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| Lazybones. Buck Jones (Steve "Lazybones" Tuttle). |
US © 1925 Fox. D: Frank Borzage. SC: Frances Marion. DP: George Schneiderman. Starring Buck Jones (Steve "Lazybones" Tuttle), Madge Bellamy (Kit as a young woman), ZaSu Pitts (Ruth Fanning).
MoMA print. 6395 ft /22 fps/ 78 min.
Viewed at SEA, Orion, Helsinki, 8 Feb 2005, with music by Tuukka Terho (guitar) and Severi Salminen (violin).
Borzage's second masterpiece invites comparison to Russian classics like Chekhov and Goncharov in its sense of the missed opportunities of life. Lazybones is the Oblomov of America: the world goes by, life goes by, and he is mostly content to fall asleep in a big tree by the riverside. Even WWI he experiences as a somnambulistic hero-by-accident. Having taking into his custody an abandoned baby he loses his girlfriend, and a generation later, as the baby is a young woman, he realizes that love has passed him by. Lazybones is a mirror to the question "what is life all about", what have all the others accomplished? This time I felt there is maybe a bit too much caricature, but there are several subtly humoristic scenes, including the laconic ending. ****
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