Sally of the Sawdust (1925)

Director: D. W. Griffith
Writer: Forrest Halsey, from the play Poppy by Dorothy Donnelly
Stars: Carol Dempster and W. C. Fields

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the star of Sally of the Sawdust is Carol Dempster, playing, well, Sally of the Sawdust, the key name here is her co-star, W. C. Fields, because this is a pivotal film in his career for a variety of reasons.

For one, he plays a versatile show man, Prof. Eustace McGargle. His first and, for my money, most impressive routine is comedic juggling, a routine that’s perfect except when he doesn’t want it to be, at which point he loses balls but uses a quick foot movement to regain them as if nothing untoward had happened. It should not surprise that this was Fields’s specialty as a vaudeville performer.

For two, it’s based on a stage play from 1923 called Poppy. That wasn’t his first experience on Broadway, as he’d debuted in 1905 and was a regular in Ziegfeld Follies revues, but it was a lead role, with Madge Kennedy, that made his name as an actor. He was the only actor to go from play to film and he shot a sound remake, Poppy, in 1936, with Rochelle Hudson.

For three, the routine that gets McGargle in trouble is the shell game, though he insists it’s not gambling at all but a game of skill. “It’s the old army game”, he claims. This film and That Royle Girl after it landed him a contract with Paramount and his first film for them was It’s the Old Army Game.

The Gold Rush (1925)

Director: Charles Chaplin
Writer: Charles Chaplin
Stars: Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain and Georgia Hale

Index: That's a Wrap!

I was rather surprised to find that I haven’t reviewed The Gold Rush before, given that it’s the indirect reason why I wrote Charlie Chaplin Centennial: Keystone, a book about his first year in film, 1914. The trigger was a friend of mine attending a college film class, because he was the only person in the room who looked at the cover of the textbook and recognised Chaplin as the Little Tramp in The Gold Rush.

The point, of course, was that a century ago, the Little Tramp’s famous silhouette was the most recognised image in the entire world. To go from that to the comment of “Who’s that dude on the cover?” in a college film class is a scary descent in cultural awareness.

She (1925)

Director: Leander de Cordova
Writer: H. Rider Haggard
Stars: Betty Blythe, Carlyle Blackwell and Mary Odette

Index: That's a Wrap!

Oh, dear. Much of the point of this project is to highlight just how good and/or interesting feature films made a hundred years ago were. Sure, we’ve made technological strides in the decades since 1925, but silent movies were not just melodrama and wild gesticulation.

Well, except this one. This seventh take and first feature adaptation on H. Rider Haggard’s classic adventure novel She—it was first filmed in 1899 by Georges Méliès as a one minute long trick short—is absolutely melodrama and wild gesticulation.

What’s really frustrating is that it isn’t a lot else! It may be the first huge disappointment that this project has turned up thus far, which is a shame because I’m a fan of Haggard and his novel She, which deepened the lost world genre that he had so memorably pioneered in King Solomon’s Mines.

Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925)

Director: Donald Crisp
Writer: Jack Cunningham, based on the novel Don Q’s Love Story by K. & Hesketh Prichard
Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Astor, Jack McDonald and Donald Crisp

Index: That's a Wrap!

It’s a long while since I’ve seen the original The Mark of Zorro, a Douglas Fairbanks vehicle based on the first appearance of Zorro, a short story called The Curse of Capistrano, published a single year earlier. Zorro came quickly to film.

However, this is only a sequel in name, as it was based on a Don Q novel instead, a Spanish character called Don Quebranta Huesos, who first appeared in 1904, so predated Zorro. Don Q’s Love Story was the first Don Q novel after a couple of short story collections, all written by a mother and son writing team.

Here, due to Hollywood story manipulation, Don Quebranta Huesos becomes Don Cesar de Vega, son of Don Diego de Vega, now formally outed as Zorro. He’s a Californian of Spanish blood, though almost the entire story unfolds in Spain, with young Don Cesar visiting “for a period of travel and study”, as per a tradition for eldest de Vega sons.

The Unholy Three (1925)

Director: Tod Browning
Writer: Waldemar Young, based on the novel by Tod Robbins
Stars: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch and Matt Moore

Index: That's a Wrap!

There are other legendary collaborations in the silent era, but the standout on the darker side of film was between Lon Chaney and Tod Browning. That didn’t technically begin here, as they’d made a pair of Priscilla Dean movies, The Wicked Darling and Outside the Law, at the turn of the decade, but this was where their partnership as lead actor and director started.

