The NFR Project: 'The Strong Man' (1926) and the problem of Harry Langdon

 

The Strong Man

Dir: Frank Capra

Scr: Arthur Ripley, Hal Conklin, Robert Eddy, Reed Heustis

Pho: Glenn Kershner, Elgin Lessley

Ed: Harold Young, Arthur Ripley

Premiere: Sept. 19, 1926

75 min.

Who can explain the popularity of silent-film comedian Harry Langdon in the 1920s? Not me.

Primarily on the strength of three successful features in a row made in 1926 and 1927, he was dubbed by famed critic James Agee in 1949 as one of the four great silent clowns, alongside Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

However, Agee also famously referred to Langdon as having the demeanor of a “baby dope fiend” – giving performances that only read as creepy and disturbing today.

The Strong Man title is ironic as Langdon is here the meekest of the meek and the weakest of the weak. He is dimwitted to the point of imbecility.

In this film, Harry is a World War I Belgian solider who comes to America after the war to find his pen pal, Mary Brown, who is lovely, kind, and touchingly blind (then how did she write those letters?).

He falls in as the assistant to Zandow, the strong man. They travel until they wind up in Mary’s home town. Harry finds his love, and goes onstage, woefully, for his drunken master, displeasing the crowd until he fires Zandow’s cannon at them (his one non-impotent act) and he brings the local palace of sin down and drives its ugly and rapacious mob out of town.

It is extremely difficult to watch Langdon now. His comedy is grounded in the premise that he is childlike and naïve. However, Langdon pushes these traits to their extreme, giving us a character that is so passive that he is blown from one plot point to another without any exercise of will whatsoever.

You wonder how he can make his way across a room, let alone through an entire film. He is fate’s plaything, coy and innocent, slow-blinking and staring off into the middle distance. He gets the girl, but he can’t for the life of him figure out how he managed it. Even at film’s end, he stumbles and his blind girlfriend picks him up and guides him along, into the distance.

For some reason I can’t fathom, audiences found this persona enchanting, and he made a lot of money for First National Pictures. This is the second of the three key Langdon films, and the first feature directed by the soon-to-be-wildly-renowned Frank Capra, who got his real start in the industry years previous as a gagman for Our Gang and Mack Sennett. This film demonstrated Capra’s talents, and he directed the next and last memorable Langdon feature, Long Pants (1927).

There is no real hint of the earnestness of Capra’s strong future outlook and style, unless you think of Langdon as hopelessly, helplessly earnest in his obliviousness to the complexities of existence. After the success of Long Pants, the story is that Langdon now thought he was a genius and parted ways with Capra, who went on to better things as Langdon wasted away into obscurity in self-directed mediocrities, and finally odd comedy jobs for small studios.

He is not a transformational comedian like Chaplin, or an architect and engineer, as Keaton was. He doesn’t have Lloyd’s energy and optimism. Langdon can’t seem to do anything. He just, barely, is. He is condemned to a waifish insubstantiality, and requires the full attention of a benign world in order to exist.

It’s understandable that certain kinds of comedy go out of style. It’s just unfortunate that Langdon didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Battle of the Century.

 

The NFR Project: 'Son of the Sheik'

 

The Son of the Sheik

Dir: George Fitzmaurice

Scr: Frances Marion, Fred de Gresac, George Marion Jr., Paul Gerard Smith

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: Unknown

Premiere: July 9, 1926

80 min.

Silent film star Rudolph Valentino’s last picture was his biggest.

“Son of the Sheik” was a 1926 sequel (when sequels were a rarity) to his 1921 hit “The Sheik.” That initial film cemented Valentino in the minds of filmgoers as the great “exotic” lover. (A line of condoms was named Sheik, and the association with Valentino’s supposed sexual prowess made them a popular brand.)

Like so many screen sex symbols, Valentino wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. He made some attempts in this direction, which proved not too profitable. “Son of the Sheik” was a return to the heartthrob territory in which he excelled.

In the film, the young son of the original sheik (both father and son were played by Valentino, and they shared the screen through the magic of in-camera editing) falls in love with a dancing girl, but then is kidnapped by her family of bandits. The young sheik-to-be thinks his girl was in on the plot, and he spurns her until the truth is revealed. There are escapes, chases, storms, and moments of nearly compromised virtue.

Throughout, Valentino emits emotions penetratingly. He can manifest feeling on screen vividly. Here, he yearns, he suffers, he smolders all to perfection. It’s this fullness of emotional presence that women found so relatable – so dissimilar to the sober, hard-working, emotionally distant ideal American male of the time. Valentino didn’t love, he LOVED.

The film is problematic today for its portrayal of much of the Arabic world as consisting of thieves and brigands, and for the rather rape-y aspect of the male expression of love in the film, and general racist tone throughout . . . for hero and heroine, as in the first film, could not really be together unless both were of white parents – heaven forfend!

The film opened in early July of 1926. Valentino got busy promoting it. On August 15, he collapsed in his hotel room in New York City. After an operation for a perforated ulcer, he contracted peritonitis and died on August 23.

The movie went into nationwide release two weeks later, and went on to make more than two million dollars. Was it the novelty of the star’s demise that made it such a draw? Or was Valentino precisely, exactly where he needed to be onscreen – in an epic romantic adventure?

 The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Strong Man.

The NFR Project: W.C. Fields in 'So's Your Old Man' (1926)

 So’s Your Old Man

Dir: Gregory La Cava

Scr: Howard Emmett Rogers, Tom J. Geraghty, J. Clarkson Miller, Julian Johnson

Pho: George Webber

Ed: George Block, Julian Johnson

Premiere: Oct. 26, 1926

67 min.

W.C. Fields is remembered today as the ultimate flim-flam man, the sly and cynical popper of pretension and dysfunction around him. However, the comedian had one other personality that he displayed in his films – that of the put-upon everyman.

This character is on display, front and center, in this film early in his career. Fields was already a respected juggler and comic artist on stage, but he longed to be in the movies as well. This, his first feature film, gives us the first hints of traits that would define Fields – his fondness for alcohol and his allergy to regular work.

Poor small-towner Sam Bisbee is a would-be inventor who is generally despised by his community for having little couth. His family, too, fails to respect him. He does invent shatter-proof automobile glass, but due to a car mix-up, he loses the chance to impress a bunch of automobile manufacturers. He ponders suicide on his way home, but rejects it . . . then he runs across a beautiful young woman who he suspects wants to end her life as well. She doesn’t, but his kindness makes her want to help him. Being a princess, she uses her influence to make Sam a respected citizen and family man again.

Naturally, Sam doesn’t believe the woman’s royal status, and he looks on her efforts to rehabilitate as part of a bigger scam. That he goes along willingly with the apparent deception speaks to his contempt for the shallow and judgmental society that has kept him down up to that point. Bisbee is happy to put one over on the town. He gets a happy ending, deserved or not.

Shoehorned into the film is the long golfing sketch that Fields had already perfected on stage. As such, it is a valuable documentation of his routine. His battle with recalcitrant objects is a textbook display of the art of slow-boil comedy.

All in all, an excellent initial outinggreat for the comedy . (Fun fact: the famous Roaring 20’s illustrator John Held Jr. did the title illustrations.) The premise was successful; so much so that the film was remade with Fields for sound as You’re Telling Me! In 1934.

 The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Son of the Sheik.