Rosita, chanteuse des rues

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.

"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.

Mary Pickford was a stickler for preserving a large body of her films. She prized almost every movie she was in, and, unusual for an actress, she collected scores of prints of her work. One notable exception was September 1923's "Rosita." She demanded and was handed over almost every existing print distributed a few months after the movie was released. With the exception of one: a print 90 minutes long was found in 1960 in the Soviet Union, and given to New York's Museum of Modern Art, much to the consternation of an aging Pickford.

No explanation for Pickford's obsession in destroying the film was given. It wasn't because of any negative reviews. In fact, it was just the opposite. "Nothing more delightfully charming than Mary Pickford's new picture Rosita has been seen on the screen for some time," wrote the film critic for the New York Times.

"Rosita" was certainly a landmark motion picture, mainly because it was German director Ernst Lubitsch's first United States film after directing scores of German movies for nearly ten years. Pickford, just turning 30, had yearned to escape her popular child roles (played as an adult) and witnessed Lubitsch's sophistication on the screen as the panacea to that change. She contracted him to come to America and apply his craft with her as a lead. Once on shore, Lubitsch learned the actress wanted to make a film on the then popular genre of an elaborate costume drama. The director shot down one Pickford suggestion, while his desire to direct a version based on Faust was nixed by Pickford's mother because of a baby-killing scene. They settled on a 1872 opera about a libertine Spanish king who falls for Rosita (Pickford), a poor but very popular singer in Seville, Spain.

Pickford gave no reason for her unusual confiscation of "Rosita." One theory is she realized after seeing the finished print that she wasn't the heroine of the story; the Spanish queen is. Another is she wanted to forget what she later claimed was Lubitsch total authoritarian behavior. "I detested that picture," said the elderly actress years later to biographer Kevin Brownlow. "I disliked the director as much as he disliked me." But contemporary sources at the time of "Rosita's" production claim, beside a language barrier between the actress and the director, the two got along charmingly on the set. She wrote after the completion of "Rosita" that Lubitsch was " the best director in the world." They had planned to make more films together, but tight funds at Pickford's United Artists precluded such a working relationship.

"Rosita" turned out to be a tremendous hit, gaining the number six best box office position of 1923, and established Lubitsch's America's credentials. Warner Brothers signed him to a three-year, six picture lucrative deal, with total freedom to select his actors, crew and most importantly, final say in the finished product.

Pickford did, however, preserve one reel of "Rosita," a sequence that has gone down in classic film lore where she uses a fruit bowl as a prop to ward off the aggressive king as he tries to seduce her in his suite.

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" (1923) stars Mary Pickford and is directed by Ernst Lubitsch; so...it should be a dynamite piece of film viewing. It's certainly not bad, but it's no masterpiece. Mary is a street singer during what appears to be some century in Seville hundreds of years ago. She is a sort-of François Villon poet/singer who chooses to snipe at the reigning king and his government and the taxes imposed which siphon the wherewithal out of the peasant class. By the upper classes Mary is constantly monikered 'harlot'. She is eventually dragged away by nasty government agent during Carnival festival, but a noble steps up, one who is recently returned from serving military service, and he stops the agent; then gets into a sword duel with him; kills him; then is put into prison where in the morning he will be hanged. Mary is put into the same prison. I'll let it hang there so you can find the film and watch to see what occurs!

Begins slowly. The story is a good one. What happens, though, is that this should have been a good drama. Even a few Pickford light moments would have worked to make this work if it had remained a good drama. Instead...it turns into a second rate meller/romance. Mary doesn't seem happy during this film. Something must have been up. We know historically that is true.

Well worth the watch. But this one does NOT have the Lubitsch touch. Instead, this one's 99 minutes is simply too long. I enjoyed the ending, but I knew it would happen the way it did. Probably would have been better with the Hitchcock touch; or simply letting Mary do her own version. This is on the new Blu-Ray release from Grapevine Video, a Kickstarter project with work done by Jack Hardy and a piano musical score by David Drazin. Score is good, though the Carnival scene music is a tad overwrought.

Also appearing with Pickford are Holbrook Blinn as the king; Irene Rich as his wife, the queen (and who is the person I think did the best job of characterization, and was a pleasure for the little time she appears); George Walsh as Don Diego, Mary's love interest; Mathilde Comont as Mary's mother; George Periolat as Mary's father; and many, many others. Supposedly Charles Farrell and Marion Nixon are here somewhere.