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King Vidor is at pains to depict the artist in the wilderness, the immediate reactions are by Chaplin (The Kid) and Renoir (La Fille d'Eau). Twain terrain, shantyboats on the Mississippi, the feller (F.A. Turner) passes the time tinkering with a beloved tin clock. (Like a baby, "she don't do a thing you expect all day long.") Mother (Claire McDowell) and child (Bobby Kelso) step in out of the storm, soon it's codger and orphan drifting down the river. Wooden toys pacify the bereft boy, the creative gives Michelangelo's old joke when facing a raw plank, just whittle away everything that's not a bunny. "A knight of the winding road" (Harry Todd) makes himself at home on their vessel, full of japes and ditties and a noble scapegoat when the fancy-pants from the Child's Rescue Society knocks at the door. A task fulfilled by protagonist and director, "tenderly and reverently." Serene location work, where characters stumble into the drink and traverse furrowed fields to witness a Dickensian little scene at a soup dive. Commiseration at the prison quarry, the luxuriant satisfaction of a good shave, cf. London's The Valley of the Moon. There's a whole industry for the image-making outsider, the enterprising New Yorker (Florence Vidor) helps him see the crowd of cheering tykes. "When the love and joy of creating enter into our handiwork, the world's appreciation comes unbidden." One's happy ending in long-shot is another's bittersweet one in close-up, just as in Stella Dallas. With Lillian Leighton, Willis Marks, James Corrigan, and Charles Arling. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |