WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY

(1919, Victor Fleming) Super-superstitious Manhattanite Doug is hand-picked for a mind control experiment by a Caligariesque shrink, in archetypal screwball comedy highlighted by a surrealistic pigout-induced nightmare and awe-inspiring hurricane/flood climax. Feature debut for Fleming: twenty years later he’s make Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.  Approx. 69 min. 35mm.

REVIEWS

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“The best of all the contemporary Fairbanks comedies... executed at a breathless pace,
When the Clouds Roll By is a masterful showpiece for the whirling cyclone of energy
that was Douglas Fairbanks”
– Jeffrey Vance

“Technically, it is one of the most inventive of all the Fairbanks films.
The slow-motion chase is about the best gymnastic section of all the early comedies.”
– Alistair Cooke (1941)