WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I went to see The Extra Girl (1923, F. Richard Jones) with Mabel Norman. It's a charming comedy where Mabel, a small town girl dreams of becoming a movie star. After her own photograph has been substituted by that of a gorgeous looking lady, she is called up to Hollywood. Alas, when the substitution is revealed, she ends up working in the costume department. Many years before Show People and Ella Cinders , Mack Sennett produced this great comedy that shows how the studio worked in the teens. Mabel is a real hoot as the clumsy girl who makes one mistake after another. Her biggest being to take a lion through the studio creating havoc. There is also a nice sequence when Mabel is allowed a screen test and fails miserably. Her foot gets caught on a piece of chewing-gum, or even worse, she sat on some dirty gloves and her underwear shows the mark! I saw a Paul Killiam print, entirely tinted, of good quality. It was great fun!

[drednm]

I love The Extra Girland can't understand why it's so underrated. To my knowledge it's the only one of Normand's 1920s features to survive extant. Others like Molly O and Suzanna only survive in pieces.

Mabel Normand is unjustly forgotten or if remembered, it's only as a foil to Roscoe Arbuckle in their many short films together. In The Extra Girl she is fron tand center and easily holds a feature film together. From her opening, "Hey, Ma. Come watch me act!" through her adventures in a film studio, this is a gem of a comedy. The film was released October 1923 after the murder of William Desmond Taylor (February 1922) but was banned in many places because of Normand's association with the murder. She was the last person to see him alive but was never a serious suspect.

But after the Arbuckle scandal (the book on the Arbuckle trials by David Yallop is a must read), theater owners were under fire by the hysterical public to ban films of Hollywood stars involved in scandals. So the flop flopped. In 1926 she came back and made a handful of shorts, but her career was dead.

Luckily The Extra Girl has survived.

[silentscreen]

I saw Her Sister From Paris from the new Kino set. It's a light, frothy little comedy made interesting by the interplay between Constance Talmadge and Ronald Colman. They both act with their faces, and Colman's reactions to Talmadge's advances are hysterical! Comedian George K. Arthur adds a quirky touch as Colman's friend, who also has a thing for Helen/La Perry.

Best scenes are when Colman breaks a pencil during Helen/La Perry's enthusiastic kiss, the look on his face from a car window on the way to a tryst, and the knowing look on Talmadge's face during the final scene as the camera understands and respectfully backs off.

Early costumes by Adrian, and set designs by William Cameron Menzies. Thanks to Kino for bringing us these rarities!

[Ann Harding]

I just realised I got the year wrong on The Extra Girl. The Cinémathèque programme printed it wrong....I corrected it, thanks.

[Birdy]

Her Sister From Paris sounds wonderful - I don't know if those Kinos are available through the library system - I'll look sometime.
B

[drednm]

The Kino DVDs for the Talmadge Sister just came out mid-March.

I re-watched The Extra Girl yesterday. I really enjoyed the film although it seems there might be some missing scenes. Still, Mabel Normand is a treasure. She's a female Harry Langdon with her sad-sack face and shapeless body apron thing she wears, but she has incredibly expressive eyes. Mabel re-teamed with Mack Sennett for this film but it was directed by F. Richard Jones. Supporting cast is very good: Ralph Graves as David, George Nichols as the father, Anna (Dodge) Hernandez as the mother, Vernon Dent as Applejohn, Max Davidson as the tailor, Ramsey Wallace (who just appears mid-way) as Hackett, Louise Carver as the tall boss, and Charlotte Mineau as the "grass widow."

[MichiganJ]

While I like The Extra Girl, to me it's far more of a melodrama than comedy. There are comedic elements for sure, but if one comes to the film expecting a Sennett slapstick, you may be disappointed.

While the cast is good, the screenplay is uneven and it's to Normand's credit that she can handle both the comedic and melodramatic elements so well. I see her more as a female Chaplin than Langdon, but either way, she looks awfully tired throughout much of the film.

[silentscreen]

Mabel had been ill with tuberculosis for quite some time when she did The Extra Girl.

[MichiganJ]

Mabel had been ill with tuberculosis for quite some time when she did The Extra Girl.

Yes, and it shows, especially when compared to the vivacious and spunky look and performance Normand gave in Mickey.

I actually like her best with Arbuckle. The two really shared a terrific chemistry, and the physical contrast is always worth a chuckle or two.

[drednm]

I'm reading Mabel by Betty Fussell. I just started it but she's already stated that Mabel's long-time companion/housekeeper discounts the stories about drugs. Yes Mabel had TB, supposedly, for many years but it never slowed her down much. I wonder if it was a misdiagnosis.

In The Extra Girl there are a few moments of slapstick, but the story is really Mabel's and she's very good in both the comedy and the drama portions.

[Ann Harding]

I went to see Le Pied Qui Etreint (The Feet That Embraces, 1916). It's a spoof of The Exploits of Elaine a 1914 Gasnier serial. It's been allegedly directed by Jacques Feyder; but like most Gaumont production of the time, it's hard to prove. Anyway, the idea of making a parody of American serials is a good one, but the result is pretty dire. The gags are really labored, the picture has no pacing to speak of and it drags terribly... Reviewers at time also said that the film was a terrible failure (I wished I had read the review beforehand!). The only interesting aspect is Georges Biscot's amusing impression of Charlie Chaplin (check the picture above). But even that goes on for far too long. It's interesting to see that as early as 1916 the character of the Tramp was already so famous that it provided food for other pictures.

