| Summary: | THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND is part of the film retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema. A film designed to show the absurdity of talkies that recorded action in pictures with unnecessary explanations of the action recorded in sound. Film was shown for one night in a Boston theater but not appreciated by the audience. Harold Lloyd, directed by Sennett, might have brought it off. --J.S. WATSON, JR.Watson's 1930/1933 avant-garde film is a unique example of Dadaist aesthetics in early sound cinema. A minimalist and virtually expressionless acting style on a claustrophobic set characterizes the melodramatic love triangle. Watson considered the film a failure, though it appears extremely modern today, and he suppressed its existence. --JAN-CHRISTOPHER HORAK Born to wealth, James Sibley "J.S." Watson, Jr. was considered a Renaissance man in each of his chosen fields: medical doctor and researcher, man of letters, preservationist, philanthropist, and filmmaker. After graduating medical school, Watson bought and published "The Dial" between 1920-29, a literary journal founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1840. By the mid-1920s, he became fascinated with motion pictures and produced a striking series of films: "The Fall of the House of Usher "(1927), "Tomatos Another Day" (1930), and "The Eyes of Science" (1931), among others. --JAN-CHRISTOPHER HORAK / BRUCE POSNER. Alternate title: "Tomatos Another Day", "It Never Happened". 35mm 1.20:1 black and white sound 6:43 minutes. Courtesy: James Sibley Watson Jr., Nancy Watson Dean.
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