Huckleberry Finn

Huckleberry Finn (1920)

*** (out of 4)

The now infamous William Desmond Taylor directed this very first adaptation of Mark Twain's novel, which has Lewis Sargent playing Huck. This is a fairly straight adaptation hitting on the key moments in the story has Huck and the runaway slave Jim (George Reed) head down the Mississippi River getting into one situation after another. This here was a lost film until 1962 when a print turned up in a Danish vault and it took until 2011 for George Eastman House to restore it. It should be noted that there were some issues doing this including them having to translate the title cards from Danish to English, which caused some of the dialogue to have to be taken directly from the novel. Another issue is that there are at least three sequences that are still missing and these here get a title card of what you should be seeing. With that said, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much I enjoyed this picture. Yes, it's not 100% the novel but then again very few films are that faithful. What I enjoyed most was the performance of Sargent who I thought was excellent in the role. I thought he brought a youthful energy to the part and I really couldn't help but think he's one of the best I've seen in the role. He certainly kept the character going at full speed and there's no question that he was fun to watch. Reed was also excellent in the role of Jim as he manages to bring some nice humor. Gordon Griffith is good as Tom Sawyer and Edythe Chapman also stands out as Aunt Polly. The direction is pretty good throughout as the pacing is nice and there's never really any slow moments.