2 and ½? Three Women (1924)

 

This posting is late, for which I can only apologise, but I found myself in crisis and desperate to see the restored version of the film Lubitsch made directly after it, Forbidden Paradise (1924) only to discover, from reading this very blog, that I’d seen it in 2018. In the cut and thrust of silent film watching these things can happen, an overdose of Ruritanian comedies, too much Pola (is that even possible?) and perhaps a Touch of the Lubitsch’s can all contribute but you never lose that Lubitsch Feeling which is why his extremely coherent body of work can confuse your random-access memory?

 

I was pointed towards Forbidden Paradise after reading the director’s biographer Joseph McBride* on this run of early Hollywood films. He is disappointed in Three Women in comparison with the more experimental and engaging film that followed it, Ernst’s third in his first full year in America and fourth overall after starting with Rosita in 1923. McBride notes “intermittent felicities…” but marks down Three Women’s “clumsy construction, uncertainty of tone and lack of inspiration…” in comparison to the excellence of The Marriage Circle, the first of the 1924 hattrick.

 

Watching this good-looking release on the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray I wouldn’t have expected to agree with most of these sentiments based on the pacey and touch-filled opening sequences but the narrative does lose its way and we also get precious little screen time for the third woman, Marie Prevost whose presence does lift the last third of the film, it’s just a shame she isn’t given more to do. This is a Lubitsch though and it’s like a rushed early Beatles album or an off-colour Vermeer; it’s still very good and entertaining.

Pauline Frederick

Based on the 1914 novel Lillis Ehe (Lilli's Marriage) by Yolande Maree (originally Iolanthe Marès) part of a popular series of “moral” novels set in the Berlin demimonde and clearly appealing to Lubitsch’s interest in the compromised classes. Here there is bad behaviour amongst the civilised high society now relocated to New York City, as human frailty feeds human greed and innocence is taken advantage of and corrupted by the dishonest and cruel although one wonders how Lew Cody can’t be spotted a mile off so slight are his charms in comparison to say Adolphe Menjou?

 

Anyway… what we do have going for this film is the formidable Pauline Frederick as Mrs. Mabel Wilton and the film kicks off with her character carefully weighing herself on the scales against a stark black backdrop which allows us to focus on her ongoing concerns about getting old… a proto-Smouldering Fires moment for the fabulous-looking 40-year-old. Still, it’s how you’re made to feel and especially by a society that favours sheen over substance.

 

Have you any idea how much wealth is represented by that woman you have just held in your arms?

 

Mabel attends a vast charity ball for the Eastern Red Cross Committee at a “Waldorf Astoria” impressively designed and choreographed by Lubitsch complete with slides, merry-go-rounds and jollity on a grand scale. An eye-catching attendee is penniless but for some reason desirable Edmund Lamont (Lew Cody) who dodges his creditors and makes a beeline for Mabel after helping her off the slide and being advised by his pal/also creditor Harvey (Willard Louis) about her three-million-dollar fortune.

 

Lew Cody

Cue some “touches” as the $tar-struck Edmund looks on Mabel’s jewellery, focusing item by item as Lubitsch reveals his heart’s desire even as he begins the process of seducing his target. There are pretty young women all around him but he only has eyes for Mabel’s diamond necklace, gold rings and dazzling bracelet. Gradually the images run together and it’s all Edmund can do to stop himself from fainting. Greed! He offers her a nightcap and accompanied by Harvey, who acts as a somnambulant chaperone after polishing off all the chocolates – another trademark visual ellipse - the three head to Mabel’s home. Her ardour is finally cooled by a letter from her daughter Jeanne (May McAvoy) who reminds her that she’ll be 18 in a few days… her mother suddenly feels very old and stares at the mirror.

 

So far so good, and there are a lot of delicious moments at Jeanne’s party in Berkeley, California as lovelorn Fred Armstrong (Pierre Gendron) tries to find the right moment to give his sweetheart the $500 bracelet he’s had to pawn his watch for and pledge his troth. His progress to this goal is interrupted and thwarted by split-second misfortunes as Lubitsch plays out a dance of frustration with said watch repeatedly being pulled from and returned to Fred’s pocket… as his last chance is lost when she opens her mother’s present of a diamond bracelet.

