Century Film Project

Celebrating the movies our ancestors loved

Tag: Constance Talmadge

January 24, 2017

1916 Century Award Nominations

12068530171690234341director chair.svg.medSo, once again the Academy Award nominations have been announced, so once again I announce the nominees for the Century Awards. This year, incidentally, I saw several Oscar nominees – all in categories like “production design” and “visual effects” and “makeup and hairstyling.” So yeah, whatever.

Some basic ground rules, once again: I do not have categories for animation or shorts. Those movies are treated like everything else, since they were on a more even playing field at the time. I didn’t actually watch any animation for 1916, so that’s moot anyway, but lots of shorts (mostly comedy) have been nominated in various categories. I only watched one documentary this year, so that category’s a gimme, but I have included it as a nominee in a number of other areas, including Best Picture (because it really is good enough to be considered for it). Oh, and I make no distinction between English and “foreign language” films, since with Intertitles it makes minimal difference.

I do reserve the right to make changes in the final weeks as there are still a few more 1916 films I hope to get around to watching. If you have any opinions on these nominations, or suggestions for things I should watch (especially if they can be seen for free on the Internet), please do write a comment.

Battle of the Somme-film

Best Documentary

  1. Battle of the Somme

Best Makeup/Hairstyling

  1. Intolerance
  2. Queen of Spades
  3. Waiters Ball
  4. The Danger Girl
  5. Snow White

Best Costume Design

  1. Intolerance
  2. The Curse of Quon Gwon
  3. Queen of Spades
  4. Snow White
  5. Joan the Woman

Intolerance BabylonBest Production Design

  1. Intolerance
  2. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea
  3. One A.M.
  4. Joan the Woman
  5. The Captive God

Best Stunts

  1. The Matrimaniac
  2. Flirting with Fate
  3. His Picture in the Papers
  4. Reggie Mixes In
  5. The Poison Man (Les Vampires)
  6. The Rink

Best Film Editing

  1. Intolerance
  2. East Is East
  3. His Picture in the Papers
  4. The Battle of the Somme
  5. The Bloody Wedding (Les Vampires)

Hells Hinges3Best Cinematography

  1. Eugene Gaudio, for “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”
  2. Elgin Lessley, for “He Did and He Didn’t”
  3. Billy Bitzer, for “Intolerance”
  4. Joseph H. August, for “Hell’s Hinges”
  5. Carl Hoffmann, for “Homunculus”

Best Visual Effects (includes animation)

  1. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
  2. The Spectre (Les Vampires)
  3. The Devil’s Needle
  4. Homunculus
  5. The Mysterious Shadow (Judex)

Best Screenplay

  1. East Is East
  2. Hell’s Hinges
  3. The Curse of Quon Gwon
  4. A Life for A Life
  5. Joan the Woman

lord-of-thunderBest Supporting Actress

  1. Lidiia Koroneva, in “A Life for a Life”
  2. Louise Glaum, in “Return of Draw Egan”
  3. Constance Talmadge, in “Intolerance”
  4. Marion E. Wong, in “The Curse of Quon Gwon”
  5. Musidora, in “The Lord of Thunder” (Les Vampires)

Best Supporting Actor

  1. Al St. John, in “Fatty and Mabel Adrift”
  2. Robert McKim, in “The Return of Draw Egan”
  3. Eric Campbell, in “The Count”
  4. Marcel Levésque, in “The Bloody Wedding”
  5. Ernest Maupain, in “Sherlock Holmes”

Best Leading Actor

  1. William Gillette, in “Sherlock Holmes”
  2. Charlie Chaplin, in “The Vagabond”
  3. Olaf Fønss, in “Homonculus”
  4. Henry Edwards, in “East Is East”
  5. William S. Hart, in “Hell’s Hinges”

joan-the-woman1Best Leading Actress

  1. Vera Kholodnaia, in “A Life for a Life”
  2. Florence Turner, in “East Is East”
  3. Geraldine Farrar, in “Joan the Woman”
  4. Marguerite Clark, in “Snow White”
  5. Violet Wong, in “The Curse of Quon Gwon”

Best Director

  1. Evgeni Bauer, for “A Life for a Life”
  2. Yakov Protazonov, for “Queen of Spades”
  3. Marion E. Wong, for “The Curse of Quon Gwon”
  4. Cecil B. DeMille, for “Joan the Woman”
  5. Charles Swickard and William S. Hart, for “Hell’s Hinges”

Best Picture

  1. “Intolerance”
  2. “Hell’s Hinges”
  3. “The Curse of Quon Gwon”
  4. “East Is East”
  5. “A Life for a Life”
  6. “Joan the Woman”
  7. “Homunculus”
  8. “Sherlock Holmes”
  9. “The Battle of the Somme”
  10. “The Return of Draw Egan”
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August 9, 2016

Intolerance (1916)

Probably the most talked about film of 1916, “Intolerance” remains a kind of enigma to film historians. Despite the large amount of ink and computer bytes shed writing about it (see the bibliography at the end of this review for a small sample), it seems no better understood than most of the more typical releases of the year. What is this movie that has inspired so much discussion and debate? Is it one of the most important movies in history or just a giant flop?

