TOM MIX and
WILL ROGERS in
"MEN TO REMEMBER"
- - - - - - - - - -
And a documentary
visit to
EASTMAN HOUSE

The Screen Snaps series was generally pretty inferior and sloppily put together. This one, devoted to the careers of Will Rogers and Tom Mix, is however, rather good, and a distinct cut above the average. Henry King, Frank Borzage, Sally Blane, Ruth Roland, John Mack Brown, Ted Lewis and others are also shown briefly.

Bill, as the sheriff, is notified that an outlaw is hiding out in a cabin where his mother is dying. Bill leaves ahead of the posse. When he arrives, the outlaw has just buried his mother, and Bill recognises him as a man who had once saved his life. He permits him to escape. The townspeople are outraged, consider Bill a coward, and demand his resignation - which he gives them. Later, the outlaws raid the bank. Bill alone fights them. In a final scuffle, the outlaw leader is shot and dies in his arms, and Bill says (in title) "I reckon we've both paid our debts". The townspeople, ashamed, reinstate Bill as sheriff. This is a good, typical early Hart, and quite a rare one too.

A Mender of Nets presented exactly the same problem as the Hart film, but because it has a more straightforward story-line, and because Griffith's cutting-patterns are more familiar, it was somewhat easier to assemble. We can guarantee that nothing is in the wrong place, but there does seem to be a short scene missing. After the irate father has closed in on the hero, Mary Pickford prevents murder by leading in his daughter, and telling him that she really loves the hero. It's an important scene, though a very short one, and just why it should be missing from this print (and from the original 35mm negative, which we checked carefully) is just another one of those movie mysteries that will probably never be explained. Possibly the scene was lifted for use in a compilation at one time, and never returned. The plot is something of an embryo An American Tragedy. Mary Pickford and Charles West are fisher folk, very much in love, and planning marriage. But West had earlier seduced a girl who now seems much less attractive to him - Mabel Normand. When Mabel's father overhears her telling West that she is pregnant, he is enraged, and determines to kill him. By now Mary has learned the truth, and stops him. UnseIfishly, she renounces her love so that the two may marry. The titles were all quite lovely in the old Griffith tradition, but only one was really essential, so we'll record it here. It occurs at the very end of the film where Mary is sitting, forlorn, with her fisherman grandfather (Christy Miller). "After all," she sighs, "there must be somebody to mend other people's torn nets". And, on a closeup of Mary, the film fades. At a time when Griffith was concentrating more and more on melodrama, A Mender of Nets is surprisingly sensitive and tender. Mary is particularly good, and Bitzer captures some excellent closeups of her, as well as some very pleasing seascapes.

INTERMISSION

After the first day's editing, it became apparent that this was not ALL of the original film, but a later release with (presumably) some additional closing footage. Critics at the time pointed out that audiences were confused and dissatisfied with the climax, which gave no hint at all as to which of the two women the hero would marry. Quite certainly there is no doubt about it here, and the film finishes on a conventional happy note.

After the second day of editing, we got it down to the five reels we are showing tonight. With two sequences of Monte Blue rushing through the San Francisco streets to his wedding, and at least three almost identical sequences of him rushing up to Irene Rich's country cottage, we were more than satiated with Brass, and thus perhaps our earlier comments on it as a disappointment were a trifle harsh. Frankly only a complete Greed or Spione could really justify all the time this little opus took up! However, we wound up with five reels (as opposed to the original 8 or 9) which made sense -- and an additional reel of isolated clips that would have destroyed that sense had we tried to interpolate them. Those isolated clips consisted 50% of ferocious arguments between Monte Blue and Marie Prevost (of which the print in its present form has a plethora anyway) and odd scenes of characters wandering in from left field. (The film has quite a few of those too!) Certainly the addition of those odd scenes would only have clouded the issues further, as well as taking another day of editing -- and if anybody doubts that, I'll gladly give them the clips to do with as they will!

After those anguished paragraphs, let me sum up by saying that the film is obviously far from complete. It has a beginning, middle and end. There are no obvious episodes missing, and no jumps in continuity. It is therefore reasonably representative of the original Brass. There certainly seems to be quite a hex on the works of the Norris Brothers however; it was Charles' brother Frank who wrote McTeague! As a novel, Brass seems to have been of a little sterner stuff than its movie adaptation., and utilised a suicide as one of its plot solutions. The title, by the way, is explained very late in the proceedings -- it refers to a "marriage that glittered like gold - but proved to be a miserable counterfeit - BRASS. Film Daily, condensing the synopsis a bit, said (not too inaccurately) that the plot revolved around the problem of "Marjorie preferring jazz to her baby," and pointed out that its success would be automatic since "it deals with an ever-popular subject - marriage."

The camerawork by the way is quite fine, and the performances of Monte Blue, Irene Rich, and Marie Prevost extremely good.