RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS’ Category

Suds

21 Sep

Suds – Directed by John Francis Dillon. Comic Melodrama. A scrubgirl rides a magic horse to true love and salvation. 65 minutes Black And White Silent 1920.

* * *

Pickford’s Amanda Afflick is a reprise of a character from Stella Maris, but without the deformed shoulder. The face is a grimace, the mouth flattened, the eyebrows thickened. You would not recognize her as Amanda until the princess scenes, where she appears as the Mary Pickford we know. The real difference, however, is in the interior of the Stella Maris character which is another person entirely from Stella Maris herself. Here, in Suds, the actress instead gives herself over to large gestures and cartoon faces, even broader in the princess scenes, which is strange because Pickford was renowned for inventing screen acting as we know it today, a craft of interior and subtle registration. She also miscalculates the performance by crying, weeping, bawling, wailing at every slight and abuse. She leaves no room for us to participate in her situation. (See Judy Garland make the same mistake in A Star Is Born.) What does work is her execution of the physical comedy, which is imaginative and robust. The Extras include the three endings the film had, and a documentary on Pickford’s immense film career.

[ad#300×250]

 

 

 

 

 
1 Comment

Posted in 1920s, ACTING STYLE: CAMERAMAN, DON'T SHOOT UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYEBALLS, BROAD COMEDY, Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, MELODRAMA, SILENT PICTURE, Slapstick Comedy

 

The Taming Of The Shrew [1929]

22 Jul

The Taming Of the Shrew – Directed by Sam Wood. Shakespearean Comedy. An out-of-towner in town to marry wealthily hooks up with a harridan. 63 minutes Black and White 1929.

* * * * *

The first talking film of a Shakespeare play, this is also the first time (and the last time) Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford appeared together in a picture. They go at one another with bullwhips, which is less funny than the series of brilliant sight gags the film explodes with. (Tell me, please, how that business with the chair was ever done!) The screenwriter has balanced out the story rather neatly with the conceit that Kate, in order to reach a truce, by succumbing to his outrageous demands is actually taming Petruchio. The movie begins with the camera looking admiringly at the sets by William Cameron Menzies, and it ends abruptly and bafflingly by omitting the buildup scene to Kate’s submission speech. Pickford was a wonderful actor, but here she plays into her husband’s huge theatrical style and not to her advantage. Fairbanks throws his arms wide upon every occasion and tosses his head back and laughs longer than even his three thousand white teeth can lend reality to. If you handed him a cup of tea, he would do the same. But this style both suits the role and suits his limitations but does not suit Pickford’s genuine genius for realistic performance. Make-up gives her wasp-stung lips, and Costume wimples her head like the Mad Queen. She ends up visible as a character to us only when she shows her hair. The script is cut to include only its famous big set pieces, such as the moon scene and the dinner table scene. But that’s all right. The show is far more lively than the lumbering version with the Burtons. The Taming Of The Shrew a very great comedy, on three counts: It has dialogue that an actor can swing around like a cat by the tail; it has a supersonic plot; it has two leading roles that never misfire.

[ad#300×250]

 
1 Comment

Posted in ACTING STYLE: CAMERAMAN, DON'T SHOOT UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYEBALLS, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, MATING, SCREWBALL COMEDY, Tudor Costume Drama, WRITTEN BY: William Shakespeare

 

Tess Of The Storm Country

10 Jun

Tess Of the Storm Country – Directed by John S. Robertson. Melodrama. Will the man in the mansion get rid of that bunch of smelly folks at the bottom of his hill? 118 minutes Black and White Silent 1922.

* * * * *

A full-blown melodrama, nothing omitted but a train wreck. I marvel at what silent film asks of one, for what it asks is one’s imagination. And the way it goes about that is to be mute. So one must interpret, lean forward to hear, pay attention, fill in the blanks. And one is given a lot to pay attention to, a lot to engage with. Mary Pickford is a dream actress, quick, imaginative, experienced beyond measure, and always willing to appear foolish. Here she’s a little hellcat of a fisher shack girl, whose hometown a rich nasty is trying to close down. I have nothing more to say, except watch her fight scenes, and there are a lot of them. And watch her business with the rake. She’s a master. A master actor and a master entertainer. She produced this film. She was the most powerful and capable woman Hollywood has ever known. She founded and personally ran Untied Artists, she wrote certain of her own films and produced a number of them, and some of those of her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. She founded the Academy. She founded the Actors Hospital and Home. She founded the School of the Cinema at UCLA. And she was the superstar female actor in the world in her day. Hooray for Mary! The picture is also accompanied by a first class modern score.

[ad#300×250]

 

 

 

 

 
2 Comments

Posted in 1920s, ACTING STYLE: CAMERAMAN, DON'T SHOOT UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYEBALLS, ACTING STYLE: SILENT GESTURAL, Early 20th Century Hollywood, Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, MELODRAMA, Period: 1910-1914

 

Daddy Long Legs

10 Jun

Daddy Long Legs – Directed by Marshall Neilan. Melodrama. A mischievous orphan girl is helped by a mystery man. 85 minutes Black and White with Color Filters, Silent 1919.

