When Knighthood Was In Flower (1922) Review – A Marion Davies & Forrest Stanley Affair

A frame from the film

When Knighthood Was In Flower is one of many films only really known for one thing… Marion Davies. Her charm has extended to many projects, often beneath her. This one is noteworthy for how large its budget was, $1.5 million! Visually, the sets are nice and the cast are serviceable, though the spectacle doesn’t benefit the story much, which is simplistic enough that it could’ve likely been told for much less. The best moments, though not exceptional, are Davies’ comedic moments; from the bit about her being “more beautiful than Venus”, her with the fabrics, and especially her in bed. That “bed” scene really shows how much better this story would’ve been as a comedy. Davies is also a good emotional performer, such as when crying or depressed. While the writing doesn’t do many favors, Davies gives some life and angst to her character of Mary Tudor. Arguably she could’ve done more on that front.

Other highlights include: That creepy room with the crystal ball. It’d be nice if it played more of a role in the story. The jester is amusing, it’s always nice to spot him in the background. The crossdressing scene provides more moments for Davies to shine. The negatives of the film are more noticeable and consequential: Some shots are cut off at the bottom. That made it seem there was a cropping issue with my copy of the movie, but that appears to not be the case. It’s sometimes awkward how comedy sequences are included in an otherwise dramatic film, but it could be done worse; like if they happened in dead serious moments or they weren’t consistent with the characters.

Slight importance is placed on Mary and Brandon’s friends. They are sometimes there to help out, though at the end of the day don’t do anything. They either should’ve been more pronounced or removed. Mary’s friend always seems to want to have her back. That should’ve mattered to the story in some way. That character eventually stops appearing. There’s a bit of a woman with a stringed instrument where she’s clearly not playing it. The praying scene was a little comical, unintentionally. It comes off as very over the top in how seriously it wants to be taken. As is pretty standard, the romance just happens suddenly without development. It’s not understood why the characters like each other.

The worst parts are when Mary is portrayed as extremely weak, more or less a damsel in distress. She’s generally confident, such as in the great fight scenes, so it can be strange or irritating when she’s written to be helpless and needs to be saved. One fight scene where she’s portrayed as petrified is an example of this. Those comedic and strong willed moments are the main reason we get on board with and root for Mary.

SPOILERS

After the failed escape attempt, it’s strange to so soon go into a comedy sequence. For the sake of pacing, Brandon should’ve been imprisoned only once instead of twice, though there are good bits in that superfluous first attempt and it establishes the stakes. It would’ve been a net gain to combine both escape attempts into one at the end. Another great scene was the surprise of the heir to the throne entering Mary’s room through a painting. That’s such a great way to demonstrate him as a threat, especially with an all-black background. It’s horrifying that Mary might’ve had to marry him if it weren’t for the deal she made with her brother, as is it that the male characters that mistreat Mary don’t get their comeuppance. She is sometimes treated as a spirit too wild for her own good, and thus she should let the men decide what’s best for her. Forrest Stanley was tasked with “taming” Marion in Enchantment. He is also asked to do that here.

OVERVIEW

It’s not incompetent, but not special. More of a sense of adventure would’ve helped. The film looks good, especially outside. More of that set would’ve been nice. If you want a decent, though not exceptional, Marion Davies movie, this accomplishes that, though it doesn’t pull off much else. When Knighthood Was In Flower is the fifteenth Marion Davies film. Forrest Stanley has been in them all from the eleventh to here, except for #12. Wonder if people thought the repetition was getting old?

April Folly (1920) Review

One of Marion’s lovely outfits in the film

April Folly is the first Marion Davies film at the point where they mostly survive. Of her first seven, we only have one and a half films. From here, there are two lost installments, though Buried Treasure and April Folly are both missing one reel. Still, you essentially get the story. Folly promises an adventure, then delivers most of its runtime being set on a dull-looking boat. That’s not the biggest annoyance, but it would’ve been nice to get more diverse imagery. Two films and one year later, Davies would make Buried Treasure, which also delivers a boat instead of an adventure. It’s surprising no one thought this would look like somebody’s reusing old ideas as soon as the ninth Hearst-Davies film.

This film plays like the filmmakers wanted to add visuals to a book. There are so many intertitles. The intertitles explain so much information that’s either not necessary to understanding the story or should be seen in the performances. A lot of characterization is missing due to the film deciding to just tell you instead of show you. Even when we get the picture without the explanation, who can resist the glorious sentences of, “Another man was also waiting for Diana – the man she loved and hoped to marry.” and “On the second day out from Southampton, April – or Lady Diana – found that her story plot was becoming complicated.”? Go figure!

Davies isn’t too bad here, but she doesn’t much elevate the material. This very short film is still a chore to sit through, more so than a movie like Enchantment, which is also not that good but Davies gets a chance to make something of it. Folly has a handful of sparks for Davies to delight. The two main male characters, Conway Tearle as Kerry Sarle and J. Herbert Frank as Ronald Kenna, are beyond flat. They get very little focus and for good reason. Davies is clearly carrying their shared scenes and they barely do a thing.

There’s a fun bit of “silent film logic” when a man is asked his name, so he pulls out and shows his business card instead of saying it, possibly because the card would negate the need for an intertitle. There’s a woman who seems to delight in finding something that could be a scandal and acting morally superior to it. She dresses like a rich and out of touch old white lady and literally has a feather she shakes. When she gets heated at one point, she shakes the feather harder. It’s an amusingly stereotypical character, though she isn’t very well performed. She’s a comedic character in this non-comedic film.

There’s a nice special effect where someone looks in an empty room and there’s a fade to an earlier moment of something happening in the room. The subjects materialize into the area for the scene to happen. It seems the man is remembering the earlier scene, though he didn’t see it from the perspective he imagines it from later. There’s a house where many of the women living there are clearly wearing men’s clothing and one man a dress. There’s a beautiful shot of Sarle looking at the moon, bathed in its darkness. There’s a man who walks in a room with a cigar and fills the room with smoke. Finally, Davies has many glamorous costumes, as always.

SPOILERS

There’s literally a scene where Violet is going to have a meal with Sarle, then we skip to afterwards where they’re in love. Can these love stories possibly be more unnatural? When April prompts what Sarle would do if he found out she wasn’t really Lady Diana, his response includes, “you [would be] a fraud, masquerading” and “I could never believe such a thing of you, because I love you.” April is haunted by not wanting to be thought a “fraud” and doesn’t explain later why Kenna was after her because then he would reveal that she’s not Diana. However, all Sarle is given here is this supposed hypothetical, without the context of why she would be masquerading. He even said he loves her, so he would probably be understanding. Don’t beat yourself up over this and just tell him you’re not Lady Diana! Your reasons for doing this are noble. Also, you’d think he’d be onto her deception due to her asking that strangely specific question. And of course, we get intertitles telling us that April is worried about this.

Instead of an intertitle basically saying Kenna is a villain, let’s keep that a mystery until he actually does something villainous. Admittedly, he does kind of look and act like a villain, so it would be easy for people to figure out. For no reason, April pulls out and just looks at “the Mannister Diamond”. She carefully looks out her window to make sure no one is near, then leaves the curtain open, so Kenna could look in right after she leaves the window. This is such a frustrating plot hole. Close the curtain! When April is being grabbed by Kenna, she seems somewhat limp, as if Davies isn’t putting effort into trying to escape.

A fun moment is when April bursts out at the “woman in search of scandal” and pushes her out of her room. Later, Kenna finds the diamond’s box. When he opens it, there’s a letter where April scolds him for trying to steal. There’s a great shot of April leaving a crate with a gun and being responsible for Kenna’s arrest. It’s nice to see that April didn’t need to have a man capture Kenna for her, as sometimes happens in old movies. At one point, April even spins the gun around her finger.

