kidboots
This very moody and atmospheric thriller about a secret society was directed by Wallace Worsley and written by Gouverneur Morris, who were both responsible for Lon Chaney's chilling movie "The Penalty" (1920). The evocative and eerie music (by Vivek Maddala, so much more appropriate than his score for "The Patsy") gets you into the mood instantly as a secret society meet on a windy, rainy night to plot the murder of "one who has lived too long". Even in the depths of all this seriousness there is a romantic triangle going on as Mr. Forrest (John Bowers) and Mr. Farallone (Lon Chaney) both fall in love with the elusive Lilith (Leatrice Joy) who is wedded to "the Cause"!!!After the gruelling role of "Blizzard" in "The Penalty", this role of the lovelorn Mr. Farallone must have seemed like a walk in the park to Chaney but such is the power of his acting that with a few emotive expressions he was still able to give a gripping performance. When the cards are dealt, the Ace of Hearts, the card of death, goes to Mr. Forrest and he is elated that he has been chosen to eliminate "the Menace" (Raymond Hatton). Lilith then announces that she will marry him if that will inspire him further but after a night of love she is a changed woman and begs Forrest to run away with her. He is supposed to go to his waiters job and leave a timed bomb at the seat where "the Menace" has his breakfast every morning at nine o'clock. But things don't go to plan and when he sees a pair of run away lovers (Cullen Landis is one) sitting at a nearby table he cannot go through with it. That means he, himself, is under sentence of death but meanwhile Lilith has extracted a promise from the lovesick Farallone that if something goes wrong he will help them. In an unexpected twist Farallone (which proves Chaney didn't give up all his intensity) makes Lilith promise that if Forrest doesn't return she will, in turn, marry him. But Farallone has an ace up his sleeve that paves the way for the newly wed's happiness.Chaney's intensity toward the end made me wonder if the movie was meant to be far longer than it's 75 minutes. It originally had a far different ending, much more exciting in my opinion. Lilith and Forrest are finally tracked down to their mountain haven by Morgridge, the Society leader, who, in the original ending had picked the Ace of Hearts as the one to hunt down and kill Forrest. He survives the bomb blast but when he sees the happy family (there is now a baby) he also renounces "the Cause" with a view that love conquers everything. When Samuel Goldwyn saw it, he declared it preposterous and ordered a new ending!!!It was this movie that bought Leatrice Joy (soon to be Mrs. John Gilbert) to the attention of Cecil B. DeMille and the next year she would shoot to fame in "Saturday Night" - he intended to do for her as he had done for Gloria Swanson. John Bowers was married to Marguerite De La Motte and his main claim to fame is that his life and death were the inspiration for the Norman Maine character of "A Star is Born", although neither he nor his wife were as famous as the two depicted in the movie.
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Suddenly, we find ourselves watching a meeting of a secret brotherhood of assassins who decide who has lived too long and then go ahead and kill him. There is no explanation of the background to the brotherhood and no detail as to what the man they intend to kill has done to make him fit only for death, but from a well placed headline part way through the tale, we realise that the action takes place during the great "red scare" of the post Russian revolution days. Leatrice Joy, later seen in "Manslaughter" is not at all like the sex symbol we usually see her as: possibly the heavy Edwardian fashions of long skirts and masses of hair are not flattering but overall the film shows us an accurate picture of the pre-jazz age era. Chaney once again plays the loser in a love triangle. Apart from longish hair, his make up is straight, but his acting is not: the style, here, of his mannerisms, gestures and facial expressions are more Phantom of the Opera than this story calls for. Chaney is capable of greater subtlety. Sadly, my copy, though visually good, has a terrible score. I accept that we should be thankful that such early films have survived at all, but if a decent musical accompaniment cannot be provided, then please don't bother! In this case I just turned the sound off! "The Ace of Hearts" was shown at the Imperial Hall, Walsall in the week after they showed "Heart of a Wolf", which demonstrates the popularity of Chaney's films. In short, a curious and interesting film.
brucewla
After all the years (well all my life, really) that I have spent being addicted to movies, the one category that I was not much interested in until recently is the most historic: silent films. I have always found them interesting in one way; because I am a "history geek," I found them fascinating as a sort of living record of say, how Los Angeles looked back then, watching actual people from 1917, and so forth, but as far as sitting through most of them, especially the feature length ones, I wasn't really interested. The combination of them being of another time, for another audience, very few have survived, and so on---I just didn't spend much time with them.But recently this changed--I read two books by Scott Eyman, "Lion Of Hollywood," about L.B. Mayer, and "Empire Of Dreams," about Cecil B. Demille. These books made me very interested in viewing some of these films, but my first problem is, of course, most of the silent films discussed in film histories have not survived, and, secondly, for those that are still available, what is the best source? For most people with a casual interest in the material, that would be Turner Classic Movies. TCM shows silent films fairly regularly, for part of the season they show them on Sunday nights, and when they feature a certain star, they might run all day, as in the case of Lon Chaney recently. This is invaluable for people like me, with a casual interest; I think most people have seen The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and Phantom of The Opera, (I have), but few of this generation have seen films such as The Unholy Three, Tell It To The Marines, Laugh Clown Laugh, and the one that I have spent all this time bloviating to get to: The Ace of Hearts.The Ace of Hearts is about a "secret society" or "dark brotherhood" (with one sister, though), i.e. a group of assassins, that have decided a "certain man" has "lived too long." They discuss how he has become more greedy arrogant, etc. The story is, evidently, deliberately generic, but I would suppose that you could interpret the group as being communists, the "man who has lived too long," capitalism, the group as an anarchist, the "man" as the U.S. President, and so on and so forth, but the story is laid out as, the group decides that this man, whoever or whatever he is, should die, and one of them will be the one to kill him.The way this is decided, by the society's rules is, a deck of cards is shuffled, and a card dealt to each person in turn, whomever gets the ace of hearts, will be the assassin; this person will be provided with the general plan and anything needed to carry out the execution. One complication is, Mr Forrest, who is chosen, and Mr. Farrallone, (Chaney), are both in love with Lilith, the only female in the society. That's one level where the film is interesting--if it weren't for that part of the story, there probably would not be a female involved. Secondly, this is one of only two films that I know of, where Chaney appears with his true face, i.e. no layers of makeup as usual. His hair is sort of long, that's all. The only other film that I am aware of where you see his "true face" is Tell It To The Marines.So now, the action is set in motion. The method of execution is chosen, and Mr. Forrest has his appointed task. But of course complications ensue, (I won't detail those), and a relief assassin has to step in for Mr Forrest (guess who)? The Society is not happy. I will leave the ending for you to discover since I am assuming you have not seen the film and I have told you plenty, already.Finally I am fascinated by how Lon Chaney was able to convey such emotion in films that had no spoken dialog. Many silent stars could, because they began as stage actors, but he could do it to an entirely different level. Many believe he would have been a huge star in sound films also, but unfortunately he passed away in 1930, just as sound films were beginning. I am very interested to see "The Unholy Three" sound version, as I have never heard him speak.If you have not seen many feature length silent films this is an excellent one to start with.8/10.
