Murph-17 Reviews

Why Worry? (1923)

Zany

[23 April 2003]

The zaniest, most cartoonlike of all Harold Lloyd features recaptures the energetic anarchy of his wilder short subjects while at the same time drawing from the sort of satirical innocent-ugly-American-abroad adventures that Douglas Fairbanks and Anita Loos had popularized in the teens.

Lloyd plays an obtuse millionaire hypochondriac who "has taken so many pills he rattles when he walks." He blunders into a banana republic's revolution and must defeat a dictatorial regime backed by an unscrupulous Yankee. Along the way, he faces up to his imaginary ills and falls for his spunky, long-suffering nurse -- ably played by the quietly sexy Jobyna Ralston in her first feature as Lloyd's love interest. But the real star is John Aase n -- all eight feet, nine and a half inches of him -- who makes an excellent 503 pound mad hermit, buddying up with Lloyd for some of the most improbable and unrelenting sight gag sequences ever put on film -- among them, an extended effort to pull the giant's aching tooth.

The setting is obviously Latin America (and, in fact, the whole film functions nicely as propaganda, artfully fudging the United States' imperial subjugation of the region by focusing on a single American villain) but when real-life Mexicans earnestly protested the film's stereotypes, Lloyd responded by changing the intertitles to suggest that the whole thing takes place on a mythical island. I can't imagine anyone was fooled by this since the Latino stereotypes still dominate the film: lazy peasants, greasy strongmen, etc.

Why Worry? grossed slightly less at the box office than Lloyd's previous film, Safety Last (almost $1.5 million vs. almost $1.6 million), and cost about a hundred thousand dollars more to make (almost $221,000 vs. almost $121,000). It was his last film for producer Hal Roach. Lloyd went on to make his next ten films independently for release through distributors like Pathe, Paramount and Fox -- but despite a few wild sequences in films like Hot Water and For Heaven's Sake, he never again made a picture quite as snappy and offbeat as Why Worry?

If the film looks back to Fairbanks, it looks ahead to the hypochondriac heroes of Broadway's The Nervous Wreck and its film versions, including Eddie Cantor's Whoopee! and Danny Kaye's Up in Arms, not to mention the mythical political intrigue of W. C. Fields' Million Dollar Legs, the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, Woody Allen's Bananas, and much else in the realm of American low comedy.

Beau Geste (1926)

Legionnaires disease

[27 January 2003]

A well-directed melodrama with a near-flawless cast. Director Herbert Brenon (or his editor) lets the story unfold at a steady but never slow pace, nicely managing the suspense, but giving you perhaps too much time to ponder some of the oddities that crop up in the plot. Why, for instance, when everyone is standing in a room from which a valuable jewel has just been stolen by a culprit who is clearly still present, do they not simply search the room? Why do the three brothers, each separately on the run, condemn themselves to joining the French Foreign Legion (simultaneously, no less!) if all of them know they're not guilty of any great crime and thus consciously ignore their family's desperate financial straits? They could have at least sent some of their Legion pay back home to mother.

Those Legionnaires got paid a wad of dough because -- in real life, anyhow -- they were brutal, mercenary killers employed by an imperialist power to wipe out Arabs and anybody else who got in its way. Not that the Arabs were such nice guys either but, of course, the film presents all this with the complexity of a cowboys-and-Indians B western. Having your hero join the Legion with no qualms is sort of like having your hero join the Ku Klux Klan, except that the Klan wasn't as efficient a group of racist mass-murderers.

Absurdities and implausiblities aside, the film holds its grip pretty well, not because of epic elements like mobs of attacking Arabs, shots of marvelously oppressive desert vistas, etc., but because of the unstressed acting amidst all the mayhem and intrigue. I tend to agree with the critic who wrote that, in the 1939 version, Gary Cooper merely played Gary Cooper but that, in the '26 version, Ronald Colman embodied Beau Geste. Everyone else is fine and if the villain is over-the-top, it's certainly forgivable on this occasion.

There's a lot of bugling in these French Foreign Legion pictures and whoever accompanies this long silent will have to struggle to stay in perfect sync with all the various fanfares, especially a necessary rendition of "Taps" near the climax.

Suds (1920)

No soap

[27 January 2003]

A not-entirely-successful, offbeat, change-of-pace for America's alleged Sweetheart, Mary Pickford. Playing a Cockney laundress in an excellently re-created London, she is at her best with the comedy: falling in and out of laundry bins, hiding under baskets, keeping a horse in her apartment, etc. As for the pathos, our heroine is less sympathetic here than usual, mainly because most of the character's problems are brought on by herself and her own unhealthy fantasy life (some of which is depicted in a lengthy, but wonderfully loopy, imaginary flashback). There is no real villain to overcome but herself -- and she fails to manage a victory. The ending (or endings -- three different final scenes were filmed) is abrupt and not terribly convincing. The supporting cast, though competent, is unmemorable -- except, perhaps, for Lavender, the horse, who gets a couple of good bits, including a final sight gag in one of the endings: pulling a chair, and the movie, out from under poor Mary.

