Macho e Fêmea

Very solid Cecil B. DeMille production of JM Barrie's play, "The Admirable Crichton" with a few DeMille flourishes.

Crichton (Thomas Meighan) is a very proper butler in a staid British home. Of course he has a distant crush on Lady Mary (Gloria Swanson), a very pampered and spoiled young lady. Tweeny the household maid (Lila Lee) has a crush on Crichton.

The family, headed by a silly old man (Theodore Roberts) decides to take a sailing trip to the South Seas and gathers up a party of family and friends. Of course they run the yacht into a rock and are washed ashore on a deserted island. The rich are all nitwits and haven't a clue how to do anything for themselves. They assume Meighan and Lee will continue to wait on them. Wrong.

Slowly it occurs to everyone that there is a new order on the island. The crafty and self-sufficient Meighan sets out to build a shelter, a fire, harvest food, etc. while the rich sit and watch. Their attempts to copy him are sadly disastrous. Eventually they "join" the former butler's group with Meighan as a sort of king.

Among the items that have washed ashore after the wreck is a book of poems that talks about a Babylonian king. In a typical DeMille moment, Swanson daydreams about her life in a Babylonian court. The sequence that follows ranks among the most famous in silent film history as Meighan becomes the Babylonian king who sentences the reluctant maiden (Swanson) to the lions' den as his jealous courtesan (Bebe Daniels) gleefully watches. The scene is much shorter than I remembered as the fabulously gowned Swanson walks in among the lions. The famous scene of the bare-backed Swanson with the roaring lion atop her was very real (no double).

And so the merry band of islanders, under King Crichton, goes on for a few years until, just before the marriage of Swanson and Meighan), they are "rescued" and returned to their former lives (and stations).

Meighan and Swanson are terrific. Roberts is funny as the old man. The supporting cast includes Julia Faye (as a maid), Robert Cain (as Swanson's boring suitor), Edmund Burns (as the vicar), Raymond Hatton (as the silly ass Ernie), Mildred Reardon (as Lady Agatha), and Rhy Darby (as the pitiful Lady Duncraigie who marries her chauffeur).

Logic aside, this is a stylish and solid film and features a ravishing 20-year-old Gloria Swanson in one of her first big hits for DeMille. Another famous scene is early in the film as Swanson prepares to taker her morning bath, a ritual that includes several maids, gallons of rose water, and another of DeMille's groundbreaking interior designs.

A must see for fans of silent films.

Sir J. M. Barrie was still very much alive and kicking when this well crafted adaptation of his "Admirable Crichton" (1902) story was made and I wonder if he ever saw it... It is the story of the "Earl of Loam" (Theodore Roberts) who decides to take his entirely spoiled, aristocratic family on his yacht for a cruise on the South Seas. It's up to the butler "Crichton" (Thomas Meighan) to organise it all before the mollycoddled bunch all set sail... It's all, well, plain sailing until their boat runs aground on a desert island and their whole, nicely ordered, lives are thrown asunder... In order to survive, let alone thrive, in this outwardly hostile place, they must forget the protocols and deferences that bound their hitherto formal relationships and it isn't soon before roles are reversed and the butler is in charge... The original story offers a whimsical swipe at the landed gentry - amiably exemplified here by Roberts, Robert Cain ("Lord Brocklehurst") and the feisty "Lady Mary" (Gloria Swanson) - but it is also a bit of a love story that demonstrates how their lives might progress without the social restrictions placed on them - indeed, until the timely arrival of a rescue ship - their new meritocracy might just have prevailed!. The characters are exactly that, they add a richness to the story that is well developed here by the likes of the delightful scullery maid Lila Lee and "Lady Agatha" - who has about as much common sense as a teabag (Mildred Reardon) as well as Mayme Kelso ensuring due propriety at the end... This is a thoroughly enjoyable film that looks great, flows well and makes us all think, just a little about the things we all take for granted.

For someone who has seen Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard in We're Not Dressing you will get a nice musical and comedy treat as Bing sings some nice songs and comedy is nicely handled by Burns&Allen and Leon Errol. But while the broad comedy aspects of The Admirable Crichton are handled well there, the broad range of James M. Barrie's story is done in the Cecil B. DeMille silent film Male And Female. Starring of course DeMille's latest discovery Gloria Swanson.

