Lazybones (1925)

"Remind me to fix it tomorrow/when I get back home ".That gate ,along with the incredible last (very short) sequence ,is a comic relief ,without which the viewer would be full of despair."Lazybones" begins as a light comedy: a "good-for-nothin" boy whose nickname is the title of the film ,spends his time fishing in the river or pouring syrup on his pancakes -the opening of the movie is revealing- He's got a fiancée,Agnes ,but both she and his mother ,although they love him,think that there 's nothing they can do to cure his laziness.Steve might be the first of the great heroes Borzagesque,one of those who gave all and asked for nothing in return ;he is a cousin of Tim scrawling in the snow ("Lucky Star") ,of Angela smiling through her tears when she's about to be arrested ("Street Angel") ,of Hans doing anything to make his wife happy ("little man what now?" ) of Louise on her boat saying farewell to her husband ("Big city"),of the Dr Paige ("Green Light")using herself as a guinea pig ,of.... the list is endless.All these characters are ready to sacrifice everything so that the persons they love tenderly will be happy .Steve is a good man from the start.After rescuing a woman ,he receives her baby in his home and all along the story his face seems to say:"don't thank me,everybody would have done the same".And Steve has to fight,like the great Borzagesque heroes ,against a hostile ,nay cruel world: the mother beating her daughter is a very violent scene by the silent era's standards ;the little girl considered the ugly duckling by her schoolmates (the subject of the outcast would be applied again in Borzage's underrated "moonrise" ).But the scenes between "Uncle " Steve and his nephew make it all worthwhile.When she complains the others treat her like a punching bag ,he takes her in his arms and they communicate with their eyes .Few directors show more sympathy and tenderness for their own characters.With "Lazybones",Borzage had invented what the Italians would do long after him: a comedy which turns into a drama.

It's the turn of the century in the middle of nowhere. Buck Jones stars as rube Steve Tuttle, a man who is the very definition of bone idle. He's a nice honest guy but he'd much rather be chewing on an ear of corn with a hat over his face than doin' much of anything. For some reason a lovely young lady called Agnes is sweet on him, but he'd rather catch forty zees than go a-courtin'. There's a brash annoying fellow called Elmer Ballister who is referred to by an intertitle as being a "Beau Brummel" type, and he is well dressed and well-to-do but that's about the sum of the man. Agnes' ma, rather a wicked witch type of character straight of the set of the Wizard of Oz prefers Elmer to Steve. For sure, if she could sweep him into the river she would.To add a dash of zing to the film Agnes' sister Ruth turns up with a baby. She went away to college and married a nautical fellow on the sly. Unfortunately the sea took him from her. Ruth knows that her mother will never believe the story. On the way home she ditches herself in the river and Frank hooks more than he bargained for lazing in the Y of a tree with his fishing rod.He agrees to look after the baby, so that Ruth can go home and pretends that nothing has happened. And that's how he spends the next few years, lazin' away and bringing up "Kit". Borzage allows us the usual tender moments here. As in Lucky Star, come the Great War, the protagonist (almost an oxymoron in this case) heads off to France, where he becomes a war hero by total chance.This movie is about the passing of time though. Steve returns from France and time has moved on, his boots don't fit, and the sticking gate which he always meant to fix has been fixed by a young man who carries his Kit away.This is the part of the movie that really is a punch in the gut. Steve, inept at love through inexperience and sheer idleness falls in love with his adoptive daughter whom he can't have. The last scenes were like a roundhouse to the jaw for me. Just after we've quite literally seen the hay wain of life pass a house-entombed Agnes by, we see Frank catching the tiniest fish in the gulch. That I think is major cinema. There are momentous hardcore existential messages pouring off the screen during the reversal at the end of the film. At it's heart it is a movie about the sheer folly of letting life slip idly by.Steve, one might feel, deserved some reward for bringing Kit up, however in a nice guy comes last world, things like that don't happen. You have to seize life and in particular the girl to get anything out of it.My apologies for the spoilers, almost impossible to discuss the movie sensibly without them.