April simply reveals to Sarle that she’s not Lady Diana and he doesn’t appear to care. It would’ve been nice to have a reason for April to suddenly not mind Sarle knowing she’s not Lady Diana, especially when she was so bothered by that before. For whatever reason, there’s a strangely slow dialogue where essentially April gives Kenna to a bit character so he can get the money for himself. Why this dull scene needed to happen, who knows? I’m not sure if the movie just being April’s manuscript was a twist ending or a framing story, based on the first reel being lost. It works better as presented here, as a twist.

OVERVIEW

There are some fun moments here and there, especially during the finale. Davies gets her best moments there. Still, that ending isn’t anything necessary and the rest is less than that. The movie admittedly partially suffers due to the first reel being missing, so it doesn’t get off the ground well due to circumstances not its fault. Even if we had it and even if it was amazing, the most of the film would still be dull. I’m also willing to bet the first reel isn’t a masterpiece. Also, the poster looks interesting, featuring a saxophonist that doesn’t appear in the four existing reels.

The Belle of New York (1919) Surviving Excerpt Review

She’s got Marion Davies eyes

The Belle of New York is the earliest Marion Davies movie with surviving footage. A healthy amount of it survives, but not enough to get a very strong idea of what it was going for. Based on available information on what the story was about, it doesn’t stand out very much from other romances of the time. It’s the sort of thing that would only really be worthwhile if the performances were good on the actors’ parts. There are notable themes, such as religion. If there’s a compelling way to bring a main character to Christianity then it could be an interesting drama. It would be annoying to get something like Polly of the Circus where it’s forced in. The scenes in the Salvation Army look nice.

Marion Davies is Violet Gray (who at one point goes by “Jill”). Violet does seem to be written as a very simple person who doesn’t really have flaws. Davies does this well enough. Her best moment is when she seems to be thinking something and we see her tired and longing eyes. I’m not sure what she’s thinking about, but perhaps she discovered something upsetting at a late hour and it’s on her mind? The male lead is Raymond Bloomer as Jack. He doesn’t give the worst performance, but his character is supposed to be in a lot of distress at one point and he doesn’t play him as damaged enough. You have to feel his pain. He feels like someone who is acting.

The movie seems like it would be pretty uninteresting, especially when looking at the “perfect white girl” character type and religious themes that are probably pushed in. However, the rich blue tint and moody shots are so impressive it’d probably be worth watching for that alone, even more so if it was on a cinema screen. The sets can look dingy, though in a good way. Everybody is showing up to a club at night to watch girls dance. Elsewhere, some are drinking heavily and others are learning about God. That atmosphere radiates off the sets, especially in the ballroom scenes and the look of the outside. The bit of Jack in his house feels out of place due to how reminiscent it is of standard 1910s sets. It seems the film would’ve included more nightclub scenes than we have in reels three and four. Based on conventional tropes, it’d be annoying if the first reel was of Violet in stuffy sets giving thin emotions about characters we don’t know anything about.

There could be fewer intertitles. “Jack is ambitious to help “Jill” up the hill – of her career.” is a fun one. “At the fashionable Art Club, Violet is delighted with the change of environment and opportunity.” Beyond that awkward grammar, this is something that should be shown. I’d be curious to see more of a scene of Violet outside with the Salvation Army. I wonder what the context was. Based on the man who wouldn’t learn the Salvation Army and Davies’ acting, it seems something here must’ve worked, even if it wasn’t the main story.

SPOILERS

Jack appears to physically grab Violet to stop her from leaving an event. Fortunately, the other characters think Jack is in the wrong, but this feeds into the annoying trope of physical violence at worst being something that is forgivable. Jack and Violet don’t have much chemistry. While I’d bet that they didn’t in the full movie due to how common a problem this was, we don’t know there wasn’t chemistry. Violet acts like a concerned maternal figure to his drinking, not a love interest.

OVERVIEW

Due to the visual aesthetic and Davies’ performance, it’d be nice to see The Belle of New York in full. Both could thrive more in their intended context. Still, the excerpt we have is interesting and valuable in its own way, though it isn’t close to serving its original goal of being a compelling drama. We do still get some understanding of it. It is possible the movie in full would’ve been little more than what we have in terms of substance. The incomplete April Folly and Buried Treasure are probably both represented fairly, but Belle isn’t. The film can still service at providing more Marion Davies to those who want more of her charm and elegance. We get some of that effortless talent. Having two-fifths of this film is certainly a lot better than the later Davies film Adam and Eva, which only one-eighths survives. This would probably be better than Marion’s first surviving film, Getting Mary Married. Davies’ acting being so poor in Married made me fear her other 1910s movies also had a performance that suggested she was learning the ropes of the craft, but here it’s proven she was capable of doing a good job. The reasoning might be that Married seems to be a less interesting movie than this one.

The Restless Sex (1920) Review

Marion Cozies

The Restless Sex can be appreciated in some ways and not in others. It clearly is the sort of thing that makes the most sense with actors in their early 20s; however, Ralph Kellard as Jim Cleland and Carlyle Blackwell as Oswald Grismer look too old to be college students. Both actors are in their mid-30s. It’s strange no one got early 20s for these characters that just left college. This is essentially a “coming of age” movie, but it’s hard to take it seriously as such due to the older actors. That being said, both give decent performances. You could do better or you could do worse. Oswald periodically has issues which cause him to be sad and stiff. Blackwell does a good job of having that sense of depression and distress. The romance in the story is expectedly weak and underdeveloped. The film can be unapproachable due to the slow beginning, with some poor story decisions. Tragically, Marion Davies looks clearly bored with the whole thing. However, the story gets going and Davies gets interested. She has some nice dramatic and comedic moments. There are also well-executed and intense scenes. The movie is never a masterpiece, but it can hold a pace during its second half.

There’s so many intertitles. A lot of the story which should best be demonstrated through acting is instead shown through intertitles. They also aren’t written very well. “John Cleland, his home very desolate after the death of his wife and the departure of his son for a military school, is won by the charm of an orphan child.” There’s even an intertitle describing that John’s lawyer is his lawyer. That could’ve been included in a line of dialogue. More consequently are descriptions of characters’ emotions, which would be more impactful with facial expressions and body language. At least some of the intertitles attempt to be wordy, as if you’re reading a book, but the film still could do without them. Steve was described as “roguish” as a child and in general as swaying from interest to interest. Steve is later described as depressed and her and Jim have a great bond. All of these don’t need to be explained, but instead shown. They’re important to the dynamics of the characters. Some of these would be perfectly understood without the intertitles.

Steve can feel too perfect, like her only fault is being too worldly and interesting. “Isn’t it terrible, Oswald – I know that to be great in any one thing would never satisfy me!” Lines like this make her feel like a manufactured main character. Much better are moments like Steve being playful and running around, and later when she’s seeking thrills. The latter shows her having minor faults based on the events of the story. Steve is training to work at a hospital. We could’ve seen a sign of her doing this before it was tossed in. Of course it is irrelevant after its only seen. It’s quite hard to hate Marion Davies when she seems interested. She gives off such a warmth and vigor to what’s going on. It’s investing when something happens that causes her to be upset or quiet, due to the contrast to her more bubbly self. That dynamic is harmed by her “bored” moments, but not too badly.

There are some beautiful bits of imagery in the film, like a shot of Steve, Jim, and Oswald in the woods, as are ones of dimly lit scenes and the snow. It’s fun that the score changes to be more jazzy when we see people dancing to music. The score sometimes is awkward when shifting to or fro it. There’s a bit that sounds like, “Uh oh” from an instrument when the party is interrupted.

SPOILERS

Steve kisses her brother without consent and their dad just laughs. There’s no reason given for Steve to be in love with Jim. I guess she just thinks he’s handsome? It’s fair enough for her at twelve years old to have those feelings, but they somehow didn’t pass after over ten years apparently? Jim writes about “the restless sex” in what is perhaps intended as a poem of sorts? Why he wrote it or what it means or how he feels on “the restless sex” (women) isn’t made clear. The tone of his writing seems condescending, “Look at these cute little girls wanting more social power.” Oswald tells Jim he thinks Steve is in love with him, to which Jim responds, “Nonsense – she never thinks of me except as her brother.” Have you met Steve? Jim and Steve return home to see their father has suddenly died. The scene is so overly theatrical that it’s a little comical, especially Marion’s exaggerated facial expression that feels like the type of expression you’d see in a goofy comedy. The dad really needed more screen time so this would have more impact. His death has essentially no relevance to later events.

“Lonely, yet strangely indifferent, Jim at the moment of his departure remembers only two things: that his father is dead… that Stephanie is not his sister.” These intertitles, man! The film gets better upon Jim’s departure. There’s a nice suspenseful sequence of Steve and Oswald outracing a train. The score becomes more intense, as well. They appear to have made it, but then we have a very awkward cut to the car having crashed. It’s a nice bit of action for the story. This whole sequence represents Davies getting more invested in the story, she seems to be having a lot of fun. After the crash, Steve laughs and says, “Wasn’t it – thrilling!!” Steve tapping her feet together a little later shows she has some kind of joy in all that’s happened. Steve and Oswald talk to a man and then there’s a sudden cut to them having married. There was later an explanation for this, but the sudden cut is jarring.

Oswald’s dad is so distraught over this that he kills himself. This happening feels pretty unnatural and sudden. It’s obviously a ploy to mine drama from the characters, at the cost of this life. Still, Oswald and Steve finding his body is a great shot. It’s doomy and dark and depressing. The movie continues to improve when Jim returns to Steve and Oswald. An intertitle explains that Jim doesn’t know about some of the things that happened to them, which is yet another example of how unnecessary a lot of the intertitles are. After, we get another great-looking shot of Oswald looking distraught and Steve looking at him. The blackness of the frame emphasizes how he feels. The centerpiece of the film is a grand ballroom party that happens after. Steve takes Oswald to it. Why would Oswald go to the party if he’s so depressed? We could’ve had an intertitle of Steve saying he needs to get out of the house. The sequence being so style over substance feels a little out-of-place. Based on the film in many ways being about Oswald’s problems, it’d make more sense to have the elements of the story make him feel alone and uncared for. Even if the intention was for there to be an irony to him being depressed in this vibrant place, the camera can’t bother to dig into his head. He needs to be suffering more. We don’t get as much focus on him as we could. It doesn’t help the scene that there’s lines like, “Jim has a sudden conviction that there is something Oswald is concealing and Oswald remembers that Jim is not really Stephanie’s brother.” That is a real line.

There’s a scene where Steve tells Jim she’s not in love with Oswald and then there’s a very sharp cut to Jim telling Steve he loves her. The nature of this suggests there is missing footage. Hopefully the missing footage let this moment breathe a little more. Oswald overhears this and is distraught. A very morbid moment is when Oswald clearly wants to kill himself, with a defeated and horrified face he imagines a train. Part of the morbidity is that you would expect Jim and Steve to somehow find out about this before it happens and save him. However, he does in fact kill himself without any suggestion he had trouble doing it and without the others knowing he wanted to until it’s too late. The others just get notified of what happened later. Also, Oswald overhearing Steve and Jim confess their love to each other could’ve been what pushed him over the edge.

The scenes of Steve and Jim learning of Oswald’s death and dealing with it are generally good, though Jim does give the slight impression at points that he doesn’t care about Oswald and only about getting with Steve, probably being caused by the actor not being able to connect to the moment. At one point, he has a smile when embracing Steve that reads as, “Thank God Oswald is dead, now he won’t be in the way of us!” The great shot of the two in the snow would be far more powerful if they had chemistry.

“So Jim and Stephanie were left with each other – alone in the world.” How are they alone? They had friends; specially because they have a child just after this, which further shows how not-alone they are. If the movie ended on essentially a downbeat for Steve and Jim, that would make the film feel more poignant and like Steve and Jim have work to do to help themselves. Their various moments of things going wrong would have more of a reason to be, they would all be building to this. There could be a potential parallel to all of their dads dying so recently, but alas not. The baby is too positive, as if a happy ending was forced in, same with “Restless no longer.” That’s apparently part of the point of the movie. It’s concerning that the story feels a need to explain that Steve isn’t restless. It’s like if you watched a movie and then you get a title card telling you “the hero saved the day”. I want to see it. While Steve getting older could’ve been pronounced more, it is still clear that she “stopped being restless” without the intertitle.

Plot descriptions frequently describe the film being about Steve being in love with Jim and Oswald, but she doesn’t seem in love with Oswald ever, only Jim.

OVERVIEW

Buried Treasure promised a different type of role for Marion Davies to me. She’s playful, but inexperienced and thus has a more fluid feeling to her roles that’s surprisingly endearing. She was able to have fun with it. The Belle of New York and Enchantment have similar positives. The first has good action, the second decent drama, and the third good comedy, so perhaps she was able to thrive on that more interesting material? Getting Mary Married and at points April Folly and The Restless Sex portray a Davies that feels out of her depth. It’s like she was just told how to act a certain scene, didn’t understand what best to do, so did a very basic and expected performance that’s not very engaging. That being said, she’s a little better here than in her weakest 30s films where she seems to have no love for the material at all. These low points do make it all the more satisfying when she opens up. The movie and her stop worrying so much about setup and for it this is worth watching if you’re a Davies fan, but not if you’re not.

Zander the Great (1925) Review – The Marion Machination Meets

Zander the Great is a mostly dramatic vehicle for the actress who people say was better at comedy but often put in dramas, Marion Davies. Some of her material here is very intriguing, and she handles it very well. Davies has had a way of proving wrong those that say she isn’t talented at a certain task. That being said, the film devolves into something a lot less smart and Davies plays a concerned maternal figure-type. The nuance that she had early on eventually goes, as does a complex portrayal of the latter character type. The beginning promises a psychological drama of sorts. Davies’ character, Mamie, goes through a traumatic experience before having a chance to live a normal life. Later, she is focused on a new matter that isn’t her own experiences and the story is more generic. It’s essentially a western. While there are good elements of what’s next, it misses obvious potential and near the end, becomes more plain.

Mamie generally has a way of taking some brightness from dark situations, but understands when things are a threat and when she should be acting, especially when to protect someone else or herself. When the opportunity presents itself, she can be lighthearted and get laughs from the audience. These scenes are probably only here to showcase Davies’ comedy ability, to suggest she is very talented. Mamie comes off as pretty well-rounded due to a fresh and plucky performance. As the more “western” elements come in, Mamie becomes more and more as expected. There’s arguably a sexist vibe of “this woman is being problematic and the men can’t work”, but there are reasons for some of the men to be more reasonable and Mamie to be erratic, so the film isn’t sexist, in my humble opinion.

The film makes a lot of frustrating decisions. There’s an intimidating-looking matron that terrifies Mamie and gives the impression she will be a recurring threat in the protagonist’s life. However, she leaves the story very early on and is never mentioned or seen again. There are not one, but two points where there’s the opportunity to emotionally push Mamie, but instead we do a time jump. There are bits of humor in the middle of darker moments. Some have a natural place, as if Mamie internally feels forced to be bright. Other times, it spoils the tone and comes off like it was there to make some quota. At one point, a morbid tone is set and shortly after is a scene of Mamie not liking someone’s table manners.

It seems that every old movie has this one trope in it, the romance. The romance here doesn’t feel natural. There’s a few scenes thrown in that include it, but most of the runtime doesn’t even touch on it. When the two seem in love near the end, there’s the sense of, “Were we supposed to be invested in that?” Things like this lead to the story being very “bullet point”. There’s a list of things that have to happen, each happens, but with no flavor for what’s going on or sense of feeling it. We’re constantly moving on to the next plot point, when perhaps we had already had some sort of change or revelation. Let’s simmer. As suddenly as the romance is tossed in, so are some bandits. The bandits near the end just show up to create a finale. It’s not satisfying to see them as they had no introduction or natural placement. If they needed to be there, they could’ve been mentioned throughout the film as this terrifying thing everyone’s afraid of.

Davies can be respected for clearly trying here. She manages to elevate the story more with her performance, probably doing a better job than many could. She sometimes has a distressed and frantic feeling to her, but it all comes from a relatable place. In some aspects, she drops the ball. A lot of the later scenes would be hard to make really compelling and she doesn’t. She even can overact at points. Thus, a lot of her best scenes are around the first half, with her being a childlike and emotional young girl. It sets up more character than we get. After the beginnings, Mamie needed more complexity than she was given. She needs more flaws and personality. Davies implants these in small ways, but writing them into the script would help. Arguably a better actor could’ve done even more. As an aside, Davies is not the most realistic crier.

SPOILERS

After Mamie moves out of the orphanage, she is understandably on edge. A film with a focus on her mental health and what she goes through escaping that traumatic experience would’ve been so enticing, but instead we time skip. A scene of a man wanting to marry Mamie being shown in silhouette suggests him and/or the environment are unsafe. As an aside, of course this character never appears again. It would’ve been nice to see more of the stepmom of Mamie before she dies, as there’d be more impact to her death. Admittedly, there is some because it’s understood a mother dying is sad and it’s an easy thing to empathize with.

The matron and others tell Mamie that they will take Zander because his father is unavailable and his mother now dead. In a well-filmed sequence, they escape, with Mamie planning to find Zander’s father. It’s not too bad a scene, but it needs more danger and daringness. Mamie should be more on edge and stressed. When taken to the car, Zander tells Mamie not to forget their rabbits, which is arguably a comedic moment in a serious scene. Even if it isn’t, it lulls the pace for too long in something that should be suspenseful. Mamie should’ve had to break from her escape for something more necessary, like gas. We have to feel the pain, only to be relieved by them driving off. Mamie knows which state to find Zander’s father in because he revealed so in a letter to his mother. He said in the letter he isn’t coming back and he should be forgotten. If he wanted to be left alone, why would he tell her? While there could be a reason, it’s obviously just a plot contrivance.

Mamie and Zander drive to Arizona, with that being jumped over, thus we’re skipping a lot of Mamie emotionally handling what happened. She meets some men, including Dan, the handsome male lead played by Harrison Ford. Dan tells the sheriff Zander is his child so he can look more innocent, as the sheriff suspects him. He tells Mamie that he really is Zander’s father and proves it by answering some questions. Thus, Mamie and Zander situate themselves with Dan. After an (excusable) time jump, Dan is away and an intertitle reads, “Her first chance to investigate the mysterious and jealously guarded trap door.” We were barely introduced to this door and Mamie never seemed interested in it. Who is checking these scripts for continuity errors?

Mamie finds alcohol and things quickly heat up, with Mamie threatening to leave Dan. We just saw her move in, more time to breathe would be nice. Later, Mamie runs away and is found by the bandits, who want to hurt her. This is just some random thing to cause conflict. It distracts from the story as was happening. We know Mamie wouldn’t die here, so it’s a frustrating divergence. After Dan saves Mamie, he reveals that Zander’s dad died and he was lying… So how did he have that information on him? The ending is so unsatisfying as it doesn’t resolve Mamie’s character. Even taken as is, it fails because if there were bandits before, there could be bandits again. It’s not even that Mamie accepts that, it just isn’t addressed. A realistic character would be more afraid and leave if possible. There’s no sign of the bandits or Dan’s attitude changing her.

The start is very promising. Mamie is stuck in a cruel place, but makes due to some degree. Then, she’s nervous and awkward getting into her new environment, then prioritizes saving a child she cares about. All topped off by Mamie being played by the instantly loveable Marion Davies, so of course we follow some other drama introduced relatively late that is so typical. That being a man with a heart of gold and rough exterior too stuck in his ways meeting a woman and through an ordeal between the two, they first decide to split before realizing they love each other. Even then, this movie couldn’t even be that, because their romance isn’t focused on at all. It’s absurd how little it is. There’s the intention there, with their relationship being pressured and challenged. There’s drama which sometimes affects them, though it starts from nowhere. Antagonists show up without prior notice near the end and the day is saved essentially by their defeat, but it’s not satisfying because we’re not focusing on what was already started.

The matron that made Mamie miserable in the beginning never returns or has any impact. What if the third act surrounds her finding out Dan isn’t Zander’s father, so she comes to take Zander away, and natural drama ensues? Some catharsis can come to how she terrorized Mamie. Zander is out of the picture around the end, with him being somewhat brushed aside. It’s worth noting he is mostly in safe hands. Dan clearly cares about him and he’s always with either Mamie, Dan, or Dan’s friend who is intelligent and respectful. There is a brief period where bandits break into a house Zander is in. While it’s obviously scary for a child to be in such a situation, it doesn’t feel very real. It’s cartoonish. Mamie being afraid of Zander being taken to an abusive orphanage by the matron could give Zander and Mamie more to do, and follow on from the early scenes of the movie. Most importantly, it would feel real. There’s a natural dread that could be created from the fear of someone showing up with the legal ability to take Zander. Mamie could learn something about herself or the world instead of it seeming that a man is all she needed.

Speaking of Zander, he doesn’t really do anything. We don’t get his feelings or perspective on the film’s events. Mamie mentions that if Zander is taken from her, it’d “break his heart”. That would’ve been more impactful if we saw scenes of him connecting to her. Why even name the movie after Zander due to him being severely back-seated for a story that is more about Dan softening around Mamie?

OVERVIEW

Zander the Great is a disposable western runaround. Don’t take anything more from that and you’ll be fine enough with it. It’s just a shame the obvious potential wasn’t used. If it had been, it could’ve been a highly acclaimed classic. Mamie is a compelling character played by a great actress, but we don’t get that taken where it needs to go in order to make a movie worth watching unless you like anyone involved.

ON THE CORNER AND OFF THE WALL

After a break from Marion Davies, I watched Hearts Divided, which is definitely the worst of her films that I’ve seen. Now I watch this, which isn’t as bad, but still is bad. Of the 35 Marion films available (not including It’s a Wise Child), I’ve seen 13. I feel extra compelled to not watch anymore until I can start really missing her. I will certainly return to Marion Davies, maybe very soon, but I feel more comfortable in taking a break from these generally poor stories. One fun thing about Zander the Great is that there’s a trio played by actors Harrison Ford, Harry Watson, and Harry Myers.

