Stars: Martin Fuller and Mrs William Bechtel
It was made as an advert, of all things, a promotional film to point out how awesome the Fresh Air Fund was. This non-profit organisation is still in operation today, even though it was celebrating its 35th anniversary in 1912. Founded in 1877 by Rev Willard Parsons, a pastor in rural Sherman, PA, it aimed to provide disadvantaged children with holidays in the countryside, courtesy of a network of volunteer host families. It succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, outlasting the newspaper that assisted it, The New York Tribune, and thus far helping over 1.7m children. Within the framework of this story it helps young Joe, a newsboy in the slums of the big city, who lives in squalour with his abusive, alcoholic grandmother. Instead of buying a paper from him, a lady gives him a ticket to a Fresh Air Fund picnic in the countryside and he sneaks out to catch the train and discover the colour green for the first time. You'd think that tells you the whole story but you'd be wrong.
If the film ended here, it would have been less notable than it becomes. It would still have been unusual for morphing Dickensian social commentary into promotional home video into fairy tale fancy, complete with a little cinematic trickery. The naturalistic acting is refreshing, hardly what you might expect from an early silent film. Yet it's writer Dorothy Shore's finalé that sears it all onto the memory. With one subtle shot that still impresses over a hundred years later, she kicks into motion the wild ending that still has me puzzled as to what she really aimed to say. As the fairy tale ends, the happy reenactment in Joe's imagination is countered by a darker reenactment in his memory of his grandmother beating him, projected onto the side of the barn behind the still seated children. Clearly he doesn't want to go home, so he hides away until everyone has gone, then walks down to the shore to find a way to reenact his fairy tale for real.
And that's what I can't get past here. There is much to enjoy in this film, which is in a category of its own, unfolding unconventionally from grim reality to ambiguous finalé that could be a dream within a dream, unbridled romantic lunacy or a subconcious manifesto that death is better than poverty for young boys. The shifting tones play out like Joe elevates through planes of existence, ascending to higher and higher levels of imagination, like an acid trip that unfolds blissfully but is about to go horribly wrong. Simply changing the title cards could warp this unashamedly. And at the heart of it is the Fresh Air Fund, depicted initially as lifesavers, helping kids like Joe to escape their lot in life for a brief window to revel in the countryside, but then as well meaning bumblers, ineptly losing track of one of their charges who surely dies on their watch. How could this possibly have been the sort of promotion that they were looking for? Thanks, Edison!
No comments:
Post a Comment