Papa d'un jour

Harry Langdon dreams of having a wife and child. When pregnant Gladys McConnell runs away from her husband, Cornelius Keefe, in the hope and expectation that this will let him reconcile with his father, she collapses in front of Harry, seemingly giving im everything he hopes for.

Of course, he doesn't know quite what to do with anything, which is half of his comedy; the other half is the slapstick that goes on, not on the screen -- although there's a fine final gag to this movie that works quite well -- but behind his eyes. We get a glimpse of what goes on in his head in a dream sequence in which Keefe returns for Miss McConnell and the baby. It is as disastrous as anything the audience might imagine.

This was the third movie on Langdon's First National contract. The previous two had been successful for First National, not so much for Harry when they went over budget. Caught between disagreements on his staff, he fired Frank Capra as director, and did the directing himself. You can argue that this made it a much better Langdon movie, and I agree. I liked it a lot. It also made it less popular with the contemporary audiences.

The copy I looked at was in pretty good shape, although there were spots of outgassing from the film it was pulled from on two occasions.

Langdon decided to direct his next film all by himself after Frank Capra left. Adapting August 1927's "Three's A Crowd" from another Arthur Ripley story, the film is about a wife, Gladys (Gladys McConnell), along with her baby, who leaves her husband because of his excessive drinking. Langdon serves as a simpleton living in a shoddy one-room apartment who dreams of being a father to a family. He discovers a passed out Gladys and the baby in a raging blizzard and brings them to his place. A fortune teller Harry approaches sees the husband not looking for her. Langdon dreams of Gladys wanting to remain with him while he enters a boxing match to fight the imaginary ex.

Once again, the Langdon movie was didn't spark any magic at the box office. The public couldn't quite wrap its hands around the deadpan look of a puerile adult exhibiting both childish antics with grown-up ambitions. Modern critics today are split assessing "Three's A Crowd," with reviewer Alfred Eaker claiming, "The bleakness of Three's a Crowd is worthy of Beckett, rivals the best of Chaplin, and stands apart as THE unjustly maligned, hopelessly misunderstood, dark horse masterpiece of silent cinema. Fans of silent comedy have often expressed disappointment in this film, citing that it is simply not funny. It is not a comedy, but the purest expression of Langdon's standout art, which refuses to be pigeonholed."

Although Langdon's popularity never equaled his peak in 1926, the comedian continued appearing in films well into the 1940s, albeit in low-budget productions. He worked on set almost right up to his death of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 22, 1944 at the age of 60.

A child-like man lives alone in an old house, in a slum neighbourhood that seems to be otherwise deserted. One night, in a snowstorm, he finds a young woman and her baby. He brings them home to his hovel, and takes responsibility for the woman and her child. The child-like man falls in love with the woman, and he imagines himself as her husband and the baby's father. But then the baby's real father shows up...

That's the plot of "Three's a Crowd", starring Harry Langdon in an "auteur" film that he also produced and directed. Langdon is traditionally considered one of the four great comedians of the silent screen, a few paces behind Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd. Unlike those three comedy geniuses, Langdon never really understood the character he played on screen, even though he had created this character in vaudeville. Langdon played an extremely infantile man, a gigantic innocent baby who was nonetheless capable of adult passions whenever he met a pretty girl. Harry Langdon's best work was in movies written and directed by people who understood Langdon's baby-man character better than Langdon himself: most notably Harry Edwards, Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra. (Capra got his comedy training in Langdon's slapstick comedies.) After these men helped Harry Langdon achieve stardom and box-office success, Langdon got a big head and decided that - like Chaplin, whom Langdon envied to the point of obsession - he could make all the decisions himself, sharing credit with nobody.

"Three's a Crowd" is the unfortunate result of Langdon's ego trip. Based on the success of his previous films directed by Edwards and Capra, Langdon was able to get sizeable financial backing for "Three's a Crowd", his first attempt to be his own producer and director. Unfortunately, Langdon squandered most of his production budget before filming started. His obsession with Chaplin compelled Langdon to fill "Three's a Crowd" with lots of Chaplinesque pathos ... except that it's merely pathetic. This movie is meant to be a comedy, but it tries hard to be a tear-jerker too, and it falls between two genres. A "gag" sequence involving the long flight of stairs outside Harry's house just isn't funny at all.

