Sofia Coppola--The Beguiled (2017)

I expected great things of this film, since I had read about the response to it at Cannes and had read several positive reviews. I was disappointed and I was puzzled regarding the hoopla. 

I've not read the original novel, nor have I seen the 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, so I had few preconceptions going into the theatre. I understand that Coppola's focus on the relations between the women and girls on the decaying estate housing a girls' school in Civil War Virginia is a unique approach to the story. The film fails to fulfill that promise, though, because the beautiful cinematography of Philippe Le Sourd disguises a very conventional film. 

What is revealed about the women and girls? That they all lose their minds when a wounded Union deserter is brought into their house to be nursed back to health. Unleash the repressed desires. Prepare the coquetry. Let loose the petty jealousy and competition among the women. Bring out the glad-rags. The film taps every possible stereotype about male-female relations. 

Corporal McBurney, the solder played by Colin Farrell, is actually a character of greater depth than any of the women. He masks his true thoughts; his duplicity is enacted for viewers. His apparent wily intelligence made me wonder who he really was and what he really wanted. Even as the film went on, I wondered about his motives. That is more than I will say about any of the female characters. All of those glances among them add up to precisely what you would expect. 

Each woman and girl is given a certain kind of individuality, but it's the individuality of labels (here's the one with the budding sexuality, here's the one who resents the attention given a Yankee, here's the one younger than the others whose fascination with him takes a more juvenile form). I had read in one review that Edwina, the character played by Kirsten Dunst, "wants something different." No she doesn't. It's the same thing that the characters played by Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning want. They may want it in age- and social position-appropriate ways, but it comes down to the same thing. 

This story is an opportunity missed. I anticipated some injection of modernity into the proceedings, but from interviews given by Coppola it appears that this effort was lavished on costumes and hairstyles. Nothing unexpected happens here, though there was plenty of room to introduce greater complexity and some uniqueness into the portraits of these ladies. 

The film's best qualities are 

• The performances of Dunst and Farrell 
• The performance of Oona Laurence as young Amy who finds the soldier 
• The cinematography, especially of the natural world 
• The final scene, when the camera draws back from the porch to the gates 

In Birth of a Nation (1916), D.W. Griffith showed a very different picture of a Virginia family that outlasted the war. I could not help but think of young Flora Cameron decorating her worn dress with "Southern ermine" (cotton) when the women of The Beguiled dragged out their finery and jewels to beguile the young man in their midst. Those costumes are finally just window-dressing for a set of tired conventions.

Patricia Rozema--Into the Forest (2015)

I’ve loved some of director (and writer) Patricia Rozema’s works and that love started with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing in the late 1980s and surged again with Mansfield Park (1999). Her writing for Grey Gardens (2009) was brilliant. I so wanted to love this one, which stars Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood as sisters who live with their father in a remote forested area. We don’t know why. The sisters are several years apart in age and are very unlike in every possible way: appearance, temperament, interests, talents, and stage of life. While Nell (Page) studies for the SAT, Eva (Wood), the elder by several years, prepares endlessly for her dance audition. Dad (Callum Keith Rennie) is a good-tempered, upbeat fellow who will not be in the film for very long.

One day a power outage hits the area, probably the whole continent, maybe the whole world. We never know. The family lives far from town and when they make one trip to the decimated grocery store and to the empty gas stations they have ominous encounters with some men who are either creepy, up to no good, or both. The characters themselves seem to be remarkably uninterested in what the problem is. First, it’s an inconvenience and as the outage stretches over weeks, months and then more than a year, it appears that the situation may be permanent.

The film is a character study with small and large moments of drama. It dwells on the ups and downs of the relationship between the sisters, how they deal with tragedy, how they deal with deprivation; their responses could hardly be more different. While Nell is practical, steady in temperament, and willing (to a degree) to figure out how best to act in the situation, Eva is quite the opposite. She is rarely anything other than self-centered, whiny, weak-willed and selfish. After a variety of bad things happen, Eva makes a decision that, depending on the viewer’s perspective, is either the ultimate in selfishness or a small vote for hope.

The film takes no interest in why or how the electrical outage has occurred because that’s not the story that’s being told. I applaud the novel choice to tell a big story through the experiences of just a handful of characters on a limited stage. There are no zombies, mutants or aliens in the film. For a film that focuses for the most part on the relationship between two people, though, its emotional tone and impact was far too muted.

We move from incident to incident. There are struggles between these two very different women over any number of things (let’s use one of our last gallons of gas to fire up the generator and listen to music for a few minutes; no, we have to save it for when we really need it) and there is one particularly hard-hitting moment of quietly devastating disappointment when they discover what might be a note left by their father. There are some decisions that seem to exist for their symbolic value and left me thinking, “You idiots!” When Nell decides to go along with a decision insisted upon by her sister at the end of the film, it’s clear she is giving in against her better judgment. For what it’s worth, I think it’s an awful decision too. Her sister’s (former) passivity seems to have shifted to Nell. Maybe she’s tired of doing every single thing and making every single decision that keeps them alive. Just a thought on my part, because neither the acting nor dialogue provide a clue. This ending, too, seems to be symbolic rather than natural, in the sense of flowing from the dynamics of both story and character. It simply does not seem to make sense.

The real problem for me was that while this was a character study, neither of the characters really had much depth. Their dynamics seemed very superficial and lacking in intensity where it was needed. I didn’t feel that the two actors were a match that ever felt natural or real. Character was built mostly from brief scenes of action and short scenes with dialogue. The film needed more dialogue to create greater complexity in the characters and their interactions.

I did enjoy the moody, nature-friendly photography of cinematographer Daniel Grant.

Rozema’s decision to focus on character is a gutsy choice and the existential situation provides an opportunity for some creative, unusual storytelling but ultimately she has little success. These characters need a lot more development and the narrative lacks both force and intensity that would draw in the viewer.

