The Scarlet Letter
Dir.Victor Sjöström
98 Minutes
USA
1926
Starring: Lilian Gish, Lars Hanson, Henry Walthall, Karl Dane, William H. Tooker, Marcelle Corday
***1/2/*****
Victor Sjöström's lovely adaptation of The Scarlet Letter creatively takes Nathaniel Hawthorne's difficult text and gives it a filmic life that retains much of the power and impact of the original. This is greatly aided by Lilian Gish's terrific leading work as Hester Prynne and Frances Marion's screenplay, which has a firm understanding of which elements from the novel would work on the screen on other which may not. Hawthorne's work makes for a great piece of silent melodrama, starting with Hester's carefree, youthful mentality that easily forgets the abundance of rules in her Puritan society (when the film starts others look at her in horror for playing on the Sabbath, an offense that soon has her in the public stocks), and following her love affair with The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale (Lars Hanson, who apparently is speaking Swedish during his dialogue scenes) and subsequent bastard childbirth, an act which forces her to don a scarlet letter "A" to be worn for the rest of her life.
Swedish director Victor Sjöström (who had been making movies in the United States for a few years at this point) explores theme of punishment and ostracization using the frame, and the ability to exist within it, as a method to depict how people are treated in Hester's society. Characters who are revered and honored, such as Dimmesdale framed high while at the pulpit, are given the space to exist in their own portrait, while his followers are often either shown in clusters and the appearance of a mob that can easily "gang up" on those they deem offensive, or moving away from a figure they wish to punish, forcing them to remain in the frame by themselves as if a spotlight is being placed on them magnifying their bad behavior. These earlier scenes that establish the society are stronger than when the film settles into the Hester/Dimmesdale love melodrama, and Sjöström seems more fascinated with the depiction of this society while Marion finds a stronger voice within the more narrative movements of the characters she is adapting. There is also some fantastic borderline Expressionist visuals through the introduction of the evil Roger Chillingworth (played pitch perfect by Henry Walthall). Marion works nicely within the confines of adaptation, always keeping a close focus on the arc compared to some of the more relaxed narratives like Min & Bill, Blonde of the Follies, or, most intensely, Secrets. Surprisingly, Sjöström stays away from any fancy color tinting tricks for the titular letter, but such an act may have actually caused a distancing from the main action as opposed to making it more absorbing. Sjöström, Marion, and Gish would reunite two years later for the remarkable melodrama The Wind.
Viewed on July 23rd, 2020
Blonde of the Follies
Dir. Edmund Goulding
91 Minutes
USA 1932
Dir. Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove, Jimmy Durante, James Gleason, ZaSu Pitts, Sidney Toler
***/*****
Blonde of the Follies is an entertaining showcase for Marion Davies, even if it offers few compelling things outside of her effortlessly charming performance. Davies plays Blondie McClune, a young women living in a New York tenement with her family. When her friend Lurlene (Billie Dove) scores a part in a big Broadway show, she arranges for Blondie to join her on stage where she becomes a huge success. But things get more complicated when Lurlene's boyfriend Larry (Robert Montgomery) becomes drawn to Blondie, a feeling that is fully mutual.
The film has echoes of Davies' late silent film Show People, which has her character (Peggy Pepper!) rising to stardom in Hollywood. The narrative follows a similar pattern, having Blondie navigating through various spaces of Broadway elite: the camera weaving through and following her in bigwig offices, backstage, and cocktail parties, all in stark contrast to the cramped and stationary frames of the tenement. Director Edmund Goulding keeps this simple narrative moving at a nice clip, and the film is rarely dry on a visual level even when it drifts into episodic or variety territory, such as a total pause for Jimmy Durante to do a set (complete with a mockup of Goulding's previous film, future Best Picture winner Grand Hotel, having Davies and Durante working impressions of Greta Garbo and John Barrymore). The film is most interesting when exploring the Blonde/Lurlene, with screenwriter Frances Marion possibly using the fictional pair to explore her own friendship and working relationship with Mary Pickford (the two, who collaborated in scores of films throughout the teens and twenties, would work together only one more time in Borzage's Secrets the following year). At times, the screenplay seems to flirt with this concept of female art and collaboration being overpowered by masculine presence, but doing so in the confines of such a tired device as a love triangle somewhat cheapens the affair, and the ending, while superficially "happy", feels anything but that.
