As someone who grew up well into the era of sound films but who loves the silent era, I'm not sure that the brief period of "partial sound" and "synchronized sound" at the tail end of the 1920s is anything to be recalled fondly. The canned cheers and laughter, meager sound effects and imitated dialogue, and occasional weakly delivered single verbal lines are so tinny and artificial that I'm reminded of Monty Python; see 'The Holy Grail' with its animated sequence of "And there was much rejoicing," or the surrealist works of Czech wiz Jan Svankmajer. I must suppose that these wowed contemporary audiences - and I also must suppose that upon witnessing full sound cinema just a few years later they felt just as put out then as I do now. Adding to this picture's troubles is the antiquated racist dialogue that Jack Jarmuth wrote in his intertitles for a couple of supporting black characters - typical of the time, yes, but that doesn't make it any better - and the insincerity with which too much of this is written, above all in making many characters decidedly cartoonish. Frankly, 'The first auto' doesn't make a very good impression from the outset.
Maybe these issues wouldn't come off as being so severe if the substance were stronger, but in a flick partially intended for humor, too much of the intended comedy is cheap and simple-minded in the first place, and the overblown ancestral "laugh track" and ham-handed acting and direction only make the incidence worse. There is cleverness here, too, certainly, but far more sparingly. There is some earnestness, but only as applies to equine enthusiast Hank Armstrong - who to my chagrin is depicted here as the old fuddledud who can't handle "progress." Meanwhile, for a movie made at a time when the automobile industry was still developing and the combustion engine being refined, I'm sure the notions on hand were quaint and timely for viewers in 1927. However, as a piece that makes light of the advent of the "horseless carriage" at the end of the nineteenth century, I don't think this has aged well.
If the humor were sharper it would have allowed the film to skirt the edges of thorny subject matter, and earn laughs like Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd did with some similar material, as the script fleetingly references topics like auto safety (for drivers, passengers, and bystanders alike), pollution of every variety, manufacturing and labor, the obsolescence of other trades and businesses, the loss of human connection and empathy as we "get behind the wheel," the unthinking embrace of new technologies, and more. Almost one hundred years later, the tangled weave of social, political, economic, environmental, and technological considerations that sprawled out from the moment in time being portrayed, and which furthermore can be discussed in association with too many other technological developments, makes the attitudes conveyed here come off as pure naïveté. We're supposed to see Hank as a stick in the mud, and a man forgetting himself in his obstinacy, but from the perspective of 2025, faults and all, he's actually the lone voice of reason and lasting wisdom as those around him speed heedlessly toward an unsustainable future, losing fragments of their own humanity in the process.
There are suitable ideas here for a narrative, ideas that have been employed with other central conceits: a rift between father and son, regrets of the "old-fashioned" father, the "forward-thinking" optimism of the son, the love interest, the rival for the love interest's affections, and more, all amidst changes in society. I think if the material were exercised to more straightforward dramatic ends the end result would have been distinctly stronger, even if it still failed to hold up in retrospect. As it stands, the sobriety that characterizes much of Darryl F. Zanuck's story is rendered with far too much would-be levity in the hands of screenwriter Anthony Coldeway, and even the synchronized music of Herman S. Heller is generally light and peppy in a manner that works against even the most serious beats. As far as I'm concerned, 'The first auto' feels like a confused mishmash of tonal disparity and uncertainty; ill-considered cinematic novelty; some discrete writing weaknesses; and, decades later, the childish credulity of assuming "new" is always better," as in "oh, you dear spring chickens, you thought this was promising?" - all accentuated, in my mind, by how father Hank gets treated by the feature, including in a flimsy denouement.
Maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe I'm looking at this too much with the eyes of a twenty-first century person with all the cynicism of knowing what technology, divorced from moderation and consideration for the long view, has done to the world. All I know is that I sat to watch this with the anticipation of a silent devotee, and I step away feeling unimpressed if not also a tad frustrated. Broadly speaking we can say that this is made according to the standards of the late 20s, but that only gets us so far, and I'm not so sure that I'm pleased with the choices made in the writing, or the acting, or in Roy Del Ruth's direction. Take into account all the other wrong buttons that 'The first auto' presses, and in all honesty I come away from this fairly lighthearted title feeling even more depressed than I already am about the state of the world. I don't think that's what this was meant to do, but here we are. I'm glad for those who get more out of this than I do, and those who are able more than I am to look past one's presuppositions to more closely appreciate the picture just as it is. For my part, bitter skepticism dominates my view of 'The first auto,' and save for the nominal place that it has in the history of the medium and which its thoughts portend in the wider scope of culture, I don't think it's a piece worth revisiting. I maintain that some of the greatest works ever produced in cinema hail from its earliest years, sometimes despite old technology and old sensibilities of film-making and storytelling, and despite outdated values. On the other hand, elsewhere, sometimes the latter considerations supersede and distract from a film's lasting worth - and I think this is one of those times.
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