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Voidsville Follies

Works featuring "zero to hero" (17)

The Voice Of The Violin

D.W. Griffith (director/writer)
G.W. Bitzer (cinematographer)
Arthur Johnson (lead)
Marion Leonard (lead)
David Miles (lead)
Biograph (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Mar 1909
Minutes: 13

Hooded men in sheets plot to murder people but, surprisingly, in this Griffith film they'e not the heroes - probably because they annoyingly keep repeating "No high, No low, All equal!", which turns out to be an accurate description of this lengthy monotonous mess that once again shows that Griffith was burdened with too much film stock.

Featured elements:

: bombers; bookends; comedy; crime; fighting; forbidden love; the long fuse; zero to hero

She Would Be An Actress

Lubin (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Aug 1909
Minutes: 5

Intense drama unfolds when wife must choose between the two greatest joys in her life: dancing on stage, and whacking her hubby upside the head. What will she choose: the glamour of stage life, or the fulfillment of pummeling Papa?

Before his Alexander's Ragtime Band shot him to fame, a 20-year-old Irving Berlin penned a modest success in 1909, that included lyrics on the same theme: Sadie Cohen left her happy home//To become an actress lady
On the stage she soon became the rage//As the only real Salomy baby
When she came to town, her sweetheart Mose//Brought for her around a pretty rose
But he got an awful fright//When his Sadie came to sight//He stood up and yelled with all his might: [Refrain:] Don't do that dance, I tell you Sadie//That's not a bus'ness for a lady!
'Most ev'rybody knows//That I'm your loving Mose//Oy, Oy, Oy, Oy//Where is your clothes?...
Oy! such a sad disgrace//No one looks in your face
Sadie Salome, go home

Also, note the original “slap stick” the comic uses, just before she goes on stage.

Featured elements:

: abuse; backstage; by the book; comedy; dance; dance-orientale; emblematic shot; family; forsaken; marriage reconciliation; metatheatre; neglected spouse; obsession; patriarchy; shrew; slapstick; undercover agent; zero to hero

That Chink At Golden Gulch

D.W. Griffith (director)
G.W. Bitzer (cinematographer)
Emmett C. Hall (writer)
Anthony O'Sullivan (lead)
Dell Henderson (lead)
Biograph (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Oct 1910
Minutes: 14

Who could pass up a title like that? After all, over a century later ESPN was still relying on chink power to grab eyeballs with its “Chink in the Armor” headline for a Jeremy Lin story. Here, reknown Massa of ethnology D.W. Griffith spins a tale of a Noble Pagan who “though a saffron-skinned Pagan, his soul is white and real red blood pulsates his heart” the Moving Picture World synopsis tells us. The Moving Picture World review however was a bit less sentimental: “Perhaps if everyone could see such heroic self-sacrifice in a Chinaman as this one displayed, the aversion which most men feel toward them would disappear. It is doubtful, however, if such unselfishness and generosity abide in more than an occasional individual. The picture is not up to the Biograph standard...” - which already sets the bar quite low.

Featured elements:

: cowboys; displaced persons; ethnic stereotype; heroic defender; melodrama; persecution; prejudice; redemption; revenge; social commentary; torture; white savior; white supremacy; zero to hero

Bread for the Birds (Le pain des petits oiseaux)

Albert Capellani (director)
Georges Le Faure (writer)
Stacia Napierkowska (lead)
Lucien Callamand (lead)
Pathé (production)

Language: Silent, French titles, English subtitles, released in Aug 1911
Minutes: 14

A tight little work mixing comedy and melodrama, brief enough to avoid being boring or annoying, skillfully flying through 7 settings in just over 10 minutes, and featuring a bit of lovely dancing.

