cinema history class: the penalty (1920)

The session: "Happy 140th Birthday, Lon Chaney, Sr."

This month we watch silent movies starring the one and only Lon Chaney, Sr.

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Week 2: The Penalty (1920)
Directed by Wallace Worsley

My Impressions Going In:

I'd never heard of this movie. Of course, I'd heard of Lon Chaney, Sr, whom Ethan cites as the best screen actor ever. And I've seen a few of the films he was in. So I had high hopes.

Plot:

Having lost his legs as a child -- due to an accident and a doctor's mistake -- Blizzard (yes, that's the character's name) turn to a life of crime in order to attain wealth and revenge.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

One thing I find fascinating about watching old silent films -- and I'm not an expert, but I have seen several over the years. -- is how different they were than movies of today. Granted, movies change over the decades. Technology changes (whether the changes represent improvement is a matter that one can debate) and cultural tastes change. So today's movies feel different than movies from, say, the early 1970's. But even so, there is a fundamental similarity in form between modern movies and those from decades ago.

But these old silent films -- they feel fundamentally different. There's a fundamental simplicity in the storytelling. They didn't have a plethora of side characters, each with a backstory. Dialogue is necessarily sparse, since it required title cards. And when title cards were displayed, the movie had to cut away from the visual images of the characters. Very often the actors employed exaggerated facial expressions because they couldn't use their voices to convey emotions. And often the close-ups appeared to be the actor's face with a black background -- separated from the scene.

Being that I grew up when I did, it can be very easy for me to be bored by these movies, as they are much less intricate than the movies I grew up with. And yet, it's important not to be too dismissive. When the story is told well and the performances are "on," these old movies can be every bit as compelling -- perhaps more so -- than newer films.

Chaney, for his part, was brilliant. His character's legs had been amputated, and that had to be conveyed onscreen. This was before CGI or any other special effects. Keith explained that Chaney had his legs tied back in order to appear as an amputee. This process was painful enough that Chaney could only perform for a couple minutes at a time before releasing his legs to restore circulation. According to Keith, Chaney even suffered permanent harm as a result.

It's also interesting to me that we were watching a medium in its early stages of growth. These guys were inventing the art form as they went along. What works? What doesn't? How long should a movie be? How many acts should it have? All of these were largely unknown. Chaney, as I understand it, appeared in a now-lost epilogue in order to prove that he wasn't actually an amputee. Did he do that because it was felt that the audience needed that revelation? Or did he feel, the need, as a point of pride, to make sure the audience knew how elaborate was the illusion he had created? This all makes me think of Freaks, Tod Browning's 1932 film, which happened to be the first movie Keith showed us in this class a decade ago. Does the fact that the titular characters in that film actually had the physical deformities they portrayed make the movie better? Did it make the movie worse? How does that relate to the fact that Chaney was able to expertly simulate his character's disability. These are questions I am thinking about, but I'll not answer them now.

As much as I liked to story as a whole, I found the ending disappointing. I acknowledge that part of what drove that ending was the era in which it was made. Popular taste required something of the sort. When I made that observation in class, Joe asked directly what ending would have satisfied me. It's a fair enough question, but I maintained (and continue to maintain) that it's not my job to answer that. A story was presented to me and I found one aspect of it lacking. Had the ending been different, I might have liked it more. But I'm judging this film based on what was in it.

Ratings

Me: 9.5

Dave: 9.5

Ethan: 9

Joe: 10