Karyn Kusama—The Invitation (2015)

I approached this film with no expectations, not having seen any other film by the director, not even the acclaimed Girl Fight (2000). I am not even sure how it ended up on my Netflix viewing list, possibly it was because Netflix classifies it as a “psychological thriller” and it was available, through streaming, for instant gratification.  But I did not expect much gratification. The scores on Netflix and IMDB do not indicate an overwhelming positive response.

I enjoyed The Invitation more fully than I have enjoyed any movie in quite a while. Maybe this is because my expectations were low, but I have been recommending it to everyone I know who has the patience to wait for the plot to develop beyond the stage of “Oh, it’s just another group of neurotic, over-privileged Californians.” While it IS about a group of neurotic Californians, it touches on several profound issues (death and dying, coping with grief and loss, the lack of cell coverage in many California neighborhoods) in ways that feel surprising and realistic at once.

At the heart of the film is a now-divorced couple who are meeting again at the invitation of the ex-wife, Eden, and her new husband. Eden has invited many of the old friends from whom the divorced couple has fallen away. Will, the ex-husband, and the one who is very uneasy about the meeting, brings his girlfriend, Kira. Just to add to the weirdness, the dinner is taking place at the gorgeous house once shared by Eden and Will. Will’s nervousness about the meeting is not dispelled by the necessity of killing an injured coyote, practically with his bare hands, after striking it with the car. I would have turned around right there. He soon has a lot more to be uncomfortable about.

Kusama interjects tidbits of information designed to make viewers more curious and heighten the suspense. Some of the hints point to the reason for the divorce:  a child who died. Eden announces that she has gotten beyond her grief with the assistance of a long spiritual retreat in Mexico with David, her new husband. Will, in contrast, obviously is still mired in depression, grief and guilt.

While most of the old friends make their best efforts to reconnect, there are missteps and embarrassed silences that add to the underlying unease of the whole evening, and the particular focus is on Will. When Eden and David unexpectedly sit their guests down to watch a video made during the retreat, the guests are introduced to a rather anodyne view of death, though it is clear the move to over-share strikes them as tasteless. The view of death seems both soothing and bland, though its personal nature leaves the guests squirming and unhappy. Death is not loss or darkness, they are told. Death is not to be feared but rather to be welcomed because it means safety, reunion, and an end to suffering. We all become part of one another, etc.. The guests react in several ways, all of which indicate that they did not enjoy the video. Tense discussion follows.

Everyone is on edge, plus there is a guest who is known only to Eden and David.  That guest, Pruitt (played by John Carroll Lynch, with an unsettling combination of reticence and menace), is someone they met at the retreat. Will becomes more paranoid and does a few things that nice guests do not do. Or should not be caught doing.

Kusama guides the narrative development very effectively, so from one moment to the next, the viewer does not know if Will is totally unhinged by his grief and getting worse in this environment or if there really is something weird going on with Eden, David and Pruitt. Time after time, viewer expectations of resolution are aroused and deflated.

In one short scene, Will watches with curiosity as David lights and hangs up a small red lantern in the yard. It is only apparent how significant this at the very end of the film. The underlying tension develops into high anxiety and a series of shocks, but Kusama expertly handles our apprehension by keeping our desire to know what’s really happening suspended between…well, you have to watch the film.

I appreciated Kusama’s rejection of plot and character stereotypes in the final scenes; more than that though, I was knocked out by the quiet, powerful visual image that ends this film.  The slow-dawning of its significance has really stuck with me. This deep discomfort seems just right for the current emotional climate.  

Andrea Arnold--American Honey (2016)

So, about ten minutes into the film I turned to my viewing companion and said, “If this handheld camera continues much longer, I’m going to be sick.” That was annoying, but things settled down after that and I learned to love the movie. Or, if not love, then at least enjoy and appreciate. It’s a quite extraordinary accomplishment on many levels.

Some of my early discomfort with the movie stemmed from not being able to figure out what it was. This film falls into so many genres that even now I don’t know what to call it.  Female coming-of-age film? Road movie? Picaresque? All of the above, I guess.The movie seemed long-ish at 2 hours and 43 minutes, but then that’s pretty much a characteristic of the picaresque, so at least I didn’t have to wade through 700 pages with small print. And, in the end, it didn’t seem too long.  It seemed just right. The length allowed for unforced development.

Here are the qualities I most admired about this film:

The acting of Sasha Lane.  She is an incredible talent and I hope she gets a lot more chances to show what she’s capable of.

Shia LaBeouf…he was just playing himself, right?  Anyway, he was very good in a demanding role.

I loved that the film at many points does the unexpected, but it does it in a way that feels like the operation of chance, the randomness of life, proving that sometimes people do really stupid things and…nothing bad happens. It is especially notable here since when women do stupid things—like get very, very drunk with a bunch of men, total strangers, in a convertible—in films, they usually have to pay for them in some way, often with violence, sex or a combination of the two. It happens at several points—high anxiety alert!--that Star does these dumb or dangerous things and I really enjoyed the way the story backed away from the conventions. Of course, she does have plenty of unpleasant experiences, so it’s not like a total fiction.

Anyone who has ever driven cross-country taking old state highways and avoiding interstates will recognize that this really is America that the kids see out of the windows of the van. You can never tell what state they’re in because everything looks alike…the crummy shopping centers, the unsavory looking motels, the Walmarts and the Targets.  The homogeneity is stunning and true.Of course, there’s a lot to be depressed about in the film, too. 

Most or all of the kids seem to be runaways or kids who simply walked away and were never missed.  We are given a brief view of Star’s home-life and her parents and it is all too clear, though left unstated, what she’s leaving behind.  Every one of the young people is individualized to a remarkable degree and you get the sense that behind each one there is a similar history. They are shown as both singular and having a shared kind of story, one that doesn’t reflect well on contemporary America. They are also raucous, badly behaved, kind, funny and horrible to each other. They are no better and no worse than most. They are not (certainly not yet) rags-to-riches stories or young heroes. Maybe that’s where they are headed. But when we meet them they are not yet meth or heroin addicts and they are still moving on in life and having a shared adventure.