Blonde of the Follies is ultimately a trifle of a film, a fairly standard example of the backstage romance that is not without its pleasures even when it embraces the routine.
Viewed on July 23rd, 2020
Cynara
Dir. King Vidor
78 Minutes
USA
1932
Starring Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Phyllis Barry, Henry Stephenson, Viva Tattersall, Florine McKinney
**1/2/*****
Fully embracing its melodramatic tendencies, King Vidor's Cynara has a nice pair of performances at its foundation but is otherwise an unremarkable reunion between Vidor and screenwriter Frances Marion following their big Oscar success The Champ. The film starts with married couple Jim and Clemency Warlock (Colman and Kay Francis) about to separate. Jim is remorseful, and Clemency is confused: what happened to him that led to whatever it was that happened? Through flashback we learn of Clemency's departure on a vacation with a friend, where Jim, following a lengthy speech by his friend John Tring (Henry Stephenson) about the benefits of maintaining a mistress, meets shopgirl Doris (Phyllis Barry). The two carry out an affair which reaches its epoch when Clemency returns from her trip and feels that something is amiss, some connection a bit severed.Â
Cynara drifts between a few different modes, at its most compelling during various two-hander sequences: Jim and Tring, Jim and Doris, and, primarily, Jim and Clemency. And both Coleman and Vidor understanding the vast differences in dynamics between Jim and those three people, tailoring his performance accordingly from insecure, to trepidatiously curious, to comfortably bored respectively. But the film loses some of its luster as its narrative raises its melodramatic stakes, even cramming in a courtroom drama in its slim seventy-five minutes. But there is a sweetness in the marriage, probably a result of the nice performances by Colman and Francis that keep the attention from wavering. And it was nice seeing the action end happily rather than the tragedy it appears to be drifting towards. Portions of the film feel like preparation for Vidor's terrific The Wedding Night a few years later.
Viewed on July 23rd, 2020
Secrets
Dir. Frank Borzage
84 Minutes
USA
1933
Starring: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith, Blanche Friderici, Doris Lloyd, Herbert Evans
**1/2/*****
Secrets marks the final film for silent screen star Mary Pickford, once again collaborating with screenwriter (and close personal friend) Frances Marion, and it is quite the strange finish for a career. Narratively the film has four distinct episodes, awkwardly bouncing from a variety of genres and modes, linked through the relationship between Mary and John Carlton (Pickford and Leslie Howard). After being arranged to marry the much older Lord Hurley, Mary runs away with John, a lowly clerk at the bank her father operates. Moving west, the two start a new life as ranchers until a violent encounter with some cattle rustlers lead to tragedy. Years later, the now wealthy pair face potential scandal as John, now running for governor, is linked to an affair with a society girl. And moving even more years later, the couple, now elderly, deal with their less than understanding children.
There is little connective tissue throughout this bizarre eighty minutes, as if Marion and director Frank Borzage (a replacement hire) were looking for ways to emphasize the variety of genres and styles one experiences in life. But the episodic structure and the harsh shift in tone every twenty minutes creates an odd and disjointed experience. There are certainly pleasures to be had in these individual sections (with the western chunk probably the most visually satisfying), and unsurprisingly for Borzage the scenes focusing on this relationship are carefully and tenderly handled (and, as sappy as it is, there is a real sweetness to the final moments as the couple reflects on everything they have been through and the "secrets" they share). An odd amalgamation of styles, almost an anthology of genre, that never comes together but has successful moments scattered throughout.
Viewed on July 23rd, 2020