A Corner in Wheat (1909)

Wheat thin

[27 January 2003]

After offering some unsubtle social criticism (the poor's inability to buy bread contrasted with a wealthy wheat speculator's fancy dinner party, etc.), director D. W. Griffith kills off his villain by accidentally burying him in a grain elevator. Perhaps if Griffith had made a film called "Corner in Meat," the evil rich guy would be ground up in a sausage factory. However satisfying it may seem, offing the rich in freak accidents is hardly a serious response to a society's gross inequality -- and this kind of shallow evasion kills the film as well.

A Southern Yankee (1948)

Waving a two-sided flag

[13 January 2002]

Contrary to popular belief, A SOUTHERN YANKEE is NOT a remake of Buster Keaton's 1927 silent THE GENERAL. Both films take place during the American Civil War and include gags devised by Keaton -- other than that, there's little resemblance. (The only remake of THE GENERAL is Walt Disney's 1956 THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE.) YANKEE's story, by the writing team of Panama and Frank, was later recycled in part for THE COURT JESTER (1956, also by Panama and Frank -- and starring Danny Kaye).

Keaton's contributions to YANKEE include his suggestion to the producer that the opening scenes be toned down in order to make Red Skelton's character more sympathetic; the memorable two-sided flag gag (derived from a two-sided costume gag Keaton used in his silent days); some of the climactic chase sequence (a gag with a horse and a dress is lifted directly from Keaton's 1923 OUR HOSPITALITY); and, presumably, the acrobatic dentist sequence and, very likely, the astonishing scene involving a 19th century "lawn mower" and a land mine.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Childish drivel

[13 January 2002]

With more emotionally potent oversimplifications per reel than any Nazi propaganda film, this sickening spectacle paints a false portrait of everything it depicts whether it be the state of childhood or the state of Kansas. Garish scenery competes with bearish scenery-chewing in a contest to see which can turn your stomach faster -- although there are incidental pleasures: despite its fraudulent utopianism, the film's melodic ballad contrasts nicely with the noisily mechanical show tunes that desperately try to jumpstart the flagging narrative every few minutes (until the filmmakers finally give up and offer a feeble concluding half hour that is, at least, thankfully song-free) -- and the veteran comedians who befriend the heroine manage to salvage a small amount of humor from their underwritten roles (which only depressingly reminds one how cruelly Hollywood wasted their talents). All in all, an unhealthy excursion into two-dimensional fantasy wish-fulfillment -- made for the immature, by the immature.

King Kong (1933)

Beastly

[13 January 2002]

As usual in these sort of movies, the mechanical monster has more depth than any of the human beings, which isn't saying much. Ham-fisted dramatics alternate with creaky special effects and a vulgar emphasis on sex and violence for its own sake. It was a box office success in the midst of the Great Depression but you would have to be extremely depressed today for a movie like this to lift your spirits any: good for a few derisory chuckles, perhaps, but little else. And, if you pause to consider the influence this trash has had on the Hollywood Sausage Factory over the decades, you may not be in the mood for even a chuckle. That this dreck may make you long for a fantasy with some intelligence to it or some real human beings in it, like Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête, is about the best that can be said for it.

Duck Soup (1933)

Muck Slop

[13 January 2002]

Weak songs; uninteresting characters; no discernible plot; too many jokes -- most of them quite lame, etc. The allegedly witty comedy team at the heart of this seedy and desperate film consists of a man with a black moustache painted on his lip (someone's idea of humor, no doubt), an offensive Italian stereotype, a mute clown with more energy than comic timing, and a pathetic lickspittle. Why they and their awkwardly assembled vehicle should be so highly regarded is a mystery -- perhaps a partial explanation is their brazen theft of material from better comics: Max Linder's superior mirror routine is pointlessly rehashed here with the same lack of conviction and attention to detail that dooms the rest of the movie. A shallow, cartoon-like mess.

Don Q Son of Zorro (1925)

The Fairbanks action-adventure formula at its most streamlined

[9/10 · 2 June 2001]

After his artsy fantasy "The Thief of Baghdad" freaked everyone out, Doug got back to basics with this sequel to his first swashbuckler, "The Mark of Zorro" -- and concocted a meticulously designed, take-no-chances star vehicle. The sets, cast, and screenplay are all impressive but, as always, it's the Fairbanks persona -- an odd combination of pragmatist and dreamer, magician and acrobat, lover and fighter, rogue and moralist -- and his endless bag of tricks, gags, and stunts that sets the film apart from, not only 1920s action spectacles, but those of his successors: Jackie Chan, James Bond, and Indiana Jones.

Of his later pictures, perhaps only "The Gaucho" tops this one for sheer excellence in filmmaking.