Featured elements:

: aging; backstage; bookends; comedy; dance; melodrama; poverty; tramp; zero to hero

Algie The Miner

Alice Guy-Blaché (director/producer)
Harry Schenck (director)
Edward Warren (director)
Billy Quirk (lead)
Solax (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Feb 1912
Minutes: 10

After the broad comedy of "Go West, young sissy", this switches midway into a tale of male bonding (or something like that). In less than a week Algie returns East to claim his bride (who loved him as an effeminate man, so probably will be disgusted with him as a Rough Rider), bringing along his newly bonded male (or something like that) who presumably will play an unspecified role in Algie`s marriage. Seems there is no consensus on who actually directed this - an ambiguity befitting this quirky work.

Featured elements:

: addiction; baptism of fire; comedy; cowboys; gender-bender; male bonding; modernism; prejudice; sexuality; sissy comedy; zero to hero

A Beast At Bay

D.W. Griffith (director)
G.W. Bitzer (cinematographer)
George Hennessy (writer)
Mary Pickford (lead)
Edwin August (lead)
Alfred Paget (lead)
Mae Marsh (lead)
Biograph (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in May 1912
Minutes: 14

Routine race-to-the rescue, made interesting only by the relatively wild performance of the 'beast'.

Featured elements:

: action; automobile; chase; crime; fighting; forsaken; rescue; zero to hero

Katchem Kate

Mack Sennett (director)
Percy Higginson (cinematographer)
Dell Henderson (writer)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Fred Mace (lead)
Charles Avery (lead)
Biograph (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Jun 1912
Minutes: 11

To escape the drudgery of her job in a laundry, Mabel attends 'The Alert Detective School' to become a sleuth, and soon happens on a bombing conspiracy. OK - so not much laughs, but watching Mabel's early comic moves and cross-dressing may be of historic interest for her fans.

Featured elements:

: bombers; comedy; cross-dressing; detective; gender-bender; wage slavery; zero to hero

Mabel's Dramatic Career

Mack Sennett (director/lead/producer)
Mabel Normand (lead)
Alice Davenport (lead)
Virginia Kirtley (lead)
Ford Sterling (lead)
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (lead)
Charles Avery (lead)
Keystone Cops (lead)
Keystone 5-step Porch (location)
Keystone (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Sep 1913
Minutes: 15

Mack Sennett stars as a bumpkin who courts, then quickly dumps, his klutzy housemaid, played by Mabel Normand. The maid later finds success on screen - in Keystone comedies! Sennett assembled a fine cast: Mabel's comic mug (above) and nicely timed pratfalls are enough to carry the comedy by itself, but she gets ample help from Ford Sterling's wacky comic moves. The Keystone-within-a-Keystone is a clever touch that's more realistic than the similar scene in `The False Max Linder`. Unfortunately, Sennett's performance seems amateurishly overacted and drags the pace down. Thankfully, Sennett didn't star in many more of his comedies after this.

Featured elements:

: backstage; comedy; forsaken; identity mix-up; metatheatre; parody; slapstick; slide; zero to hero

L'enfant de Paris

Léonce Perret (director/writer)
Georges Specht (cinematographer)
Louis Leubas (lead)
Maurice Lagrenée (lead)
Notre-Dame de Paris (location)
Gaumont (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Sep 1913
Minutes: 124

Think two-hour “epics” are reserved for tales of war or larger-than-life heroes, as in Cabiria (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), or J'accuse (1919)? Sorry, but this golden-to-ghetto melodrama came before those. Here - “epic” this:

Credits: 3 minutes
Gomez is called to smack down uppity desert hanky-heads, leaving Uncle Fester responsible for the family: 3 minutes
Gomez unleashes the fury of the French Empire, hanky-heads let loose the juice and served him like couscous: 6 minutes
Morticia seizes the chance to bail on Fester and her boring brat: 3 minutes
Fester is called to smack down uppity audience members demanding refunds: 3 minutes
Audience punished for uprising - forced to watch nothing more than a boring brat weeping: 15 minutes

Finally, after 33 minutes of bourgeois colonialist weepfest, things get real when Edmond “The Graduate” enters - but he exits less than 5 minutes later, and is gone for 15 minutes. After his return, he disappears again, and the final 47 minutes of the film is little more than watching a nookie-starved snitch run back and forth to the cops.

