# When the Clouds Roll By
**When the Clouds Roll By** is a 1919 American silent comedy directed by [Victor Fleming](https://www.edgepedia.org/victor-fleming), starring [Douglas Fairbanks](https://www.edgepedia.org/douglas-fairbanks) as a superstitious New Yorker driven toward madness by a mad-scientist neighbor, and released through [United Artists](https://www.edgepedia.org/united-artists) on 29 December 1919.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) It was Fleming's first film as a director and one of the last of Fairbanks's modern-dress comedies before he turned to swashbuckling costume pictures such as *The Mark of Zorro* (1920).[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) • [3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 29 December 1919; copyright 21 December 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corp., LP14595[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) |
| Director | Victor Fleming, his directorial debut; assistant director Theodore Reed[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) |
| Writing | Scenario by Thomas J. Geraghty from a screen story by Douglas Fairbanks[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) |
| Format | Silent, black and white, six reels, standard 35mm 1.33:1; working title *Cheer Up*[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) |
| Distribution | United Artists Corporation; the second Fairbanks film released through the company[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) • [3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) |
| Flood spectacle | A reservoir holding two million gallons of water and a city two miles long were built in the Cascade Mountains foothills of Northern California for the climax[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) |
| Survival | The film is extant; a 35mm print is held by Cohen Media Group (Raymond Rohauer collection), and the film is in the public domain in the USA[2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
In the film, Daniel Boone Brown, a fun-loving young New Yorker employed at his uncle's brokerage firm, becomes an unknowing participant in the hypnotic experiments of Dr. Ulrich Metz, a psychiatrist in his neighborhood who tries to determine how far circumstance and mental state alone can drive a man toward death.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) • [4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/when_the_clouds_roll_by) Convinced his bad luck comes from an opal ring, Daniel throws it away in a park, where Lucette Bancroft picks it up and he promptly falls in love with her.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) Metz exploits a love triangle to attack Daniel's sanity, and the former suitor Mark Drake schemes to seize Oklahoma oil interests owned by Lucette's father.[5](https://moviessilently.com/2019/10/13/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919-a-silent-film-review/) • [1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) The climax shifts from New York to the countryside: Daniel and Lucette are on a train swept away by a massive flood, and after taking refuge on a drifting roof they are married by a minister who floats past.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) • [6](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2024/01/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919/)
The critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, formerly chief film critic of the *Chicago Reader*, describes the film as nominally a satire of 1919 American fads, from Ouija boards and superstitions to crackpot psychological experiments, but chiefly a free-form adventure built around Fairbanks's athletic stunts and playful breaches of the ordinary rules of space and time.[6](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2024/01/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919/)
## Production
**Fairbanks's search for a new direction.** Through 1918 and 1919 Douglas Fairbanks, then the biggest male star in the film industry, was hunting for good scripts after a spate of negative reviews of his recent films, which he pasted into his personal scrapbook and studied.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) *When the Clouds Roll By* was the second film he released through United Artists, the distribution company he co-founded, after *His Majesty, the American*; it was one of the last of his "Coat and Tie" comedies before his transformation into the screen's most popular swashbuckler.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
**The disputed credit.** Many contemporary reviews and trade articles credited Louis Weadock (misspelled "Louis Weadon" in the reviews) as co-author of the story and scenario with Fairbanks and Thomas Geraghty, but the Fairbanks organization issued a statement in early 1920 that Weadock had contributed to neither.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) According to Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance, the star paid Weadock $500 to settle a claim of libel.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
**Style and craft.** Fleming, Fairbanks's former cinematographer, kept the action moving with brisk editing and let Fairbanks display the acrobatic abilities that soon redirected his career; Fairbanks insisted that his stunts were never performed for their own sake but served his interpretation of youth.[6](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2024/01/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919/) • [7](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1/) The film also shows the flexibility of silent-era art titles: it contains few long shots of buildings or exteriors, conveying a sense of various parts of New York City through painted titles, such as a view of the [Washington Square](https://www.edgepedia.org/washington-square) arch followed by a shot of Fairbanks walking in a park that could be almost anywhere.