Back in 2017 Flicker Alley released a restored version of Irvin Willat’s 1919 BEHIND THE DOOR, an intense but forgotten World War I melodrama that still has the power to engage and shock a modern audience. Now they have released, on their Flicker Fusion series in partnership with The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, a restored version of Willat’s followup film BELOW THE SURFACE (1920) which is coupled with DOOR on a single Blu-ray. Both movies star Hobart Bosworth who was a major figure in the early days of Hollywood although he is forgotten today primarily due to the unavailability of many of his films.
While DOOR is basically a revenge tragedy, SURFACE could be considered a domestic one as it deals with a family split between Bosworth and his only son. The son is played by Lloyd Hughes who is best remembered as the intrepid reporter in THE LOST WORLD in 1925. He and his father live and work in a fishing community on a small island off the New England coast. They specialize in deep sea diving. When the father helps to rescue a trapped submarine, he draws a lot of outside publicity. A Boston con man (George Webb) and his wife (Grace Dormand) see an opportunity to salvage a sunken treasure ship but when they approach the father, he refuses to help them.
They then go to work on the son. The wife, pretending to be the con man’s sister, rents a cottage and pretends to fall in love with the son. She even goes so far as to marry him much to the father’s dismay and this causes the split between father and son. After getting the son to dive to the wreck and bring back some gold coins (which the con man will use to dupe investors), she deserts him and goes back to Boston with her real husband. The son becomes critically ill so the father goes to Boston to bring her back but fate intervenes and the movie switches from melodrama to serious drama with consequences for all involved.
Hobart Bosworth had a commanding on-screen presence during the silent era and that is certainly the case here. While not as intense as he was in DOOR, he still dominates every scene he’s in much the way that John Wayne did in his later years. Lloyd Hughes is essentially the central figure in this story and he acquits himself well in the role of the betrayed husband showing that he had more than just good looks. Grace Darmond and George Webb as the scheming con artists (and villains of the piece) give restrained, believable performances. Darmond is especially effective as the duplicitous wife.
Unlike BEHIND THE DOOR which is a composite restoration involving a number of prints (including one from Russia), BELOW THE SURFACE is essentially taken from a print that was located at the Library Of Congress. Major funding was provided by San Francisco Film Preserve along with The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. SURFACE is virtually complete and has had its original color tints replicated while the beautiful illustrated title cards are intact which adds an extra dimension to viewing the movie. It’s a shame these cards disappeared by the mid 1920s. The location shooting is well photographed and the underwater sequences are very well handled.
As a silent film enthusiast, it’s always rewarding when a film produced by Thomas Ince can be seen in a quality print. Ince is truly the forgotten man in Hollywood history who is remembered today only for his mysterious death aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht in 1924 rather than for his many cinematic accomplishments. He died right as the studio system which he pioneered came to fruition. Very little of his vast output has been made available including the anti-war allegory CIVILIZATION (1916) which is as important as D.W Griffith’s INTOLERANCE. Thanks to Flicker Alley for making these two movies available as they demonstrate the power that well made silent movies still have.
The Capsule Critic 