Lazybones (1925), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Dave Glass’ introduction included a visual essay starting with William Fox (of whom more later at the KB) which then focused on an overview of the director of tonight’s main feature, Frank Borzage with a reminder of his chief elements of style, his longevity and quality. He made four features in 1925 starting with perhaps Norma Talmadge’s finest performance and finest film, The Lady and ending up with Lazybones (1922) – an outstanding year commercially as well as artistically.

 

The title may indicate a romantic comedy with some predictable turns of fate to enable the titular character, Steve Tuttle (Buck Jones) redemption as a hard-working, hero and yet the film is so much more than that and is an a-typical romance in which the main character’s laziness is a more existential challenge to his self-awareness. When the need arises, he is decisive and quick to action, but he is faulted by an unwillingness to challenge his heart even as he often does the right thing and has moral courage. Borzage – and Frances Marion’s script – enable our full sympathy but there’s something unsaid, un-done and unfulfilled which at the last is revealed as a very smart piece of filmmaking.

 

Mr Glass covered the arrival of Herr Murnau at Fox where he was sent to encourage and review other director’s to add more Germanic nuance to their work but seemingly he spent as much time watching Borzage at work as advising him, the results of this cross-continental pollination are there for all to see in the combinations of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor with a bit of George O’Brien and a bit more of the splendid Mary Duncan (City Girl and The River being two of the greatest films about love made by each director or any human).

 

Buster Jones... how's he gonna to get the day's work done?

Buster Jones is a handsome chap albeit no Charles Farrell I hear my wife – and a number of others –cry, but he’s got his charms and here is conveys “Lazy” in ways that belie his casting in so many westerns. He’s a careful ploy by Borzage, playing against type and in ways which the audience really can’t pin down. Bones is indeed lazy and he gets caught napping even by the local fish quick enough to leap off the line after waking the somnambulant fisherman, insists that his ragged roof doesn’t need fixing as it’s not raining and asks his Mom (Edythe Chapman) to remind him to fix their wonky gate: “that darn gate!” says everyone who passes through it today, tomorrow and for years to come.

 

Jones looks like one of life’s easy winners and yet here he presents as a man preparing himself for disappointment by prevarication: why look life square in the eye when you can just sleep it off. Borzage makes sure his audience isn’t lulled into the dream by wrong-footing us and heaping humiliations on Steve, and us, as time and again he’s caught napping. It’s enough to drive Erich von Stroheim out of the theatre in floods of tears.

 

We are waiting for something to happen, something to reveal the hero within as good defeats evil in a world in which bad men do not profit for being rotten bullies by being promoted. Turns out that it’s that American Dream we used to hear about.

 

Zasu Pitts and Jane Novak

It begins with Frank’s gentle routines being disturbed by the arrival of his sweetheart Agnes Fanning (Jane Novak) and her fearsome mother (Emily Fitzroy). The two ride in by tandem and Mrs Fanning’s stiff-backed posture lets you know to expect the worst… She cannot disguise her disgust at Steve and certainly doesn’t want his relationship with Agnes to develop. Steve manages to get his jalopy running and momentarily impresses before it blows up, he tells Agnes he has plans and whilst in a more typical film there would be a hidden secret to rescue his fortune here you cannot be so sure.

 

Mrs Fanning much prefers the local “Beau Brummel”, Elmer Ballister (William Bailey) who she has lined up for her elder daughter Ruth (Zasu Pitts); he’s a real go-getter and full of it. She writes to Ruth telling her to return from her teaching post and prepare herself for wedlock. But Ruth has been rather busy away from home having married a sailor and born his child only to be rapidly widowed following his death at sea. She returns home with her child convinced that no one will believe that she has ever been married and in a moment of desperation, throws herself into the fast-running waters on the edge of town. Now we see how fast Lazybones can move if he wants to as, hearing her cries he wakes from his slumber-fishing to dive in and save her.

 

Safely on the riverbank, Ruth tells all and Steve agrees an unlikely plan to save her reputation by looking after her baby daughter until she has the strength to confess all to her mother. He returns home with the baby spinning the tale of finding her abandoned and spurred on by Elmer’s callous disdain, announces that he will adopt. Ruth is safe for the moment but when she finally tells her mother the old harridan refuses to listen or believe taking a stick to her terrified daughter in a genuinely shocking moment. Mrs Fanning may well be the wicked witch of the mid-West but a shadow of shame hangs momentarily across Emily Fitzroy’s brow before she grits her teeth in cruel resolve.