It spanned eight features over five years and I look forward to covering them all. Well, all of the ones still extant, at least. People claim that they’ve found London After Midnight often but, thus far, they’ve all been liars. Here’s to a true discovery soon! Check your attics, folks.

I’m especially fond of this film because it’s based on a novel by Tod Robbins, whose story, Spurs, was filmed by Browning as Freaks. Fans of that film will recognise Harry Earles as one of the trio of crooks who make up the Unholy Three, with Chaney and future Oscar winner Victor McLaglen. The stories aren’t related but do share a common theme in carnival life.

Strike (1925)

Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Writers: Proletkult under the direction of Valerian Pletnev
Stars: First Workers’ Theatre of Proletkult

Index: That's a Wrap!

As propositions go, the series of seven silent Soviet Union propaganda films called Towards Dictatorship of the Proletariat isn’t very high on my priority list. However, only one was made and it was the debut of Sergei Eisenstein, who came out seriously swinging.

After a quote from Lenin about the strength of the working class being organisation, part one of six promises us that “All is calm at the factory”. So far, so boring. However, then the cinematography leaps into action.

There’s a great characterful close up, a tasty dissolve, a delightfully choreographed shot of a busy hallway and a gorgeous high dolly shot through a factory floor. That’s the first twenty seconds. No, I’m not kidding.

The Wizard of Oz (1925)

Director: Larry Semon
Writers: L. Frank Baum, Jr. Leon Lee and Larry Semon, based on the story by L. Frank Baum
Stars: Dorothy Dwan, Oliver Hardy, Curtis McHenry and Larry Semon

Index: That's a Wrap!

While the production values of this take on L. Frank Baum’s classic story don’t come close to the famous 1939 version, there’s a lot here that might surprise. And hey, they’re a heck of a step up from The Patchwork Girl of Oz in 1914, a film written and released by Baum himself!

He died in 1919 so didn’t have a hand in this but his son, credited as L. Frank Baum Jr. even though his name was Frank Joslyn Baum, did. However, it’s hardly faithful in its adaptation, even by the low standards of other versions, including 1939, which changed a lot more than the colour of Dorothy’s slippers. After all, the Wicked Witch of the West only got 26 pages in the original book!

She isn’t in this version at all and I wish that Dorothy wasn’t either. It’s not that namesake Dorothy Dwan isn’t a capable actress; it’s that the character has no substance. When we first set foot in Kansas, a clearly aged Aunt Em and a stunningly rotund Uncle Henry are working their fingers to the bone, while Dorothy has no interest in helping. She isn’t even dressed to help! She flits around gathering flowers and looking precious, as if that’s all the world ever wants. I wanted her to break a nail and pout in the corner, so I could get on with the movie.

Whirlpool of Fate (1925)

Director: Jean Renoir
Writer: Pierre Lestringuez
Stars: Catherine Hessling, Pierre Philippe, Maurice Touzé and Harold Levingston

Index: That's a Wrap!

1925 was the gift that kept on giving when it came to new directors. February saw Josef von Sternberg debut with The Salvation Hunters and René Clair follow him just one week later with The Crazy Ray. March means the debut of Jean Renoir, whose The Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game are often described as the greatest films ever made. If that wasn’t enough, April would introduce Sergei Eisenstein with Strike.

Whirlpool of Fate is a routine melodrama but there are moments to suggest that Renoir had what it took to become notable as a filmmaker the way his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, had became notable as a painter. To be fair, he had co-directed a feature with Albert Dieudonné a year earlier, Catherine, but that wasn’t released until 1927. This second film was seen first and he directed it on his own.

One of those moments arrives at the start of the film, just after we’re introduced to Gudule, the young lady at its heart. She’s on horseback to lead the family barge forward. Her brute of an uncle, Jeff, walks backwards on the barge as it passes the camera at exactly the same speed, making it appear as if he’s making no progress at all. It’s not a particularly difficult shot but it shows how the young Renoir had a keen eye.

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925)

Directors: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack
Writers: Terry Ramsaye and Richard P. Carver
Stars: Haidar Khan and Lufta

Index: That's a Wrap!

Here’s something a little different: a feature film whose première was at the annual dinner of the Explorers Club in New York. Then again, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, a duo best known today for directing King Kong, could be fairly described in 1925 as explorers.

Initially a journalist, Cooper became a pilot, serving in multiple wars. He was shot down in action in the First World War and the Polish-Soviet War, resulting in time spent in German and Soviet POW camps. Marguerite Harrison, an American spy, who he had met in Warsaw, helped him out in the latter.

Back home, he returned to journalism and a job writing articles for Asia magazine, seeking the Missing Link in the Malay archipelago and visiting Ras Tafari in Abyssinia, where footage was shot by Schoedsack. They were grounded by pirates in the Red Sea but escaped, only for the ship to burn in Suez.

Seven Chances (1925)

Director: Buster Keaton
Writers: Jean Havez and Joseph Mitchell, from the play by by Roi Cooper Megrue
Star: Buster Keaton

Index: That's a Wrap!

This is a far more enjoyable feature than its one joke premise ought to warrant. Of course, it’s a Buster Keaton movie, which helps, but he wisely wraps it up early at under an hour and breaks that up into forty minutes of story and a sixteen minute chase scene.

As a story, it’s weak, but, as a warm up to an impeccable chase scene, it’s enjoyable enough. It probably doesn’t hurt that the opening is in early Process 2 Technicolor, which was almost a trend in 1925, with The Phantom of the Opera and Ben-Hur both following suit.

It was no pioneer: the lost 1917 film The Gulf Between was Process 1 Technicolor and The Toll of the Sea in 1922 and Wanderer of the Wasteland in 1924 were Process 2, and others, like The Ten Commandments, had Process 2 sequences. That said, the third Process 2 feature wouldn’t show up until 1926, The Black Pirate.

The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (1925)

Director: René Clair
Writer: René Clair
Stars: Georges Vaultier and Sandra Milovanoff

Index: That's a Wrap!

I’ve already reviewed a 1925 René Clair film for this project, The Crazy Ray, but he shot that a year earlier, along with his debut, a surreal short called Entr’acte. This full length feature continues his love affair with fantastic cinema with a film that plays out like The Invisible Man but with an unusual spiritual twist.

Initially, however, it’s a routine melodrama about a young lady’s hand, which makes the eventual shift all the more wild. She’s Yvonne Vincent and she’s very much in love with her fiancé, Julien Boissel, a successful businessman who’s just as in love with her. Unfortunately, a scurrilous publisher, Gauthier, wants to marry her too and his claim wins out because he has blackmail material on her father, some sort of shady deal he made when he was a diplomat.

There’s a bit more depth than that because Julien has made a major deal as the film begins that all the papers are happy about except the Streets’ Echo, run by—guess who?—Gauthier! So Julien therefore has a pair of grudges against the man about to steal his fiancée.

Lady of the Night (1925)

Director: Monta Bell
Writer: Adela Rogers St. Johns and Alice D. G. Miller
Stars: Norma Shearer, Malcolm Mac Gregor and George K. Arthur

Index: That's a Wrap!

I wasn’t expecting to like Lady of the Night as much as I did, especially as I had seen it before and didn’t rate it highly back in 2006. I’ve also never been a huge fan of Norma Shearer, who was the biggest female star at MGM back then, only partly because she was married to Irving Thalberg, their head of production.

However, she’s highly impressive here in a double role, as the eighteen year old versions of the two babies we meet at the beginning of the film. One is born poor, her father already in handcuffs as her mother names her Molly; Judge Banning soon sentences him to twenty years. The other is born rich, to the very same judge, her name being Florence.

Shearer delineates these two characters in a number of ways and, while I’m still puzzled as to why nobody who meets both ever chooses to comment that they look stunningly alike, I never confused them once, even though they are actively compared often, including in their very first scenes.

The Monster (1925)

Director: Roland West
Writer: Willard Mack and Albert G. Kenyon, based on the play by Crane Wilbur
Stars: Lon Chaney and Johnny Arthur

Index: That's a Wrap!

Here’s an interesting movie, but not for the reasons we expect. I’m up for anything that’s got Lon Chaney in the cast, but he doesn’t do much in this film and he overdoes what little he does. His other two extant 1925 movies are notable for him rather than other people; this one isn’t worth watching for Chaney alone.

However, it’s absolutely worth watching for fans of director Roland West, made before The Bat and The Bat Whispers and outdoing both of them on the old dark house front. In fact, this outdoes The Old Dark House, which wouldn’t be made for another seven years anyway. Once it gets moving, every scene seems to feature at least one and often two or three different old dark house tropes arriving so quickly that we can’t close our eyes in case we miss some.

It does take a little while to get moving and much of that is because, while Chaney was the big name, it’s really a Johnny Arthur vehicle, a comedy horror with him getting scared at any opportunity that arises but somehow making it through to be the hero anyway. In that way, it’s as much a precursor to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as The Old Dark House.

