Sun 8 Dec 2013
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1917).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews , Silent films[13] Comments
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Fox Film Corporation, 1917. William Farnum, Jewel Carmen, Charles Clary, Herschel Mayan, Rosita Marstini, and many others. Scenario by Frank Lloyd. Director: Frank Lloyd. Shown at Cinevent 38, Columbus OH, May 2006.
This is a lavish, entertaining version of the Dickens novel, adapted and directed by Frank Lloyd (later director of the 1924 version of The Sea Hawk), which undoubtedly takes many liberties with the original to fit into a seventy-minute running time.
The most startling departure is the murder of Mme De Farge (certainly well-deserved but not canonical) but otherwise the story sticks to the familiar central plot of wrongs righted with new wrongs committed in the name of “justice,” and Sydney Carton delivering, as expected and anticipated, his famous curtain speech in intertitles.
The key roles of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are both played by William Farnum, and played superbly, and the supporting cast is uniformly excellent The 1935 version will probably always be considered the definitive screen adaptation for its typically lavish MGM production and casting, but this silent film seems somehow closer in spirit and style to the historical period.
December 8th, 2013 at 1:13 pm
William Farnum, and his brother Dustin, were enormous stars. Dustin died in 1926, but William lived long enough to lose heavily in the stock market crash and rebuild, sort of, his career, as a compelling, though hammy, supporting player.
I have been looking for Soldiers of Fortune (1914) with Dustin or its 1919 reincarnation, directed by Allan Dwan. Any thoughts will be welcome. Thanks.
December 8th, 2013 at 4:49 pm
The silent acting style was hammy by necessity, and can take a little getting used to, but the production values can be astounding on some films, and many of the performers seemed to fit into the post silent acting style with ease. If the Farnums were hammy, it was as Barry says good ham.
Both brothers had that star quality on the screen, seeming to draw the camera with no effort.
I haven’t seen all of this one, but enough to suspect it is a very good film.
The 1914 Soldiers of Fortune sounds good, have to look it up on IMDb, see if it is original or based on the Richard Harding Davis novel.
One of these days I’ll get around to reviewing the 1917 Raffles with John Barrymore’s screen debut. In many ways it is the best of the three Raffles films, and the only one to escape that claustrophobic stage feeling that even hampers the David Niven/Olivia de Haviland film. The opening sequence on an ocean liner would be difficult to film today, and it is clearly Barrymore doing his own stunts.
Barrymore remains the only actor to play Raffles, Arsene Lupin, and Sherlock Holmes on screen.
December 8th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
David,
It is indeed based on the Richard Harding Davis novel. There is an edition published in 2006 with editorial notes by Brady Harrison, University of Montana, that include for and against Davis by TR (Very Positive) to an array of critical thoughts, all readable. I have spoken to Brady, seems like a good guy, though, of course, being a modern man, he and I probably have a different historic and philosophic perspective.
December 8th, 2013 at 10:40 pm
Barry
Thanks, now I want to see it too, and read the Harrison notes, though I’ve already read the book, and recovered a copy at Gutenberg.
December 9th, 2013 at 5:06 am
I don’t find Silent-Movie-Acting typically hammy. There’s some over-emoting, just as there’s plenty of bad acting today, but in general the better silent-movie actors were incredibly adept and often remarkably subtle. I suspect that this version was able to spin the TALE because of the remarkable ability of the Silents to convey a point quickly, unencumbered by the need for dialogue.
December 9th, 2013 at 11:10 am
Agreed, about hammy acting in silent films. Not at all my point re William Farnum. He was hammy in sound pictures. There were few silent after the crash. So, look for him, early in with Will Rogers in Connecticut Yankee and then slowly into second features at Republic and other places in support. One of his later efforts was Samson and Delilah, playing the father of both Angela Lansbury and Hedy Lamaar. If you think he was right at home and over-the-top, you would be wrong. The starring cast, mature, Sanders, Wilcoxon and the two ladies, are timeless. The film, not at all.
December 9th, 2013 at 11:48 am
Barry
After your comment #1 and not particularly recognizing William Farnum’s name, I looked him up on IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0267912/reference
He really did have a long list of credits in the talkies, all the way through to 1952.
One credit that caught my eye was TRAIL OF ROBIN HOOD, a small Roy Rogers epic that also featured Rex Allen, Rocky Lane, Monte Hale, Tom Tyler, Ray Corrigan, Kermit Maynard, Tom Keene and Jack Holt — a who’s who of B-western heroes and villains, all playing themselves.
December 9th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
Steve, The point about De Mille using him is at least somewhat important reference to old Hollywood. Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner looked after former stars down on their luck by providing modest but liveable wages as studio contract players. C.B. only had his own unit but he did some of the same. Also, Farnum and especially his brother Dustin, go back to the beginning with De Mille. And by that I mean the first ever films made in Hollywood.
December 9th, 2013 at 6:20 pm
Is the character really named Charles Carney? He is Charles Darnay in the original Dickens novel.
December 9th, 2013 at 6:38 pm
Oops, thanks Randy. I’ve fixed that. Glitches like this are almost inevitable when you’re scanning text into a Word file (and the editor’s mind is somewhere else).
December 9th, 2013 at 6:50 pm
Re Trail of Robin Hood. Republic did that more than once, all star guest cast, in Rogers films. Bells of Rosarita is another fun, if weird, film. The guest stars here are Wild Bill Elliott, Allan Lane, Don Barry, Sunset Carson and Bob Livingston. And, their horses. I think, but uncertain about it, something along this lien was done for a Monte Hale western.
December 9th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
By hammy I was talking of the broader and more expressive style of much of silent acting. It was absolutely a necessity in that form, but it becomes hammy when translated to sound film, and I’ll wager most contemporary viewers unfamiliar with the form would find the acting hammy and overly broad. Obviously you don’t, I don’t, but I can’t pretend there is no difference, certainly in earlier films before actors and directors learned how subtle the camera can be.
There were naturalistic actors in silent film, and towards the end the broader style was fading, but I’ll hold that much of silent acting seems ‘hammy’, or at least broad to anyone not familiar with the stage or used to silents.
Oddly though Wallace Beery was less broad in silent films.
Most of the actors who made the transition to the talkies were bigger stars in the new medium (of course there are exceptions, Barrymore, Garbo, …), or found a different kind of career in the new medium (Lewis Stone from leading man to character actor), and often it was less voice than translating to the new style. Doug Fairbanks never did make the transition comfortably, and poor Buster Keaton was forced to betray his art for verbal comedy that wasn’t his forte.
As I said, towards the end the silent style wasn’t that noticeably different than the talkies, but many a silent star would never have become a star in talkies if they hadn’t been able to change and adapt.
Both styles are an art, but not the same art any more than stage and screen are the same — something Laurence Olivier admitted, and any actor from the stage will tell you.
They did have faces then, and good faces, but for anyone not familiar with silent film what they will notice first is how broad much of the acting is. Hopefully they will stay with it long enough to discover what great films so many are.
December 10th, 2013 at 4:28 pm
I remember seeing Trail of Robin Hood in the theater when it was released and knew somehow these were old timers in Westerns, but they were new to me!