By Jeremy Carr.
Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions has once again sifted through the annals of film’s rich origins and, with producer and Ford scholar Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, worked to digitally restore and release a key Francis Ford feature as well as a grouping of shorts….”
Before he was known simply as John Ford’s brother, having appeared in several of his younger sibling’s films in memorably grizzled, usually boozy cameo roles, Francis Ford was a prolific and proficient actor, writer, and the director of more than 100 shorts and features from 1912 to 1928. Unfortunately, this early part of his career has been a victim of the all-too-common erasure of silent cinema, either due to the neglect and loss of the actual material or the variable fluctuations of film history. That Francis remains even somewhat known is thanks to his association with John, though that association still diminishes his own singular body of work. To help rectify this oversight, Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions has once again sifted through the annals of film’s rich origins and, with producer and Ford scholar Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, worked to digitally restore and release a key Francis Ford feature as well as a grouping of shorts. They have also provided a brief though valuable video essay, Francis Ford, Film Pioneer, which establishes and properly contextualizes Ford’s standing.
Born Francis Joseph Feeney in 1881 (the last name later adopted in apparent tribute to the automotive company), Ford made his first significant mark on the film industry when he arrived in Texas as part of the Star Film Company, a unit headed by Gaston Méliès, who also knew a thing or two about brotherly competition and credit. It was during this time that Ford appeared in the comic Western When the Tables Turned (1911), one of the shorts included in this Undercrank collection. Here, however, Ford is far less the focus than Edith Storey, who stars as actress Ethel Kirby. Ethel is mistaken for another young woman, Florence, and is kidnapped in a prank enacted by some rowdy cowboys. She’s savvy and spirited, though, and as the title of the picture suggests, she ends up getting the better of the raucous men (one of them played by Ford). Storey is a delight in every scene, with a patent comedic and physical appeal, and is herself a stunning rediscovery. It’s a shame, then, that When The Tables Turned is missing early sequences when Ethel and Florence meet on a train, establishing their characters and building to the case of mistaken identity. Nevertheless, what still remains, particularly as Ethel gets the men to behave as they normally wouldn’t, is a great deal of fun.
Ford soon thereafter moved to Hollywood and worked under the auspices of Thomas H. Ince and his Bison Film Company. It was a short-lived and unpleasant tenure for Ford, and, perhaps for that reason, one of the films coming out of this period and included on the disc, The Post Telegrapher (1912), is the least remarkable of the bunch. Sharing director credit with Ince, Ford also stars as Bob Evans, the eponymous telegraph operator who courageously does his part to help thwart an Indian attack on a nearby fort. There is action aplenty and Ford shows an aptitude for staging the outdoor maneuvers of soldiers and Sioux alike, but there is little that distinguishes this two-reeler from similar genre products of its day.
Much more intriguing and stylistically ambitious is Unmasked, a film Ford made for the newly formed Universal. Released in 1913 as the two-reel Black Masks, introductory titles note the only surviving copy of the film is this 1917 reissue that was trimmed to just 11 minutes. Beginning with a superb opening shot that perfectly sets the scene, Unmasked is an amiable thriller about two dueling thieves played by Ford, who cuts a dashing figure, and his frequent collaborator Grace Cunard, who appeared in, co-wrote, and co-directed many of Ford’s Universal pictures. They have instantly evident chemistry and the film, despite its clipped extant form, features some clever storytelling devices. As with When The Tables Turned, the missing footage is thus a major loss.
Then there’s the centerpiece of the Undercrank collection, Ford’s 1918 psychological drama, The Craving. Produced at Ford’s own independent company with brother John (then Jack) as an assistant, the film’s creative “photographic effects” were a prime selling point at the time and remain impressive. Encasing these sequences is the story of Ford’s scientist Carroll Wayles, who toils away on an explosive chemical while rival “Eastern scientist” Ala Kasarib (Peter Gerald) attempts to steal his secret formula. Carroll’s main adversary, however, is his currently checked alcoholism. Flashbacks to a decisive drunken outing years prior allow Ford to first integrate the film’s multiple exposure impressions as an inebriated Carroll conjures a wild fantasy with tiny female sprites who tumble in and out of his glass and his pocket while offering words of caution (there was also, in a missing scene, images of a “writhing orgy”). The delirium is enough to scare Carroll sober and from that point on he devotes himself to his work … even if he still has a puzzlingly well-stocked bar beside him in his lab.
Meanwhile, accompanied by his ward Beulah Grey (Mae Gaston), Ala asserts his mental dominance over the young woman and conspires against Carroll. Seeking the aid of Carroll, Beulah speaks of Ala’s “weird influence” and Ford does his low-key best to convey the “mysterious atmosphere” that sweeps through Ala’s residence, largely suggested by an incessant breeze (presumably caused by an outdoor set), which enlivens plants and curtains, and by mild, if effective, gestures of concern. To illustrate Beulah’s backstory, Ford incorporates scenes of his now lost 1915 short about the Indian rebellion, The Campbells Are Coming, and later, found footage from a Universal war film works to supposedly comment on the “needless slaughter of troops,” though that critique is secondary at best and its connection to the film’s plot proper is rather tenuous. If anything, the overarching connection between these outlier concepts and the story of Carroll versus Ala is the persuasive power of the mind: to control soldiers and a broader populace, to control individuals, to create, or to overcome a debilitating addiction.
In part owing to its length and near-complete form, The Craving is the disc’s most thorough and striking sampling of Ford’s talent. Absent the visual effects employed for the more fantastical moments, he expresses the tension of Ala’s uncanny danger through judicious compositions and the behavior and expressions of the performers, himself included. And certain scenes also have a pronounced visual flair; for example, placing Carroll’s brightly illuminated laboratory in the foreground against a completely darked backdrop. Still, the films in this collection, which are accompanied by the always notable musical scores of Model, only hint at Ford’s overlooked prowess. Even something like the amusing excerpt from Screen Snapshots (1920), a self-promotional Columbia short showing Ford’s behind the scenes attempt to get a slipshod shot with his jovial cast, advocates his contemporary influence and importance, an importance that will hopefully be bolstered by subsequent discoveries and releases of his work.
Jeremy Carr is a Contributing Editor at Film International and teaches film studies at Arizona State University. He writes for the publications Cineaste, Senses of Cinema, MUBI/Notebook, Cinema Retro, Vague Visages, The Retro Set, The Moving Image, Diabolique Magazine and Fandor. He is the author of Repulsion (1965) from Auteur Publishing and Kubrick and Control from Liverpool University Press a contributor to the collections ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May, from Edinburgh University Press, and David Fincher’s Zodiac: Cinema of Investigation and (Mis)Interpretation, from Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.