The First Degree

Last September, TCM had a night of movies to celebrate Silent Film Day, including one that had only recently been refound, having been considered a lost movie for nearly a century: The First Degree.

In some ruralish corner of the country, a lot of farmers seem to be having problems with some of their sheep going missing. So the authorities have decided to set up a grand jury which, with the power of subpoena, might be able to get to the bottom of it. One of the people they're about to interview is Sam Purdy (Frank Mayo). He's relatively new to town, and seems to be a bit of a keep to himself sort of person, which is why he'd make a reasonable suspect, even if they're talking to everybody to try to figure out what happened.

And as it turns out, Sam has a guilty conscience, so when he goes to the grand jury, he goes believing that the game is up. But what he doesn't realize is that the grand jury only wants to know about missing sheep, the authorities not having told the interviewees why they're being interviews. And Sam does not actually have that guilty conscience over the missing sheep, since he's not responsible for those. He's got something far worse on his mind.

As he tells the grand jury, they'll never believe him when he says he killed a man in self-defense. To be fair, it's not as if he reported the death before this, and if anybody found the dead guy's body, of course there would be an inquest and the convening of a grand jury. But since this is a Hollywood movie, we're about to get another flashback as to what led Sam to kill this man.

The man also just happens to be Sam's half-brother Will (Philo McCullough). Sam had been in love with Mary (Sylvia Breamer) in that flashback. But so had Will, who was always a bad guy. So when matters come to a head, Will and a friend rob the bank where Sam works and escape with Sam trying to track them down, in such a way that Sam is the one left holding the bag. (The film, although found and restored, is missing about a reel's worth of material, so that helps explain why this part of the story is a bit unclear.) Sam does his time in prison, and gets out and moves to a new town.

In that new town, Sam becomes a pillar of society, and wants to run for political office -- certainly, the townsfolk want him to. But right at that time Will shows up and tells Sam that if he does try to run, he (Will) will tell the townsfolk about Sam's past. Sam is forced to move again, and it puts Sam's relationship with Mary on hold. So that's how Sam wound up a sheep farmer, something he can do and stay away from society. At least until Will shows up a third time....

The First Degree is an interesting little movie, although I can't help but think it would be better if it had been found whole instead of missing pieces here and there. The ending is also one that defies logic, although perhaps it was considered more original back in 1923 when the movie was released. But even with those flaws, it's always interesting to see a previously lost silent, and it's not overly long so it's not as if there's a huge time commitment here.

In theory, the visual print of The First Degree should be in the public domain, although I'm not quite certain how restoration work affects the copyright on the images. The restorers, however, also commissioned a new score, and that score would definitely be under copyright. So this is one of those films I watched just to get off the DVR.