A Florida Enchantment

Back in the early days of silent films, Hollywood was still a sleepy village. Most of the American films were made on the East Coast...such as in New Jersey and Florida. While Hollywood had begun making movies by 1914, it was still a new thing...and Florida was still a leading location for movies in both Jacksonville and nearby St. Augustine. This is a Vitagraph movie made in St. Augustine. My assumption is that they stopped making Florida films soon after this due to the rain and heat...as Hollywood is more temperate and dry.

A lady returns home because she plans on marrying an eligible doctor in town. However, after a misunderstanding, she thinks he's interested in other women and she runs away to pout...though the doctor had actually done nothing wrong. Lillian then does something weird....she finds a letter written a hundred years ago in which it describes seeds from Africa that will make women's problems go away....and she takes one! The next morning, she awakens with a mustache and over time she begins looking and acting more like a man! Now she no longer wants a maid but a valet...so she gives one of the pills to her maid. What happens next? Well, you should see the film...but it includes Lillian now acting like an Amazon and doing such things as dressing as a man and chasing women instead of the doctor!

This is a very shocking plot when you see the film today. Before the tough Production Code was adopted by Hollywood in mid-1934, films could have anything they wanted in them. Sure, local censor boards could edit things out or refuse to release the movies in their states...but often studios just accepted this and made films with some amazing content when seen today. Most of the really outrageous stuff in films (such as nudity, bestiality, cursing and sexuality) was seen in the early 1930s but sometimes earlier films also were pretty risque. After all, 1924's "Ben Hur" features nudity and "A Florida Enchantment" is an LGBT film! Plus, Germans were making LGBT films as well in the 20s and 30s...something that would surprise folks who aren't really aware of cinema or cultural history. So, historically speaking, it is a pretty amazing picture and proves being gay wasn't something invented in the 1960s!

Now, this does not mean the film is inoffensive and won't shock a few sensibilities today. All the maids and butlers and valets in this film are played by white folks wearing burnt cork makeup to look black. It's ridiculous and pretty awful...but it was 1914 and minstrels and the like were widely accepted. My advice is accept it and just watch the film, as it would be a shame to avoid a film simply because it was made long before political correctness. It's sort like the expression 'Two steps forward, one step back'.

So should you watch it? Well, it's well worth seeing simply to dispell the widely accepted myth that DW Griffith invented full-length films with 1915's "Birth of a Nation". I've seen "Birth" mentioned many times as a first and while it might be the first American picture that is over three hours long, "A Florida Enchantment" came out a year earlier and lasted an hour...making it a full-length picture. Additionally, if you care, films like the Italian epic "Cabiria" came out in 1914 and was two and a half hours in length!

How is the film technically? Well, it looks very advanced for 1914...with a complex plot, lots of edits and very nice sets. And, while some of the camerawork is a bit primitive, it's not bad at all when seen today.

This brings me to watchability. "A Florida Enchantment" is very easy to watch if you are a patient person who watched silents. Many folks automatically dismiss silent films, though if you give it a chance you'll probably enjoy it as I did. Overall, a funny and very unusual film...one that would be great to show at an LGBT film festival to show the history of this in the cinema. Plus, Edith Storey's performance as Lillian is great and shouldn't be missed!

A pioneering work on gay cinema, "A Florida Enchantment" is a delightful and entertaining glimpse at WW1-era America and its social and cultural mores. Based on a book and play of the same name this vintage charmer tells the tale of a woman who ingests strange "ingredients" that transform her into something not particularly favorable in 1914 America. Coming from a 1 % family and with an aging doctor for a suitor madcap hilarity ensues as the young lady indulges in her newfound freedom to everyone's horror and bemusement.

In humorous and still quite scandalous tones the film takes on the then novel topics of bisexuality, cross dressing and transgenderism. Although it has its slow parts and the minimal intertitles make the story a bit hard to follow at little over an hour long the acting and pacing are well done for a film well over a century old. To see the elegant suits of the men, the elaborate gowns of the women, the hats, the antiquated gestures and mannerisms, the amusing blackface, and overall vintage look, feel and vibe hearken one back to a bygone age. What I'll always remember and associate the film with is the sunny, windy, leafy and lush scenery of the Florida background which gives this B & W relic a tropical freshness distinct in movies of the time.

One of the silents that will always remain viewable and relevant because of its quality and subject matter, "A Florida Enchantment" is a must see for historians and silent film fans.

Wonderful performance by Edith Storey. I was surprised by the gusto with which she took on a male persona. People have played with gender norms for a long time.

It's incredible I hadn't heard of this movie until very recently.

If you ever wanted a queer film from before WWI then this is about the closest you're going to get.

It isn't really though. It's a neat concept and gimmick but they don't do much with it.

I would have thought that they would have spent more of the third act really establishing character dynamics that display the relationship between the sexes for them to build on later.

Watching this lady make out (barely) with other ladies is the only thing they really do to make her out as *now acting like a man*.

It's about the right length for what it is and the actor in blackface is something that needs to be acknowledged but what is there really to say at this point?

A worthy movie if, like me, you're doing a "one movie for every year" kick.

This early feature-length film, "A Florida Enchantment", has a novel and goofy story of a woman discovering old seeds that reverse one's gender. She and her servant take one each and, supposedly, become men (although they're still played by the same actresses and, often, appear to the other characters to be female when they're wearing dresses). She also gives one to her fiancé, and he is thus feminized. The narrative, however, is lacking beyond the comedy of genders exaggerating the characteristics of the opposite sex. There are party and travel scenes that don't progress the plot. This gender-bending comedy probably would've fit the one or two-reel format better than it does the hour-plus length. In fact, an early short film, Alice Guy's "The Consequences of Feminism" (Les Résultats du féminism)(1906) was a similar gender-role-reversal farce. Additionally, this narrative suggests some homosexuality and, especially, cross-dressing, but not in any daring way, but rather as an extension of the gender-reversal amusement.

The gender transformations are less than convincing, but I suppose that doesn't matter. More bothersome is the servant characters in blackface and the otherwise rather racist characterizations of blacks in this film. The goggled eyes and jokes based on the servant's stupidity or the lead character striking her maid made valet are insulting rather than funny. Otherwise, the film is of little cinematic interest. It's rather prosaically filmed. There are a few abrupt cuts, which don't distinguish the passing of time (i.e. direct cuts instead of fades or something similar). Overall, "A Florida Enchantment" is, at best, mildly amusing in parts.