The Regeneration

People who think that all silents are sticky with Victorian melodrama will be surprised by the sustained pace, the bracing realism, and the soft-pedaling of the sentimental elements of this startlingly fresh film. The 28-year old Raoul Walsh had already written and produced a dozen films when he directed this. Although the narrative rambles a bit, Walsh's dynamic use of film grammar - closeups, dollies in and out, cross-cutting between scenes, sharp editing - makes REGENERATION look more modern than many silent films made ten years later. Walsh shows his creativity when he uses the circling movements of dancers to foreshadow public panic in an impressively staged sequence of a fire [although it has little plot function]. Titles are used sparingly throughout, and even they are terse and direct. The performances are also surprisingly natural, from square-jawed Rockcliffe Fellowes [who looks something like Robert Stack] to Anna Q. Nilsson, who gives a delicate, sympathetic performance as the good girl/settlement worker. Within the outline of a traditional melodrama, Walsh forthrightly portrays the underside of contemporary society, keeps the sentiment light, and provides an ending that is not without surprises either.

I became obsessed with this movie two years ago after checking it out of our great NYC library. I rave about it to my friends. To think that this full-length feature was made in l915 is astounding. Maybe it's because of its amazing star, Rockliffe Fellowes, who looks so much like Marlon Brando you'll be double-takes. That he never became a legendary star is a real tragedy but when you think of it, almost none of the film actors from that era survived into the 20s except for Mary Pickford and a few comedians. Rockcliffe is so natural, as is his co-star, the beautiful Anna Q. Nillsen, you have to remind yourself that they were acting. This movie should be studied in film courses to show today's younger movie buffs what dynamic work was being done back int he "dinosaur" age of films. And maybe, like myself, they'll never forget the fantastic Rockliffe Fellowes. This guy "coulda been a contendah!"

By the standards of its time, this is a better than average film, and it is still watchable, even though the social and cinematic conventions of 1915 may make it rather quaint to some viewers. Still, the theme about a good woman regenerating a rascal is not unusual today, and here it is told with coherence and simplicity.

One may find the acting style quaint, too, but some of the worst excesses of the silent days are avoided for the most part. Perhaps we can thank young Raoul for that. The editing is choppy, but that may be due to losses over the years, and it may vary depending on the print or tape translation one sees.

I'm not a lover of silent cinema for a host of reasons, The Regeneration manages to avoid a couple but walks headlong into others.

It tells the tale of a young boy who loses his mother at a tender age, he's raised into violence and poverty and finds himself as an adult engaging in criminal activity. But when a kind hearted lady enters his life he finds himself questing for change, but can he escape his past?

The first thing that struck me about The Regeneration was how stunning it looks, there are movies made decades after this that don't look this good. The camera work is oddly crisp, the cinematography excellent and the performances are considerably less hammy than you'd expect from this era.

I feel like the movie would have been best served as a short, maybe at a 30-40 minute length. As a feature it dragged and the soundtrack though superior to most of it's ilk really does begin to grind on you.

The Regeneration is a wonderful attempt and one of the best of its type that I've seen, alas certain tropes of the genre that I despise meant it could only go so far.

The Good:

Looks incredible for its time

Great finale

The Bad:

Music gets old

Drags around the middle

Raoul Walsh had been an actor and an understudy assistant director under D. W. Griffith when Fox Films hired him to direct his first feature film, September 1915's "Regeneration." Many cite Walsh's full-length directorial debut as cinema's first gangster feature film.

Walsh had run away from home at 15 and worked a series of laborious, dangerous jobs, including a cow hand and a seafarer. His hands at that time were so calloused he refused to shake hands. Because of his horse-riding skills, D. W. Griffith hired him as an actor, with one of his first roles as a young version of Mexican revolutionist Pancho Villa.

Walsh showed enough of a curiosity of filmmaking that Griffith took him on as an assistant director, most notably helping him out in "The Birth of a Nation." In the 1915 film, Walsh also plays John Wilkes Booth, who kills Abraham Lincoln. Newly formed Fox Films Corporation heard and saw so many good things from Walsh that William Fox hired him to do one of his studio's first feature films.

"Regeneration," adapted from a 1908 play based on Owen Kildare's autobiography, was a redemption tale of a boy who grew up to become a criminal, but eventually realizing the wrongs he had committed through the guiding influence of a female social worker. Walsh decided to film in New York City's poor Lower East Side using actual criminals and prostitutes to heighten his movie's authenticity.

Elements of Griffith, who Walsh labeled as his teacher, is clearly visible in "Regeneration:" the masking of the lens, the parallel editing and camera positioning, numerous close ups and implementing newly devised cinematic techniques such as a handful of dolly movements. Certain scenes Walsh filmed contained chiaroscuro lighting, anticipating Germanic Expressionism film aesthetics by a few years.

Walsh would become one of Hollywood's auteurs noted for his hard-hitting, macho crime movies such as 1939's "The Roaring Twenties," 1941 "High Sierra," and 1949's "White Heat." He would direct until his final film in 1964, and have a script of his produced as a movie in 1970.