Silent movies were, of course, not silent at all. We are all familiar with the figure of the pianist in the pit, watching the film unfold and supplying suitable music from their wide repertoire. Many films were released with full score available to those cinemas with an actual pit orchestra. Then, by 1928, film companies were experimenting with “part talkies” – and it’s to this genre that Beggars of Life belongs. However, there are many different versions and the Aesthetica Festival at York Theatre Royal showed a silent version, though with a theme song that came with the original release.
As accompanists the Dodge Brothers occupy the space between the pianist and the full score. A five-piece band with Mark Kermode on double bass, they rely heavily on the talented Neil Brand on piano, with the constituent parts of a string band forming up around him. But, as they point out, they are improvising musicians: they have certain themes that they use every time, but the details change from performance to performance.
It seems that Beggars of Life is not highly rated – very surprising, the Dodge Brothers’ view that it’s a favourite of theirs seems much more accurate. It was directed by the great William Wellman and follows up on his Oscar-winning Wings. It also includes in the cast two Hollywood legends: Louise Brooks (who was so upset at the parts offered in Hollywood that she went to Austria and became a star for G.W. Pabst) and Wallace Beery, later to become the highest paid film actor.
Maybe it lacked the drama of Wings, but Wellman produces spectacular train shunts: it’s a film about hoboes and hoboes mean trains and, in Wellman’s book, trains mean uncoupled box cars plunging to flaming destruction. More likely the story, essentially a love story with almost no physical contact, seems a bit too much like a fairy story, though one with plenty of realistic meat.
A hobo, unnamed (Richard Arlen) comes to a house in search of breakfast. Slowly he realises that the man of the house has been shot dead. Then there appears the Girl, also unnamed (Louise Brooks) who haltingly confesses to murder: the man had taken her from an orphanage two years before and now his advances have become too much. It’s part of Louise Brooks’ magical appeal that we always regard her as an innocent girl – she’s just murdered a guy!
So she disguises herself as a boy and they begin the hobo life, initially only as far as the railroad, but eventually inseparable. Semi-comic adventures (getting turfed out of a hayrick, being dumped on the road from the backboard of a cart) lead to their meeting with a desperate gang of hobos, the Girl being recognised as female, and the rollicking first appearance of Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery). His expansively evil personality (full of the little silent era quirks such as the knowing half-smile) leads ultimately to him recognising love when he sees it (he’s never seen it before) and conniving in their escape to Canada before dying in a mixed shootout and conflagration.
Wellman’s direction is impeccable. Apart from the spectacular work with trains, there are subtler touches: the merging of two Louise Brookses as she tells the story of, and re-enacts, the murder, the suggestion of the appeal between her and Arlen in little touches while she remains stiffly aloof, and many others.
The fullish audience at York loved the film, even though further consideration suggests weaknesses. Let’s give credit to the Dodge Brothers whose improvised accompaniment compelled attention to the drama. It’s highly unlikely to have been accompanied by country music and Texas blues on first release, but more’s the pity.
Reviewed on 6th November 2025
