I’ve been immersed in silent movies recently, partly as research for a book but also because I’m fascinated by both the history and the films of this period. Spending more time at home this year has enabled me to take a long, close look at movies made in 1920, exactly one hundred years ago.
It was a particularly fascinating year. The world had just emerged from WWI and a devastating pandemic. Both left a psychological mark especially on defeated Germany, where filmmakers responded with dark folk tales, horror, and expressionism. (And some comedy as well – thank you Ernst Lubitsch!)
In America the mood was lighter. 1920 saw the enactment of Prohibition outlawing the sale or use of alcohol, but despite this – perhaps because of it – Americans were in a party mood. The movie industry, having entered its rebellious teen years, was eager to set the pace. They would have ten more years to whoop it up before the Hays Code came in to regulate movie morals and ruin everyone’s fun.
If American films reflected the concerns of their time, apparently marital infidelity was on everyone’s mind. Romance crossing social classes was also a frequent theme, as were stern warnings about the social repercussions of marrying below your class. Marrying above your class, however, was celebrated, provided you were sincere and not a just a golddigger.
Husband thinks of wife while in the arms of a (gasp!) showgirl!
Also in 1920 scandalously hilarious teen ‘flappers’ burst onto the cultural scene. At that time the word ‘flapper’ referred solely to foolish teenage girls eagerly adopting grownup fashions and habits:, namely smoking, drinking, and the hot pursuit of romance.
In 1920 comedies were still usually shortform (12 to 20 minutes long) but the biggest stars were poised to make the leap into feature-length pictures in 1921. The superstars of the day were Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Roscoe Arbuckle – still one year away from the scandal that destroyed his career.
Chaplin was preoccupied with a messy divorce in 1920, and made no new films, but his partners in the newly formed United Artists were busy:
Doug Fairbanks created a new genre: the swashbuckling adventure-comedy. Mary Pickford continued in the eternally youthful parts her fan base adored. D.W. Griffith had a late-career hurrah with an old-fashioned melodrama, but would never really find his feet again with audiences demanding the new and modern.
Crime dramas were also very popular. One rising star in these was Lon Chaney, who was quickly becoming known as the “man of a thousand faces”.
Performers and plots were frequently borrowed from the stage – Humoresque featured a story and stars from Yiddish vaudeville and Broadway favourite John Barrymore was not above slumming in a horror film. Films had certainly come up in the world, for just eight or nine years earlier theatre actors had shunned film work, certain that an appearance in a ‘flicker’ would end their “legitimate” stage careers.
There were movies for every taste and mood. Wallace Reid made cheeky racecar movies, William S. Hart specialized in violent, morally tormented Westerns, and even the famous escape artist Harry Houdini churned out pulpy adventure pictures – complete with the ethnic stereotypes that sadly were the norm in 1920.
A paternalistic racism is present in many films from this era. Even when storylines included admirable non-white characters, they were more often than not portrayed by white actors in blackface (ie. The Last of the Mohicans, or Griffiths’ two South Seas pictures).
There were a few directors of colour attempting to set the record straight in 1920, most noteworthy being Oscar Micheaux. His films from that year, Within Our Gates and Symbol of the Unconquered, were made specifically in response to Griffith’s Klan-worshipping Birth of a Nation (1915). A vibrant black film industry was developing around that time and throughout the next decades, though unfortunately few of the earliest films survive today.
I’m still hunting down films from 1920, particularly from other countries. I’ve seen some terrific films from Denmark and Sweden, but none from France or Britain yet.
Stay tuned! I hope to write in more detail about specific films and trends in the near future.
[ Where to find the films: I subscribe to the Criterion Channel, but the majority of these can be found on Youtube. ]