The Michigan Kid

I watched this film last night and was in the end a little disappointed. Conrad Nagel puts in a fine performance in the title role and Renee Adoree is always beautiful and a decent actress.

Although the plot relies heavily on coincidence the scene is very well set during the first half of the film which I thoroughly enjoyed. However the second half is a bit of a letdown by comparison. The main reason is the poor effects during the scene on the raging river and waterfall. This was reminiscent of 'The Ice Flood' a couple of years earlier. I also got the feeling that having set up the story the director struggled to end the film satisfactorily.

Having said all this the film is still well worth watching, particularly for silent movie fans and especially fans of Renee Adoree.

Along with the notorious "Behind the Door" (1919), "The Michigan Kid" shows director Irvin Willat at his best. And how good was that? Good enough to make one realize that this overlooked director, who specialized in thrillers and action, has yet to receive his due.

Conrad Nagel plays the titular Kid, a gambler running a saloon in Alaska who dreams of being with his childhood sweetheart (Renée Adorée) but must contend with an old rival. Adorée is lovely as usual. Nagel was usually blander than tapioca, but here he embraces the raffish, enigmatic side of the Kid.

William K. Everson (who literally wrote the book on silent cinema) called "The Michigan Kid" "a good, rugged, virile melodrama...done with style." You couldn't ask for a better summation. Being a late silent, its camera-work is a delight, with voluptuous tracking shots and daring POV angles. Willat's hard-boiled directorial style works through precise, suggestive concision.

The otherwise adequate gray-market DVD retains the arresting blue tones and pink tinting of the intense forest-fire climax, a bravura sequence that combines superb in-camera mattes with very fine miniatures. The results are so convincing I was astonished to learn it was entirely filmed in the studio. "The Michigan Kid" is not a profound film or masterpiece--it's a terrific piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment, a genre assignment blessedly better than it needed to be.

One of the studio's most expensive pictures of the year, you'd think this super-exciting Universal production would rate more than a footnote in "The Universal Story". But that's the way it goes. Critics rarely take northerns seriously.

Admittedly, this one takes a while to get going. But as it turns out, that's all to the good, as we don't see the first half of the movie in its original sepia format but in a black-and-white dupe. But wow! That second half is where all the action is, and Grapevine's DVD has the most exciting tints I've ever seen in my life, including, for the most part, a really scary double layer of blue and red. Easily the most realistic, suspenseful and hideously realistic fire sequence ever!

Universal publicity claims that Willat and company set a real forest on fire. I hope not. But it sure looks like it. Willat was once renowned as the supreme master of spectacular action movies like "All the Brothers Were Valiant", "Wanderer of the Waste Land", "North of 36", "Back to God's Country" and the 1929 "Isle of Lost Ships". But mention the name, Irwin Willat, at a film buffs' convention and nobody gives a hoot. Say, "Sam Wood!" and ears prick up everywhere.

It's true that Conrad Nagel is not exactly a charismatic hero, but neither is the hero of Beach's story. Nagel is exactly right for the part, as is Whitlock for the heavy, and Miss Adorée for the vacillating heroine.

A nicely shot but mediocre drama, set in the backwoods of Alaska, which sees professional gambler Conrad Nagel and crooked businessman Lloyd Whitlock fighting one another for the affection of sweet little Renee Adoree. Livens up for a terrific finale, but bit of a snoozefest until then.