The Silent Command

Plot

Benadict Hisston is a foreign agent, part of a conspiracy to destroy the Panama Canal and the United States Navy's Atlantic Fleet. He attempts to acquire information about mine placement in the Canal Zone from Captain Richard Decatur, but fails. With that information essential to the conspiracy's success, he then hires vamp Peg Williams to obtain the intelligence through seduction.

Decatur is not fooled, and obeys the "silent command" of the Chief of Naval Intelligence to play along with the spies without revealing his purpose to friends or family. He is court-martialed, stripped of rank, and dismissed from the Navy after he strikes an admiral. His association with Williams estranges him from his wife, but earns him the trust of Hisston and the other spies. When the conspirators are ready to enact their plan, he travels to Panama with them. He thwarts their attempt at sabotage, saving the canal and the fleet. He is reinstated into the Navy, reunited with his wife, and honored by the nation for his heroism.

Cast

Production

The Silent Command was not based on previous published material. Rufus King, later known for his detective novels, wrote the original story, which was adapted into a screenplay by Anthony Paul Kelly. It was essentially intended as a propaganda film to encourage popular support for expansion of the United States Navy, and was made with the Navy's cooperation and support. Fox Film's publicity promoter, Wells Hawks, may have been responsible for this arrangement, as he had previously worked in a publicity role for the Navy Quotes praising the film, for use in advertising, were provided by several prominent members of the military, including General John J. Pershing and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Years later, in a publicity interview for The Return of Chandu, Bela Lugosi commented on the irony of being a propagandist for naval expansion, when his native country, landlocked Hungary, "has no navy nor needs any!"

In December 1922, Lugosi had starred in a Greenwich Village play, The Red Poppy. The play performed poorly, but Lugosi, in the role of a thuggish Spaniard, received critical praise. He was cast as Hisston in The Silent Command based on the strength of that performance. Extreme close-ups of Lugosi's eyes were used throughout the film to reinforce perception of this character as evil. These shots may have been intended as allusions to the evil eye or hypnosis; Lugosi himself had previously played an evil hypnotist, modeled after Svengali, in the 1919 German film Sklaven fremdes Willens.

The Silent Command was initially released as an eight-reel film with a 91-minute run time. Subsequent releases cut 18 minutes and reduced it to seven reels. H.T. Hodge claimed to have shown a nine-reel version at the Palace Theatre in Abilene, Texas. The film was retitled His Country for distribution in France.

Release and reception

William Fox opened the first Pacific Coast movie theater in his Fox Theatres chain in Oakland, California on August 25, 1923. The first feature-length film shown at the Fox Oakland, as part of its grand opening gala, was The Silent Command, over a week before its New York premiere.

Many critics considered the focus on Lugosi's eyes to be cliché or even unintentionally humorous, but some moviegoers did find the shots genuinely frightening.

Legacy

The Silent Command was Lugosi's first American film, and influenced the direction of his career in cinema. Lugosi had expressed an interest in playing Latin lover characters in the model of Rudolph Valentino, but his performance as Hisston revealed him to be convincing in more villainous roles. The technique of focusing on his eyes in extreme close-up would also be revisited in many of his later horror films, and even used in advertising.

Unlike most of Edwards's films, copies of The Silent Command are preserved in three archives: the George Eastman Museum, the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art, and Brussels's Cinematek. Grapevine Video made the film available on VHS in 1999, and released a DVD edition in 2005.