DVD Review: Harry Langdon in Three's a Crowd and The Chaser

Harry Langdon will be forever stuck in fourth place in the canon of silent film comics, always trailing Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. Still, he endures, his childlike, slightly sad face and his eye for the slightly perverse never losing their power.

This Kino set collects the first two films he directed, two gems that, ironically, failed at the box office and helped begin a career slide from which he never recovered. To view them today is to be puzzled as to why they did so poorly. Maybe, given that they were released in 1927 and 1928 respectively, a nation in the onset of Depression was not interested in the gentle melancholy of Three's a Crowd or The Chaser.

In Three's a Crowd, Langdon's directorial debut, he plays a bumbling employee of a moving company who can't seem to get anything right. He lives in a shack on top of an apartment building in a run-down neighborhood, and the only access to his room is an insanely long, warped staircase aside the building. He longs for a wife and family, and his boss' wife takes pity on him. One day during a snowstorm he takes in a freezing pregnant woman (Gladys McConnell) who has just left her drunken husband. Langdon nurses her and rallies the neighborhood women to help birth the child. A neighborhood palm reader tells him his troubles are over and the he will win her heart.

As he helps the young mother and child gain strength, it seems that Harry indeed has found true love. And the woman herself comes to love him as well, to the point where, when the penitent husband returns, she wants to stay with Harry -- provided he win a boxing match against the husband. He loses, and the winner eventually collects his prize, a reunion for which Harry has a front row seat.

There are a couple moments of heartbreaking genius at the end of the film. As the woman is embracing her husband before they leave Langdon's apartment, he watches them, puzzled, resigned. He does a double take look at his left hand, suddenly remembering his "fortune." As they leave, and she with her coat over her shoulders, he gently reaches out and grabs an empty sleeve, and shakes it briefly. There is so much power and humanity in those gestures to fuel a hundred films. Now alone, he walks through the neighborhood, a brick in his hand. He stands in front of the palm reader's window, trying to gain the nerve to toss it through. He wimps out, though, and as he tosses the brick away he sets off a chain reaction that causes a huge barrel to crash into the shop and destroy it.

Just as innovative, 1928's The Chaser was daring for its time. Langdon is a night owl whose carousing ways piss off his wife and her shrewish mother to the point that they take him to court for trying to stab the mother (he actually brushed her in the ass with a sword while hiding under a table). The judge sentences him to live one month with the roles of himself and his wife reversed, or face prison time.

When next we see Langdon, he is in house frock behind the house, trying to coax an egg from one of the hens for breakfast for his impatient -- and professionally dressed -- wife. Given the times, the censors would not permit a woman to wear pants, so she has a skirt below her jacket and tie. She leaves for "work," at a social club for women, while he is left to fight off amorous salesmen -- two of whom kiss Langdon on the way out.

There is also a veiled allusion to impotence, as a salesman comes to collect a bill for a baby carriage. After consulting with his wife on the phone, he tells the salesman to take it away -- they won't be needing it. In a fit despair over his fate, he contemplates killing himself, but neither a gun (the one he shoots is a water pistol) or poison (he drinks castor oil instead of the glass of poison next to it) work, so he decides to rebel and go golfing with a friend.

They come upon a group of girls in bathing suits frolicking with beach balls. Through either fear of his wife or a sense of duty to her, he returns home. His wife returns home in the meantime and finds the suicide note and the messy kitchen, and though she thinks he has killed himself, her mother convinces her to drive around looking for him. They eventually return, to be met by a ghost -- the flour-covered Langdon. They tentatively embrace, with Langdon's skewed smile implying an enjoyment both of the reunion and of having scared her.

These two films show an artist at peak, willing to take chances, willing to expand the possibilities of his famous persona, willing to risk his audience by exploring new depths. Thus, Harry Langdon triumphs on all counts in these films. Despite their contribution to his career demise, they can be seen now as personal films with more heart and humanity than anything that has been at your local googolplex in years.

Three's a Crowd and The Chaser is available from Kino Video.

DVD Review: Sideshow Still Alive

Sideshow Still Alive takes two paths to what it hopes is the same story. One is a thumbnail history of the sideshow, from its origins in drawing rooms full of anatomical curiosities collected by the rich to exhibit for friends--and then to paying customers--to the carnival and the modern, hip freak show. This part of the film is mostly propelled by talking heads and vintage clips, yet it is strangely more compelling than the live action. It provides a somewhat poignant look at those anatomical and mentally challenged oddities who came to be called Freaks, and how, ironically they found a place of acceptance while still being exploited for money.

The bridge into the second path lies in the present day geeks, those repulsive/attractive masochists who eat razors, swallow swords, push power drills into their noses, and drink bile from the stomach of geeks who have regurgitated. The geeks represent that shock and awe that have always been a part of the sideshow. What they contribute to the sideshow is bizarre talent; their bodies are not deformed, they are manipulated to be able to perform outrageous acts. They embody the test of will and stamina that allows us who have not been as willing to test ourselves have a vicarious share in the feat.

