Street Angel (1928)

When Angela’s (Janet Gaynor) mother is gravely ill and needs medicine, she becomes desperate to do anything to get the money she needs. She tries prostitution, but when she doesn’t succeed with that, she steals the money. She’s arrested and sentenced to spend time in a workhouse, but she escapes to her home to see her mother, but her mother has died. With no money and nowhere else to go, she hides from the law by joining a traveling circus.

Despite everything she’s been through, Angela is content with her life in the circus. Although she isn’t specifically out to find love, she ends up falling in love with a street painter named Gino (Charles Farrell). While she can’t forget her past, he sees her for who she really is. But when she falls and breaks her ankle, she has to give up performing in the circus so she and Gino go back to her hometown of Naples. She hasn’t told him about her past and it’s not easy being back home. Gino continues to paint and although he’s improving as a painter, they struggle to get by until he get hired to paint a mural for a church. She’s also afraid of her secret past being  revealed.

Gino really wants to marry Angela, but then her worst fears come true when a police officer recognizes her and she has to serve her one-year sentence in the workhouse. The officer gives her an hour to say goodbye to Gino, but she still won’t tell him what’s going on so she simply disappears from his life. Without Angela around, Gino is completely lost in life. His once promising painting career has gone downhill and he’s fired from painting the mural. When Angela is released, she’s once again, completely alone and penniless. With no other choice, she heads down to the wharf with the other prostitutes. It just so happens that Gino is down by the wharf looking for a woman to paint.

Street Angel is one of three movies that earned Janet Gaynor the honor of being the first actress to win a Best Actress Academy Award, the other two movies being Sunrise and 7th Heaven. Both Gaynor and Charles Farrell deliver great performances, they had great, very natural chemistry together. Gaynor in particular had the perfect amount of vulnerability that the role needed.

In both Street Angel and 7th Heaven, Gaynor was directed by Frank Borzage, who does an exceptional job with Street Angel. For a movie full of mundane settings, Borzage found ways to work in some extremely dramatic shots and beautiful cinematography. Thanks to him, not only is the movie’s story beautiful, it looks just as beautiful, too, and Janet Gaynor’s performance was the icing on the cake.

The Circle (1925)

When Arnold Cheney (Creighton Hale) was just a baby, his mother Lady Catherine (Joan Crawford as the young Catherine, Eugenie Besserer as older Catherine) leaves her husband Lord Clive (Derek Glynne as young Clive, Alec B. Francis as older Clive) to run off and elope with his friend Hugh (Frank Braidwood as young Hugh, George Fawcett as older Hugh). When Catherine leaves, she leaves baby Arnold at home to be raised by Clive.

30 years pass and Arnold hasn’t seen his mother since. Naturally, Arnold and Clive have a lot of resentment toward Catherine and Hugh. Arnold is now married to a woman named Elizabeth (Eleanor Boardman) and they live together in the big family estate, enjoying all the privileges that come with wealth. But Elizabeth is in love with Edward Lutton (Malcolm Mc Gregor) and is considering leaving Arnold for him. Since she knows the situation she’s in sounds somewhat familiar, she decides to invite Catherine and Hugh over so she can see what their relationship is like now.

Arnold is very anxious about this meeting and when they arrive, things are awkward at first. But when Elizabeth sees Catherine and Hugh having a sentimental moment together, she thinks leaving her husband would be the best move. But when Arnold finds out about it, he isn’t about to give up on his marriage so easily.

For some reason, I didn’t have terribly high expectations for The Circle, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected to. Frank Borzage directed it and did a fine job. The story has a very healthy balance of humor and drama. It’s the kind of story that might have become cheesy and cliched in less capable hands, but it worked out very well. The cast is excellent and I really enjoyed the cinematography and sets. This is the kind of movie I don’t hear mentioned too often, but it’s a real gem.

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)

On the day of her confirmation, Thymian (Lousie Brooks) is given a diary as a gift. It was also the day her life started a downward slide. She’s the daughter of a pharmacist who can never resist having affairs with the family’s housekeepers. When the latest one, Barbara, is pregnant, she’s sent away, but Thymian doesn’t know why. Barbara later commits suicide and when her body is brought back to their home, Thymian is understandably upset. That night, her father’s business partner Meinert (Fritz Rasp) comes to console her, then rapes her, which results in Thymian having a child out of wedlock. She never admits who the father is, so her family reads her diary to learn the truth. They want her to marry Meinert, but she refuses, so they take her child away from her and send her to reform school.

Life in the reform school is brutal and Thymian desperately wants to get out. She gets in touch with a friend, Count Orsdoff (Andre Roanne), who has also fallen on hard times. He had been supported by a wealthy uncle, but was cut off when he fails to succeed at any subject in school. She tries to get him to talk her father into getting her out, but he’s just married Meta (Franziska Kinz), the family’s new housekeeper, and doesn’t want Thymian around. Instead, Orsdoff helps Thymian and her friend Erika (Edith Meinhard) escape.

The first thing Thymian wants to do is see her child, but finds out the baby has died. With no one to take care of her and no job skills, she and Erika become prostitutes. One night, her father, Meta, and Meinert see her in a nightclub in the city and are shocked to see what’s become of her. But shortly afterward, Thymian’s father passes away, leaving her as sole heir. She stands to inherit a lot of money since Meinert is buying her father’s share of the pharmacy and she plans to use her money to start a new life. She even plans to marry Orsdoff so she can have a new identity and help Ordoff start a new life. But when she sees that Meta and her two young children have been left with no money and no place to go, she decides to give them the money because she doesn’t want the children to wind up like her.

Since Ordoff now isn’t able to start over in life, he kills himself. Ordoff’s uncle feels terribly guilty for disowning him and decides to make up for it by taking care of Thymian and helping her start over. She earns a more respectable place in society and people start trying to get her involved in charities — including the reform school she was once imprisoned in.

Diary of a Lost Girl really ought to have been titled Diary of a Lost Girl: Men are Terrible. Everything bad that happens to poor Thymian is the result of being forced to be around terrible men like her father, Meinert, and the super creepy warden at the reform school. This movie is definitely not short on melodrama and Louise Brooks gives a wonderful performance in it. She’s absolutely radiant and lights up a screen like few other stars ever could. Brooks greatly benefits from G.W. Pabst’s direction; they were such a great actress/director pair, like Dietrich and Von Sternberg or de Mille and Gloria Swanson. If you liked Pandora’s Box, you’ll probably also like Diary of a Lost Girl. Between Brooks’s performance and Pabst’s direction, Diary of a Lost Girl remains entertaining and compelling and stands apart from being ordinary melodrama.

Seven Years Bad Luck (1921)

After his raucous bachelor party, Max (Max Linder) comes home very drunk the next morning. He’s so drunk he doesn’t even recognize his own bedroom. The next morning, his butler accidentally breaks Max’s mirror while flirting with the maid and tries to pretend nothing happened, even going as far as to convince another house employee to dress up as Max and stand on the other side of the mirror and mimic him while he gets ready until the mirror can be replaced. It doesn’t take Max long to realize what’s going on and make him want to destroy the illusion. But then his fiance Betty (Alta Allen) calls and interrupts him and while he’s away, the mirror is replaced. So when he comes back to throw something through the mirror frame, he ends up breaking the mirror.

Max is a bit superstitious, so the thought of starting seven years of bad luck just before his wedding horrifies him. He does everything he can to avoid bad luck. When he goes to see Betty, her maid offers to read his palm for him while he waits for her and she tells him he’ll have bad luck with a dog. Since Betty has a dog, Max tries to get rid of it and Betty isn’t pleased and breaks things off with him. She changes her mind, but Max’s behavior once again bothers her and she ends it with him again. Desperate to save their relationship, Max gets his friend to talk to Betty on his behalf, but his friend has been in love with Betty and tells her that Max has run off one of his old girlfriends. Deeply hurt, she decides to marry Max’s friend out of spite.

When Max finds out what’s been going on, he decides to get away from it all with a train trip. But he gets robbed before he can get on the train and tries to sneak on.  His presence doesn’t go unnoticed by the train conductor and Max has to spend the trip trying to evade the train employees. Eventually he’s arrested and has to see a judge, but it just so happens Betty and Max’s friend are there to see the same judge to get married. But is Max’s streak of bad luck over?

