Waking Up the Town

Jack Pickford works for Alec B. Francis at the latter's auto shop. He is an engineer, trying to interest town banker Herbert Prior in his scheme to harness the power of a local waterfall to run mills. After Pickford blows up the birth party of Prior's grand daughter, he despairs, although Francis's grand daughter, Norma Shearer wants to help him. Fortunately for Jack, Francis takes him up to his private observatory and explains that the earth is going to crash into the moon in eighteen months and three days. Here's the $18,000 in cash Francis has accumulated over a lifetime. Use it, my boy.

Every movie being its own little universe, perhaps the movie did end 190 days or so later with the Earth crashing into the moon; I looked at a cutdown version, which reduced the original 63 minutes to less than 42. What survives are the bare bones of the plot, and a couple of cute and amusing sequences, like the opening with Miss Shearer meeting Pickford. Jack Pickford was a real talent as an actor. Alas, he was more interested in the trappings and privileges of being a member of Hollywood royalty than in working. A couple of times he could have gone to jail for long stretches, had sister Mary -- whose company produced this picture -- not gone gone to bat for him. He made his last feature in 1928, and died in 1933 at age 37.

It is an age of speed in Amerika ( a strange habit for that far away Country, indeed… in Europe the German aristocrats only drink tea… ) and for that reason two motor cops are after Mary Ellen; Dame Mary, fleeing from the police, is helped by Jim Joyce who runs a garage with old Abner Hope. Because the silent cinema is a small world, Herr Abner Hope is Mary's grandfather, and he had received just a few seconds ago a letter from his granddaughter telling him she was about to pay a visit to him. When finally Mary is rid of the police, it's time for her to fall in love with Jim, a youngster with a special dream: a dream of harnessing the vast power of Rainbow Falls…but unfortunately that young engineer can't get any financing to make true his engineering dream, in spite of his trying so very hard with Curt Horndyke, the town banker… but that's not all about these two special partners, because Mary's grandpa has an astronomical observatory ( an ordinary habit for a middle-western Amerikan automobile repairman… ), and thanks to this hobby and years of study, old Abner Hope predicts that the earth is being drawn out of its course and in eighteen months and three days it will collide with the moon and be destroyed! So there is no hope because of Abner Hope...

"Waking Up The Town" was directed by the prolific James Cruze and starred Jim Joyce and Norma Shearer; the most remarkable aspect about this film is the story, a bizarre combination of sci-fi ( the most interesting aspect of the film due to Abner Hope's astronomical and surprising catastrophic predictions ) and romantic comedy ( predictable and naïf ) and in spite the copy that this German Count watched is incomplete and apparently missing a section near the end, it is a routine film directed by Herr Cruze, who was not very interested in developing the great possibilities of its peculiar sci-fi story.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must check if the Earth is still turning around.