The Headless Horseman

This is an early telling of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and runs 71 minutes. Considering that this film starred Will Rogers, I had very high hopes for this silent picture and assumed it would be a comedy. However, I soon noticed that the print was extremely horrible and often difficult to watch. Then I noticed that although Rogers was very talented and funny, in this film he was about as funny as Walter Cronkite. And then I noticed that I kept falling asleep during the film--strike three! The bottom line is that although this is a relatively faithful retelling of the Washington Irving short story, there just isn't any life in it. Plus, given that practically every viewer knows what happens at the end, there isn't any suspense either. It's watchable and interesting to note that they actually filmed it in Upstate New York, but that's really about it.

Sadly, the film is bundled another silent,THE MECHANICAL MAN, on DVD. This Italian film manages to be even less interesting or entertaining that THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and so I strongly caution all sane people from buying this DVD. Fortunately I got it from Netflix--otherwise, I'd be feeling pretty angry now!

Headless Horseman, The (1922)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pretty poor version of Washington Irving's tale. Will Rogers plays the school teacher who travels to Sleepy Hollow only to discover the mysterious headless horseman. For some reason this film pays more attention to the teacher and his personal affairs rather than the headless horseman and the legend surrounding him. The movie only runs 76-minutes but it feels like a couple of hours. The story is all over the map without too many of anything actually going on. The miscasting of Rogers hurts the film as well, although the special effects and sets are good.

This is not a great film. It is very slow. The book was very scary. The 1999 film Sleep Hollow based on the same book Legend of sleepy hollow by Washington Irving. The short cartoon the Legend of sleepy hollow is very entertaining. This is badly written. It is also badly acted. There try to makes short story into a long movie. By adding stuff that just for the sake of making it long. So they could make a full length movie. They did not capture the fear of the book. The book is one of the scariest stories ever. And this is just boring and slow. It is not scary at all. There should have made it a short film then it might have been fun. Instead of being just boring.

This adaptation of the Washington Irving story is watchable, and it has some good moments, but that's the best you can say about it. It makes you feel as if somewhere it missed the opportunity to be a little better. While it tells the story in a clear and capable fashion, that's about all it does. There is never really a distinctive atmosphere or any sustained tension, and there are only a few brief moments of comic relief, despite ample opportunities for any or all of these.

It seems a bit of a shame to have the thoroughly likable Will Rogers portray a smug and rather petty character like Ichabod Crane. Rogers does a satisfactory job, but he is limited by what the role has to offer. The other characters likewise are believable, and are recognizable from the story, but it needed some atmosphere or creative touches to make the characters and the situation more compelling.

It's probably still worth seeing for silent movie fans. The climactic sequence - which offers material much more cinematic in nature than the rest of the narrative - is done well, and it allows the movie to end with some energy.

Today's viewers of early silent movies might think that actors-and especially actresses-all applied a thick application of lipstick and eye-liner since those areas were so dark. And the skin tones looked like they never had been in the sun, so pale were their faces. The real truth is the film stock used in early movies was orthochromatic, invented in 1873 for still photography, and is still used by photographers today for landscape and some portrait photos.

Technically, orthochromatic consists of silver halide crystals, which are sensitive to the color blue. One can notice movies in the late 1800's and early 1900's where daylight scenes have white skies on a cloudless day. In close-up shots, actors with blue eyes appeared to have nearly white eyeballs. In addition, orthochromatic film can't detect red light; it converts reds simply to black. So actresses appeared to wear black lipstick even though on the set they wore red.

A German chemist, Herman Vogel, tinkered with several ingredients knowing the weaknesses of orthochromatic film. Others built on Vogel's work, inventing in 1906 the panchromatic process for still photography. By 1913 Eastman Kodak, the supplier of motion picture film stock, was able to introduce the advanced process to flexible celluloid, but it was high unstable and expensive. Finally in 1922, Kodak's panchromatic film quality was much improved and the cost to manufacture it dramatically dropped.

The first movie to be entirely shot using panchromatic film was November 1922's "The Headless Horseman." It may appear the new process didn't make much difference since the surviving prints of "The Headless Horseman" are worn and washed out. This was a major problem with early panchromatic motion picture film since it had such a short shelf-life. By 1926, more refinements in stability were introduced. With an extended preservation of its sharpness and depth of visual tones, panchromatic became the movie industry standard, forcing Kodak to discontinue orthochromatic movie film stock by 1930.

Showman Will Rogers headlined "The Headless Horseman," appearing as the stern teacher, Ichabod Crane. The movie is the earliest surviving film version based on the Washington Irving's short story. Rogers went against his normal friendly and homespun persona by acting as the harsh, rigid school taskmaster. His character didn't quite mesh with the small Sleepy Hollow, New York, villagers, who were about to railroad Crane out of town.

Rogers was in his fifth year in cinema when he appeared in "The Headless Horsemen." Samuel Goldwyn had signed the Broadway star to a multi-year contract in 1918 to appear in silent movies, an unusual move since the Oklahoma-born performer was known more for his verbal witticisms rather than his pantomiming. A 10th-grade high school drop-out who had spent time learning the ranch ropes in Argentina and in South Africa, began performing tricks with his lassos. Catching on to vaudeville circuits in the United States beginning in 1905, he became popular performing his horse and pony stunts. Ten years later, as a performer for Florenz Ziegfeld's 'Midnight Frolic,' in New York City, he mixed his lasso tricks with chitchat about the days' events gleaned from the daily newspapers. "All I know is what I read in the paper" became Rogers' trademark opening line.

His real personality, despite appearing in 48 silent films, wasn't fully appreciated until the advent of talkies in 1929, where he was able to express himself verbally.