Kiki

A total delight! This famous flop for Mary Pickford is VERY funny and totally fun.

Pickford plays a French chorus girl in New York trying to make good and survive. Pickford's French accent may not be as good as Marion Davies' in "Marianne" but she's wonderfully funny in this role. It's a talkie extension of all the great comic parts she played in silent films.

Pickford was a great comic and proves she had what it takes to make it in talkies. KIKI is a terrific comedy and she's better in this than in her other three talkies. KIKI was based on the Norma Talmadge silent film which was based on the Broadway play. Oddly I just read in the Valentino biography that he had seen Lenore Ulric in New York and then Gladys Cooper in London in the stage versions.

The film opens with a LONG panning shot of backstage doings all in time to the song the chorus girls are stomping away to. Pickford gets fired but insinuates her way back into the chorus via the producer (Reginald Denny). On opening night she makes a shambles of the big number starring Margaret Livingston as the vain star. Pickford is hysterically funny.

Not realistic at all but great fun. Co-stars include Joseph Cawthorn, Phil Tead (funny as the butler), Edwin Maxwell, and Fred Walton.

The sets for the apartment are atrociously ugly. Not to be believed! An explosion of Victoriana and Art Deco.

Mary Pickford was definitely one of the greats!

This is so like Mary Pickford.

Even in one her apparently not so good movies she deposits a number of special moments and some in this movie are totally enjoyable.

The long dance scene is wonderfully choreographed and hilarious, I had to keep watching it over and over.

People often forget that in the earliest talkies actors were hamstrung by the positioning and quality of microphones. It took them a while to work it out and for actors to work out how to free themselves up again.

This is by no means a bad movie. An enjoyable movie with some special moments and also great to see a different Pickford.

Pickford only made one more movie, mostly because external events and pressures were over taking her life. If only Fairbanks could have stayed true to Mary - we may have got a whole bunch of Mary Pickford movies and in a new genre.

The dance scene is what most people take away from this movie and that certainly was a 10 out of 10 moment. I have watched it many times and it is up on Youtube.

The rest of the movie suffers from direction and script and the need to make Mary over act to fit the part. This was a stage play not really suitable for film without a change. The stage productions earlier success was grounded on deliberate stage over acting. So it is not surprising it didn't suit film that well. The film without Pickford would have been irritating, it is Pickford that saves it and makes it watchable.

But we should also remember that at this time studios were still struggling with Sound and this made direction and acting quite difficult.

Mary could have easily taken this onto the stage and had a big hit with it, she was a veteran stage actor.

If anything this movies shows Pickford to be versatile and willing to step out of the box.

The transition from silent to talkies was a killer for most silent screen actors and actresses. The more they talked, the more audiences realized their acting abilities were pretty dramatically shallow. Some who had survived learned to say less and display more of a physicality between them and their co-stars.

It's a lesson Mary Pickford should have learned. Right out of the gate, 'America's Sweetheart' became enamored with dialogue. Her first talkie, 1929's "Coquette," taken from a 1927 Broadway play, features her adopting a southern accent. The film is filled with dialogue. But she was awarded an Academy Award Best Actress, where she lobbied the organization's judges for the win. Her next talkie was 1929's "Taming of the Shrew," co-starring her husband, Douglas Fairbanks. Another failure. Next came March 1931 "Kiki," yet another Pickford stage adaptation, this one from an Andre Picard 1918 play. In it, the actress adopts a French accent while the feature film is equally filled with lots of talking.

Pickford plays a chorus girl who has trouble learning her steps. She falls in love with producer Victor Randall (Reginald Denny), who still is in touch with his ex-wife. "Kiki" failed miserably in the theaters, partly because Pickford's loyal fans weren't used to her playing a brash, provocative showgirl who constantly wears tight shorts, who takes off her bra underneath her blouse while standing in front of Victor, and who sits in front of a male theater assistant in only her underwear slowly pulling up long nylon stockings one leg at a time. Her new on-screen persona failed to deliver box-office magic, creating a loss for United Artist studio she and her partners owned.

Today's viewers cite one particular scene where Pickford shines. Early in "Kiki" she gets a chance to display her comical dancing talents. The musical number, choreographed by Busby Berkeley following his Hollywood debut in 1930's "Whoopee!" consists of the 'Goldwyn Girls' and Pickford. The actress' physicality is a pure delight to see, especially her athleticism at the age of 39. She performs several pratfalls and stunts, amusing the on-screen theater audience, but causing much angst to the show's managers and the band's drummer. The 10-minute sketch, which is likened to a Lucy Ball skit, serves as a reminder why Pickford's silent screen movies were so popular. But once the number concludes, she descends back into a dialogue-filled yapper.

"Kiki" was Pickford's second-to-last film. An era was quickly closing in on one of early Hollywood's most influential actresses. For one brief sequence, "Kiki" viewers in 1931 were able to capture the enormous talents of Pickford, a trademark that earned her the nickname "America's Sweetheart."

Having been aware of Mary Pickford only by reputation up to this point, it is kind of a shame that I chose this to be the first film of hers I watched. But to be fair, I didn't watch it for her. Busby Berkeley choreographed a number early on, and that madcap farce ended up being the best thing about this. As for Pickford, let's just say she, along with practically the rest of the film, is a hot mess. Everything about her performance, from the exaggerated gestures to the atrocious French accent, screams trainwreck. As the quote I chose headline with might indicate, the best parts of this, few as they are, happen when she isn't talking. Beyond that, the source quality on YouTube was barely watchable. I don't see myself sitting through this again, but it was fun enough this once.