The one extant Capra film I could not find a copy of in my run, and the major reason I was excited about this 4K/Blu-ray box set of Capra's work at Columbia (well, most of it). And it ends up being one of my favorite Capra silents. Like much of Capra's work at the time, there's a certain throwaway feel to the film, like Capra never expected the film to have a life beyond a few weeks, at most, in a movie theater. It's a quick 60-minute adventure through a love triangle and mobsters that has action, romance, and tragedy. It works quite well, to be honest.
Handsome Williams (Mitchell Lewis) is a mobster with an ugly mug he can't stand to see in mirrors who has been making a fool of his fellow mobster, Tiger Louie (William Norton Bailey), by gunning down his bootleggers and stealing their alcohol to sell in his own place. Louie needs to get Handsome to stop, but Handsome has no weaknesses. That is, he has no evident weaknesses until Louie's girl, Marie (Margaret Livingston), follows Handsome and discovers his infatuation with a blind street violinist, Nora (Alice Day). Handsome takes her in after a drive by shooting meant for him, feeds her, and offers her a job to play in his joint alongside the down and out pianist Dan (Theodore von Eltz).
The film really gets split in two from here. The first half is Handsome treating Nora well while hiding the fact that he's hideous from the blind girl. She wants to touch his face, but he refuses until he gets the idea that she should touch Dan's face instead. I mean, it's predictable, but Capra always handled these kinds of human interactions really well, even in his silent period. Both men fall for her, and Dan can't cross the man who's been giving him a job despite his obvious alcoholism. The second half is Louie getting back at Handsome by kidnapping Nora to get Handsome to stop hijacking his trucks. Since Louie is nefarious, he takes it too far, and that leads to Handsome having a big fight and shootout to save Nora.
Really, the story, like most of Capra's silent films and even many of his sound ones, is not complicated. The joys are in the characters, the minor players around them, and his sense of humanist humor underlying everything. Despite the writing only giving the central three characters some basic character traits to define them, Capra lets his actors find the characters and give them life. He lets the camera linger on reaction shots to show some level of depth of feeling that deepens the action to a certain degree. But then there are the side characters, like the Chinese cook (Willie Fung) at Louie's house who feels understandably disloyal to Louie when Handsome points a gun at him to let him into Louie's house. The cook then uses the chaos as an excuse to steal bottles of alcohol and get gleefully drunk in a closet.
The film ends on a shockingly down note which really did surprise me. I actually rewound it to make sure I didn't misinterpret what had happened, and it ends up feeling tragic. The perpetually ugly man getting his first real reaction on his looks from his girl and completely losing any hope he has. It's not pretty, but Lewis is such a solid actor that he sells it well.
So, what was essentially a lost film for me has been found, and I get to gaze over approvingly at it every once in a while on my shelf. Like much of Capra's output, it was good, solid and sort of disposable entertainment that showed that Capra had a good technical hand on a human story that could touch the heart, even in minor ways. It's a good little example of his output from the time, and I'm glad I finally found a copy.
