I caught an interesting silent feature on Turner Classic Movies last night, beginning at 11:15 p.m. (Central). It was entitled Crainquebille, and it hailed from France, having been first released in that country in 1922; its director was Jacques Feyder (best known in the U.S. for having directed Greta Garbo in her last silent film).
Crainquebille is a bittersweet comedy on the travails of an old fruits-and-vegetables vendor in Paris, an elderly gentleman who is the film's titular character. Having been adapted from a tale by Anatole France, the story shows the absurdities to which the legal and judicial systems of so-called enlightened societies can sometimes descend. The film also functions as a loving time-capsule of a vanished France, doing much the same for the urban landscape of that country as Andre Antoine's La Terre, from around the same time, did for the French countryside. The film has been praised for its realism, but no less remarkable are two striking fantasy and dream sequences, which anticipate Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bete and even, of all things, the Tool video 'Stinkfist'.
The film ended on a somewhat arbitrary note, and one of the main characters remained oddly underdeveloped, yet the ending was sweet and effective, and I did not regret staying up way past my bedtime to catch this rare film. Worth checking out.