* * * * *

Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted: an unknown benefactor who sees through our detractors’ faults and banks us and banks on us and appears at the end as…. Ah, yes. And so our Miss Mary plays the juvenile orphan on this path, but with many a digression into naughty pranks and hijinks, which solidify the stark disapproval of the matron – but that’s what matrons are for, aren’t they? Some of these antics read like vaudeville turns, for Mary Pickford trod the boards from small childhood in second rate theatre companies touring through Canada and the States, and there she not only learned her craft but the tricks of the trade. So she’s a lot of fun as the movie marks time with a close-order-drill of great energy and variety until it gets on with the plot, which has to do with social rank, of course.  She is really wonderful here, and why is that? Because she is a fine film actress, one might say a revolutionary actress. Everything is simple unselfconscious as only plenty of rehearsals can provide. She does everything immediate and small. She was the first actress in film history to ever have a close-up. And how right that is, for the entire character registers on her visage in response to the forces that beset both her and the orphans around her. You will be interested to see the costumes of the period. And how smoking played such a large part in film acting from the time film started until quite recently. Tobacco in all its forms was the greatest of all actors’ props. It was versatile, it gave something for the actor to do, it was expressive, it could define mood and power. It gave one pause. It gave one interruption. It gave one romantic liaison. Take a look at Daddy Long Legs’ use of it here. It rises like an infernal emanation from behind the back of that chair, like a volcano not yet disturbed.

[ad#300×250]

 

 

 
1 Comment

Posted in ACTING STYLE: SILENT PANTOMIME REALISTIC, Early 20th Century Hollywood, Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, MATING, MELODRAMA, Period: 1910-1914

 

Stella Maris

22 May

 

 

Stella Maris – Directed by Marshall Neilan. Melodrama. A sequestered rich girl wakes up to the reality of life in her love for a man also loved by a poor orphan. 84 minutes Black and White Silent 1918.

* * * * *

If you can accept the rubrics inherent in silent pictures as entertainment of a kind, you will likely have a good time with this film. The requirements of story-telling in silent pictures are different from what we have become used to in modern films, and the stories told, while, like ours, still melodrama, are executed on a different level of value, since, let us say, in black and white films, values themselves are more black and white. So patience with the unfamiliar is called for to enjoy what is before us. What is priceless is what the actors do within these confines, and Mary Pickford is an extraordinary example of genius and charm in dealing with them. Here she plays Stella Maris, a Happy Prince character preserved from the woes of this world because she is crippled. The character would be intolerable were she played for pathos, but Pickford plays her as happy, open, and without calculation. You never feel sorry for her. You only want to be in her company. But Pickford also plays another character, the orphan Unity, in one of the shrewdest portrayals I’ve ever seen an actress attempt, for she gives Unity a hunched shoulder which makes her appear also crippled. Standing together in the film, you would not believe they were being played by the same actress. Homely Unity’s inner life in no particular resembles that of pretty Stella Maris’s. Neither in appearance nor being are they the same person. And the actress is completely realistic and in the moment with both. Mary Pickford was the most popular female film star of her time; she was also the most brilliant businesswoman ever to work in Hollywood (She founded and ran United Artists); what is more important still, she clearly was one of the greatest actresses of her era.

[ad#300×250]

 
2 Comments

Posted in ACTING STYLE: CAMERAMAN, DON'T SHOOT UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYEBALLS, BROAD TRAGEDY, Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, MATING, MELODRAMA, PERIOD: WWI, ROMANTIC DRAMA, SILENT PICTURE

 

Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley & The Dream

25 Jan

Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley & The Dream – Broad Comedy. In the first, a laundress and her family is invited into the parlor of the upper-crust. In the second, a devoted housewife is mistaken for a raving tart by her drunkard husband. 67 minutes. black and white, silent.1918 & 1911.

* * * * *

She was a charming actress, understated, quick, responsive, and not so pretty as a picture as to give offense. America’s Sweetheart was not readily cast as a vamp, but in the second of these two films, the 10 minute The Dream, she turns from the dutiful wife to the flagrant babe, kicking over the traces. Amarilly is a story that remained with us right through Pretty Woman, and was played out by Laurette Taylor, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur, Ginger Rogers, Barbara Stanwyck, and any actress who could convey the lower classes moving into the upper classes. These stories always have an immigrant settling, for they were made in the day when many Americans were just arrived or first generation. Nowadays, for the most part, we no longer have that background. This one is Irish-American, and it’s a comedy played in broad strokes. It is interesting to see how the acting style resulted from the fact that the camera did not move and the action was played against a single set. This seduced the actors to move a lot, as in The Dream. Pickford wisely remains restrained. It also drove the actors into necessary improvisation, and they were very good at it. I admire their gusto and willingness. I think you will too. Just don’t judge it by today’s standards — except for Pickford, who is as modern an actress as one could hope for. Don’t confuse the role with the actress. See her. It’s likable to like someone as likeable as Pickford, and you’ll like yourself for it. It’s the secret of her vast and still valid success.

[ad#300×250]

 
1 Comment

Posted in BROAD COMEDY, FAMILY FILM, Mary Pickford: SCREEN SUPERSTAR; ACTING GODDESS, SILENT PICTURE

 
 
Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Technorati button Reddit button Myspace button Linkedin button Webonews button Delicious button Digg button Flickr button Stumbleupon button Newsvine button