Out of all the silent film comedians, I’ve long felt like Max Linder has been overdue for rediscovery by classic film fans. He was a tremendous influence on so many of the great classic comedians like Chaplin, Keaton, and the Marx Brothers and Seven Years Bad Luck is an excellent example of how brilliant he was. The whole scene with Max’s employee trying to be the mirror image of Max was clearly an inspiration for Groucho and Harpo’s famous mirror scene in Duck Soup. Even though it’s a slapstick comedy, Linder does a fantastic job of handling everything with style and grace. Seven Years Bad Luck is not the broad, over the top style of slapstick that something like Tillie’s Punctured Romance is. It’s a very fun and clever little comedy that I’ll admit kind of starts to drag a little bit near the end, but is still highly enjoyable.

The Goddess (1934)

An unnamed single woman (Ruan Lingyu) has no other choice but to work as a prostitute to support her infant son (Li Keng). She absolutely adores her son and wants him to have a more opportunities to have a better life than she did. One night, while walking the streets, she ends up taking shelter with a big gambler (Zhang Zhizhi), the gambler decides that she is officially his property. She doesn’t like him and tries to get away from him, but he finds her again. He’s so intimidating that she has no other choice but to do what he says.

A few years pass and she’s still under the gambler’s control, but she continues working as a prostitute to be able to send her son to a good school. However, the parents of her son’s classmates are aware of what her profession is and her son is shunned by his classmates. There’s such a commotion about her that her principal has to come see her to find out whether or not the rumors are true. If they were, he’s have to expel her son. But after meeting her and seeing how sincerely she cares for her son, he doesn’t have the heart to do anything. But then the principal is forced to resign and her son is expelled anyway.

She realizes that if she wants to give her son a better life, her only choice is to move someplace where nobody knows them. She’s been hiding money away, but when she goes to get it, she realizes the gambler has taken it. She demands her money back and he refuses, so she hits him over the head with a bottle, killing him. She’s sentenced to 12 years in prison and her son is headed for an orphanage. When the son’s former principal reads about what happened, she goes to see her and offers to raise her son and give him a good education.

Although the silent film industry in America had come to a complete stop before 1934, aside from Chaplin, they were still being produced in China because so few theaters could afford to upgrade to sound technology and because so many dialects are spoken in China. The Goddess is one of the most influential films made in China and stars the wonderful Ruan Lingyu, who was considered to be China’s answer to Greta Garbo. Her performance was beautiful, heartfelt, and sensitive. The story may be melodramatic, but Ruan’s performance elevates it above ordinary melodrama. I can think of several American films from around this era that have a similar premise of a fallen woman making a major sacrifice for her child, but The Goddess is better than any of them.

If you’ve never seen The Goddess, it’s well worth seeing just for a chance to see Ruan Lingyu in action. She was a major star in China who committed suicide at the age of 24. Only 8 of her movies are known to survive and The Goddess is a fine example of what a talent she was.

The Oyster Princess (1919)

Ossi (Ossi Oswalda) is the spoiled daughter of Quaker (Victor Janson), a wealthy man who has made his fortune in oysters. When she finds out the daughter of a shoe polish magnate has just married a count, she’s absolutely furious that she isn’t married yet. To calm her down, Quaker promises to buy her a prince and gets in touch with a matchmaker to find someone with a suitable family tree.

The matchmaker knows just the man for Ossi — Prince Nucki (Harry Liedtke). Only Prince Nucki isn’t actually a prince, he’s poor and lives in a very run down apartment with his friend Josef (Julius Falkenstein). When the matchmaker shows up to tell Nucki he’s found a match for him, Nucki and Josef are stunned that their scheme actually worked. To keep up the illusion that Nucki is a prince, Nucki has Josef pose as his representative to go see what Ossi is like.

When Josef arrives at Ossi’s home, everyone assumes he’s the price. Ossi doesn’t make a very good first impression of him and she isn’t too fond of him either, but she’s so eager to get married, she marries Josef that very night. Since their marriage was a spur of the moment thing, their reception is strictly for close family, which still ends up being a big soiree. Everyone has a wonderful time, especially Josef, who hasn’t had a good meal or a drink in a long time. Ossi dances the night away while Josef drinks the night away. Meanwhile, Nucki is back at his apartment having a terrible dinner before he gets invited to get drunk with some friends.

The next morning, Ossi goes to a meeting for a women’s group dedicated to fighting dispomania and  Nucki happens to be one of the drunks brought in for them to cure. Since he’s the only young, handsome drunk in the bunch, all the women fight over who gets to cure Nucki and Ossi wins. She flirts with him and insists on bringing him home with her as part of his treatment. When Josef finds Nucki passed out at Ossi’s home, he can’t help but laugh because they don’t realize he got married under Nucki’s name so he and Ossi are the ones who are married.

Ernst Lubitsch has a well-deserved reputation for being one of the best directors to ever work in Hollywood. His very distinctive knack for witty, sophisticated dialogue and characters remains unsurpassed. But before coming to Hollywood, Lubitsch was making equally sophisticated and witty silent films in Germany that tend to be overlooked. Since The Oyster Princess is a silent film, obviously it doesn’t have as much sharp dialogue as something like Ninotchka or To Be or Not to Be, but it’s still a very witty movie with an incredible amount of style. It’s still very uniquely Lubitsch’s style.

Ossi Oswalda is very charming actress and was considered to be Germany’s answer to Mary Pickford. It’s too bad she didn’t become a more widely known store because I really like her a lot.

Lonesome (1928)

Mary (Barbara Kent) and Jim (Glenn Tryon) have never met, but they have much in common. They both live in New York City, they’re both single, and they’re both feeling pretty lonely. Mary is a phone operator and Jim is a factory worker and on 4th of July weekend, they’re both invited to join some of their coupled friends out at Coney Island. Not wanting to feel like a third wheel, both Mary and Jim decline the invitations, but after spending some time alone in their respective apartments, they decide to head out to the beach by themselves.

Jim and Mary’s paths finally cross while they’re at the beach and the attraction is instant. They spend the entire day together having fun at the beach and at the carnival. At last, they’ve finally found the companionship they’ve been longing for. By now, they’re very much in love with each other, but when they end up getting separated during a commotion, it’s an uphill battle to find each other again. They only know each other’s first names and have a picture of each other to go on.

I love Lonesome. I recently picked it up during a Criterion 50% off sale never having seen it before and I’m so glad I did. It’s a very pleasant, poignant film with a lot of very innovative things going on in it. Lonesome isn’t a completely silent film, it does have a few scenes with recorded dialogue. It also has a lot of very interesting editing and superimposition, which might not seem too exciting if you’re thinking of the modern editing technology available today. Those types of things were much more difficult in 1928. Director Paul Fejos even experiments with color tinting in some scenes. If you’re a big fan of getting to see vintage New York City and Coney Island pictures and footage, you’re in for a real treat with Lonesome because this has a lot of footage that was shot on location. It’s a beautiful film that deserves to be more well known.

Spite Marriage (1929)

Elmer (Buster Keaton) is the biggest fan actress Trilby Drew (Dorothy Sebastian) could ask for. He never misses one of her stage performances and if he knows where she’ll be throughout the day, he tries to be there so he can see her. His presence hasn’t gone unnoticed by Trillby or her entourage. Whenever they see him, Elmer is always dressed in a very nice looking outfit, so they all assume he’s a very wealthy admirer. In reality, he works in a laundry and borrows the nice clothes.

However, Trillby is in love with fellow actor Lionel Benmore (Edward Earle). One night, an actor in the show is unable to go on at the last minute and since Elmer has seen the show so many times, he fills in. Of course, the show ends up being a complete disaster, but since Elmer was very heavily costumed on stage, he was able to sneak backstage and get back into his nice clothes without anyone being the wiser. As if the show wasn’t disastrous enough, after the performance is over, Trillby finds out Lionel is engaged to another woman. When she runs into Elmer backstage, she decides to marry him purely out of spite.

It isn’t long before Trillby realizes what a terrible idea this all was. Elmer isn’t the wealthy man she thought he was, Lionel is off with another woman, and she’s so unhappy that she spends her entire wedding night completely drunk. The next day, Trillby’s managers come to help her out of the marriage and convince Elmer to go away for a while so she can get a divorce for desertion. He leaves and accidentally ends up working on a boat with some bootleggers. Eventually, he ends up making his way to being a sailor on a private yacht, which just happens to include Trillby and Lionel as passengers. When a fire breaks out on the ship, it surprisingly ends up being the opportunity he needed to prove to Trillby just how much he loves her.

Spite Marriage was the last silent film by the great Buster Keaton and although it isn’t quite the masterpiece that some of his other movies are, it’s still a darn good movie with some really great laughs in it, particularly when Elmer is trying to put Trillby to bed when she was black-out drunk and when Elmer’s filling in for the stage actor and putting on his costume.  Buster’s good in it and the movie also greatly benefits from Dorothy Sebastian’s performance; she does a wonderful job of holding her own alongside Keaton.

