Post by petrolino on Jun 22, 2024 23:43:24 GMT
'Regeneration' (1915 - Raoul Walsh)
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The crime drama 'Regeneration' (1915) is built from two primary sources; the play 'The Regeneration' by Walter C. Hackett and Owen Frawley Kildare, and Kildare's personal memoir 'My Mamie Rose : The Story Of My Regeneration' (1903). It tells the tale of orphan Owen (Rockliffe Fellowes), an Irish-American boy in New York City who feels consigned to a life of poverty by the death of his mother. Owen turns to crime and becomes affiliated with the mob. His one opportunity for salvation comes when Marie Deering (Anna Q. Nilsson) takes an interest in him. The man on the mob's case is District Attorney Ames (played by filmmaker and co-writer Carl Harbaugh) who vows to bring them down.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Regeneration_1915_poster.jpg)
'Regeneration' is shot on location in New York City's Lower East Side. Director Raoul Walsh exhibits a talent for using the whole frame early in his directorial career. Opening the picture with shots of forgotten 10-year old Owen without his mother, Walsh draws the viewer's attention to a skinny tomcat fending for itself in the background, blocking out part of the frame to heighten the effect. Later, during scenes showing life on the docks, there are scuffles and tussles as hungry men compete for jobs.
"Marie Deering, whose butterfly existence has hidden, even from herself, the knowledge of her nobler qualities."
'Regeneration'
'Regeneration'
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Regeneration_1915_poster.jpg)
'Raoul Walsh’s apprenticeship under D.W. Griffith paid off with his first feature, commonly recognised as the first gangster picture. We’re a long way from the archetypal likes of Scarface (1932) though, as Regeneration angles for an authentic presentation of a young man dragged up through the slums. Walsh was no sentimentalist, and the film isn’t shy in its depiction of the school of hard knocks, despite the foregrounded social conscience. The filmmaking itself is remarkable for a first feature, let alone one made in 1915, with the pleasure cruise fire sequence a standout.'
- The British Film Institute
'New York Tenement - 1910' by Lewis Hine
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'But 'Regeneration' was the main event of the morning, and it did not disappoint. This story of a tenement toughie reformed by a guilt-stricken socialite soars past your cynicism, because it is so exquisitely, tenderly photographed. It’s realism, but editorialised. And those performances! Rockliffe Fellowes has the best name in showbiz, hands down, and is reminiscent of a young [Marlon] Brando here as the angsty hero. Anna Q Nillsson (yes, a “waxwork” from 'Sunset Boulevard') puts in a heartfelt turn as his goodhearted ladyfriend. And oh, the photography, those truncated tracking shots and oh, the ensemble cast of characterful and possibly threatening faces. Everything [Martin] Scorsese ever did is here, and it’s compelling, enthralling to watch.'
- Silent London
The Regenerators
The Regenerators
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Raoul Walsh went on to direct the genre piece 'Me, Gangster' (1928) with Carole Lombard as Blonde Rosie, but it's now considered a lost movie. Aware of advancements being made by Mervyn LeRoy's 'Little Caesar' (1931), William Wellman's 'Public Enemy' (1931) and Howard Hawks' 'Scarface' (1932), Walsh set his sights on a new project, 'The Bowery' (1933). The joys of working-class life and pleasures of New York's bad girls are shown in 'The Bowery'. The chorus girls are particularly outrageous, high-stepping, skirt-hitching and bending over in frilly knickers. In a career year, Fay Wray plays naughty Lucy Calhoun, a good time stray on the lookout for fun who hides a passion for raw negligee and who's job is the fleece. Killing it for Walsh, Wray bites George Raft's hand and has her feet tickled by Wallace Beery, both men succumbing to her charms. Truth is, Lucy Calhoun's about as far from Marie Deering as you could get.
'Historians feel that his Breakthrough Hit was Regeneration (1915), a proto-gangster film shot on location in New York's fading Five Points district. Raoul Walsh continued directing and acting intermittently in the tens and twenties, but he became a full-time director as a result of a 1928 freak accident. Walsh was directing and starring in a film called In Old Arizona. While driving his car down a highway, a jackrabbit in the path of the car jumped on top and burst through the windshield. Walsh lost an eye as a result of this accident and gave up acting for good, famously wearing a distinctive eyepatch for the rest of his life. This accident was partly recreated in High Sierra with far less drastic results.'
- TV Tropes
Lankum [Tiny Desk Concert]
The success of 'The Bowery' ensured Wray and Beery would be reunited for Jack Conway's Pancho Villa biopic 'Viva Villa!' (1934) which is said to have taken some uncredited direction from William Wellman and Howard Hawks. Interestingly, Walsh once played Villa himself, for Christy Cabanne's biographical piece 'The Life Of General Villa' (1914) which was produced by his early mentor D.W. Griffith.
