Post by rmichaelpyle on Mar 5, 2012 6:00:01 GMT -6
I watched a thoroughly enjoyable Richard Dix silent today, "The Lucky Devil" (1925), with Esther Ralston and Edna May Oliver. If one looks at the story of the rise of Dix in pictures, it comes with the death of Wallace Reid, the most popular of all matinee idols of the teens and first couple of years of the twenties. Reid's forte was making fast moving shows usually about fast moving automobiles. These were good comedies usually with a good dollop of drama and adventure and some thrills thrown in for good measure. Dix took over the reins of such films and made several, meanwhile expanding his repertoire to include such silent masterpieces as "The Ten Commandments" (1923), directed by Cecil B. De Mille and "The Vanishing American" (1925). "The Lucky Devil" could almost be a follow-up to Reid's "Excuse My Dust" (1920).
Good show with all the ingredients of gentle comedy mixed with some rough-housing, besides. Dix, a displayer in a department store, enters a raffle and wins the so-called 'hoodoo' bad-luck automobile formerly owned by the store owner's son, a soul seemingly always in trouble with cops and women. Well, suddenly Dix begins to have the same problem, only he also gets mixed up in the life of Esther Ralston and her Aunt Edna May Oliver. Hilarious misunderstandings and undertakings become the fodder for the day!
Wonderful show that moves like greased lightning and doesn't let up for a moment from beginning to end!
Recommended. Newly available from Grapevine in a very nice print with good score!
On the same DVD was a Billy West short, "Line's Busy" (1924). West was the most successful imitator of Charlie Chaplin, and there were many! This short is rather a compilation of scenes stolen from Lloyd, Chaplin, and Keaton. They're certainly funny, but not in the way that they were with the originators. I enjoyed the show, though, which is sheer mayhap, mayhem, and non-stop antics. It may not be Chaplin, but this little twenty minute two-reeler had me smiling throughout and laughing a good deal, too. Fun, even though he did better.
Good show with all the ingredients of gentle comedy mixed with some rough-housing, besides. Dix, a displayer in a department store, enters a raffle and wins the so-called 'hoodoo' bad-luck automobile formerly owned by the store owner's son, a soul seemingly always in trouble with cops and women. Well, suddenly Dix begins to have the same problem, only he also gets mixed up in the life of Esther Ralston and her Aunt Edna May Oliver. Hilarious misunderstandings and undertakings become the fodder for the day!
Wonderful show that moves like greased lightning and doesn't let up for a moment from beginning to end!
Recommended. Newly available from Grapevine in a very nice print with good score!
On the same DVD was a Billy West short, "Line's Busy" (1924). West was the most successful imitator of Charlie Chaplin, and there were many! This short is rather a compilation of scenes stolen from Lloyd, Chaplin, and Keaton. They're certainly funny, but not in the way that they were with the originators. I enjoyed the show, though, which is sheer mayhap, mayhem, and non-stop antics. It may not be Chaplin, but this little twenty minute two-reeler had me smiling throughout and laughing a good deal, too. Fun, even though he did better.