Here's the part of the film that didn’t ring true to me:  the scenes in Mission Hills. The scenes inside of the homes there did seem realistic. That combination of fear-of-offending and suspicion with which most of the women at home met Star and Jake was right on target and strongly rendered by all of the actors involved.  The truth is, though, that had Star and Jake gone into even one of those houses or rolled around on even one of those lovely lawns, they would have been surrounded by cops in the first five minutes or shot by a homeowner.That’s reality.

Excellent movie.  Support this work.

Lois Weber--Suspense (1913)

In 1909, D.W. Griffith made The Lonely Villa, which features perhaps the earliest effective use of cross-cutting (aka “parallel editing”) to generate suspense. In my film history course, I show several earlier films that use cross-cutting to some degree, but do not show an awareness of how it can be used to add suspense and dynamism to plots where it would be appropriate. For instance, in Porter’s Great Train Robbery from 1906, the action switches to different scenes but their length and the editing does not exploit the quick cuts that would generate greater anxiety in viewers by quickening the passage of time during simultaneous action. In 1911, Griffith would again use cross-cutting to heighten suspense in The Lonedale Operator.

Lois Weber
Wikimedia Commons

The foregoing information is given to provide the background for my astonishment in my recent viewing of Suspense, a one-reeler made in 1913 and co-directed by Lois Weber and her husband, Phillips Smalley. The plot is a knock-off of the concept of The Lonely Villa (which was itself a knock-off of a French original, but let us not digress*): a country house with a family inside is threatened by evil-doers while the man of the house is away. In the case of Suspense, a woman and infant are home alone when a tramp sneaks into the house. A phone call to the husband, just as in The Lonely Villa, starts his frantic trip home to try to save his family. Spoiler:  In both cases, he succeeds.

It’s interesting to consider the title of Weber’s film, Suspense. This points not to plot but to a promise of visceral thrills. There are some elements of plot that differ from Griffith’s and could be said to add suspense. For instance, while Griffith’s film features a mother and several children, both young and older, Weber’s scenario (she is credited with the writing) allows for only a woman and infant in the isolated home. Plus, Weber enhances the plot with an added layer of suspense.  The question is not just “will the husband get home in time to rescue his family?” but “will the husband, despite the fact that he is being pursued by police because he’s driving a stolen car, get home in time to rescue his family?” Where Griffith found suspense in the race to the destination, Weber, creates tension among different sources of suspense, through the rush toward the destination, an accident en route, and the attempt to elude pursuit. This last is heightened as the husband constantly looks in his rear-view mirror to judge how close his pursuers have come. These effects function as multiple sources of anxiety for viewers.

Weber’s more provocative achievement though, and the one that did (really!) startle this jaded viewer, is through camera work and the framing of images. Scattered throughout the 10:35 of the film are multiple images presented for maximum destabilizing, anxiety-producing effect (the film gives no photography credit). There is nothing like these shots in The Lonely Villa.

The film opens with the family’s housekeeper writing a note saying that she won’t work in this “lonesome place,” which reinforces the connection between the two films. Without a word to her employer, she picks up her suitcase and leaves. She closes the door and the next shot (1:48) is outside; it’s a high-angle shot through the open top of the porch as she steps away. The effect of this camera angle at first seems a mere curiosity. It seems unmotivated, a destabilizing move from the horizontal to the vertical, but just a camera trick. At 4:50-4:53, though, a shot from the same high angle but slightly closer shows the tramp stepping onto the porch and onto the mat, under which a key is hidden.

At 5:07, the woman, spooked by the presence of the stranger, has retreated to the second floor bedroom with the baby; she steps to the window and two seconds later the shot changes.

What happens next is particularly unsettling for several reasons. First, the viewer may expect an eyeline match, since the woman is at the window presumably looking down, but in that case the unshaven face looking up in a perfectly vertical angle implies that the bedroom window is directly above the porch. This is belied by how close the man’s face is, though. It is so close that the slats of the porch’s roof are not visible.  The shot is a medium close-up showing his threatening face, his foreshortened body and his clutching hands held near his abdomen.

While the implication is that she looks out the window and sees him as the viewer sees him, there is a jarring mismatch between what the diegesis demands and what is needed to produce the maximum startle effect in the viewer. It is also unsettling to realize that the high angle view of the porch has been reserved specifically for viewers. It originates neither in the upstairs window nor at the ground level. It’s a supremely unnatural point of view in limbo belonging only to the camera and the viewer. The angle, the degree of closeness and the detachment of the point of view from any known source work together to strengthen viewer anxiety.

As the woman steps away from the window, Weber reverts to a triple-split-screen matte shot showing three actions happening simultaneously: the tramp picks up the key, the woman phones her husband, and he speaks with her on the phone. Weber uses this unusual effect several times, though it did not originate with her according to a quote from Kevin Brownlow displayed before the narrative begins.

The final scene I want to examine in this kind of detail begins at 9:00. Weber makes good use of the stairway by positioning the camera at the top and filming as the tramp ascends. The man approaches step-by-step until his face—always in focus, eyes challenging the camera and the viewer--almost fills the frame, with an effect reminiscent of the famous close-up in Griffith’s Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912). The view shifts briefly to the inside of the bedroom and the fearful woman; then, to the fist punching through the door, in front of which she has moved a chest. The extended arm punches the door and moves the chest. Back to the screaming woman, then outside to her husband arriving, pursued by cops and an angry car owner. Back to the hand reaching through the door to turn the key; back to the screaming woman. The tramp enters the room, clutching a big, shiny butcher knife. Outside, though, the officers begin to shoot at the husband as he runs to the house. Alarmed, the tramp tries to escape, threatening the husband with the knife at the foot of the stairs, but he is overpowered by the husband and police, and all ends well.

In many ways, this is a far richer film than The Lonely Villa and there is much more that could be said on that score (for instance, the fact that this film is strongly situated in the woman’s experience). Weber is not content to film the action as it takes place before a static camera. While it’s equally true that both directors rely on editing (basic shot/scene editing, as well as parallel editing) to increase the impact of their suspenseful films, Weber’s work is enriched with a wider range of shots, angles, distance and in-camera effects than is Griffith’s. While it’s also true that Weber’s film comes four years later and much changed in those years, this short film seems to demonstrate a unique sense of composition and of deliberately chosen image details (the upturned face, the fist through the door). They are manipulated with the specific aim of inducing in the viewer a very personal sense of uneasiness. Where Griffith is the master of narrative, telling his story but telling it at a distance, Weber shows her talent for narrative but also her strong awareness of how best to use the camera to transfer elements of suspense and destabilization from the screen to the viewer.

*To anyone who does wish to digress, I suggest reading Tom Gunning’s “Heard over the Phone: The Lonely Villa and the De Lorde Tradition of the Terrors of Technology,” Screen 32 (1991): 184-96. The article discusses the sources of The Lonely Villa and then focuses on the importance of telephone technology in the way it can be used to play with time and space and, thereby, add suspense. 

Notes:

The film is available here ( https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-lois-weber/ ) in a restored print. While you’re there, read Shelley Stamp’s profile of Lois Weber.

I want to give a special shout-out to Rick Kelley, whose blog, Luddite Robot, and article on Suspense and horror films started me thinking about what I saw in this film and its relationship to Carol Clover’s and Linda Williams’ discussion of “body genres.” 

Dorothy Davenport Reid--The Road to Ruin (1934)

This may be the last Dorothy Davenport Reid film I watch for this project, unless I locate another one that’s readily available. Let’s re-cap:

• ·         Red Kimona (1925, “Produced under the personal supervision…”)
• ·         Sucker Money (1933, co-directed with Melville Shyer)
• ·         The Woman Condemned (1934, dir. “Mrs. Wallace Reid”)

Yes, I do wish I’d watched them in chronological order.

“Mrs. Wallace Reid” co-directed 1934’s The Road to Ruin with Melville Shyer with whom she also paired for Sucker Money (1933). The film was produced under the auspices of Willis Kent and debuted in March 1934 only a month before The Woman Condemned, also a Willis Kent production. Like that film, this film does not bear any Code seal of approval.

This is an exploitation film. The Road to Ruin doesn’t suffer from the poorly-motivated action that characterized The Woman Condemned and made it very confusing to follow. It also doesn’t suffer from the hysteria of Reefer Madness, which came out in 1936. This is a conventional story of the naïve new-girl-in-town who gets in with the wrong crowd. Kissing, smoking, dancing and staying out late mix with alcohol, which leads to sex, which leads to illegal abortion that leads to death. Risqué jokes shared by bad parents are also implicated.

Parents who are poor role models or too trusting are at fault. The concrete suggestion about how to fix the problem comes from a social worker, who speaks with Ann (Helen Foster, the naïve girl) and Eve (Nell O’Day, the girl who knows a little too much about the seedy side of life) after they and a bunch of drunken friends have been picked up by the police.  The two girls have been labeled “sex delinquents” by the police and after both girls have been examined by the doctor, Eve has to be treated for a sexually-transmitted disease. When Mrs. Dixon, Ann’s mother, comes to pick her up, the social worker tells her what today’s young people need is knowledge, that is, honest, realistic instruction about sex.

This film does not have a frame of direct address to the audience that would put it squarely in the exploitation genre, nor does it end with a warning for the audience, but warning it is. There are no flashbacks to “where she went wrong” or to scenes of hypocritical parents. The structure is entirely linear and chronological. It struck me though that the film was quite remarkable in two ways.

I was surprised at the very open treatment of sex. This film was far more clear about what was happening than any film from the 1950s that I have seen. I imagine that since the film was presented as a lesson and warning, that may have made its straightforwardness more palatable. But 1934 is the year of tightened Code enforcement, so I am curious about how long this kind of realism lasted. The film is relatively low-key about all of these matters and manages to stay just this side of sensationalism. We are aware that these high schoolers’ road to hell is trodden with many a misstep, but it is also interesting to note how little blame or responsibility they are given for their behavior.

Of the parents we are shown, only Mrs. Dixon comes out clean. Eve’s mother, Mrs. Monroe, is separated from Eve’s father. She has a male friend and she is rarely at home.  When she is at home, she is entertaining guests who drink a lot and tell dirty jokes. When Eve is taken up by the police, it’s not immediately clear where her mother can be found. Ann’s mother, on the other hand, is a nice, conventional lady, who makes a mistake in trusting her daughter too much in a new town where the daughter lacks guidance about who the good and bad companions are in her school. Mr. Dixon, who seems like a concerned but busy and rather remote parent, leaves the house saying he is going to a conference, but gets into a taxi in which there is a companion and directs the cab to a hotel. The hypocrisy of adults is pointed out in other ways.  For instance, on the evening of the police raid, neighbors are watching the young people’s misbehavior, which involves the girls taking off most of their clothes and jumping into a pool, and while the watching woman is simply outraged at the behavior, the man expresses outrage but can’t pull himself away from the sight of so many nearly-naked young women. Adults, not high school kids, are obviously the addressees.

Dorothy Davenport Reid was set on the road to making films like this by the death of her husband Wallace Reid from morphine addiction in 1923 when he was only 31. Her first film along these lines, Human Wreckage, was made shortly after his death.  All prints of that film are assumed lost.

By 1934, though, such films had worn out their welcome and with stronger enforcement of the Code on the way, it is unlikely that these morality plays that verged on—or careened into--sensationalism would thrive. They survived the flappers of the 1920s (indeed, producer Willis Kent had made The Road to Ruin as a silent film in 1928, starring Helen Foster who would have been, at the age of 22, more convincing in her role as a high school girl than she is here, six years later, as Ann), but would not survive the changing tastes of Depression-Era moviegoers.

How History Is Lost

The more a thing gets repeated, the more it will be believed and accepted as true. This repetition works whether the information is factual or not. I was reminded of this last night while browsing Twitter.  I saw a post from AmyPoehlerSmartGirls (@smrtgrls) that celebrated the great American director, Dorothy Arzner, on what would have been her 120th birthday.

The tweet included a link to a short film about Arzner's work and life. I was overjoyed to see this recognition but the film itself perpetuated some misinformation that just goes to show how women's history is lost. Arzner's described as the "ONLY American film director working in the 1930s" and as the "First woman to join the Directors' Guild of America."

This is all perfectly well-intended, but these two statements are simply not true. Or, rather, the first is not true and the second is misleading.

In the early 1930s, Dorothy Davenport Reid (sometimes "Mrs. Wallace Reid") was still directing in a long career of acting, directing, writing and producing that started in 1910. I have recently watched three sound films that she directed or co-directed in the 1930s:

• Sucker Money (1933, co-directed with Melville Shyer)
• The Woman Condemned (1934, dir. “Mrs. Wallace Reid”)
• The Road to Ruin (1934, co-directed with Melville Shyer)

In regard to the second statement about Arzner's membership in the DGA, this is misleading. The Motion Picture Directors' Association was founded in 1915.  This organization was the predecessor of the Directors' Guild of America, which took over in 1936. The interesting story of how and why the transition occurred can be found here, http://www.dga.org/BeforeTheGuild.

Photoplay Oct. 1916
Source information

The point is, though, that in 1916, one year after its founding, Lois Weber was selected as a member. At the time, Weber was the mayor of Universal City, the "top director" at Universal Film Manufacturing Company, and "the first woman inducted into the Motion Picture Directors' Association" (Shelley Stamp, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, U of Cal P, 2015, 4).

So, notice how the laudable desire to celebrate the achievements of Dorothy Arzner can so easily become an eliding of history to overlook, and bury deeper, the achievements of other women, in this case Lois Weber and Dorothy Davenport Reid.

In fact, in the introduction to her book, as elsewhere in the text, Stamp demonstrates how "onliness" can backfire, particularly if social and industry changes work together to marginalize women. I won't recite that argument here--read the book, it is a wonderful exploration of early Hollywood--but in celebrating the uniqueness of one woman's achievements (that individualism has great appeal to Americans), we may send the message that such achievements are only possible for unique women or that they can achieve in certain areas (only) because they are women. 

Weber started as a director for everyone, but was gradually pressed farther into "women's pictures" and discovering and shaping female stars. From controlling the whole show, she became merely a handmaiden to talent, because she was the "only" one with the uniquely female status. Hollywood became more male (both in assumptions about the jobs involved and in its population) during the 1920s and, thus, the histories that were written were the histories of male achievements and if women are there at all they are not the main story, they remain at the margin, female, unique and "only." As Stamp says, "Before her career was even over, Weber was effectively written out of the story" (8).

I have not (yet) become that familiar with Dorothy Arzner's story.  I do know that it is quite different from Weber's and Davenport Reid's. I also know that she is one of very few early women directors featured in any film history texts I have used (there might be a sentence about Ida Lupino and a paragraph about Arzner). The work of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women in the early days of film is rarely given so much as a sidebar, and when it's in a sidebar, that is the visual representation of marginalization. It speaks to lost history, history that is there but for which we must dig in archives and old trade publications, and when we accept women's status as "only" then we tacitly accept the way history has been handed to us. We ourselves need to examine the language of these celebrations and what it implies and we must always examine the context in which these "only" achievements took place.  Otherwise, we bury the achievements of other women just a little deeper.

Dorothy Davenport Reid--The Red Kimona (1925)

As in 1933’s Sucker Money, The Red Kimona (1925) illustrates the complexities of determining Dorothy Davenport Reid’s precise contribution to many of the films with which she is associated.  In The Red Kimona (also to be found as The Red Kimono), Walter Lang is credited as director and “Mrs. Wallace Reid” is credited prominently as the producer: “Produced under the personal supervision of Mrs. Walter Reid.”

In his article on Davenport Reid for the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University, Mark Lynn Anderson attempts to sort out this question. He notes that when Gabrielle Darley brought a lawsuit seeking damages for the use of her life story without her permission, it was Davenport Reid, not Lang, as well as her director of photography, James Diamond, and production manager, Cliff Houghton, who were sued. This does seem to point to Davenport Reid as having a great deal of responsibility for the production. It may be that, as Anderson suggests, further study will determine the reasons for her lack of a directing credit here. However, her role in bringing the movie to the screen seems to have been central since pains were taken to highlight it.

The film has more than one major female artist attached to it. The story came originally from the reporting of Adela Rogers St. John and the scenario is credited to Dorothy Arzner. Davenport Reid’s own production company brought out the film.

This is a stronger film in most ways than Sucker Money or The Woman Condemned and that’s not just because of the fine restoration of this print by the Library of Congress and the Motion Picture Preservation Center.  The print is sharp and without any intrusive breaks. This far older film has the visual clarity and coherence of narrative that raise it above both of those later films. And while the narrative structure is admirably complex, it has no lapses into incoherence. It does operate with a reliance on coincidence that marks the melodrama, but it isn’t distractingly reliant on coincidence in a way that weakens the plot. Character motivation is strong here and the dialogue carried by intertitles is well above average. The acting by most principals is good. Priscilla Bonner as Gabrielle is a little too reminiscent of Lillian Gish in some of her gestures, though she is never guilty of raising her hand to push the corners of her mouth into a rictus grin.

This is the story of a young woman lured from her rural home by a man who promises her marriage if she will only come with him to his home in New Orleans. When they arrive though, he pawns her off on a pimp, while stringing her along. When he leaves for Los Angeles without a word, she follows him and finds him in H.E. Reid Jewelers buying a wedding ring, but not for her. He looks upon her with contempt and she shoots him. She’s tried for his murder but is, to everyone’s surprise, found not guilty.

A publicity-seeking society matron takes her in, as Gabrielle has no family, friends or money. There follow many uncomfortable scenes of social hypocrisy and self-interested philanthropy.

She and the matron’s chauffeur, Freddy, fall in love, but when he leaves on a trip with his employer, Gabrielle is dropped by the matron with only a letter of recommendation to a local hospital superintendent, because the young woman has often expressed an interest in doing useful work to make up for her errors. In her interview, it’s made clear that there is no place for a fallen woman in hospital work. Job opportunities are few and she is always dogged by the notoriety that her association with the matron has given her. Unable to contact Freddy, she finally decides to return to New Orleans and the fate that awaits her there, though she is still very resistant to the idea. Freddy arrives at the L.A. depot after a high-speed, careening drive through the city (too late!) and eventually pursues her to New Orleans.  He misses her again (too late!) because, trying to escape from a pimp who is attempting to take her back into prostitution, she is hit by a car and hospitalized.

Finally, because of the increased need for hospital help (the story is set in 1917-18 just as the USA enters the war and the influenza epidemic is underway) she’s taken on as a cleaner. Meanwhile, Freddy has joined the troops waiting to be shipped to the front. Escorting an ambulance to the hospital one day, he sees Gabrielle and they’re reunited. He immediately asks her to marry him and simultaneously he is notified that his unit is getting ready to leave (too late!). Surprisingly, she says “’Not now. Maybe when you come back. First I have to earn my right to happiness. I’ll be waiting’” (too soon!).  He accepts this and we are left to hope that he eventually returns.

In this summary, it’s clear that this is a melodrama.  It is also a social problem film because the melodrama is wrapped, beginning and end, in a narrative of social concern that makes a direct appeal to women to “face our responsibility” to assist women such as Gabrielle to get back on their feet and to not be the ones to cast the first stone. The film is not at all reticent in exposing the hypocrisy of the well-to-do, especially idle women of the higher classes, but even the lawyer who obtains freedom for Gabrielle takes her rings in payment and then Gabrielle sees his high-society wife, who is getting ready to dismiss Gabrielle, her maid, because her past has come to light, wearing one of those rings. The hypocrisy is carried even in sanctioned legal services and legal tender. Freddy has already been allowed to point out to the society matron who employed him that her “’two-bit philanthropy’” in which she took up Gabrielle’s cause for her own publicity, has forced Gabrielle back onto the streets. He says to her, with shocking clarity: “’You just happen to be lucky—you got a wedding ring,” a statement that seems to condemn not only her hypocrisy but also the status of marriage as a kind of legal prostitution.

Though there are many fascinating points to be made about this film, I’ll highlight just three more.

The narrative is very successful in using its multiple frames in an unobtrusive manner. An allegorical scene (presumably enacting the struggles of fallen women) begins and ends the film.  Within this allegorical frame we find the confirmation that this story is ripped from the headlines: A beautiful and somber woman enters a room and sits to examine a newspaper archive from 1917. This establishes not only the date of the story we will see, but we are also shown a close-up of the headlines reporting the Gabrielle Darley story and, around it, we see articles about the build-up to war. The somber woman (this dark-eyed beauty is Davenport Reid herself) speaks directly to the audience at the beginning and the end of the narrative, with her final words a plea. Within this narrative framework that grants truth-status to the story we’re about to watch, is the story itself.  And it contains flashbacks.  These complicated narrative layers are handled seamlessly.

While much of the credit for the visual sophistication of this film must lie with James Diamond, whose work was also seen in Sucker Money, I hope that Dorothy Davenport Reid’s refined eye is also responsible for much of what we are shown. There are so many scenes of visual interest and sophistication that I can only mention a few here. At about 12:20, when Gabrielle is in jail, she is shown in a high angle shot through bars, but there are also shadows of bars and there are bars behind her. The cinematography is worthy of Fritz Lang. In another scene, after Gabrielle has been in New Orleans for a while, we see her from the waist up in a bridal veil carrying in flowers; then the perspective switches and we realize that she is clothed in everyday wear and is seeing this bridal fantasy in the mirror. It’s a powerful reminder that she still loves the man who has put her in the brothel and that she still has hope. Another scene at 41:21 shows the view through a window into the matron’s house as Gabrielle passes by, glancing out the window, then turning away from it to show her hands clutched behind her back. The shot makes the point that Gabrielle is as much a prisoner in this mansion as she was in jail. In fact, she later returns to the jail looking for the wardress who was kind to her, only to be told that the woman is gone. Her luck is so bad she can’t even find shelter in the jail.

Finally, the film shows a fairly refined sense of “upstairs/downstairs” social tensions and a perhaps too sentimental sense of the empathy of the lower classes for a woman of Gabrielle’s status. In the mansion, an upstairs maid (a fine, uncredited performance in a small role) looks on with knowing disapproval of how Gabrielle is being used by her employer, while the housekeeper, a budding Mrs. Danvers, is cruel and haughty to everyone else on the staff and to Gabrielle as well. Just in case Gabrielle somehow feels that the matron has singled her out, the housekeeper notes that at least Gabrielle lasted longer than some of her employer’s other social projects, such as the burglar. The film at several points presses home the notion that the poor and lower classes feel empathy with other sufferers more than do the hypocritical rich (the ragged woman wiping her tears in the courtroom scene, the wardress in the jail, Freddy's friend at Western Union). While that sentimentality may seem a step too far for the modern viewer, the closely-observed portrait of oppression within the serving class itself is marvelous.

This is a rich film that conveys a social message but still feels natural and unforced. It never flags and it surprises (check out the scene on the rollercoaster) at many turns. I can recommend not only Anderson’s article that treats the film in some detail, but also an insightful review by blogger Kathleen Rooney that examines some “proto-feminist values” conveyed by the film.

Dorothy Davenport Reid--Sucker Money (1933)

Dorothy Davenport Reid directed this film as “Dorothy Reid,” with a co-director, Melville Shyer. A bare plot summary—and the subtitle, “An exposé of the psychic racket,”--give the impression that it is a clumsy perhaps lurid attempt at an exploitation film. That’s far from the truth.