[8](https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2011/FAV190/um/Thompson_Kristin_-_The_formulation_of_the_classical_style_1909-1928.pdf) The title-card backgrounds were painted by the popular illustrator Henry Clive, and the opening credits show Fleming filming scenarist Geraghty, the cameramen, and Fairbanks with the actor's Alaskan malamute, Rex.[8](https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2011/FAV190/um/Thompson_Kristin_-_The_formulation_of_the_classical_style_1909-1928.pdf) • [3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
## The nightmare sequence
The film's most famous passage, a surreal nightmare in the first reel in which Fairbanks walks on walls and the ceiling, was not Fleming's work. It had been directed by Joseph Henabery for Fairbanks's previous film, *His Majesty, the American*, cut from that film's first edit, and worked into this release instead.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) Film historians long credited the fledgling Fleming for the witty sequence without knowing its origin; the press book for *His Majesty* had referenced the "wild and delirious nightmare," and a correction slip had to be included with each press kit urging exhibitors to drop any mention of it.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) The wall-walking effect anticipated a famous [Fred Astaire](https://www.edgepedia.org/fred-astaire) sequence by more than 30 years and has since been reproduced, without attribution, in *Royal Wedding* (1951) and in certain shots of the thriller *Inception* (2010).[7](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1/) • [3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
## The flood
Fairbanks pulled out all stops in the last reel. For the film's climax, four huge electric pumps lifted over a million gallons of [Sacramento River](https://www.edgepedia.org/sacramento-river) water up to a reservoir in the Cascade mountains; when the water was let go, the resulting flood swept away a town that convincingly mixed miniature structures with full-scale buildings.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) The AFI Catalog records the production's own figures as a reservoir holding two million gallons and a city two miles in length at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in [Northern California](https://www.edgepedia.org/northern-california).[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) For the post-flood sequence, a flooded plain near Seal Beach was dressed with trees, houses, and even a floating church, which conveniently supplied the minister for the film's happy ending.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
## Reception and survival
The film was a success, earning the second highest returns of any of Fairbanks's productions to date, and it was well received by critics; *Photoplay* wrote that if he had begun his United Artists career with it, the film would have given the new connection a boost that *His Majesty the American* failed to impart.[3](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/) The Museum of Modern Art screened it in October 1960, and its first film curator, Iris Barry, wrote that the picture parodied with no discernible time-lag the pattern of a new social scene, skewering the dubious profession of "psychoanalyst," a new word in 1919 that in the public mind covered more naive and lurid cures than Freud or Adler had ever proposed.[9](https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/2746/releases/MOMA_1960_0144_119.pdf)
The film survives. The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database lists it as extant, a 35mm print was screened at the Kansas Silent Film Festival in Topeka in February 2005, and a 35mm positive is held in the Cohen Media Group's Raymond Rohauer collection.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY) • [2](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html) A restoration has drawn on a black-and-white nitrate print with French intertitles from the Cinémathèque Royale, an eight-reel safety negative with German intertitles from Gosfilmofond, and incomplete Czech-titled prints and negatives from the Berlin Bundesarchiv and Prague archive.[10](https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/cat_CR1998.pdf)
## References
1. [When the Clouds Roll by (1919), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/15789-WHEN-THE-CLOUDS-ROLL-BY)
2. [When the Clouds Roll By (1919), Progressive Silent Film List, Silent Era](https://w.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WhenTheCloudsRollBy1919.html)
3. [Tracey Goessel, "When the Clouds Roll By," San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 2016](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-2/)
4. [When the Clouds Roll By, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/when_the_clouds_roll_by)
5. [When the Clouds Roll By (1919): A Silent Film Review, Movies Silently](https://moviessilently.com/2019/10/13/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919-a-silent-film-review/)
6. [Jonathan Rosenbaum, "When the Clouds Roll By (1919)"](https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2024/01/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1919/)
7. [Scott Brogan, "When the Clouds Roll By," San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 2004](https://silentfilm.org/when-the-clouds-roll-by-1/)
8. [Kristin Thompson, The Formulation of the Classical Style, 1909–1928](https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2011/FAV190/um/Thompson_Kristin_-_The_formulation_of_the_classical_style_1909-1928.pdf)
9. [Douglas Fairbanks Film Comedy at Museum of Modern Art, MoMA press release, October 1960](https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/2746/releases/MOMA_1960_0144_119.pdf)
10. [Cinema Ritrovato catalog, Cinema Fulgor (1998)](https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/cat_CR1998.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Early and silent cinema › Silent genre and exploitation features*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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