All the Movies Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

I hope you didn’t mind my two recent posts that weren’t a part of the film chronology. I did something similar once before, in October, when I rattled off a list of my favorite monster movies, and I may do it again. Who knows? Fear not, however, if you are only here for the films, as nearly every time I post, it will be a podcast about the next film on my list.

Meanwhile, I feel I need to reiterate the reason this podcast exists, as my article about saving cinema attracted a large number of new subscribers. I fear the new listeners may be disappointed when they find out I don’t normally write articles about the world of film, and am instead watching my way chronologically through a list of films, and then sharing my thoughts about each film. Soooo… welcome, new subscribers! I hope you are interested in my thoughts regarding very, very old movies, as at this point, I’m only up to the films of 1916 in my list.

Speaking of that list, it has now grown to 3,845 films. Today I’m covering film number 76 in that list. Even if I were to pick up the pace considerably and cover 200 films per year, and not add any new films to the list, this project will still take me at least another 20 years. I hope I live long enough to finish! And I hope everyone reading this lives long enough to celebrate with me when I finally reach the films of 2025!

If it seems like I’m rambling rather than discussing today’s film, well, perhaps I am. It’s another Charlie Chaplin short. It’s a fine and funny comedy, and as before I’m growing more fond of Chaplin’s work, but there isn’t much to it.

What’s the film about? A top-hatted and tuxedoed Chaplin returns home after a night of drinking, and offers up 25 minutes of sight gags involving him climbing up and falling down stairs, dealing with a revolving table, tripping over rugs, lighting a cigarette, pulling out a Murphy bed, and various other impediments standing between him and a good night’s sleep.

See? Now you know why I was stalling for time at the beginning. I’ve got nothing more to say about today’s movie. I promise the next episode will be much more interesting, as the film deals with a very salacious and juicy topic— heroin addiction!

You can watch One A.M., and 11 other Chaplin shorts, on the same Blu-ray that I own. You can click the picture below to purchase a copy. I do not make any money if you buy one, just so you know.

Next I’m watching The Devil’s Needle [1916], directed by Chester Withey.

I know that in my last podcast I promised another Chaplin movie was coming next, but that was before I discovered the film The Half-Breed, which, as luck would have it, comes exactly next in the chronology. Starring Douglas Fairbanks, The Half-Breed was released 20 days after The Vagabond, and 8 days before One A.M. It was almost as if fate decreed that I find the movie just in time to include it in my podcast. Serendipity, am I right?

Not so fortuitous were my discoveries of two other Douglas Fairbanks films, The Good Bad-Man and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish. However, as both were released in 1916, in April and June respectively, I decided to watch all three and talk about them together today, in much the same way that I watched some of Norma Talmadge’s older short films before talking about Going Straight. This is, after all, my first encounter with Fairbanks, who is a bona fide screen legend, so it’s only reasonable that I go back and watch a couple of his prior films to help me better understand who he was.

I’m also turning to a friend who knows far more about silent films than I do. That’s Dante. Today, Dante is joining me on the podcast to talk about Douglas Fairbanks in general, and these three films in particular. If you want to hear Dante’s thoughts, be sure to listen to the audio version of this article!

First off, I’ll share my thoughts on the three films. Douglas Fairbanks is a Hollywood legend. He was considered to be one of the four biggest stars of his age, and of any age, really, along with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and William S. Hart. As such, I’ve been looking forward to seeing what he was all about. Will he be like Pickford and Hart— movie stars that instantly stunned me with their screen presence and talent? Or more like Chaplin, who has taken awhile to grow on me? Let’s find out!

First up, I watched The Good Bad-Man. Fairbanks plays an outlaw who is actually a good man. Honestly, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the film, and if I didn’t know that Fairbanks was destined to become I would not have identified him as a future star. It played like a William S. Hart knockoff, and Fairbanks seems out of place. He’s meant to be a tough gunslinger in the Wild West, but he came across to me as more of a middle-aged dad cosplaying as a cowboy. The film isn’t terrible, and neither is he, by any stretch, but nothing about it is great. Unlike early Chaplin films, where I don’t like Chaplin’s persona, I very much like Fairbanks’ demeanor and screen presence. The only issue is that he seems out of place in a Western, and very much as if her were trying to mimic Hart, who by this point had mastered the role of a good bad-man. I want to rewatch The Bargain again after seeing this, if only to see perhaps the finest cinematic good bad-man of all time.

