“I hate him, he
lets me do whatever I want! Why does marriage spoil men? It makes them just
husbands… “
Viola Dana is another hugely successful silent film star
who is not as widely recalled as her contemporary fame might have suggested. As
with Mabel Normand, Norma Talmadge and even Lois Webber, she’s fallen from a
collective memory dominated by those with longer – post-talkie – careers,
better preserved archives and the twists of fashion. As with Pickford and
Swanson, Dana was a post-Victorian waif – undernourished and frail in parts
such as Children of Eve - and just about five feet in heels. But, as with Mary
and Gloria she was also a very fine actress and highly adept at comedy.
In Open All Night
she’s part of a splendid cast including two of the great gentlemen of
sophisticated silent screwball, Raymond Griffith and Adolphe Menjou and the
excellent Jetta Goudal who pretty much steals the show as Lea the aggressive
lover of cycling champ Petit Mathieu (Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn). It’s an amusing
rather than hilarious film, well made but with a conflicted message about love
and physicality that won’t play well with most modern audiences and must have
met with disapproval from some at the time: I can’t imagine my Nan putting up
with any of this nonsense from any man she decided was worthy of her time…
although this is a little balance at the end: big tough guys also need tough
women.
“A woman may be
fascinated by a brute but she can’t respect him…”
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| Adolphe Menjou |
Set in Paris, the story is essentially about two couples
at a cross-roads and we start with Mr and Mrs Duverne played by Menjou and
Dana, in their splendid apartment on the Ile du France… He’s watching the couple
across the way with his binoculars and she’s reading a romantic novel in an
extensive scene in her bath tub. Edmund sees the attractive woman across the
way being pushed around and shakes his head as he decides no man could keep a
woman’s love if he treated her violently.
Meanwhile Therese, reading a book that equates
rough-handling with ecstasy… goads her husband to smash the door down and force
her to come out with him. Their friend Isabelle Fevre (Gale Henry) arrives with
her latest escort, and American called Igor (Griffith) who is drunk and incapable…
Griffith is intermittingly amusing in the film but is under-used.
Isabelle decides that her friend needs taking out of herself
and that some sauce must be found for the gander with which to prick the conscience
of the over-gallant goose… The conclusion of a marathon cycle race in the velodrome
will provide the opportunity.
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| Viola Dana |
At the race, local favourite Petit Mathieu is ahead of a world-class field including a continent (Africa),
a country (United States) and a city (New York) … he’s a rangy fellow covered
in grease who seems to tower over the rest. Director Paul Bern (yes, Jean Harlow’s
tragic Paul…) films the velodrome well with Bert Glennon’s cameras at a low
angle, tracking ahead or alongside the racers and generally putting the viewer
in amongst it.
In the stands is his girl Lea who snarls
her support and gives the films best performance with a swagger that subverts
sexual/gender stereotypes mores than anything in the narrative. Hers is no
cheap-shot like the reference to the sexuality of the Gendarme swooning over
Igor’s signed photo, but a genuinely strong women who knows what she wants – and
that is more attention from her man Mathieu.
Lea goes to the Café des Boulevards to drown her sorrows and there’s quite the scene as
she downs glass after glass of Pernod or possibly Absinth while repulsing
numerous polishes-but-dull men in evening suits. Edmund is impressed – he’d
obviously prefer a tipsy lass with attitude to a demanding wife. The two get on
and end up at the Velodrome.
“So, you want this
pin-point of a woman, do you?!”
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| Adolphe Menjou and Jetta Goudal |
By this time Therese has taken her own interest in the
hunky cyclist – far taller, muscular and greasier than her husband and is
applying more oils and leg massage between stages of the race. She’s not
entirely sure that size matters until, inevitably, their other halves discover
them… and, as Griffith valiantly attempts to squeeze out some slapstick laughs
by drunkenly dancing with the arcing bikes on the track, the marriage square
must resolve itself to a circle…
This was enjoyable if not hilarious as the reviews of the time seemed to suggest with Film Daily saying: “The story is
slight… Whilst the excellent characterisations and the skilful direction is
important, it is a question whether or not the picture fans care sufficiently
about this.”
Meg Morley’s accompaniment was a jazzed as you’d expect
and she enlivened the narrative throughout with period-appropriate flourishes
and the light-touch assurance you’d expect from a Kennington Bioscope alumnus!
All in all, a precious flicker for the so many now-familiar
faces who starred in it.
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| Raymond Griffith |
After the film, Viola decided to marry her cyclist “Lefty” – who was a former football player – at least up until 1929 after
which she made the switch to golf with Jimmy Thomson with whom she was married to for
15 years.
Dana was not one of those who continued into sound but
she was a star for twenty years and more. In January 1922, Screenland Magazine reported that she and Bebe Daniels were more
popular in Japan than Mary Pickford and Mary Miles Minter. Now we have more of
her films being rediscovered by modern audiences such as this one - us and it - and there’s also a new DVD for The Cossack Whip (1916) from a Kickstarter project initiated by Edward Lorusso.
Let's have more Viola (and Jetta too).
Let's have more Viola (and Jetta too).
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| Viola Dana in The Cossack Whip (1916) |
.JPG)
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