There is no warning about the dangers lurking among the séance crowd and there is no straight-into-the-camera serious lecture about the average person’s gullibility delivered by a pipe-smoking professor or doctor sitting at a desk. The film does not pose as a documentary.  It is a crime melodrama, suspenseful and well-paced, and the acting is creditable on the part of Mischa Auer, as the villainous Swami Yomurda (yes, say that quickly), and Mae Busch as Mame, a worn and cynical member of the group of fakes and swindlers, who is not too far gone to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

Mae Busch (1923)
--Wikimedia Commons

Jimmy Reeves (Earl McCarty) is a young newspaper reporter and a former actor.  Because of this latter skill, his editor sends him undercover to get a job with a psychic who, the editor suspects, is a con artist. In his first day on the job, he falls for Clare Walton (Phyllis Barrington) whose well-to-do father is the target of the Swami’s fraud. The Swami’s traveling group of crooks goes from town to town bilking people out of their money. After much ado involving the hypnotizing and kidnapping of Clare and the payment of a ransom, the cops catch up with the Swami, though not before he kills two women, including Mame, and attempts to murder the group’s man on the outside, George Hunter (Al Bridge), who has befriended Mr. Walton and Clare. All comes right in the end, with the Swami dead and Clare and Jimmy united and headed for Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where Jimmy will take a job in banking. (Yes, there is something really funny in that level of specificity in 1933 during the Depression, but I digress…).

The plot is conventional in many ways but the persuasive acting of Mae Busch gives it a heart. Her role is of decent size and there are plenty of opportunities for her to offer a performance that ranges from nearly raging, desperate with an alcoholic thirst, to regretful, thoughtful and quietly tragic. When she is on the screen she is extraordinary. Her subtle acting is perfectly captured by the camera. She is usually photographed in medium shots, not close ups, so the acting has to be legible and convincing at that distance. I will certainly be keeping an eye out for her in future #52FilmsByWomen viewing.

If “traveling group of crooks” has you thinking “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” (with a nod to Cher) you might also think about a traveling troupe of actors and their ability to set up camp, put on a show that amazes and immerses the audience, then pull up stakes and move to another town and perform the same stunt for a new audience.

The subtext here, and it is possible to read it as intentional, is about actors and audience, the way an audience willingly gives itself up to the fantasy on the screen. About twenty minutes into the film, a spectacle (the “manifestation,” as the Swami calls it) is performed for Mr. Walton and others in fairly large audience.

The segment of the film from 17:44-24:53 is the first set of “manifestations.” There are three manifestations that are interrupted by cuts to the audience or to the changing room where Mame and Jimmy are getting ready for their performances, which are the second and third manifestations.

From the meta-cinematic perspective, the first manifestation is remarkable. As proof that the seer, Princess Karami, can see both the past and the future, the Swami draws aside curtains revealing what appears to be a screen or reflective surface. He announces that the seer will make scenes of the past “materialize upon the sacred onyx” and Karami herself follows this with, the scenes “will be inscribed forever upon the records of eternity.” Upon the “onyx” on screen we, situated behind and somewhat above the diegetic audience (see screenshot), watch a moving picture “materialize”; it shows the Waltons and the nefarious George walking along the street. The Waltons and George react with astonishment, recognizing that their actions from a previous day are being shown on the screen.

At the end of this first segment, the camera cuts to Mame and Jimmy behind the scenes. Previously, we non-diegetic viewers have watched them do their lighting tests and consider the proper poses to take. Now the players apply make-up and put on their wigs and costumes. We are privy to all of this including the skilled labor of the lighting specialist who works with some pretty fancy equipment; his hand is shown on two occasions pulling the lever of the dimmer. Here, he enters carrying the motion picture projector used for the onyx display and it’s explained by Mame to Jimmy. This is the equipment used to take advantage of the “saps,” as Mame calls them. The technical mechanisms of performance and performance itself are highlighted in the film. The Swami’s house is a space of performance and exhibition, even of spectacle.

Now to return to the moment of the first manifestation:

We, the non-diegetic audience, watch almost as members of the on-screen audience, and we unexpectedly see projected a scene that we have already viewed, but it is now at a further distance, within the film we are watching.  There is a film within the film, but it is disorienting because this is no ordinary film. This is an unsettling moment of the fantastic.

Questions immediately distracted and absorbed me:  I first accepted it as simply the repeating of a scene I had already viewed being shown again in a different context. I would call this extra-textual thinking on my part--“The film editor has just reused this segment of film.” But this thought was quickly overtaken by the question of how this film could exist. Who made it? Where were they when we were watching the Waltons ourselves?

The Waltons are the intended audience. The film means something only to them; the rest of the audience does not understand its significance. The Waltons realize they are viewing a scene they enacted unaware that they were performing for “the records of eternity.” George, that faker, even exclaims, “Great Scott, that is uncanny!” (19:54).

And indeed it is.
 

It is uncanny in one way for the Waltons, whose subjective experience is exhibited objectively from an unknown point of view; this is an uncanny repetition.  For the non-diegetic audience, me, for instance, it is doubly uncanny.  I was aware of watching them on film the first time they were shown on the street, but that’s what films do. The repetition of their performance (isn’t an element of the uncanny already present in any film experience?) at this remove made me question who had been filming over my shoulder, as I experienced their stroll filtered through my own subjectivity, never realizing that my experience was also being filmed.  And would be repeated in a new context.

I only wish there were some way to show all of those flashes of thought in there proper sequence and at the speed with which they occurred in my mind. I was so caught up in thinking about all of this, I don’t even recall what happened at the end of the scene. I was perfectly comfortable in my privileged spectatorship, quite cognizant that I knew it was all a stunt and that there were real actors involved, then I had to adjust to absorb this shock.  The experience was much more shocking and discomfiting than this makes it sound.

