Caught a terrific silent at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It was the idea of a collaboration between director Josef von Sternberg and one of the all-time great screenwriters, Ben Hecht (who would win an Oscar a few years later for Scarface), that caught my eye in the program guide, and yet even then it surpassed my expectations. Despite an amusing anecdote from Eddie Muller, San Francisco's "czar of noir," about Hecht basically wanting his name taken off the film because he was so frustrated with "a half dozen" of von Sternberg's more melodramatic additions (and you can pretty easily spot what these might be), the final result is still a near-perfect dream. Sure, it's in some regards a corny crime melodrama -- not quite noir but a noir antecedent, and certainly a gangster picture -- but von Sternberg, who would become renowned for his several great early sound films starring Marlene Dietrich, had a visual sense quite ahead of its time. 
There are breathtakingly cinematic moments -- a feather floating in the air, a hallway so full of party streamers they look like alien worms, even a bit of a moving camera at times -- that looks even more so after having seen a few other silents recently that had a more static style typical of early film, and those films also suffered from stagy, hammy acting.
There's some of that here, too, but in general lead actors George Bancroft (as the wonderfully named "Bull" Weed), Evelyn Brent (ditto her moll named "Feathers" McCoy) and Clive Brook as "Rolls Royce" Wensel don't mug for the camera as often as you might have seen back in 1927. Brent has a scene in which tears roll down her face that instead of making roll my eyes nearly moved me to tears as well, Sure Bancroft overdid it a few times, hamming up the maniacal laughter early on, but as the film wears on he shows a real dimension and humanity underneath his gangster persona; Bancroft had an undeniably large presence. Brook's effeminate Rolls Royce at first appears to be an unavowed gay man, even declaring to Feathers early on that he has no interest in women, only to -- cop out! -- fall in love with her, causing Bull to become suspicious. But his scenes with Brent are actually quite wonderful.
Hecht's knowledge of the Chicago crime world from his days as a newspaperman covering that world also add a sense of realism to Underworld that sets it above most other crime melodramas of the era.
The film is deservedly well known among film scholars but undeservedly neglected by moviegoing audiences. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to have seen it live at the Castro Theater (with wonderful musical accompaniment by British musician Stephen Horne, long one of the great silent film accompanists). But it's a shame that more people can't currently have the chance to see Underworld as it's not currently on DVD. Here's hoping it gets the audience it deserves as one of the great silent films. Paging Paramount...
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The prolific Ben Hecht's remarkable career can be traced here.
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