Welcome to today's lecture class, where we'll be focusing on the early silent versions of L Frank Baum's classic The Wizard of Oz. Let this page load, go back and read my bloggage for a bit. When you're done there, this page should be ready and waiting.
1910 "The Wizard of Oz"- dir. Otis Turner
"Cyclone"
"Scarecrow"
1925 "The Wizard of Oz"- dir. Larry Semon
"Tornado"
"Scarecrow"
On my main blog page I said these films demonstrate changes in silent film techniques. Well, that's a bit of an overstatement, but they do clearly demonstrate certain changes, some thanks to increasing technological sophistication, and some resulting from the emergence of new ideas concerning acting, staging, framing and other directorial techniques. For instance, the relatively primitive set design and staging of Otis Turner's 1910 version could be symptomatic of the way films were made at that time, or possibly a reflection of Turner's own lack of sophistication. Being a fairly new student of silent film myself, I don't really know, though I suspect it's a bit of both. I've seen films by D W Griffith that were made around the same time with much better directorial choices.
Above I grouped together scenes from the first and fourth of the 5 films (I won't be discussing the cartoon, though it's actually quite good, and is in fact the only animated one... seems strange on an animation blog, but go figure - this is an analysis of silent movies). The reason I grouped them this way is because these two are the only films with comparable scenes... namely each has a tornado sequence and a "scarecrow comes to life" sequence. By comparing them you get a good idea of the differences in the films. What hits me on the head right away about the 1910 b&w version are... shallow and obviously fake sets with painted backdrops, locked-down camera position, emphasis on groups rather than individuals, and very (very) broad pantomime that seems to be ad-libbed, with all the actors engaging in histrionics at the same time as if they're all having simultaneous epileptic seizures.
With everybody jumping around hamming it up for the camera, you don't get much of a sense of focus, it's sort of like watching a bunch of single-celled protozoans twitching aimlessly on a microscope slide! But all this said, I actually don't hate this film as much as it might seem. On the positive side, I find it at times charming and quite pleasant. Dorothy is adorable, though unusually young (seems to be about 10) and really the scarecrow isn't half bad. And as primitive as the "Cyclone" effects are (I love the fact that they felt the need to introduce it with a title card! I cut it down to a tolerable duration for the clip) I kind of like the sheer theatricality and design of it. Using a haystack rather than a shack was a nice touch, but I'm not sure what those farm animals are doing going along for the ride (and I'm actually a bit disturbed by their behavior... is it just me, or are they humping the haystack?).
-Spoiler Alert... next 2 paragraphs-
By contrast, everything that's wrong with the 1910 film is right about Larry Semon's 1925 version, though a lot of other things are very wrong with it. Let me state right here and now, this and the cartoon are the only ones I was able to sit all the way through, and in fact I watched Semon's film twice without ever feeling to urge to skip ahead or shut it off. It's very pleasant entertainment that frequently reminds me of The Three Stooges. But be forewarned, if you buy the set to watch this film... it will piss you off in some ways! The structure of the story is entirely different from what you're used to. I'm not familiar with Baum's book, and I'm sure the 1939 film with Judy Garland took a lot of liberties, but story seems to be quite secondary here.
It begins and ends with a clever framing device... Semon as an old puppet-maker who is lovingly examining his Scarecrow and Tin Woodsman puppets when his little daughter comes in and begs him to read The Wizard of Oz to her. This is a representation of Baum himself, who like Lewis Carrol was most at home when telling stories to children, and apparently spun the famous tale "on the fly". In fact, when the children asked him the name of this magical land, he searched the room quickly and spied a filing cabinet divided into two sections... A-N and (you guessed it) O-Z. When the story proper begins, it's basically a very thin plot used to string together a series of comedic situations designed to fit Semon's well-known formula. He always used the same actors... there's always a fat guy (Hardy) who is his rival for a girl and a really fat guy who plays the girl's father
and who falls down a lot and gets dumped into vats of various types of glop. But if you looked at the page I linked to about Larry Semon, then this is old news.
