Silent Movies (3/11/17)

As you can see from the date above, I’m woefully behind in posting. Saturday,
the 11th, was another in the Silent Clowns series—Saturday Afternoon (1926) and Hands Up! (1926). This was the second of a three-part series featuring
Raymond Griffith, and these two films were selected by Ben Model, accompanist and President of the presenting organization.

Saturday Afternoon has Harry Langdon, as Harry Higgins, a henpecked husband, attempting to slink away from his wife for a Saturday afternoon double date. The film starts out with Harry wielding a sledgehammer in a blacksmith’s stable but keeping an eye on the clock (noon is soon). The ’smithy is ready with hot steel, but during Harry’s backswing his hammer goes flying. After retrieving it and preparing his backswing again, the whistle blows, Harry bolts, and the ’smithy is left holding the red-hot steel. And we’re off!

At home, while Harry is trying to retrieve his personal hoard of coins (wifey holds the purse strings in that family), he is thwarted by his wife. After she finally gives him a dime (contrived circumstance—hey, it’s silent film comedy), he collects coins from his second private hoard and meets the mastermind of the double date. Well, of course the dates don’t work out, and there are humorous episodes involving the first dates, the proposed second dates, and the thugs who were the real dates of the second dates. Confused yet? All ends well, with the wife finding him in trouble and then blaming herself for giving him the dime!

This is interesting. The title card slides add a lot of humor to these silent films. As much as the visuals delight us, the written word setups are important too. Here are two from Saturday Afternoon: “In 1864 when Lincoln declared all men free and equal, did he, or did he not, include husbands?” and “Harry Higgins, just a crumb from the sponge cake of Life.”

As I was watching Hands Up! with Mr. Griffith, I found myself thinking that I had seen it before, and indeed I had. Here’s a snippet that I wrote in July of 2012 (same organization, same film). “The feature was Hands Up!—a film starring Raymond Griffith. The plot was all over the place with Civil War agents and spies and a gold mine owner and his daughters and Lincoln and Brigham Young and—well, you get the idea. Once again, laugh out loud situations (including a painting of a supposed firing squad victim—I’m not making this up, you know!).”

So, almost five years later, seeing it a second time was interesting because even though I had already seen it, I was aware of different things this time around. Worth seeing again five years from now? Maybe so. And I laughed out loud again, as did this audience, this time around.

NYC peeps, if you want to see the third installment, it happens on Saturday, April 29. (Alas, no popcorn allowed in the Bruno Walter auditorium.)

ConcertMeister