Sure, the street scenes look nice, but the investigation of those scenes by The Cine-Tourist is much more interesting.

Featured elements:

: abuse; action; addiction; adopted child; adventure; anti-colonialism; armed conflict; automobile; breaking class; chase; child labor; crime; criminal mastermind; detective; family; flashback; gangs; helpless heroine; kiddie act; master of disguise; melodrama; Morocco; orphan; prejudice; rescue; school; servitude; train; uprising; veteran; vigilante; zero to hero

American Aristocracy

Lloyd Ingraham (director)
Victor Fleming (cinematographer)
Anita Loos (writer)
Douglas Fairbanks (lead)
Jewel Carmen (lead)
Albert Parker (lead)

Language: Silent, released in Nov 1916
Minutes: 52

Douglas Fairbanks, barely past his first year of movie-making, not only rolls, climbs a tree, jumps fences/cars/benches, climbs onto a moving car then jumps off and hangs from a wire, and gratuitously does every other animal act trick (other than roll over and beg - that's the one he used to get this gig), but also spanks and kisses his servant, pole dances, endlessly swaggers like an ape with a broomstick up its ass, and generally works hard to be overconfident, overbearing, and terribly annoying - i.e. the embodiment of the imagined ethos of early twentieth century white American maleness. A comedy, minus the laughs, more like news from home - which is, a title card tells us, generally bad.

Featured elements:

: automobile; comedy; comedy of manners; crime; ethnic stereotype; identity mix-up; patriotism; prejudice; romance; servitude; social commentary; zero to hero

Easy Street

Charles Chaplin (director/lead/writer)
William C. Foster (cinematographer)
Roland Totheroh (cinematographer)
Vincent Bryan (writer)
Maverick Terrell (writer)
Eric Campbell (lead)
Edna Purviance (lead)
Lloyd Bacon (lead)
Albert Austin (lead)
Charlotte Mineau (lead)
Leo White (lead)
James T. Kelley (lead)
John Rand (lead)
Mutual (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Jan 1917
Minutes: 23

With so many hilarious gags (and some are just small movements), that come at you so rapidly, repeat viewings is a must.

Featured elements:

: addiction; baptism of fire; bookends; chase; comedy; crazy cops; dark comedy; drunken warrior; family; fighting; heroic defender; poverty; redemption; religion; slapstick; smack attack; strongman; tramp; zero to hero

Out West

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead/writer)
George Peters (cinematographer)
Natalie Talmadge (writer)
Al St. John (lead)
Buster Keaton (lead)
Alice Lake (lead)
Joe Keaton (lead)
Comique (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Jan 1918
Minutes: 20

A parody of the conventions of Wild West movies - clearly a slapdash attempt to capitalize on the box-office success of 1974's Blazing Saddles.

Featured elements:

: action; animal act; antihero; comedy; cowboys; dark comedy; death scene; ethnic stereotype; forsaken; gambling; parody; redemption; rescue; slapstick; torture; train; tramp; unstoppable menace; white savior; white supremacy; zero to hero

A Trip to Mars (Himmelskibet)

Holger-Madsen (director)
Ole Olsen [1863-1943] (producer/writer)
Sophus Michaëlis (author/writer)
Nicolai Neiiendam (lead)
Gunnar Tolnæs (lead)
Zanny Petersen (lead)
Alf Blütecher (lead)
Svend Kornbeck (lead)

Language: Silent, Danish and English titles, Spanish subtitles, released in Feb 1918
Minutes: 81

Nine adventurous thrill-seeking young men in tight leather suits share a cramped spaceship for months. Right - love the kinky Warholish story idea, and its social commentary. Shame the commentary is never developed, and ruined by 19th-century grand stage-style cornball acting.

