The Silver Screen Oasis

Thanks to Fernando I got to see Four Frightened People by Cecil B Demille. What a fun film, Mary Boland was peerless, she's even better here than in Three Cornered Moon. She manages to turn the women of the tribe against the men by preaching birth control is roitous and only would such a theme appear on film in the precodes. I didn't believe Claudette Colbert as a stuffy school marm one bit, she's gorgeous with a seductive voice even when dressed schoolmarmish, of course this changes and in the course of the film DeMille manages to get some footage of her taking an openair shower. The one that amused me the most after reading Laurence Quirk's book on Claudette is Herbert Marshall, he's good in the movie but the poor man signs on for a film that is shot in Hawaii and is about 4 stranded people who get their clothes gradually ripped to shreds in uncomfortable terrain. All kinds of tricks were organised to disguise Herbert's false limb from his audience. One has to admire the guts of the man, he didn't look incredibly comfortable though.

Was it common knowledge in the thirties that he had a prosthetic limb or is it something the studio's covered up?

Just reading your great review makes me want to see this picture again!

It's great, there's something about it that really shouldn't work but it's so tongue in cheek it's great.

Plus it's a rare time when Claudette Colbert plays a frump.

Yesterday I discovered a rare Lubitsch called Kohlhiesels Töchter (Kohlhiesel's Daughters, 1920) with Henny Porten and Emil Jannings. It's a parody of The Taming of the Shrew done as a Bavarian farce. Henny Porten plays a double role. She plays two sisters: Gretel, the sweet -though a trifle simple-minded- girl and Liesel, always in a bad mood, violent and looking frumpy. Gretel would like to marry Xaver (E. Jannings) but her father refuses until her sister Liesel has found a husband. Henny Porten is having a ball playing the two sisters, with some good double exposure, and Jannings, looking young and energetic is trying to tame the shrew, though he looks more like the one who gets caught. The film was shot in the Bavarian Alps (in Garmisch-Partenkirchen) like Die Bergkatze (The Mountain Cat, 1920), another hilarious Lubitsch comedy. This film resembles Romeo und Julia im Schnee (Romeo & Juliet in Snow, 1920), another Shakespeare parody shot in the Black Forest. It's not as good as Bergkatze, but I enjoyed it.

I watched Sweetie. Cute early musical starring Nancy Carroll as a chorus girl who inherits a men’s college where her ex-boyfriend (Stanley Smith) is a star football player. She tries to sabotage his career until she gets school spirit. An original musical for the screen, Sweetie boasts a good cast and some solid tunes.

Helen Kane co-stars as the troublemaking Helen who boop-a-doops through “He’s So Unusual” and does a mean “Pep Step” with Jack Oakie, a brash hoofer who follows Carroll to college and enrolls. William Austin is the silly college dean, and Stu Erwin is a dumb-blond football player who is usually the target of Kane’s pop gun.

Carroll and Smith sing a few songs, but it’s Oakie’s “Alma Mammy” that flows through the film as a theme song after Oakie is told that alma mater is Latin for dear mother, which he converts into a Jolson-like MAMMY song.

Nancy Carroll was Paramount’s top musical star in early talkies, and she’s stunning, but this film belongs to Helen Kane and Jack Oakie.

Thanks for mentioning the Lubitsch film, it sounds just super! Now to find it around here.

Is that Lubitsch comedy getting a general release Christine? It sounds like a must see.

charliechaplinfan wrote:Is that Lubitsch comedy getting a general release Christine? It sounds like a must see.

No, it was broadcast on French TV last WE. No DVD for the moment.

At least it survives in good condition

I watched The Lady Refuses a charming precode about a lady of the night who is hired by a English Lord to lure his son away from a floozie who is encouraging him to spend all his time drinking and going out. The Lord falls in love with the lady and so does his son making everything rather complicated. The lady of the night is played really charmingly by Betty Compson, my favorite was the Lord played by Gilbert Emery. John Darrow plays the son.

I like The Lady Refuses also.... I always like Betty Compson.

Yesterday, I watched two early Russian silent films directed by Yevgenny Bauer. Bauer, who died of cholera in 1918, is one of the two giants of pre-1917 Russian cinema. (The other is Yakov Protazonov, who left Russia and then returned to make "Alita" under the Soviets.)

The two films were "Twilight of a Woman's Soul" and "After Death."

"Twilight of a Woman's Soul" was only okay. Technically, it was superb, with all sorts of shots that you wouldn't expect to find in a 1913 film. What hurt the film for me was an unexpected (and arbitrary) shift from the female character to the male character. It started out as her story and ended up as his, to my bewilderment.

"After Death" (1915) was superb. It is about a college student who becomes obsessed with (if not haunted by) an actress who has committed suicide. This film stayed focused, had good performances and the nightmare/haunting scenes were well done. It could almost be considered the first "vampire" movie, if it were clear the woman was a ghost. The fact that the movie left it ambiguous whether we should take a supernatural or psychological view of its events was fascinating.

This is my first attempt ever at making up a slide-show. Really just a rough draft at best. Featured are many of my colorized photos of Clara Bow. I probably have close to 50 or 60 others which I did not use in this presentation. I'm still learning how to add openings, and titles. Hopefully, I will be able to figure that business out later on. I had a good opening with curtains and a movie screen Unfortunately, it through my music selections out of kilter.

http://fan.tcm.com/_Clara-Bow-Slide-Sho ... 66470.html

Very nice, Jeff.... great pictures.

Nice slide show, Jeffrey. Lots of work went into it, I'm sure. Thanks for sharing.