Penrod and Sam

From the 39th Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Jay Weissberg oversold this feature film for Day 1, "Penrod and Sam" (1923), as being similar to "Boyhood" (2014), which, no, it's not really. It's more akin to Our Gang, a.k.a. The Little Rascals, comedy shorts in its episodic slapstick of children running around, hitting each other and generally getting into trouble, but with a dramatic arch that extends the film's length to the feature format. Weissberg also mentioned the relatively decent treatment of the African-American children in the film, which I had by doubts regarding when the two boys were introduced in a pun as "the colors." After that, the film is relatively inoffensive, though, especially for something from 1923. The film also gets off to a bad start with the literal slapstick--fighting with wooden swords--of the kids playing war, but once they start interacting with the adult world and the plotline with the dog gets going, the comedy becomes somewhat amusing, and the drama avoids devolving into sap.

Intertitles are arguably too plentiful, and I don't think the mocking of children's syntax and pronunciations is funny enough to sustain a running gag throughout the picture. Scenes such as of the boys mocking the flirtations of teenagers works better, and the main father and mother are laughably exactly what one would imagine as past suburban stereotypes and predates "Leave It to Beaver" and similar such TV and movies: father in his chair reading the paper, only to get up to reprimand the boys for their latest hijinks, as the literally-pearl-clutching mother brings such matters to father's attention. It's all a little too mainstream wholesome for my taste, but I can certainly see why others would enjoy it, and it's not bad for its kind. It was made, after all, by a director, William Beaudine, whose long career demonstrated his proficiency, from Mary Pickford vehicles to "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966).

(Note: 35mm, tinted print from Library of Congress.)