Hollywood in the 1930s had the nasty habit, among others, of cannibalizing old silent films in their vaults to repurpose as shorts with obnoxious, jokey voiceover narration. I've already reviewed another one of these before, "Boo" (also from 1932), which employed Universal's copy of "Nosferatu" (1922) to combine it with footage from the more recent "The Cat Creeps" (1930) and "Frankenstein" (1931). Meanwhile, "The Unshod Maiden" regurgitates Lois Weber's 1916 feature "Shoes." So radical was the shift at the time to synchronized-sound production, that the silent films of only a decade or two ago were now being trotted out in adulterated form to be mocked. No wonder, then, if some might have believed that the silent era was little more than sped-up Keystone Kops slapstick.
Just imagine if, say, Warner Bros. trotted out "The Dark Knight" (2008) re-edited as a short for HBO Max, not only as one of those CinemaSins YouTube videos, but also to make fun of how supposedly-primitive movies were back in those days--even to have been shot on celluloid, without 3D or much CGI and to be seen in theatres--and with whatever today's equivalent is of wisecracking puns such as, "Alas, shoes came high in those days. In fact, they came half way up the calf, and that's no bull." And, that's the only way you could see "The Dark Knight," such being the case in 1932 in the days before TV and home video, let alone streaming. Films were nothing but a product to be briefly consumed before being disposed of--at most for another product, such as "The Unshod Maiden," before it was thrown away, too.
OK, maybe a joke here or there isn't awful (e.g. "He says there are 82 million men out of work and soon Congress is going to make it unanimous"), but they all come and go so quickly, throwaway lines to be treated as disposable as the filmmakers behind this treated celluloid itself that none of them are given an opportunity to land. Even a belch sound effect is added, for crying out loud. Besides, the smart aleck narration hardly matches the 1916 footage, biased as I may be from having just seen the social-problem drama "Shoes."
The only potential benefit I see with this cannibalization was that it might've inadvertently saved some silent-film footage, so mistreated was celluloid otherwise, too. The only bit of "The Cat Creeps," for instance, that exists today is from "Boo." Some of "The Unshod Maiden," as well, was put back into the restoration of "Shoes." This is nitrate film that the studios may have otherwise intentionally and unintentionally burned, thrown away, or otherwise left to rot--even had they donated it to a venerable institution for preservation. It's not as though the Academy, the Museum of Modern Art, etc., haven't already lost films they held to deterioration and misplacement (just look at the tragedy of Colleen Moore's films, which she donated to MoMa, only for them to be left to decay), or that there still isn't a full accounting of materials held in the various vaults throughout the world today. That's it, though; "The Unshod Maiden" is otherwise contemptable, with the intention of such gags in the first place having been the destruction of those films.
Just imagine if, say, Warner Bros. trotted out "The Dark Knight" (2008) re-edited as a short for HBO Max, not only as one of those CinemaSins YouTube videos, but also to make fun of how supposedly-primitive movies were back in those days--even to have been shot on celluloid, without 3D or much CGI and to be seen in theatres--and with whatever today's equivalent is of wisecracking puns such as, "Alas, shoes came high in those days. In fact, they came half way up the calf, and that's no bull." And, that's the only way you could see "The Dark Knight," such being the case in 1932 in the days before TV and home video, let alone streaming. Films were nothing but a product to be briefly consumed before being disposed of--at most for another product, such as "The Unshod Maiden," before it was thrown away, too.
OK, maybe a joke here or there isn't awful (e.g. "He says there are 82 million men out of work and soon Congress is going to make it unanimous"), but they all come and go so quickly, throwaway lines to be treated as disposable as the filmmakers behind this treated celluloid itself that none of them are given an opportunity to land. Even a belch sound effect is added, for crying out loud. Besides, the smart aleck narration hardly matches the 1916 footage, biased as I may be from having just seen the social-problem drama "Shoes."
The only potential benefit I see with this cannibalization was that it might've inadvertently saved some silent-film footage, so mistreated was celluloid otherwise, too. The only bit of "The Cat Creeps," for instance, that exists today is from "Boo." Some of "The Unshod Maiden," as well, was put back into the restoration of "Shoes." This is nitrate film that the studios may have otherwise intentionally and unintentionally burned, thrown away, or otherwise left to rot--even had they donated it to a venerable institution for preservation. It's not as though the Academy, the Museum of Modern Art, etc., haven't already lost films they held to deterioration and misplacement (just look at the tragedy of Colleen Moore's films, which she donated to MoMa, only for them to be left to decay), or that there still isn't a full accounting of materials held in the various vaults throughout the world today. That's it, though; "The Unshod Maiden" is otherwise contemptable, with the intention of such gags in the first place having been the destruction of those films.
