Image Entertainment's new disc teaming the 1919 hour-long features Victory and The Wicked Darling offers the chance to see Chaney when, generally speaking, he was allowed to be only menacing. Of course, he's not the lead in either, so to judge them as "Chaney pictures" is questionable. Instead, it's best to see them as above-average silent melodramas in which good and evil tussle. The struggle plays out most convincingly in The Wicked Darling, which is placed first on the disc. Coincidentally, it's also the movie in which Chaney plays a more central role and one of his early collaborations with director Tod Browning (The Unholy Three, The Unknown).
It's the skid-row tale of Mary (Priscilla Dean), a down-on-her-luck lass kept down by "Stoop" Conners (Chaney) and lecherous pawnbroker Pete Fadem (Spottiswoode Aitken). The movie makes no reference to sex, but these two men sure feel like her pimps, though the story's main concern is thievery. Mary, who we're told right away is good-hearted (an intertitle likens her to a soiled rose we see), steals a pearl necklace belonging to a socialite and, instead of handing it over to Stoop and Fadem, goes straight, because she's fallen for strapping Kent (Wellington Playter). Of course, Stoop eventually finds Mary, Kent must fight off the villains and Mary must come clean with Kent, who hates thieves.
Chaney makes Stoop believably ruthless and crafty, and the story zips along nicely, with Browning's penchant for the grotesque adding flavor to the skid-row setting. Because of that accursed setting, the many pockmarks on the picture (the disc was transferred from the sole surviving print of the movie) don't really bother you. The occasional cuts in that Dutch print of the film - someone will walk up to a door, then be in the room, without ever having gone through the door - are more jarring.
The visuals are pristine in Maurice Tourneur's lush Victory. This scenic melodrama, billed as "an island tale by Joseph Conrad" (it's based on Conrad's novel), involves reclusive Heyst (Jack Holt), a Thoreau-like westerner who's secluded himself in the Dutch East Indies. While concluding some business on an adjacent island, he meets miserable beauty Alma (Seena Owen), who invites herself back to his island, much to the chagrin of the boorish hotelier (Wallace Beery) trying to seduce her. The movie slightly lost me when it has its two leads sneak away from the hotel as if they were breaking out of prison - it seems contrived that they can't just freely leave. There's also her boss in an all-female orchestra to elude, but it's still far-fetched.
Chaney plays one of the trio of cutthroats that the hotelier entices to go after Heyst and Alma. Chaney's performance gives a hint of things to come, since he's practically unrecognizable at first (his character sports a bandito moustache) and because he eventually falls for Alma, and tries to doublecross the leader of the trio because of it. Victory also makes you realize that Chaney, however physically imposing he seems, was not a tall man. Every other actor towers over him in Victory, as Playter does in The Wicked Darling. Of course, shortness never stopped Chaney from overshadowing bigger men. The Victory/The Wicked Darling disc, with solid new musical scores from Eric Beheim, isn't the first stop for the curious to get a taste of Chaney, but it's a worthy experience for those already familiar with his 1920s work.
For more information about Victory/The Wicked Darling, visit Image Entertainment. To order Victory/The Wicked Darling, go to TCM Shopping.
by Paul Sherman