Thus establishing a bridge of authenticity to the modern sideshow, the film becomes more problematic. These modern freaks are freaks of a different kind. Born from the ironic and self-aware punk scene, their abnormalities are self-inflicted, having chosen to tattoo their entire bodies, file their teeth into fangs, implant ridges into their foreheads, etc. Interviews with these performers tend to focus more on their explaining why they look the way they do than on any real insight into why they chose the profession. For a group that seems defiant about their choices, they seem overly defensive, to the point of trying to say that earlier sideshow attractions, like them, also chose their lot, that a dwarf has always had the choice to live away from the carnival as more or less a regular person, or to work for the sideshow, choosing to be a freak. Clearly, however, modern acts like Enigma (completely tattooed in blue and white puzzle pieces) could have gone into other lines of work pre-body enhancement; dwarves in the 1930s could not. The psychology of body-manipulation is not explored, nor, really, is the dark side of exploitation of sideshow performers of the past. In the context of the new sideshow, maybe, that would seem to undercut point of the show now being for the hip and jaded.

There are attempts to connect our perverse Jerry Springer/reality TV/forensic dissection culture with the perpetual need for sideshow thrills, though they overlook an obvious example of that. A hundred years ago the strong man of the sideshow was a freak; today he is an ideal. Likewise the painfully skinny girl. That tension between exploitation and entertainment would have been a rich vein to mine, but the film only approaches it to exonerate modern freaks from charges of their own brand of exploitation.

Director Juan C. Lopez tries to keep the pace whimsical, though he lingers over some performances and flies through others. There is also the misstep of a short montage of wounded soldiers, set to carnival music. This happens right after a historian mentions that deformity by war was always a taboo in the sideshow. No one would call a scarred soldier a freak, or ask him to join a show. Lopez seems to want to break that taboo, but it doesn’t work. It deflates an implied narrative that performers are not exploited, that even the pinheads and dwarves and human torsos were performers by choice. This film ultimately tries too hard to make that point, and never makes it.

DVD Review: Frontrunner: The Afghan Woman who Surprised the World

These days, social documentaries stick to a few simple formulas. One is to show the process of social reform in relation to whatever sorry, formidable or oppressive state of affairs that exist, and show accord with the reformists even if the odds are against these changes succeeding.

Frontrunner: The Afghan Woman who Surprised the World (2007), which premiered at the 14th annual Slamdance Film Festival, follows Dr. Massouda Jalal, a pediatrician and teacher who ran for president of Afghanistan in 2004, as she walks the political fault lines between patriarchy, militancy, and the better financed political machine of the eventual winner, President Hamid Karzai.

As a case study, Frontrunner examines the kind of investment needed to make democracy take root in a difficult cultural terrain and explores the process of building a political framework that allows women to develop social and political power. For this documentary, there is no debate. Democracy is a necessary condition for women to voice their concerns in their own country, for theocratic governments create male hegemonies that are reinforced by tribal politics. Although Frontrunner focuses on democracy as a political mechanism, it also argues that democracy is a moral instrument, one that allows all groups to express their political wills regardless of factional affiliations.

As a political candidate, Jalal ventures bravely into the agora, breaking new ground by making arguments to legitimize her position. Her rhetorical exegesis is to use examples from democratic countries with significant Muslim populations (Turkey, Indonesia, India) that have or have had women leaders. Once she is in the thick of her candidacy, she works tirelessly in her campaign, giving interviews and speeches to interested but sometimes skeptical audiences. Here, the spoken word is the primacy of political power, particularly in a culture with stunning illiteracy rates.

Clearly, the film's purpose is to create an empathic understanding of Jalal, to see Afghanistan from her perspective, and to understand her run for the presidency. In a few scenes, the documentary adopts Jalal and her husband's criticisms of Karzai to illustrate his political advantages, ones that come from the kind of tribalism that, for the film, is antithetical to democratic practices. These points may be fair, and there's lots to admire about the film's focus, but Frontrunner suffers from some simple problems.

To develop a better understanding of its subject, the film should have composed a more substantive portrait of Jalal rather than just focusing on her political identity. Frontrunner skimps on explaining those important aspects that have helped shape her political perspective. What are her views on philosophy, theology and, even, parenthood, aspects which an academic would be prepared to answer? Quite curiously, the documentary makes little attempt to explain Jalal's view of the paradigm shift that accorded her the freedom to run for office.

These expository problems are compounded when the documentary begins a bit confusingly with Afghanistan's 2002 election for the interim presidency because the process by which Jalal decides to run is edited too statically to understand fully. In media res plunks us down into a confusing election process. Certainly, this confusion is deliberate, but the documentary over relies on multiple voices to explain the competing confusions.

