Wolf Song

This was shown tonight at Film Forum, NYC so possibly others will be posting.

Apparently the only known print in the world is held by LOC (with a negative). When there are no picture problems, the image is pristine and glowing, but there is a lot of nitrate decomposition, mostly during intertitles. And it's only about 55 minutes- the part-talkie version, since lost, apparently had Coper and perhaps his buddies singing (campfire songs?) A Paramount film + Lib of Congress one ever sees this- get a TCM channel of your own already, Paramount! And don't suck like Fox Movie Channel! The plot summary at the top of IMDb's entry is accurate. Lupe Velez is pale and lovely and there are many shots of her bosom heaving rapidly as she is confronted with the proximate Cooper. There are nice love scenes and a dance scene when they meet. Cooper is bronzed and a little younger than we usually see him and photographed more crisply and lovingly than in THE VIRGINIAN of the same year. He wears an unusual curved-up cowboy hat and his upper torso is seen from behind as he shaves by a stream- but certainly not full-frontally in this print at least, as suggested in IMDb's entry. It's a nice film to get to see for the first time but there isn't that much to it, especially at such a short running time.

During this film, Cooper was having an intense love affair with his leading lady, Lupe Velez. A bit of Mexican fire is an novelty to a westerner, so I can understand his emotional drive. Her real name was Maria Guadalope Velez, and she earned $14,000 whilst Cooper earned $2,750.

First, the problems with the print I looked at: it's about fifteen minutes shorter than the listed runtime, it's a silent movie instead of the part-talkie that others have reported on, and it's pretty fuzzy. Still given the poor condition of Fleming's next movie with Gary Cooper, THE VIRGINIAN, it's a matter of taking what we can get.

Coop is a trapper, hooked up with mountain men Louis Wollheim and Constantine Romanoff. They arrive in Taos with a lot of furs, and prepare to celebrate, when Cooper falls in love with local senorita Lupe Velez and she with him. Her father objects, of course, so they all lead off to another town. Lupe is happy, but time hangs heavy on the guys in town, and when his partners head out to the mountains, can Cooper be far behind?

Victor Fleming may be best remembered for directing GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ late in his career, but he was one of those directors whose main strength seemed to be directing movies about men among men, like Ford, Hawks, and Wellman. He could work with strong actresses and get great performances out of them like Clara Bow. Here, although he celebrates Coop's masculinity, even having him bathe naked in a river, it seems more an effort to appeal to the women in the audience. He was nothing if not a practical director. The result is a fine movie for people who want to see Cooper's growth as a star.