Outside the Law/Shadows

The masterful Lon Chaney stars in these two classic silent films. "Outside the Law" (1920, 75 min.) - In this early collaboration with director Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks), Chaney delivers a dual performance of dramatic intensity, starring as Ah Wing, a kind-hearted student of Confucian philosophy, and Black Mike Sylva, a murderous rake of the San Francisco underworld. Like night and day, Ah Wing and Sylva are physical representations of the opposing factions of light and dark that weigh upon the moral conscience of the film's protagonist, Molly Madden (Priscilla Dean), who must choose between lives of crime and domesticity. "Shadows" (1922, 68 min.) - In one of the most challenging performances of his illustrious career, Chaney stars as a Chinese laundryman caught in a web of small-town jealousy and extortion. Both films features new orchestral scores.

Lon Chaney is not the star of Tod Browning's Outside the Law (the second of 10 pictures they made together), but he practically steals the film. Browning cast the man of a thousand faces in two roles, as the despicable gangster Black Mike ("a rat, a vulture, and a snake," according to the titles) and as the devoted Chinese servant to a Confucian Chinatown teacher. Priscilla Dean stars as Molly, the daughter of a San Francisco underworld leader lured back to a life of crime by Mike, who frames her father for murder and then plots to double-cross her as well. Hard-bitten kewpie doll Dean underplays her gangster-moll part beautifully, and Chaney's Mike is dastardly and dangerous, a sneering hard case with a scar running down his cheek. Browning pours on the syrup in the film's middle section as Molly's hard heart is slowly melted by her gangster lover and the cloyingly cute kid from next door. Then he twists it back from melodrama with an escalating series of taut confrontations that build to an exciting, well-staged climactic shootout. The Kino print, taken from the Blackhawk Collection, shows some serious deterioration near the end, but it clears up in time for the fireworks. The orchestral score is edited together from other music and enhanced with sound effects. --Sean Axmaker