Elliott Dexter a DeMille silent regular was unavailable so Thomas Meighan takes the title role as the butler on Theodore Roberts estate. He has two daughters and a silly sot of a nephew in Raymond Hatton. The daughters are Gloria Swanson and Lila Lee.

We have class distinctions in America, but they're not as rigid as they are in the United Kingdom. It's those aspects that are dealt with in Male And Female not the Americanized We're Not Dressing. Meighan has it bad for Swanson, but the rigid class structure makes that union impossible.

But when they're shipwrecked on a tropical island while on a cruise the social order is reversed. Theodore Roberts by dint of his title tries to assert his authority. But Meighan as the man with the most knowledge on how to survive upsets that in a hurry. Unlike the Crosby/Lombard film, these folks are here for a few years and thinking even with the social order reversed, it's not like Robinson Crusoe with no one to converse with for years.

Barrie both satirizes and deals with the subject class seriously. As for DeMille he gets to do one of his spectacle type sequences in a flashback when the cast imagines they're in ancient Babylon with Meighan as king. In that flashback is a young Bebe Daniels who was getting started and she would shortly being starring in DeMille silent films. DeMille in his autobiography pays compliments to a new member of his team Mitchell Leisen who did the costumes. He would be a DeMille regular until he went out on his own as a director.

I liked the film and I'll let you others decide whether there is more Barrie or more DeMille in this film.

The scene was one the most dangerous the 20-year-old actress had ever filmed. In Cecil B. DeMille's third movie with Gloria Swanson, November 1919's "Male and Female," the sequence called for a lion to be hovering next to her while she lay prone on the ground. In fact, the director had decided to cancel the act after thinking about how dangerous it potentially could be for the studio's prized actress.

She insisted DeMille film the scene. "Are you menstruating?" the director asked, knowing blood sends lions into a feeding frenzy. "No," she replied. With two trainers and her father just off frame and DeMille ready with his revolver, Swanson spends some time with the lion, who is seen licking his chops. The actress, besides a faster than normal beating heart, ended unscathed and completing one of the more iconic scenes in silent movies. Little did anyone know two weeks later that same lion ended up killing a person before being put down himself.

Such was the Swanson legend born in "Male and Female." In an earlier scene in the movie, the actress, who plays a British aristocrat, enters a luxurious Turkish bath in her mansion with the help of two maids. The exotic image lingered in the minds of the public upon first viewing, and imprinted the icon of Swanson's aura of sophistication surrounded by total opulence for the remainder of her acting career.

Her role in the movie, based on a 1902 J. M. Barrie (yes, the Peter Pan creator) play called 'The Admirable Crichton,' presented a perfect personification of hers to illustrate the class separation of the English and each member's desire to stay within the framework of their class despite others' character, likability, intelligence and ability.

Swanson's selected household, relatives and boyfriend are stranded on a deserted island after their boat runs aground. The distinct societal differences so profound back in civilization evaporate into a Darwinistic survival of the fitness on the island. The butler, Crichton, becomes the leader of the group through his wilderness skills of hunting and construction. A strong love relationship develops between Swanson and Thomas Meighan, playing the butler--so much so they contemplate marriage. Once discovered and rescued, could the two revert back to class differences and be separated, or do they shrug off the artificialness of wealth that previously would constrict their love for each other?

For actress Bebe Daniels, the female sidekick for Harold Floyd since 1916, she had reached out to DeMille for an opportunity to expand her acting chops. He agreed, and she's seen in the Babylonian sequence as the King's Favorite. The movie served as a launching pad for her to star in a variety of roles in fature films well into the late 1950's.

"Male and Female" was a huge hit for Paramount Pictures, earning as much money as DeMille's previous five films together. The movie was nominated for the American Film Institute's 100 Most Passionate Films Ever Made.

In 1952 humorist S. J. Perelman contributed a piece to The New Yorker magazine devoted to Cecil B. DeMille's silent drama Male and Female. He was a teenager when the movie was first released in 1919, and found it so enthralling he sat through it twice. More than thirty years later Perelman, by then a middle-aged playwright and essayist, saw the film again at the Museum of Modern Art and recorded his impressions. It goes without saying for anyone familiar with the man's work that his piece is hilarious, but what's surprising is how little he exaggerated. I read his essay long before I saw the movie itself, and assumed that when he quoted title cards or described the action he was employing artistic license to get laughs, but no; he described the film with journalistic accuracy and yet his article is laugh-out-loud funny. Time has not been kind to Male and Female, that is, if DeMille honestly intended to say something profound about class and gender relations, but viewed in the proper spirit the movie is still quite entertaining. Certainly it offers sumptuous production values and top-notch cinematography (and happily, survives in beautiful condition), while most of the performances are surprisingly nuanced. It's the storytelling technique that lacks subtlety, for DeMille was a moralist who could never make his points delicately when there was a sledgehammer handy.

The story is based on J. M. Barrie's 1902 stage play "The Admirable Crichton," a satire on the English class system that has been staged repeatedly and adapted into all sorts of movies over the years, and no wonder: it presents a deeply satisfying fantasy of virtue recognized and bogus class distinctions overturned-temporarily, anyway. Crichton, dignified butler in a household full of pampered, lazy snobs, proves to be the most useful person present when the whole gang is shipwrecked on a remote island in the South Seas. In the version made in the '30s, We're Not Dressing with Bing Crosby and Carole Lombard, this premise was turned into a musical comedy, while a 1957 English adaptation followed the satirical elements of the play more closely, but DeMille had his own distinctive approach to the material. As the title suggests, Male and Female plays up the romantic/erotic aspects of the role reversal, giving audiences of 1919 some of the steamiest situations then permissible.

The naughty tone is set early on, when an impish serving boy who works in the stately household of Lord Loam peeks through bedroom keyholes, giving us our first look at each major character via "keyhole shot." The most dramatic intro is reserved for the beautiful, haughty Lady Mary (Gloria Swanson), who rises from her luxurious bed and is promptly accompanied by serving girls into her marbled bathroom for a descent into a sunken tub-and celluloid immortality! This bathing sequence was an instant sensation, and lives on in the textbooks as the most famous such scene in silent cinema. Today it's a little difficult to imagine what all the fuss was about, but I'll bet your eyes won't wander from the screen. Miss Swanson was at the peak of her youthful beauty at this time, with a special charisma all her own.

Once the plot gets under way the opening sequences set up the thesis question: can lovers who cross class boundaries find happiness, or is "kind-to-kind" the only formula that works? The question is put to the test on a South Sea voyage when the Loam family's rented yacht hits the rocks, splinters apart, and strands them on an uncharted island, along with loyal Crichton and scullery maid Tweeny (the adorable Lila Lee), who is slavishly devoted to him, but well aware of the charged relationship between he and Lady Mary. Crichton soon establishes himself as the only person present who knows how to live on an island: he can build a fire, hunt, and cook a good meal, so his authority is grudgingly recognized. Two years pass, and here's where the inescapably silly elements of the story kick in. Crichton is now the unquestioned but benevolent ruler of an idyllic jungle paradise. Like the Swiss Family Robinson -or Gilligan and his friends- our castaways live in elaborate "primitive" huts that look like rustic vacation cabins where everyone wears designer pelts. Clothes horse Gloria even has a Peter Pan-style hat with a feather! We note the altered relationship between the one-time butler and his former employers: Lady Mary, who commanded Crichton with such hauteur in the opening scenes, now literally fights with Tweeny over the privilege of serving him his dinner. And it's finally explained why Mary and Crichton repeatedly yet unwittingly quote a passage of Victorian poetry concerning antiquity. It seems that, in a past life, Crichton was a Babylonian King and Lady Mary was a Christian slave, a defiant captive the King was unable to subdue, thus compelling him to feed her to "the sacred lions of Ishtar." (This is all enacted in a jaw-dropping flashback played absolutely straight.) The slave's dying curse is that the King will suffer for his deed throughout the ages, and so now, naturally, she is his superior and he waits on her-although on the island, of course, their roles have reverted to what they once were, back in ancient Babylon.

After that bizarre episode there is little left to do but arrange for the timely rescue of the castaways and then conclude with Barrie's ironic finale, in which the class system reasserts itself and all our characters revert to type. Crichton earns himself a happy ending, however, and so does the long-suffering Tweeny. This movie was a smash hit in its day, and it remains a kitschy treat for silent film buffs who enjoy exquisitely produced hokum. If you can find a copy of Perelman's essay it may help to have it handy as a sort of Viewer's Guide while you watch Male and Female: he captures its grandeur as well as its absurdity with admirable precision.