Even now, when time has dulled the impression and made me half question my own experience and horrible doubts, there are things in that letter of Akeley’s which I would not quote

THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS

2011

Directed Sean Branney

Written by Andrew Leman and Sean Branney (based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft)

plus "The Call of Cthulhu" (2005), written and directed by same

Spoilers: moderate

Is this a God dam?

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

2024

Directed by Mike Cheslik

Written by Ryland Tews and Mike Cheslik

Spoilers: moderate

A kiss goodbye

THE KISS

1929

Directed by Jacques Feyder

Written by Hanns Kraly and Marian Ainslee (based on the short story by George Saville)

Spoilers: moderate

Greta Garbo will never love you Johnny Mack Brown, accept it

THE SINGLE STANDARD

1929

Directed by John S. Robertson

Written by Josephine Lovett and Marian Ainslee (based on the novel by Adela Rogers St. John)

Spoilers: moderate (lot of redactions, though)

Tiger, tiger, burning bright, something something something night

WILD ORCHIDS

1929

Directed by Sidney Franklin

Written by Hanns Kraly, Ruth Cummings, Willis Goldbeck, and William Schayer (based on the novel Heat by John Colton)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: She was the male of the species that is more fearless than mankind

A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS

1928

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Bess Meredyth, Marian Ainslee, and Ruth Cummings (based on the novel The Green Hat by Michael Arlen)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: But we're supposed to work for the tsar

THE COSSACKS

1928

Directed by George Hill and Clarence Brown

Written by Frances Marion (based on the novel by Lev Tolstoy)

Spoilers: moderate

The Encyclopedia Brown: There's gold in them thar hills

THE TRAIL OF '98

1928

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Benjamin Glazer, Joseph Farnham, and Waldemar Young (based on the novel by Robert W. Service)

Spoilers: well, it certainly doesn't last, does it? (moderate)

The Encyclopedia Brown: An Early Clarence Brown Compendium

In which we file away The Blue Bird (1918), The Last of the Mohicans (1920), "The Light of Faith" (1922), The Signal Tower (1924), Smouldering Fires (1925), The Goose Woman (1925), The Eagle (1925), and Kiki (1926), plus—talkie bonus!—Navy Blues (1929)

One should not have to "discover" Clarence Brown, but that's the way it is in the year 2022, and the way it has been since, probably, the mid-1950s, when he retired on his own terms to go live on a ranch for the next three decades.  Maybe the word "discover" does too much: he's only as obscure as any Old Hollywood studio man, but such a person can get pretty obscure, after all, because it sometimes feels like so much of the fullness and flavor of Old Hollywood's legacy was lost to the grimly-streamlined Boomer cinematic canon, which became the dull, conformist framework for communicating and teaching film history for the next sixty years.  In any case, discovery is what it felt like to me, when I noticed over the course of about a year that the guy who did The Rains Came was the guy who did The Yearling was the guy who did Flesh and the Devil and I said, "okay, show me" when National Velvet made its rounds on HBOMax and I saw that this, too, was Brown, leading to the statistically-startling and hugely-tantalizing realization that I had seen four Brown movies at more-or-less random but had also seen four masterpieces.

And then, as I do, I got really enthusiastic and burned through Brown's 1941-1947 stretch for no reason but I felt like it, since "what I feel like" is the long and short of my critical ethos here, and as I've gotten a better grasp of the director, it turns out that for whatever reason that stretch in the third decade of his career saw Brown hit not only his stride (just great movie after great movie in the middle of that decade) but also many of his highest peaks, which means that were I to, say, decide upon a more systematic overview of his career, it would be almost guaranteed to be a bit of a let-down.  After all, nobody, not nobody—at least not nobody who had to do what Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer told him to once or twice or three times a year, whether he wanted to do it or not—was likely to have managed to keep that level of superlative quality up.  That's something that his tossed-off second film of 1941, They Met In Bombay, indicates powerfully, despite coming in between Come Live With Me and The Human Comedy.  That's just the business—even beyond the studio system, you should expect even the greatest filmmakers to have fallow periods and the occasional dud—but you know, Brown's late 1920s and 1930s aren't wastelands either.  They absolutely have some peaks of their own, and not just a few, either.

Feminine mystique

THE MYSTERIOUS LADY

1928

Directed by Fred Niblo

Written by Bess Meredyth, Frances Marion, Marian Ainslee, and Ruth Cummings (based on the novel War in the Dark by Ludwig Wolff)

Spoilers: moderate

Gilbert and Garbo in

LOVE

1927

Directed by Edmund Goulding

Written by Lorna Moon, Frances Marion, Marian Ainslee, and Ruth Cummings (based on the novel Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy)

Spoilers: saying there could be something to meaningfully spoil about this adaptation of Anna Karenina is a spoiler in itself, ain't it?

