Written by Stephen Winer
Translator: Issac
Proofreader: Onegin
Source: Standard Collection
With the advent of sound films, a simple question was asked of the great silent film actors: Can they talk? Can they adapt their style to the demands of the dialogue, while convincing the audience who has been just watching and not being able to hear?
Silent film comedians, however, face a different and perhaps more difficult problem. They are original beings, born and grown in silence. They fly over the world they have created, unaffected by the shackles of the common laws of the rest of us.
Charlie chaplin
Sound can only give them the basis of reality, and they neither need nor want reality. The questions that plague the Joker go beyond "Can they talk?" the category became "Why do they talk?"
Charlie Chaplin's body is as flexible as a ballet dancer, and he uses every large movement of his body to express the emotions of the little tramp he plays. The stoic Buster Keaton only needs to change his eyes slightly to say something richer than most actors' monologues. And "boy" Harry Langton? He obviously couldn't speak yet.
Buster Keaton
Among the great silent film comedians, Harold Lloyd seems to have adapted best to the transition to sound comedy. He created a screen character who was as much like a normal person as possible. He didn't have oversized clothing or oil-colored makeup —just a pair of corner-edged glasses and an occasional straw hat.
His humor is to bring a person who may be walking past us on the street step by step into a world full of misfortune. No major reflection is required to get this guy to speak. His slight, muffled voice seemed to perpetuate the same youthful fantasy he had always had (he was thirty-six years old when he first spoke).
Harold Lloyd
But Lloyd's transition to sound films may be more difficult than anyone expected. When he was working on the last silent film, he decided to reshoot it and make it his first sound film, but by this time the silent film had been shot. Released in 1929, Not Afraid of Death was the most successful commercial work of his career.
Not Afraid of Death (1929)
The audience obviously wanted to hear Harold speak. But the film itself sucks, arguably the worst of his heyday (well, you might argue with me – but I'll say it's closed). The film has no obvious structure and story, nor is there a first-class joke, with Lloyd playing a much-loved glasses man, but the way the character behaves is completely unlikable, even annoying (why?!).
Harold Lloyd in "Not Afraid to Die" is the same as he was sentenced to a year earlier in the dazzling Scud. His second sound film, Danger First (1930), was only slightly better, despite the novel thrilling scenes hanging from the buildings. This was done to remind the audience how much they loved his classic Safety Down (1923). And the film's box office performance also plummeted amazingly.
Safety To the Bottom (1923)
But artist Harold Lloyd, like the image on the screen, is determined to overcome many difficulties and succeed. He wanted to make sure his third sound film, Shadow Madness, was his best work.
Shadow Madness (1932)
He used the presuppositions in several of his classic silent films— notably Safety Down and New Life— to determine the film's structure. Once again, he tells the story of a young man who runs away from home to pursue his chosen career.
In this movie, he's going to Hollywood to be a movie star. Just like in his previous films, he failed before tenacity and luck turned his impossible dreams into reality, while also reaping the rewarding love. But this time, his completely effective use of sound made the film look both fresh and modern, while at the same time feeling intimately familiar to his long-standing fans.
Lloyd hired Clyde Brookman, a first-class comedian who has worked with Lloyd and Buster Keaton in many of their great films. Unfortunately, Brookman was an alcoholic and simply couldn't do the job. Lloyd eventually directed most of the film himself, and at the same time helped Brookman retain the director's signature.
As Konstanz Cummings, who starred with him, later said, Lloyd would prepare a scene on his own mind, and then the "director" would make sure Lloyd's vision came true. Therefore, it is necessary to commend Lloyd for capturing the ever-changing life with his fluid and imaginative lens in the studio where he pursues wealth. Particularly memorable is the rocker shot later in the film, which first shows all the equipment and activity around the stage, then moves down and forward until we are fully into the scene.
The comedy passages in Shadow Madness are Lloyd's best scene since Scud. After arriving in Hollywood, Harold stumbled upon a movie in progress and was asked to make an improvisational appearance — the task was simple, and he was clumsy in the gags and jokes again and again.
Later, during an audition, he also screwed up, and what we saw was not what was happening at the time, but a tense scene shown to increasingly angry studio executives. Each "strip" of the shooting becomes a gag, and as the clip plays, the speed of the picture and sound increases, so that the "laugh" effect is better.
The highlight of the film is that Lloyd turns to the past again for inspiration. Perhaps the most memorable scene in "New Life" is harold dancing in a suit that the tailor has only had time to roughly sew. The laugh here stems from Harold's desperate attempt to stick fragments of his clothes to his body.
