Tonight I watched Douglas Fairbanks again, in "The Good Bad Man"(1916), and this time I managed to stay awake. Fairbanks stars as an eccentric gunman named "Passin' Through", who stages unusual holdups that often turn out as pranks rather than robberies. Passin' is trying to find information on his father, whom he never knew. He carries in his pocket a letter from his late mother, which gives vague clues about the man, though there's not enough info to identify him. As he robs and pranks his way through the desert town of Mojave, he meets a beautiful young girl (Bessie Love) who lives with her paralysed father. Passin' falls in love with Miss Love, and tells her of his search for his own long lost Dad.
There is a bad guy in town, known as The Wolf (Sam De Grasse). He considers Bessie Love to be his girl, though she wants nothing to do with him. It's a one-sided romance by coersion, and The Wolf has a reputation and a large posse to back him up. Bessie is afraid of him and tells Passin' Through, who promises her he will confront Wolf and get him out of her life. What Passin' doesn't know, however, is that The Wolf is already aware of him, and is planning to remove him from the picture too.
In steps a United States Marshal (Pomeroy Cannon, born in 1870), who is also trying to rid the area of Wolf and his gang. He arrests Passin' Through, nominally on a robbery charge, but really for his own good, so he can place him in protective custody. The Marshal knows something about Passin's life story, which he relates in a cryptic way, giving Passin' just enough information about his mother for him to realize there was another man in her life.......and yes indeed, it was The Wolf.
Passin' now has another reason to go after The Wolf, and he doubles his resolve. As it turns out, The Wolf killed the man Passin' assumes to be his father, because Wolf wanted Passin's mother in the same way he now wants young Bessie Love.
If all this sounds complicated, I sympathize. It makes clear sense onscreen, however, and it's easy to follow, with title cards that state simply the relationships I may have jumbled up with unclarified sentences.
There's a twist at the end, when Passin' may or may not discover his father's identity, but the main thing is that "The Good Bad Man" is an entertaining, if simple, Silent Western. It clocks in at a brief but power packed 50 minutes, directed by the prolific Allan Dwan, whose IMDB lists 407 directorial credits. The movie was written by Douglas Fairbanks himself, a well plotted effort from the man known mainly as one of Hollywood's earliest movie stars, and the founder - along with his gal Mary Pickford, of United Artists, which began as an actor's union and became a major studio. I'm a newcomer to the work of Mr. Fairbanks, and I find him an unusual big screen icon. He was not handsome in the conventional sense, and perhaps a bit odd looking. But like Lon Chaney (who used makeup techniques and endless disguises to hide or accentuate his stoney features), he became popular in spite of his looks, and in Fairbanks' case it was due to his charisma and athleticism. He was known initially for the swashbuckling roles he played, but he became really one of the founders of Hollywood as it developed from Silents and grew into a humongous industry. His son Douglas Jr. followed in his footsteps, and in some ways, Junior, with his good looks and more graceful athleticism, eclipsed his Dad in popularity, if not in legend.
I give "The Good Bad Man" Two Thumbs Up, and rank it on similar terms with "The Half Breed", also starring Fairbanks Senior. With Silent movies you always have to deal with excessive facial makeup and broad gestures, which can make a silent film seem campy, but the important thing is to focus on the emotion conveyed in an acting style that was still being transmuted from the stage. ////
We are all still reeling, even if we weren't basketball fans, just from the Mass Media shock of such a loss. I am also adjusting to my new role as a caregiver, and though very tired I'm re-balancing my surfboard to compensate for the changes ahead.
I'll see you in the morning on what should be a beautiful day.
Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment