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.

In spite of its notoriety amongst Mary Pickford fans, "Kiki" is far from the disaster it is reputed to be.

Legend has it that this film was an attempt to sex up the Pickford image, with results so catastrophic that she appeared in only one more film. That "Kiki" was a resounding box office flop is irrefutable. But it proves to be an entertaining, fast moving comedy with a dazzling tour de force from its star.

There is nothing at all embarrassing about Pickford's performance. She may not be at her most subtle, and there is notable absence of pathos, but she gives a credible performance and seems much younger than her 39 years. Her French accent may not be all that authentic, but it is consistent.

And she has clearly not lost her knack for physical comedy. Indeed her entrance - being hurled into a room flat on her posterior - is as memorable as anything in the Pickford body of work.

The supporting cast is not up to much, and the direction flags at the mid point - though Sam Taylor does offer a fine opening backstage sequence. "Kiki" may not be the best comedy of its type, but its very far from a write off.

As we are now removed from the Pickford mystique, its much easier to see her performance for what it is, rather than as a violation of a hallowed image. Its far too late for "Kiki" to find a popular audience, of course, but it is certainly due for a reevaluation.

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.

Mary Pickford's "Kiki" (1931) is not generally considered one of her best films, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable.

An earlier comment here said that this film was Ms. Pickford's attempt to "sex up" her image. Long gone were the billowy curls of her early films, where she played young girls even after she was in her thirties. Here, she sports jazz-age bobbed hair, plays an audacious flirt, and is clearly a woman "on the make" -- though chastely -- for the character played by her costar, Reginald Denny.

I've said that in "Kiki," Ms. Pickford tries to "sex up" her image. Here, she shows us her legs (which were "not bad" for someone only 5 feet tall); she removes her brassiere from beneath her blouse while standing in front of Denny; and in a later scene, she sits in front of his male assistant in her lingerie and unconcernedly puts on her stockings, slowly, one leg at a time.

The film is lively and kinetic, almost a slapstick comedy. Ms. Pickford delivers kicks to various backsides, among them Reginald Denny's and Margaret Livingston's, and gets kicked herself. Twice, Ms. Pickford is seen falling on her rear end. She even tumbles off the stage and into the orchestra pit, landing seat first into a drum -- a stunt her friend Charles Chaplin would use, years later, in "Limelight" (1952). I thought everyone in "Kiki" was extraordinarily game. They were all obviously hoping to make this film hilarious.

Unfortunately, "Kiki" flopped at the box office, and Ms. Pickford would make only one more film -- "Secrets," another flop. The writing on the wall was now more legible than ever. Maybe the public felt that, at age 39, Ms. Pickford was reaching a little too hard for the youth serum. The era of "America's Sweetheart" was over.

But she left behind a legacy of great performances, and a great public enthusiasm for America's first major female movie star.

Dan Navarro (daneldorado93@yahoo.com)