The Michigan Kid

Along with the notorious "Behind the Door" (1919), "The Michigan Kid" shows director Irvin Willat at his best. And how good was that? Good enough to make one realize that this overlooked director, who specialized in thrillers and action, has yet to receive his due.

Conrad Nagel plays the titular Kid, a gambler running a saloon in Alaska who dreams of being with his childhood sweetheart (Renée Adorée) but must contend with an old rival. Adorée is lovely as usual. Nagel was usually blander than tapioca, but here he embraces the raffish, enigmatic side of the Kid.

William K. Everson (who literally wrote the book on silent cinema) called "The Michigan Kid" "a good, rugged, virile melodrama...done with style." You couldn't ask for a better summation. Being a late silent, its camera-work is a delight, with voluptuous tracking shots and daring POV angles. Willat's hard-boiled directorial style works through precise, suggestive concision.

The otherwise adequate gray-market DVD retains the arresting blue tones and pink tinting of the intense forest-fire climax, a bravura sequence that combines superb in-camera mattes with very fine miniatures. The results are so convincing I was astonished to learn it was entirely filmed in the studio. "The Michigan Kid" is not a profound film or masterpiece--it's a terrific piece of meat-and-potatoes entertainment, a genre assignment blessedly better than it needed to be.