Plot Intro
Southern Belle Norma Besant (Mary Pickford) is flitting between men despite her father’s (John St Polis) preference for dull but well-to-do Stanley Wentworth (Matt Moore). But Norma suddenly falls in love with Michael Jeffrey (Johnny Mack Brown), a man whom her father distrusts immensely...
Doug says...
This is a hilariously melodramatic film involving shootings, suicides and lots of very inaudible dialogue. Clocking in at 1 hour 15 minutes, this is setting a trend for the next few years for very short films drawing attention for their lead female performances. The storyline is ridiculous and reflects my thoughts already that the audiences of the 1920s wanted melodrama, almost-Shakespearean plot convolutions and MANY shots of heroines pressing the backs of their hands to their foreheads in despair. In this case, Coquette delivers entirely.
It feels a little mean to judge by our modern standards therefore, as clearly the desires of cinema-goers were very different. But I’m going to judge it anyway.
The plot is ridiculous and yet somehow they manage to crowbar lots of scenes of dialogue in - mainly because most of the action happens offstage, Greek Tragedy style. I also struggled in that we had no subtitles and the sound quality was so appalling that I think I genuinely caught about three lines of dialogue in the whole thing. Luckily for me, they’re still doing Silent Film Acting (lots of eye-rolls, large dramatic poses, quick elongated movements) so I managed to stay pretty much aware of what was going on.
However, I can see why they chose to reward Mary Pickford (a renowned name) with this second Best Actress award. She doesn’t have much in a lot of it, but suddenly towards the end she gets a deathbed scene and a courtroom scene in which she displays stunningly modern naturalistic acting, and makes the acting of her peers seem wooden and dusty. She’s doing a lot at once - keeping the movements and expressions of silent film acting, while somehow making it seem entirely real and spontaneous. It’s a bit of a Luise Rainer moment (when she won an Oscar for a telephone call scene in The Great Ziegfeld) - she’s given a good meaty moment to prove her talent, so she does exactly that.
I feel like this may be setting a new trend that we’ll see in this project, where the film itself may be not that great, or quite flawed, but the lead performance is so good that it draws acclaim. In fact the most recent example of this would be Renee Zellwegger winning for Judy, where the film was widely described as a let down, but her performance regarded as peerless. It’ll be interesting to see how this continues.
Highlight
The courtroom scene, where - despite not being able to hear a word - Mary Pickford slowly showed us her skill with naturalistic acting as Norma emotionally breaks down.
Lowlight
The ridiculous and frankly silly plot.
Mark
6/10
Paul says...
As with the Best Pictures, the second Best Actress winner is the first in sound. The transition from silent to sound was shockingly quick, sending a great deal of silent movie stars into a career black hole. One of them just so happened to be this week’s actress, Mary Pickford.
Pickford is one of the most important and prolific stars of Hollywood’s early years. She was not only a co-founder of the Academy itself, she was also a co-founder of United Artists in 1919 along with Charlie Chaplin and her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. On top of this, she spearheaded various Hollywood initiatives to help the war effort during the First World War. Truly am outstanding businessperson. Her first movies date back to 1909, a year in which, at the age of 17, she featured in 51 different movies. Her cascading ringlet hairstyle became her signature look and she became one of the biggest stars of the silent era.
Coquette was her first foray into sound, and the first time audiences heard the voice of such a well-established star. Chopping off her ringlets for the shorter, tighter hairdo she sports here was front page news, apparently. Interestingly, her win of Best Actress is considered quite controversial because, as a founding member of the Academy, Pickford was aware of her nomination and invited the judges over for tea. The other nominees were not aware of their nominations until later.
Without the prior knowledge, she may well not have won for her performance alone. She’s pretty good in some scenes, particularly a final one where, weak and broken, she slowly leaves the courthouse. She’s also careful to ensure that Norma isn’t an immoral, manipulative brat like, say, Scarlett O’Hara. She’s actually very kind to everyone including the dull suitor Stanley who she knows loves her. But for a lot of it, I found Pickford a bit lugubrious. In her defence, so is everyone else. We’re at that weird period of cinema where you could hear what the actors were saying, but they were still overacting as if they were in silent films. It took a few more years for directors to twig that, with a more full-bodied script, you don’t need the leading lady to throw herself weeping and screaming onto the floor at the drop of a hat.
Coquette itself feels like a very silly little melodrama, a histrionic play about characters seeking vengeance and declaring love within a matter of seconds. It’s tricky to know on which side you’re meant to be (Doug pointed out that it’s trying to be a Greek tragedy in that way) which I usually enjoy, but it’s also difficult to work out what the film is trying to achieve. Sheer entertainment? A commentary on the southern states’ obsession with propriety? If either of these are correct, it still falls short.
Although Pickford machivellianed her way to the Oscar, her career dive-bombed. She was known for playing ingenues and fiery young women which is very much her character here. The problem is that, presumably, Norma Besant is meant to be barely 21. Pickford was 36. With her usual roles going to new generations of actresses, and struggling with the new art form of sound acting, Pickford retired from acting just five years after the release of Coquette, in 1933, although she had a hand in producing every now and then. She struggled with alcoholism, particularly after her divorce from Fairbanks, but re-married another actor, Buddy Rogers. They adopted two children but apparently Pickford was quite horrid towards them and struggled to show love in what sounds like a very Mommy Dearest sort of situation. She died in 1979.
Highlight
When Pickford finds her dying beloved, she does do a great job of tenderly denying his death and coming to terms with it. Her histrionics in the next scene are less moving but highly entertaining nonetheless.
Lowlight
Like Doug, I’m not a fan of the plot in general. I know Americans all have guns (and this is a film set in the South) but seeing Norma’s father immediately grab a gun just because he doesn’t like the bloke she wants to marry is a bit daft. As are a couple of other plot points later on.
Mark
3/10
No comments:
Post a Comment