Hearts Divided (1936) Review: A Bit Of Film Starring Marion Davies

Recommended track to listen to: Bring It To Jerome by Bo Diddley

My journey through the films of Marion Davies has led me to a strange place. A place of dread and discomfort. A place called the mid 30s. While Not So Dumb manages to be delightful, taking advantage of verbal humor, and some other installments being or seeming fine enough, fans tend to feel Davies went into decline in the 30s. This was exemplified to me by Polly of the Circus. So lifeless and hollow that it felt more like an exercise in tedium than a film, despite only being sixty-nine minutes long. Still, while the silent era of Davies didn’t manage a dud quite that bad, that can’t be representative of a trend? Especially considering that some of the silents are quite bad and some of the sounds pretty good. My confidence was challenged by seeing some moments of Operator 13, which features Marion in blackface and a stereotypical “minstrel show dialect”. Hmm. That one will probably be worse than Polly, but I can at least pretend until seeing it. Next I watched Hearts Divided. It is truly a groundbreaking work that has shifted how I see Marion Davies.

Hearts begins promisingly enough. There’s a little bit of drama between Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte, the latter played by the great Claude Rains. These scenes play a pretty minor role in the film as a whole. Napoleon and especially Thomas Jefferson are minor players. While the film is centralized around Betsy, played by Marion Davies, she first appears at the 11:26 mark. This is representative of the whole movie. Though things are basically about her, Betsy is in a sense off to the side. In fact, the political subplot doesn’t really necessitate that character, despite Davies being top billed. She is not much more than her connection with Jerome Bonaparte, played by Dick Powell. Davies does get top billing and all of her movies are vehicles for her, Powell certainly is the protagonist, though that may not be on purpose.

The central plot is about Jerome’s goals and experiences more so than Betsy’s. Whenever Jerome and Betsy are in conflict, Jerome is portrayed as being in the right. Anyone watching for Marion will be disappointed by her lack of presence, failing to steal scenes from the phoning-it-in Powell. Jerome holds a stiff upper lip and acts as a typical handsome lead. He does a few basic things with the intention of seeming romantic, like singing a pretty song. He never comes close to burrowing in the hearts of the audience, making you at least understand how someone could love him. The most memorable thing he does is kiss Betsy without consent, and that’s for the wrong reason clearly.

One moment of Davies saying the line, “You have no right to talk that way,” is particularly telling. Her performance shows a dead and wooden look on her face and tone in her voice. Her head tilts the way one does when you have no feeling for what you’re doing and are just going through the motions; plus maybe if you’re also a bit sleepy. Marion doesn’t seem like she cares at all. As if she is fulfilling something she’s known and is trying to make it through the day, going through the process. Seeing as this is her third-last film ever, she seemingly ran out of steam soon after Hearts.

A group of three suitors are comic relief, all inept at winning Betsy’s affection. If all of their scenes were removed, the film would be basically the same. This would be excusable if the trio of dunces actually were satisfying, but the humor is generally so alien to be impenetrable; like if you explained comedy and its purpose to a robot and asked it to write jokes. One example is when one runs into a tree and the others joke about how stupid he is. An unintentionally funny moment is when they prance through the woods as silly music plays, showing how out of place they are from the more-serious film.

To be fair, one of them got an honest laugh from me, “Tell me, senator, have you ever seen anyone quite so annoying?” “Yes.” At another point, one made an amusing expression with his interesting face. That face suggests that that actor might’ve been better in a role focused on body language and not talking. Hopefully he had a career in the silent era. These three serve as a brutal reminder that this is the only Davies film I’ve seen (of twelve) where she never tries to be funny. Normally she’ll inject some comedy into her performance, as that’s her strength. That added layer is sorely missed.

Claude Rains does the best job here. He is an effective and caring leader, who has some faults. You can imagine this performance in a more straightforward and easier-to-take-seriously Napoleon film. Rains, given little to do, doesn’t provide a masterful portrayal by any means, but he clearly is trying and knows what he’s doing. He does manage to give a few layers to his character in a scene near the end. Another benefit to the film he provides is the scene of him shirtless. Shame there’s no such equivalent for Davies.

None of the moments have weight, save for that one Rains scene. They hit the beats of storytelling, but there’s no drive or forward momentum, no room to breathe. Nothing where we can dwell in a state of mind or environment, as we have to move on apparently. If someone says something dramatic, that should matter to those hearing it. While they may respond, two seconds later we’ll move past that, with a resolution or everybody ignoring it. If you map out the typical events in a romance movie, that’s basically the number of scenes our lovebirds have, with one-a-scene. Try not to get a headache from the roller coaster of the two being pushed together, then apart, and repeat.

SPOILERS

Jerome and Betsy meet at a horse race. They make a bet where if Betsy loses, she has to go on a walk with him. At a breakneck pace; she’s persuaded, the horses race, she loses, they start walking, and then we cut to after the walk. Any of those moments would be more impactful if more time was spent on them. Jerome makes himself instantly unlikable when he kisses Betsy without consent, then afterwards says, “It’s your own fault for being so adorable.” The film either portrays him as in the right or not doing something a big deal or warranting Betsy to be upset, despite what he did and how he tried to undermine it. He never gets his comeuppance. In fact, he doesn’t really lose in the movie. He’s treated as a charismatic and loveable guy, despite either being bland or stuck in his own ego.

The film and I will tangent to one of the most bizarre and probably the worst scene in the film. When Betsy walks away from Jerome after that kiss, she comes across a little black boy she knows, and they begin talking. After sliding in a little racist joke (“I ain’t so easy to find in the dark.”), Betsy is nice to him and he responds, “Ms. Betsy, I sure glad I belong to you.” Betsy says he only belongs to his “mammy”. He responds, “Please, Ms. Betsy, can I belong to you, too?” “Alright, as long as you’re good.” “Then I always gonna be good.” Betsy returns the boy to his “mammy” as a group of slaves sing and generally seem fine. Hopefully a modern audience would understand just how uncomfortable and racist that sequence is. The nature of a group of white filmmakers filming this scene of a group of black people seeming so grateful and happy to be doing what they’re doing is deeply unsettling and I shutter at anyone who could maintain faith in this movie working out after that. Seeing as the sequence is irrelevant to the plot, to the point of none of the characters other than Betsy appearing in the rest of the film, it seems this was just someone satisfying either their jollies or some Confederate rewriting of history. Thus is a damp reminder to older cinema in general. A black child literally asking to be owned by Marion makes me embarrassed to be a fan of her.

Once Jerome is hired as her French teacher, Betsy is portrayed as silly for seeming so at arms with Jerome, an obvious attempt of her trying to hide her feelings. Despite her falling madly in love with him, the only things he had done was give French lessons, sing, and commit sexual assault. While it’s suggested they had a nice walk together, we never saw it. Next time show the walk and not the assault. Not that that would be enough. The movie is so dedicated to following a basic romance formula it doesn’t remember to give this guy something worth liking. In fact, this story is quite forgetful. When things seem like they won’t work out, Betsy’s mother tells her it’s all for the best for things to end. This scene doesn’t have a payoff. No scene of the mother giving her blessing or showing a response to the two being together at the end. This is a common “beat” in romance films, but the closure was lost in translation. Just like several other scenes, this one should be cut.

The best moment is when Napoleon seemingly gives into what Jerome and Betsy want, letting them marry, but that was part of his plan to manipulate them. It was a clever moment, though harmed by the overly-theatrical dialogue. Still, Claude Rains has such a warm voice that you can imagine him being good at tricking people. Even when looking at the script, it was genuinely a clever way to subvert audience expectations and give a realistic reason for their relationship to end. It would be very funny if that literally was the end, but alas Napoleon is later convinced and Jerome and Betsy reconnect. There’s a cold and quick fade upon their union, ending the film. Scenes like this show the importance of the scene at the end of a lot of Buster Keaton films where we see him and the love interest living happily ever after. That’s a great way to create satisfaction and fulfillment. It feels like a middle finger to just have the movie stop once the plot is resolved. Let’s see them off!

OVERVIEW

Hearts Divided is barely even a film. It doesn’t seem like anyone other than possibly Claude Rains had any affinity for the story or desire to put in effort. The pacing is so jolty that you can’t even really get comfortable with it. The ultimate signifier of how lifeless and unrealistic this love story is, the real Jerome and Betsy Bonaparte married in 1803, only to annul their marriage in 1805. So it seems we could’ve had a sequel in 1938 where Dick and Marion portray a couple ready to end it. Hearts can be only recommended to the very bravest of Marion fans. Marion fans that can stomach skipping any should definitely skip this one, and probably Polly. My hopes aren’t high for Operator. At least Polly and Hearts have nice outfits for Marion to wear. The elaborate outfits are definitely the best part of the films.

Some would feel dissuaded. Polly and Hearts Divided have challenged me on how bad a Marion Davies film and performance can be, and I suspect Operator will be about this bad. Some other 30s Marions seem to be bland, though not offensive or awful to these degrees. However, I know Davies can be a charming and hilarious performer. She’s someone who has the ability to make a girl of the 21st century traverse all the middling commercial films she’s done. Why shall I stop now? Hearts Divided may be a challenge of hubris, but perhaps it’s a challenge worth facing. Facing to know that nobody is perfect. Or maybe I’m just making things up to justify the film? Probably.

Enchantment (1921) Review

Marion looking stylish

Catching this film is a bit funny. I had wanted to review every Taming of the Shrew movie around 2018 and now a TotS film has found me! Enchantment is an adaptation of the Shakespeare classic, though it takes quite a few very large liberties. It does have the shared element of “Taming a Shrew” and there’s even a scene where the main family watches a production of the thing. The film starts strong with Marion Davies as Ethel Hoyt being very selfish and inconsiderate to her family. Davies plays these scenes with confidence and a comedic wink to the audience. She digs into the character and seems to be having fun being so ridiculous. She steals screen time from everyone else and rightfully so. This opening promises a lot of comedic potential as to how she’ll be removed from her high horse.

Featured here is one of the most tragic examples of a problem that plagues many Davies films. A character is introduced to a new situation and instead of taking the time to familiarize the protagonist in the environment with many scenes of development, we time jump to after that, where the characters are just in a different dynamic without ever seeing how. The rest of the film is very shaky because of the time jump. Ethel has certain relationships with characters that feel like the aftermath of development and thus it’s all baseless. It could almost be believed that the film had lost scenes, though that’s not the case. It also has a problem essentially the opposite of a time jump. Like in Buried Treasure, there’s a decent portion of the film focused on something irrelevant to the plot. Treasure’s tangent was more entertaining than the rest, but Enchantment’s isn’t, dragging the pace to a halt.

The other actors are serviceable though not exceptional. Ethel’s parents aren’t even named, to show how cared for they are. One highlight of the secondary cast was when Ethel’s mother had a look of shock on her face. It initially seemed like this would be the best Marion film of the eleven I’ve seen so far thanks to its slightly madcap energy; Ethel having an army of Harvard gentlemen to carry her things; her father asking, “How long since Ethel has been spanked?”, outdated as that is, it gave me a laugh; and two characters making a cruel deal, with cigarettes appearing in their hands between shots, as if to exemplify the unruliness of their actions, though that was probably just a continuity error.

SPOILERS

The film doesn’t care for subtlety. Ethel writes in her diary about how she could get any man very directly. It feels like a description of how she feels about herself, not being written in a way someone would actually write if they were in this situation. Perhaps Davies could deliver them as lines better, but they seem poorly thought out as written text. One moment of Ethel being inconsiderate is when she brings a few of her suitors with her family to see The Taming of the Shrew. Ethel’s dad apparently knows one of the actors in the play, Ernie, and persuades him to make Ethel fall in love with him, only for him to break her heart. Before their conversation ends, the dad reminds Ernie that their plan is just acting and makes him promise he’ll walk out on her… I wonder what’s going to happen?

Another highlight is when Ernie meets Ethel. She acts like she’s too good for him and one ups his attempts to get her interested. Both have amusing facial expressions and body language. This scene is in tandem with being a character moment for Ernie and Ethel, who is trying so hard to seem interesting and uninterested in Ernie. Despite this, she touched up her makeup in preparation of his arrival and doesn’t really act pompous in the way she does here during the rest of the film, being slightly more down to Earth usually. Ernie is shocked that she isn’t already infatuated with him and gets progressively more desperate, giving remarks to try to collapse her fort. Ethel seems honestly disinterested in Ernie. She defeats him so hard that he tells her father that he is giving up. The competition of one-upping each other is ultimately won by Ethel’s father. He tells Ethel she is forbidden from seeing him, and thus she starts dating him.

Ernie and Ethel dating is mostly skipped over. Many moments of the film don’t land at all because the audience doesn’t know much about these two together. One scene features Ethel being loud and inconsiderate at rehearsals for a play, having her friends over and talking to them as others rehearse. Ernie snaps at her. His frustration would come across stronger if there were scenes of Ethel acting like this and him just putting up with it. Admittedly, there was a scene or two of this before they started dating, but not after. More egregiously, Ernie says he’s in love with Ethel in the second-next scene they appear in. There were no moments where they seemed to love each other. It could’ve been so funny and powerful to include them. Ethel is initially pompous, but softens overtime, but will remind herself to be rude. Ernie puts up with it, at first because he agreed to, and then because of those moments when she is genuinely kind. To demonstrate her independence, Ethel brings her friends to the rehearsal to prove a point. Queue the aforementioned scene.

After the rehearsal, the next scene is a lengthy sequence of the play featuring Ethel and Ernie playing out. Nothing of consequence happens until the moment he “breaks her heart”. When they are on-stage and Ethel is playing an unconscious woman, he kisses her without consent. This depresses her and also accomplishes her father’s goal of “taming her”. How did that “tame” her? You’d think that would make her more rowdy, because she was taken advantage of. Ernie returns and reveals her father’s plan to Ethel, who is understandably furious at everyone involved. There’s a nice moment of her yelling at everyone for pulling this whole ploy on her. Having rightfully expressed anger at the injustices that happened to her, Ethel falls to tears. However, when she witnesses Ernie trying to leave, she goes up to him and says he and her father did the right thing and it’s better she was tamed, thus is the “happy ending”. The End. 

Not only is this ridiculously unrealistic, but it plays into the sexism of the time. Thank God that woman is now wife material! Who cares she was emotionally abused and kissed without consent? The Taming of the Shrew ends with Kate comically proclaiming that women should be submissive. If that was intended to be shown here, this film fails. The ending of Shrew could be read as Kate pretending and/or to highlight the absurdity of the perception of women, or any number of things. Here, there’s no wink to the audience or comedy. The movie has to sand off her edges and get her to be “tame” no matter how suddenly it has to happen or how unfortunately its implications are for how one should treat real life women. Ethel tamed over basically nothing and with almost no gradual transition. Also, Ernie sexually assaulted Ethel. That is not a recipe for a likable relationship. If given the ability to change the ending, Ethel would realize that this manipulative behavior is unhealthy and not be part of it. Leave!

OVERVIEW

While the first half of the film can be commended for giving good comedic material to Marion, the poorly landed second half makes the affair unsatisfying, though with some good moments here and there. Those who like silent comedies should give it a watch, despite its flaws. The positives are solid enough to make Enchantment worth your time. Fixing the ending alone would make the film better, so perhaps ignore the tail end. Perhaps a fan editor could scruff up the whole thing.

Getting Mary Married (1919) Review

One of Mary’s dresses

Getting Mary Married is a 1910s romantic comedy and the earliest surviving film starring Marion Davies, unless you count the mostly incomplete The Belle of New York. The film follows various check-boxes of rom-coms of the time. The characters and plot are very basic and predictable, it satisfies what those wanting a romance will want, but without giving much more. Most egregiously, this film is light on comedy to the point that you could get away with just calling it “a romance”. Many rom-coms of the time were more rom than com.

Marion Davies usually delights in her movies, even when the film itself is bad. Here she is phoning it in. She stands around looking pretty, letting other people give stronger and more emotional performances. There’s a certain life a good actor can add, throwing creases on your face and putting your body in your performance. Davies is just there, performing her lines without a sense of who her character is or life behind the eyes. While there’s no diamond in the ruff, there are some pretty rocks that can make the experience more bearable. Davies’ character Mary plays with her dog and lightly picks on some people who are mean to her. These are just a few small moments, but they’re still nice.

Most of the acting here is a little more fleshed out. Mary’s step-relatives are one note, having more or less one trait, being self-centered and villainous. One moment of her uncle, Amos, being distraught shows him amusingly overacting. Glad to know his actor is more invested here. He and the other antagonists serviceably are what they need to be. Norman Kerry as James Winthrop is the handsome leading man type. The best performance in the film is by Matt Moore as Ted Barnacle. You know he’s the highlight when his name is “Mr. Barnacle”. He runs around with a smile on his face, aiding James while also being obnoxious and unlikeable to him for no reason. He says inappropriate comments in dramatic situations with the presence to suggest he’s trying to steal the movie, not that that’s particularly difficult.

Some funny lines of dialogue come when one character trying to sound smart says, “They destroy the precious carbon dioxide, which we need for cerebral stimulation.” At another point, a character compliments another, but finishes the line as an insult in their head, “You’ve a lovely voice… for selling fish.”, which is honestly a great insult that should be adopted in the 2020s vernacular.

There’s a lot of intertitles which tell instead of show. You can’t get invested because we don’t see much characterization. As an example, the intertitles tell us that Mary’s lonely. Instead of telling us this, what if we saw her look at a group of people being happy and she looks away sad or she asks for mail and is told there’s none for her? Her father, John Bussard, is said to be unkind. The intertitles for that weren’t even needed because we could see that he’s unkind.

SPOILERS

John Bussard amusingly dies by falling down an elevator shaft. His death comes out of nowhere; he just walks to the elevator without paying attention to his surroundings and that’s it. No one even cares that he’s dead. Do what Brewster’s Millions does and start the movie with the protagonist learning of a relative’s death instead of wasting time introducing us to him. John’s will reveals that Mary can have his fortune if she lives with his brother for a year and also not marry in that time. If she fails this, Amos gets the money. If John Bussard is so bad, why did he write Mary in the will in the first place? Davies playing kind and honest people is demonstrated in this movie when she says she doesn’t care about the money by a man giving her that information. When a helpless-looking woman reveals to her that John swindled money from her and is now broke, Mary accepts the money so she can help the woman.

Here, Mary could’ve just said, “I will live with my uncle” and move on, but the scene is drawn out. She asks if her father really did this, she’s told yes, she says she will repay them, she’s told with what money, “With my money”, “You can’t do that, Miss Mary. You have nothing unless you fulfill the conditions of the will”, [We already know that], she consoles the woman, is asked what she’s going to do, and replies, “I am going to go through with the conditions of that will.” Who knows why this simple scene was dragged out with excessive and long dialogue? Did the editor go on strike?

The will stipulating Mary won’t get the money if she marries is only for the plot. There’s no reason for this in-universe. Why would her step-father care? Mary and James fall for each other but can’t marry due to the will. They haven’t known each other very long. So many older movies feature characters who don’t know each other well rushing to the altar. Was this actually common at the time or was it made up for movies? Its lack of realism, at least by modern standards, make the romance more absurd and less believable. 1940’s The Philadelphia Story parodies this trope to great effect, so at least someone thought it was odd.

Throughout the film, Mary had been going out with Ted, though in actuality he was taking her to meet James. Amos manipulates her by saying she has given herself a bad reputation by going out with a man she’s not married to without a chaperone and thus she must marry Ted to redeem herself. To a modern eye, this is absolutely ridiculous, but odds are that sort of thing might have happened back then. It’s unnerving how regressive people can be. If Mary did marry Ted, she’d probably have a miserable and unhappy marriage just so Amos can get money. Ted even jumps at the opportunity to marry a woman he knows doesn’t love him and wasn’t even going out with. James for no reason is invited to the wedding, stopping it once he arrives. Why was he invited in the first place? Even if no one knew he was dating Mary, when he visited the household he would ask about her, thus showing an interest. When Amos goes broke, he amusingly shouts, “Work! Work!!” Capitalism strikes again.

OVERVIEW

This film is so minor and inconsequential that it’s hard to dislike. It shows up for sixty-five minutes and then it’s over. Nothing is offensive and nothing is stellar. It can only be recommended for people who like very typical 1910s romance films or Marion Davies, as long as they can forgive her underwhelming performance. At least her dress at the end kills.

Just a nice picture

Buried Treasure (1921) Review

Buried Treasure has an intriguing synopsis. There’s pirates and galleons and treasure. You’d think this would be an adventure film. The focus, however, is on our protagonist Pauline, played by Marion Davies, disapproving of the life her father, played by Anders Randolf, wants for her. At about forty-three minutes in, Pauline reads a pirate book and this is visualized with the cast all portraying a character in the book. One might think this is just a brief detour, but this segment ends at the one hour mark of a seventy minute movie. While the scene does personify how Pauline feels about her father, seeing as Randolf plays a villain in this part, it doesn’t actually add to the plot. That all being said, so little of note occurs in the proper narrative that the pirate excursion is by far more interesting. If you cut all the scenes of superfluous conversations and other elements that don’t add to the story, as well as the pirate scene, you’d end up with a very short film. As a guess, around twenty minutes.

The pirate segment has fun over-the-top performances and silly dialogue with fights and dramatic moments. The acting is bad, which makes the whole thing funny. If one is to be objective, this tangent isn’t great, but it’s fun. The scenes before are slower and less engaging. It seems like the movie was made with the pirate portion in mind as the set piece and a “normal” story was crafted around it. It’s a shame the whole movie wasn’t this. Afterward, the film is close to over. If the filmmakers put much stock in the main plot and not the pirate portion, they probably would’ve made the ending longer so as to be more climactic.

Davies’ performance is more loose and relaxed than in her later works. Here, she plays a rich girl who doesn’t seem to be bothered by things for the most part. She has a casualness to her acting that’s very endearing. One scene that summarizes her well is when she is under threat of her father making her poor and she doesn’t seem to care. Wealth is clearly important to her, so her rejection shows us where her priorities are.

Pauline exchanges playful engages with her brother, Joeffrey, played by Earl Schenck. The two have very little screen time together but what is there is nice. One personal favorite moment is when Pauline whispers something and the two start laughing as their father is being difficult. A big crux of the plot is the relationship between Pauline and her father. When they disagree, you’re supposed to be on the edge of your seat wanting things to be right, however this is essentially just a few scenes stapled to the movie. So much information, mainly on Pauline and her father, is told to us through intertitles, so you never really care. Various other characters, like Pauline’s mother, get so little screen time or anything to do that they feel insignificant.

