White Tiger (1923 film)

White Tiger is a 1923 American silent crime film directed by Tod Browning starring Priscilla Dean and featuring Wallace Beery in a supporting role.[1][2][3]

White Tiger
Lantern slide
Directed byTod Browning
Written byTod Browning
Charles Kenyon
StarringPriscilla Dean
Matt Moore
Wallace Beery
CinematographyWilliam Fildew
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release date
  • December 17, 1923 (1923-12-17)
Running time
86 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)

Cast

Theme

In White Tiger, Browning, a former magician, provides an exposé of the “mystifying mechanics” of the famous chess-playing automaton widely exhibited in late 18th and early 19th century Europe and America.[4] The automaton fashioned to represent a Turkish chess master was an often convincing—though entirely fraudulent—representation of artificial intelligence: the device was actually operated by a human chess expert concealed within the cabinet below the chess board.[5] Browning, a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, combined Poe’s famous 1836 essay on the hoax with the author’s fascination with tales of mystery and the macabre.[6][7]

The protagonists in White Tiger use the “baffling” device to gain entrance to a wealthy estate and execute a jewel heist.[8] In exposing the fraud, Browning violates a precept of the magician's code of ethics; to never reveal the mechanics of an illusion.[9]

Footnotes
  1. "Progressive Silent Film List: White Tiger". silentera.com. Retrieved May 6, 2008.
  2. The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Catalog: White Tiger Retrieved November 3, 2014
  3. The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: White Tiger Retrieved November 3, 2014
    Sobchack, 2006 p. 24: “The White Tiger is essentially a remake of Outside the Law (1920).”
  4. Solomon, 2006 p. 50-51: “...prior to his career as a director, Browning was a magician...a 1914 movie fan magazine described him...as a sideshow artist...” And p. 51: “A number of Browning films of the 1920s contain striking reproductions of theatrical- or quasi-theatrical- illusions that are staged not only for spectators within the films, but for contemporaneous viewers of the films themselves.”
  5. Solomon, 2006 p. 55: Scenes from White Tiger provide “correspondences with Poe’s published expose (accent) Maelzel’s [automaton] chess-player.”
  6. Solomon, 2006 p. 56: “During his career as a director Browning was compared to Poe [by Joan Dickey in Motion Picture Magazine, March 1928, See footnotes]...In a studio biographical survey in the late 1930s Browning listed Poe as his ‘favorite classical author’”
  7. Eaker, 2016 : “In 1836, Poe wrote an expose of the touring “Mechanical Chess Player” Automaton. In the expose Poe revealed that inside this mechanical chess player was a concealed, quite human operator. Poe’s article was the seed for Browning’s film…”
  8. Solomon, 2006 p. 51: “In White Tiger (1923) it is the false chess-playing automaton which the protagonists use to gain entrance to-and burgle-high society homes.”
  9. Solomon, 2006 p. 52: “...Browning’s films explicitly violate the magician’s professional code, which stipulates that stage illusions [remain] concealed to the spectator...Browning did not hesitate to expose the methods of magic tricks on screen.”
    Eaker, 2016: “After a jewelry heist in a mansion, utilizing the Mechanical Chess Player, the trio hole up at a claustrophobic cabin in the mountains. The final quarter of the film casts a Poe-like eye on imagined (and real) enemies.”

References
  • Eaker, Alfred. 2016. Tod Browning Retrospective Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  • Sobchack, Vivian. 2006. "The Films of Tod Browning: An Overview Long Past" in The Films of Tod Browning, editor Bernd Herzogenrath, 2006 Black Dog Publishing. London. pp. 21–39. ISBN 1-904772-51-X
  • Solomon, Matthew. 2006. "Staging Deception: Theatrical Illusionism in the Browning Films of the 1920s" in The Films of Tod Browning, editor Bernd Herzogenrath, 2006 Black Dog Publishing. London. pp. 49–67 ISBN 1-904772-51-X
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