I first purchased this film over a decade ago on VHS and then when it first came out on DVD a few years later. Now I see that it has become part of the latest trend and has become an on demand DVD-R. I don’t care what the format is as long as the film continues to be made available for it is not only an invaluable time capsule of what life was like in NYC tenements back in 1915, but it’s “a damn good film” in its own right said director Raoul Walsh who cut his directorial teeth on this movie. It was still early enough in movie history to where it was easier to go out and shoot it on location rather than in a studio.
I hadn’t watched the movie in several years. Now that I teach courses on silent movies, I decided to revisit it and found, to my delight, that it was even better than I remembered it being. The story itself is nothing special. Boy from the slums meets rich girl social worker and they fall in love but not with predictable results (at least by later Hollywood standards). Rockliffe Fellowes, as someone else pointed out, really does come across as a silent version of Marlon Brando. We can feel the magnetism and we don’t have to decipher his mumbling (if you want to hear his voice, he’s the gangster boss in the Marx Brothers’ 1931 film MONKEY BUSINESS).
Anna Q. Nilsson is best remembered today as one of the bridge players in SUNSET BOULEVARD yet she was a big star in the silent era first in her native Sweden and then in America (she can also be seen in William S. Hart’s 1920 Western THE TOLL GATE) but as is the case with so many ealy silent film stars, most of her movies do not survive. In fact, as can be seen in this transfer, REGENERATION almost didn’t survive and suffers from nitrate deterioration. The bulk of the film though is in remarkable shape and shows off the true stars of the film, the locations and the local inhabitants.
Raoul Walsh would go on to become a major Hollywood director with films like THIEF OF BAGDAD, SADIE THOMPSON and WHAT PRICE GLORY? in the silent era and HIGH SIERRA, WHITE HEAT, and THE NAKED & THE DEAD in the sound era. He lost an eye in a car accident in 1928 and wore an eyepatch ever after. It’s ironic that Skinny, the villain of REGENERATION, wears an eyepatch (but it’s on the wrong eye). The film was made for Fox Films (later 20th Century Fox) and William Fox, the most enlightened of the early moguls who was interested in more than just entertainment and it shows in the movies, like this one, that he allowed to be released under his name.
William C. de Mille’s YOUNG ROMANCE can be taken care of in a single paragraph. Not that it’s a bad film, it’s just a slight one when compared with REGENERATION. This charming story of two shop clerks who pretend to be rich and fall in love not realizing they both work in the same store is a marvelous look at America in 1915 (check out the clothes and those restaurant prices!). The print is absolutely pristine and the musical accompaniment by Robert Israel is absolutely perfect. I love the movies that were made on the East Coast before Hollywood took over in the 1920s but so few have survived. There’s a certain sincerity about them that disappeared with the move West. REGENERATION remains one of the best survivors and is highly recommended.
The Capsule Critic 