It’s a little difficult to appreciate the film fully because the final reel is lost. The Blu-ray includes a reconstruction, but it’s not the same as if the reel was present. The movie might’ve been better if the first reel was missing. While it does introduce the characters, the scenes progress so slowly that it’s a very dull experience. We’re just waiting for something to happen. Very little of substance happens in the first thirty minutes. We do get scenes of the characters interacting that aren’t necessary. Starting the plot would tell us information on them more naturally. The most unfortunate of the character moments is when a man we’re supposed to like kisses a woman without her consent. This also happened in another Davies’ film, The Red Mill.

SPOILERS

After close to twenty minutes had passed of superfluous conversations and dancing, Pauline talks to her love interest, John, and they discuss that they’re in love but can’t be together. There should’ve been a scene of Pauline and John showing affection for the other before Pauline tried to get him to marry her at the party. It’s all very sudden. The film has a few laughs. Pauline and John are caught kissing, the catcher leaves to get someone and in that time, John goes away and Pauline gets Joeffrey. When the person comes back, Joeffrey says, “Why the excitement? I was merely kissing my own sister!” Later, Pauline’s father suggests taking John on a trip with the family. Pauline begs he doesn’t, so he does. Pauline reveals to Joeffrey, “I opposed Dr. [John] Grant for I was sure that if I did Dad would take him.”

OVERVIEW

This is decent off of the pirate segment and a few other fun moments, but there’s too much drag and little going on to call Buried Treasure a good film. It’s really only valuable for Marion Davies fans. Her performance has made me more interested in seeing her early movies.

Peg o’ My Heart (1933) Review

How can a fair and tender lady like myself not appreciate an Irish-accented Marion Davies yet again carrying a movie, which isn’t trying as hard as her?

Peg o’ My Heart puts its best foot forward for the beginning of the movie. The first act focuses on the comfortable life of Marion Davies as Peggy and J. Farrell MacDonald as Peggy’s father, Patrick O’Connell. There’s a fresh blend of comedic moments for Marion to play in and dramatic moments for Davies and especially MacDonald to run through. MacDonald is given more dramatic moments than Davies, his character has to make more tough decisions. The first act is very good and you get invested in the story because of the solid acting. Even outside of the first act, the two maintain strong performances. One really nice moment comes when Peggy is bonding with someone outside. There’s a playfulness which shows Peggy’s charm. Other than one scene of Davies overacting while talking about love, her performance carries a natural likability and innocence. She’s an honest-natured girl who has to deal with difficult issues.

When Peggy must spend time away from her father and instead with her extended family, the film drags considerably. Most of the extended family is one-note in a way they really shouldn’t be. A handful of scenes are dedicated to their stories, which just takes away from Peggy. The cast aren’t particularly good at their characters, thus leading to a veneer of fakeness. The already brisk runtime is so short and so much of it is wasted. Peggy’s story is not fleshed out very much, possibly due to other characters eating up the screen. Peggy doesn’t always seem believable because moments we should be seeing aren’t here. The worst performance is that of Irene Browne as Mrs. Chichester. She is very much a stock “villainous older woman”. She is very set in her ways and stubborn, not willing to consider how she treats others and thus everyone is afraid of her to some extent. She is very proper and has strong views on how people should act, especially the more liberal female protagonist. Browne was almost the same age as Davies. She comes off as a young woman pretending to be old, because that is what she’s doing. There’s no personality to the character and so little is put into her that Mrs. Chichester is essentially a walking cliché.

SPOILERS

During the setup of the plot, we get some nice moments. Peggy is confused for a boy, presumably because of her wearing men’s clothes when she’s working. In another scene, she thinks a man traveled to Ireland from England just to talk about plum pudding, which she’s never had. We also get to see her do some singing and dancing. While Marion Davies is not the best singer or dancer, she brings with her a charm and enough proficiency that these scenes warrant inclusion. The film avoids the common exposition dump, other than a brief line where Patrick mentions Peggy’s mom being absent for no reason other than for the audience to know.

Patrick is told that Peggy will inherit a fortune on a few conditions. One is that she has to spend three years with her aunt, another is that she can’t see her father again. He initially turns the offer away, but when an accident occurs which costs a few lives, Patrick persuades Peggy to go. Keep in mind that it’s made clear that Peggy wouldn’t want the money if she knew she had to separate from her father. He has to lie to her, first by saying he’ll be with her soon and then telling someone to tell Peggy that he died. We can see what is making Patrick do this. The accident frightens him and then he incorrectly thinks she is happy in a life of wealth. Despite these reasons, his decisions don’t make sense. Their bond is very strong, with Peggy being miserable away from him. While Patrick doesn’t know that, he does know that she cares for him very deeply based on scenes of them in the first act. He seems too keen on her thinking he’s dead and then running away forever, not just from Peggy, but from his life and friends to a different country. The way he acts when he first learns of the condition better reflects how you’d expect him to act, in horror at the thought of them being separated over something as trivial as money. He is willing to destroy so much for Peggy’s potential fortune. You’d think he’d at least ask her what she wants.

Some of the best scenes in the film relate to their separation. Patrick has a good facial expression of horror when the accident occurs, but it also shows his horror that he’s considering an action that will stop him from being with his daughter. The scene of him and Peggy parting is very heartfelt. They both keep talking as they don’t want her to go.

The family are pretty mean to Peggy for no real reason and despite them needing her. They get money from her being there. There are several points where she considers leaving because of how little she likes it with them. You’d think they’d be as nice to her as possible. Mrs. Chichester’s daughter, Ethel, plans to run away from her engagement with Peggy’s love interest, Gerald, for another man. Peggy attempts to stop her, with Ethel’s response being emblematic of her annoyance for Peggy.. When Peggy saves Ethel from a scandal related to the man and shows her the error of her ways, Ethel is much kinder to Peggy.

Davies’ comedic muscles get some use when she delivers a series of funny lines when she is introduced to her extended family. The point of such a scene is to get a taste of all these characters and how they react to Peggy being unladylike. What one would expect next is for scenes of Peggy situating herself in this new environment, being taught various manners and progressively getting better at doing things of that nature. The next scene after Peggy’s first day establishes that she has been there for a while. Her aunt has “treated her like one of her own children”, though the audience hasn’t seen much between them. It feels like scenes were cut where Peggy interacts with everybody on a day-to-day basis. It’s so awkward to hear the characters just refer to things that happened in between the time jump.

The main story of Peg o’ My Heart is, “Peggy goes to England, gets accustomed to her new life, misses how things were, and goes back but with a piece of the new life”. There’s so little time devoted to her going through this journey. We skip from her being very fish out of water to her being reasonably used to things with nothing in between. There aren’t even many scenes of her in her new setting due to the focus on the other characters and the first act. Those elements also aren’t explored very much because this is about Peggy. The audience doesn’t really get accustomed to Peggy in England because we don’t see her do that. Let us feel something like we did for her in Ireland. The Ireland part of the story is setup and yet it is much better developed.

There is a standard sudden happy ending. Peggy returns to Ireland and her father is there. Gerald shows up and says he loves Peggy. His proposal to Ethel is simply no longer a factor. While the two did have some nice moments together, their relationship wasn’t shown far beyond surface level.

OVERVIEW

This could’ve been a great film about being forced to manage with people and scenarios the protagonist doesn’t understand, all for said people’s gain. We could’ve seen Peggy be made  into a lady and have these scenes inform her of the characters, the characters of her, or the audience of them. We could’ve seen things characters said or did have more impact. Once the climax happens, there could’ve been some scenes dedicated to dealing with all that happened over the course of the story, yet so much is ignored. Peg o’ My Heart is cute, just listen to Peggy’s Irish accent, but loses steam fast and doesn’t focus on what it should.