Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.)

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Just Pals (1920)
Topic Started: Jan 1 2008, 10:05 AM (226 Views)
Laughing Gravy
Member Avatar
Look for In The Balcony on Facebook!
[ *  *  * ]
Buck Jones is the town ne'er do well, who comes to the aid of a young boy who's drifting through town and the local schoolma'arm, who has imbezzled the school's building fund to help out her boyfriend, the crooked local banker.

Ford's first Fox film is an impressive little 47-min. comedy/drama, frightfully entertaining. I watched it the day after watching Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), because that latter film's cinematography is a deliberate attempt to recreate the look of silent films, and it seemed appropos to go visit a John Ford film to compare (see how my mind works?). Interestingly, both films feature a profane youngster, Heaven as the narrator and Pals as the kid. Buck Jones has enormous appeal here; he's got a bad crush on the schoolma'arm (Helen Ferguson, whose career didn't survive the coming of talkies). The kid at one point advises Buck, "Why don't you cop her while she's still young and careless?" There's also a comic relief sheriff (Duke Lee, in lots of Ford films), a crooked doctor, and the kind of wild west we'd see in Roy Rogers pictures: when a horse ain't fast enough, take a car. I loved it.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · Silents, Please · Next Topic »
Add Reply