Daily Archives: December 9, 2021

Street Angel
Directed by Frank Borzage
Philip Klein and Henry Robert Symonds from a play by Monkton Hoffe
1928/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube (free)

Title Card: Everywhere… in every town, in every street… we pass, unknowingly, human souls made great by love and adversity.

Another beautiful romance from Frank Borzage and company.

The story takes place in Naples, Italy. Angela (Janet Gaynor) has grown up tough on the streets but hides a beautiful soul within.  She desperately needs money to buy medicine for her dying mother.  Her only quick route to this is crime.  So she attempts to sell her body and when she is unsuccessful she turns to attempted theft.  She is apprehended and sentenced to a year in jail.  She escapes and is hidden by a traveling circus.

There she meets poverty-stricken painter Gino (Charles Farrell).  They start out as painter and model but soon are madly in love.  Gino needs to move to Naples to seek a better lot in life.  Angela accompanies him despite the danger she will be picked up by the police and the fact that Gino knows nothing of her past.

In Naples, things start looking up when Charles sells Angela’s portrait (looking like the Madonna) and receives a major commission to paint a mural.  Can their love survive Angela’s rearrest?

This one didn’t make me cry like Seventh Heaven but it is certainly worth watching even if only for the visuals.  The acting is great too and makes the story line go down quite easily.

Janet Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for her performances in this, Seventh Heaven (1927) and Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans (1927).  The film was nominated in the categories of Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.

The Iron Mask
Directed by Allan Dwan
Written by Douglas Fairbanks (uncredited) from novels by Alexandre Dumas
1929/US
Elton Corporation/United Artists
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime (free to members)

Porthos: Come on! There is greater adventure beyond.

Douglas Fairbanks’ final silent movie is a solid adventure with the customary Fairbanskian wit and flair.

The story begins during the reign of Louis XIII of France.  He is anxiously awaiting the birth of what he hopes will be a son and heir.  He gets a son, two in fact.  No one is aware of the birth of the twin except Constance, D’Artagnan’s (Fairbanks) lady love and lady in wait to the Queen, the Queen herself and the dastardly Cardinal Richelieu and De Rochefort. The latter plot to silence the ladies and take control of the second twin in hopes of destabilizing France.

D’Artagnanan and his bosom buddies the three musketeers serve the King with utmost loyalty.  Constance is killed and her dying words are “the other one”.  This puzzles him for quite some time.

Eventually Louis the XIII dies and the elder of the twins takes the throne as Louis the XIV. That is when De Rochefort trots out the younger, meaner, twin.  The real King is sent to a riverside castle where he is made to live in a dungeon wearing an iron mask that disguises his identity.  He finds a way to reach out to the musketeers and much swashbuckling ensues.

Fairbanks was already 46 when he made this but he could still swash a mean buckle.  The antics of the musketeers kept me engaged the entire time.  The music on the Amazon version did not do the film any favors in my opinion.  Much of it was modern sounding. The film is in the public domain and many versions are available for free on YouTube.