Show People (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 7/27/2018

Show People was our third film from 1928. It was directed by King Vidor, and starred Marion Davies and William Haines, all of whom we've seen before during this project -- Marion Davies in 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower and 1927's The Red Mill, William Haines in 1926's Tell It to the Marines, and King Vidor as the director of 1925's The Big Parade.

This was another film with a Movietone soundtrack, signaling the incipient end of the silent era, and the kids were impressed that, for the first time, we heard the MGM lion roar. ("Whoa!" they said.) Until recently I had actually believed that the point of the MGM lion -- and its roar -- was to signal to audiences that they were watching a sound film -- but we've seen the lion roaring silently on films dating back a few years, so obviously that was incorrect.

Show People is a Hollywood movie about Hollywood, similar in some ways to 1923's The Extra Girl, but its humor is broader than that film, which is especially notable when you remember that a long sequence in the earlier film involved Mabel Normand not being able to tell the difference between a dog dressed up as a lion and a real lion. Marion Davies in this case plays the newcomer to Hollywood, and is eventually helped out by William Haines, who is a slapstick comedian at a minor studio. Haines, as we saw a few months ago, held his own against Lon Chaney in Tell It to the Marines, perhaps surprisingly. But he does less well up against Marion Davies in this picture. She is clearly the star of the film, and gives her normal charismatic performance, though she is a bit less charming and more self-centered than in previous films. In fact, the major arc of the film follows her rise up the Hollywood ladder, forgetting her friends along the way. But she is obnoxious not only on the way up, but also when she rights things at the end. Haines also is fairly obnoxious in his role, and never quite shows his character's core of seriousness as he did in Tell It to the Marines.

Neither The Extra Girl nor this film was intended as a brutal satire of Hollywood exactly, but this film has a little more of an insider feel than the earlier one, which gives it that much less bite. It reminded me of the phenomenon of celebrities who have been mocked on Saturday Night Live showing up in person, to signal that the mockery is all in good fun -- whether or not that is (or should be) the case. And there are a number of celebrity cameos throughout the movie, playing themselves, including William S. Hart, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert. Some show up only briefly in a single shot, but some, like Charlie Chaplin, are mentioned by name, and actually have a short scene with the lead characters. The Extra Girl had a few celebrity cameos as well, but nothing close to the star power of this film.

I think I would have preferred if this film had taken a stronger approach in one direction or another -- either to have been funnier, or to have had less two-dimensional characters, or to have been more scathing about Hollywood. But it was entertaining, and it was certainly interesting to see the impression Hollywood had or wanted to create for itself at this point in its history.

Next week we move on to The Crowd, our fourth film from 1928, which was also directed by King Vidor. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT.

The Red Mill (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/24/2018

The Red Mill was our ninth film from 1927, and our second starring Marion Davies. It was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under the pseudonym William Goodrich, which he used after his career was virtually destroyed in 1921-1922 by the famous scandal and subsequent trials. The Red Mill was one of the more high profile films he made in his post-scandal career, though at the time of his death of a heart attack in 1933, his fortunes had begun to improve, and he had even begun acting under his own name again.

This film is essentially a romantic comedy, unusual only in its foreign setting. Marion Davies stars as a servant in a tavern who falls in love with Owen Moore, a well-off visitor to Holland. There are a variety of shenanigans and misunderstandings, and a prominent secondary plot about another romantic couple played by Louise Fazenda and Karl Dane. Dane looked familiar to me, and, looking him up afterwards, I realized that I recognized him as one of John Gilbert's friends in 1925's The Big Parade. He apparently was also in 1926's The Scarlet Letter, which we saw at the Packard Theater in Culpeper, but I have less clear memories of him in that. He has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page that tells the cheerful story of his career decline during the sound era -- due to his Danish accent -- and subsequent depression and suicide in 1934.

There is not much surprising in this film, excepting maybe a slightly suspenseful ending sequence. Dane and Fazenda play their parts a shade broader than Moore and Davies, but nobody in this film is pitching their performance at any great level of subtlety. Davies is as charming as you would expect her to be, given that this is essentially a vehicle for her, as was the previous film we'd seen her in, 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower. That too was a romantic comedy, but it also had some aspirations as a period piece, and depicted events that vaguely lined up with the historical record. This movie has no such aspirations, but is in the main pleasant and agreeable.

Next week, before finishing up 1927, we're going to skip ahead to 1928, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, our second film from that year, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti. The list of upcoming films, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922)

Originally posted to Facebook on 10/16/2017

As mentioned last week, our sixth and final film from 1922 arrived late, after we'd watched all of our other films from 1922 and 1923 and most of 1924. The reason for the late arrival was that the film, while not lost like so many other silent films, was not readily available streaming or via DVD, and the version we received was as a result of a Kickstarter project by Ben Model, funded by ~300 contributors, including me.

When Knighthood Was in Flower was similar in some ways to 1922's Robin Hood and also to 1923's Scaramouche, in that it was a big-budget historical entertainment, setting personal stories against the backdrop of some approximation of real events. It is probably a little more concerned with the historical side of things than Robin Hood, but not so much as Scaramouche, which seemed genuinely if fitfully interested in the events of the French Revolution.

Marion Davies stars as the sister of Henry VIII, played by Lyn Harding -- already portraying him as the overweight, capricious, man of appetites that is now, and may have been then, the standard depiction. Davies is set to be married off to the King of France, but falls in love with a captain of the royal guard, played by Forrest Stanley, who is well below her class. This and subsequent events are surprisingly not that far from the actual historical truth (based on my typically cursory Wikipedia research), but they are played very much in the vein of a romance, and the plot could easily have been transplanted a hundred years earlier or later. Marion Davies is charming and charismatic, and mostly eclipses her costars, though apparently Stanley, Davies, and the director (Robert G. Vignola) were a recurring trio at around this time, and collaborated on several movies.

Next week, we return to 1924 to see our fifth and final film from that year: He Who Gets Slapped. This will be the second film we've seen starring Lon Chaney, and the fifth directed by Victor Sjöström -- but the first after his move to Hollywood. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT