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 Young Romance $2.99 There was more to the Silent Era of Film than the sugary Mary Pickford reels and the slapstick of Chaplin, Keaton, and the Keystone Cops. In "Regeneration", Raoul Walsh, who was also an accomplished actor, took a cue from D.W. Griffith and used film as a means to first confront the public with issues that breached contemporary sensitivities, and then present a potential solution and, for good measure, the consequences of ignorance. "Regeneration" (1915) was not shot in an elaborate Hollywood studio, but on the gritty streets of New York. Real tenements and their Dickensian dwellers figure prominently in the background AND the storyline. Owen, a gangster boss, and Marie, a society girl who finds her true calling as a social worker at a slum district settlement house, push each other toward their ultimate destinies: he recognizes the evil of the life he has been leading and 'goes straight', while she becomes of a victim of the violence that she has been selflessly working to eradicate. It's not the type of 'happily ever after' picture that was being churned out by the hundreds during the golden age of filmmaking, and its effect is unsettling even by today's standards. "Regeneration" is especially noteworthy in that the bit players were, for the most part, New York low life. Alternately uplifting and depressing, this movie deserves an upper spot in any list of the previous century's most powerful films. Young Romance $9.99 There was more to the Silent Era of Film than the sugary Mary Pickford reels and the slapstick of Chaplin, Keaton, and the Keystone Cops. In "Regeneration", Raoul Walsh, who was also an accomplished actor, took a cue from D.W. Griffith and used film as a means to first confront the public with issues that breached contemporary sensitivities, and then present a potential solution and, for good measure, the consequences of ignorance. "Regeneration" (1915) was not shot in an elaborate Hollywood studio, but on the gritty streets of New York. Real tenements and their Dickensian dwellers figure prominently in the background AND the storyline. Owen, a gangster boss, and Marie, a society girl who finds her true calling as a social worker at a slum district settlement house, push each other toward their ultimate destinies: he recognizes the evil of the life he has been leading and 'goes straight', while she becomes of a victim of the violence that she has been selflessly working to eradicate. It's not the type of 'happily ever after' picture that was being churned out by the hundreds during the golden age of filmmaking, and its effect is unsettling even by today's standards. "Regeneration" is especially noteworthy in that the bit players were, for the most part, New York low life. Alternately uplifting and depressing, this movie deserves an upper spot in any list of the previous century's most powerful films. |
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