Coming on Sunday, March 30 in Wilton, N.H.: 'Long Pants,' a very strange silent comedy

Harry Langdon in 'Long Pants' (1927), to be screened on Sunday, March 30 at 4:30 p.m. at the Wilton (N.H.) Town Hall Theatre.

Just a brief post to highlight an unusual film this weekend that I think is worth checking out.

On Sunday, March 30, we'll be showing 'Long Pants' (1927), a rarely screened feature-length silent comedy starring Harry Langdon.

The show is at 4:30 p.m. at the Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton, N.H. Admission is free, although we encourage a donation of $5 to help defray expenses.

Who was Harry Langdon? He was a middle-aged vaudevillian who quickly shot to movie comedy fame in the last years of the silent era, that's who.

How popular was he? In a word, huge. For a time, he was regarded as Chaplin's only serious rival in motion pictures. His character, a baby-faced innocent man-child making his way in the sophisticated 1920s, struck a chord that really resonated at the time. His films, with stories created by a team that included a young Frank Capra, were big hits.

And yet as rapidly as Langdon's star rose, it fell just as fast. By the end of the silent era, Langdon was yesterday's leftovers.

For audiences who are new to Langdon, the point I try to make is that his comedy exists primarily in reaction to so much that was typical of silent film comedy.

Where other comedians would react violently to being hit on the head, Langdon might just go quiet, blink his eyes, and then quietly curl up on the nearest sofa or divan. (That's exactly what happens in 'The Strong Man' (1926), another Langdon feature that I accompanied earlier this week.)

And in 'Long Pants,' things are especially strange in that Harry, an obviously middle-aged man, plays the role of a teenage boy coming of age.

I've done the film once before, about three years ago, and it got a surprisingly strong reaction from a small audience in which no one had ever heard of Langdon before.

So I'm interested in seeing what kind of reaction 'Long Pants' produces on Sunday afternoon in Wilton, where we often get sizable crowds. (Plus, the weather is looking gloomy for this Sunday, which often boosts attendance at our screenings.) Come on and be a part of the experiment.

And because the film is only about an hour long, I'll run some unusual silent comedy shorts prior to the main event. Hope you can join us!

Harry Langdon — not so fast!

Among Hollywood's great silent clowns of the 1920s, Harry Langdon has the reputation of being an acquired taste. Among some, he's known for not producing laughs with modern audiences. I remember reading part of Walter Kerr's great 1975 book 'Silent Clowns' in which the author recalls audiences greeting Keaton's 'The General' (1927) with "constant, astonished laughter" while a screening of Langdon's 'The Strong Man' (1926) produced bupkiss. And I guess that sealed it with me.

But, after last night's screening of Langdon's rarely seen feature 'Long Pants' (1927), I'm now prepared to say that Langdon should not be sold short at all when it comes to laughter. He does very well, thank you. All that's necessary is to tell people (even those who've never attended a silent film) that Langdon was popular as a reaction to the fast-paced frenetic style of silent comedy, and it seems to do the trick.

Last night, our little-publicized screening of 'Long Pants' at the Manchester (N.H.) Public Library attracted a total of five people. (I was surprised we got any, it being the day after Labor Day weekend.) Never mind Langdon—all of them had never attended a silent film screening of any kind. But right from the start, you could tell that Harry had them. Well, Harry and director Frank Capra, whose sure hand and sense of story-telling could clearly be seen in how the film was laid out.

And rather than the stony silence that Kerr got when he ran 'The Strong Man,' last night Harry received the "constant, astonished laughter" that Kerr concluded was Buster's province. Really. Harry got laughs trying to impress Alma Bennett, the girl of his dreams on his bicycle, and it built steadily from then on. The weirdly dark "trying to kill his bride" sequence got a big reaction. And things really took off in the extended slapstick that follows the jailbreak, which is top-notch silent comedy.

The only moment that didn't get an expected strong laugh was when Harry finally reacts to Alma Bennett's criminal roughhousing ("I'm surprised!"), which I think forms the comic climax of the film, but which was met with silence. Oh well. But on his walk home, through the same woods where he tried to kill Priscilla Bonner earlier in the film, things grew warm very quickly, and I tried to build the music to illustrate the transformation to Harry finally realizing what he had left behind.

And so the ending, which seemed rather perfunctory me in previewing the film, came across in live performance as the perfect finish to a very satisfying comic adventure. I was as surprised as anyone! And the audience, even just five people, really seemed to eat it up. As Harry gets clobbered one last time by the upturned dinner table, somehow it all seemed just exactly right.

Afterwards, we talked, and two young gals who had taken in the picture on a whim, said they probably would not have watched it on television, but that they found 'Long Pants' to be a strangely beguiling and compelling experience in a theater. The three other folks (two sisters and their wheelchair-bound mother) agreed. And we went on talking for about a half-hour about the picture and silent films in general.

And I thought how we've screened 'Tramp Tramp Tramp' and 'The Strong Man' (both 1926) several times, and they always get a good response. And now, with 'Long Pants' joining them in getting a good reaction, I'm prepared to say that maybe Harry shouldn't be put in the "acquired taste" box. In my experience, he does very well for himself. 'The Strong Man' seems to hold its own with audiences especially well, but 'Tramp Tramp Tramp' has a succession of marvelous things, and 'Long Pants' is right up there, too.

Maybe times have changed and all silent comedy (and silent film in general) now seems fresh and new to people in a way that wasn't possible when Walter Kerr was screening flicks in the 1970s.

After all, silent film really is a different art form that seems to surprise people who've never encountered it before (in a theater with live music), which is something I saw again last night at the Manchester Library. For these newcomers, it's pointless to compare the various styles and approaches of Chaplin, Keaton, etc. For them, all the films are stripped bare of context, and so they must stand or fail on their own.

Though Harry does require a little nudge (explaining how his approach was different), the stories in his features are strong enough to carry the day, and the comedy is something that people still respond to. And so more and more I'm convinced his stuff is some of the best and most balanced that was done in the silent era—a little warmer than Lloyd, though not as maudlin as Chaplin, and often as inventive as Keaton.

But there I go comparing.

By the way, one of the more interesting personal connections to the silent film era I've encountered was meeting Harry's nephew, also named Harry Langdon, at the Kansas Silent Film Festival in 2007. (Here's a picture of him on the left.) Harry (the younger) was born around 1940, so never actually met his famous moviestar uncle, but still had a lot to say about the family and was a really nice guy.