Originally posted to Facebook on 1/7/2017
Why Change Your Wife? was our first film from 1920, and our fourth by Cecil B. DeMille. It re-united Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan from 1919’s Male and Female, and also starred Bebe Daniels, who had a bit part in Male and Female, and whom we just saw in the 1919 Harold Lloyd short Bumping Into Broadway. (According to IMDB she was in almost 40 shorts in 1919, quite a few of them with Lloyd.) This film was a follow-up to another 1919 Cecil B. DeMille / Gloria Swanson film called Don’t Change Your Husband. We didn’t watch that film, but this one wavered between being a romantic comedy and a moralistic cautionary tale. Thomas Meighan and Gloria Swanson start the film as a married couple who are not getting along. The blame is initially put rather squarely on Swanson’s shoulders, since she is continually nagging him, and not interested in wearing some ostensibly sexy lingerie that he buys for her. In one racist intertitle, she responds to the latter by saying, “Do you expect me to share your Oriental ideas?” But the racism was crowded out by the much more omnipresent sexism. Bebe Daniels plays a woman whom Meighan meets at the clothing store where he bought the lingerie, and he ends up spending a night with her after Swanson declines his invitation to see the Follies (at $3.50 a ticket.) The film doesn’t exactly absolve Meighan, but it strongly suggests that Swanson shares the blame. I won’t detail the rest of the film, but one partial spoiler I will share is that the film ends up having a very similar moral to Grease. Grease, though, had a much lighter tone. This film would have been much better, and much more palatable, if it had committed to consistently playing scenes for comedy -- without insisting on any kind of universal lesson. At times it adopts this approach, and it certainly has the form of a romantic comedy, but even conventional scenes from a movie of that type are sometimes weighed down with more solemnity than they can carry. The most dramatic and risible example of this is a scene late in the movie where Meighan slips on a banana peel -- really -- but then ends up lying on the ground with his head in a pool of blood while a crowd gathers. Our last film from 1919 -- True Heart Susie -- was also rather sexist, but in some ways its message was from the opposite side of the spectrum. It held up as an ideal a selfless non-paint-wearing martyr in the form of Lillian Gish, whereas this film blames Swanson for being reluctant to dance or wear perfume or lingerie. I guess you can’t win.
So, not exactly an auspicious start to the 1920s, but our next film is one of the canonical classics of the silent era: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The list for our upcoming films is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Showing posts with label Bebe Daniels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bebe Daniels. Show all posts
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Shorts (1918-1919)
Originally posted to Facebook on 1/1/2017
Last week we watched our second and last batch of shorts from the teens. They included:
A Dog's Life (1918)
The Bell Boy (1918)
From Hand to Mouth (1919)
Bumping into Broadway (1919)
All three of the canonical silent comedians are represented: Chaplin in A Dog’s Life, Keaton in The Bell Boy, and Harold Lloyd in the other two.
We’d seen three Chaplin shorts the previous week, and the new one was along much the same lines, including the presence of Edna Purviance as his leading lady. Quality-wise it was in the middle of the pack: not as good as The Immigrant, but better than The Tramp. Much of the plot revolves around Chaplin trying to obtain money and food, which is essentially the premise of the earlier shorts as well.
That basic plot is also the basis of Harold Lloyd’s From Hand to Mouth, though Lloyd is a somewhat more accessible leading man. Chaplin often has a slightly alien presence -- including his unusual appearance, and his ignorance or lack of concern with normal human conventions. Lloyd comes across as more of a normal human being down on his luck. His co-star in this film was Mildred Davis, who eventually became his wife of forty-plus years.
Bumping into Broadway was another Lloyd short from the same year, and had many of the same supporting cast, excepting his co-star, who in this case was Bebe Daniels, an actress whom we’d seen in a bit part in Male and Female, and who was active in movies and TV well into the 1950s. Interestingly both films end with dozens of policeman chasing people around, which conforms to a stereotype of silent comedies. Neither film was made for Keystone, so these weren’t technically Keystone Cops, but seem likely to be a derivative of some sort.
I’d taken the kids to see 1928’s Speedy back during the fall at the Alamo in Winchester, so this wasn’t their first time seeing Harold Lloyd. He’s a decade younger in these shorts, but his persona already seems to be basically intact.
