When you’re a boy… The Snowbird (1916), Cinema’s First Nasty Women Box Set

How do I know that you do not lie, all women lie!

 

A couple of years before Nell Shipman and her menagerie made their way to “God’s Country” another, altogether less robust woman was trekking across land and snow to look after the men in her life albeit in the hills of northern California. Mabel Taliaferro was tiny in comparison to sturdy Nell, and she probably also had warm hotel rooms built into her contract, but here she plays almost as feisty as the rich man’s daughter who finds something worth fighting for up in the snowy wastes of Canada.

 

Presented on Disc Four of the Mighty Cinema’s First Nasty Women set, The Snowbird provides something of a cross-dressing companion to Phil for Short the other gender bent feature included in this venture and it follows a similar path in that its heroine does not dress as a man for romantic reasons for the practical purpose of projecting a challenge to male dominance. The fact that she finds a woman-hating man who comes to appreciate her first as a boy is neither here nor there… There’s no Weimar sauciness in this confusion just that the man in question is won over by what she does as a man before realising that she has proved him wrong in his categorical feelings about the “lying, devious, faithless…” group of humanity known as Womankind.

 

It's only money matters my dear, you would not understand…

Mabel Taliaferro and Warren Cook

As in Phil, Lois Wheeler’s Mabel Taliaferro has a nice fool for a father, who needs protecting from himself. Daddy Wheeler (Warren Cook) is living in a big house with a portfolio of businesses but a liquidity issue based on cashflow complications that I wouldn’t want to worry your pretty little heads about let alone mine. Wheeler’s so close to broke that he asks his friend Bruce Mitchell (James Cruze), currently attempting to woo his daughter over a game of tennis, to loan him some money based on his share of some lumber land in Chalet, Quebec.

 

The land is worth twice what Mitchell signed up for and is co-owned with a French-Canadian (aye, aye…) Jean Corteau (Edwin Carewe, who also directs) who has inherited it from his father. It seems a safe bet but when Wheeler heads to see his attorney in Chalet, Magistrate Le Blanc (John Melody), he discovers that a fire has destroyed his copy; only Corteau has a copy and he is not inclined to find it, realising that he can take all of the site which, you’ll have to forgive me, seems very un-Canadian.

 

The plot gets much thicker as Mitchell, rebuffed by Mabel, who likes his tennis but not his amorous intention, declaring the match 40-Love in her favour, sees a way of forcing a tie-break and blackmailing the old man into selling his daughter’s hand in exchange for the debt he can no longer complete.

Edwin Carewe multi-tasks as director and women-hater

Like a wounded snowbird you have fallen from the sky to share my loneliness … here you can stay and be my boy.

 

When the going gets tough, the woman gets going though and Mabel is transformed when travelling up to plead with Corteau, disguising herself as a boy who the odd bachelor decides to take in as his ward, trusting the youth far more than the woman from Paris who, in his youth, had made a fool of him and spurned his advances in front of polite society leaving him to seek bitter isolation among the woods and ice.

 

Mabel aims to steal his copy of the contract but, you wonder, is there anything else she might steal… time will tell, especially as the mean old Mitchell also heads north to protect his ill-gotten gains.

This sparkling restoration comes with an all-new score from Diana Reason, who plays piano and keyboard, Sean Sonderegger on sax and woodwind, Peter Valsamis on drums and Jan Michael Looking Wolf on native American flute. It’s playful and energetic and adds greatly to the viewing experience of a film that balances humour and drama in skilfully interlaced measures.

 

Definitely a wrong-un'... James Cruze

Directed with wit and economy by Carewe, the story is based on a plot credited to Mary Ryder and June Mathis, two of the many women writers working in American film at this point, a situation that was to change dramatically over the next few decades as the studio system rigged opportunity and agenda in favour of men; the facts speaking for themselves in an industry still to reach the same levels of female involvement. Change is happening once again but progression is no longer guaranteed, is it?

 

I’d not seen Mabel Taliaferro before and her stage experience plus an awareness of the cinematic remit sees her put in a delightfully natural performance that makes her character’s transition all the more winning. Character will out indeed, and her Lois is resourceful and steadfast, identifiable and inspirational, just as Philomena was, a new kind of feminine hero just as the times they were indeed changing as the Great War brought women to the forefront of manufacture and other industries not just film where they already contributed in abundance!

 

Mabel Taliaferro 

 

The box set can be ordered direct from Kino Lorber or via all good retailers around the World, it's even available via UK Amazon now. Whilst I suspect you may already have it; I still wouldn’t want you to miss out on one of the key releases of this century.

Granda Pa Trump had a hotel near these frozen wastes in the 1900s and he would have been bowled over by Mabel Taliaferro and her cousins Leontine et al, if only they’d done more stage work in the far North West, perhaps his grandson might have been just a little less of the misogynistic misanthrope he has become with his original coining of the phrase Nasty Woman. Well Junior, these women are not nasty they’re just forceful, funny and smart and if that’s a problem for you… just blow it out your ear! 

