The Shakedown

Skipping ahead three years, missing most of the Blue Streak series as well as a couple of others that seem to be lost, we come to William Wyler's boxing drama/comedy The Shakedown. After two of these early silent films from Wyler, I'm itching even more for finding ways to discover the rest of his silent filmography. There's a confidence and competence to the storytelling and filmmaking while Wyler's visual acuity grows by leaps and bounds. It's interesting to see a studio director so early in the history of film already so accomplished artistically. He's not making art, but he's making solidly entertaining films consistently. That's no small thing.

Dave Roberts (James Murray) is part of a con that involves him going into a small town, building up his reputation as a fighter, before a show comes to town centered around Battling Roff (George Kotsonaros) where anyone who can last four rounds with him will win one thousand dollars. The con is to build up this challenger, increase betting in his favor, and Dave tanks the fight. In the town they start in, the effort leads to less than stellar results, and Dave is sent out ahead for the next bout with orders to make himself better known, maybe even by saving someone's life.

Working on an oil rig, he makes a connection with the small diner's waitress, Marjorie (Barbara Kent), enjoying this life of work and nice interactions with a pretty young woman. When the homeless orphan Clem (Jack Hanlon) steals a pie from the diner, Dave chases after him, eventually saving the boy after he falls and hits his head on a train rail as trains come passing by. The two form a quick connection since Dave showed Clem a modicum of decency and Dave has no one else to form any kind of connection with. It's a happy coincidence, then, that Clem notices Dave's fighter-like physique and offers to train him for that bout with Roff that's coming to town.

I think it's easy to see where all of this is going to go. It's predictable, but much like the success of The Stolen Ranch relied on solidly built character, so does the success of The Shakedown. Dave is obviously the central focus of the film, and the key relationship is his big brother-like interaction with Clem. He becomes something of an idol to the child while the child because his key relationship that feels genuine, showing off his ability to box to the kid's benefit against Dugan (Harry Gribbon), sent to check up on Dave before the arrival of Roff.

The truth eventually comes out, despite Dave's best efforts, predicated on Clem getting into fights on the street with other kids, a series of actions that lead to threats from the authorities to send him to some kind of reform school. The last one includes some words about how Dave is a fraud, which leads to Dave admitting to Marjorie. That's his down and out moment, right when Roff and the rest of the con show up in town, and Dave decides to turn it all around, leading to a real boxing match instead of a thrown one.

And you know what? It works. It works because Dave is a likeable guy that we want to win, to turn his life around, to get the girl. It's well-worn cliché now, but that doesn't keep the fact that this sort of cliché can work when the ground is laid well enough beforehand, and Wyler and his writers Charles Logue and Clarence Marks do just that. There are great moments in the fight when we watch Marjorie from the wings, consumed with guilt because she pushed him into the fight, and he starts losing.

Is it deep stuff? Not at all. Is it entertaining? Very much so. Murray as Dave has a likeable air about him as he dodges punches while standing on a handkerchief or saves Clem from the rail and gives him knocks on the chin for what he risked for the kid's life. Hanlon gets into amusing little faceoffs with Gribbon as they contort their faces in antagonism against each other. Kent is pretty and earnest as Marjorie, especially in the film's ending.

Wyler really was in a good place this early in his career. Visually, he was developing the kind of three-dimensional framing that he would later go on to use so effectively in larger films. There's a great shot early where Roff is at a bar in the left third of the frame while we can see the door to the outdoors in the rest of the frame, in which Dave and a woman interact as part of the con that will continue its play a moment later. It's great to look at while providing key information quickly and efficiently.

Wyler was an extremely talented filmmaker from the beginning, it seems. It also seems that his talent extended well beyond the markers of the physical production. That both of these early films are built on solid scripts does not feel like a coincidence. Different sets of writers, but the same eye towards character in well-worn fictional genres, all done in a way to make the well-worn movements of plot impact rather than just play out? If Wyler didn't have a hand in that crafting, then he was just getting lucky, and I don't think he was just getting lucky.

George Kotsonaros is a tank fighter, going from one town to the next, offering $1000 to anyone who can stand in the ring with him for four rounds. It's a frame-up, with James Murray the man who loses, and the gang makes a nice profit by betting on the outcome. He's been showing off a little in the towns up to now, and the betting hasn't been good, so he's sent to the next town with orders to get a regular job, do something like save a life, and get ready to lose. But when he saves Jack Hanlon with no witnesses, he takes a liking to the waif, and to diner waitress Barbara Kent. When the show rolls around, there's heavy betting on him, but he's changed. At first he refuses to fight at all. That will mean Kotsonaros will will by default. So he has to go into the ring trying to win. And the gang isn't going to play by Marquess of Queensbury rule

William Wyler's goat-glanded picture -- the copy I looked at was entirely silent -- is a tale of redemption, with a lot of sappy stuff going on as Murray comes to care more about the boy and the girl than the easy money. It also has a brutal fight scene, with Kotsonaros looking like he's beating Murray to a pulp. Wheeler Oakman is despicable as the caddish manager, and Harry Gribbon offers some sort of comedy by making faces at young Hanlon. John Huston is supposed to be visible in the crowds, but I couldn't spot him.

I'd never heard of this one prior to the announcement just a couple of weeks back of its screening on late-night Italian TV but, obviously, I become interested in it because the film represented the earliest facet of director Wyler's career I'd ever come across; actually, while it was supposedly a part-Talkie, the version I watched was completely Silent!

Anyway, the resulting effort is charming and reasonably stylish (even at this stage, Wyler was experimenting with deep-focus photography) – but hardly the masterpiece as described by a commentator on the IMDb following its recent restoration and screening in film festivals. Interestingly, the film shares most of its plot line with two famous tearjerkers – Charles Chaplin's THE KID (1921) and King Vidor's THE CHAMP (1931) – being the adventures of a con-man boxer reformed by a spunky homeless boy; however, the latter (played by Jack Hanlon) isn't very sympathetic and displays little of either Jackie Coogan or Jackie Cooper's talent!

Incidentally, THE SHAKEDOWN features the same leading-man as Vidor's masterpiece THE CROWD (1928) – the tragic James Murray; Barbara Kent, then, who had starred in Paul Fejos' LONESOME (1928) – another highly-regarded 'city' film – appears as the female protagonist here (but isn't given much to do). For what it's worth, the boxing sequences (as well as a fist-fight between the kid and another boy) are quite well-staged; however, the film's highlight has to be the remarkable scene early on in which Murray and Hanlon get caught on a railway track between two speeding trains!

Whilst viewing this relic from the silent feature vault i could not help but to think of the now lost art of silent film acting. Without words the actors had to be thespian-plus and gesticulate with machine gun rapidity . A far cry from sly- stallone who also never found the art speaking. This feel good yarn let me down with its predictable finish but the rest packed a punch - on me - and the villian.

THE SHAKEDOWN, restored to 35mm by George Eastman house, shown in 1998 in Pordenone, and in 1999 at Telluride, is a superb action-comedy about a boxer whose life changes when he meets up with an orphan boy. Love interest is provided by Barbara Kent, who may be remembered from her winning performance in LONESOME and later sound films.

Wyler was not thought to have made any great silents, but this one is a classic, with fine camerawork, a captivating cast, a dynamic story, and an uplifting feeling. Audiences who saw this film in Pordenone and Telluride cheered and leapt to their feet at the end of the film.

A two-piano score has been created for THE SHAKEDOWN and was premiered by Neal Brand and Donald Sosin at the Telluride Film Festival in September 1999. Plans are underway to tour this film around the US under the joint auspices of the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy and Telluride