The remaining short, The Bell Boy, was a Fatty Arbuckle picture, and co-starred both Keaton and Arbuckle’s nephew Al St. John, whom we'd seen in the previous week’s Fatty and Mabel Adrift. This is the first time we’ve seen Keaton however, and although he isn’t the star of the picture his talents are prominently on display, and you can see an athleticism and apparent willingness to endure pain for the sake of a gag that are unlike Chaplin or Lloyd. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, he reprised much of this short twenty years later in the sound era, with 1937’s Love Nest on Wheels, and also used a portion of it almost fifty years later, in a 1966 short called The Scribe. Like all of the shorts this week, this film has a lot of scattershot jokes, some of which are better than others. Interestingly there are some topical references to Rasputin and to Kaiser Wilhelm, making this and Shoulder Arms the only two films we’ve seen to directly reference World War One while it was actually occurring.
Next week we begin the 1920s, with our fourth film by Cecil B. DeMille, titled Why Change Your Wife?. I’ve also added a new set of films from 1921. As with 1920, I’ve failed to keep to my original plan of targeting four films a year, and have instead selected five. This should take us into early March. I’m definitely hoping to hit sound films this year, since I would like to finish this project before the kids go to college, but we shall see. The updated list is shared here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Last week we watched our second and last batch of shorts from the teens. They included:
A Dog's Life (1918)
The Bell Boy (1918)
From Hand to Mouth (1919)
Bumping into Broadway (1919)
All three of the canonical silent comedians are represented: Chaplin in A Dog’s Life, Keaton in The Bell Boy, and Harold Lloyd in the other two.
We’d seen three Chaplin shorts the previous week, and the new one was along much the same lines, including the presence of Edna Purviance as his leading lady. Quality-wise it was in the middle of the pack: not as good as The Immigrant, but better than The Tramp. Much of the plot revolves around Chaplin trying to obtain money and food, which is essentially the premise of the earlier shorts as well.
That basic plot is also the basis of Harold Lloyd’s From Hand to Mouth, though Lloyd is a somewhat more accessible leading man. Chaplin often has a slightly alien presence -- including his unusual appearance, and his ignorance or lack of concern with normal human conventions. Lloyd comes across as more of a normal human being down on his luck. His co-star in this film was Mildred Davis, who eventually became his wife of forty-plus years.
Bumping into Broadway was another Lloyd short from the same year, and had many of the same supporting cast, excepting his co-star, who in this case was Bebe Daniels, an actress whom we’d seen in a bit part in Male and Female, and who was active in movies and TV well into the 1950s. Interestingly both films end with dozens of policeman chasing people around, which conforms to a stereotype of silent comedies. Neither film was made for Keystone, so these weren’t technically Keystone Cops, but seem likely to be a derivative of some sort.
I’d taken the kids to see 1928’s Speedy back during the fall at the Alamo in Winchester, so this wasn’t their first time seeing Harold Lloyd. He’s a decade younger in these shorts, but his persona already seems to be basically intact.
The remaining short, The Bell Boy, was a Fatty Arbuckle picture, and co-starred both Keaton and Arbuckle’s nephew Al St. John, whom we'd seen in the previous week’s Fatty and Mabel Adrift. This is the first time we’ve seen Keaton however, and although he isn’t the star of the picture his talents are prominently on display, and you can see an athleticism and apparent willingness to endure pain for the sake of a gag that are unlike Chaplin or Lloyd. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, he reprised much of this short twenty years later in the sound era, with 1937’s Love Nest on Wheels, and also used a portion of it almost fifty years later, in a 1966 short called The Scribe. Like all of the shorts this week, this film has a lot of scattershot jokes, some of which are better than others. Interestingly there are some topical references to Rasputin and to Kaiser Wilhelm, making this and Shoulder Arms the only two films we’ve seen to directly reference World War One while it was actually occurring.
Next week we begin the 1920s, with our fourth film by Cecil B. DeMille, titled Why Change Your Wife?. I’ve also added a new set of films from 1921. As with 1920, I’ve failed to keep to my original plan of targeting four films a year, and have instead selected five. This should take us into early March. I’m definitely hoping to hit sound films this year, since I would like to finish this project before the kids go to college, but we shall see. The updated list is shared here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
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