 

Why have you come without my permission?

 

Her mother’s present depresses Jeanne with its crass over-compensation for lack of attention and even when she returns home she’s unwelcomed by Mabel who is far too busy being romanced by the man who she’s just gifted $100,000 for sure-fire investments to. This inattention soon becomes heavily ironic when, after saying she was too busy to spend time with Jeanne, Lamont also makes his excuses and sees the daughter instead. As Mabel mopes alone at home, Harvey spots his pal with a younger woman at a nightclub only to realise that it was Jeanne the next day whereupon he informs Lamont of the daughter’s worth as the betrayals mount up.

 

May McAvoy and Pierre Gendron

Now, there are various ways this could all play out and this is where the story diverges from could have been a more satisfying and believable analysis of mother-daughter relationships, faithless gold-diggers and their good-hearted molls – Marie Prevost could have rescued things – but this descend into unlikely melodrama.

 

Frederick and McAvoy give things a good shot and what we do see of Prevost is, of course, eye-catching, but it was still early days for Lubitsch in this new environment and a lot more was in store.

 

Back to Lew Cody… he does his best but he doesn’t quite convince as sophisticated enough to win the affections of either let alone both women, and I’m quite sure Marie Prevost’s character would have him exactly where she wanted him. All this said, Cody has his own style and was apparently a great raconteur, highly popular, a pal of Buster’s and the husband to be of Mabel Normand. Given a better scenario his character and its arc could have been much more compelling.

 

Three Women is still well worth watching though and I would love to see it on the big screen as opposed to just the splendid Kino-Lorber Blu-ray which comes with a stirring new score from Andrew Earle Simpson and an excellent commentary track from Anthony Slide.

 

It’s available direct from Kino or other online retailers selling US worldwide.

Marie Prevost abides...

 *How Did Lubitsch Do It? by Joseph Mcbride (2018, Columbia University Press) Buy it on Amazon!!

Home truths… Back Pay (1922), with Andrew Earle Simpson, Undercrank Productions DVD

 

The story of Hester Bevins is as old as sin, but sin is just a little bit younger than love, and often the two are interchangeable…

This film is about karma but in terms of its survival, it’s hardly been instant given that we can only now rewatch it a century after its release. Any film directed by Frank Borzage you’d expect to be not only commercially viable but also available and yet it took a Kickstarter campaign from composer Andrew Earle Simpson, supported by Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions to produce the DVD I now hold in my hand (typing with my right!). My name is on the credits along with hundreds of others world-wide who have pitched in on this one and it feels good to be a small part of preserving these films not just in digital formats but also in memory and wider study.

The only copies of Back Pay and its companion on this project, Borzage’s The Valley of Silent Men (1922) are held as part of the Marion Davies collection in the Library of Congress, and Back Pay is presented from a new 2K scan of the LOC’s 35mm acetate duplicate negative, printed from the sole surviving 35mm nitrate print.  It includes the film’s original tinting scheme and looks fabulous, especially as it also includes Grace Waller’s original art titles and “art” is what they are with illustrations enhancing the witty script from the great Frances Marion, who adapted from the short story of the same name by Fannie Hurst.

It’s 1922 and there’s still plenty of women involved in Hollywood and Fanny Hurst was arguably the most popular writer in America with a stonking twenty nine films based on her stories. Hurst chronicled the lives of working class urban lives and was, according to Grace Paley in The Stories of Fannie Hurst*, “…a pioneer in writing about working women, from maids to secretaries to garment workers, from prostitutes to artists,” weaving these together into “… captivating, deeply human stories that capture her characters’ struggles, triumphs, conflicts, and loves.”

Seena Owen

You can see the huge cinema going everywoman audience relating to this and especially Back Pay, which ponders the right of women to hold ambition in ways reflective of post-War equality – in the US as in the UK – women’s role in the war effort had earned them more respect and recognition. It’s easy, but remiss, to overlook this context in viewing what is a melodrama and also to take the proximity of the Great War for granted; four years on, countries were still full of physically and mentally damaged veterans who had lost their place in a society that didn’t always understand their sacrifice. In this way Back Pay reminds me a little of Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919), which dealt with the social and welfare aftermath of the conflict.

