Director Roland West is largely forgotten today by all but the most devoted classic film buffs, but in his time, he was popular enough to be prominently featured in advertising for movies like “The Bat Whispers,” which showcased West’s name above the title on the poster.
That 1930 talkie was a remake of a movie West had directed only four years earlier called “The Bat,” and both films had a profound impact on comic book artist Bob Kane; he saw them as a child, and their imagery — especially a bat shadow cast on walls like a signal — informed his most beloved and enduring creation, Batman.
West would be worthy of serious study regardless of his influence on Kane’s iconic superhero; he was a gifted director of crime films and thrillers whose expressive visual style looked forward less to DC comics than to the golden age of film noir. He directed around 14 feature films in 15 years (it’s always tricky trying to be exact when it comes to silent film credits, given that so many of the movies have been lost). Many exhibit the rich sense of atmosphere, chiaroscuro lighting, and preoccupation with the dark side of human nature that would become so prevalent in the 1940s.
At his best, as in the early sound feature “Alibi,” West crafted surprisingly modern meditations on crime and punishment; with its searing look at corrupt cops and even more despicable criminals, the Oscar-nominated “Alibi” plays like an early riff on James Ellroy (“L.A. Confidential”). Newly available on Blu-ray in a gorgeous edition from Undercrank Productions, “The Bat” is more playful but every bit as exquisite in terms of its filmmaking; it shares with “Alibi” production designer William Cameron Menzies (who would go on to design a little movie called “Gone With the Wind”), and the visual design is unbelievably striking.
That’s thanks not only to Menzies’ elaborate sets but to how they’re lit; the movie is essentially an “old dark house” movie in which a bunch of characters gather in an isolated location to try to uncover a criminal among them (the “bat” of the title), but it never feels constricted or claustrophobic. To the contrary, the film is a visual feast, and it’s no wonder — the cinematographer was Arthur Edeson, who would go on to shoot “Frankenstein,” “The Maltese Falcon,” and “Casablanca,” and he was assisted by future “Citizen Kane” groundbreaker Gregg Toland.
West, Edeson, and Menzies take their cues from German expressionism to create consistently dynamic frames, and West’s energetic direction of actors yields plenty of big laughs that both complement and serve as counterpoint to the suspense. While much of West’s work exists only in spotty copies on YouTube (when you can find it at all), “The Bat” looks fantastic on Blu-ray thanks to Undercrank’s digital restoration taken from 35mm elements preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Undercrank has been doing beautiful work for years unearthing obscure silent gems, and “The Bat” is one of the distributor’s finest releases to date, with not only a flawless transfer but a lively new score and a brief but informative documentary on West. (There’s also a bonus two-reeler, “A Fraternity Mix-Up,” thrown in for good measure.) The documentary provides a nice overview of West’s filmography and explains why a director so skilled and popular in his day became overlooked in later years — basically, the suspicious death of his business partner and lover, Thelma Todd, created a scandal that made West persona non grata in Hollywood, even though he was never charged with any wrongdoing.
West would only make one movie after Todd’s death, the high-seas adventure “Corsair” in 1931 (with Todd acting under the pseudonym Alison Loyd), and by the time he died in 1952, the film industry at large barely noticed. But his movies remain thrilling a hundred years after they were made thanks to his appetite for innovation and experimentation; when he remade “The Bat” as “The Bat Whispers” in 1930, he shot it in widescreen 65mm and incorporated astonishingly elaborate camerawork to apply the techniques of silent film to the then-primitive technology of talkies. West deserves cinephiles’ attention — and when given it, provides ample rewards.
The new special edition Blu-ray of “The Bat” will be available from Undercrank Productions on October 15.