Wray reunited with Walsh for the comedy 'One Sunday Afternoon' (1933) which provided the template for two more adaptations of James Hogan's play 'One Sunday Afternoon' (1933), the comedy 'The Strawberry Blonde' (1941) and the musical 'One Sunday Afternoon' (1948).
"Touching and lovingly made piece of Americana, exuding period charm and atmosphere, though darker in tone than the two Warner Bros. remakes by Raoul Walsh ..."
- Leonard Maltin reviews 'One Sunday Afternoon', Wikipedia
Lisa O'Neill [Tiny Desk Concert]
Raoul Walsh was one of crime cinema's great pioneers. He'd go on to make several more influential genre films in 'The Roaring Twenties' (1939), 'High Sierra' (1941) and 'White Heat' (1949), providing building blocks for the gangster picture. In the year 2000, 'Regeneration' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
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Among the architects of the American crime genre, filmmakers Raoul Walsh (born March 11, 1887 in New York City, New York), John Ford (born February 1, 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine) and William A. Wellman (born February 29, 1896 in Brookline, Massachusetts) were of part Irish ancestry.
Interview Excerpt : ' "You Can't Let The Audience Get Ahead Of You" - Raoul Walsh Interviewed In 1972' by James Childs [BFI / Sight & Sound]
( : full article posted online at the British Film Institute on March 8, 2024 : )
Interviewer - Who are some of your favourite directors?
Walsh - I like old Henry King, and John Ford.
Interviewer - Do you think you and John Ford share some affinity?
Walsh - Probably. We’re both of Irish descent. He came into the business pretty early. I was the first one in. Another fellow named Allan Dwan was also a good director. I think Allan came in the year after I did. And Charlie Chaplin and I were great pals in the early days. I remember when Charlie worked for Mack Sennett [at Keystone Studios] for five bucks a day.
Interviewer - Were there any foreign film-makers you especially liked?
Walsh - I liked [Ernst] Lubitsch. He and I were pretty good pals. He once said, “Raoul, I would like to make vat you make : is box office. You make vat I make, sometimes box office, sometimes no box office.”
( : full article posted online at the British Film Institute on March 8, 2024 : )
Interviewer - Who are some of your favourite directors?
Walsh - I like old Henry King, and John Ford.
Interviewer - Do you think you and John Ford share some affinity?
Walsh - Probably. We’re both of Irish descent. He came into the business pretty early. I was the first one in. Another fellow named Allan Dwan was also a good director. I think Allan came in the year after I did. And Charlie Chaplin and I were great pals in the early days. I remember when Charlie worked for Mack Sennett [at Keystone Studios] for five bucks a day.
Interviewer - Were there any foreign film-makers you especially liked?
Walsh - I liked [Ernst] Lubitsch. He and I were pretty good pals. He once said, “Raoul, I would like to make vat you make : is box office. You make vat I make, sometimes box office, sometimes no box office.”
Fritz Murnau, he was a good one. You see, when Lubitsch and Murnau first came over, they got in touch with me, and I sort of steered them about the different approaches to things. Gave them a pretty good schooling in how to handle themselves. They appreciated that, and we became good friends.
[Casablanca director] Mike Curtiz and I knocked around in the same studio. Mike was a nice old guy.
Interviewer - One critic, Andrew Sarris, has said, “The Walshian hero is less interested in the why or the how than in the what. He is always plunging into the unknown, and he is never too sure what he will find there.” Do you feel that’s too precious a criticism, or that it’s on the nail?
Walsh - I guess it’s so. Everyone has his own impression of things. Maybe the guy was drunk.
Interviewer - One critic, Andrew Sarris, has said, “The Walshian hero is less interested in the why or the how than in the what. He is always plunging into the unknown, and he is never too sure what he will find there.” Do you feel that’s too precious a criticism, or that it’s on the nail?
Walsh - I guess it’s so. Everyone has his own impression of things. Maybe the guy was drunk.
School Of Rock : 'Voodoo Child' (Jimi Hendrix, of part Irish ancestry) & 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' (Pat Benatar, also of part Irish ancestry)
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All three men worked with two of the silver screen's original tough guys who were of Irish stock, James Cagney (born July 17, 1899 in New York City, New York) and Spencer Tracy (born April 5, 1900 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin). Tracy's close friend, actor Pat O'Brien (born November 11, 1899 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), was also friends with Cagney.
