The Bat

A moody cityscape in black and white. A heavily fortified bank. A masked and caped figure uses a grappling hook to scale the walls. There’s a crime in progress and a mystery about to unfold – yet it will be another 13 years before the world first encounters the legend that is Batman.

Long thought to be a lost film, Roland West’s 1926 comedy thriller The Bat was salvaged by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in the late 1980s, but it has only recently returned to prominence, thanks to the dedicated efforts of restorationist and musician Ben Model. Model’s score accompanies the otherwise silent scenes in keeping with the traditions of its era, adding an emotional element which nicely balances the pithy dialogue in the intertitles.

Anyone who thinks of silent films as dull and worth watching only for historical value, or to make girls think they’re intellectual, is in for a surprise. Never mind its wider significance – The Bat hangs from its own two feet, and delivers lively entertainment throughout. Following the bank raid, the action moves to an old mansion on the edge of town where various people believe that the loot has been stashed. There are rumours of a secret room, but that’s only one of the secrets concealed by the various people living there or visiting.

Young Miss Dale (Jewel Carmen) is hiding her lover, a bank clerk who is a prime suspect in the case, trying to pass him off as a gardener to her shrewd mystery author aunt, Miss Cornelia (Emily Fitzroy). The maid is so frightened of the Bat that she’s hiding a bear trap in the hope of catching him. Then there’s a doctor who secretly opens a window, a PI and a police detective trying to one-up one another, and a butler who seems to be trying to hide the fact that he’s actually Japanese under layers of bizarre make-up presumably designed to make him look like what white Americans expected a Japanese man to look like at the time. One of these people may be the Bat – but who?

In its restored form, the film looks great – fresh and clear, which is important given its fondness for shadows. There’s no blurring, and even the texture of silk stockings can be discerned. This makes it easier to appreciate a great suite of performances, with Fitzroy the standout in a gem of a role. Meanwhile, audiences can take in those early inventions which point the way to the creation of the caped crusader, which range from batarangs to the sudden appearance, towards the end, of what is unmistakably the bat signal.

The Bat is a lot of fun and its mystery will keep you guessing right up to the end. Catch it if you can.