Quality Street

"Dr. Brown" (Conrad Nagel) arrives, eagerly expected, at the home of his belle "Phoebe" (Marion Davies) only to tell her that he is off to help the soldiers fighting the Napoleonic wars. She and her sister "Susan" (Helen Jerome Eddy) become school teachers and almost ten years pass before the doctor, now a captain, returns to be disappointed by his now rather more aged gal. She's horrified by his reaction so sets about rejuvenating herself to win him back. Thing is, though, she doesn't just re-invent "Phoebe", she creates a younger version: her neice "Livvy". It isn't just him whose head is turned, though. There are plenty of other dashing young men now paying court to this revamped lady and she is soon ably playing them all off the increasingly jealous "Brown". Of course, it being a small middle-class English community, there are no shortage of nosey-parkers watching everything that is going on and they are enjoyably epitomised by spinster "Willoughby" (Flora Finch) who could give you a running commentary on the grass growing in an house two miles away! Basing a silent film on a book, and a Sir J. M. Barrie book at that, was a risky venture and does rob the story of it's verbal flightiness and some of it's mischief, but there's still quite a lot of chemistry on display from Nagel and a very engaging Davis who does the doubling-up role in a way that wouldn't fool anyone, and Sidney Franklin manages to keep all of this moving along with an entertaining skip in it's step.

On Quality Street the principal occupation is gossip. Doctor Conrad Nagel is courting Marion Davies. But Napoleon is threatening, and so Nagel marches off to war. When he returns, he finds Miss Davies and her sister, Helen Jerome Eddy, running a school, and Miss Davies feels like an old maid, and dresses like one: she wears (gasp!) glasses! There's a bit of awkward conversation, and when Nagel leaves, she rants, dresses in girlish fashion, and announces to her sister and servant Kate Price that she is her own niece. Nagel walks in at this point, and she behaves most coquettishly. Nagel seems fascinated, and so Miss Davies decides to humiliate him.

It clearly was the sort of movie that she and her lover, William Randolph Hearst, could agree on. She knew her talents were as a light comedienne. He wanted to see her in major dress dramas, so James M. Barrie's play, with its Regency furniture and clothing, was an artful compromise. Miss Davies offers three performances here, as the young Phoebe, the older one, and as Livy, with some nice layering to indicate that the last is an act. Nagel, a competent but usually uninspiring male lead, is quite good here, looking a lot like Fredric March would in dress dramas a decade later; and the bevy of gossips include Flora Finch. At 115 minutes it moves a trifle slowly, but Miss Davies has a lot of different emotions to run through, and it's an excellent, if old-fashioned drama.

Marion Davies is nearly engaged to Conrad Nagel, but then he decides to join the British army to fight in the Napoleonic wars. When he returns perhaps ten years later, he seems to snub her for being too old, so she decides to test his love by impersonating her mythical niece Livvy from London.

Very well done. The contrast between Marion Davies' two characters is fun and interesting. The dialog in the titles may seem queer, but is probably taken from the J.M. Barrie play.

The cinematography has some unusual camera angles and some of the scenes could not be done as they are in a sound movie, especially the gossips.

James M Barrie is now remembered solely for 'Peter Pan', but his play 'Quality Street' was once extremely popular ... so much so that in Britain a brand of filled chocolates were named Quality Street. Barrie's play (despite this film version and a remake) is now out of fashion, but the Quality Street choccies are more popular than ever ... and are exactly the sort of sweets that would be devoured by some lovelorn woman whilst reading a Mills & Boon romance paperback containing the sort of historical claptrap seen in this film.

I screened a videotape of 'Quality Street' that was transferred from a nitrate print that had already begun to deteriorate. In my several decades of movie-watching, I've viewed hundreds of reels of nitrate films that have begun to decompose, and I've got pretty good at ignoring the ripples and slurries while concentrating on the surviving portions of the image. Yet, because I'm accustomed to absolute image clarity when watching videos or DVDs, I found the very minor nitrate deterioration in this video transfer to be deeply distracting. When I see the ripples of deteriorating nitrate, I expect to smell the odour of vinegar ... but on this video, all I could smell was the head-cleaner solution.