Next I watched The Mystery of the Leaping Fish and saw Fairbanks play an very different sort of character. No longer a cowboy, Fairbanks is now a drug-addled super-detective named Coke Ennyday. True to his name, he snorts coke, and shoots up heroin, any and every day, while solving crimes for the Secret Service. This short film has him on the tail of some Chinese smugglers, whom he pursues and eventually apprehends using heroin and opium the way Popeye uses spinach. His hopping around while “hopped up” dance is entertaining, as is everything in this short, silly film that feels like the seed from which things like Cheech & Chong no doubt sprung.

Finally, I watched The Half-Breed. This is the winner of the bunch. It’s a fully formed, well-shot movie. The camera lingers on some beautiful long shots, and moves when necessary, something that still hasn’t become common in the films I’ve seen from this period. Many still set up and shoot as if they are filming a stage play, but not Dwan. He’s clearly taken a page from Griffith’s handbook, and knows how to use camera motion to enhance the action on the screen.

I watched all three of these films on YouTube, and have shared the videos below.

This where I’d normally end my podcast, and it’s where the written portion of this entry ends, but if you listen to the recorded version , you’ll hear what Dante has to say. He has some great insights about all three films, as well as the life and career of the great Douglas Fairbanks. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Next I’m watching One A.M. [1916], directed by Charles Chaplin.

There isn’t much to this film, but it’s important to keep in mind that I’ve been on a run of some really solid films of late, and all things considered this one isn’t half bad. Compared to the average films of its era it’s probably a little bit better than average, but when stacked up against some of my recent entries, it’s a bit lacking The best thing it has going for it is Lilian Gish, but this is not her at her best.

The story is straight-forward. It begins in Russia, where Marfa (Gish) is living with her aunt and uncle. Their only interest in her is financial, as they intend to sell her as a bride to the highest bidder. She wants no part in their business venture, and wishes she could marry Jan, the handsome young man she met a few months back. He’s recently returned from America. Unfortunately, he’s broke, so instead she’s sold to a rather repugnant fellow. The film’s best scene comes when he approaches Marfa as she sits with her friend. She grabs his bottle of vodka and beats him with it before chasing him off. Her facial expressions during this sequence are as good as any I’ve seen in a silent film to date. You can view the scene below.

When the marriage day arrives, Marfa refuses. Next she ends up betrothed to a military official, but she clobbers him and flees the scene. He survives, but before they can find Marfa, she and her family have fled to a nearby port city and boarded a ship bound for America. Who else is onboard? Jan, of course! Her family still wants to profit by selling her off, so when they arrive in the States, they dupe him, leaving him in San Francisco while they head to Los Angeles. He eventually finds out that’s where they went, and heads to L.A. and starts hunting for her in the Russian part of town.

Meanwhile, Jan has again been sold to a bachelor bidder, but escapes. She finds a policeman, but he doesn’t speak Russian and ends up bringing her back to the family. All seems lost once the ceremony is taking place, but Jan shows up just in time. He’s brought the police, who have been cracking down on Russian brides for sale, and the entire corrupt family ends up in jail, leaving Marfa and Jan free to be together.

Again, though this isn’t a bad film, it’s nothing special. I don’t know that I’ll watch it again anytime soon, though I do have it on a DVD, so perhaps one day I’ll revisit it. It’s the first film from William Christy Cabanne that I’ve watched, and while he directed 167 films during a career that spanned 1912 to 1948, this is the only film of his I have on my list to watch. He does have some co-director credits here and there, so I will encounter his work again here and there, most notably on the 1925 blockbuster epic Ben-Hur. Fred Niblo is credited as the director of that film, but Cabanne is one of four others who co-directed, but weren’t credited at the time.

Perhaps someone reading this can recommend a Cabanne film that I should add to my list? I’m always open to suggestions, and I am certain that I’ve missed many important films while compiling my list of films to watch. The list is available to all paid subscribers, by the way. Or, to anyone who asks nicely.

Next I’m watching Shoe Palace Pinkus [1916], directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

Giovanni Pastrone’s ground-breaking epic Cabiria has been one of the best films I’ve watched so far as a part of this podcast, so I was looking forward to seeing another film that he directed. I had no idea what to expect from this film, as even its title, The Fire, is vague. A film with that title could be about nearly anything. As it turns out, this one is about an incendiary relationship between a poet and a painter.

The original Italian title of the film is Il Fuoco (la Favilla - la Vampa - la Cenere), which translates to The Fire (the Spark, the Blaze, the Ash). That’s a solid title, as the film depicts a relationshp that grows from a spark of mutual interest into a blazing inferno of passion, and ultimately ends up in ashen ruins. In other words, the fire is a metaphor, which makes sense for a film about a poet.

I neither loved nor hated this film. I may have felt somewhat letdown due to my own expectations, as I thought this would be another epic-scale action drama along the lines of Cabiria, but that’s my own fault for pigeonholing Pastrone as a director who only made epics. No director makes only epics. Even D.W. Griffith made small-scale dramas.

The story is fairly simple. The main character, a painter of humble background, heads out to a lake to paint, where he encounters a woman writing poetry. They hit it off, and start spending time together. She’s wealthy and married, but living a wild life, and he abandons his mother to move into her mansion. They have a passionate affair, until one morning he wakes up after a bender to find the mansion abandoned. She’s moved out. He’s inconsolable, and eventually tracks her down at a high society party, only to find her with her husband. She pretends not to know him, and he has a nervous breakdown. The film ends with him in a nuthouse folding paper animals, while she continues to enjoy her wealthy lifestyle.

The Fire would pair well on a double feature with a A Fool There Was, as both deal with the then-popular topic of the female vampire, who seduces and discards men, leaving them broken-down shells of who they once were. I enjoyed A Fool There Was more, partly because Theda Bara made for a far more intriguing lead than Pina Menichelli, who plays the vampire in this one. I did enjoy the fire metaphor and imagery in this film, which made for clever, and at times almost surreal, visual effects.

This film was a little bit tricky to track down. I couldn’t find it on any sort of physical media, and it doesn’t seem to be on YouTube. The only place I was able to find it online is at the Internet Archive, where you can watch it, too.

Next I’m watching: Sold for Marriage [1916], directed by Christy Cabanne.

I mentioned in the last episode that I would be going back and editing past posts to include the director in each episode’s subtitle. While doing so, I realized that a few episodes were inadvertently marked as viewable only by paid subscribers to my Substack. As I have no paid subscribers, that means they were invisible to one and all.

Before I start putting up new episodes, I’m going to go back and fix those old ones and share them, so you will see some “new” posts that are actually old posts pop up before I resume sharing new episodes.

Hello strangers! (And a few folks I know.) Season 2 of All the Movies is here, which means I am about to start putting up some more podcasts of the movies I’ve been watching. We left off in early 1916, and we’ll pick up there with an Italian film in the next installment, which will be the 59th film I’ve watched thus far.

Before I put up that new episode, I’m going to edit the past posts to include the name of the director of each film. I usually mentioned the director, but it seems like something that I should highlight, so I’m replacing the somewhat pointless, though occasionally pithy, subtitles on past posts with the name the film’s director, and will continue to include that information in all future titles.

As a quick refresher, this podcast exists as a way for me to better remember the details about the films I watch. I also have an account on Letterboxd where I share lists of the films I watch, and some other neat stuff. You can also read this older post if you’d like to know more about why I launched this podcast.

And even though I initially created this Substack for my own personal use, now that people have subscribed, I hope y’all can converse with one another in the comments. Please use it as a place to get to know other fans of cinema. Especially at this early stage in the podcast, when all the films discussed are silent and over 100 years old, the odds of finding another person who shares your interest in esoteric film are probably better here than anywhere else online. In today’s world, where everything is online, opportunities to find likeminded individuals are few and far between, especially for stuff like old movies. Take advantage. Converse among yourselves!