'It can be reliably argued that Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) remains the most dominant filmmaker of Hollywood’s studio era. As an auteur Walsh could be of the equal of Ford, Hawks or Hitchcock – or, at the very least, today he would well count among the “Pantheon” directors the late Andrew Sarris immortalized in his groundbreaking American Cinema : Directors and Directions of 1968. This retrospective counting seventeen features that Haden Guest has carefully and, if I may, brilliantly selected for viewing over the course of the spring semester will allow us to judge.
Subject of Raoul Walsh : The True Adventures of Hollywood’s Legendary Director, Marilyn Ann Moss’s meticulously researched biography of 2011, Walsh counts among the mythic one-eyed moguls (with Ford and André de Toth) who knew how to conceive, shoot and edit films that were invariably finished on time and under budget. Indelible auteur, he brought innovation and signature style to a plethora of genres : the western, the woman’s film, melodrama, the musical, dance films, boxing movies, gangster potboilers, the sword-and-sandal (or peplum) epic, film noir, depression comedy, the war movie, the pirate movie, the period piece …. From 1913 to 1964, from A Mother’s Love (Pathé, filmed in Brooklyn) and Paul Revere’s Ride (also Pathé, shot in Fort Lee, NJ) to A Distant Trumpet (Warner Brothers) he was responsible for – mostly directing, often editing and, early on, acting in – 176 films.'
- 'Raoul Walsh : A Retrospective, February 1 - March 10, 2013' [Harvard Film Archive]
William Wellman & James Cagney [2] : 'The Public Enemy' (1931) & 'Other Men's Women' (1931)
Raoul Walsh & James Cagney [4] : 'The Roaring Twenties' (1939), 'The Strawberry Blonde' (1941), 'White Heat' (1949) & 'A Lion Is In The Streets' (1953)
John Ford & James Cagney [2] : 'What Price Glory' (1952) & 'Mister Roberts' (1955)
Peter Bogdanovich Recommends ... Raoul Walsh & James Cagney
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John Ford & Spencer Tracy [3] : 'Up The River' (1930), 'The Last Hurrah' (1958) & 'How The West Was Won' (1962)
Raoul Walsh & Spencer Tracy [1] : 'Me And My Gal' (1932)
William Wellman & Spencer Tracy [1] : 'Looking For Trouble' (1934)
'Me And My Gal' (1932)
I don't know if William Keighley (born August 4, 1889 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) had Irish ancestry. Keighley often worked with Cagney and Errol Flynn who was also of Irish descent.
In the case of Mervyn LeRoy (born October 15, 1900 in San Francisco, California), his surname suggests he was possibly of French ancestry. LeRoy's friend Henry Hathaway (born March 13, 1898 in Sacramento, California) was of Belgian and Hungarian ancestry.
'The Irish mob is recognized as one of the oldest organized crime gangs in the U.S. A sordid past and existence in almost every city across America has resulted in the Irish mob being the source of countless motion pictures.'
- Irish Central
School Of Rock Presents ... Dexys Midnight Runners ...
LeRoy directed Lana Turner in 'They Won't Forget' (1937), 'Johnny Eager' (1941), 'Homecoming' (1948) and 'Latin Lovers' (1953). One of cinema's working class heroines, Turner was of part Irish ancestry. During her career, she worked with major actors of Irish ancestry including Tracy on 'Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde' (1941) and 'Cass Timberlane' (1947), James Stewart on 'Ziegfeld Girl' (1941) and John Wayne on 'The Sea Chase' (1955). I mention this as there's a wonderful comic sequence in Wesley Ruggles' screwball comedy 'Slightly Dangerous' (1943) that was directed by Buster Keaton according to Robert Osborne (Turner Classic Movies - cited at Wikipedia), whose touted Irish background has been disputed online.
Phosphate soda pop girl Peggy Evans (Lana Turner) is called in to the office by general manager Bob Stuart (Robert Young, whose father was Irish)
Dick Powell and Priscilla Lane in Lloyd Bacon's Warner Bros genrebuster 'Cowboy From Brooklyn' (1938)
Crime cinema wouldn't be the same without the influence of the Irish. From indelible characters like gunrunner Eddie Coyle in Peter Yates' 'The Friends Of Eddie Coyle' (1973), Officer Alex Murphy in Paul Verhoeven's 'RoboCop' (1987) and Officer Jim Malone in Brian De Palma's 'The Untouchables' (1987), to the general milieu of crime films like Phil Joanou's 'State Of Grace' (1990), Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' (2006) and Jonathan Hensleigh's 'Kill The Irishman' (2011), America's great modern crime filmmakers owe a debt of gratitude to Raoul Walsh.