L'uomo meccanico

This DVD was a bit of surprise from Alpha Video. They release many old, public domain films, but I had never heard of this one. For 6 dollars you get this and the 1922 Headless Horseman film. All I can say is "No Brainer" for fans of silent horror/SF.

It was to supposedly originally run a little over an hour, but only 26 minutes of this previously lost Italian film are here. A narrative overview is given at the beginning to let viewers understand the overall plot to make up for the missing. It's a big help as a lot of the gaps are scattered throughout, and this pulp story wouldn't make much sense otherwise. The Mechanical Man is a lot of fun, though and the film feels pretty complete, which is a minor miracle.

The plot involves an evil woman who steals a robot from a scientist. She programs it to destroy to serve her wishes. A young man tries to save his girlfriend with help from the scientist who invented the mechanical man. In the end he sends out a second mechanical man to dispose of the original. It has a Feuillade-like pace to it.

One interesting thing about Alpha is they seem to afford opportunities to up and coming composers. The score is very satisfying and brings some modern ideas to the antique film. Their work on last year's "Student of Prague" (1913) is equally good. In my opinion, Alpha does not have to do this at the low prices they ask for their films. No, their films are not re-mastered or restored, but they show that they care about fans by going the extra mile. The new English inter-titles are designed in an appropriate style. A fun surprise for silent film fans.

After re-reading Mike's comments and especially this enthusiastic write-up (http://www.mjsimpson.co.uk/reviews/mechanicalman.html), I had high hopes for this early (Italian, no less!) science-fiction film. While that review does mention a lot of what I disliked about the film, the author seemed a great deal more forgiving of them than me.

I didn't mind so much that I couldn't follow the plot due to the loss of about two-thirds of the film's original length but, really, there's nothing remotely interesting going on here (even if I concede the novelty value it must have had back in '21). The comic relief provided by Saltarello aka Andre' Deed (the director himself!) is so pathetically archaic that I was rolling my eyes every time he turned up (which is enough to almost make me glad the film didn't survive in its entirety)! The various exploits perpetrated by the villainess (so many thrillers of the era present women as master criminals; see the infinitely superior Louis Feuillade serials, for instance) didn't generate a reaction from me one way or the other - though her ingenious escape from a hospital/prison by causing a fire was, admittedly, nicely done. As for the robot, well, it's a lumbering and rather unattractive creation and, indeed, just about the only scene where it's put to any good use at all is when it suddenly picks up speed in order to chase the fleeing heroes' motor-car. What about the long-awaited showdown between the two robots, then? Their "fiercesome battle" consists of the two holding one another and going around in circles, almost as if they were engaged in a dance!! By the way, the tinting was effective but the accompanying electronic score, while appropriately ominous at times, is simply too 'modern' to fit the impossibly primitive images.

I guess one should be grateful to the Cineteca di Bologna for making an effort to restore the film in the best way it could and to Alpha Video for making it available on DVD but it's lasting value, as both entertainment and a landmark in science-fiction cinema, is quite minimal.

André Deed was a pioneer comic star who made films in both France and Italy (originally as Boireau/Cretinetti) and whose career paved the way for all the comic stars who came after. His reputation has always suffered particularly amongst anglophone critics from the usual tendency to try and read history backwards and portray the earlier comic stars as simply primitive versions of Charlie Chaplin. So amongst the English critics, on the basis usually of very little acquaintance with the actual films, he has always passed for nothing but an eyeball-rolling, face-pulling farceur and one sees the sad evidence of that oft-repeated caricature in some of the review here.

In fact, even if Deed's comic style was broad, his films often contain very interesting elements of the surreal that is part of a Franco-Italian tradition quite different from the later US comics )even Keaton, whose surrealism is of a rather different kind). In the later part of his career he himself acted less and less, preferring to concentrate on directing and writing and promoting the career of his wife Valeria Frascaroli, who is splendid as the masked villainess in this film.

It is a great shame that this film does not survive in a fuller and more continuous form because it introduces some very good ideas. It is not by any means the first appearance in films of automata (the word "robot" had yet to be coined) or mechanical men (the Houdini serial Man of Mystery of the previous year features a very similar automaton) but it is notable in presenting the robot in more believable science-fiction manner (the Houdini automaton turns out to be a fake), particularly by introducing the notion of "remote control". It also plays very nicely on the idea of the automaton - by having the automaton pass as a guest at a fancy dress ball and by having two rival automata fighting it out.

Stylistically Deed follows Feuillade quite closely and could not have had a better model. All in all it is an important early piece of science fiction that deserves considerable respect. I believe my description of Deed in the summary is a more accurate one than usually sees.

THE MECHANICAL MAN was a silent film that was assumed lost. However, recently about 40% of the film was discovered and released on DVD along with a really bad copy of Will Rogers' HEADLESS HORSEMAN. Since most of the film is still lost, the company that released the film used a long written explanation of the plot and cards were used to explain missing sequences. However, the film still turned out to be extremely confusing and rather pointless--so much so that I really wished they hadn't bothered to release it--just conserve it until one day when (hopefully) the rest can be found. Sure, the robot fighting sequences were pretty cool for 1921, but this couldn't save this confusing mess of a "restoration". Save your money and buy a DVD that is complete--or at least more than half complete.

Mechanical Man, The (1921)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Incomplete

Seven hundred meters of this film are now lost but twenty minutes worth of footage of recently found so that's what this is. A scientist creates a mechanical man but thieves steal it and send it out to kill and destroy a city. The only way to stop the creature is by creating another mechanical man to destroy it. This Italian horror film seems to have had an influence on Fritz Lang's Metropolis, at least in the look of the robots. It's hard to really judge the film since so much of it is missing but they did a good job at taking the current length and adding enough background so that we know what's going on.