(1928) 2.5 Bruce Eder Wings (1927) may be William A. Wellman's most renowned silent film -- having won the first Best Picture Oscar -- but Beggars Of Life deserves just about as much recognition within its more modest boundaries. For starters, it is the best of Louise Brooks' American films, and on that basis alone would be worth seeing. Despite the overpowering presence of Wallace Beery in the top-billed part of Oklahoma Red, Brooks acquits herself memorably as Nancy, the sad, harried teenage waif, who has killed the guardian who was trying to rape her. In a few short scenes and some telling close-ups, she nearly steals the picture from her co-stars with her quiet, reserved, yet deeply emotional performance. And beyond Brooks' work, Beggars Of Life has a massive amount going for it, not least of which the visual poetry of Wellman's direction and Henry W. Gerrard's cinematography. The movie was shot almost entirely on location, and the verisimilitude achieved, and the energy of the resulting scenes -- including some harrowing train sequences -- give the movie a fierce immediacy that comes through with laser-like intensity, even eight decades later. But more than that, the realism of the settings and Wellman's care with his actors helpt to turn virtually each and every shot into a haunting essay on desolation, loneliness, greed, and hunger, that last of a deeply psychic nature. We see all of those elements from two sides, written on the face of the innocent, quietly wounded Nancy, struggling to come to grips with life and what it has done to her, and on the desperate, hungry visages of the downtrodden, often evil, sometimes mentally unhinged men who occupy the hobo jungle. The plot moves forward at a breakneck pace, with a number of surprising twists and turns, all leading to an exciting, bittersweet denouement that gives Beery the last word and final shot. He's a powerful presence here, even if he is acting in a style far removed from Brooks's work, and Arlen -- displaying some of the same raw energy that he called up in Wellman's Wings -- has some powerful scenes as well. Long believed to be a lost film,Beggars Of Life was restored in the early twenty-first century by George Eastman House, working from the sole surviving 16mm print.

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Beggars of Life (1928)

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Questionable for Children

genres

Drama

sub-genres

Crime Drama

category

Feature

directed by

William Wellman

countries

USA

released

1928

run time

80 min.

produced by

Paramount

released by

Paramount

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by Bruce Eder synopsis

Wallace Beery appeared in this silent film with intertitles, a dark drama of hobo life. Jim (Richard Arlen), a wanderer, comes upon young Nancy (Louise Brooks), who has just killed the guardian who was trying to rape her. Disguised as a boy, she takes off with Jim and rides the rails to a hobo camp led by Arkansas Snake (Robert Perry). When Oklahoma Red (Beery) takes over the camp, he begins to pursue Nancy, but before he can take her from Jim, the detectives show up to arrest her. He engineers a daring escape that nearly kills them all, but allows Nancy and Jim to get away -- but Red is still interested in her, and still following them; as resourceful as ever, he steals a car and some girl's clothes for Nancy, to throw the police off the trail, and tries to convince Jim to light out on his own. When he sees how much they actually love each other, however, he suddenly decides to let them go. But Red knows that the police won't give up their pursuit of an accused murderer, unless they think she's dead -- and he plans one last, very risky ruse to get the detectives to walk away.

characteristics

- Tramp

- Beggar

- Indigent

- Derelict

- Transient

- Vagrant

- Bum

- Incognito

- Freight-train

- Fisticuffs

- Poverty

- Vagabond

- Train-hopping

- Fight

- On-the-run

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