April 10 , 1972

The Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society

TRAILIN' is the earliest Mix-Fox feature that we've run, and while it isn't as elaborate as the later ones, it maintains his high standards rather well. Only partially a western, it is perhaps the most complicated film we've seen since The Big Sleep. Not only does its prologue seem to have no relationship to its "20 Years After" plot-line, but almost every time fresh characters are introduced we get a set of flashbacks which muddies the water even further. Complications in fact tend to take the place of physical action for a while, but the latter part of the film more than compensates with a marathon of really fast and exciting stunt action. Incidentally, the story was remade by Fox in the early 30's as A Holy Terror with George O'Brien and Humphrey Bogart.

As we announced last week, the expected print of The Seas Beneath is still being worked on in a Hollywood lab, and we are forced instead to run a far-from-ideal work-print. Be warned that it is not a print one can relax with, and viewing is recommended only for the dedicated Ford students. Viewing it is an academic experience, not a particularly entertaining one. It is from a peculiar original 35mm negative made up for a German version. There are constant slugs of white leader intended for the insertion of German subtitles. While the sound-track has been printed, it is often all but submerged beneath the musical score for the silent, non-dialogue version. Finally, it is so fantastically and inconsistently out of synch than no amount of juggling with the loop can compensate. It often starts a reel in synch, and by the end of the 10-minute reel is some 30 seconds out of synch! The only compensations: the story-line is simple, dialogue not that important, so it is easy to follow; and the pictorial quality is stunning, a good deal better I'm sure than that of the copy (from an American full-sound release print) now being worked on. Frankly we don't feel justified in charging an admission for a print like this, and yet our own overhead remains. We'll suggest therefore that those who do not feel up to it after this description leave after the Tom Mix, and at no charge. Only those who stay will be asked to contribute on this occasion. Incidentally, the second half of the film is virtually all action, and the mechanical drawbacks then become less irksome.

In his interview-book with Bogdanovich, Ford rather dismisses this film, and vents his spleen on the necessity for having written an unnecessary heroine into the story to accommodate Marion Leasing, a short-lived Fox discovery whose knowledge of German (which Ford disputes!) enabled her not only to play roles like this, but also to take the leads in German versions of other Fox films, such as The Big Trail. She does admittedly add a strong note of contrivance, but the film is in any case a strange mixture of near-documentary coverage of the Q ship operation in World War One, and rather novelettish spy stuff. On the whole though, it is a remarkably good film, burdened perhaps with a little too much of Ford's usual comedic naval camaraderie, though this aspect is lessened in this particular print where so much of the dialogue is drowned out by music. It's stiff and sincere, somewhat like Asquith's Tell England, and plot-wise something of a forerunner of Dick Powell's The Enemy Below. Catalina serves extensively and well for a Mediterranean port, and the action, when it comes, is extremely vigorous and well-staged. The seascapes and sea action are superbly photographed by August (comparisons with his later Ford film They Were Expendable are interesting) and there's a beautifully done funeral at sea - the first of several such for Ford - in which he (as always) mixes honest sentiment with underplayed patriotism, and makes it work - beautifully. A lot of later Ford sequences - and characters - have their roots in this film, and while it is admittedly something of a chore to sit though a print in this condition, it's worth the effort. The original, by the way, used an absolute minimum of subtitles in the extended German dialogue scenes. Some of the submarine footage was used again in both The World Moves On and Submarine Patrol. (John Loder spoke excellent German, and appeared in many early German talkies).

-- William K. Everson --