Top Films of 1917
We continue our series on films celebrating 10-year milestones this year – we’ve already done 1997, 1977, 1967, 1947 and 1927. Now are you ready for slapstick comedy, adventurers, and damsels in distress? Let’s head back to 1917!
Last year when we did 1916, the Flickchart Top Ten was almost completely filled with Charlie Chaplin films. 1917 still has Chaplin shorts clustered at the top, but there are some new kids on the block – Buster Keaton makes his debut in 1917, and a trio of his collaborations with Fatty Arbuckle make the list. Douglas Fairbanks begins to make his mark with a hyperathletic adventure. Swedish cinema’s early master Victor Sjöström makes the cut, and there’s even room for a very young Gloria Swanson in a film that contains one of the most iconic “tied to the tracks” scenes.
It’s been suggested by film historian David Bordwell and others that 1917 was the year American cinema solidified into what would be known as the “classic Hollywood style.” Film language had been developing for the past decade as filmmakers added close-ups, long shots, pans, camera movements, narrative, and editing techniques to their repertoire, and all that was basically in place by 1917. Films are also more commonly reaching feature length – at least for dramas and adventures. Two-reel comedies (twenty minutes) would be the standard until the mid-1920s.
Unfortunately, we may never know how this set of films measures up to the 1917 box office champ, the Theda Bara-starring Cleopatra. Like up to 80% of silent films, Cleopatra has been lost, the last two known copies having burned in a fire at Fox Studios in 1937. This was a common fate in an era that coupled highly flammable film stock with an industry that at the time cared little about its history. Thankfully many films have survived, and most of them are now available on YouTube. They’re more available than they’ve ever been, and we’re lucky to have them, so please check them out!
10. A Modern Musketeer
A Modern Musketeer, which trades Dumas’s France for the American West and his scheming noblemen for greedy bankers and villainous Native American stereotypes, casts craggy-faced, meaty-shouldered Douglas Fairbanks as a boyish college graduate. The 34-year-old actor, who’d appeared in over twenty films between 1915 and 1917 but was still years away from his career-defining silent epics Robin Hood and The Thief of Bagdad, is so absurdly energetic that the conceit almost works. Seeing Fairbanks climb a church in a flat minute, fly up a wooden ladder, and do a handstand on the rim of the Grand Canyon are highlight-reel moments for the kinetic matinee idol. At least in retrospect, however, one can’t help but think that a slimmer, softer silent comedian might have been a better fit for A Modern Musketeer. The film’s premise is funny enough: a 20th century man with the arcane lexicon and chivalrous worldview of d’Artagnan rescues flappers instead of damsels and drives a Ford instead of a steed. Yet even when delivering roundhouse kicks, the three-piece suit of a do-gooder subtopian doesn’t fit Fairbanks as well as his more famous swashbuckling personas. Fairbanks would play the literal d’Artagnan in 1921’s The Three Musketeers to better effect. Nevertheless, A Modern Musketeer is worth watching for its showcase of an early action star in development, its self-conscious depictions of modernity circa 1917, and its effects-rich depiction of a Kansas twister twenty-two years before The Wizard of Oz (and eight years before even the silent Oz!) – David Conrad
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9. Teddy at the Throttle
It’s an old saw that silent films are full of melodramas about damsels in distress being tied to railroad tracks by mustachioed villains. Here’s the thing: it isn’t true. What is true is that some silent COMEDIES include an exaggerated scene involving people being tied to railroad tracks – and this is one of them. The story is about a fickle youth (Bobbie Vernon), his long-suffering sweetheart (a very young Gloria Swanson), and her guardian (Wallace Beery), who somehow also has control of Bobbie’s estate. It gets very complicated with Bobbie’s relative’s will and various back-and-forths about how he should or shouldn’t marry Gloria to get the money, Beery trying to get Bobbie to marry his sister and then trying to marry Gloria himself, and finally tying Gloria to the tracks. Can her dog Teddy rescue her? As you might guess, there is a ton of stuff happening in this short, and it’s edited VERY manically for the time period, with many shots being only a few frames long. The style fits the story, though, for the most part, and also fits Keystone’s reputation for breakneck comedy. – Jandy Hardesty
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8. A Man There Was
In the 1910s, directors Victor Sjöström (Americanized pronunciation “See-strom”) and Mauritz Stiller were fathers of the Golden Age of Swedish Cinema. Their film innovations influenced Germany’s greatly, as Germany was insulated during World War I from the films of the United States, Britain, and France. Sjöström directed 35 films from 1912 through 1919, and became known for his focus on character and emotion, and for on-location filming and the attendant emphasis on naturalism. He brings these qualities to play in his adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Terje Vigen. In his youth, Ibsen met an elderly maritime pilot whose colorful life inspired this story. Terje (portrayed by Sjöström) is a seafarer living with his wife and daughter on the Norwegian coast during the Napoleonic wars. A British blockade causes mass starvation, and Terje vows to run the blockade to bring food for his starving family. On his return trip, he’s caught by a British ship and imprisoned for five years, setting up his decision for either revenge or forgiveness.