William S. Hart continues to be the best discovery I’ve made so far during this project. I knew virtually nothing about him before I watched The Bargain, and by virtually nothing I mean his name was vaguely familiar to me as belonging to someone who acted in Westerns. I did not expect to enjoy his films, and in fact, didn’t have any on the original list I made the day I came up with the idea for this podcast. It was only after I’d started watching my way through the list that I came upon The Bargain in a book about silent films, and learned that Hart was one of the legends of the silent era that I knew I needed to give him a chance. I’m glad I did!

Hell’s Hinges is the third Hart film I’ve watched to this point, and while The Bargain remains my favorite, Hell’s Hinges is a solid effort. This time around, Hart plays Blaze Tracy, the toughest guy in a lawless town.

When the film opens, we meet Bob Henley, played by Jack Standing, who I last saw as Landry in the delightful Fanchon the Cricket. At his mother’s insistence, he’s become a priest. He’s ill suited for the lifestyle, but his mother is immensely proud of his decision. The higher-ups in the church realize he’s likely to succumb to the temptations of big city life, so they assign him to a church in a tiny western town. He heads west, accompanied by his sister Faith, played by Clara Williams. She was Nell, Hart’s love interest, in The Bargain, and again there are sparks between the two of them. Frank Burke, the sheriff in The Bargain, and who also had a small role in Civilization shows up as Zeb.

Upon arriving in the town of Hell’s Hinges, the Henley siblings are “greeted” by a rowdy mob, led by Blaze. He has been asked by Silk Miller, the owner of the saloon, to run them out of town, and has promised to scare the reverend to death. Circumstances immediately change, as it’s love at first sight when Blaze sets his eyes on Faith. While that situation is a cinematic cliché, it’s believable here. We’ve all experienced what Blaze does at least once or twice in our lives, and the initial meeting between Blaze and Faith exudes chemistry and realism in a way that one seldom sees onscreen.

Needless to say, Silk and the rest of the town rowdies don’t see it that way, and are appalled that the meanest, toughest scoundrel in town has suddenly given up drinking and shooting, and is instead attending church. Undeterred, Silk quickly realizes that Bob Henley is not the most virutous of priests, so he invites him to give a private sermon to the dancehall girls. One in particular, Dolly, has been instructed to seduce Henley, and she handles her task with aplomb. The scene of the two of them drinking and canoodling is hilarious. Sure enough, he gets drunk and spends the night with her, and oversleeps. His congregation sets out to find him, and are dismayed when they do.

The disgraced reverend has quickly taken to the bottle, to the point where Blaze must ride to the next town to find him a doctor. Meanwhile, Henley proves far more devoted to the drinking life than he ever was to the cloth, and immediately takes up with the saloon crowd. He and his new friends get drunk and decide to burn down the church, leading to a brilliant battle between the mob and the church-goers, during which Henley is killed.

Blaze returns too late to stop the destruction. In the film’s best scene, he creeps up to the saloon, wherein lays an ambush, but he realizes this and kicks in the door with guns blazing and in a scene similar to one that would play out 76 years later in Unforgiven, wins a saloon shootout against overwhelming odds. After killing Silk, Blaze does what Eastwood only threatens to do, and burns the entire town of Hell’s Hinges to embers, after which he and Faith light out to start a life together.

I watched this on a DVD, though the quality wasn’t great. I found a version on Youtube that actually looks a lot better than the DVD copy.

Next I’m watching The Fire [1916], directed by Giovanni Pastrone.

I watched this film entirely because it’s Ernst Lubitsch’s oldest surviving film. I’ve enjoyed a number of his talkies, and was excited to see some of his early work, and while this isn’t on par with his later efforts, it includes some clever moments.

The story is fun, and you may find it familiar. We meet our protagonist, played by director Lubitsch, who lives with his wife and mother-in-law. One night, he leaves dinner early to participate in a game of chess. He’s in a chess club, and he is playing in the final match of the club’s tournament. His opponent is extremely slow, at one point taking hours to make a single move. Eventually, our hero wins the game, but at the cost of his marriage, for his mother-in-law has locked him out. He spends the night asleep on the steps of his own home, and is shooed away for good in the morning; the mother-in-law has convinced her daughter to leave the marriage.

