Rosita

"Set the table for three. Tonight we feast with death!"

It's a simple story and it moves a little slowly at times, but to see Mary Pickford playing a street musician and dancing a little jig, flirting with a traveling nobleman, and fending off the advances of the horny king, all under the direction of Ernst Lubitsch, hey I'm in. It's actually kind of hard to tell it's from Lubitsch, though the sets are gorgeous and the crowd scenes suitably lively, with the exception of this intertitle, which I chuckled over: "Good news! His Majesty graciously consents to your being shot." This is Pickford's show though, and she's as charming as ever.

The restoration is a thing of beauty, with sharp images, good tints, a Handschlegel sequence that is charming, beautiful set design, and photography by Miss Pickford's regular cameraman in this period, the great Charles Rosher. Ernst Lubitsch, in his first American film, directs to show off everything, offers a few grace notes, and has turned out an overlong movie.

I admire Lubitsch's comedies endlessly, but I am not so fond of his historical epics. I understand their popularity at the time. With Europe in the last days of the Great War, and a couple of years coming out of it, looking at luxury on screen was all the escape audiences could get from a devastated continent. Yet showing that luxury takes up screen time, and Lubitsch seemed to feel no need to fill it up for those of us who exhausted that pleasure quickly. As a result of this, while the opening sequences of Carnival, waiting for Miss Pickford to appear amidst the innumerable extras, is exciting and fun and even a bit suspenseful, the constant barrage of magnificent clothes and high glass shots while Miss Pickford shows she is a great actress palled on me. She had already shown her range in an assortment of roles eight years earlier, when she played Indian girls, Scottish lasses and Madame Butterfly. In those movies, she had shown her range by offering her audiences drama and comedy. In this movie, it's Mathilde Comont and George who get the giggles, while Miss Pickford gets to do an 18th Century Suffering In Mink role in slow motion. Her features had been an hour in length. This one stretches to 100 minutes.

One of the reasons that Miss Pickford wanted to make this movie is she was tired of the popular movies she had made over the last few years, in which she played children or adolescents. "That little girl killed me" she later said. Did she understand the irony? An actor performs many roles, but when people go to see a star, they have expectations about what they'll be seeing. Miss Pickford was not going to play Lady MacBeth, even though she was undoubtedly capable of giving a bang-up performance. She stretched here to please the critics, and her fans accepted it and even enjoyed it, because it showed she was as good as they thought she was. Yet if it's that little girl killed her, it's equally true she made Miss Pickford one of the half dozen biggest stars in the history of cinema.

The King of Spain (Holbrook Blinn) visits the carnival in Seville where he listens incognito to Rosita (Mary Pickford) singing a cheeky song that criticises his rule. Rosita is arrested, though Don Diego (George Walsh) intervenes while she is being dragged off to jail, only to be jailed himself. Of course the lecherous king has become interested in the pretty street singer - but so has Don Diego, who is now being sentenced to death because he killed the officer who had arrested Rosita... and so on. What follows is a quite convoluted affair, and that is one of my points of criticism. The whole setup is so complicated that there would have been material enough for a couple of films. As it is the whole thing feels rushed, despite the one hour forty minutes it takes. A consequence of this is that the characters remain pretty one-dimensional (this is my second point of criticism). The king cannot control his sex drive, Don Diego is noble, Rosita not above accepting favours but nevertheless sweet, pretty and lovable. At the end of all this the queen appears more or less like a deus ex machina to resolve the complications. The settings of the film are sumptuous, as are the costumes that place the story roughly in the Napoleonic era (when Spain had other problems than the king's libido). In sum: Fundamentally this is a watchable picture, but there are a number of weaknesses that make it more difficult to enjoy than many other silent films.

"Rosita" is an enjoyable film--even with its faults. After all, think about the notion of having Mary Pickford playing a Spanish temptress! But despite this, the film is decent breezy entertainment and a change of pace from the typical roles played by this silent star.

The film is set sometime in the 18th century. The King is a bit of a dirty old man and, as usual, is up to no good. In this case, a priest talks about how wicked a local festival has become--so the King has to go to 'investigate'. His investigations add up to him falling in love with a fiery temptress, Rosita. He orders his men to abduct her--though a very honorable Captain sees what's happening and jumps to her defense--and is sent to prison for his troubles. When Rosita meets the King, he showers her with jewels and a castle and his intentions are mostly dishonorable. But, he seems willing to give her anything she wants--and she wants the Captain out of prison. What's next? Well, a lot of treachery and a happy ending that pops out of no where.

Like so many of Pickford's films, the sets are top-notch and it's an excellent production all around. In fact, Allied Artists even went to the trouble of bringing one of Germany's best directors to do this one and Ernst Lubitsch was on hand to give it his famous touch. My only complaint, other than the odd casting of Mary, is that the film seems a bit lightweight--though it is certainly fun.

Pickford is impressive as the poor peasant entertainer with whom the King becomes ridiculously obsessed. Having seen some of Pickford's earlier 'little girl', romanticism movies this was a refreshing change and demonstrates how she was able to extend her range given the opportunity, utterly convincing as she is playing the fiesty young rebel as a woman with attitude. She reminded me of our contempory performers such as Madonna. Always amusing and beautifully composed by Lubitsch, whilst not a classic a highly enjoyable film.