In a review of Moonrise (1948), I asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: did Borzage ever direct a film that wasn't about the redemptive power of love? Then I saw Lazybones, a deceptively low-key film that quietly suggests that love and sacrifice are not always rewarded, that relationships can be destroyed permanently by lack of trust, and that people's characters just don't change. I always associated Borzage with miraculous, credibility-straining happy endings in which people return from the dead, recover their ability to walk, or at least forgive and forget past misunderstandings in sublime romantic union. I don't want to spoil the ending of Lazybones, but I will say: this film doesn't go where you think it's going. It's not a tragedy, nor a melodrama, but a sustained, tender look at a group of people whose lives are more like those of real human beings than of Hollywood movie characters.Charles "Buck" Jones plays Steve Tuttle, nicknamed "Lazybones." He is introduced by a symbolic shot of molasses pouring slowly over pancakes; then we see Steve snoozing with his feet up against a fence, where they have been so long cobwebs have formed at his toes. We seem to be in the realm of quaint rural comedy. Steve has an ever-loyal mother and a beautiful girlfriend named Agnes (Jane Novak), whose gargoyle of a mother, naturally, doesn't approve of this good-for-nothing. The movie starts slowly with light humor, in a beautifully realized turn-of-the-century setting. Then Steve rescues Ruth (Zasu Pitts), a young woman who throws herself into the river in a suicide attempt. She has a baby from a secret marriage, her husband is dead—and she's Agnes's sister. Steve offers to take the baby home, and of course no one believes that he found it; they assume it's really his. Agnes says she will never speak to him again.What we expect now is some comedy about a man trying to deal with a baby, before a few revelations and a happy denouement. Instead, the story starts to leap ahead in time, as baby Kit becomes a little girl, teased by her schoolmates and ostracized by the town for her questionable parentage, then a teenager in overalls. Steve continues to be shiftless and lazy; Ruth is unhappily married against her will to a pompous dandy. World War I breaks out, and when Steve returns, after inadvertently becoming a hero, he sees the beautiful young woman Kit has become and—rather disturbingly—falls in love with her. By this point, all the expectations aroused by the conventional storyline have gone out the window.Lazybones is a small-scale film, but it's exquisitely crafted, from the clever and handsomely illustrated title cards to the visual wit with which sequences are connected. I can't think of a silent drama more subtly acted; every performance is natural, delicate and underplayed. I've never seen Buck Jones in his cowboy persona, but it was a wonderful inspiration to turn this big, square-jawed lug into a gentle, dreamy, wistful character. Without any overt emoting, he gives an affecting performance as a man of innate decency but curious passivity. He shades ever so subtly from youthful promise (he'll overcome his laziness and make good, we assume) to a still likable but saddened, almost stunted middle age; he realizes he's missed his chances, yet his life can't be seen as wasted. The delicate ambiguity of this character development is more reminiscent of Japanese cinema than Hollywood.Zasu Pitts uses her huge mournful eyes and thin, sickly face to powerful effect in the tragic role of a woman forced to watch her child grow up without knowing her. The mother of Agnes and Ruth is the only character who is less than nuanced. Borzage seems to have had an obsession with abusive women: like the mother in Lucky Star and the sister in Seventh Heaven, Mrs. Fanning wields a whip against a helpless waif. Virginia Marshall, who plays the young Kit, is striking and not a bit cloying. Madge Bellamy is reminiscent of Mabel Normand in her tomboyish teenage scenes, and brilliantly nervous and embarrassed in a scene with her dying mother. Towards the end of the film, her chocolate-box prettiness takes the edge off Kit's appealing outcast character.Lacking a transcendent romance at its center, Lazybones highlights Borzage's interest in outsiders, social rejects, people who create their own world because they can't fit into the mainstream. Refreshingly free of clichés or easy answers, it's a tender miniature that makes an unexpectedly strong impression.

"Lazybones", directed by Herr Frank Borzage was the beginning of this director's most fruitful period in the silent era. Like Herr Borzage's other most important and remarkable silent films,"Lazybones" was produced for Fox. "Lazybones" tells the story of Steve Tuttle ( Buck Jones ) "a man as slow as molasses in winter" so the people gave him the nickname of "Lazybones" a man with many unrequited loves that he will sacrifice in a languid way true to his character. The film combines a refined sense of humour with a kind of melancholy melodrama developed by excellent actors who are perfect in their different characters. Buck Jones was mainly famous for his cowboy roles ( And Borzage himself was also noted for his early westerns ). Steve's opposite is JaneNovak (Zasu Pitts) , a victim of her strict mother, and who is a fragile character with little chance for rebellion in a town where convention rules and keeping up appearances is a very important matter.In this film nature and the landscapes are very important too and become subtle characters in their own right. They sometimes reflect the different moods or the special way of life of the different characters of the film, ( sunny, idyllic and carefree for Lazybones and unsettled and windy for the women ). The decisive importance of the background shows an European influence, especially from the Danes and Swedes. The film is also an excellent example of the Herr Borzage mastery of storytelling and pacing. Technical effects, flashbacks and camera movements are combined in such an imperceptible manner that the audience can feel and sense the inexorable passing of time in an elegant, sad but beautiful way…,this German count, who lacks some of the common human feelings, still thinks that makes for poetry, doesn't it? And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must go stretch.Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien