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 Gloria Swanson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gloria Swanson. Show all posts
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Shorts (1915-1917)
Originally posted to Facebook on 12/14/2016
This was our first of two weekends watching shorts from the teens. We saw five films:
The Tramp (1915)
A Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916)
Teddy at the Throttle (1917)
The Immigrant (1917)
Three of them were Chaplin shorts, the best of which was The Immigrant, which included a brief scene that I half-recognized from somewhere, specifically a few seconds in which Chaplin is half-walking / half-hopping in order to keep his balance on a rocking boat. The Immigrant is split into two parts, the first of which takes place on a ship bringing immigrants to the United States, including their sighting of the Statue of Liberty (which, as I believe I mentioned when discussing 1915’s The Italian, had been built just thirty years earlier.) The second section takes place mostly at a restaurant, once Chaplin and his co-star have settled in America. The best scenes are on board the ship; things slow down a bit once he comes ashore. His costar in all three shorts is Edna Purviance, who was also his co-star in 1918’s Shoulder Arms, which we saw several weeks ago. (The distinction between shorts and features during this period is a bit arbitrary; The Immigrant was half an hour, while Shoulder Arms was only forty-five minutes.)
A Burlesque on Carmen was interesting in that it was a direct parody of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 version of Carmen, which we watched back in May. The sets and costumes and plot points were quite similar, though the jokes were mostly shoehorned into the plot, rather than constituting any real satire of the earlier movie.
The Tramp was the earliest of the three, and probably the least inventive, with most of the jokes consisting of people being hit with bricks or poked with pitchforks or having things fall on them.
Fatty and Mabel Adrift starred Mabel Normand (who we last saw in 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance, with Chaplin) and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The villain was played by Al St. John, Arbuckle’s nephew. His acting in this short was extremely broad, even by the standards of early silent comedies, but apparently he went on to a long career as a Western sidekick in the thirties and forties, including many B movies with Buster Crabbe. This movie was basically about Arbuckle and Normand’s characters' romance and eventual marriage, and St. John’s jealous attempts at sabotage.
Teddy at the Throttle starred Gloria Swanson, whom we saw a few weeks ago in Male and Female. Her costar was Bobby Vernon, who was only an inch taller than Swanson at 5’2. The main villain was played by Wallace Beery, who was married to Swanson at the time. Like her, he bridged the gap between silents and talkies, winning a Best Actor Oscar in 1932. He was also famously referenced in Barton Fink (“Wallace Beery. Wrestling Picture. What do you need, a roadmap?”) The plot of this was similar to a few other films we’ve seen, in that Swanson and Vernon are due to inherit some money if and when they are married, and Beery and his sister attempt to use this information to enrich themselves.
I can’t say any of these films really struck me as worthy of recommendation, but The Immigrant and Teddy at the Throttle were probably the best of the bunch. Next week we see four more shorts, and then move on to features from the 1920s. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
This was our first of two weekends watching shorts from the teens. We saw five films:
The Tramp (1915)
A Burlesque on Carmen (1915)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916)
Teddy at the Throttle (1917)
The Immigrant (1917)
Three of them were Chaplin shorts, the best of which was The Immigrant, which included a brief scene that I half-recognized from somewhere, specifically a few seconds in which Chaplin is half-walking / half-hopping in order to keep his balance on a rocking boat. The Immigrant is split into two parts, the first of which takes place on a ship bringing immigrants to the United States, including their sighting of the Statue of Liberty (which, as I believe I mentioned when discussing 1915’s The Italian, had been built just thirty years earlier.) The second section takes place mostly at a restaurant, once Chaplin and his co-star have settled in America. The best scenes are on board the ship; things slow down a bit once he comes ashore. His costar in all three shorts is Edna Purviance, who was also his co-star in 1918’s Shoulder Arms, which we saw several weeks ago. (The distinction between shorts and features during this period is a bit arbitrary; The Immigrant was half an hour, while Shoulder Arms was only forty-five minutes.)
A Burlesque on Carmen was interesting in that it was a direct parody of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 version of Carmen, which we watched back in May. The sets and costumes and plot points were quite similar, though the jokes were mostly shoehorned into the plot, rather than constituting any real satire of the earlier movie.
The Tramp was the earliest of the three, and probably the least inventive, with most of the jokes consisting of people being hit with bricks or poked with pitchforks or having things fall on them.
Fatty and Mabel Adrift starred Mabel Normand (who we last saw in 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance, with Chaplin) and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. The villain was played by Al St. John, Arbuckle’s nephew. His acting in this short was extremely broad, even by the standards of early silent comedies, but apparently he went on to a long career as a Western sidekick in the thirties and forties, including many B movies with Buster Crabbe. This movie was basically about Arbuckle and Normand’s characters' romance and eventual marriage, and St. John’s jealous attempts at sabotage.
Teddy at the Throttle starred Gloria Swanson, whom we saw a few weeks ago in Male and Female. Her costar was Bobby Vernon, who was only an inch taller than Swanson at 5’2. The main villain was played by Wallace Beery, who was married to Swanson at the time. Like her, he bridged the gap between silents and talkies, winning a Best Actor Oscar in 1932. He was also famously referenced in Barton Fink (“Wallace Beery. Wrestling Picture. What do you need, a roadmap?”) The plot of this was similar to a few other films we’ve seen, in that Swanson and Vernon are due to inherit some money if and when they are married, and Beery and his sister attempt to use this information to enrich themselves.
I can’t say any of these films really struck me as worthy of recommendation, but The Immigrant and Teddy at the Throttle were probably the best of the bunch. Next week we see four more shorts, and then move on to features from the 1920s. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Male and Female (1919)
Originally posted to Facebook on 11/12/2016
Male and Female was the first film we watched from 1919, and the third film we’ve seen directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It is also the first we’ve seen starring Gloria Swanson, probably twenty years old at the time. She is probably most famous for her silent work, but continued appearing in movies and television well into the 1970s, including notably Sunset Boulevard, in which DeMille also appeared. This movie is based on the play The Admirable Crichton, written by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. It has been adapted a few times over the years, and is probably somewhere in the lineage of Swept Away and its remake as well. It concerns a group of upper-class Britons and their servants who are shipwrecked on an island, and find their social roles inverted as a result of their isolation and the need for survival. Crichton, the butler who takes control post-shipwreck, is played by Thomas Meighan, and the eldest daughter of the upper-class family is played by Swanson. The majority of the film takes place on the island, though there is a probably too-lengthy portion set at the family’s London estate prior to the shipwreck. There is also a strange fantasy sequence, during which Meighan and Swanson imagine themselves in Babylonian times, with Meighan the emperor and Swanson a Christian slave thrown to the lions for refusing to submit. As with several films we’ve seen from this period, the incredible effect of Swanson being in the same shot with an actual lion is achieved by disregarding civilized norms of workplace safety.
I haven’t read or seen the original play, so I don’t know how it compares, but from the changed title of this version, I suspected that the depiction of the new social structure of the island was going to be rather sexist, and that certainly turned out to be the case. I think there is a larger point to be made about how the influence of society inhibits or shapes how sexism manifests itself, but this movie doesn’t attempt anything that sophisticated. It basically collapses into a love triangle, with Swanson and Lila Lee, playing the scullery maid, vying for Crichton. Its commentary on the collapse of class is similarly shallow and essentially suggests that the class roles are inverted on the island because Crichton is competent and best able to aid everyone in survival. There is the briefest suggestion of the use of force to maintain order, but only in relation to a character who was refusing to do his fair share. Otherwise Crichton is portrayed as being of too noble a character to enforce his position by violence. This is essentially a romantic comedy, though, and is meant to be lightweight -- so I am not arguing that it should have explored sexism and class structure more deeply. By all appearances the filmmakers would have been poorly suited to take that route, and I suspect a better approach would have been to adopt an even lighter touch.
Our next film is our second from 1919, and the third we’ve seen starring Douglas Fairbanks: When the Clouds Roll By. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
Male and Female was the first film we watched from 1919, and the third film we’ve seen directed by Cecil B. DeMille. It is also the first we’ve seen starring Gloria Swanson, probably twenty years old at the time. She is probably most famous for her silent work, but continued appearing in movies and television well into the 1970s, including notably Sunset Boulevard, in which DeMille also appeared. This movie is based on the play The Admirable Crichton, written by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. It has been adapted a few times over the years, and is probably somewhere in the lineage of Swept Away and its remake as well. It concerns a group of upper-class Britons and their servants who are shipwrecked on an island, and find their social roles inverted as a result of their isolation and the need for survival. Crichton, the butler who takes control post-shipwreck, is played by Thomas Meighan, and the eldest daughter of the upper-class family is played by Swanson. The majority of the film takes place on the island, though there is a probably too-lengthy portion set at the family’s London estate prior to the shipwreck. There is also a strange fantasy sequence, during which Meighan and Swanson imagine themselves in Babylonian times, with Meighan the emperor and Swanson a Christian slave thrown to the lions for refusing to submit. As with several films we’ve seen from this period, the incredible effect of Swanson being in the same shot with an actual lion is achieved by disregarding civilized norms of workplace safety.
I haven’t read or seen the original play, so I don’t know how it compares, but from the changed title of this version, I suspected that the depiction of the new social structure of the island was going to be rather sexist, and that certainly turned out to be the case. I think there is a larger point to be made about how the influence of society inhibits or shapes how sexism manifests itself, but this movie doesn’t attempt anything that sophisticated. It basically collapses into a love triangle, with Swanson and Lila Lee, playing the scullery maid, vying for Crichton. Its commentary on the collapse of class is similarly shallow and essentially suggests that the class roles are inverted on the island because Crichton is competent and best able to aid everyone in survival. There is the briefest suggestion of the use of force to maintain order, but only in relation to a character who was refusing to do his fair share. Otherwise Crichton is portrayed as being of too noble a character to enforce his position by violence. This is essentially a romantic comedy, though, and is meant to be lightweight -- so I am not arguing that it should have explored sexism and class structure more deeply. By all appearances the filmmakers would have been poorly suited to take that route, and I suspect a better approach would have been to adopt an even lighter touch.
Our next film is our second from 1919, and the third we’ve seen starring Douglas Fairbanks: When the Clouds Roll By. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT
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