Intolerance_(film)

Quick Summary

Regular readers of my blog know I usually begin each review with a recap of the action from the film – I don’t worry too much about “spoiling” 100-year-old movies, but if you want to see it first, you can always scroll down to the link and then come back and read the review. In this case, I’m going to be a bit less specific about the sequence of events and just give a summary of the stories, not accounting for the editing or sequence. In part,  this is because there are several different movies today calling themselves “Intolerance,” and deciding which is the “most authentic” is one of the sources of debate among scholars. It is complicated by the fact that the director, D.W. Griffith, kept making changes for each new re-release of the movie, beginning shortly after the premier on September 5, 1916. Some have argued that the 1917 re-release is more definitive, or even that the version Griffith reconstructed in 1922 after chopping up the print to release one of the storylines as a separate film is the most accurate. In 1990 the Museum of Modern Art attempted to reconstruct the movie based on the score written by Joseph Carl Breil for the opening night, in an attempt to get back to an “original” form, but it needs to be noted that this reconstruction is highly debated, and that it is possible that most viewers in 1916 were seeing a quite different movie. Read the rest of this entry »

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April 16, 2016

The Matrimaniac (1916)

Matrimaniac2This short comedy feature stars Douglas Fairbanks in the kind of vehicle he would be known for before he reinvented himself as an action-adventure star. It’s a movie that emphasizes situation for its silliness, but still allows Doug to show off his physical prowess in stunts and derring-do.

MatrimaniacDoug Fairbanks is determined to get married. Lucky for him, Constance Talmadge (sister of Norma) is just as interested in marrying him. Unlucky for him, her father has already picked another suitor (Clyde E. Hopkins) and has her licked in her room. So, it’s up to Doug to come up with an increasingly wacky elopement scheme and escape with her. Much of this movie plays like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” with Doug and a preacher (Fred Warren) trying to catch up by any means they can with the train Constance with Constance and the would-be-son-in-law. They wind up on a railway cart, a burro, and finally another train before they get there, but then they have to avoid the “officers of the court” who Dad has called in to serve an injunction to stop the wedding! This movie has all of the elements of the later 1930s “screwball comedies,” including mistaken identities, people getting thrown in jail for the wrong reasons, and plenty of fast talking deal-making, plus Fairbanks’s remarkable athletic abilities, to make for a great silent situation comedy.

No time to get dressed, this is a wedding!

No time to get dressed, this is a wedding!

Fairbanks, avoiding the court officers, climbs up the side of a jailhouse, leaps from one rooftop to another, and also climbs along some telephone wires, performing a bit of a high-wire act up there. Actually, we saw Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle do something similar in “Fatty’s Tintype Tangle” last year – and, if nothing else the camera angle in that one made it clear that he really was high above the ground. Fairbanks is rather less athletic on the wires than Arbuckle was, and from what we see, the whole thing might’ve been faked. What definitely isn’t faked is some scenes which involve him and the preacher being thrown off, jumping onto, or climbing underneath (!) moving trains. Having had some experience train-hopping, I know how dangerous this is, and it would not have been possible to fake it at the time. Doug’s lucky to have kept all his appendages intact.

NOT her boyfriend.

NOT her boyfriend.

Constance Talmadge also acquits herself well in this movie as a somewhat spoiled rich girl who’s used to getting her own way. Some of her best parts come when she’s cutting down the man daddy wants her to marry. When he’s checking them into a hotel, intending to hold Constance until she changes her mind, the clerk asks, “And is this your fiancé?” To which Constance responds, “What, that?” The look on her face is deliciously chilly. She can also be somewhat domineering toward Doug. After going to some lengths to change clothes with a maid and escape the hotel, she arrives at the jail and find he isn’t there (he’s busy leaping from rooftops a block or so away). She declares that he can come get her when he’s ready, and stalks back to her hotel room! I was sort of hoping that the maid and the faux beaux would get together in the end – they both seemed like such easy-going people by comparison.

Matrimaniac5What really makes this, and other Fairbanks comedies, work, is that Doug is so obviously enjoying every minute of it. I recommend it as a change of pace from slapstick comedies, or to demonstrate to your friends that not all silent comedians were constantly hitting one another. I actually think I may have laughed out loud at this at least as many times, if not more, than the last Chaplin film I watched – and that’s saying something!

Matrimaniac3Director: Paul Powell

Camera: Victor Fleming

Starring: Douglas Fairbanks, Constance Talmadge, Clyde E. Hopkins, Fred Warren

Run Time: 45 Min

I have not found this available for free on the Internet. If you do, please let me know in the comments.

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