Silent movies are such a fascinating look into film as a medium. Using very little dialogue (those little cue cards that pop up intermittently, you really have to rely on the actors' body language and the cinematography as a whole. With silents, one has to be fully dedicated to the film as a whole. I love them for the innovative use of a new medium, the look back at clothing, and the expressive acting. Here are a couple of recent views into this moldering Art Form.
Director DW Griffiths' fave leading lady stars in WAY DOWN EAST, an interesting curio about a small town girl (Lillian Gish) who is sent to live with her rich cousins in the Big City. Naturally, they treat her like the wicked step-sisters they are, but is romanced by a lothario who has big ideas about getting Anna on her back. He stages a "marriage" gets Anna pregnant, then announces they're not married at all and DUMPS her!!! Rapscallion!!! Needless to say, she has the baby in a seedy boarding house, and the peril ensues. Griffith is pretty heavy handed with the Bible stuff and the moral is pronounced early on, but that's Griffith. Gish, however, gives a lovely (and usual) performance as the Damsel in Distress, her beautiful, heart shaped faced, huge eyes brimming with tears consistently expressive and fine. In one famous scene, Anna is stuck on an ice flow, and nearly loses her life as it drifts dangerously toward a water fall. Fun stuff because, as Gish would later assert, there was no such thing as a stunt person, so that was her out on that frigid river, scared to death as she moved steadily toward the cascades. That's not acting! That's terror.
The Flapper stars little known (now) Ziegfeld Follies Girl cum comedienne, Olive Thomas in a really hilarious film about a boarding school girl, again, off to the Big City on "an Adventure!" Well she gets into one, in a way she didn't expect. Framed for a robbery she didn't commit!!! When Olive returns home in the form of a Vamp, her senator father is scandalized. Oh, this is a really fun romp from David O. Selznick's brother Myron, and you can tell there was no expense spared on the quality of this film. Even creative cards come up, and I was giggling with delight. I had never heard of Thomas before, nor of her marriage to drunken lout Jack Pickford, (Mary's brother), nor of her tragic death in Paris at 27. The accompanying documentary is well worth the rental alone, though why they got one of those dreadful Arquette sisters to narrate is beyond me, considering Thomas was a huge star at the time, and the Arquette's nothing but aged starlets.
Something with sound, 1955's The Eddy Duchin Story. Starring Tyrone Power as the famed Society Pianist is a glossed over, Technicolor, Cinemascope bio-pic that Hollywood was famed for. The highest grossing pic for Fox that year, it's big and over'blown, but Power is his likeable self, though Kim Novak is a complete and utter bore as his first wife. Hounded by tragedy, Duchin was a favorite with High Society for his theatrical, and sorta on the sweet side piano playing, but provided entertainment...a precursor to Liberace. Duchin's son Peter continues the legacy, long after Duchin's early death of Leukemia. You know where this saga is going, but I have to give the director credit for an innovative smash finale.
Speaking of DREADFUL Gay Flix: Shelter, starring has been Brad Rowe and some other guy as a couple of surfers who fall in love. Ugh. They call each other dude alot, drink beers, do nasty things with each other in bed. This is the kind of SEE HOW STRAIGHT GAY GUYS CAN BE crap that Logo (Lifetime for Homos) produces with a regularity that's ghastly. I was bored to tears.
Sometimes it's just better to be silent.
8 comments:
Eddy Duchin Story I think was out of Columbia studios.
I actually think you are right!!! Sorry for the error! And do watch some of Miss Gish's work. She's incredibly wonderful.
Thanks again,
Craig
Oh, and mrs. r, thanks for actually READING this! I truly appreciate your input.
Craig
You haven't had a silent moment since the middle of your freshman year of high school. Listen Craig Steven Couiffure Mabel Little Gloria Drunk At Last Curtis, you better get ahold of me. I, after all. Am the one person who remembers when you were a frowsy, pre-blonde, Ruth Mchughesque, bit player at RKO. If I'm not mistaken, I showed you hot to make a Robo&7 and gave you your first set of highlights AND showed you how to shimmy like my sister Kate.
You just better contact me mucho pronto or I will come to wherever the hell Bellingham is (as soon as my passport comes through)and track you down through all the worst Gin joints in wherever Bellingham is. I swear to you I will rent a team of dogs and a sled!
"Hail to thee our alma mater To Edgewood hear our pledge....."
Rat bastard.
Listen Earl Blackwell, you might want to take credit for my sense of style, but I owe all to Sydney Guilaroff and Adrian! Further, though, yes, my number has changed from the WALdorf exchange, my email account has not. And as for your sister Kate....well. She more slimmied than shimmied. Her career breaker was when she auditioned singing "Oh what a loverly bunch of coconuts" covered in nothing but banana peels and a ukelele! No Goldwyn Girl she. That disgusting CHIMP made her the talk of tinsel town. Carrying it into Perino's set tongues a-wagging, and set Crawford to writing hate letters to her. So listen, you cheap version of ANITA PAGE (and it couldn't get much cheaper), I suggest you email me at my hotmail account so you can privately vent all that venom you have stored up after years of bit parts as maids. Even moiself started out as a dress extra. With Zazu Pitts.
MAIDS! MAIDS!
I'll have you know I was the first colored girl to play "second girl from the left" in many of Mr. Pitts filmatic treasures!
MAIDS!
Shall contact you by this horrid email sister.
Btw, Edith Head one told me (in private, of course.) that you had no Toucas and a tight box.
And, Suzy never liked you as a virgin. That's why she never mentioned you in her columns after you signed with Columbia (Columbia! How could you!).
First of all, you second-rate Butterly McQueen, I never stepped fuck me pump one on the Columbia lot. Secondly, that half rate, I'll get an oscar for anything Givenchy does for Audrey Hepburn, was merely scorned by my refusal to hop in the sack with her. I let Barbara Stanwyck take care of the. Thirdly, the only reason why you managed to escape the "scourge" of the race card, is because Sarah Jane Johnson did it before you, breaking her poor mother's heart (Peola or Annie, you choose). And BTW, you were no where near Pitts. The only director that would hire a second rate actress like you was DW Griffith, and THAT was for a lynching scene. Strange Fruit indeed.
Such a pretty mouth.
Such an ugly tongue.
Oh, for the days of silence (or silents) again.
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