Oh Evelyn, you’re incorrigible, Renée, you’re adorable and
Thomas, my Meighan, you’re faultless as well: what a good cast and what an
interesting film
The Mating Call
proves to be. There’s proto-screwball, with Brent providing the template for
Lombard and Hepburn to follow, shocking skinny dipping (really) and a KKK-type
body known as The Order who dispense local justice for local people with all
the due diligence of the Kray Twins.
James Cruze directed and some fella name of Howard Hughes
produced a film that was as brave in its subject matter as his previous film
with Meighan, The Racket, which dealt
with the thorny topic of Al Capone and the Mob who no doubt took as close an
interest in their fictional representation as the KKK who then numbered some
four million members across American society.
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| Thomas Meighan - maybe more Mitchum than Wayne on second thoughts... |
There are similarities between the two films beyond the
criminal clubs with Meighan playing a fine, upstanding Irish American having to
contend with smartly-assertive women. Brent’s character is a flirt, a
manipulator but true to herself in much the same way as Marie Prevost in
The Racket: she knows what she wants and
she’s not going to apologise for wanting to get it. Louise Brooks may have
famously referred to Brent as like an arctic roll but this is a warm-hearted
performance that whilst not a million miles away from Feathers is the polar
opposite of the long-suffering big-sis she played in
Love ‘em and Leave ‘em – her breakthrough film with Brooksie.
She and Meighan have a great chemistry especially when
he’s manhandling her into her car and away from his libido as she tries to wrap
herself around him.
 |
| Brassy? |
Against brassy-Brent we have the Gallic charms of Renée
Adorée… or do we? In a shock announcement (to me anyway) Tony Fletcher revealed
that not only was she born in Germany her father was a British music hall
performer – she played down the German connection to become Renee from Lille. This
is a story indeed as even Wiki and IMDB have this wrong and I look forward to
Tony screening his documentary on the actress at the Bioscope.
Whatever her origin – British, really? – the woman had skill and here is able to act herself out
of the un-promising scenario of being a bride for hire at Ellis Island
immigration in a story line so modern it hurts: these people coming over to our
country and upsetting the Clan etc. She melts into the frame in contrast to
Evelyn’s bolder intrusions (as Brooks said, her opening gambit was often to adopt
The Stance and fire forth…) and even with a relatively limited amount of screen
time – a lot happens – she wins sympathy and also convinces as a romantic
partner for Thomas M who is about as romantically convincing as John Wayne.
  |
| Renée not from Lille |
The plot? Thomas Meighan plays Leslie Hatton who, whilst
serving as an officer in the war, marries his village sweetheart Rose (Evelyn
Brent) before returning to the front. After the war he returns eager to
commence married life only to find that Rose parents have annulled the marriage
on the grounds of their daughter’s youth (eh?) and that she has married
businessman and serial philanderer Lon Henderson (Alan Roscoe).
Lon and Rose were made for each other and share the same
desire to absolutely be with someone else as often as possible. Rose still
carries a candelabra for Mr Hatton whilst Lon’s carrying on with young Jessie
(Helen Foster) and moonlighting as a leading light in The Order, dressing up in
black hoods (not white: black) in order that The Order may maintain order.
 |
| The exterior shots are well made. |
All this is too much for Les who decides that the only
way to get Rose out of his hair – and everywhere else, you should see the way
she applies her perfume… saucy is not the word… is to claim he’s already
re-married. He hasn’t but this is where he does a deal with Renée Adorée’s
Catherine and her family: room and board in exchange for marriage.
Not a promising start to any relationship but, but… once
you’ve seen Catherine cook breakfast, bath a piglet and, astonishingly, swim
around with fewer clothes than Hedy Lamarr five years later… you’ll understand
why the big lug falls for her.
But… there will be other complications too complicated to
mention here: a suicide, some incriminating letters, the Order flogging to the
wrong conclusions and much more.
 |
| The Order keep order |
The film was believed lost for many years and shows the
developments in story and performance that would morph into the “pre-code”
talkies although here the images carry more weight than dialogue would have
allowed…
Kevin Brownlow introduced reading from an essay full of
his personal recollections of the film makers – he’s a personal emissary from
the era that transfixes us.
 |
| Will Rogers and his ropin' |
For the opening session Kevin showed us a fun film about lassoing
starring Will Rogers in the self-depreciatingly entitled
The Ropin’ Fool (1922). The film showed Will’s tricks in real time
and then in slow motion and his ability to throw a rope under a horse to lasso
its rider has to be seen to be believed. Rogers seems quite the character
saying if folk didn’t like the film, he’d grow a beard, pretend to be German
and they’d call it “art”.
The things dropped back a few millennia for a double-dose
of Ben Hur… and what a difference two decades can make. The original Ben from
1907 was shot from a static camera which failed to capture even the majesty of
a few horses against a painted backdrop whereas the 1925 is genuinely epic in a
way that still stands against its CGI-drenched remake.
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| Mass spectacle in 1907... |
Kevin showed the whole of the chariot race which still
thrills on the big screen with a dust-mote sunshine depth of field as Ramon
Navarro and Francis X Bushman are filmed amongst the chaos. It’s the knowledge
that they and the actual riders, horse and crew where in a genuinely perilous
environment that makes the contest gripping.
But not everything in the huge arena was as it seemed,
the upper tiers of the Circus Maximus were formed of small figures
hand-operated to create the effect of a living crowd with the camera shooting
the models close-up to give the seamless effect seen on screen.
 |
| ...and in 1925! |
Costas Fotopoulos accompanied The Mating Call with
classical flourishes and Meg Morley was on hand to musically-enhance the
evening’s opening section (Carl Davis too, although not in person).
Another enlightening evening in Kennington – thank you to all
at
the Bioscope.
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