A Pair of Silk Stockings

Cute little silent film, nothing earth-shattering, but still enjoyable for its stars, adorable Constance Talmadge and handsome Harrison Ford the First. Connie thinks hubbie Harrison has cheated on her, but it's not the case. She divorces him and all her society friends back her up, despite her lack of proof. Harrison spends the rest of the film trying to win her back, by some rather unorthodox means.

The print I saw of this film was in sepia tones, I assume with the camera being held up to the screen, with the wonderful Philip Carli accompanying on the piano. You can hear the audience laughing in the background, so they obviously enjoyed it as much as I did.

Considering that this film was made as early as it was, it was a pretty good film that is still reasonably watchable. While it lacks to huge epic scope of the films of Griffith or DeMille of that era, it is still a nice simple romantic comedy. In some ways, I often prefer this type of film over the mega-movies that were just becoming popular--as a light and simple movie sometimes just "hits the spot". Had this movie been made a decade later, I probably would have scored it as a five or six--but for 1918, it was good stuff. Oddly, while the film is set in Britain in the Summer of 1918, there is no mention of WWI--which had already been raging for years and wouldn't end until almost 1919.

The film is a simple marital mix-up that escalates out of control and results in a marriage on the rocks--much like the later films THE AWFUL TRUTH or MR. AND MRS. SMITH (the Hitchcock version--not the new film with the same name but totally different plot). The acting is pretty good, direction snappy and fun to watch--while not exactly believable.

By the way, this film was produced for the CINEVENT movie show in 1996 and shows a brief introduction as well as introducing the pianist who did the live accompaniment at this showing. In other words, this was a small-time locally produced video that I found at my local library--I doubt if it can be found at AMAZON or other movie retailers. And, based on the sparsity of reviews, the fact that you are even reading this now is amazing!