What probably bothered me the most is the way the farmhand characters "transform" into their Oz roles. I love the fact that in the Judy Garland version Oz -could have been- a dream, and the characters there are like twisted alternate dimension dopplegangers of familiar faces from her ordinary life. But here, they all actually go along to Oz and simply put on disguises to escape the soldiers who are after them! And to make matters worse, their charade only lasts for maybe three minutes at the most , before they're captured and unmasked, though Semon does play out the rest of the film in his Scarecrow getup. Hardy's rather laughable Tin Woodsman outfit (that he cobbles together while cowering in a pile of scrap metal) only appears onscreen for a few seconds total (almost all of it is included in the Scarecrow clip above)! And yet later in the film they inexplicably refer to him as "The Tin Woodsman". But aside from this sort of sloppiness, it is a beautifully shot film filled with wonderful moments. I didn't care much for Semon's farmhand character... his acting style is similar to Stan Laurel with a good deal of Chaplin's effeminacy (without the genius). As a "young" farmhand he somehow seemed more like a very athletic old man wearing eyeliner, but the second he puts on the grease paint and becomes the Scarecrow, he's delightful. He's also excellent as the old puppetmaker. Dorothy on the other hand.... the least appealing Dorothy I've ever seen (could just be my personal opinion). She's probably 19 or 20, but somehow seems matronly, almost 40-something, with a tightly curled flapper coif that reminds me of my grandma's hairstyle. But then, she's not in the film much, so it hardly matters... this is the Scarecrow show, baby! In a surprising note, the black actor who plays the Cowardly Lion has a physicality and sheer athleticism that puts any physical comedian I've ever seen to shame (including Buster Keaton) but he lacks the timing and comedic sense to really be a great slapstick comic. -End Spoiler Alert-
Below I've grouped together the remaining two films, which are presented mainly as examples of "what not to do" as a filmmaker, in making silent or animated films (both of which describe mine). All three make too much use of title cards, which is why each clip begins with one. I at least had the decency to cut down the first and last card in each clip so you can just read it before or after the clip plays, but I left the rest intact so you can feel their full effect. This is why I want to avoid title cards as much as possible, and never ever repeat what's already being told visually!
First up is the intros sequence from The Magic Cloak of Oz. On the positive side, we have a pretty leading lady and I like the effect of the multiple mirrors reflecting her. But on the minus side, the scene is repeated exactly with the next actress (playing a boy) And the donkey suit, all interspersed with lengthy title cards!! The second clip is also from Magic Cloak. In this one, we have a lot of floaty fairy maidens dancing unimaginitively in a field in a cleverly double-exposed shot to make them transparent. Ok, it says "Fairies", and yet the scene does nothing to advance the story. In fact, in this particularly frustrating film, the visuals seem to be there only as an afterthought, embellishment on the story which is told entirely through title cards, which ofen become extremely redundant in themselves! Man, I couldn't make this stuff up!! Note the second and third title cards say essentially the same thing, and are separated by redundant shots of a very Melies-like moon-man and some pointless arm-waving. Sorry I had tpo subject you to that, but it does serve a purpose. By studying these examples of what not to do we can recognize and avoid them in our own work.
And finally, in His Majesty the Scarecrow, we have yet another example of unenthusiatic dancing, a very generic "Indian rain dance" typical of films of the time, which strangely is used as the excuse for the scarecrow's coming to life. Again, we have transparent dancing folk, Indians this time, and for some odd reason, the filmmakers felt the need to show the scarecrow awakening twice. Very odd. Hard to understand today why they made some of these choices... though it's possible I'm missing something. Bracketing this scene I included two clips that look too similar... but they're actually from different parts of the movie. As in the first film we have constant frenetic pantomime ad-libbing, though with a bit more focus this time. I dislike silent films where people keep flapping their gums as if they're talking, and also the accompanying finger-waving, which the King does an awful lot of, but I guess it can be a useful device. To me though, there's something very wrong with a "chatty" silent picture.
Magic Cloak of Oz intros
Magic Cloak of Oz redundancy
His Majesty the Scarecrow
You know, it only now occurs to me how mean it was to post these three clips that basically have no redeeming qualities. Sorry about that! Go back and watch the Larry Semon clips again, it'll wash out the bad taste!