Director: Ray C. Smallwood
Cast: Alla Nazimova, Rudolph Valentino, Rex Cherryman, Arthur Hoyt
Have I Seen It Before: Never. I know I’ve gone to too many Second Saturday Silent Shorts when I a) have seen the film already and b) have already written a review of it.
Did I Like It: I can generally tell if I’m in trouble if I had a way, way better time with the Felix the Cat short than I did with the feature. A week later, and I can’t even remember what the Felix short was about. Something about a cat labor dispute? That sounds right.
It is well known—and our organist pointed out before the movie played—that most silent movies are gone forever. Anthony Slide in Nitrate Won’t Wait: A History of Film Preservation* estimates that 75% of the films made before the release of The Jazz Singer (1927) have disappeared, with the thinking being that retaining them would have little financial value. No one to my knowledge has come up with a more authoritative number than that, so I’ll take it as the truth.
So, then I’m left to wonder why any of Charlie Chaplin’s films wound up lost, and somehow this film survived. That might be a cheap shot, one that a kinder reviewer might chalk up to a difference in sensibilities over the course of a century.
But really? This is what passed for romance in the years between World Wars? Armand (Valentino, clearly meant for bigger and better things, or anything really) goes all googly eyed for Marguerite (Nazimova**). They go back and forth for an hour that feels like three, and then she dies.
Maybe dying before consumation was what passed for romantic fantasy before epidurals in childbirth became common. Maybe we really are that different from people 100 years ago.
*Yes, I’ve read it. Just who do you think you’re talking to?
**We were also warned by the organist that Nazimova’s defining characteristic is a fright wig, and I should really learn to take these pre-show warnings more seriously.