The Ace of Hearts (1921)

The Ace of Hearts (1921), directed by Wallace Worseley, 3 stars

An assortment of aging anarchists has gathered to vote on whether a person they know should be put to death.  Should he be declared anathema, this individual will become “the man who has lived too long,” and it will fall to one of the assembled to rid the world of this evildoer.  Enter three additional individuals—each a member of this group, and each equally if uniquely ill-suited to the task at hand.  The first to arrive is Mr. Forrest (John Bowers).  One can only wonder how this callow, dashingly handsome youth first encountered this sordid group of self-selected dispensers of justice. One might well ask the same of the young and lovely Lilith (Leatrice Joy), who is not present for the voting but arrives in time to dole out the fateful cards that will determine who must do the dirty deed.  Finally, there’s Mr. Farallone (Lon Chaney), an older and extremely emotional, long-haired lover of Lilith whose excessively artistic temperament is hard for everyone to take, including Lilith herself.  Instead, she is smitten by Mr. Forrest, more her own age, and to whom she deals the ace of hearts, the card that determines who must kill the man who has lived too long.  Mr. Farallone is crushed.  It is too much for him to have not been selected for the mission and to have lost his lady love--both in a single day.

Chaney is as always riveting, and viewers are hard-pressed to take their eyes off him whenever he is on screen.  Even though he is outrageously melodramatic by today’s standards in demonstrating an inability to contain his emotions, alternately pouting, slouching in his chair, weeping, and standing outside Lilith’s apartment all night, gazing up at her window for hours in the rain, he is simply masterly in his larger than life performance.  In the morning, still sitting on the steps of Lilith’s apartment, he is so self-absorbed in sadness that he completely ignores a stray dog that has wandered by and is intent on cheering up the morose man.  The dog yaps insistently, only inches from Chaney’s face, scratching playfully at his pants leg and licking the back of his hand, all in a vain attempt to get the poor man’s attention.  As the sequence goes on, one feels more sorry for the dog than for the man.

Chaney’s performance is not the only over-the-top feature of the film. The intertitles (of which there are many) teem with highfalutin dialogue.  Even the editing succumbs to extremes.  Chaney finally acknowledges the dog once it climbs into his lap.  As he caresses it, the camera cuts to a scene in the upstairs bedroom where Lilith and Mr. Forrest are clasped in each other’s arms.  This juxtaposition is so jarring that it pulled me completely out of the picture.

The DVD version release by Turner Classics is part of a Lon Chaney retrospective.  The print of “The Ace of Hearts” is very scratchy, but it’s better to have access to a less than perfect print than to have no copies of the film at all, which is the case with much of Chaney’s work, as well as that of many other of his contemporaries.  I especially liked the opening of the film, with its sound effects that include the rapping associated with a sequence of secret knocks required to gain entry into the anarchists’ lair.  There’s also a wonderful extreme high-angle shot of the dealing out of the cards from directly overhead that suggests that fate is playing a hand in the outcome.  Vivek Maddala was christened by TCM to compose an original score for the DVD, and its subtlety mitigates much of the excess in acting, editing, and overblown intertitles.

The more I watch his films, the more I admire Lon Chaney and the creative genius he brought to the screen.  There are few actors before or since that have been able to display anywhere near the range of characters that he seems to have done so effortlessly.