The Swan (1925)

Director: Dmitriy Bukhovetskiy
Writer: Dmitriy Bukhovetskiy, based on the play by Ferenc Molnár
Stars: Adolphe Menjou, Ricardo Cortez and Frances Howard

Index: That's a Wrap!

If The Rag Man was an emotional but highly predictable film for the whole family, then The Swan is all of those things but for women. This is a textbook weepie, the sort of stereotypical picture that men hated and women wept over.

It’s based on a Hungarian play, A hattyú, or The Swan, by Ferenc Molnár, a comedy whose comedy seems to have been lost in translation. On the other hand, it had tragic undercurrents which are emphasised in this version. Some of the scenes almost seem brutal in their tragedy and it’s hard to imagine comedy ever having been associated. And I say that as a devotee of the blackest English humour. I see Kind Hearts and Coronets as an absolute masterpiece. I have no issue with comedy and tragedy co-existing.

The story also seems to be so threadbare as to be archetypal. Was it successful because it’s the originator of a trope? I don’t know. Given that I liked the 1956 remake for its dialogue, a notion helped by actors of the calibre of Grace Kelly, Estelle Winwood and Agnes Moorehead, not to forget Alec Guinness, there to deliver it, I wonder if this struggles because it inherently doesn’t have much dialogue, as a silent movie.

The Rag Man (1925)

Director: Edward F. Cline
Writers: Willard Mack and Robert E. Hopkins
Star: Jackie Coogan

Index: That's a Wrap!

The first entirely MGM outing for child star Jackie Coogan arrived four years after his huge appearance in Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and it borrows from it considerably.

For a start, he’s an orphan again, though he has a place in an orphanage this time out. The catch is that the orphanage is on fire when the film begins and so, rather cleverly, is the title card that tells us that.

He does climb out, using bedsheeets that are tied together but they’re also on fire and they drop him on the ground and wrap around him, so the firemen putting out the flames inadvertently bounce him out to the street, where a cop chases him away because he’s only dressed in a nightshirt.

And so he’s on the loose in New York City, a couple of years younger than Macaulay Culkin was when he made Home Alone II and without a packed wallet that will get him into the Plaza Hotel. Instead he sleeps his first night in the back of a rag man’s horsedrawn cart, in which he also finds a sweater, a pair of trousers and a familiar looking hat. He has to cut the trousers down to size by placing them on tram tracks, but that’s only the first of his bright ideas that works a treat.

The Lost World (1925)

Director: Harry O. Hoyt
Writer: Marion Fairfax, based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
Stars: Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery and Lloyd Hughes

Index: That's a Wrap!

Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this one! I have seen it before, probably more than once, but not for a couple of decades and I’m unsure as to the completeness of those versions. Now, I’m watching as complete a version as exists, a 92 minute composite of eight prints.

It’s the Arthur Conan Doyle story, of course, a pivotal 1912 novel that didn’t invent a genre but did give it a name. It stands up very well as a smooth read free of the excesses of Victorian literature and as an archetypal adventure.

Of course, Hollywood ached to adapt it but a crucial detail needed to be squared away. How were they going to depict the dinosaurs? Well, enter Willis O’Brien, who had been animating them in stop motion since The Dinosaur and the Missing Link in 1915 and the far more advanced The Ghost of Slumber Mountain in 1918. He’s best known today as the animator of King Kong but his work here was just as pioneering.

The Crazy Ray (1925)

Director: René Clair
Writer: René Clair
Stars: Henri Rollan, Albert Préjean, Madeleine Rodrigue, Louis Pré Fils, Antoine Stacquet, Marcel Vallée, Charles Martinelli and Myla Seller

Index: That's a Wrap!

Less than a week after Josef von Sternberg’s debut with The Salvation Hunters, another film legend of the future, René Clair, debuted with this short and unusual science fiction feature, although I believe his second picture, Entr’acte, was released first, in 1924.

It’s usually titled The Crazy Ray in English, a much edited version released as At 3:25, but its original French title translates to Paris Asleep, which carries a lot more depth. As French film tends to do, it asks many questions, but it isn’t particularly interested in answering any. It’s a happy and very cinematic curiosity.

Initially it’s a curiosity because of its dream of a location. Albert wakes up one morning to look out over Paris from a singular point: he’s at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, where he’s presumably working as a night watchman. The views of 1924 Paris from this height are magic andshots of the tower are even better still. The one of him walking down the spiral staircase at its heart while the camera slowly descends alongside him is a thing of beauty indeed.

The Salvation Hunters (1925)

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Writer: Josef von Sternberg
Stars: George K. Arthur, Georgia Hale and Bruce Guerin

Index: That's a Wrap!

After precisely no notable new feature films in January 1925, February started off with one from a complete unknown of a director, Josef von Sternberg.

He was Austro-Hungarian, born in Vienna in 1894 and he would become a major filmmaker, often credited for inventing the gangster film, with 1927’s Underworld, and lauded for a string of important films starring Marlene Dietrich, not least The Blue Angel, Morocco and Shanghai Express, the latter two landing him Oscar nods. Talking of Oscar, he’d also direct Emil Jannings in what would become the very first Academy Award-winning performance for Best Actor, in 1928’s The Last Command.

Needless to say, this picture isn’t up to those standards, but it’s an interesting one, notably artistic and feeling much more European than American, though it was made in Hollywood.

It’s a depressing picture but it’s meant to be. The Great Depression didn’t happen until 1929 but times were tough in the twenties and this film makes them seem even tougher. Tellingly, everything is kept vague, none of the locations or characters given names, and stripping their identities helps us to realise not only that they could be anyone anywhere but also that they simply don’t matter to the world at large.

That's a Wrap!

I've reviewed a lot of silent movies at Apocalypse Later and find that era the purest form of cinema. However many I've watched and reviewed, though, there are always many more that I haven't.

So, in 2023, I decided to add a new centennial project to my roster by reviewing films from 1923 on the hundredth anniversary of their original release dates.

As always, I failed to review anywhere near what I'd have liked in 2023 and especially 2024, but freeing myself up from other responsibilities, I've kept pretty much on schedule in 2025.

And that means that I should be able to publish the 2025 line-up in a zine at the end of the year, but catch up with 2023 and 2024 equivalents later.

Rating System
1 - Abysmal | 2 - Bad | 3 - Poor | 4 - OK | 5 - Good | 6 - Excellent | 7 - Classic

Latest Review (2 Aug 2025)
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
Sally of the Sawdust	1925	5	-	D. W. Griffith	IMDb

1923
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Blizzard	1923	5	5	Mauritz Stiller	IMDb
Mist in the Valley	1923	5	5	Cecil M. Hepworth	IMDb
A Spectre Haunts Europe	1923	4	4	Vladimir Gardin	IMDb
Earth Spirit	1923	4	4	Leopold Jessner	IMDb
The Treasure	1923	5	5	G. W. Pabst	IMDb
Souls for Sale	1923	5	5	Rupert Hughes	IMDb
Safety Last!	1923	7	6	Fred Newmeyer & Sam Taylor	IMDb
Our Hospitality	1923	7	6	Buster Keaton & Jack Blystone	IMDb
The Faithful Heart	1923	4	-	Jean Epstein	IMDb
Anna Christie	1923	4	4	John Griffith Wray	IMDb
The Street	1923	5	4	Karl Grune	IMDb
The Ten Commandments	1923	4	-	Cecil B. De Mille	IMDb

1924
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Finances of the Grand Duke	1924	6	5	F. W. Murnau	IMDb
Wild Oranges	1924	4	4	King Vidor	IMDb
The Marriage Circle	1924	5	5	Ernst Lubitsch	IMDb

1925
Title	Year	H	D	Director(s)	IMDb
The Salvation Hunters	1925	4	4	Josef von Sternberg	IMDb
The Crazy Ray	1925	5	5	René Clair	IMDb
The Lost World	1925	6	6	Harry O. Hoyt	IMDb
The Rag Man	1925	5	5	Edward F. Cline	IMDb
The Swan	1925	3	3	Dimitri Buchowetzki	IMDb
The Monster	1925	5	5	Roland West	IMDb
Lady of the Night	1925	5	5	Monta Bell	IMDb
The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge	1925	5	-	René Clair	IMDb
Seven Chances	1925	5	-	Buster Keaton	IMDb
Whirlpool of Fate	1925	4	-	Jean Renoir	IMDb
Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life	1925	6	-	Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack	IMDb
The Wizard of Oz	1925	5	5	Larry Semon	IMDb
Strike	1925	6	6	Sergei Eisenstein	IMDb
The Unholy Three	1925	6	-	Tod Browning	IMDb
Don Q, Son of Zorro	1925	5	-	Donald Crisp	IMDb
She	1925	2	-	Leander De Cordova	IMDb
The Gold Rush	1925	7	7	Charles Chaplin	IMDb
Sally of the Sawdust	1925	5	-	D. W. Griffith	IMDb