There are a couple of good laughs in this movie, notably in a dream sequence involving a boxing match between Langdon and the baby's father. The exterior sets in the slum neighbourhood are impressive (except for the street-lamps), and the snowstorms look more realistic than usual for a silent film. But the laughs are very far apart.

Kevin Brownlow's excellent book about silent films, "The Parade's Gone By", describes one scene of pathos in this movie. Late at night, the woman's husband has arrived to take her home with their child. Faithful Harry picks up his lantern and escorts them down the long flight of stairs into the dark street. After the man drives away with his wife and child, Harry stands alone in the street with his lantern. Slowly, sadly, he blows out his lantern ... and, behind him, all the street-lamps go out. The way Brownlow describes this scene, it sounds a masterpiece of pathos and tragedy. Intrigued by Brownlow's description, I sought out this film and I eagerly awaited the scene with the street-lamps. What a disappointment: Langdon directs and performs this scene with no energy at all. It isn't tragic, and it isn't funny. It's just inept. Even the street-lamps look like phony props.

Long before Jerry Lewis, Harry Langdon was the first comedian to wreck his own career with his overgrown ego. "Three's a Crowd" could have been a silent-film masterpiece like "Sunrise" ... instead, it's a terribly disappointing failure, with just enough style and humour to sharpen the disappointment by reminding us of what this movie COULD have been.

Even at their most unremarkable, there's generally something irrepressibly charming about silent films, and in some capacities this one is a good example. The sense of humor and entertainment is sometimes very simple and even quaint, more passive amusement than robust fun. We see passing reflections of notions like abusive labor practices or the necessary resourcefulness of the working class, showing that even almost 100 years later, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And sometimes we see elements of early film-making, or attempts at gags, that just haven't aged well, such as the use of blackface, which even at its most "innocent" is rather distasteful unless the context is emphatic mockery of the concept. Yet for all in 'Three's a crowd' that doesn't necessarily immediately inspire, there's also a lot to enjoy. It's not the most essential film of the 1920s, but this is still a pretty good time.

Star and director Harry Langdon sometimes gets mentioned alongside silent luminaries like Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, and at his best one can see why. He has a propensity for physical comedy, stunts, and sacrificing his body that lends to a great deal of humor, in addition to the sight gags and situational comedy that rounds out any given picture. One sees glimmers of this intelligence in 'Three's a crowd,' and it's duly enjoyable. Would that it were applied more consistently, or that the writing, direction, and sequencing were tighter and more mindful to better facilitate the storytelling and merriment. This is hardly to say that this particular feature is bad - only, this would seem to be Langdon's first outing as a director, and broadly speaking it kind of shows. Case in point - though the narrative is complete, the ending mostly just kind of peters out, and the last impression we have of the movie is arguably at one of its weakest points.

Though it's no one's fault, it's also worth noting the apparent deterioration over time of the surviving print before it was digitized. There are a few considerable stretches in which the image quality is so heavily degraded that the visual presentation is all but entirely nullified - a deeply unfortunate reality of watching pictures from so long ago. Still, through every shortcoming of the movie as it was and the movie as we see it, there was no intent here except light-hearted entertainment. Save for that it is a surviving title of the earliest years of cinema, there's nothing about 'Three's a crowd' that stands out so much as to demand viewership, but it fairly succeeds in its modest goal, and anyone who appreciates older films will surely find this to their liking, too. Moreover, one can only admire the hard work that went into the production, including set design and decoration, hair and makeup, and even the basic orchestration of scenes that are filled with silliness of one type or another. The climax is notably imaginative and done well, including some sharp editing. Everyone involved put in fine work to make this a reality, and though it may not get name-dropped the way some of its brethren do, or deserve to, Langdon's directorial debut is nevertheless suitably enjoyable.

