The Half-Breed

There is now a fair understanding of the way that the fatuous Hollywood-centred account of silent cinema with which we all grew up falsified and deformed the history of cinema. The rediscovery of the great European films of the era have very effectively put paid to any such notion. What is perhaps less appreciated is the way that the history of US cinema itself was deformed by the simplistic picture painted of it and its genuine excellencies often obscured. No one has I think suffered more from this than Douglas Fairbanks.

Just as Chaplin found himself trapped in his role as "the little tramp" and Pickford imprisoned in eternal gnome-like childhood, so Fairbanks became, whether he would or no, the archetypal swashbuckler. The very selective survival of silent films almost entirely obfuscated the fact that it was not swashbucklers that first made Fairbanks a star but the sophisticated and often highly innovative comedies produced in the earlier period with John Emerson and one of the sharpest satirists of her time, Anita Loos. Now, with so many more available, we have at long last a truer picture of Fairbanks' career.

Fairbanks' style of comedy has much in common with that of the great French comedian, Max Linder (whose similarities with Chaplin are almost entirely superficial) and often shows, in its approach to the surreal, the influence of European style. Like Linder, Fairbanks tended to be a bit hit-and-miss (both were experimenters rather than perfectionists in the Chaplin manner) but the great films of this pre-swash period (The Mystery of the Leaping Fish 1916 or When the Clouds Roll By 1919 are my personal favourites) have a quality not really to be found elsewhere in US cinema. In saying this, I do not by any means intend to devalue the swashbucklers (Robin Hood, The Mark of Zorro or The Thief of Bagdad remain classics and are themselves pervaded by the charming nonsensicality of the comedies) but rather to revalue the other Fairbanks that lay for so long ignored.

Allan Dwan who had made his way to Griffith's Fine Arts Film Company via a long stint at American Film Manufacturing Company, making mainly westerns and then with the Ince companies at about the time they were gobbled up by Universal. His image of Fairbanks was very much as an action hero and the combination Dwan-Loos that we have in this film is almost a perfect representation of the two ways in which the star was being pulled.

Amongst the various Dwan try-outs for Fairbanks was the politically correct western hero rather in the mould of William S. Hart (he and Fairbanks would even make a film entitled The Good Bad Man in 1916). This film is politically correct in another way too. The revisionist approach, with its very overt attack on racism and white supremacism, was not new (it had always been a significant element in the Ince westerns) even if it is here more outspoken than usual.

Even if the defence of Native Americans and Mexicans was less controversial in this respect than that of African Americans (and acceptable to Grifith), it was still of consuiderable importance in the face of the resurgence of white supremacism that followed Griffith's Birth of a Nation. The silent presence of an elegant black gambler in the saloon in this film is not, I think, insignificant amongst all the various minorities represented and contrasted with the miserable specimens of the "superior" white man. Similarly the parson's announced sermon on "intolerance" (never delivered) is obviously a nod to Griffith's better angel (several of the cast also appeared in the Griffith film). All in all the message is clear and, if a shade strident, is nonetheless important.

With the character of Nellie (Jewel Carmen), with her expensive education, "trained misunderstanding" of music and faultless taste in clothes, a sort of lily-white Lorelei Lee of the West, Loos comes into her own and the balance tips towards satire. The métisse Teresa (Alma Rubens) is on the other hand the free strong-minded female heroine that Loos offers as the counterpart in another political element of the story that invites the audience to see the white male treatment of women as comparable to that of its treatment of minorities.

The film is in the end neither the action film that Dwan might have preferred nor the satirical comedy that Loos could have written but a half-breed somewhere between the two. Yet, even if Dwan and Loos resembled each other only in their cynicism - of the three Fairbanks himself was the most idealistic - it does emerge as a surprisingly angry film at a moment when racist and anti-immigrant feeling was at its height in the US and still very much on the rise. The union of the two mixed race characters (Fairbanks and Rubens) is sometimes seen as an evasion of the racial issue but it does serve to underline the message stressed throughout the film that (in direct contradiction of Griffith's prologue to Birth of a Nation and to the fashionable eugenics of the day), it is "whiteness" that represents the problem in US society while the diversity represented by métissage is its redeeming feature.

But for Fairbanks personally it was neither the political nor the satirical aspects of the film that pointed the way forward but rather the forest idyll of the lovers with its incidental resemblance to Robin Hood. The swashbucklers, with some inevitability, proved ultimately a dead end for Fairbanks just as the "little girl" films did for his Hollywood queen and it proved impossible for him in later years, despite some not uninteresting attempts, to successfully either develop his potential as a dramatic actor nor to revive the great comedian he had once been. In Hollywood "when the legend becomes fact"......

The Half-Breed (1916)

*** (out of 4)

A young Indian woman brings her newborn son to the home of a white man where she drops it off and shortly later kills herself. The baby, part white and part Indian, grows up to live a normal life but when his caretaker dies, the townspeople run him out. Soon he sees various racial injustice and pretty soon finds himself in the woods with another outcast.

THE HALF-BREED isn't the greatest film ever made but it's certainly an entertaining one that fans of silent cinema should enjoy. Douglas Fairbanks plays the title character and does a very good job with the role. Obviously the actor is very energetic but he manages to handle the small, quiet scenes just as well as any of the stuff that has him running around. The actor was very believable as the somewhat naive man who doesn't realize that people will hate him just because of his skin color.

The film's story isn't all that original and deals with the half-breed going up against a sheriff who just happens to be his real father, although neither one realizes it. The film features some terrific visuals and especially the scenes in the forest. There's a terrific climax where a fire breaks out and the movie ends on a very poetic note. The main reason to watch this film is certainly for Fairbanks and you have to wonder what his female fans in 1916 thought about his nearly nude entrance at the start of the picture.

I have been collecting silent films on DVD for over 20 years and it's very gratifying to see more titles from 1910-1920 become available on the home market. Case in point is this satisfying 1916 double bill from Kino Lorber starring Douglas Fairbanks 4 years before his breakthrough film, THE MARK OF ZORRO. I had known about THE HALF BREED for years thanks to a famous still of Doug in the briefest of loincloths. It was considered a lost film and I never expected to see it. The rediscovery of old movies and the restoration of them has come a long way since the turn of the century with THE HALF BREED and THE GOOD BAD MAN being 2 excellent examples. Both are collaborative efforts between The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, La Cinematique Francaise, and Lobster Films. The quality of the movie image is excellent and the musical scores by Donald Sosin are simple and effective.

THE HALF BREED tells the story of Lo Dorman whose Native American mother was abandoned by his white father resulting in her death. He then faces extreme ostracism from the townspeople of the small community he lives in. THE GOOD BAD MAN has him playing a Robin Hood like bandit named "Passing Through" who steals only what is needed and then gives it to those who need it most. Both films benefit from the presence of Sam De Grasse, Fairbanks' go to villain, who is nothing less than a silent film version of Alan Rickman. Both of these movies were helmed by Allan Dwan (1885-1981), a Canadian born director whose career spanned over 50 years and featured such titles as 2 Shirley Temple vehicles (HEIDI, REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM) and the John Wayne classic, THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA. His silent films are now making a comeback with the recent release of 3 Gloria Swanson films (ZAZA, MANHANDLED, STAGE STRUCK).

Kino Lorber has recently released a number of Paramount silents including 2 classic W. C. Fields comedies (IT'S THE OLD ARMY GAME, RUNNING WILD) and the epic Western THE COVERED WAGON. Two more titles on the horizon include a newly restored version of Josef von Sternberg's THE LAST COMMAND with Emil Jannings and the one I've been waiting on, OLD IRONSIDES with Charles Farrell & Esther Ralston. That just leaves THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK, Valentino's THE SHEIK, and Erich von Stroheim's THE WEDDING MARCH from the old VHS set of almost 30 years ago to be released on DVD/Blu-Ray. The 1923 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and WINGS from that set have already been given deluxe editions... For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Pretty heavy themes in this 1916 melodrama. I have just been rediscovering Fairbanks' early works and this one caught me by surprise. After watching silent films for almost 50 years, what a joy it is to see them digitally restored. A far cry from the fuzzy 8mm prints of my youth. If I had seen a musty out of focus truncated print of this film, I would have missed much of its joy. Thank you to all who worked so hard to bring this one back to all of us.

The usual suspects -- star Doug Fairbanks, writers Anita Loos and John Emerson and director Allan Dwan -- try something different from their usual light-hearted romp with social commentary, working from a story by Bret Harte.

Unfortunately, the copy screened by the Museum of Modern Art is in poor shape. Only about twenty-five minutes of the one-hour feature could be screened, and the print showed a lot of damage. The titles, when possessed of any humor, are dour and there isn't much of Doug's usual stuntwork -- he clambers around the redwood forests of northern California for a bit and bends a young conifer double a couple of times to spring from one place to another. We do get a bit of beefcake in an early scene, where he is shown, stripped to the waist, but that's about it.

The rest is an open attack on racism. Doug, the titular half-breed is trapped in a small, nasty town full of racists who dislike him solely because he is an Indian. Of course, Jewel Carmen and Alma Rubens have yens for him, but besides showing jealousy when Doug is not present, do nothing about it. The genially corrupt individuals who inhabit most of Harte's better known works are not present. Instead, they are selfish, nasty and smug

It's difficult to judge the impact of this movie almost a hundred years after it was produced, but over all it looks like an earnest work with some good production values: an attempt to expand Doug's range as a movie star. Judging by the fact that he went back to his usual mode of movie until 1920s' THE MARK OF ZORRO, it almost certainly didn't take. Nor, judging by what remains, should it have.