The Old Captain (1911) Online

Fred Huntley is released as ship's captain because he is too old. Despite his protests, and those of his wife, Anna Dodge, his command is given to a younger man. He is a brute who drinks and when the ship runs on the rocks, he panics.

The first thing I noticed was that Huntley seemed to be wearing more make-up than Karloff in FRANKENSTEIN. He was 48 when he made this and needed to look old. However he seems to have used stage make-up and facial prosthesis far too liberally.

Other than that, I found the movie to be decently performed with the moral that experience is worth a great deal. As I meander through my seventh decade, I find that comforting... but I always thought that old people had probably learned a few things through the decades.

They did without titles in this production; perhaps it was because I was looking at the Dutch version from the Eye Institute. Most of it is clear, although it took me a couple of minutes to make sense of the brief epilogue. Perhaps you'll catch on quicker.

The poignant, old, old story that never grows trite, of age that is compelled to give way to youth, is pictured in this film. The old captain is as fine an old man and sea-dog as ever commanded a ship. The representation of this character is worthy of the highest praise. The lady who plays the captain's motherly wife also does very commendably. But it is hard to discover just what impression the writer of this photoplay desired to create. He has shown the easy-going old captain as compelled to step out and give room to a younger man, efficient and capable when he's sober, who makes the deck most emphatically alive. This young captain gets drunk and piles up his ship in a storm, and this makes the old man's dismissal sadder. Now, in order to show the quality of this character's soul, the scenario writer has made trouble follow the ship's owner fast and faster, and he is shown at length as starving. All these things are possible, but they are not the natural consequences of anything shown in the drama, and criticize the owner, if he is the typical owner, unjustly. Therefore we are compelled to see the old captain's story as partly typical and partly improbable. This is the picture's great weakness. It is more noticeable because a true and typical picture of the old captain's dismissal would have been as important as any picture could be. The scene where the old captain feeds the one-time owner is not well acted. It is impossible to picture a realistic shipwreck. This film doesn't attempt it, but its picture of seas breaking on rocks doesn't succeed in making us fear. - The Moving Picture World, August 19, 1911