Much has been said elsewhere about the relationship between Marion Davies and her backer WR Hearst. Davies proved that her real talent was for frothy comedies of manners in modern settings, but Hearst preferred to cast her in elaborate costume dramas that would present her as a 'serious' actress. 'Quality Street' was clearly chosen for her by Hearst. This story takes place in England during the Napoleonic wars: there are plenty of scoop bonnets, mob caps, plumed shakos and Empire waistlines on offer here. We're solidly in Jane Austen territory, but with a story and characters below Jane Austen's standards.

SPOILERS COMING. The basic storyline here is very similar to 'Madam Satan' and 'Two-Faced Woman': when a man loses interest in a woman, she creates a younger and more vivacious identity, then proceeds to regain his interest as this 'other' woman. The leading man here is Conrad Nagel, who zombies his way through this role even more dully than usual for him. When Dr Brown (Nagel) appears to be no longer enamoured of Phoebe Throssel (Davies), she becomes her own niece Livvy. The doctor seems to prefer Livvy to Phoebe. The end of this story is deeply unconvincing, when Brown announces that he prefers Phoebe after all. A maidservant (Kate Price) has already revealed the imposture to Brown ... so we never know whether his preference for Phoebe is genuine.

The costumes and sets are impressive throughout, except for an anachronistic house number outside Phoebe's residence at 56 Quality Street. (British residences didn't have house numbers until Queen Victoria's reign.) Even more impressive here is the virtuoso camera work by Hendrik Sartov, who filmed this movie's dolly shots with a hand-held camera while wearing roller skates. But we get the usual flaw of movies set in the past: everything is too clean, and everyone's teeth are too good. This is especially conspicuous during one sequence featuring Flora Finch as the local gossip. Sartov's camera skates in for a tight close-up of Finch's mouth, and he holds this while we notice how impeccable Finch's teeth are. I doubt that anyone in Georgian England had such fine choppers.

The intertitles feature lots of 'La, sir!' dialogue that should please readers of Regency romances. This really isn't my sort of story; I kept expecting Dame Barbara Cartland to show up. I'll rate 'Quality Street' 6 out of 10.

In 1927 and 1928, as the silent era was coming to an end, Marion Davies turned out seven films, not counting the abandoned FIVE O'CLOCK GIRL. In 1929 she made the talkie plunge in MARIANNE.

In those 7 films Davies played an amazing array of characters in SHOW PEOPLE, THE PATSY, TILLIE THE TOILER, THE RED MILL, THE FAIR CO-ED, THE CARDBOARD LOVER, and QUALITY STREET. Few silent-screen actresses could have produced so many terrific films in a 2-year period. Of these only TILLIE remains hidden away in an archive somewhere; the other six films are available on DVD or VHS.

QUALITY STREET is based on a play by James M. Barrie and was remade as a talkie for Katharine Hepburn in 1937. This silent version is terrific in its costumes, sets, and of course in Marion Davies in the dual roles of Phoebe and Livvy. Phoebe is about to be engaged to Conrad Nagel when he suddenly goes off to the Napoleonic Wars. Years later he returns to find Phoebe an old maid. Furious that he should find her old, she masquerades as her made-up niece Livvy and captures his romantic attentions.

Essentially playing three characters, Davies is just wonderful as the hopeful young Phoebe, the plain and worn-out Phoebe who runs a school, and the kittenish Livvy. Nagel is solid as the suitor. Helen Jerome Eddy plays Susan, Kate Price is Patty. Flora Finch, Margaret Seddon, and Marcelle Corday play the busybodies.

Davies proves once again that she was a fine actress and a super comedienne. She's a delight here and dominates every scene she's in. During this period she ranked among the top FIVE box office stars (with Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, William Haines, and Norma Shearer) for MGM but still the urban legends persist about her unpopularity and lack of talent. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Davies has a remarkable dramatic scene after she learns that Brown is taken with Livvy and has forgotten her, seeing that she is an old maid. She discards the Livvy dress and make-up and, staring into a mirror, dons her "old maid" clothes, neatly tucking her hair into her plain bonnet. In essence, she is accepting her fate as an old maid. Her sadness is palpable. It's a moving moment from a great actress.