HUCKLEBERRY FINN C+
USA (75 mi) 1920 d: William Desmond Taylor
HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920) official trailer - YouTube
Nearly a decade after the release of his popular The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, considered one of the great American novels largely due to painting such a vivid portrait of life along the Mississippi River, including the use of highly colorful characters, a somewhat scathing use of Southern antebellum flavor, including the controversial use of regional dialect, making satiric references to entrenched attitudes towards slavery that persisted at the time, including language and stereotypes now deplored as racist, including the frequent use of the word “nigger,” which does not appear in the film. The book was condemned by author Louisa May Alcott upon release and the public library in Concord, Massachusetts refused to carry the book, claiming it was “more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Despite continuing efforts to ban this book specifically for the protagonist’s language, including condensed editions released today which delete the offensive words, what’s unique is the original inclusion as a remarkable depiction of regional accuracy. This is an era when public lynchings of disobedient or caught runaway slaves were still common, an incident that is aptly described in the book but was deleted in this film.
Nearly a decade after the release of his popular The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, considered one of the great American novels largely due to painting such a vivid portrait of life along the Mississippi River, including the use of highly colorful characters, a somewhat scathing use of Southern antebellum flavor, including the controversial use of regional dialect, making satiric references to entrenched attitudes towards slavery that persisted at the time, including language and stereotypes now deplored as racist, including the frequent use of the word “nigger,” which does not appear in the film. The book was condemned by author Louisa May Alcott upon release and the public library in Concord, Massachusetts refused to carry the book, claiming it was “more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” Despite continuing efforts to ban this book specifically for the protagonist’s language, including condensed editions released today which delete the offensive words, what’s unique is the original inclusion as a remarkable depiction of regional accuracy. This is an era when public lynchings of disobedient or caught runaway slaves were still common, an incident that is aptly described in the book but was deleted in this film.
To this Irish born director’s credit, he was an avid reader and previously filmed TOM SAWYER in 1917 and HUCK AND TOM a year later, so he was intimately familiar with the material, but deleted much of the most controversial aspects of the story. Still, there are somewhat shocking visual portrayals of slaves as lazy and listless, often seen sleeping throughout the day, while slave children are happily seen eating watermelon. Truthfully, this film is no more shocking than the depiction of slaves fiercely loyal to the Confederacy in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), often listed as one of the great American films, including 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Noted as the first feature length film version of the popular book, it was recently restored to a 35 mm print by the film preservationist George Eastman House, including occasional use of surrealism and color tinting. The Silent film is being released with a newly scored soundtrack by the Mont Alto Orchestra, which is included in the version seen on Turner Classic Movies television and airing the same night as the Portage theater screening, courtesy of the Northwest Chicago Film Society, which included live organ accompaniment by Jay Warren. While the vivid detail of the restored image is state of the art, there are a few cuts to a black screen noting a sequence with lost footage, also some nearly destroyed images that show signs of print deterioration.
Without the use of any real stars, the film opens and closes with bookend shots of Mark Twain sitting in a rocking chair on his front porch, where the movie becomes his recollections of what he’d written, seen as a companion piece to Tom Sawyer. Set on the Missouri shores of the Mississippi River a decade or so before the Civil War, Huck, played by 17-year old Lewis Sargent, is placed under the guardianship of two stern elderly women, Widow Douglas and her contrary and authoritarian minded sister Miss Watson who seem bound a determined to teach him some manners, forever instilling upon him some rules to live by. Despite the confining chokehold from the restricted, civilized life, it’s better than when his drunk and abusive father returns to the scene literally kidnapping him and enslaving him with the sole intention of beating him, where Huck’s soon had enough of “civilization,” fakes his death and escapes on a raft down the river with an escaped slave named Jim. Shortly afterwards the duo is met on the riverbank by a pair of escaping con artists claiming to be a Duke and a King, two outrageous scoundrels who do nothing but continually hatch plans to fool people into parting with their cash. When they hear of the death of a property owner, they soon impersonate the missing brothers who stand to inherit the proceeds, quickly acquiring a bagful of cash that Huck hides from the scheming imposters as he’s fallen for one of the daughters, who becomes the girl of his dreams, Mary Jane, played by Esther Ralston, who by the end of the decade became one of the highest paid Silent film actresses, known for her flamboyant lifestyle that included riding around in a chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce where the chauffeur’s uniform matched the color of her dress.
Huck’s journey leads him to a personal transformation, as he slowly comes to realize that all is not as it seems, that Jim is his real friend, loyal and helpful, despite being on the run from the law, while the Duke and the King are liars and cheats who always find a public following of fools yet they continually get away scot free, though in the book they are eventually tarred and feathered. In the end Huck realizes that Jim’s escape from slavery, a world of captive brutality, is no different than his own need to escape the vicious beatings from his own drunk and belligerent father. Despite what seems like neverending inner titles advancing the story, where you spend much of the time reading this movie, the director makes little differentiation between the changing perceptions on land and on the river, where what’s missing is the wry humor and relentlessly sarcastic, observational tone that holds society on the riverbank up to ridicule by continually poking fun at the neverending hypocrisy happening all around them. By leaving out the most provocative and detestable material, the director is undermining the full power and intent of the novel. Absent Twain’s real genius, which is to belittle and castrate existing trends of wrongfully imposed morality through a kind of everyday, warm and folksy humor, ironically using two oddly illiterate heroes to expose this kind of social revelation, the audience here is rarely in on the joke, often missing the eventual elevation of one’s consciousness from the seething tone of disenchantment with the now duly deposed antebellum world. Huck’s flight to freedom should feel like an iconic journey that the entire newly liberated, post Civil War nation is taking right alongside with him.
