The Painted Lady

Early film directed by D.W. Griffith; with Blanche Sweet giving a noteworthy performance. She is a young woman forbidden, by her father (Charles Hill Mailes), to wear make-up. When she goes to an ice cream social, she attracts little attention, while the Griffith men go for "The Painted Lady". Dejected, she meets a stranger in town (Joseph Graybill); at last! a man shows interest in the unpainted Ms. Sweet. They begin to meet secretly. Sadly, the man is really interested in her father's money - in disguise, he goes to rob Sweet's home; then, our heroine gets a gun to confront the thief…

Sweet is entertaining in the starring role, relaying all the proper emotions with her face and gestures. There is a continuity distraction - note that the man's hat as he lies down seems to pop back on his head inexplicably. "The Painted Lady"'s message doesn't really make too much sense. Why is Sweet is the only woman who suffers the consequences of frivolous femininity?

***** The Painted Lady (10/24/12) D.W. Griffith ~ Blanche Sweet, Charles Hill Mailes, Joseph Graybill

After a year or two of working with very small casts and perfecting his direction of actors, Griffith was by this point starting to work his way back towards the larger scale pictures, but still retaining the intimate, human focus. The Painted Lady demonstrates how he could make such an individual drama against the backdrop of crowds and moments of action.

This is a film about madness and isolation. Griffith demonstrates that isolation in a crowd shot early on. As opposed to the rather cluttered and confusing crowd scenes of Griffith's earliest works, the focus here is very clear. Blanche Sweet literally stands out from the crowd, a passive and solitary figure against a backdrop of much activity and excitement. Later, he repeatedly uses the very plain bridge location which forces us to focus totally upon her.

Although the Painted Lady does contain an action sequence of the kind that might normally be the climax of a Biograph short, Griffith instead makes it the catalyst for the final act. He doesn't dwell on it, and so it doesn't overwhelm the second half of the film. The slowness of the final scenes forms a balance with the first half, and they have a greater impact as a result.

Prior to this, while the acting in Griffith's shorts was becoming increasingly naturalistic, his actors still often slipped into over-the-top pantomiming when their characters' emotions ran high. Here however, in a picture that has a lot of scope for melodrama with its murder and madness, Sweet surprisingly manages to keep it relatively real. Importantly Griffith also encourages a deep performance from her by doing very long takes of her madness scenes.

The Painted Lady has aged better than most Griffith pictures, and is still very effective today mainly thanks to Blanche Sweet's acting. It goes to show that the depiction of a deranged loner unable to connect with society goes back a lot further than Travis Bickle.

Miss Blanche Sweet's portrayal of a mad girl in this picture seems to reach a higher plane of art than any of her previous characterizations, and she has done good work in many diverse roles. The film presents a psychological study of character dramatically, and gives a fresh criticism of life. The subtlety of it makes it a hard picture to comment on; one hesitates as before jumping into a very deep pool. But very crudely we may say that it draws for us a not very well balanced girl. She is somewhat morbidly conscientious and, consequently, not popular; but the humanity of her heart, as shown by her longing for friends, her longing to be understood, makes us deeply interested in her. Very logical is her reaching out to her new friend, her first sweetheart, and since he is what he is, a tragedy of some sort is imminent. The suddenness with which it comes shatters her mind. It is a picture that most certainly ought to be liked. No mechanically working mind could possibly have conceived it and we commend it as a work of art. A strong offering. - The Moving Picture World, November 9, 1912

While a young lady contemplated the advantages of make-up a man contemplated how he could get access of an old man's business secrets.

In "The Painted Lady" The Older Sister (Blanche Sweet) eschewed make-up while The Younger Sister (Madge Kirby) had all the boys in the yard by virtue of her liberally using her war paint. But not all of the men flocked to The Younger Sister. At least one man, The Stranger (Joseph Graybill), was attracted to The Older Sister. Too bad his aims were criminal in nature. He was using the Older Sister as a means to get access to her father's business secrets.

Free on YouTube.

I like the subhead to this film: "An Indictment Of Frivolous Femininity." I don't like the idea expressed in the story that a woman has to put on a lot of makeup to attract a man. In fact, in this case, the actress playing the "plain" and often-rejected girl, is pretty without it. She's Blanche Sweet, who starred in a ton of silent movies including many in her teenage years. Although only in her mid-teens when this was made (perhaps even 14), she looked more mature.

In this story, as we see, shyness and a too-strict father are also making a dating life almost nonexistent for poor, makeup-less "the older sister" (Sweet).

What happens in this story is very strange, and you can read various accounts of it here. I guess the lonely girl wasn't too good at figuring out men. Chalk it up to loneliness and inexperience. What happens in her house, though, is too weird and dates the movie quite a bit. But, that's to be expected. After all, the movie isn't far from being 100 years old.

It's nice that these old D.W. Griffith shorts are still available to the public, even if they look a little odd.