The overall execution of the movie just isn’t quite up to par with some of Keaton’s earlier work primarily because Keaton wasn’t allowed as much creative control over the project. Spite Marriage is widely noted for being the turning point in his career when it started going downhill. This was the second project he made while under contract at MGM and was the last project he made there where he’d have any creative control over during his time there. But even with that lack of control, it was still a very enjoyable swan song for a silent film legend.

Male and Female (1919)

Lady Mary Lasenby (Gloria Swanson) comes from a very wealthy, socially important family. She’s never had to work a day in her life and is used to having other people do everything for her. Her family’s butler William Crichton (Thomas Meighan) is in love with Mary, but Mary is a strong believer of marrying within one’s own class and is engaged to another upper class man. Tweeny (Lila Lee), one of the family’s maids, is in love with William, but he only seems to have eyes for Mary.

One day, Mary, her family, and their servants head out on a yachting trip and wind up getting shipwrecked on a deserted island. Naturally, the servants prove to be the most adept at survival while the wealthy family is completely clueless. With no money to divide the classes anymore, the tables quickly turn and the servants end up becoming the leaders. They are all left on the island for a couple of years and over time, Mary begins to fall in love with the William. They decide to get married in a simple little island ceremony, but right as they’re about to say their vows, a ship finally comes to rescue them.

When they return to home, everything goes back to the way it was. Mary and William still love each other, but when one of Mary’s friends visits, William begins to reconsider his decision to marry Mary. Mary’s friend has become a social outcast after marrying her chauffeur. William decides he’d rather marry Tweeny instead and move someplace where class isn’t so important.

I was really hoping to like this movie, but unfortunately, it just didn’t do anything for me. I’d heard so much about the famous scene where Gloria Swanson is together with the lions so I was hoping to like it if only for that. The story had a very interesting premise, but it just didn’t hold my interest. A little too slowly paced for my liking. It’s very typical of other Cecil B. DeMille movies from this era in that it takes a modern day social commentary and weave it in with a flashback to historical times; in this case, ancient Babylon. The Babylon scenes are classic Cecil B. DeMille with grand sets, Gloria Swanson in fabulous costumes, and those live lions which Gloria did, indeed, really lie down with. It’s ultimately unnecessary to the plot and slows down an already slowly paced movie, but it’s definitely a good example of what made DeMille the legend he is. A lot of other people seem to like this movie, but unfortunately, I just didn’t see the appeal.

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

On the night of a sold-out opera, Captain Karl von Raden (Conrad Nagel) is only able to get a seat when another patron returns their ticket at the last minute. When he finds his way to his seat, he discovers his seat is next to the beautiful Tania Fedorova (Greta Garbo). The patron who had returned their ticket at the last minute was her cousin. They’re very attracted to each other and when Karl offers to take her home after the show, she hesitates at first but reluctantly agrees. Before they know it, they’re having a blissful day together out in the country.

When Karl has to leave for duty, his uncle Colonel Eric von Raden (Edward Connelly) tells him Tania is actually a top Russian spy. He boards his train absolutely furious at Tania for betraying him. Tania follows him onto the train to apologize and tries to tell her that she really does love him, but he won’t have any of it. In a fit of anger, she steals the plans he was carrying and sneaks off the train during the night.

Once Karl’s train reaches its destination, he has to pay dearly for his fling with Tania. He’s publicly degraded by his officers and spends some time in jail, but his uncle has a plan for how he can redeem himself by exposing a real traitor. As part of the plan, Karl has to pose as a piano player in Warsaw, but as fate would have it, he ends up playing at a party being thrown for Tania. They both still have feelings for each other and when they get to spend a brief moment together, it’s enough to put both of them in danger.

I love The Mysterious Lady. Is there any more perfect title for a Greta Garbo movie than that? This is, in my opinion, one of Garbo’s most underrated movies. She and Conrad Nagel had good chemistry together and the story is really entertaining and fascinating. This is the kind of movie that’s really good at grabbing your attention at the very beginning and holding onto it at the very last second with lots of twists and turns along the way. My only complaint about it is that the ending feels a bit forced and tacked on. But otherwise, it’s fantastic. I’d love to see this movie on the big screen some day because Garbo is so stunning in it, seeing it in a theater must be absolutely breathtaking to see.