Letterboxd Season Challenge 2019-2020! Theme four, part two - a silent horror film!
(Chosen by Jackie!)
Might as well start off by noting the most notable thing about The Bat as a media franchise: in his 1989 autobiography Batman and Me, Bob Kane named Roland West's 1930 sound remake of this silent comedy-mystery as a major influence on his most famous creation, Batman. This would count for something more if it weren't for Bob Kane's major contributions to the Batman mythos beginning and ending with the idea for a guy named Batman. Considering Kane and his estate spent a good collective seventy-seven years bilking Bill Finger of any and all creative credit on published materials, despite Finger coming up with (among other things), Batman's actual costume, the Batcave, the Batmobile, Robin, Commissioner Gordon, the Joker, Catwoman, many of Batman's villains who hail from the 1940s, and the actual stories and dialogue from the vast majority of Batman stories published during the Golden and early Silver Ages, I do not think it matters much that Mary Roberst Rinehart's 1920 Broadway smash hit eventually played before Kane's eyes as a filmic adaptation when considering the overall Batman legacy. There's a few tiny elements in common here to make the tenuous connection a little more believable, such as the presence of a circular light with a bat silhouette in the middle, or the bat-shaped calling cards the titular villain leaves behind, but in the main, naming The Bat as a major influence on Batman's creation only gives credence and credit to a man who stole more than enough both during and after his time on this earth. Someone let me know when a Bill Finger biography mentions this play or either film; then we can start talking.
Anyhow, as a film, 1926's The Bat proves a difficult watch. Looking over the Wikipedia synopsis for the play, there are mentions of where exactly the act breaks go, and I can see how moments within the film are meant to function as such, yet the pace West adopts to keep things lively makes matters muddled and difficult to follow. On paper, the tale involves the criminal mastermind known only as the Bat holing up in an old manor where an elderly woman, her youthful niece, and their live-in maid have recently taken residence, joined in short order by a mysterious new gardener, a doctor representing a bank which was robbed under suspicious circumstances, two detectives hired to chase down the bank robber and the Bat respectively, and a late-arriving roughed-up man who nobody can identify. You set them lose on the understanding that any one of them could be the Bat, and you've the ingredients for a nice spooky run-around. In practice, there are so many characters with so many hidden agendas, introduced at a pace which does not slow down for or discriminate between act structures, and treated as a single massive pack whose individual members don't much matter so often as to leave one completely lost. Try as I did, I could not keep track of the plot's twists and turns and double-backs, and eventually asked the room if anyone knew what was going on, to which I received a collective, "No."
It's at least nice to know understanding the mystery is only one component involved to enjoy The Bat. The other, pertaining to the film's miniature comedic routines, makes a nice time. If I don't know quite what's going on or why the characters are doing what they're doing, I'm at least guaranteed to enjoy whatever's happening on-screen at any given point. West cuts between footage and title cards at a rate which I assume is meant to duplicate the dialectic rhythms of the stage play, and finds more success than usual in the attempt. I'm personally a fan of maid Lizzie's comedic hysterics and how overall extra she gets when faced with the slightest amount of stress. Characters moving through the manor in a big ol' huddle leads to some decent comedic scenarios here and there, particularly when they all go swinging from the rooftops. One of the detectives, who looks to me for all the world like Roscoe Arbuckle, gets into a little game of turn-around over a gun on a table with the mystery man while the latter's tied up, and that clicks along nicely. Connect the gags of comedy the gags of horror, and The Bat also has some nice beats along those lines, such as the moment when the villain corners the niece in a hidden room and we finally get to see his realistic chioptera mask in detail, or the way West frequently narrows the camera's focus to just the diagonal slice of a stairwell to heighten tension. He's a little incoherent on the big picture, but I'm having myself a decent experience.
I cannot call The Bat a particularly good movie. Not when the reveal of whodunnit comes at the close, we all spend a few minutes discussing what happened amongst ourselves, and then I look up the plot summary on Wikipedia and find the four of us misunderstood what happened entirely. West's film does not make the play's plot easy to follow, what with the way it hastily introduces multiple characters at a rapid clip and treats the routines the scenario makes possible as more important than the overarching structure or point of the piece. With said routines, be they comedic or intended as frightening, serving to draw out a small smile or appreciative nod multiple times throughout, the negative impact of his plotting and character work is dampened to an extent. It's likely not the best way to experience Rineheart's work between her original novel The Circle Staircase, the stage production, West's sound remake, and the 1959 redo with Vincent Price. Could easily be wrong on that count - I've not experienced any of the others, so maybe The Bat as a property doesn't hold any appeal for me and this IS the best of all possible versions - but I'd imagine at least ONE of these is still funny while also making it substantially easier to follow who's who and what's going on.
(Gotta love how we just absolutely mangle the Bat's leg during the climax while elderly Miss Ogden casually goes about her crocheting.)
2.5/5
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