Le Secret des abîmes

This expertly rendered potboiler stars Hobart Bosworth as a great diver who is approached by some con artists. They want him to front for a fake company recovering gold from wrecks. He refuses and they put pressure on him by vamping his son.

Everyone plays their parts well and this silent movie from 1920 is beautifully acted -- particularly well underplayed by Bosworth and con man George Webb -- and well shot. The outdoor scenes are shot on location, including the diving platforms and that adds a great deal to movies like this: a touch of realism that later, slicker Hollywood movies would lose.

Watch out for Gladys George, who spent the late thirties playing oversexed mature women (best in THE MALTESE FALCON) as a young, innocent ingénue.

"Below the Surface" (1920) stars Hobart Bosworth and Lloyd Hughes as father and son professional divers, Grace Darmond and George Webb as professional schemers and scammers, Gladys George as Hughes' best girl for the very first part of the film until she's undermined by Darmond, Edith Yorke as Bosworth's wife and Hughes' mother, and others who fill out the bill.

The story begins with Bosworth diving 55 fathoms (about 330 feet) to secure a stuck, sunken, submerged American submarine with 27 aboard, running out of oxygen; then having the craft raised, Bosworth saving the day. It's an exciting beginning, with almost cryptic signs of priggish character being simultaneously pinned to Bosworth and his family. The somewhat religious overtones that periodically interrupt the film are distracting IMHO. Directed by Irvin Willat, this beginning is in keeping with his exciting, if not somewhat lurid epic tales he'd directed before, such as "The Zeppelin's Last Raid", "The False Faces", and the previous year's "Behind the Door", all dealing with involvement with Germany during the course of WWI. "Below the Surface", another sea tale (Willat followed this with many others in the future), now takes place on an island off the East coast. Bosworth and Hughes are well respected as divers. When Bosworth makes news with his herculean recovery of the sunken submarine, he's approached by Webb and Darmond to dive for a decades sunken vessel with millions in gold aboard. The plan is to have them bring up a few pieces of gold, then sell shares before an expedition can actually occur, making them loads of instant cash, then quickly and quietly disappear. However, Bosworth refuses on the grounds it would be very foolish and no doubt unsafe to make such a dive. Meanwhile Hughes is falling for Darmond (whose intent it was for him to do so!), and he takes up the offer of diving. He even volunteers to marry Darmond! Bosworth has discovered the pair is married - not brother and sister as they'd claimed - by hiring a private detective. Hughes by this time has seemingly discarded his old flame, Gladys George, and fallen headlong into the trap. Will Bosworth save the day? Will the plot thicken? You bet!

This is a fun potboiler's potboiler. It has some dull moments and almost ridiculous plot points, but Willat gets us to the end, an ending which is wrapped up hurriedly and in a way that is almost too fast. Nevertheless, at only one hour the show was a good watch. Bosworth followed up the next year with "The Sea Lion", keeping his string of sea tales going. He's a good piece of lumber, an actor whose rugged manhood (and rather aged by now) plays okay, but for modern audiences may be just a tad too - yeah, just a tad too... I always enjoy watching him, but he'd not be my hero today; rather, a great father figure for a more slick hero. On the other hand, I can see why Hughes would fall for Darmond: she's a knockout. I like her more as a good girl ("The Hope Diamond Mystery"), but she certainly lights up the scenery even when she's bad. Hughes is just Hughes: he's always serviceable. I've got him in 22 of his 97 films he made until 1939. He had enough popularity to keep him in front of audiences for over twenty years.

Back in 2017 Flicker Alley released a restored version of Irvin Willat's 1919 BEHIND THE DOOR, an intense but forgotten World War I melodrama that still retains the power to engage and shock an audience of today. Now they have released, on their Flicker Fusion series in partnership with The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, a restored version of Willat's followup film BELOW THE SURFACE (1920) which is coupled with DOOR on a single Blu-ray. These make for a perfect pairing. Both movies star Hobart Bosworth who was a major figure in the early days of Hollywood although forgotten today, primarily due to the unavailability of many of his films.

While DOOR is basically a revenge tragedy, SURFACE could be considered a domestic tragedy as it deals with a family divided between Bosworth and his only son. The son, Paul, is played by Lloyd Hughes who is best remembered as the intrepid reporter in THE LOST WORLD (1925). Paul and his father, Martin, live and work in a fishing community on a small island off the New England coast. They specialize in deep sea diving. When Martin helps to rescue a trapped submarine, he draws a lot of outside publicity. A Boston con man (George Webb) and his wife (Grace Dormand) see an opportunity to salvage a sunken treasure ship but when they approach Martin, he refuses to help them.

They then go to work on Paul. The wife, posing as the con man's sister, rents a cottage and pretends to fall in love with Paul. She even goes so far as to marry him, much to Martin's dismay, and this causes the split between father and son. After getting Paul to dive to the wreck and bring back some gold coins (which the con man will use to dupe investors), she deserts him and returns Boston with her actual husband. After Paul becomes critically ill, Martin travels to Boston to bring her back but fate (in the form of the scriptwriter) intervenes and the movie switches from melodrama to true drama with consequences for all involved.

Hobart Bosworth had a commanding on-screen presence during the silent era and this shows in his performance here. While not as intense as in DOOR, Bosworth dominates every scene he is in much the way that John Wayne did in his later years. Lloyd Hughes is essentially the central figure in this story (as he was in THE LOST WORLD) and he acquits himself well in the role of the betrayed "husband" proving he was more than just good looking. Grace Darmond and George Webb as the scheming con artists (and villains of the piece) give restrained, believable performances. Darmond is especially effective as the duplicitous wife.

Unlike BEHIND THE DOOR which is a composite restoration involving a number of prints (including one from Russia), BELOW THE SURFACE is essentially taken from a single print which was located in the Library Of Congress. Major funding was provided by San Francisco Film Preserve and The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. SURFACE is virtually complete with its original color tints replicated, and the beautifully illustrated title cards intact, which lends an extra dimension to viewing the movie. It's a shame the illustrated style of intertitles disappeared by the mid 1920s. The location shooting is beautifully photographed and the underwater sequences are well handled.

For a silent film enthusiast as myself, it's always rewarding when a Thomas Ince production can be viewed in a quality print. Ince is truly the forgotten man in Hollywood history who is remembered today for his mysterious death aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924 rather than for his many cinematic accomplishments. He died right as the studio system which he pioneered was coming to fruition. Precious little of his vast output has been made available, including the anti-war allegory CIVILIZATION (1916) which is as important to film history as D. W Griffith's INTOLERANCE (also 1916). Thanks to Flicker Alley for making SURFACE and DOOR available as they demonstrate the full power that well made silent movies possess...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.