Moving with the Times

Humanity's primal drive to mate run amok in urban modernity; taking the form of a working-class love rectangle between a shop clerk, an electrician, a porter, and a seamstress; chivalry in the contemporary guise of men surrendering their seats to women; a stranger made into momentary babysitter; culminating within the heart of the city's power at the coal plant and the underground electric railroad that circulates through the metropolis. "Underground" isn't one of the masterpieces it's sandwiched between in writer-director Anthony Asquith's oeuvre, "Shooting Stars" (1928) and "A Cottage on Dartmoor" (1929), it being a merely good gorgeous late silent era picture. Given its themes, it's something of a lesser "Sunrise" (1927) or "Lonesome" (1928), minus any amusement parks, with the Tube in their place.

Is this the origin of the meeting on bypassing escalators, continuing to this day as in one of the episodes from "Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy" (2021)? I've seen what Charlie Chaplin ("The Floorwalker" (1916)) and Buster Keaton ("The Electric House" (1922)) could do with such a lift, although I have yet to see Alfred Hitchcock's "Downhill" (1927). It's a reminder that many of these modern modes and conveniences emerged during the lives of the makers of such films. It's like the obsession of the cinema of today with all things computer-related, from social media to artificial intelligence. Here, it's subterranean trains, moving stairs, widespread electricity, trolleys, department stores, even the "new women" in the workforce. Of course, some aspects hardly change at all over the years; Asquith prominently places a beggar in one scene as a reminder of how fortunate our squabbling lovers are to expend so much energy on their silly love triangles.

I've been meaning to see "Underground" for a while now. After seeing his other two aforementioned silents, I'd be eager to see any film from the era from Asquith, although his only other remaining one, I believe, is the mostly unavailable and not as well reviewed "The Runaway Princess" (1929). I hope to crack into his sound pictures someday, too, although they by and large also tend not to be as well received, perhaps lacking in the visual flair of his silent work that took inspiration from the best of overseas cinema: the Hollywood glamor, Soviet montage, and unchained German camera. This one even gets to go back to cinematic origins with the phantom-ride shots, movies having been linked to the railways almost from the beginning. ("The Haverstraw Tunnel" (1897) oft being cited as the first such instance, and there's the famous Lumière "Arrival of a Train" (1896/1897) demonstrating early on the camera's general interest in the locomotive.) I like the mirror shots and shadow stuff here, and the punching at the camera of the pub fight. There's almost something in the visual representation of the coal plant, too, preceding Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936). The only obvious goof I noticed in the whole thing being a man falling into water but emerging onto land dry as British wit.

So, I took the opportunity to finally see it after watching the latest "Downton Abbey," "A New Era" (2022), where one of the storylines involves the transition from silent films to talkies--taking its cue largely from the real production history of Hitchcock's "Blackmail" (1929) and the reel fiction of "Singin' in the Rain" (1952). Besides demonstrating to be bunk the rather odd claim in "A New Era" that Abel Gance's masterpiece "Napoléon" (1927) had much to do with inspiring filmmakers to shoot on location, both Gance's film and "Underground" hitting British theatres the same year, not to mention on-location shoots before either, a comparison is interesting in other ways. "Downton Abbey" is a series that not only romanticizes the past, it's set in a past that further romanticizes its past and all in a way that valorizes the aristocracy. In "A New Era," the film industry they only welcome into their estate for their money is looked upon with disdain by the snobs of the house.

Asquith, on the other hand, was a real member of English nobility, the son of a prime minister, born into a life of privilege, and unlike his contemporary and relative commoner Hitchcock. Not many neophytes looking to break into filmmaking are afforded a half-year invitation to Hollywood to live and hang out with the likes of Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford as Asquith was. The booklet accompanying the BFI home video presentation of the restored film even includes a photograph of "America's Sweetheart" returning the favor with a visit to this production, only his second and the first where he received credit. Additionally, fitting two storylines from "Downton Abbey," for two different characters, Asquith was also a socialist, with an apparent interest in depicting the lives of laborers and not in any overly gritty way, and was a closeted homosexual. Unlike that show, however, "Underground" is distinctly looking forward, embracing modernity. Asquith's self-referential treatment of filmmaking in "Shooting Stars" and of the transition to talkies in "A Cottage on Dartmoor" would make for even more striking comparison besides, again, being unreservedly great films.