Garbo fucks

FLESH AND THE DEVIL

1927

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Benjamin Glazer and Marian Ainslee (based on the novel The Undying Past by Hermann Sudermann)

Spoilers: moderate

Evil woman

THE TEMPTRESS

1926

Directed by Fred Niblo and Mauritz Stiller

Written by Dorothy Farnum and Marian Ainslee (based on the novel A Land For All by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez)

Spoilers: moderate

On the other side of the water

TORRENT

1926

Directed by Monta Bell

Written by Dorothy Farnum, Katherine Hilliker, and H.H. Caldwell (based on the novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez)

Spoilers: moderate

Buckle that swash, part VII: Fairbanks' new groove

THE GAUCHO

After a break, somewhat justified by a hard-to-get-ahold-of DVD, we at last return to the ongoing adventures of Douglas Fairbanks.  Would that the film itself were especially good.

1927

Directed by F. Richard Jones

Written by Lotta Woods, Dr. Arthur Woods, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (The Gaucho), Lupe Velez (The Mountain Girl), Eve Southern (The Girl of the Shrine), Nigel de Brulier (The Padre), Gustav von Seyffertitz (Ruiz, the Usurper), Michael Vavitch (The Usurper's First Liutenant), Charles Stevens (The Gaucho's First Lieutenant), Albert MacQuarrie (The Victim of the Black Doom), and Mary Pickford (Saint Mary)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Buckle that swash, part VI: A variety of shades of brown—all in glorious Technicolor!

THE BLACK PIRATE

Very close to the ur-text of cinematic buccaneering and color photography alike, The Black Pirate is short, sweet—and even a little bit revolutionary.

1926

Directed by Albert Parker

Written by Jack Cunningham, Lotta Woods, Dr. Arthur Woods, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (The Black Pirate), Billie Dove ("Princess" Isobel), Donald Crisp (MacTavish), Charles Belcher (The Nobleman), Anders Randolf (The Pirate Captain), and Sam De Grasse (The Pirate Lieutenant)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Buckle that swash, part V: Daddy, what did you do in the war?

DON Q, SON OF ZORRO

An acceptable offering of Fairbanksian whimsy—right smack in the middle of his personal bell curve.

1925
Directed by Donald Crisp
Written by Jack Cunningham and Lotta Woods (based on the novel Don Q's Love Story by Kate and Hesketh Prichard)
With Douglas Fairbanks (Don Cesar de Vega, and his father, Don Diego de Vega/Zorro), Mary Astor (Dolores de Muro), Jack McDonald (General de Muro), Warner Oland (Archduke Paul), Col. Matsado (Albert MacQuarrie), Jean Hersholt (Don Fabrique), and Donald Crisp (Don Sebastian)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Buckle that swash, part III: Men in tights, eventually

ROBIN HOOD

I know that silent films don't need to be slow or boring, and yet, sometimes, they are.

1922
Directed by Allan Dwan
Written by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (The Earl of Huntingdon, afterwards Robin Hood), Wallace Beery (King Richard I the Lionheart), Sam De Grasse (Prince John), Paul Dickey (Sir Guy of Densborne), and Enid Bennett (Lady Marian Fitzwalter)

Spoiler alert: oh, get real

Buckle that swash, part II: More like F'artagnan

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

A descent into action-adventure sub-mediocrity, Douglas Fairbanks' second swashbuckler needed more than just indifferently-filmed swordfighting.

1921
Directed by Fred Niblo
Written by Edward Knoblock, Lotta Woods, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (D'artagnan), Marguerite de la Motte (Constance), Leon Bary (Athos), George Siegman (Porthos), Eugene Pallette (Aramis), Adolphe Menjou (King Louis XIII), Mary MacLaren (Queen Anne), Barbara La Marr (Milady de Winter), Lon Poff (Father Joseph), and Nigel de Brulier (Cardinal de Richelieu)

Spoiler alert: high

Buckle that swash, part I: He's crazy... like a fox!

THE MARK OF ZORRO

The action-adventure genre soars into life, midwifed by a really cut man in a silly mask, jumping and climbing all over every last damned thing he surveys.

1920
Directed by Fred Niblo
Written by Eugene Miller and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (based on "The Curse of Capistrano" by Johnston McCulley)
With Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (Don Diego Vega/Zorro), Margueritte De La Motte (Lolita Pulido), Tote Du Crow (Bernardo), Sydney De Grey (Don Alejandro Vega), Noah Beerey (Sgt. Pedro Gonzales), and Robert McKim (Capitan Juan Ramon)

Spoiler alert: moderate