The Road to Yesterday (1925), a late silent film from Cecil D. DeMille, can be watched at the Public Domain Movies website. Viewers may explore the odd screen presence of Joseph Schildkraut, an actor with a great profile, and William Boyd, who a legion of Hopalong Cassidy fans nearing age 80 will recognize as their favorite do-right cowboy dressed in black.
Schildkraut (1896-1964) was a professionally trained actor and the son of another famous stage performer. He began work in silent movies in the early 1920’s and had early success in D.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola.
Boyd (1895-1972) started in silent pictures in 1918 and was a major box office star by the mid-20’s when he appeared in DeMille’s The King Kings (1927).
Facts regarding this film were partially derived from the website Movies Silently. The storyline has reincarnation as its central plot device: what we do in the past affects our present lives. Ken (Joseph Schildkraut) and Malena (Jetta Goudal) are spending their honeymoon when, for some unexplained reason, Malena realizes she is repelled by her husband.
Meanwhile, a second couple, Jack (William Boyd) and Bess (Vera Reynolds), meet and make-out. Further developments are curtailed when Bess learns Jack is a minister (his day job) and a Boy Scout leader (his good works). All four meet, mingle, and are involved in a massive train wreck. This catastrophe sends them all back to a slightly medieval England, where it turns out they all knew each other in other lives.
The big reveal: Newly married Malena was once a witch that was burned at the stake by husband Ken, hence the present day unease.
The movie was not a big success for DeMille, but he would use both leading men in future and better movies. In 1927, both were featured in DeMille’s epic The King of Kings, Schildkraut playing Judas Iscariot and Boyd playing Simon of Cyrene.
