back surrounded by palm fronds. From the right and left sides of the screen, different pairs of hands glide toward her pearl necklace and freeze as the camera slowly pulls back to reveal the male and female thieves in black masks gazing into each other’s eyes. The title cards refer to honor among thieves, but this must be a case of love among thieves. She lets the thief take the necklace but later relieves him of his watch. They each throw their heads back in delight at this anticipation of Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932).
The Blu-ray’s title attraction is The Craving (1918), Ford’s independent five-reel feature. Alas, its completion during the deadly influenza pandemic, while theatres were closed, prevented its release until Universal picked it up. The only reason the film still exists is that a print was bought by a Dutch distributor and discovered by the Netherlands’ Eye Filmmuseum. “Jack Ford” receives an assistant credit.
Francis Ford must have been proud of The Craving, which opens by proclaiming: “The marvelous mechanical effects and intricate multiple exposures employed in this film are some of the most remarkable photographic illusions ever cast on the screen. It has taken months of persistent and extraordinarily careful technical dedication to achieve the results in a complete image.” The rudimentary plot is an excuse for the effects.
Ford plays Carroll Wayles, a chemist working on “the most powerful explosive ever developed.” Keep in mind that the Great War was still at the forefront of everyone’s mind. He’s also an alcoholic, as he explains in a flashback that shows multiple exposures in which he has visions of tiny chorus girls cavorting in his cocktail glass and running around the table.
The bad guy who wants to steal his formula is Ala Kasarib (Peter Gerald), whose mesmeric hold over his adopted ward Beulah (Mae Gaston) is explained by being from India. Her origin is recounted in flashbacks using footage from Ford’s lost The Campbells Are Coming (1915). Later, multiple versions of Wayles share the screen as he travels through visions of footage from WWI dramas before he pulls himself together and saves his formula and Beulah during a sulfuric acid explosion. One would think he wouldn’t want to be in the room when that happens.
As Wayles and Beulah walk in a cuddle back to his well-appointed home, there’s no sign of any authorities asking pesky questions about explosions, and apparently, the world has been made safe for his more dangerous formula. Like the other films on the disc, The Craving is adorned with a new piano score by Ben Model, who produced the Blu-ray with Fuller-Seeley.
Annie Laurie (1927) Director: John S. Robertson
Annie Laurie is one of Lillian Gish’s MGM productions, and she was among the stars who had power over the details of her vehicles. As film historian Anthony Slide, who knew Gish, explains in his commentary, Gish was the only person who wanted her co-star to be “chesty” broad-shouldered Norman Kerry. The director and studio didn’t like him, but she got him for what turned out to be his favorite role.
The title is a famous Scottish ballad, and Robert Israel‘s new orchestral score uses it freely along with other well-known Scots tunes. Annie Laurie is also Gish’s character, injected without regard for historical accuracy into a highly fanciful retelling of the Massacre of Glencoe in February 1692. That event is here cast as a feud between the clans of MacDonald and Campbell, with an unrelated Annie Laurie somewhere in the middle after falling in love with the strapping and arrogant Ian MacDonald (Kerry), who does show plenty of chest.
Annie Laurie is one of many films from the married team of director John S. Robertson and writer Josephine Lovett, who were important throughout the ’20s. Robertson’s most famous film is John Barrymore‘s 1920 incarnation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He directs Annie Laurie with an eye for spectacle and an appreciation of the massive sets by Cedric Gibbons and Merrill Pye, as shot with ravishment by Oliver Marsh.
Gish is sometimes almost lost in the shuffle, but the story keeps coming back to her shaky romance with a big brawling son of the Highlands, which can only be explained by a character who keeps repeating in Scots brogue, “Wild men hae [sic] a way with women.” Actually, Gish shows much more physical affection for best friend Enid Campbell (Patricia Avery). Enid gets swept away on horseback by Ian’s little brother Alastair (Joseph Striker), and she likes it.
While none of this seems exactly progressive, Annie gets her excitingly edited climax when she rushes to light a signal fire during the massacre led by effete fop Donald Campbell (Creighton Hale). After all the bloodshed, the happy ending is heralded by several idyllic minutes in creamy two-strip Technicolor, sending the audience home on an extra bit of dazzle.