Featured elements:

: addiction; adventure; family; melodrama; motley crew; patriarchy; sci-fi; social commentary; zero to hero

The Bellboy

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle (director/lead/writer)
Joseph Anthony Roach (writer)
George Peters (cinematographer)
Elgin Lessley (cinematographer)
Al St. John (lead)
Buster Keaton (lead)
Alice Lake (lead)
Joe Keaton (lead)
Comique (production)

Language: Silent, English titles, released in Mar 1918
Minutes: 25

The title could have been plural, as the first half features Roscoe and Buster as a pair of bellboys, mostly pulling off gags as a duo. Al has his share of fun time, but usually not sharing the screen with the other two. But in the second half, the three Rough Boys ditch their uniforms and roles to come together as a team for some serious wrecking. Highlights:

Roscoe and Buster's synchronized madness
When frightened by a guest's appearance, the bellboys surprisingly react in a way typical of darky humor - you can almost hear their knees knocking.
Fatty treats us to a dance again - always a joy to watch
Released about 8 months before the war's end, propaganda slips into the barber shop - and even in the dining hall
Fatty's devilish wink to the audience
Some cool acrobatic stunts

Featured elements:

: abuse; animal act; chase; comedy; fighting; gender-bender; metatheatre; patriotism; roughhouse; sissy comedy; slapstick; zero to hero

Laborer's Love/Romance of a Fruit Peddler (勞工之愛情/擲果緣)

Zhang Shi-Chuan/張石川 (director)
Zhang Wei-Tao/張偉濤 (cinematographer)
Zheng Zheng-Qiu/鄭正秋 (lead/writer)
Cheng Cheh-Ku/鄭鷓鴣 (lead)
Yu Yuan/余媛 (lead)
Mingxing/明星 (production)

Language: Silent, Chinese and English titles, released in Oct 1922
Minutes: 22

A familiar tale: Cheng has eyes for gal, he defends her against bullies, then proposes to her, but her dad demands Cheng first prove himself. This work is elevated from mundaneness by Cheng, a happy-go-lucky oddball with his own wacky way of handling the world - sort of a silent version of Pee Wee Herman.

Featured elements:

: comedy; fighting; flashback; forbidden love; gambling; heroic defender; slapstick; zero to hero

King Of The Circus (Max, der Zirkuskönig)

Edouard-Emile Violet/Édouard-Émile Violet (director)
Max Linder (director/lead/writer)
Vilma Bánky (lead)
Gyula Szöreghy (lead)
Eugen Burg (lead)
Ernst Günther (lead)
Vita-Film (production)

Language: Silent, Spanish titles, English subtitles, released in May 1924
Minutes: 65

In her 1983 documentary on Max Linder, The Man in the Silk Hat, Maud Linder says of Max Linder's rarely-found final feature film (made in Austria): “Nothing remains of this great film but a few stills and scraps of footage, unscreenable today”. Fortunately, more of the film was later found. Although most profiles of Linder's career sketch a portrait of post-war decline until the end, his final feature film rebuts those claims. The film was so successful that it was remade in 1937 and 1957.

Max suffers from brattiness and drunkenness, but gets serious after he falls for the daughter of a circus director - who forbids her romance with an outsider. Max then attempts to learn circus performance but when he is forced to admit his failure, the director then invites Max to join his circus anyway - as a lion tamer!

Featured elements:

: addiction; animal act; baptism of fire; boozy-woozy; breaking class; by the book; chase; circus; comedy; fighting; forbidden love; identity mix-up; romance; servitude; shadow-the-guard gag; slapstick; slide; zero to hero

Red Heroine (紅俠)

Wen Yi-Min/文逸民 (director/lead)
Shang Guan-Wu/尚冠武 (director/lead)
Devil Music Ensemble (music)
Fan Xue-Peng/范雪朋 (lead)
Chu Shao-Chuen/朱少泉 (lead)
Youlian Film/友聯影片 (production)

Language: Silent, Chinese and English titles, released in 1929, month unknown
Minutes: 95

Slow moving, baffling English titles, and a flying heroine who still must climb up walls. but worth watching for its grand scale, tasteful scoring of 'Chinese traditional-style contemporary songs' and, of course, the scantily-clad ladies.

Featured elements:

: female avenger; fighting; rescue; revenge; unrequited love; zero to hero

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