Francis Ford is mostly recalled today as a character actor in his younger brother John Ford\u2019s 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 \u201cThe Craving\u201d is now available in a digitally restored presentation from film historian and preservationist Ben Model\u2019s Undercrank Productions.
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\u201cThe Craving\u201d 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\u2019s defenses by playing into his weakness \u2013 a fondness for alcohol.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Craving\u201d epitomizes the vices of 1918-era movies: casting the \u201cEastern\u201d ethnicities as villainous, getting on the cinematic equivalent of a soapbox to condemn alcohol \u2013 Prohibition was just around the proverbial corner \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
To its credit, \u201cThe Craving\u201d 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\u2019s now-lost epic \u201cThe Campbells Are Coming\u201d that was meant to highlight the back story of the evil Indian and his British ward. <\/p>\n