What is clear, however, is that the film isn't afraid to argue that the work for women relies on the labor of men. From her husband, her vice presidential candidates (she has two) and her media staff, males work tirelessly to contribute to her candidacy. In this sense, the documentary works best when showing how political majorities help minorities understand the full benefits of citizenry. Though Jalal failed in her bid (she placed sixth), Frontrunner illustrates how a force of people are trying to change long-established cultural norms by altering social practices, and such changes begin with the freedom to act on one's personal beliefs.

In this sense, the documentary offers an interesting argument. Quite boldly, the film asserts that a political identity developed within a democracy leads to legitimate claims to power whereas an identity conceived outside of democracy leads to extremism. This kind of partisanship is but one facet of how the film identifies with Jalal. But because Middle Eastern affairs are complicated and dense, Frontrunner, unfortunately, relies on a simple dualism to compose its narrative -- where good things happen here and bad things are over there -- as a pedagogical resolve.

This didactic scheme of antithesis is useful when teaching audiences about what particular view or practice is best, but effective social documentaries should move beyond binaries by giving more insight and reflection on complex cultural matters by analyzing the dialectical relationships between individual choice and group behavior, politics and culture, and even religion and modernity. Though such juxtapositions are tried by the filmmakers, Frontrunner cuts too many thematic corners to achieve the substance the filmmakers clearly desire.

Finally, Frontrunner sees the effort of finding a public voice for women as an important struggle, so given what's at stake, the documentary takes this interesting subject and muffles its intellectual appeal by embracing a simple didacticism that never moves beyond composing a one-dimensional profile of a complicated woman. Despite these problems, the documentary does allow us to comprehend the immense difficulties of political reform in a culture held together by tribal customs and still suffering from the catastrophic effects of Taliban rule.

DVD Review: Tangier Treehouse

Tangier Treehouse (2007) offers a brief sketch of some Arab boys attending a vocational school in the second most famous city in Morocco. The kids from the Darna Youth Center must overcome linguistic barriers as well as generational differences when three middle-aged westerners arrive to help supervise the building of a tree house.

Most interestingly, this youth center is divided into different vocations (cooking, metal work, carpentry, etc.), offering students the opportunity to learn skills that enhance their chances of staying alive in an economy hemorrhaging young people to drugs, idleness and Europe. Despite some mild bickering among the boys, everybody seems to be good natured, spirited and focused.

The film contrasts these students with some sportily-dressed but aimless street youths, all of whom dream of leaving Morocco, by revealing some troubling statistics: "a third of young males are unemployed" and "30,000 Moroccans emigrate illegally to Europe every year." Daunting data to be sure. Though these statements, among other factors, lend some plausibility to the Eurabian thesis, the consequences of unemployment and emigration are severe for North Africa as well.

Despite its good intentions, a gentle approach, and a focused thesis, Tangier Treehouse suffers from two critical missteps. First, when the narrative focuses on broader social issues, the documentary falters. Morocco's severe unemployment problems go without much examination. The filmmakers hint at the deep social problems afflicting a country struggling with issues of Arab-European acculturation but fail to address some fundamental questions about the Moroccan economy. Why is unemployment so severe? Broader social and cultural issues are complicated to tackle, but such issues have a direct bearing on the boys as the film explicitly points out.

Conceivably and practically, a vocational education helps students improve their income potential, so are Morocco's problems only about a poorly skilled workforce? Wayward youth? Probably not. Second, the film seems to spend the least amount of time with the most interesting person -- Jaber, a journeyman and teacher at Darna, who is in many scenes, but whose presence is subordinated by the three visitors.

Though Tangier Treehouse portrays these visitors as believable and caring, we’re not quite sure what to make of their work. The trio are a happy mixture of builders and aesthetes, and they seem like good natured men. But is their workshop a charitable endeavor or the labor of social justice? Certainly, activists who give materials and inspiration to children are providing short-term benefits, but most credible activists look for ways to develop and maintain relationships with children, particularly when one of their goals is mentoring.

To their credit, I suppose, these men make no pretense of providing long-term care for these kids (at least, none that is stated) as they depart after ten days, but, as Tangier Treehouse presents them, they seem more like simple adventurers looking to satisfy their own interests rather than truly uplifting these kids or improving cross-cultural relations. No doubt, this interpretation is probably not the case, for one suspects these men have to respect the realities of these boys as well as be sensitive to the complications related to maintaining inter-cultural relations.

But such adult insights are largely absent, for the filmmakers tend to short-change all of the grown-ups in explaining their visions, missions and initiatives, and place the kids in a simple social context that requires more explanation to understand Morocco's complicated problems. Too bad. The mini-case study framework of Tangier Treehouse is compelling enough, and the filmmakers do interview some of the kids, but the documentary scrimps on analysis by summarizing too much for a discerning audience.