The Regeneration
About The Regeneration
Owen's mother dies when he is ten, and the Conways next door take him in. By seventeen he has learned to win by force, and by twenty-five he runs with a gang. Social worker Marie Deering comes into the district to teach the boys, and Owen starts to leave the gang for her. Skinny, who has taken Owen's place, comes back. A fire breaks out on an excursion ferry. Marie's work also puts her at odds with the district attorney who is courting her and who has declared war on the gangs.
Cast & crew
More about The Regeneration
Raoul Walsh's first feature. He and Carl Harbaugh adapted Owen Frawley Kildare's 1903 memoir My Mamie Rose and the 1908 play The Regeneration by Kildare and Walter Hackett. William Fox produced it. Georges Benoît photographed it. Fox released it on September 13, 1915. Walsh was 28, on a three-picture Fox contract at $400 a week.
Themes
Background
Trade writing of the time treated it as the first feature-length American gangster film. The Bowery material comes from Kildare's own memoir.
In film history
The Guardian later called it a milestone of the gangster film and a spiritual ancestor of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets.
Making
Walsh had just played John Wilkes Booth in The Birth of a Nation. Fox then handed him this feature, shot in the streets rather than on a standing set.
Reviews
The Guardian wrote that, with its religious themes, mobile camerawork, and grim locations, Regeneration is the spiritual ancestor of Mean Streets. Time Out singled out the physical casting, the violent action, and the pace.
Look
Georges Benoît, on his first Fox picture, shot the Lower East Side locations and the ferry fire.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles.
Preservation
Feared lost until David Shepard found a copy and sent it to the Museum of Modern Art. Prints are held by MoMA and Film Preservation Associates. The film is in the public domain and was named to the National Film Registry in 2000.
Notes
- Rockliffe Fellowes plays the adult Owen. John McCann plays him at ten and Harry McCoy at seventeen. Anna Q. Nilsson plays Marie Deering. William Sheer plays Skinny.
- Walsh shot on the Lower East Side and used prostitutes, gangsters, and homeless people as extras.
- When actors jumped from a boat into the river, fireboats and police arrived. Walsh was taken to the station house. Fox treated the raid as free publicity.
- The ferry fire echoes the General Slocum disaster of 1904.
- Walsh later wrote an autobiography in which the fates of Nilsson and Fellowes are reversed and an ending is taken from another film. Time Out noted that the print contradicts that account.
- The Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry in 2000.
Awards
- National Film Registry (2000)
Scenes
- The Conways take the boy in after his mother dies.
- A fire breaks out on the excursion ferry.
- Skinny returns after Owen has started to leave the gang for Marie.
Influenced by
- My Mamie Rose (Owen Frawley Kildare)
- The Regeneration (1908 play)
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-the-regeneration)