It’s a classic, simple, yet powerful storyline, enhanced by Sjöström’s artistry and his performance in the lead role. Sjöström’s appreciation of the source poetry is evident in the text of the narrative intertitles, and the poetic landscape compositions, sometimes with Terje memorably in frame. Sjöström’s performance in this emotional story is the heart of the picture; it’s a nuanced performance, far removed from the common perception of silent era acting. At the dénouement, it’s likely that the depiction of reconciliation resonated greatly with war-weary audiences. Sjöström’s career continued on an upward trajectory through the silent era with The Phantom Carriage (1921) and into his Hollywood years with He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Scarlet Letter (1926), and the all-time great The Wind (1928). Years later, Ingmar Bergman would show his respect, admiration, and affirm the influence of Sjöström by casting him as the lead in Wild Strawberries. – Dan Kocher
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7. The Rough House
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was by far the most popular comedy star of the 1910s not named Charlie Chaplin, and we have him to thank for bringing Buster Keaton to the screen. This was the second film they made together (the first is below, The Butcher Boy). Interestingly, Keaton is less recognizably Keaton here than in that slightly earlier film; his main action here is getting into a knockdown, drag-out fight with the cook over the kitchen girl. Keystone was known for the classic pie-in-the-face style of slapstick, and this film has it in spades – it’s not five minutes before the entire house gets trashed. The funniest moments, though, are at the very beginning, when Fatty’s cigarette catches his bed on fire and he nonchalantly goes to get a very tiny cup of water to splash on it, looking nonplussed that it did no good whatsoever. The second half involves Arbuckle trying to replace the cook (who was arrested and conscripted following the fight) and also trying to foil a pair of criminals. Interestingly, there’s a brief scene where Arbuckle is dancing rolls around on forks – just as Chaplin would famously do several years later in The Gold Rush. The film is a little disjointed as a whole, but various individual gags still shine. – Jandy
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6. The Butcher Boy
The Butcher Boy was Buster Keaton’s debut film, and though he’s easily second string to Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, he’s already recognizable as the stoic genius he would become. But this is Arbuckle’s film, no question – he plays the butcher in a general store, making his entrance from the refrigerator room in a full fur coat, then does some fancy chopping which is both funny and fairly impressive. When Keaton enters, he’s wearing his trademark porkpie hat, and I love that one of the first gags directly involves the hat: he gets molasses on it and it gets stuck to his head. There are a lot of little gags involving irate customers, and it all predictably devolves into a slapstick flour and pie fight, followed by some scandalous cross-dressing in Fatty’s girlfriend’s decidedly non-coed boarding house. I suspect the film usually gets seen today because of Keaton, but Arbuckle is very charismatic himself, and it’s easy to see why he was so popular in his heyday. – Jandy
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5. Coney Island
Coney Island is full of slapstick hijinks. Written and directed by its star, Fatty Arbuckle, it features Buster Keaton (this is the fifth of six shorts they made together in 1917). As in The Rough House and The Butcher Boy described above, Arbuckle is the main attraction in Coney Island, but Keaton stands out in a fine supporting cast that also includes comedian Al St. John. Arbuckle plays a harried husband who ditches his wife on the beach for some good times in a nearby amusement park. Keaton plays the husband’s rival – they both try to woo the same girl (played by Alice Mann) – and Buster experiments with more expressions than he would settle on later in his career. Filmed on location in New York City, the film is a fascinating time capsule of early amusement park attractions from a hundred years ago. While not risque today, some of the changing room scenes displayed bare knees, which got the film censored in some cities (and Arbuckle himself breaks the fourth wall to instruct the camera to film above the waist for his changing scene). As lighthearted amusements go, Coney Island is certainly worth a visit and the price of admission. – Ben Shoemaker
