Your Own Back Yard

This was great, no problems with this film. The only real issue might be the viewers of today watching this feature. Their perpetual victim-hood may not be able to process what this feature was about. I would also recommend noticing the race that helped Farina while he was asleep.

This 1925 Our Gang comedy has gained notoriety because 1) It has been lost for some 60 years and unseen by the public until a recent internet posting 2) Reviewers of 1925 praised it to the skies and 3) Our Gang creator and producer Hal Roach has said that this was his personal favorite of the series. Was it all that great? I finally saw it last night and well......

The film begins with Allen "Farina" Hoskins, the series Black star, being warned by his mother to "stay in your own back yard, and no harm will come to you." Good advice. The White Gang kids treat Farina with vicious cruelty in this film. Jackie Condon and Johnny Downs beat and kick the then 5 year old Farina. Mickey cheats Farina out of an ice cream cone, and Joe Cobb squirts water at him with a trick camera. All of this sends Farina home crying and leaving him with no one to play with but this chickens in his back yard. However, the film lightens up about midway with some gags involving dogs with dental cream passing as mad dogs and Mexican jumping beans. Does Farina have a happy ending or does he continue to be lonely and abused? You'll see if you're lucky enough to find this film.

The obvious problem of the film is that the Gang's treatment of Farina is so heart wrenching that it is painful to watch, especially considering his age at the time and that this film was made at a time when such mistreatment of blacks was typical (Farina himself was once banned from a hotel with his fellow gangster because of his race some 3 years after this film). This pattern would repeat itself in such gang films as One Wild Ride (1925), The Glorious 4th (1927, when Joe and the Gang throw lit firecrackers at Farina and his sister), The infamous Spook Spoofing (1928), and this film's partial remake The Smile Wins (1928). Fortunately, these films were the exceptions to the rule that made Farina a full fledged friend with the gang in most of their films.

It is perhaps due to the fact that Farina is an amazingly convincing actor at the age of 5 in this film that made Hal Roach love it and the bits with the jumping beans and the mad dogs offer some comic relief. The ending, which I will not describe here, is quite clever and creative, and the horrific treatment of Farina is not presented in a manner that is without sympathy for the boy. But if you get a chance to see this, do so if you dare.

I noticed a review for this that complains that there's a racial issue here...the white kids being mean to the black kid. Well, it might look this way if you've never watched many other Our Gang films. Taken out of context, the kids do seem awful and perhaps racist. But this is a complete misinterpretation of the short film. First, in nearly all of the 200+ Our Gang films, the black kids were treated pretty much like anyone else....race was hardly ever an issue. Second, in the silent Our Gang films, the kids are FREQUENTLY jerks towards each other! So, their being angry at Farina after his goat eats their stuff and their giving him the cold shoulder isn't at all surprising. These kids are NOT always nice....they can be jerks. And, often Farina himself is a jerk in many of these films. So, if you are going to assume racism in this film, step back...and look at all the films in their entirety before you jump to this conclusion...especially since this kid, Farina, for a time was the highest paid of the kids!

The story finds Farina being ostracized and he tries to have fun on his own. One of the ways he has fun is feeding jumping beans to his mother's chickens...with silly results. Later, when he gets frustrated with the kids, he tells them he's going to tell the cops that they're being mean to him. A short time later, the cops do show up...chasing a criminal and shooting at him. But the kids THINK this is directed towards them because Farina told the cops! And, incidentally, Farina then thinks they're coming after him! What's next? See the film.

As to the film itself, it's in pretty rough shape...a bit blurry and hard to see portions of the story. But considering that the film is almost a hundred years old and MANY old silents don't exist any more in any form, I can look past the print being pretty degraded.

So is this any good? Yes. The story is cute and is a nice showcase for Farina, as he is clearly the star of the film. Up until this time, his character had little to do in the shorts because he was so much younger than the other kids when the series started in 1922. I also liked the ending....a very nice short from Hal Roach Studios.