Now living in some sort of residential hotel, the man sees a help wanted ad his mother-in-law has run in the paper. She’s looking for a new butler, a fact which inspires him to concoct a plan. He writes a suicide note, then goes to his barber, where he’s given a wig. Apparently, the wig is disguise enough, and he’s hired by his wife and mother-in-law who fail to recognize him. None of the staff do either, and he seamlessly integrates himself into the household. If you think this sounds a lot like the plot of Mrs. Doubtfire, you aren’t alone. That was my thought, too.

After thwarting the amorous attempts of a suitor towards his presumed-widow, he is asked to escort the mother-in-law on a shopping excursion. On the car ride home, she makes a pass at him. As he’s about to kiss her, he removes the wig. Aghast, she begs him never to tell anyone about their near-tryst, and he promises on the condition that she move out and never come back. She agrees, and he sends her packing. To the delight of the staff of servants, and his wife, he has returned home.

The film was considered lost until an almost complete copy was found in Slovenia in 1994. Happily it can again be watched, though to my knowledge it’s not available on DVD or Blu-ray, so I watched on YouTube.

Next I’m watching Hell’s Hinges [1916], directed by Charles Swickard, William S. Hart and Clifford Smith.

This is a Fatty Arbuckle film I’d not seen before. Granted, I’m very unfamiliar with his work, having seen but a few of his shorts in the past, but nonetheless, this isn’t the sort of role I’m familiar with for him. This is one of his earlier films, so perhaps he hadn’t yet gone the fully comedic route, though this short film is a comedy.

The story is simple, at least at first. A married couple is getting dressed for dinner. They’re a wealthy couple, Arbuckle plays a doctor, so I suppose it makes sense that he is putting on his tuxedo for a dinner at home with his wife, played by Mabel Normand, who is also dressed to the nines. The plan is altered by the arrival of a telegram: the wife’s childhood bestie is coming for dinner. She’s elated, Arbuckle less so, especially once he learns they were sweet on each other as children. Despite it being an innocent thing— they were small children at the time— Arbuckle is jealous, and spends the evening keeping them away from one another.

The trio enjoy a decadent dinner, replete with rich, filling foods, the highlight of which are some massive lobsters. Normand remarks that no one will sleep easily after such a sumptuous feast, and no doubt all three would have spent the evening suffering from indigestion had an adventure not broken out in the meantime, for as dinner winds down, and post-prandial digestifs are being consumed, we learn that a couple crooks are casing the house.

One of the would-be robbers pretends to be injured to get inside, but Arbuckle sees through the ruse before the thief can break into his safe, and tosses him out. Undeterred, the robbers call the doctor and tell him he’s needed for an emergency, causing him to speed off to a nonexistent accident. When he gets there and realize he’s been duped, he immediately believes his wife and her friend sent him off so they can be alone together. Instead, they are beset by the robber, who has broken into the house.

From here the film shifts gears, and devolves into a series of chases and pratfalls along the lines of what one expects from a Keystone Cops short, then promptly shifts gears again, this time into much darker territory. Arbuckle returns home just after the robber has been chased away, so he sees his wife and her friend together and assumes the worst. He throws the friend out of a window, but once he lands two stories below the scene shifts to his bed. It seems the friend has dreamt the entire thing. Or has he? We cut back to Arbuckle and Normand. Still blinded by rage, he strangles her then staggers out of the room. Except she’s not dead! She picks up his discarded pistol, follows him out of the room, and shoots him as he is descending the stairs. Arbuckle falls to his death. Except he doesn’t. He, too, wakes up, having fallen asleep in his office chair. He races upstairs to check on his wife, and encounters the friend, who is doing likewise after the apparently shared nightmare.

Together the reminisce about the lobster dinner— those pesky crustaceans!— and share a laugh and a handshake. Friends at last! A fine end to a fine film!

