Penrod and Sam

From the 39th Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Jay Weissberg oversold this feature film for Day 1, "Penrod and Sam" (1923), as being similar to "Boyhood" (2014), which, no, it's not really. It's more akin to Our Gang, a.k.a. The Little Rascals, comedy shorts in its episodic slapstick of children running around, hitting each other and generally getting into trouble, but with a dramatic arch that extends the film's length to the feature format. Weissberg also mentioned the relatively decent treatment of the African-American children in the film, which I had by doubts regarding when the two boys were introduced in a pun as "the colors." After that, the film is relatively inoffensive, though, especially for something from 1923. The film also gets off to a bad start with the literal slapstick--fighting with wooden swords--of the kids playing war, but once they start interacting with the adult world and the plotline with the dog gets going, the comedy becomes somewhat amusing, and the drama avoids devolving into sap.

Intertitles are arguably too plentiful, and I don't think the mocking of children's syntax and pronunciations is funny enough to sustain a running gag throughout the picture. Scenes such as of the boys mocking the flirtations of teenagers works better, and the main father and mother are laughably exactly what one would imagine as past suburban stereotypes and predates "Leave It to Beaver" and similar such TV and movies: father in his chair reading the paper, only to get up to reprimand the boys for their latest hijinks, as the literally-pearl-clutching mother brings such matters to father's attention. It's all a little too mainstream wholesome for my taste, but I can certainly see why others would enjoy it, and it's not bad for its kind. It was made, after all, by a director, William Beaudine, whose long career demonstrated his proficiency, from Mary Pickford vehicles to "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966).

(Note: 35mm, tinted print from Library of Congress.)

As a child, I found two of Booth Tarkington's books, "Penrod" and its sequel "Penrod and Sam", to be the funniest I had read. Those two eleven year old boys and their dog, around 1900 AD, were getting into the most hilarious of mischievous scrapes. UNFORTUNATELY, the writers for this film focused primarily on those episodes where Penrod and Sam were getting their revenge on Georgie Bassett, a "goodie-goodie", so it treats the bullying of Georgie as funny and as a positive. "Bullying" is in the spotlight today with a special focus on how destructive it can be - even leading to suicide by the victims - those episodes, which composed the bulk of the film,did not seem very funny. I found it most disappointing. To be fair, the child actors were great and the director got the right flavor for the non-bullying incidents so had the movie been primarily on those types of scrapes, I would have rated this movie at the top of the scale rather than at the bottom.

I read a couple of Booth Tarkington's Penrod books about half a century ago, out of the middle school library and thought them all right. William Beaudine's silent version of the second book -- he would remake it as a talkie in 1931 -- clearly builds on Hal Roach's already successful OUR GANG series, even if the setting is Indiana rather than upstate New York. An early title tells us that the problems of boyhood are universal and timeless, and this makes me believe it. Penrod has three things he cherishes: his dog, Duke -- played by Cameo, who would reprise her role eight years later -- his shack on the lot next door, and his gang. Eventually all three will be taken from him by the incomprehensible workings of the adult world.

I think that is part of what another commenter groups into what he calls 'social satire'. I find nothing satirical about it. I think it's an accurate representation of the selfish and uncaring nature of most people. Ben Alexander, as Penrod, suffers because he has no power, and as a child, is not seen as having any feelings that need to be considered. His father, Rockliffe Fellowes, orders him to let the obnoxious kid into their club because his father, William Mong, is powerful in town. Later, when Mong runs over Penrod's dog and kills him, he offers the boy money, when sympathy might be more helpful. And Penrod's rejection of his standards makes this grown man seek his revenge. It's only by an almost literal deus ex machina that the situation is resolved at all, and not particularly satisfactorily; his dog, in the end, is still dead.

That is the reason I find the first half of the movie, filled with the concerns of boyhood when nothing is final, better than the second half. Still, I always enjoy those OUR GANG shorts which are almost plotless, just filling up an endless weekend day. Normally I enjoy a well told story with a formal plot, and it is here. However, those days of childhood, where my problems were small and inconsequential and easily soluble, are still fresh in my memory, and I mourn their passing and the cares of the adulthood which seemed so desirable at the time. What a fool I was!