At a dance party in Shadow Madness, Harold accidentally swapped his coat with a magician's (it's a comedy). Let it go). As Harold kept pulling unexpected surprises out of his coat, some of them still alive, the laughter grew louder. Although the addition of sound in Danger Is Supreme destroys the thrilling shot (the noise from the street and Harold's cries for help make it too real and uncomfortable), sound does play a role here.
There is almost no dialogue in the film, but the increasingly vocal responses of the dance music and other guests fill in the gaps in the soundtrack. Essentially, Lloyd created a silent-film comedy routine that seemed to have a voice in the first place. This is one of his greatest works. (Brookman must have been entangled, having plagiarized and reused the film in two different films, one of which was the short film The Three Stinkers, which Resulted in Lloyd suing him.) Lloyd ended up winning, even though the amount of compensation was much less than he had asked for. ）
But Lloyd knew that to make a best sound film, he needed much more than just a joke scene. He needs to say something, something the listener might really enjoy listening to, not just the kind of simple small talk he used in his early conversations. So he stepped over the joke writer he usually worked with and added two interesting names to the credits.
Agnes Christina Johnston was one of the first women to work as an important screenwriter in silent films. Although not as famous as Frances Marion and Anita Luce, she still has a huge influence, including Mary Beckford's classic Uncle Long Legs (1919) and Marion Davis's two greatest films, Little Cutie and The Life of a Play (both released in 1928). In the '40s, she went on to create successful works, including several Andy Hardy films. "Shadow Madness" gave her the signature of the author of the story.
The Life of a Drama (1932)
But the script and dialogue are the only signatures given to Vincent Lawrence. He was a successful Broadway playwright of the 1920s, and critic George Jean Nathan called him "America's greatest light comedy writer," the kind of screenwriter Hollywood was looking for when sound movies arrived.
He became an important figure in Hollywood, writing a variety of screenplays, from Demir's Cleopatra (1934) to Carlo Langbet's comedy Two Loves (1935). (Lawrence is the son of novelist James M. Lawrence. M. Kane's best friend; it was he who, after Kane's publisher refused to title his first novel Bar-B-Que, came up with an alternative—The Postman Always Rings Twice. ）
Two Loves (1935)
It's safe to say that a certain combination of Lawrence and Johnson led to the birth of Shadow Madness, a film that still feels fresh to the audience today. In Lloyd's previous films, like most of his contemporaries, "Girl" was primarily meant to give the protagonist a goal to strive for and validate the character by falling in love with him. Although she may be attractive, she can hardly be called a three-dimensional figure. But the "girl" in "Shadow Madness" is not a girl, but a woman, a woman with her own unique charm.
The woman was played by the aforementioned Konstanz Cummings. Cummings is a talented actress on stage and film, with a long acting career and numerous accolades and awards, including a Tony Award in 1979 for her role in Arthur Copi's Wings.
Cummings, who plays blonde film actress Mary Sears, was initially intimidated by Harold and then attracted to him. But when she realized that Harold didn't recognize the dark-haired character she was playing in the studio, she decided to tease him—or torture him more precisely—in an attempt to seduce Harold while she was in a costume, and then accuse him of disloyalty to him while she was in civilian clothes.
Looking again, I found myself wondering how Barbara Stanwick, a master of deception, tortured Henry Fonda, an expert in snakes, in Preston Sturges' Lady Eve (1941).
Eve the Lady (1941)
I'm not suggesting that the two are directly related, but Stedges is a fan of Lloyd and loves him to write and direct Crazy Wednesday (1947) for him, and I can easily imagine Lloyd saying lines that Steaches wrote, such as "You're a funny girl for anyone who has just been at Amazon for a year."
Towards the end of the film, when Mary unmasks her mask, she says almost exactly as much as What Jobaina Lauston said to him in The New Life, advising him to "be himself." But Harold is himself in Shadow Madness! Actually Mary wasn't doing herself! Mary's capricious behavior seems to be a direct manifestation of her personality.
One might even wonder if Harold should be with her or flee into the mountains! No matter how you look at her, Mary is clearly doing her part in Shadow Madness to push the plot forward. This compelling relationship is unique in Lloyd's films, and I can't think of anything compared to his comedic peers.
By combining these vivid scenes of modern dialogue with classic visual comedy, Harold Lloyd has finally made an audible film the best possible silent effect. In the happy ending of "Shadow Madness", Harold signed a contract with the company and became a new comedy star.
This movie also has a happy ending in life, word of mouth, box office double harvest. In the years to come, the variability of Lloyd's sound work and the consistent fun of his classic silent films will make Shadow Madness a forgotten film. But at that time in 1932, it was a victory. The young man with the glasses scored again.