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4. The Cure
Though Charlie Chaplin is rightfully most associated with his Little Tramp persona, a down-on-his luck guy who’s basically good-hearted but has fallen on rough times, early on he had another recurring character, a well-dressed and often inebriated man about town (he plays on this persona in City Lights). The character has some mannerisms in common with the Tramp, notably his splay-footed gait and tendency to tip his hat politely but needlessly. Here, the inebriate arrives at a spa to cure alcoholism, but he may be missing the point – his wardrobe is chock-full of liquor bottles. This is often considered one of Chaplin’s lesser two-reelers, but quite honestly, it’s always been one of my favorites. It doesn’t have a lot of depth or pathos, but it does have a ton of great gags and a lot of them take a while to pay off; that sense of anticipation and eventual fulfillment is great. – Jandy
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3. The Adventurer
In The Adventurer, Chaplin is playing something closer to his wealthy inebriate character from The Cure, but with a twist: he’s actually a convict on the run who, after escaping a gaggle of cops on the beach, grabs some clothes from a schmuck in a rowboat, saves Edna Purviance and her mother from drowning, then ingratiates himself into her society party. Meanwhile, her suitor Eric Campbell recognizes Charlie from his picture in the paper but can’t get anyone to believe he’s the convict, including Purviance’s judge father. It’s a pretty detailed story filled to the brim with little bits of business and gags. This one starts and ends with intricately choreographed chases, and barely slows down for anything emotional, and that’s okay. It’s straight-up hilarious all the way through. – Jandy
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2. Easy Street
Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp persona always got a taste of the good life but was usually brought back down somehow just as quickly. In Easy Street he is engaged in his usual escapades, trying to eke out a living, getting caught up in hijinks, being debased in comical ways, giving into his sense of humanity and compassion in spite of his own need. But here he actually attains a position of power – as a policeman, basically the antithesis of the Tramp. He not only holds onto the job, he even manages to change the entire social structure of his beat street (Chaplin was always concerned with social justice.) Easy Street is a wish-fulfillment film on a small scale; if you can’t change the whole world, as Chaplin gallantly tried 23 years later with The Great Dictator, you can at least work to change your small part of it. – Tom Kapr
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1. The Immigrant
By 1917, Charlie Chaplin had morphed his Tramp persona into a number of different roles, from waiters to firefighters to shop assistants to vagabonds. In this well-loved short, he takes on the role of an immigrant, which Chaplin of course was, though his path to the United States was as an entertainer with a traveling troupe rather than a penniless tramp in the belly of a steamship. The film puts him in various typical shipboard situations, avoiding seasick shipmates, playing cards (which includes a surprising bit with Charlie drawing a gun on his unscrupulous opponents), and forming a friendship with a young girl (Edna Purviance) crossing with her mother. The second half of the film, after arriving on shore, is largely a set-piece in a restaurant as Charlie realizes he can’t pay the bill and fears being mauled by the burly waiter (Eric Campbell, one of the great silent heavies). The humor is played much more close-up than is often the case for silent comedy – it’s rarely broad, relying instead on small moments and little movements that are easy to miss if you’re not paying attention. The restaurant half was actually written first, with the immigration plot added to bolster it, but it’s the depiction of the immigration experience that has given the film the extra weight and staying power it has. – Jandy
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Only 1 of them (EASY STREET)– but I wanna see all of ’em.