John Grant

“Shkurnyk,” a silent film from 1929 that I saw at the 2013 Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Giornate del Cinema Muto), is a very funny satire about the civil war in the years following the Russian Revolution.  The title means “The Self Seeker,” which must have been a loaded word in the new Soviet society of collectivism.  But with all the fighting, profiteering, starvation and political maneuvering going on, many of the citizens must have thought it best to concentrate on looking after only themselves.

Apollon (Ivan Sadovsky) seeks profit in “Shkurnyk.”

The story begins as the Red Army marches through a Ukrainian village.  The retreating White Army left an overturned cart and tins of meat from its cargo have fallen to the ground.  From his house, Kyivan Apollon Shmyguyev peers through his window shades and spies the tins.  He collects them, eager to make some quick rubles, but he’s soon apprehended by a Red Army platoon and forced to explain himself.   Faced with prison, Apollon quickly charms his way to the local commisariat and becomes the leader.  All the while, however, he continues to figure out ways to make a profit.

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As the new “Commissar” for the Bolsheviks, Apollon carries on as a bootlegger under the watchful eye of the local Bolshevik inspector woman.  Her strident sermonizing and desire to stamp out the evils of capitalism are played strictly for laughs, but Apollon soon decides to take off on his camel before his comrades discover his criminal activities.  On the road, he’s apprehended by a platoon of White Army partisans, who quickly line him up in front of a firing squad.  An old friend arrives to spare him, and the suddenly trusted Apollon soon becomes a full partisan.  Before long, however, he sallies forth again on his camel to find his fortune.  However, he meets another faction of “neutrals” and he begins anew his cycle of deceit.

The film, directed by Nikolai Shpikovsky, did not get a good reception from the Soviet authorities.  They rejected its playful criticism of the Bolshevik local administration.  Moscow pulled the film from wide distribution and it sat unwatched in the Soviet cinema archives for decades.  Many of the film’s jokes center on the misreading of Apollon’s identity papers, and perhaps that is a sly comment on the Communist ideology about collectivism versus the individual. But little is conveyed through title cards, and the audience quickly gets tied up in the obvious farce.

A 1926 German silent film called “Menschen untereinander,” or “People Among Each Other,” employs a handy storytelling device to introduce its characters without the extensive use of title cards.  The story concerns the inhabitants of an apartment building in Berlin, where the successful and rich live with the impoverished.  As the camera focuses on the apartment directory, two women, the concierge and cleaning lady, explain the characters that go with the names. We’re then taken inside each apartment one-by-one to meet the characters and learn more about their daily lives.

Aud Egede-Nissen conceives a baby in prison in “Menschen untereinander (People Among Each Other)”

The episodic film, shown this year at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, then shifts back and forth between the characters as it tells the story. Chief among these tales concerns a pregnant woman, Gertrud Kohler (played by Aud Egede-Nissen) who is convicted of wrongdoing in a traffic accident.  She’s the daughter of a public official who can do nothing to help her as she faces the loss of her child.  In another apartment, a successful but kind jeweler and his daughter work hard to continue their successful business, but also show compassion for their less fortunate neighbors scrounging to survive in the hyper-inflationary times of 1920’s Germany. In contrast, the money-grubbing landlady lays down the rules and expects prompt payment of the rent each month.
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Directed by Gerhard Lamprecht, who often took on social issues in his films, the film balances lighter elements with strident social commentary.  One of the humorous stories involves the landlady of the house, who is mostly dismissive of the more impoverished tenants.  Upstairs, a matchmaking establishment fixes her up with a gentleman from Australia.  Romance beckons and the gentleman showers her with gifts, including a ring with a hideously large stone. The gentleman turns out to be a swindler, and before long the landlady signs over his fortune to him just before he disappears.  He does so much damage to her finances that she’s forced to move and sell the building.  The director, Lamprecht, treats the landlady with little sympathy as we see her riding off in a taxi forever.

The film plays up little coincidences that lead up to big circumstances.  For instance, one of the apartments houses an impoverished piano teacher who earns little by teaching.  One day, he does a favor for one of the dancers at the top floor ballet studio.  The dancer gratefully arranges with the owner of the studio to have him play at the school for classes.  It’s the kind of human exchange where everyone benefits, and it gives us a chance to forget the hard times for awhile.