 

Steve finds a baby

Ruth cannot take her baby back and Steve realises that he’s in for the long haul. Agnes cannot face this with the inevitable implications concerning the child’s true father, and she tells poor Steve that she will never speak to him again… her final card played to her lasting regret. Events move forward to 1915 with Kit now a young girl (played by Virginia Marshall) who is still regarded with suspicion by the locals. Agnes sees her trying to befriend a local child only for the mother to pull her away whilst Steve tells his adopted daughter that it’s all his fault for being lazy.

 

War comes and Steve listlessly enlists only to find himself an accidental hero after he sleeps through the order to advance and ends up capturing a German squadron from the rear. He returns to a hero’s welcome and to find Kit all grown up and looking mighty pretty (Madge Bellamy). Kit is in love with one Dick Ritchie (Leslie Fenton) who has even fixed that darn gate. Richie proposes but Steve also realises that he has feelings for his young ward…OK, that’s a bit from left field but it’s not the only surprise as events play out in a very European way…

Lazybones packs an accumulation of little punches that leave your thoughts provoked long after the film has stopped playing. It is an intelligent film from Mr Borzage and one that stands the test of time with a message that nothing should be taken for granted in a world of false formalities. Zasu Pitts is a vital counter to the easy-going, she’s a remarkable performer with a uniquely-unsettling way here wilting in front of our very eyes as the woman with her life ruined by the need to keep up her mother’s appearances. Emily Fitzroy is also good as her sister Ruth whose heartbreak is slower burning but none the less real.

 

Madge Bellamy and Buck Jones

Don’t be lazy, make real choices and don’t sleep on the job of life. Borzage’s woke agenda still speaks powerfully.

 

All of this was added extra force by the immaculate improvisations of John Sweeney on the piano as he matched the subtle turmoil on scream meeting every triumph and disaster with carefully conceived flourishes melding with the action in that uncanny way he does, holding us rapt in the space between the thoughts and expressions.

 

The plan unravells in The House of Flickers

A seemingly more straightforward task was provided in his accompaniment of the evening’s first film, The House of Flickers (1925) a short directed by Benjamin Stoloff and starring James Parrott who, as I’m sure you all know, was the brother of the even more famous Charles Joseph Parrott also known as Charlie Chase. It’s a fast-moving comedy about a man trying to sell his picture house only for a cheeky chimp to mess up the nitrate in the projection booth. It features lots of guest players and none more famous that the primate, name of Josephine, who would later steal the limelight from Buster Keaton in The Cameraman. Also featured is The Wonder Dog Pal as Pete the Pup who gives a performance of nuanced dexterity as you would expect.

 

The Kennington Bioscope has never shied away from working with animals or, indeed, children should the need arise.

Here’s Hobart! Behind the Door (1919), Neil Brand, BFI

I was slightly confused by what sounded like a war story being termed as one of the first great horror films until Behind the Door showed its true colours as the unmentionable became undeniable and the limits to which Hobart Bosworth could take human rage were defined in the crowd-silencing dénouement.

Well, almost silent, there was a nervous laugh but you don’t get off that lightly man in row C… still thinking about it I’ll bet!

If Edgar Allen Poe scripted silent films they’d all be a bit like this one although for much of the film, you just wouldn’t necessarily see the closing sequences coming. There are indicators though including the moment when Bosworth’s character, Oscar Krug, fights the alpha males of his village after they make the sadly all too modern assumption that if he has a foreign name he must be “alien” and disloyal. Well, he proves them wrong and whups the lot in one of the most blood-caked and realistic slugfests of the era.

Not bad for a fifty-something and to cap it all he even gets the girl, Alice Morse (the 23-year old Jane Novak). Bosworth still looks handy and he has a rare intensity that not only makes him a convincing pugilist and leader of men but also a taxidermist with a lighter side… A young girl’s dolly gets run over by a cart – for a second you think it might be a child – and Krug stiches it together good as new.

The film flashes backwards and forwards so many times you almost forget who the “narrator” is and I’m looking forward to re-watching when the Flicker Alley DVD is released next month to see how the opening moments marry up with the last.

It’s 1926, or thereabouts and a silver haired sailor has finally returned home, resting at the grave of his best friend, Bill Tavish (James Gordon), the only one who would have greeted him. He makes his way into town and to a dilapidated taxidermist’s shop where local boys throw stones through the windows and he no longer has the strength to stop them.

He enters and collapses onto his worktop as he finds a piece of fabric… it was hers, the woman he loved and, presumably, lost.

Hobart Bosworth

We go back to 1917, when he was happy with Alice, daughter of weasely local bank manager Matthew Morse (J. P. Lockney) who disapproves of his daughter seeing this former sailor.

Things come to a head when America enters the war and, encouraged by banker Morse, the locals decide that hangin’s too good for anyone with a Geman name even one who was born in the USA and has already served his country.

Jane Novak

Oscar sees them off and earns the eternal respect of Tavish and the two enlist for the war. As they set sail, Alice, having been disowned for marrying her man, joins him on his voyage, stowing away as a nurse but, just as they are reunited, a U-Boat spots them and unleashes a torpedo amidships: the vessel has no chance but Oscar will do what every captain and husband would do.

After days at sea in a rudderless lifeboat, Oscar and Alice look doomed but then a submarine arrives and they think it’s salvation. The submarine is the same one that sank their ship and is captained by Lieutenant Brandt (Wallace Beery), a man for whom the word ruthless could have been invented and whose hand is offered not in friendship to Alice but with far more sinister motive.

Wallace Beery

He takes her and leaves Oscar to drown… pretty much the same level of foolhardy provocation as leaving Liam Neilson your mobile phone number after kidnapping his daughter.

I’ll stop the story here as to say anymore will spoil the brutal surprises in store: see it and be shocked!

Tonight’s show featured  Neil Brand accompanying and was sold out – Bryony Dixon was delighted as were those of us lucky enough to grab a ticket! (Don’t despair, there’s some good news down below… )

Robert Byrne, President of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival introduced and described Neil’s playing as bringing the film to life and so he did from the almost homely early sequences to the bloody battle, torpedo strike and the sickly horrors of the close he was on top of the story, synchronising style and substance with a practiced edge.

This restoration has been a labour of love for Robert who professed to knowing every frame after years of involvement in merging three sources together including some key action sequences acquired from Hobart Bosworth’s personal collection. The film is almost complete and thanks to original source materials they were able to use the original title script on the Russian print that formed the majority of this nearly lost film.

The restoration also includes the tints and tones that director Irvin Willat used in atypical ways to strengthen his narrative: not just red for anger and blue for night; the colours and the feelings run far deeper than that.

The Flicker Alley DVD/BluRay is released on 4^th April and features Stephen Horne along with a host of extras. You can order it direct.

The film is being screened again with Stephen playing his score live at the BFI on 1^st April – I would urge you to book right now to avoid disappointment – one of the silent shocks of the year awaits you! Don’t miss it!!

Sleepin' in the sun... Lazybones (1925)

Buck Jones

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” as Quarry Bank High School alumni John Lennon once said, yet for Steve Tuttle, life is what happens when he’s busy not even making plans. Named Lazybones by the locals he spends his time in relaxed denial always putting off till tomorrow what could be done today.

He gets caught napping even by the local fish quick enough to leap off the line after waking the faint-hearted fisherman, insists that his ragged roof doesn’t need fixing as it’s not raining and asks his Mom (Edythe Chapman) to remind him to fix their wonky gate: “that darn gate!” says everyone who passes through it today, tomorrow and for years to come.

There’s surely not much mileage in this lazy tale I hear you cry and yet Frank Borzage’s film is gently misleading; elegantly side-swiping the expectations of audience and Hollywood alike with a narrative that is far harder than it looks.

The director elicits some superb performances from his cast, chiefly from Buck Jones who was best known for cowboy roles and yet here creates a nuanced character as far away from genre preconceptions as you could imagine. Jones is a handsome chap and looks like one of life’s easy winners and yet here he presents as a man preparing himself for disappointment by prevarication: why look life square in the eye when you can just sleep it off.

No flies on Steve: they all get caught in the spider webs on his shoes...

