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New York gangs have rarely been as realistically depicted as in this vivid, grungy 1915 melodrama. Aside from its status as one of the earliest gangster pictures, Regeneration is the first feature in the long directorial career of Raoul Walsh (White Heat), whose marvelously energetic and manly adventures brightened Hollywood's Golden Age. The plot is a stock tale of a hood (Rockliffe Fellowes, who has a true mug's face) reformed by a social worker (Anna Q. Nilsson, a silent star with some resemblance to Leelee Sobieski), but Walsh got the grime of the slums into the very grain of the photography. He once explained, "I went down around the waterfront and around the docks and into the saloons and got all kinds of gangster types, people with terrible faces, hiding in doorways." You can almost smell the beer slopping out of the pail when the hero (as a boy) brings home his cruel stepfather's alcoholic sustenance from the tavern. --Robert Horton
Additional Features
Young Romance is an extra, almost hour-long film included on the Regeneration DVD. This delightful 1915 comedy follows two working-class department store employees (Edith Taliaferro and Tom Forman) as--unbeknownst to each other--they pretend to be swells for one week, masquerading as upper-crust types at a swanky Maine resort. Written by William C. De Mille (that's Cecil B.'s brother), this little-known gem has a breezy charm and sunny location shooting. --Robert Horton
Video Details
The first full-length gangster picture ever made according to its director, Raoul Walsh, who would later make "The Roaring Twenties," "High Sierra," "The Bowery" and "White Heat." "Regeneration" (72 min.) is a powerful slum melodrama produced in 1915 on location in the lower east side of New York City, with a gaggle of authentic low-life types performing alongside professional actors. As an added bonus on this DVD, "Young Romance" (58 min.), also released in 1915, is a recent rediscovery that forever silences the claim that refined comedy cannot be conveyed via the screen. This disguise plot, worthy of an Elizabethan drama, was written by William deMille (brother of Cecil, father of Agnes), and directed by George Melford ("The Sheik," the Spanish "Dracula"). "Regeneration" is in the Library of Congress National Registry of essential American films.
