Alternative Film Guide

The Penalty (1920)

Direction: Wallace Worsley. Screenplay: Charles Kenyon and Philip Lonergan; from Gouverneur Morris’ novel. Cast: Lon Chaney, Kenneth Harlan, Ethel Grey Terry, Doris Pawn, Charles Clary, Jim Mason, Milton Ross, Claire Adams

Lon Chaney was more than just an actor. He was a magician. Like a chameleon, he could morph into a character.

In the gruesome shocker The Penalty (directed by the all-but-forgotten Wallace Worsley), Chaney plays Blizzard, the victim of a botched operation that had left him as a kid with two amputated legs. Later in life, Blizzard becomes a professional criminal and tries to blackmail the doctor who had performed the surgery by posing for his artist daughter’s study of "the face of evil."

When a female undercover agent infiltrates Chaney’s gang, the suspense mounts as she investigates his nefarious deeds. Eventually, however, she falls under his spell.

Chaney is flawless in his portrayal of Blizzard. In fact, the only fault in The Penalty is the editing (as found in the Kino DVD edition), which much too abruptly jumps from one scene to the next. (This DVD version boasts a score by Michael Polher whose cacophonous themes annoyed me the first time I saw the film. But with subsequent viewings, I grew to appreciate how Polher’s music fit the characters’ volatility.)

Finally, I particularly enjoyed the O. Henry-type ending involving an ironic twist to Blizzard’s change of heart. Indeed, the film is full of plot twists and surprises. In other words, The Penalty is silent horror at its best.

© Danny Fortune

Technorati Tags: The Penalty, Lon Chaney, Wallace Worsley, Kenneth Harlan, Ethel Grey Terry, Gouverneur Morris, Charles Kenyon

MY LITTLE CHICKADEE

GO WEST YOUNG MAN

SPARROWS

STRAIT-JACKET

VIVA

THE NAKED KISS

NUMB

SING AND LIKE IT

HELLO, EVERYBODY!

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

Dan Callahan takes a look at Gloria Grahame’s life and career in a lengthy article at Brights Lights:

"Grahame lives on the edges of most of her films, too disturbing an image, too turbulent a consciousness to ever really play a lead role. She could look severe, even plain, when she wasn’t overly made up for gaudy seduction. Almost always, she played tramps of some sort, but she was enough of an actress to make them very different kinds of tramps, and her filmography offers a sort of strumpet cornucopia. She is capable of turning up in anything, even It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), where she’s the flip side of the film’s Donna Reed sweetheart: Violet Bick (how’s that for a mean/sexy name?), boy crazy in a black satin dress, doing the Charleston with older men at a dance. Grahame gives Violet a comic sort of speed and cluelessness, but when we see what would have happened if Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey had never been born, we catch a glimpse of Violet as a wrecked, angry whore being dragged to a paddy wagon, screaming that she knows important people. It’s possible to imagine a whole film about Violet Bick, but it wouldn’t have been made in 1946, and it might make even today’s sexually jaded art film audience flinch."

Technorati Tags: Gloria Grahame, Dan Callahan, Bright Lights, film noir, It’s a Wonderful Life, James Stewart, Donna Reed

Harrison Ford in THE INDEPENDENT

David Lean Homage

Max Schreck Biography

Q&A with BEFORE THE RAINS Director Santosh Sivan

Lyda Borelli Screening at BAM

ROSEMARY’S BABY at Robert Evans Salute

Steve Kurtz Case Dismissed

FBI Says No Marilyn Monroe Sex Film

Julie Ege

Julie Andrews: Sexy, Maternal, Theatrical

Paul Valley on Harrison Ford in The Independent:
"On his politics he is more public. A lifelong Democrat, he publicly condemned the invasion of Iraq, calling for ‘regime change’ in the United States. He has also criticised his own industry for the violence of much of its output and has [...] Continue Reading…

Geoffrey Macnab’s "The Day Cannes Burned," a highly entertaining look back at Cannes ‘68, in The Independent:
"Film-makers ‘occupied’ the festival’s Grande Salle, partly to prevent screenings and partly to hold a prolonged, open-ended debate. ‘Imagine a cinema about the size of a medium Odeon,’ the British journalist Peter Forster [...] Continue Reading…

My Little Chickadee (1940)
Direction: Edward Cline. Screenplay: Mae West, W. C. Fields. Cast: Mae West, W. C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran, Ruth Donnelly, Margaret Hamilton, Donald Meek, Jackie Searl
 

 
Mae West and W.C. Fields. The teaming of these two comedy titans in My Little Chickadee must not have [...] Continue Reading…

World Cinema Clips: Carlos Diegues’ road movie Bye Bye Brasil / Bye Bye Brazil (1979) is possibly the best Brazilian film I’ve seen. (Admittedly, I’ve seen only about 70 or so Brazilian productions.)
Set in the Amazonian region, Bye Bye Brasil follows a troupe of down-and-out itinerant entertainers as they [...] Continue Reading…

Andrew Collins Remembers David Lean in a lengthy piece in the London Observer/Guardian:
"If it’s David Lean, we must start with a bold, widescreen establishing shot that sets out our stall. A vast expanse of grey tarmac, viewed dramatically from above, bordered by asymmetric shadows and a single motorcycle. A [...] Continue Reading…

Dave Graham reports in Reuters that later this year what appears to be the first biography of silent-film actor Max Schreck, in my view the most effective movie vampire of them all, will be published in Germany.
Schreck starred in F.W. Murnau’s excellent 1922 horror drama Nosferatu, presumably the first [...] Continue Reading…

Inspired by the "Red Roofs" segment from Dan Verete’s 2002 three-part Israeli drama Yellow Asphalt, which revolves around the lives of Bedouins in the Judean desert, the visually lush Before the Rains, which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, follows the self-destructive path of a British farmer [...] Continue Reading…

 
Although it gets off to a slow start, Go West Young Man is one of Mae West’s better Post-Code efforts for Paramount. Directed by Henry Hathaway and written by Mae West herself (from Lawrence Riley’s play), Go West Young Man stars West (get it?) as temperamental film star Mavis [...] Continue Reading…

The Straddler offers a lengthy essay on Ridley Scott’s American Gangster:
"American Gangster illuminates in its failure. Earnest and workmanlike in its effort to earn a place among the venerated films in its genre, it does not succeed. A better than average film in terms of the average film — [...] Continue Reading…

A Warner Bros. digital restoration of the 1938 rousing adventure classic The Adventures of Robin Hood will be screened on Sunday, June 1, at 7 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. The program will also feature a behind-the-scenes look at [...] Continue Reading…

Sparrows (1926)
Direction: William Beaudine. Screenplay: C. Gardner Sullivan (adaptation); George Marion Jr. (titles); from a story by Winifred Dunn. Cast: Mary Pickford, Roy Stewart, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Spec O’Donnell, Billy Butts
 

 
Molly is the role Mary Pickford was born to play. In Sparrows, Molly is the oldest among the [...] Continue Reading…

CANNES CLASSICS 2008

Synopses/intros from the Cannes Film Festival press release.
Main event: LOLA MONTÈS by Max Ophüls
The Technicolor restoration of LOLA MONTÈS, directed by Max Ophüls in 1955, is to have its world premiere, presented by the Cinémathèque française, on Saturday May 17th.
Documentaries about cinema
NO SUBTITLES NECESSARY: LASZLO & [...] Continue Reading…

Wednesday, May 8, highlights on Turner Classic Movies:
John Frankenheimer’s speed-racing epic, Grand Prix, boasts an all-star cast, split screens, lots of noise, and one excellent performance, courtesy of the always reliable Eva Marie Saint.
Bachelor Mother (right) was a minor disappointment, but Charles Coburn is outstanding as the patriarch who [...] Continue Reading…

"What we wanted to say is, if these people [Iranians, Muslims] scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories." That’s filmmaker and cartoonist Marjane Satrapi, referring to Persepolis, at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
(Top photo: Brick Lane by Sarah Gavron. Right [...] Continue Reading…