Ella Cinders

If you thought all silent comedies were slapstick see this gentle character based comedy. Colleen Moore plays a much abused small town girl with a simply awful family. She wins a beauty contest - the prize a trip to Hollywood and a studio contract!

Colleen Moore is brilliant as Ella - funny, warm, beautiful, vivacious. The scene when she finds she has won the contest will move you to tears, and you'll roar with laughter when she practices eye movements for the camera. This is one of the great performances of the silent era. She can make the smallest thing funny, so it is interesting to see her work with Harry Langdon who could do the same. In one hilarious scene he plays himself.

What is remarkable about Moore is that she can be very funny but still maintain the realism of her characterisation - there is a sadness here that makes the comedy so much more potent. Wait till you see her smoke a cigar, and spin-out! I have never seen a moment like this played better.

Also very charming is Lloyd Hughes as her boyfriend. And the film's director Alfred E Green plays the director in the film!

This film, in a good print from Video Yesteryear which has a fine organ score from Rosa Rio, is a true classic - not to be missed.

A better than average comedy of the period that includes a backstage look at Hollywood. It includes a scene with Harry Langdon playing his typical screen character.

Best scenes are Ella on the lam backstage at a Hollywood studio; at the photo studio; Ella's first cigar and the eye exercises. Some of the womens costumes and the titles are also very good.

Ella Cinders is like a modern day (well, for the 1920s) Cinderella story. A poor girl (Colleen Moore) living in a house with her stepmother and stepsisters like a servant has only things going right for her. She has the love of a sweet man in town (Lloyd Hughes) and a film contest that she wins. A group of men hold a beauty contest in town and the prize is a trip to Hollywood to become an actress. The stepsisters and half of the town think they will win the prize, but a funny picture puts Ella in the spotlight, sending her on a train to Hollywood. Once there, she finds that the place isn't what she dreamed it would be, but she cannot go home so she does her best to succeed.

Harry Langdon makes a very funny but short appearance in the movie. Even without his appearance, this movie would be a jewel. It is quickly paced, very funny, and stars one of the major stars of the silent era. Unfortunately, this film, along with most of Colleen Moore's other movies, is not commercially available. Bad bootleg prints are all that we will see until someone wises up to the quality of this movie and releases it on a quality DVD.

Colleen Moore stars as the title character. In many ways, Ella's life at the beginning of the movie is like Cinderella's. She's a hated step-daughter who's treated like a slave by her step-mother and step-sisters. However, there are fortunately many differences as well with the story. Instead of going to the ball and meeting Prince Charming, Ella is discovered by a nice guy (Lloyd Hughes) and he helps her to be discovered in a local talent contest. When she wins, she is sent by the town to Hollywood to get a chance to be an actress. But two things aren't as they appear to be....the contest is a fraud and the nice guy who helped her isn't the poor ice man he appears to be. See the picture and find out what's in store for this cute lady.

In so many ways, this story is like combining the tradition tale of Cinderella with a film like Marion Davies' "Show People"...about a young lady trying her best to make it in Hollywood. Ms. Moore is lovely in this comedic role and it's one of the better silents this forgotten actress made. Well worth seeing due to excellent writing, direction and acting.

By the way, if you do see the film, look for a cameo with Harry Langdon!

I first heard of this film as a fan of the great film comedian Harry Langdon because of a guest appearance he makes in one scene of this film. Watching the whole thing, though, I was very glad I got ahold of this comedy vehicle for the silent star Colleen Moore; it's a highly funny, pleasant, and entertaining picture all the way through.

"Ella Cinders" is based on a comic strip (or, as the main title has it, "comedy strip") of the same name that started appearing only the year before the film version was made. Having seen only one edition of the strip I can't say how closely the movie parallels it, but I can say that while looking very pretty in the picture, Colleen Moore also manages to look very much like the drawings of her character.

Faithful or not, the screen treatment is a very good one -- a clever, witty, and involving update of, obviously, "Cinderella" and an effective satire of the arbitrary nature of Hollywood stardom. There are just enough diversions from the line of the story to stay funny, but keep the plot going. And the "Cinderella" elements can be very amusing when played right for laughs, especially Mrs Cinders' complete inability to remember she has another daughter.

Colleen Moore was the real revelation of the picture for me, though. If there were nothing else to it she could have carried it on charisma and screen presence alone. She's totally likable, earnest, innocent, and bewildered, and there are several great scenes that are only that way because her performance makes them so. The scene on the train that would otherwise be simply "a woman smokes a cigar given to her by an Indian" becomes a a bravura performance of her nausea barely masked by a frightened attempt to please the threatening Indians. And a highlight is Ella's earnest but inescapably silly attempts to follow a book's (surprisingly accurate!) advice that great stars are often made by crossing their eyes. Add to the list a hilarious routine with an impatient photographer, a fly, and an Ella desperate to have a flattering shot taken for her beauty contest.

It's a little ironic, actually, that a film that mocks Hollywood stardom in such an on-target way (Ella wins the contest because the fly on her nose made her look just right for the comediennes Hollywood needs!) should be so effectively "made" by its lead actress' star quality.

When Harry Langdon does show up (as Ella wanders into the shooting of one of his films -- he was at the height of his popular at this point and releasing his films through the same studio as released this) and seems exactly the same offscreen as on, he and Moore seem to have great screen chemistry, like kindred innocents trying to help each other escape... something.

Perhaps it's not substantial enough to be one of the greatest of silent comedies, but I think it would be very difficult if not impossible not to have a great time watching this. And it makes it very clear why Colleen Moore was such a sensation.