{"id":31615,"date":"2019-07-19T08:34:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-19T12:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=31615"},"modified":"2019-07-19T08:36:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T12:36:39","slug":"the-bootleg-files-capital-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/19\/the-bootleg-files-capital-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Capital Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 693:<\/strong> \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d (1925 silent drama featuring Clara Bow).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> In a crummy public domain dupe.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> A lapsed copyright.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> It is unlikely that this will be digitally restored.<\/p>\n

Unless you are a character in a Joshua Ryan story, it is safe to assume that you would probably not voluntarily submit yourself to prison incarceration. But in this obscure 1925 silent feature, the central character agrees to forsake his liberty and go behind bars as part of an elaborate ruse to call attention to the failings of the criminal justice system. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the system fails him with extraordinary brutality.
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\u201cCapital Punishment\u201d opens with a prologue involving a young man on death row. The prisoner is wild with fear of his execution, and one of the intertitles finds him pleading, \u201cBut why should I die for something I did not do?\u201d The prisoner\u2019s attorney lobbies the governor to commute the sentence to life imprisonment, but the politician refuses. Across town, an old ruffian lying on his death bed confesses to the murder that has been pinned on the condemned young man. An effort is made to relay this news to the governor and to get him to call the prison to halt the execution. Alas, the news reaches the prison after the convict has been put to death.<\/p>\n

This case has disturbed high-priced lawyer Elliott Dexter, who makes a bet with his playboy pal Robert Ellis that he can fabricate a homicide and get an innocent man put on death row for the crime that never occurred. Before the execution could, Dexter would reveal it was a hoax by producing the alleged murder victim, thus pointing out the danger associated with capital punishment. Of course, one might imagine the tragedy of wrongful execution depicted the film\u2019s prologue would have been a strong argument against the death penalty, but the scheme delights Ellis and he agrees to be the faux-murder victim and hide away while Dexter puts the plot into motion.<\/p>\n

Now, who would want to go to prison as part of this scheme? Dexter recruits a reformed thief named Danny O\u2019Connor and offers him the promise of a $10,000 payment when the scheme is over. O\u2019Connor is running financially on empty, and he wants to use the $10,000 to make life better for his elderly mother and cute young girlfriend. He agrees, and thanks to some carefully planted circumstantial evidence he is immediately arrested for Ellis\u2019 alleged murder. After the fastest trial in movie history, O\u2019Connor is sentenced to death.<\/p>\n

While on death row, O\u2019Connor is the ultimately in cocky self-confidence. After all, he knows that his presence behind bars is only temporary and a fat cash payout awaits him. What could go possibly wrong?<\/p>\n

Well, Ellis decides that he doesn\u2019t want to stay hidden for a prolonged period \u2013 especially when he discovers Dexter is making moves on his girlfriend. The two men clash and Dexter kills Ellis. But rather than confess to his crime, Dexter allows O\u2019Connor \u2013 already imprisoned on the charge of killing Ellis \u2013 to take the fall. O\u2019Connor learns of this and, not surprisingly, is a bit upset over this turn of events. Mercifully, O\u2019Connor\u2019s girlfriend is a plucky, pushy gal with a hitherto unknown talent for investigations, and she takes it upon herself to get the truth and bring it before the governor before the execution is carried out. <\/p>\n

\u201cCapital Punishment\u201d has one of the most astonishing plots ever devised, with a surplus number of logic gaps and a painfully na\u00efve understanding of how the criminal justice operates. The film\u2019s climax with the governor\u2019s car racing to the prison to stop the execution was a blatant and clumsy rip-off of the climax to modern-day segment of D.W. Griffith\u2019s \u201cIntolerance.\u201d The acting was typical of the over-emoting that burdened too many films of the silent era, especially George Hackathorne\u2019s wildly unsubtle emotional shifts as O\u2019Connor. (The fact Hackathorne had a strong resemblance to Stan Laurel does not help in his dramatic flourishes.) It was no surprise that the New York Times mused that the \u201cpivotal idea in this picture is better suited to comedy than melodrama.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d is recalled today, it is for the presence of Clara Bow in the supporting role as O\u2019Connor\u2019s girlfriend. Bow was under contract with the small studio Preferred Pictures and was starting to gain some career momentum, but for \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d she was demoted to a thankless small part that barely registered until the latter stretch of the film. She was not well styled or photographed, and her quotidian acting lacked the charisma and energy that contributed to her growing popularity. \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d was the least interesting film up to that point in her career \u2013 and, perhaps, in her full career. Oddly, Preferred Pictures highlighted her presence in the theatrical marketing of \u201cCapital Punishment,\u201d and one can assume audiences were confused to find the on-screen Bow so radically different from the publicity hype presentation.<\/p>\n

Shortly after \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d was released, Preferred Pictures filed for bankruptcy. Studio head B. P. Schulberg was quickly signed to Paramount Pictures as an associate producer and Bow\u2019s contract with Preferred was transferred to Paramount. From there, her star took off with great performances in classic films including \u201cIt\u201d and the Best Picture Oscar winner \u201cWings.\u201d \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d was quickly forgotten, and in the transition to the talkies it soon disappeared. For years, it was assumed to be a lost film, but a print was discovered in the Netherlands in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Today, \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d is a public domain title. But unlike other public domain title, it has not been a ubiquitous presence among the bargain basement home entertainment labels. A crummy duped version with a grueling organ score can be endured on the Internet Archive<\/a> website, but to date no one has bothered to offer a digital restoration with a listenable score. But anyone who is forced to watch this old dud is being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and is clearly deserving of a Get Out of Jail Card.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em>
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\nListen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall\u201d<\/a> on SoundCloud.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 693: \u201cCapital Punishment\u201d (1925 silent drama featuring Clara Bow). LAST SEEN: On Internet Archive. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: In a crummy public domain dupe. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A lapsed copyright. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: It is unlikely that this will be digitally restored. Unless you are a character in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":31616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[2280,2281,798,944],"class_list":["post-31615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-capital-punishment","tag-clara-bow","tag-prison","tag-silent-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31615"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31619,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31615\/revisions\/31619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}