Is he waiting for something to happen? When it does he is quick to react and demonstrates physical and moral courage and yet… will these acts change him into a more acceptable “hero”? Maybe he does enough and deserves security in his own nature after all it’s the energy and ambition of the more aggressively moral souls around him that create the misery. Lazybones is as much about the competitive consensus as it is about the titular slacker: he remains true to himself whilst the others in passing judgement lose out.

Emily Fitzroy and Jane Novak

Borzage’s composition and cinematography is suitably dream-like with cameramen Glen MacWilliams and George Schneiderman picking up the wonderful light of the rural settings: something so bright that any sensible man would shield his eyes and just lie back on a tree trunk to bask…

Written by Frances Marion from a play by Owen Davis the film is a tale of the unexpected that only really makes itself known in the closing sequences but I won’t give those away… 

Emily Fitzroy and Jane Novak

It begins with Frank’s gentle routines being disturbed by the arrival of his sweetheart Agnes Fanning (winningly-winsome Jane Novak) and her fearsome mother (Emily Fitzroy). The two ride in by tandem and Mrs Fanning’s stiff-backed posture lets you know to expect the worst… She cannot disguise her disgust at Steve and certainly doesn’t want his relationship with Agnes to develop.

Steve manages to get his jalopy running and momentarily impresses before it blows up, he tells Agnes he has plans and whilst in a more typical film there would be a hidden secret to rescue his fortune here you cannot be so sure.

Mrs Fanning much prefers the local “Beau Brummel”, Elmer Ballister (William Bailey) who she has lined up for her elder daughter Ruth (Zasu Pitts); he’s a real go-getter and full of it. She writes to Ruth telling her to return from her teaching post and prepare herself for wedlock. But Ruth has been rather busy away from home having married a sailor and born his child only to be rapidly widowed following his death at sea.

Zasu Pitts

She returns home with her child convinced that no one will believe that she has ever been married (no licence?) and in a moment of desperation, throws herself into the fast-running waters on the edge of town. Now we see how fast Lazybones can move if he wants to as, hearing her cries he wakes from his slumber-fishing to dive in and save her.

Ruth after the rescue...

Safely on the river bank, Ruth tells all and Steve agrees an unlikely plan to save her reputation by looking after her baby daughter until she has the strength to confess all to her mother. He returns home with the baby spinning the tale of finding her abandoned and spurred on by Elmer’s callous disdain, announces that he will adopt.

Ruth is safe for the moment but when she finally tells her mother the old harridan refuses to listen or believe taking a stick to her terrified daughter in a genuinely shocking moment. Mrs Fanning may well be the wicked witch of the mid-West but a shadow of shame hangs momentarily across Emily Fitzroy’s brow before she grits her teeth in cruel resolve.

Ruth cannot take her baby back and Steve realises that he’s in for the long haul. Agnes cannot face this with the inevitable implications concerning the child’s true father, and she tells poor Steve that she will never speak to him again… her final card played to her lasting regret.

Events move forward to 1915 with Kit now a young girl (played by Virginia Marshall) who is still regarded with suspicion by the locals. Agnes sees her trying to befriend a local child only for the mother to pull her away whilst Steve tells his adopted daughter that it’s all his fault for being lazy.

War comes and Steve listlessly enlists only to find himself an accidental hero after he sleeps through the order to advance and ends up capturing a German squadron from the rear. He returns to a hero’s welcome and to find Kit all grown up and looking mighty pretty (Madge Bellamy).

Kit is in love with one Dick Ritchie (Leslie Fenton) who has even fixed that darn gate. Richie proposes but Steve also realises that he has feelings for his young ward…OK, that’s a bit from left field but it’s not the only surprise as events play out in a very European way…

Lazybones packs an accumulation of little punches that leave your thoughts provoked long after the film has stopped playing. It is an intelligent film from Mr Borzage and one that stands the test of time with a message that nothing should be taken for granted in a World of false formalities.

In addition to Buster Jones, Zasu Pitts is also on song, giving her all in her uniquely-unsettling way as the woman with her life ruined by the need to keep up her mother’s appearances whilst Emily Fitzroy is also good as her sister Ruth whose heartbreak is slower burning but none the less real.

Lazybones is available on the Murnau and Borzage box set from TCM – very collectably-priced on Amazons but you can also watch it more cost-effectively on Netflix US.