Twenty-nine minutes late into Chicago, engineer Anderson, nicknamed Grumpy because of his single-minded devotion to timetables and railroad protocol, ploughs through heavy snowdrifts to make up lost time. His sons have followed into the railroading business, but they are gradually embittered by his apparent callousness. One of them was worked to exhaustion as the fireman of the Chicago run through the snow but gained sympathy from Zella, a nightclub singer whose private car Anderson had refused to tow, forcing her to jump into the cab and ride. His stubborn inflexibility eventually alienates his in-laws, causes the death of one of his sons, and provokes a wreck on the train on which the body was being carried by scuffling with his other son over his culpability for the death… Tantalising glimpses are all that survives of Chaney’s last silent film. From 35mm nitrate found at the Library of Congress we have four brief sections: Grumpy driving his engine through the snow, with Tommy and Zella; Tommy visits Zella at the nightclub; Grumpy at home; engines racing to the flood. From 16mm in the Michael Blake collection (shown on video), Grumpy in the machine shop. “Film Daily” described Thunder as “the weakest offering Chaney has yet made”, but these fragments suggest a very polished production.

Kevin Brownlow