Arbuckle is masterful with his gestures and facial expressions, and comes off as very versatile. He is quite menacing at times, while at others he exudes a boyish charm. He can take a pratfall as easily as he can strangle his wife. Best of all, he never overdoes it, all the while gliding across the screen in a svelte manner that belies his girth.

I watched this on YouTube, and have linked it below so you can enjoy it, too.

Next I’m watching Where Is My Treasure? [1916], directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

This is the second John H. Collins film I’ve watched, and as before, he did not disappoint. He and William S. Hart are without a doubt the biggest discoveries I’ve made so far in this podcast. I’d never heard of him when I started this podcast, but since watching Children of Eve I’ve been looking forward to the next time one of his pictures came up in the rotation. I wrote more about Collins when I wrote about Children of Eve, but the most notable fact, sadly, is that he died young, at age 28, in the 1918 flu pandemic, and what would almost certainly have been an outstanding body of cinematic work was cut woefully short.

Much smaller scale than Children of Eve, The Innocence of Ruth is nonetheless a fine film. It again stars Viola Davis, wife of the director, this time as a Ruth, a young girl whose father dies shortly after being cleaned out in the stock market by the villainous Mortimer Reynolds. With his dying wish, Ruth’s father beseeches his friend, a millionaire investor named Jimmy Carter, to take on his daughter as his ward.

Wards must have been a big thing in the early 1900s, as they pop up constantly in these early films. Apparently, when young girls lost her parents back then there was always a friendly millionaire nearby to take them in and see that they received a proper upbringing. Despite being something of a party animal— when we first meet Jimmy he’s waking up mid-afternoon after a night of debauching— he brings Ruth home with him, vowing to take good care of her. Ruth has different plans. She immediately wants to pretend she and Jimmy are married, and even steals a kiss from him. He’s mortified, and heads off for a night of drunken debauchery. Yet, whilst out with his friends, and with a proto-flapper sitting in his lap, Jimmy finds his thoughts drifting back home to Ruth.

While this is happening, Reynolds decides that driving Ruth’s father into bankruptcy and early grave wasn’t enough, and that he now wants to steal Ruth’s innocence. He plots with his live-in… what is she? It’s unclear, but Edna, an older woman, lives with Reynolds as a sort of gold-digger. He’s openly funding her lavish lifestyle, but seems to take no romantic, or sexual, interest in her whatsoever, even going so far as to dismiss her advances towards him. Whatever she is to him, together they connive to get Ruth under his influence, and the first step is to drive a wedge between her and Jimmy. They do so through Edna telling Ruth that she’s nothing but a gold-digger like herself, and that she’s leeching of of Jimmy. Ruth gravitates towards Edna and Mortimer for solace, not realizing what they have planned for her.

The story moves on to show that Reynolds, who has ruined so many in the market, has been ruined himself. In a last-ditch effort to regain financial solvency, he forges Jimmy’s signature on some documents, and uses them to secure a $10,000 bank loan. The bank finds out about the fraud, however, and sends policemen out to find Reynolds.

Reynolds is unaware that he’s been discovered, and goes home to find Edna and Ruth together. With a sinister smile, he joins Edna, who has already been encouraging Ruth to drink, and together they get her drunk. Edna starts having second thoughts, so Reynolds send her aware, then traps Ruth in his bedroom. Just when Reynolds is about to rape poor Ruth, Jimmy storms in and rescues her. Reynolds knocks Jimmy out and flees to his office, where he is confronted by the police. He shoots and kills one officer before the other kills him.

Meanwhile, both Ruth and Jimmy have recovered, and in an incredibly sweet final scene, they make up and fall in love. The film ends with Ruth climbing onto a chair and beckoning Jimmy to come closer. She opens her arms to give him a big hug, and then Collins does something I’d not yet seen in a film: he freezes the frame. Our final image is Viola Davis, arms wide, smiling and waiting for Edward Earle to come her way.

I’m a sucker for a great ending, and when a really good movie closes with a perfect scene, I’m sold. I can’t wait for the next time Collins shows up in the queue, which won’t be too long. He released another movie in 1916, The Cossack Whip, so we don’t have too long to wait.

Next I’m watching He Did and He Didn’t [1916], directed by Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle.