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Tarzan of the Apes Movie Review

Tarzan of the Apes is a 1918 silent adventure film directed by Scott Sidney and starring Elmo Lincoln and Enid Markey. It’s a flawed, yet very pleasing and mostly successful early adaptation.

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“I wonders if they died a thinkin’

old Binnsey broke ‘is promise to ’em“

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This is a more faithful adaptation of its source material and mostly a more serious film which worked in its favor. There are some silly moments to be had here and more on that later, but the movie is otherwise elegant and respectful. In my opinion, the beginning is easily the best part. It featured a wonderful spirited adventure to it and it was a great, intriguing way to open the film.

I also really liked that ending which was so sweet in that wonderful, endearing final sequence. The romance between Jane and Tarzan is actually beautiful here and incredibly sweet. Whenever the movie relied on those two together, it was a blast to watch. The expedition sequences and the scenes with his parents are also some other highlights.

However, there are some clunkers here unfortunately. One of the problems is the film’s obvious, horrible racism displayed in the title cards particularly. Black people are poorly treated here and the emphasis on “white man” is so annoying, but this is a 1918 movie so it should be forgiven for that. But the entire middle section was either silly or it relied too much on some boring human characters. Whenever a Tarzan movie is more dramatic than adventurous, I lose interest, and here it happened in that weakest second act.

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Elmo Lincoln is a solid Tarzan. I wouldn’t say he is the best one in the cinematic history, not for sure. But he is serviceable for the first ever actor to play this famous role and I found his performance pretty good. At times he was goofy, but at other times he was very likable. Enid Markey is the more memorable performer, though. She is very pretty, highly charming and she stole the show for sure. The two are, as I said above, simply incredibly charming.

But most of the other characters paled in comparison to these two with the exception of the Greystoke bunch who are actually rather proactive and interesting for the short screen time that they got. But I have to say that the movie is at its most problematic when dealing with animal characters, especially the ape ones.

Some of the animals are fine, especially the canines, but the gorillas are portrayed by actors in costumes and those costumes look simply appalling. The movie felt very dated in that regard and it really took me out of it. And that’s a shame because the rest of the flick looks so good, especially great for 1910s cinema.

They did not film it on location obviously as that did not happen until the late 20s and early 30s for Hollywood (‘Chang’ and ‘Trader Horn’ come to mind). But they still managed to make it believable enough that the suspension of disbelief is easy in this case. The score is definitely fantastic and a lot of fun, the cinematography is phenomenal, the direction is pretty good too and the film features terrific imagery at display.

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Tarzan of the Apes is unfortunately half-lost as only an hour is available and another hour is missing so I cannot comment reliably on the entire movie and especially on the pacing, but from what is remaining, I found myself engaged and charmed.

Tarzan of the Apes is a respectable first adaptation of the titular book which is unfortunately truncated in its length and thus it’s not easy to judge it properly, but from what survives of it, the movie is pretty strong, very charming and particularly endearing in its romance. It’s also very good in its adventurous elements. Although the gorilla costumes are ridiculous, the movie is otherwise phenomenally shot for its time, well directed and solidly acted by its two likable leads.

My Rating – 4