The Kid Brother (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 4/1/2018

The Kid Brother was our fourth film from 1927, and the last we saw at the AFI's silent film festival last fall. It was our fifth film starring Harold Lloyd, and the third where his female lead was Jobyna Ralston, whom we'd seen just the previous day in Wings.

In this film Lloyd lives with his father, who is the local sheriff, and his two older brothers, all of whom are bigger and stronger than Lloyd. Ralston arrives with two shady partners as part of a medicine show, and becomes involved with Lloyd. Lloyd and Ralston have a decent chemistry, perhaps by virtue of having worked together so often, and in this film their relationship is depicted as relatively healthy, unlike, for instance, in Safety Last and Girl Shy, where Lloyd did an awful lot of lying to his female lead, or in The Freshman, where he was borderline delusional. His brothers and father are also depicted as somewhere in the vicinity of a believable family, and not just as comedic foils.

The plot meanders a bit, but eventually the other two figures from the medicine show end up stealing town funds with which Lloyd's father was entrusted, casting suspicion on him. The final section of the film shows Lloyd finding the thieves and recovering the money. This last sequence is surprisingly violent, with Lloyd at one point trying to hold one of the thieves underwater until he drowns.

Seeing a movie like this in a theater is obviously a different experience than seeing it on television. For silents particularly, the live accompaniment makes a difference, but also for comedies it is interesting to hear what people actually find funny. The kids were a little critical on the way home about what they saw as overly effusive laughter from the audience. Usually I'm in sympathy with this point of view, and it often seems like there's a certain amount of performative laughter when people are watching older comedies. But the particular scene they were criticizing involved Lloyd putting human sized shoes on a monkey in order to fool his pursuer about where he was -- which seemed kind of amusing to me at the time. In general, though, Lloyd's movies usually make me smile more than laugh, but they are reliably charming, and this one is in that same vein.

After our detour into 1927, our next film, The Scarlet Letter, is our first from 1926. It's the first Lillian Gish film we've seen in a while, and also the sixth Victor Sjöström film. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT