Artivels Undescribable Perfection

Console best movie i've ever seen.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

dbschneider Pretty heavy themes in this 1916 melodrama. I have just been rediscovering Fairbanks' early works and this one caught me by surprise. After watching silent films for almost 50 years, what a joy it is to see them digitally restored. A far cry from the fuzzy 8mm prints of my youth. If I had seen a musty out of focus truncated print of this film, I would have missed much of its joy. Thank you to all who worked so hard to bring this one back to all of us.

binapiraeus "The Half-Breed" certainly is one of Douglas Fairbanks' most unusual and daring films. After having made so many hugely successful comedies and achieved the status of a superstar, he felt it was time for him to 'touch' on a subject still VERY controversial back in 1916: the fate of the Native Americans, who, while in the movie they were called 'children of nature', to the white Americans they were still 'children of a lesser God' - they didn't even possess civil rights yet at that time! And Doug not only had the courage to play a 'half-breed' (the mother of our hero here, called Lo Dorman - but in the 'old' restored version Dave Carson for some unknown reason, we'll come to that later on - was an Indian woman), but also to depict in ALL its cruelty the wrongs that were being done to the Indians by the 'white man', and even a romance of the 'half-breed' with a white woman! It was Doug's first drama - and a most provocative one...Unfortunately, it was a box office failure ('conservative' critics had seen to that, warning the audience about the 'immoral' content of the movie...); and unfortunately, after it had been considered lost for decades, the first thing that turned up in the 1980s was only a remnant of the original version, which confuses the viewer completely with its incoherency, and makes us believe that Lo's romance with Nellie (who now was called 'Peggy') would be the happy ending - which it wasn't...The original version had a running time of almost two hours, while the 'restored' version is only a rump of about 50 minutes - leaving out completely the MOST controversial part of Lo's competition with Sheriff Dunn (played by Sam De Grasse, the 'eternal baddie' in almost all of Doug's silent movies) for the favor of Nellie - who, on her part, surely WASN'T the demure, shy girl of pre-WWI USA, but one of the first 'man-eaters', years before the flappers and vamps made their appearance... And the MOST ironical thing of it all is - that Sheriff Dunn is actually Lo's father; and since he's obviously not only jealous, but also ashamed of his 'half-breed' son, he does everything to discredit him among the townsfolk! (And Doug's famous bathing scene almost in the nude - which director Allan Dwan had inserted especially for Doug's then wife Beth, who didn't want her husband to play a 'dirty, filthy character' - is also missing; much to the chagrin of today's female audience, of course...) But FORTUNATELY, in 2013, ANOTHER surviving copy of almost the complete movie was found, which makes us realize the TRUE plot - and the ending, in which, of course, Doug DOESN'T get Nellie (Peggy), but the Mexican dance hall girl Teresa (called 'Dolores' in the restored version); not because he would have been afraid of actually showing an interracial romance come true, but simply because amorous Nellie wasn't his type: he wanted a REAL, loving woman by his side! Anyway, no matter whether you'll only be able to watch the 'rump' version or the REAL restored one - this movie is a GREAT and VERY courageous drama about the 'children of nature', who are being destroyed by the 'white man', his 'civilization' and his 'firewater', and a deeply moving contemplation about the vanishing of the wilderness and the dubious 'triumph' of civilization.

Larry41OnEbay-2 But now, because of much labor and love by Robert Byrne and his team including the Cinémathèque française, the Library Of Congress and Lobster Films, it is nearly complete. I just saw it this past Saturday, 11/2/2013 at the Packard Campus theater in Culpeper, VA. In what might have been an early movie first, the lead character is sympathetically shown despite having native blood. Living as an outcast, young Lo Dorman (Fairbanks) is welcomed back into society by pretty preacher's daughter Nellie (flirty Jewel Carmen), who cares not a whit about his mixed parentage. SPOILER ALERT: But Dorman's presence in town proves uncomfortable for Sheriff Dunne (Sam DeGrasse) -- who, unbeknownst to anyone himself, is Lo's father. The sheriff does his worst to discredit Lo in the eyes of the townsfolk. Our hero joins with another "outcast," dance-hall girl Teresa (Alma Rubens). Now with the merged sources from three prints (and months of labor reassembling each shot, scene) it has a beginning, middle and end. In an interview with Kevin Brownlow, director Allan Dwan revealed that The Half-Breed almost didn't get made, thanks to the interference of Fairbank's then wife, who didn't want her husband to appear as an "unwashed" half-breed. To circumvent this, Dwan inserted a scene showing a nearly nude Fairbanks taking a "bath" in a river, then thoroughly scrubbing himself and his clothes with sand. "He was a washed Indian, not a dirty Indian," Dwan explained. "I only put the scene in to satisfy Mrs. Fairbanks."

boblipton The usual suspects -- star Doug Fairbanks, writers Anita Loos and John Emerson and director Allan Dwan -- try something different from their usual light-hearted romp with social commentary, working from a story by Bret Harte.Unfortunately, the copy screened by the Museum of Modern Art is in poor shape. Only about twenty-five minutes of the one-hour feature could be screened, and the print showed a lot of damage. The titles, when possessed of any humor, are dour and there isn't much of Doug's usual stuntwork -- he clambers around the redwood forests of northern California for a bit and bends a young conifer double a couple of times to spring from one place to another. We do get a bit of beefcake in an early scene, where he is shown, stripped to the waist, but that's about it.The rest is an open attack on racism. Doug, the titular half-breed is trapped in a small, nasty town full of racists who dislike him solely because he is an Indian. Of course, Jewel Carmen and Alma Rubens have yens for him, but besides showing jealousy when Doug is not present, do nothing about it. The genially corrupt individuals who inhabit most of Harte's better known works are not present. Instead, they are selfish, nasty and smug It's difficult to judge the impact of this movie almost a hundred years after it was produced, but over all it looks like an earnest work with some good production values: an attempt to expand Doug's range as a movie star. Judging by the fact that he went back to his usual mode of movie until 1920s' THE MARK OF ZORRO, it almost certainly didn't take. Nor, judging by what remains, should it have.