Best Makeup and Hairstyling 1917

by popegrutch

Makeup and hair styles of the movies both reflect, and to some degree determine, the styles of the day. As we move into the Silent Classical Era, the importance of the close-up and the growing star system assures an increased focus on having actors who look “just right” for their roles. Not only for beautiful leading ladies, but also for villains and those in comic roles, having just the right makeup and hair helps to create a character that audiences will respond to and remember after the flickering on the screen is over.

This year the nominees run the gamut from comedy to crime to horror to family fare. Max Linder nearly always had the perfect look of an upper-class dandy, and the hair and makeup for “Max in A Taxi” supports him and the characters who populate his bizarre world. In “Fear” Conrad Veidt becomes a mysterious Hindu magician who haunts a foolish European art collector. “Love’s Forgiveness,” the climactic finale of the serial “Judex,” uses makeup and hair to show the trials our characters have survived, and that they can still come off looking stylish and beautiful (even in death!). Mary Pickford always had her trademark locks, but in “Little Princess” we see this attention to grooming extended to a host of other characters as well as some unusual examples of makeup and hair for the “Forty Thieves” fantasy sequence.

The nominees for best makeup and hairstyling of 1917 are:

  1. Fear
  2. Love’s Forgiveness (Judex)
  3. Little Princess
  4. Max in a Taxi

And the winner is…

“Little Princess”

This was the movie I saw this year which really seemed to make the most creative successful use of makeup and hair. As I suggested above, one could give Pickford (or her hair stylist) an award for every movie she was ever in, but this one really shared the wealth. I was particularly impressed at the range of styles we see: lots of adults made up to be kids, but also Mary made up as a slave girl, her hero as Ali Baba, and a variety of creatively goofy thieves.