[Ann Harding]

After that disappointing French silent, I watched Moulin Rouge, a British silent directed by E.A. Dupont in 1928. The Russian Olga Tschechowa is a music hall star whose daughter is going to marry a young man from an aristocratic family. But the young man falls in love with his future mother-in-law... This is pure melodrama with jealousy, murder and sensuality provided by the luscious O. Tschechowa. The film is not as good as Variete (1925) where Dupont make full use of the mobile camera, but it still provides some good moments. For the record, Olga Tschechowa was a star of Nazi cinema and met many times Adolf Hitler. But, when the war was over, she was repatriated in the USSR. She had been a Russian spy all that time...! Anthony Beevor wrote a very interesting volume about her.

[feaito]

How interesting Christine, about the film and Tschechowa's life.

[feaito]

Thanks to Moira I got to see the long-awaited adult drama "The Silver Cord" (1933) which contains easily Laura hope Crews' performance of her career. A mother that literally loves too much her children. But she's not a one-dimensional character. In spite of the monster she is, you tend to feel sorry for her near the end of the picture. She's a bitter, selfish, self-centered who had a terrible marital experience. A woman whose romantic dreams were shattered and who developed romantic attachements to her two sons, manipulating them to her better advantage. Eric Linden is very good as the more embittered, insecure and jealous of her sons; a no-good cad who has the luck of having the beautiful and good natured Frances Dee love him, in spite of himslef and his horrible, disdainful mother. France Dee gives one superb performance as the absolutely shattered, broken down Hester. Irene Dunne is wonderful as the career woman who marries Crews' older and favorite son, played by Joel McCrea, whose role is rather colorless and thankless. The dialogue and the swift pacing are most effective and lead to a tempestuous climax. Recommended viewing.

[MichiganJ]

Just finished reading Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook, a very good biography with an impressive and detailed filmography, and while reading it, I re-watched some of her films. While I always admired her acting, it was quite interesting and reveling watching these films again with a more studied eye on Brent. Very modern in her approach, Brent's acting was often very subtle. Particularly in the Von Sternberg films, where much of her performance is motionless, with her eyes (usually in a fairly mean stare) providing most of the acting. But when she needs to vamp (as in The Last Command or The Mating Call), she does that quite effectively, too.

Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (1926)--In the biography's introduction, Kevin Brownlow says that Brent held her own with Louise Brooks in this film. With apologies to Mr. Brownlow, when Brooks and Brent are in the same scene, Brent disappears. She plays Brooks' older sister, and Brooks and Brent's boyfriend pretty much walk all over Brent, who, in all other aspects of her life and career, is a very strong and capable woman. Brent is fine, the story is silly (there's no way Brent's character would ever give a sap like her boyfriend the time of day), and Brooks is---well she's Louise Brooks.

Underworld (1927)--The best film that Brent appeared in. She plays Feathers, the head gangster's moll who falls for the newest member of the gangster family. The story is terrific, as are all of the performances. But it is Von Sternberg's direction which is the star. Even this early in his career, his lighting and use of close-ups is extraordinary. Brent, a pretty woman with sharp features, looks stunning.

The Last Command (1928)--The best performance by Brent; she simply shines in this film, which is again by Von Sternberg. More amazing lighting, closeups, and a character that has many dimensions. Here, Brent does hold her own with Emil Jannings, and that's saying something. The reveal of her luxurious gown (which is surely more late 20s than Russian Revolution era, but who's counting?) is stunning and the sequence in which she helps her lover escape from a train is heartbreaking. Terrific.

The Mating Call (1928) Surely one of the odder films from the silent era, The Mating Call has plenty of plot and is filled with a "clan" of one-dimensional characters. Brent is a virtueless married woman, who either really wants hero Thomas Meighan, or simply wants to infuriate her husband, who himself is a lecherous cad. Meighan decides to get a wife of his own and goes to Ellis Islands and rescues Renée Adorée and her parents from deportation. Brent is quite good in the film, especially in a sequence where she "accidentally" spills water on her dress, causing her to have to change her clothes in Meighan's room, something the "Order" (aka the Klan) frowns upon. Adorée steals every scene she's in.

The Silver Horde (1930) Brent is terrific as Cherry, a hard-nosed woman "with a past", who helps a struggling salmon fisherman (Joel McCrea) against a nefarious salmon syndicate in Alaska. McCrea and Bent fall for each other, but there's some hooey with a mis-cast Jean Arthur that has to be figured out. There are some long stretches where Brent is absent, and the film stops dead. (Unless you are interested in watching salmon as it is netted all the way to the canning--which is actually pretty interesting). Late in the film, Brent has a terrific scene with Jean Arthur, which is worth the price of admission (and having to put up with watching Joel McCrea read lines) And there are a couple of great scenes with Brent and Blanche Sweet, who herself gives a terrific performance (which, sadly, was her last for the big screen.)

Mr. Wong, Detective (1938) Thank goodness for Monogram Pictures. The first in a series of Mr. Wong pictures with Boris Karloff, complete with slight British accent and lisp, playing the Asian detective. No action, just plenty of people in different rooms giving exposition. Brent plays one of the suspects, Countess Olga Dubois, and does well standing out from the rest of the suspects. She looks as if she's having a good time, too, and the film is a hoot.

The Seventh Victim (1943) One of several of my favorite Val Lewton films, it was fascinating looking at this again from the perspective of Brent's performance. Her role is quite short (apparently edited down to fit a lower seat of a double-bill), Brent is one of the sinister devil worshipers. While her part is brief, her character is nevertheless quite fascinating, as she has only one arm; but her missing limb is never referenced. But to be honest, try as I might, I simply found myself being once again entirely caught up in this creepy and unnerving film to pay that close attention to any one performance or scene. Well, I think I noticed that Brent was missing from the poison drinking sequence, but I'm not entirely sure. I was peeking from behind a pillow. (By the way, The Seventh Victim has one of the best endings in cinema and probably the best George Sanders impersonator ever.)