Pordenone, Italy — On October 9, 2013, I had the honor of viewing a short silent film made by Orson Welles, only recently discovered in this great town. The film, “Too Much Johnson,” made in 1938, features a man name Augustus Billings (played by Joseph Cotton) who is chased all over New York City by a husband who discovers Billings sleeping with his wife.  The chase takes them to first to the docks and then to the warehouse district, where Cotton and the cuckolded husband, Leon Dathis (played by Edgar Barrier), perform dangerous stunts from precarious positions on the rooftops.  The chase goes on so long that it seems more like a looping reel rather than plotted short film.

Joseph Cotton likes Arlene Francis in “Too Much Johnson.”

Actually, Welles did not intend the film to stand alone, but instead produced it to run in snippets during the Mercury Theater’s 1938 production of William Gillette’s play of the same name.  He filmed it like a Keystone Cops slapstick comedy, and even John Housman appears as a Keystone-like policeman. Besides the action in the warehouse district, Welles continues the chase in Yonkers at a sandy location meant to represent Cuba.  In these scenes, Cotton and Barrier end up fighting a duel and getting drenched in a pond.  After seeing Cotton play so many thoughtful and exacting characters throughout his career, it’s interesting and refreshing to see him acting so exuberantly.
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In an interview with Peter Bogdanovitch, Welles said he just got an old silent movie camera and had fun with it.  Of course, it’s easy to have fun with the combined talents of the Mercury Theater.  Welles appears as a Keystone Cop, and we also get to see Houseman, Virginia Nicolson, Ruth Ford, Mary Wickes, Judy Holiday and Arlene Francis. Francis is funny as the coy Mrs. Dathis, with her winning smile and exaggerated movements.  Her scenes appear at the beginning of the film, and they provide a pleasant contrast to the extensive chase scenes.

Judging from the long line and wait to get into see this film here in Pordenone, I expect Too Much Johnson to have an extensive run online.  Besides being a delight for film scholars, Too Much Johnson could easily play as a background loop for any movie-themed restaurant.  It also surprises with its recognizable cast performing for fun.  The English narration at the film premiere in Pordenone also emphasized the importance of the New York City film locations — places that no longer exist but are now galvanized in Welles on-location short.

When a drifter (“The Boy”) knocks on a door of backwoods shack asking for bread, he doesn’t expect to find a murder scene, but that’s what happens in William Wellman’s 1928 silent classic, “Beggars of Life.”  The film screened recently at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, and proved to be one of the highlights of the entire program.  The film belongs in the canon of great silent films, even though Paramount released it with a limited soundtrack.

Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks ride the rails in “Beggars of Life.”

It turns out that the murder victim is the step-father of Louis Brooks’ character, known in the movie as “The Girl.”  As the visitor (played by Richard Arlen) realizes that the stepfather is dead, he discovers the Girl hiding in a closet.  She quickly reveals how she came to murder the man – he groped her and suffered the consequences.  That explanation is enough for the Girl to gain both the Boy’s and audience’s sympathy.  So, they take off together and ride the rails for a while, with Brook’s character dressed as a boy.  Wellman used a similar plot in “Wild Boys of the Road,” a 1933 movie that I previous reviewed in this blog.

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The Boy and the Girl find refuge in a shack with a couple of friendly hobos, and we get to see a touch of human kindness amid the unrelenting misery. Oklahoma Red shows up eventually to torment the couple, but Wellman and the screenwriter (Benjamin Glazer, from a story by Jim Tully), attempt to redeem his character by the end.  Beery was a very popular star who played a lot of mean characters, but most of them were not completely evil.

Brooks is so luminous and lovable that I’m glad she teams with a capable romantic actor here, Richard Arlen.  In later interviews, Brooks said Arlen could barely act at all, but that’s not evident in this picture.  Of course, it’s hard to believe anyone could take Louise Brooks for a boy, no matter how masculine she dresses in this picture.  But she puts her hat on, pulls it down and fools the rest of the cast until Beery shows up.