At the end of the first manifestation, the camera cuts to Mame and Jimmy. Mame explains the use of the motion picture camera and explains how the film of the Waltons was obtained. It turns out that the non-diegetic audience was shown the set-up but we can only understand it in retrospect. When the Waltons went for their walk with George, a truck, shown to us, follows them and films them. The Waltons are the stars of a movie they didn’t know they were in, one with a larger and darker plot than they realized.  George, who accompanied them, though, must have known they were all performing in a small, boring drama that would only gain significance when it was shown to the appropriate audience.

Later, a police detective who gets close to the “onyx” remarks, “I get the gag. Everything down below is reflected on the black glass.”

This was very satisfying viewing. The plot rolled on smoothly and was far more entertaining and comprehensible than that of A Woman Condemned, but the admirable complexity lay in the relationships among the performers, in the rich performance of Mae Busch, and in the sense that in the minds of the directors they were having their own little gag, giving their own “sacred onyx” some unanticipated depth, and making us (the “saps”?) look over our shoulders suspiciously for at least an anxious moment or two.

This film is available streaming through Amazon in the USA. That version is 59 minutes, while Pitts* lists it at 70 min. I wonder what happened in those additional 11 minutes?

*Pitts, Michael R. Poverty Row Studios, 1929-1940. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2005.

Dorothy Davenport Reid--The Woman Condemned (1934)

Watching Dorothy Davenport Reid’s The Woman Condemned (Progressive Pictures, 1934) reminded me of my experiences a few years ago watching Oscar Micheaux’s early sound films. The production values aren’t good, the acting ranges from bad, to serviceable, to nearly exceptional, and the character psychology and the plot itself are under-motivated. I wasn’t necessarily expecting great entertainment and the mystery, when it is revealed, is, yes, hokey, but I have some thoughts on that and more. Many things about the movie proved interesting.

Davenport Reid, who directs this film as “Mrs. Wallace Reid,” had already been a silent film actress and a producer, and then the owner of her own short-lived production company, “Mrs. Wallace Reid Productions.” Her choice to identify herself as “Mrs. Wallace Reid” professionally was apt to have been influenced by the scandal of her actor-husband Wallace’s death from morphine addiction in 1923. He was a well-known actor and it was not unlikely that putting this professional name forward was a tribute to him. Additionally, the identification of her with his name strengthened her in co-producing and in speaking for and promoting the social issues film, Human Wreckage (1923), about the dangers of drug addiction, in which she plays the addict’s wife.

The Condemned Woman is a murder mystery in which a successful radio performer, Jane Merrick (Lola Lane), is seemingly murdered and an enigmatic woman, Barbara Hammond (Claudia Dell), is arrested for the crime. There are also two romantic subplots (one fulfilled; the other seemingly on its way), some misdirection involving a doctor, and—spoiler!—it turns out Jane was not murdered but…well, you’ll have to watch it.

While the viewer must suspend disbelief to accept much of what happens, there are some discoveries to be made as well. First, this is a film from a Poverty Row studio, Progressive, so I’m sure that the director was doing the best she could with what she was offered. Looking beyond the plot, something that struck me is that had the two actresses exchanged roles, this would have been a much better film. In the role of Jane, Lola Lane doesn’t get much screen time, but her poise and naturalness are a wonder. Her looks and style immediately bring Norma Shearer to mind.  In the role of Barbara, Claudia Dell has a lot more to do, but she is not a pleasure to watch. Of course, she is, as it turns out, both acting a role in the movie and acting a role within the plot, so she had quite a challenge, but natural and poised she is not.  There are also long periods where the camera is on her but she has no dialogue, which was quite strange. She, by the way, is the heroine.

Within the film, continuous concern is voiced by the radio station manager (Jim is played by Jason Robards, Sr.) that when the star whose popularity supports the whole studio is on “vacation,” they are going to lose their audience. This is proven true but it doesn’t do a thing to move the action forward. After all, the manager is the man who is in love with Jane, but his worries about studio finances seem to exceed his interest in her mystery vacation, at least for a while. The issue continues to crop up in a way that could be construed as a comment upon under-financed filmmaking itself. What can a guy (or a gal) do without any talent on hand?

Finally, I would like to engage in some speculation about the issue that motivates Jane’s disappearance. We learn late in the film that she has disappeared because she wants to have a birthmark removed. She wants to keep this private. Now, I ask you, a birthmark?  She’s a radio star!  Maybe she has big dreams of breaking into Hollywood films, though.  In any case, this is why she has gone into hiding. 

Here is my purely speculative notion: I’m wondering if it was something more serious, say, a pregnancy, that might have been the originally scripted reason for her “vacation.” The film was released in 1934, the year that the Code really started being enforced. The print I watched did not bear the seal of approval of the Hays Office, but it was released at a time when it would have been just about impossible to bring to the screen a film that featured an unanticipated and troublesome pregnancy. While directors of “B” pictures may have had a freer hand in some ways than directors at big studios, it would probably not have extended this far, though Davenport Reid’s background was in so-called “exploitation” films (see Human Wreckage above).

I’m not planning to go in search of the original script, but if anyone else would like to, let me know what you find out.

At the end of the film, we learn that Jane had been involved previously with a mobster, Dan, and that much of what we have seen was a performance designed to entrap Dan and get him to admit to the murder. Dan appeared earlier, in Jane’s apartment on the night she was killed, and was a threatening presence. He killed her when he returned after five years in prison, or so they say. It’s hard to give credence to that when viewers saw Barbara fire a gun at Jane, saw Jane fall and be declared dead.  Oh, but wait, that was Jane’s sister, who took Jane’s place while she was in the hospital. And the sister…never mind.

I don’t want to forget to mention some brief but impressive night photography, during a car chase, showing a city’s flashing neon lights at what appears to be Christmas-time and I can’t leave without noting that in this film the fine Louise Beavers gets to slam a door in a man’s face because he offers her money to spill the beans on Jane.

The film is available here: https://archive.org/details/TheWomanCondemned

For more details on Dorothy Davenport Reid’s life and work and the continuing challenges of accounting for her contributions in film, these points are highlighted in Mark Lynn Anderson’s profile at the Women Film Pioneers Project. The site also provides a filmography and additional resources.