London After Midnight (1927)

Director: Tod Browning                                Writer: Tod Browning & Waldemar Young
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons               Cinematography: Merritt B. Gerstad
Starring: Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Conrad Nagel and Henry B Walthall

I wanted to write about the reconstructed London After Midnight, even though the film no longer exists. But when I went online to look at what other people had to say, they are very divided about the TCM reconstruction available on the Lon Chaney box set, and very heated about the reasons for their opinions. Firstly, this is not a real film. It is made up entirely of promotional stills which, as anyone who has compared such stills to a film will know, they are posed shots on the set that are usually not duplicated in the actual frames from the movie. It goes without saying, then, that there is no motion at all. The camera can zoom in, pan across the shot, or cut to another picture, but that is all. The biggest argument online is when people actually give the film a rating when it's obviously impossible for them to have seen it. Hopefully, I can avoid such a reaction by not writing about it as a film.

The first time I ever saw a silent film augmented in a few places with publicity stills was the 1984 re-imagining of Fritz Lang's Metropolis by Giorgio Moroder, and I thought it worked well. At that time it was the most complete version of the film, even though the running time was shorter because he used subtitles rather than title cards. The most extreme example of augmentation I've ever seen was with the reconstruction of Erich von Stroheim's Greed, which felt as if almost half the film was recreated using stills. In that case it was a little frustrating for me to watch because it seemed as if the action of the film was always being broken up by the stills. London After Midnight, on the other hand, comes with a completely different set of expectations. I actually enjoyed the reconstruction. I think it was a satisfying experience and really fills a need. Now, it certainly isn't going to satisfy everyone. And for those who dismiss it completely because . . . IT ISN'T AN ACTUAL FILM, I totally agree with them.

It brings to mind, in a very different way, the film Thru Different Eyes from 1929. That is an early sound film in which the only version in existence is a silent version with title cards. Is that the same experience as it would have been with sound? Absolutely not, and it some ways it was a frustrating film to watch because of that. But I am still incredibly thankful to have the silent version rather than nothing. And while it's definitely not the same thing here, I am just as thankful that there were so many publicity stills from London After Midnight, enough to make the effort of the reconstruction worthwhile anyway. And there is a good argument to be made for making the reconstruction.

Browning remade the film eight years later with Bela Lugosi as Mark of the Vampire and that would be a legitimate starting point in comparison with the stills of London After Midnight. In addition, Browning and Chaney worked together on a number of films and their previous, The Unknown, would also be a reasonable template for understanding the director’s style and applying that to the reconstruction. Using those two films to guide the creators makes me feel pretty confident about the end result. I watched the film with the Philip Glass score to Tod Browning’s Dracula and I thought it was a fantastic experience, making the film darker and more like a horror film. Though London After Midnight no longer exists, this conjecture about what it would have been like is definitely worth a viewing.