Acadian fire… Evangeline (1929)

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,

List to the mournful tradition, still sung by the pines of the forest;

List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

In 1755 British soldiers deported a group of French-Canadians, Aradians, who refused to join with the Empire in fighting their French challengers. The communities were forcibly removed from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island – up to 11,500 from a total population of 14,000… one of the first large-scale population redistribution and a large scale operation for the British.

In 1847 the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, is an epic poem that follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians.

It became the poet's most famous piece and remains one of his most enduring works in spite of the inevitable historical inaccuracies... since when have poets been required to be historically accurate?

Never-the-less thousands of lives were lost and the British were responsible for a high-mountain of human misery.

In 1929 Edwin Carewe made a film version starring Dolores del Rio, shot in Louisiana and more about the poem than the history. The film was silent but featured a Vitaphone soundtrack – don’t you just love transitional technology: always some great innovation but never as prosaically-practical as the eventual winning technology!

Delores sings?

For this Milestone DVD the majority of the sound disks were used which adds tremendously to the atmosphere and authenticity if not the hi-fidelity. You get to hear Miss del Rio (or someone else) sing and as with all things Vitaphone, the soundtrack is not directly synched with the dialogue just music, songs and sound effects. There are a few audio segments missing and so pianist Philip Carli filled in sympathetically for Hugo Riesenfeld’s music.

The impression quickly gained from this film is one of scale as well as poetic emotional sweep: this is definitely a tone poem and not a book adaptation and the rhythms are quite operatic: Evangeline is found singing to herself as she works away in her impossibly sweet cottage whilst her love Gabriel (Roland Drew) sweeps into the harbour not on wings but posed heroically on the bow of a fishing boat.

Roland Drew sweeping...

We see Father Felician (Alec B. Francis) strolling along the harbour surrounded by innocents and accompanied by lengthy dolly shot that introduces the town of Grand Pre in Acadie, then the toothless fiddler Michael (Bobby Mack) who will provide much comic relief even played against the stern Notary Rene la Blanc (George F. Marion).

To the main players, the alpha leader blacksmith Basil (James A. Marcus), father of Gabriel and the richest farmer in the town, Benedict Bellefontaine (Paul McAllister) and his son Baptiste (Donald Reed) who, for all his charms can’t prevent Evangeline’s heart beating for Gabriel even for a second: theirs is a steadfast passion – far more than that as we will see..

Cheers!

Now the sailor is returned it is a time to celebrate and Edwin Carewe directs a cast of thousands with aplomb and there are some gorgeous set-pieces captured by the cameras of Robert Kurrle and Al M. Green. A marriage contract is drawn up and signed in good humour and the community gathers again to witness the wedding of the year.

Meanwhile, the British have been getting set for war with those pesky Frenchies and the time has come to force them off King George II’s soil. The British Governor-General (Louis Payne) impresses the need for the Arcadians to join in the fight but they are reluctant to battle their fellow Frenchmen.

The march to the church

Now, dear reader, this is one of those moments in film historicals when the delicate Brit must look away in shame (my clan were variously Irish and Scottish at this point or Shropshire peasants so I’m taking no blame) but that aside, there’s no doubt this film is as kind to the “Mother country” as it could be. Most of the blame for the bad behaviour is laid at the table of Colonel Winslow (Lee Shumway) whose rogue, hot-headedness leads to the worst of consequences: the reality was far more organised and shameful.

The British army arrives just as Evangeline and Gabriel are being married – with hundreds of heavily-armed red-coats descending on the thousands of peaceful revelers (a bit like an early nineties rave after the Essex Constabulary turn up at 3AM Eternal…). The men are ordered into the church in which they are told they will pay the price for their insubordination: they will all be deported south and have their families broken up and their property destroyed.

Acadia burns as the boats start to take its citizens away

This genuinely-shocking development changes the tone of the film – and things get a whole lot darker form this point on as things kick off in a desperate struggle inside the church only halted by the appeals of Father Felician.

British guns mean that there can be no compromise and the community is dispersed - with contemporary images of mass-displacement all too fresh in the mind, this is, again, unsettling. The Army is relentless, not giving a fig for man, woman or child and the families and the lovers are split and taken away on boats.

As long as waters flow, their love will endure...

The months roll by and we follow Evangeline as she follows her search for her Gabriel: theirs is a true love and one that will endure “as long as waters flow…” You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be pulled in by this one and sometimes melodrama just works in spite of yourself.

Great composition and camerawork...

The film is lovely to look at and has the air of unreality required to match the poet’s phrases. Roland Drew and Delores del Rio make for a lovely lovelorn couple – the latter may not be one of the very best actors but she has an ethereality all of her own and is easily the stand-out performer.

Dolores del Rio

It’s also great to hear her “sing” her song – a theme apparently written by Billy Rose and one Al Jolson.

Evangeline is available from those nice Milestone people and is available direct from their shop – shipping is quick and very reliable!

Buy the Milestone DVD!