If you're not already a fan of the silent era then there won't be anything here to change your mind. For those enamored of film history, however, this is satisfying enough and worthwhile if you come across it. Likeable if not a must-see, 'Three's a crowd' is a decent way to pass an hour.

Three's a Crowd is one of those famous silent comedies -- or is "notorious" the better word? -- that has been difficult to find in any format suitable for home viewing, and hardly ever gets any public screenings. It's well known to silent comedy buffs mainly because it proved to be a career killer for its producer/director/star, Harry Langdon. Although the production values appear to be rather modest, this brief feature cost a lot of money to make, mainly because of poor planning and extensive re-takes. When it flopped at the box office Langdon never recovered his footing. His earlier features benefited from the writing and directorial skills of Harry Edwards, Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra, but by the time Three's a Crowd went into production only Ripley remained. The resulting product suggests that Langdon took on more than he could manage, and couldn't handle the demands of properly crafting a feature-length film to suit his eccentric screen persona.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the basic premise, although in outline the plot may sound a bit sticky: oddball loner Harry adopts a young woman on the run from her dissolute boyfriend, and when she gives birth he acts as caretaker for both mother and child. When the boyfriend (now suitably reformed) shows up, however, the two young lovers reconcile and depart with their child, leaving Harry alone and forlorn. With a story like that any comedian is going to need some strong laugh sequences to avoid a descent into bathos, but therein lies the biggest single problem with this film, and it's a cardinal sin for any comedy: it just isn't very funny. Gags as such are few and far between. Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd knew how to develop gag sequences with a strong hook, then build momentum to a big climax, but that never happens in Three's a Crowd. There are occasional, strange semi-gags that sort of erupt and then sputter out, often concluding on an anticlimactic note, and other bits that aren't really gags at all, just oddities. For example: after waking up in the morning Harry goes to a cabinet, takes out a kerosene lamp that has apparently been burning all night, blows it out, places it back in the cabinet and shuts the door. It's a strange moment, but that's all it is. Later, he shows up at work with a lunch pail, opens it, and reveals a cup of hot coffee already poured and sitting neatly in a saucer. Another odd moment, but not what you'd call a belly laugh.

A major problem from the opening scene onward is the director's erratic grasp of timing. There are seemingly endless shots of the star staring blankly, blinking, and puttering around to little effect, or doing the same things repeatedly, such as trying to amuse the baby with funny faces, over and over and over. On top of that, when preview screenings indicated that the film was in trouble Langdon re-cut and re-edited so extensively that certain plot points make no sense. (A sub-plot involving a carrier pigeon who delivers a love letter is confusing because footage is missing, however.) Another problem: in Langdon's earlier features Harry was pitted against strong opponents such as Vernon Dent and Gertrude Astor, but here the supporting players aren't especially colorful and don't provide much conflict. Aside from our lead comic, the strongest impression, curiously enough, is made by the set: a garret apartment at the top of an impressively long and rickety stairway that leads up the side of a building and looks like something out of a German Expressionist melodrama. It's not exactly funny, but it sure is striking. Aside from the set, the most memorable element is a dream sequence that occurs towards the end. In this bit Harry imagines himself as a boxer, complete with absurdly over-sized glove, defending his household from an interloper, i.e. the baby's father. It's an interesting scene and stands as the highlight, but even this sequence lacks punch (so to speak) and, instead of building to a strong climax, dwindles away.

Langdon's defenders assert that he was a gifted director, but his real problem was that he lacked the ability to produce his own films; i.e., to keep costs under control. The latter point may well be correct, but there is little evidence of directorial skill on display here. A quirky, offbeat sensibility most certainly, but no sense of proportion or control. Silent comedy buffs interested in Langdon's meteoric rise and fall will definitely want to see Three's a Crowd, but although it offers occasional worthwhile moments and the odd chuckle or two, the experience is ultimately a harrowing one. This isn't a comedy so much as a Post Mortem examination of what killed Langdon's career, and a textbook example of how ego can overwhelm talent.