The Painted Lady

While a young lady contemplated the advantages of make-up a man contemplated how he could get access of an old man's business secrets.

In "The Painted Lady" The Older Sister (Blanche Sweet) eschewed make-up while The Younger Sister (Madge Kirby) had all the boys in the yard by virtue of her liberally using her war paint. But not all of the men flocked to The Younger Sister. At least one man, The Stranger (Joseph Graybill), was attracted to The Older Sister. Too bad his aims were criminal in nature. He was using the Older Sister as a means to get access to her father's business secrets.

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A brave attempt from D. W. Griffith to examine the psychological frailty of a plain girl who mistakenly believes she just might have found love. Blanche Sweet, as the older wallflower sister of the popular 'Painted Lady' of the title, handles a demanding role with skill and sensitivity, but Griffith struggles with the complexity of her character's disintegration, and would have been better off making a longer picture of the subject a few years later.

Do appreciate silents and also old short films. Some of the best came from DW Griffith in the 1910s. He was not one of my favourite directors, but his short and feature films are really well worth seeing (the best musts) and he was an interesting director. Two of his best ever short films came from 1912, one being 'The Mothering Heart' and the other being the more ground-breaking 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley'. Both highly recommended.

'The Painted Lady' isn't recommended as enthusiastically. It is definitely interesting and there is a good deal to like about it, it is also a lot better than the rating here suggests. 'The Painted Lady' at the same time is not one of Griffith's best short films and nowhere among the best of his entire filmography, and is somewhat uneven. It's well directed, looks good and has a great lead performance, but the story and messaging are rather patchy in my view.

Am going to start with the good. The best thing about 'The Painted Lady' is the deeply felt and never over-melodramatic (something that could have easily been the case with this premise) performance of Blanche Sweet, who has such telling eyes and affecting facial expressions. Griffith's visual directing is very accomplished and he has a good eye for atmosphere.

Furthermore, 'The Painted Lady' looks pretty good visually, and is designed and photographed beautifully and atmospherically. A lot is packed in and it doesn't get dull, also thought it starts great.

However, it is hard to not wish that the second half lived up to it or at least was as strong. For me sadly, the second half felt very muddled and rushed. Like there was too much going on in a too short space of time, which is not usually the case with Griffith's short films and the coherence is affected as a result. Some of the goings on in the house are downright odd in a way that felt overdone.

While the messaging is well intended, it is also rather heavy-handed and feels out of date. While the rest of the acting is competent enough (nobody or nothing is terrible), nobody else is on Sweet's level and lacks her subtlety.

Overall, decent if patchy. 6/10.

Early film directed by D.W. Griffith; with Blanche Sweet giving a noteworthy performance. She is a young woman forbidden, by her father (Charles Hill Mailes), to wear make-up. When she goes to an ice cream social, she attracts little attention, while the Griffith men go for "The Painted Lady". Dejected, she meets a stranger in town (Joseph Graybill); at last! a man shows interest in the unpainted Ms. Sweet. They begin to meet secretly. Sadly, the man is really interested in her father's money - in disguise, he goes to rob Sweet's home; then, our heroine gets a gun to confront the thief…

Sweet is entertaining in the starring role, relaying all the proper emotions with her face and gestures. There is a continuity distraction - note that the man's hat as he lies down seems to pop back on his head inexplicably. "The Painted Lady"'s message doesn't really make too much sense. Why is Sweet is the only woman who suffers the consequences of frivolous femininity?

***** The Painted Lady (10/24/12) D.W. Griffith ~ Blanche Sweet, Charles Hill Mailes, Joseph Graybill

I like the subhead to this film: "An Indictment Of Frivolous Femininity." I don't like the idea expressed in the story that a woman has to put on a lot of makeup to attract a man. In fact, in this case, the actress playing the "plain" and often-rejected girl, is pretty without it. She's Blanche Sweet, who starred in a ton of silent movies including many in her teenage years. Although only in her mid-teens when this was made (perhaps even 14), she looked more mature.

In this story, as we see, shyness and a too-strict father are also making a dating life almost nonexistent for poor, makeup-less "the older sister" (Sweet).

What happens in this story is very strange, and you can read various accounts of it here. I guess the lonely girl wasn't too good at figuring out men. Chalk it up to loneliness and inexperience. What happens in her house, though, is too weird and dates the movie quite a bit. But, that's to be expected. After all, the movie isn't far from being 100 years old.

It's nice that these old D.W. Griffith shorts are still available to the public, even if they look a little odd.