Hester Bevins had spent her life in Demopolis, one of those small, changeless towns which stand like sentinels beyond the outer gates of New York.

 

Here we start with a small town called Demopolis in which young Hester (Seena Owen) is gradually suffocating, every train heading away breaking her vaguely ambitious heart just a little bit more and with all around her seemingly satisfied with their lot. “She was filled with a passion for excitement and luxury – and certainly neither of these could be found in the boarding house of Mrs Elmira Simmons…” with every mealtime a thudding reminder of the past, present and potential future if she stayed.

Her one bright spark is boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who loves her even more deeply than he loves the town and his job at the General Store. He’s scrimping and saving but $150 a month isn’t going to buy Hester the lifestyle she wants as she tells him they’re simply too poor to marry.  Borzage and his cameraman Chester A Lyons, capture some idyllic scenes of country life, especially the town’s annual picnic with egg and spoon plus sack races, dancing and music; it’s like something from a Sjostrom outdoor adventure with some craggy-faced locals providing realist flavour.

Hester and Jerry make their way for some peace and quiet and have their faithful disconnection as he proposes and she smiles briefly before declining as they talk into the night. She sings a partially finished song for them and tells him she will finish it later… only much later, as she decides she must find herself in New York. Hester’s train leaves Jerry abandoned as Frances Marion writes, two decades before Cole Porter, that to say goodbye is to die a little…

To New York City and a jump five years ahead, years of struggle… in which old beliefs and high ideals went one by one… Until luxury claimed her – on its own terms. Hester’s journey is only thus hinted at but she is now living in a fine appartement maintained by her wealthy boyfriend, the presumably married, and certainly much older, Charles G. Wheeler of Wall Street (J. Barney Sherry). She has other friends with names such as Kitty (Ethel Duray) and Speed (Charles Craig) and life is one long, well-dressed, well-watered, party with jazz music on tap and plenty of joie de vivre. Hester has a Rolls from Charles but now wants a $22,000 fur coat from her sugar financier, and she’ll get it too by making him have to out-compete friend Speed’s generosity.

 

The wages of sin is death. If sin has any wages, some of us are going to collect a lot of back pay!

On a weekend away, she asks to get dropped off in the old town and, spotting Jerry, reconnects with the man who has never stopped loving, or waiting, for her. Jerry is now on $200 a month but, as Hester says, that wouldn’t even cover her mink stole. Hester still loves Jerry but she loves the high life more… The story moves on and, as the parties continue, Hester in platinum gown dancing on a chair, we see Jerry fighting in Europe, and calling out Hester’s name as the bombs fall in No Man’s Land. The film is about to pivot as Hester reads of Jerry’s heroism and his return, injured from the front… everything she knows is about to be challenged by the conflicting realities of love, war and commerce.

I love a good location

 

It's a measured film, slow by modern standards but the narrative doesn’t feel forced from Borzage who is more than willing to let his talented cast pull the viewer along. In this so much rests on the almost ever-present Seena Owen whom I have not seen before but is so good here. I must seek out more of her work.

 

The new score from Andrew Earle Simpson is also very enjoyable, lyrical and rich in tone it provides the sincerest of accompaniments and elevates the whole experience; I’d love to hear it live. Until then, we have this excellent release from Undercrank which in addition to a 4k restoration of The Valley of Silent Men** also includes a video essay on Borzage at Cosmopolitan, Randolph Heart’s company for which he made these films. The sets also have informative Film Facts that run along the intertitles to explain the background to the films.

 

The set is being generally released in February/March 2023 and you can order direct from Undercrank right here.

 

* The Stories of Fannie Hurst, (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004) Fannie Hurst, edited by Susan Koppelman and with and introduction from Grace Paley.

** This film does raise the question of whether Ben Model can see Steve Massa’s house from his roof… if there is a Valley of Silent Men, these two surely live in it, along with Mr Simpson!