This film version of 65 year-old feminist writer Gertrude Atherton's controversial 1923 novel based upon her own treatment with an early form of hormone transplantation was on cinema screens by the end of the year and generated a lot of discussion at the height of the flapper era; and it remains topical today with the advent of HRT and current journalistic buzz about Cougars and toy boys.Aged 45 (but like many matinée idols of the era looking much older), Conway Tearle as eligible bachelor Lee Clavering has the dilemma that dizzy flappers like Janet Ogelthorpe (played by Clara Bow) bore him, yet has "a vague idea that Autumnal love is - is rather indecent". He indeed looks pretty long in the tooth for 28 year-old Corinne Griffith as the mysterious Mary Ogden, referred to in the opening credits simply as "The Woman"; about whom an awful lot of footage is squandered upon speculation as to her true identity until she finally fesses up and confirms that she is really sixty year-old Madame Zatianny. In a flashback in which she is supposed to be in her late fifties, but is made up and shuffles about like an infirm eighty year-old, she is rejuvenated in Austria by a medical procedure that is alluded to only very vaguely.At this point it gets interesting, as her old friends digest the implications of this revelation; notably Claire McDowell as Agnes Trevor, who bitterly regrets her own lost opportunities to find love when young and thus sorely envies Madame Zatianny the second chance her treatment has gifted her. (McDowell was actually less than six months older than Tearle and would probably have benefited enormously just from a more contemporary makeup and wardrobe like Griffith's.) Unfortunately, with twenty minutes still to go this is the point at which the only currently available version of 'Black Oxen' abruptly ends. Or maybe it's not so unfortunate. We know from original reviews that her old Austrian beau Prince Rohenhauer (played by Alan Hale) shows up, persuades her to act her age and return with him to Austria, leaving Lee to find true happiness with the flapper who had so bored him earlier, provoking 'Variety's original reviewer to ironically state that the film's "only fault seems to be the disappointing ending".An epilogue to 'Black Oxen' that proves yet again how much stranger real life can be even than a silent movie came in 1966 (the year that Claire McDowell died at the age of 88) when 72 year-old Griffith divorced her 45 year-old fourth husband of a few days and testified in court (contradicting testimony from Betty Blythe and Claire Windsor, who had both known her during the 1920s) that she was not Corinne Griffith, but her younger sister who had taken her place upon her elder sibling's death.

Once again a curiosity of the silent era. Unfortunately, this is another incomplete film. We don't know what the result of all this interest in youth revitalizing surgery will lead to. The main character, Mary, became old at a time when her continued work was critical to the return of Austria to power after the war. While she was hospitalized, a treatment was performed which left her forever young. Now she has come to the attention of those who knew her years before. A man falls in love with her and things get pretty complicated because she is nearly a hundred years old. Soon all the old women in the film, some friends of hers, begin to want to do the same treatment. The problem is that just as we are about to find out what happens, we run out of film. I understand this was based on a popular piece of fiction. Still, it is an interesting idea. Barely science fiction, really. Are all mythical medical discoveries in movies science fiction? Perhaps.

Sadly, I would like to know how this film ends. The DVD that is available of course is short the missing reels - the film ends at a dinner party. It's not a great transfer but worth watching. Clara Bow is an obnoxious little flapper who is in love with Conway Tearle - a small complication throughout. I agree with the previous comment that Corrine Griffith who is supposed to be around 60, when made up looks much older. She seems infirmed with a cane but there is no explanation about this. It would be wonderful if the missing reels would turn up in Russian or the Czech Republic or the Netherlands or anywhere. This film was long on my want list so when I saw it advertised on DVD I took a chance and ordered it.

"Black Oxen" by Gertrude Atherton was the #1 best-selling novel of 1923, going through 14 printings in a single year. The novel gained a racy reputation, due to its (for the time) frank discussion of women's sexual organs, and because of some innovative language. (This novel featured the first use of the word "sophisticate" as a noun.) The film version was rushed into production almost immediately, but is well-made and not a quickie."Black Oxen" (the 1923 novel) is science fiction, although few of its readers realised that fact. The 1924 film "Black Oxen" is a science-fiction movie, but is not immediately recognisable as such because the film emphasises ideas rather than sci-fi gadgetry. The film takes its title from a verse by Yeats: "The years like great Black Oxen tread the world". A much later science-fiction novel, also cried 'Black Oxen' (by New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox, published in 2001), takes its title from this same source.Lee Clavering (played by Conway Tearle) is a handsome playboy in jazz-era Manhattan. (In the novel, Clavering was a playwright: in this movie, he allegedly writes a newspaper column, but seems to spend all his time carousing.) In a nightclub, he meets a mysterious Austrian beauty named Madame Zatianny (Corinne Griffith) and he's instantly attracted to her. Clavering's older friends Mr and Mrs Oglethorpe are also intrigued by Mme Zatianny, because she is an exact double for Mary Ogden, a socialite of the 1890s who disappeared in Europe many years ago. But Mary Ogden would now be 58 years old, whilst Mme Zatianny is a young woman. Can she perhaps be Mary Ogden's daughter?SPOILER COMING: As a romance develops between Clavering and Zatianny, he discovers the bizarre truth. Years ago, Mary Ogden went to Vienna and volunteered for a medical experiment, in which her ovaries were irradiated with radium treatments. This rejuvenated the fiftyish Mary, restoring her to the sexual vitality and physical youth of her early twenties. She re-invented herself as the European beauty Zatianny, and has now returned to her old haunts. For reasons never properly explained, the radium treatment works only on women, not men.This is a strange film, but an interesting one. In flashbacks, we see Mary Ogden as she looked in her fifties: the make-up on Corinne Griffith is not very convincing, and she looks as if she's in her seventies, not her fifties. Also, the movie implies that a woman in her fifties is hopelessly old, beyond any hope of emotional happiness. If this is true, it's down to social prejudice rather than biological fact.Clara Bow is good in a small role as the Oglethorpes' socialite daughter, and more subdued than usual. "Black Oxen" is a good example of how silent films sometimes had narrative advantages over talking films. Corinne Griffith has to play an American and a (supposed) European. In a sound film, she would have to speak her lines in two different accents. The European accent would probably have been a fairly ludicrous one, dispelling the credibility of her character. Because "Black Oxen" is a silent film, the accent problem is avoided.