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The Craving (1918)

Francis Ford is mostly recalled today as a character actor in his younger brother John Ford’s classic films, but back in the 1910s and 1920s he was a prominent leading man and director. Most of his films from his halcyon days are no longer available, but his 1918 feature “The Craving” is now available in a digitally restored presentation from film historian and preservationist Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions.

“The Craving” is a wonderfully odd film with Ford as a chemist who is creating a new explosive device. A rival chemist from India wants to steal his formula and he uses his beautiful British ward to loosen Ford’s defenses by playing into his weakness – a fondness for alcohol.

“The Craving” epitomizes the vices of 1918-era movies: casting the “Eastern” ethnicities as villainous, getting on the cinematic equivalent of a soapbox to condemn alcohol – Prohibition was just around the proverbial corner – and never quite knowing whether its style belonged to old-school stagey presentation or if it could explore the liberties that the nascent film technology enabled.

To its credit, “The Craving” indulged some amusing visual effects involving multiple exposures, including an encounter between the inebriated Ford and thumb-sized starlets pretending to be sprites. There is also a fascinating clip from Ford’s now-lost epic “The Campbells Are Coming” that was meant to highlight the back story of the evil Indian and his British ward.

Ford was a virile presence and it is easy to see how he rose to stardom – and equally difficult to wonder why he was so quickly forgotten as a leading man. “The Craving” is now available in a great DVD/Blu-ray presentation with Model performing a original score that – and this is no exaggeration – is the most sublime instrumental composition I’ve heard in ages.

The DVD/Blu-ray presentation also offers three short films that Ford directed and starred in, along with a helpful mini-biography to explain Ford’s place in silent movie royalty. This is a must-have for anyone who loves vintage cinema.