Sa majesté la femme

Probably inspired by Cecil De Mille's "the ten commandments" (1923),but in a much more modest way, ,Howard Hawks begins his movie with a prologue showing Adam and Eve after the Fall : they live is some kind of prehistoric world ,in which Eve is looking forward to going to the fig leaves sale.Anachronisms abound and the subtitles are very witty,which is very rare in a silent movie.

Hawks' theory was : "the snake was none other than another woman in disguise".Thus edified,we go straight from the Iron age (?)into the twentieth century ...when woman's main concern is the clothes she is going to wear to impress her best (female ) friend .In 1926,a man would not want her wife to work ,so she 's got to expend a lot of energy when she's got nothing left to wear.The pawnshop gag may have inspired Roald Dahl for "Mrs Bixby and the colonel's coat" which was first published in 1959 (and would become a short in the "Hitchcock presents" series).

"Fig Leaves" is sometimes much fun to watch and is to be recommended ,even to these who dislike silent flicks.

One of Howard Hawks's early efforts, this delightful comedy already presages many of the thematic concerns of his later masterpieces. The Garden of Eden bookends resemble a silent-era "Flintstones", with rocks and dinosaurs ingeniously serving modern bourgeois purposes. The contemporary section is a sophisticated comedy of manners, taking jabs at the evolving status of women and the never-changing essential obsessions of the sexes. George O'Brien expertly plays the idealized American male, and sidekick Heinie Conklin has several fine slapstick moments. The intertitle dialogue is also highly amusing.

Hawks' second film as director and his oldest survivor has gorgeous housewife Olive Borden married to gorgeous plumber George O'Brien. She wants lots of new clothes, the fig leaves of the title, and designer Georges Beranger offers to make her a model -- and hopes to make her, too.

It's a completely undistinguished journeyman comedy, eked out with a Flintstones-like prologue and epilogue, a fashion show (originally presented in two-strip Technicolor, although only black-and-white elements have survived) and Heinie Conklin as O'Brien's comic assistant who is not in the least funny. Phyllis Haver has some funny bits as a trouble-making neighbor, but despite the leads putting a lot of energy into their performance, the film is flat, predictable and rarely funny. Its only interest is that it is a Hawks film, which, unless you're a complete believer that everything an auteur does is brilliant and you'll figure out how after you've thought about it long enough, is no recommendation.

Howard Hawks' first film, The Road to Glory, is lost to time, so I start here with his first comedy and second film, Fig Leaves. A comedy about the unchanging nature of the relationships between men and women over time, it is surprisingly funny 95 years after its production, but it also bears some of the more problematic conventions of silent films that end up making this 70-minute movie drag a fair bit.

The movie begins with an extended sequence of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and it's a proto-Flinstones. Adam wakes up to an alarm that drops a coconut on his head by the weight of sand on a scale. There's a dinosaur that drags a bus. The newspaper is a rock chiseled with the news that Adam breaks over his knee so that Eve can read what she wants on the other side. This is all absolutely delightful stuff.

Then the movie moves into the modern day, well, 1920s New York, and it loses something. There's a dual story going on where the relationships between men and women have never really changed over thousands of years. Instead of new fig leaves that Eve wants to spend Adam's hard-earned currency on, it's dresses. He's a plumber, and she's a stay at home wife who wants to get out of the house. Adam's partner in the plumbing trade convinces him that he needs to be less of a pushover, getting Adam to playact cartoonish dominance over his wife that ends with Eve sneaking in and getting choked by Adam. This is extremely broad humor, and it's amusing.

Their neighbor across the hall, a young woman, has designs on Adam and convinces Eve to follow up with a fashion designer that she ran into on the street. Actually, she got hit by his car in a very weird (and quick) bit of early special effects that looks like they took an image of Eve, manipulated her image to scrunch her up in the grill of the car, and then she and the car pass out of frame to the right. This all happens in less than a second, but it was so jarring visually that I actually rewound the movie to see what was going on. It's not really a criticism on my part (for the comedic effect of a girl being hit by a car I think it works quite well). It's just a very early effort at creating a special effect that I find interesting.

Anyway, Eve decides to go work for the fashion designer (Andre), and we get some extended sequences that should be in color. They were filmed with Technicolor's early (and expensive and unrepresentative of real color) 2-strip color process, but those are apparently lost to time. All that's left is the black and white version which undermines a lot of what these sequences are supposed to be. These are supposed to be moments of spectacle, but the black and white presentation turns them into a bit of a muddle. There really is something missing from the sequence without the color.

The rest of the movie is Adam finding out about Eve's new job, and the neighbor trying to pull the two apart by pushing Eve away from Adam and pulling Adam towards her with a night of drinking. It's here, I think, where the movie is least successful, and it has to do with the lack of specificity in character in silent movies. There's a severe limitation in silent movies when it comes to character because we hear so little of what they say. This can be overcome, and was often overcome with great success by many other silent films, but here it is not overcome. Adam feels rather generic along with the neighbor, so it ends up feeling rather shallow. This is also where the movie is the least amusing from a purely comedic point of view, trying its hand at drama that suffers from the lack of character specificity.

When Adam regains his sense of self and retains his wife by having her quit her job so that he can provide for her on his own, the movie returns to the Ancient world of Flinstones like dinosaurs to show the original Adam and Eve resolving in much the same way.

This is broad silent comedy undercut by its inability to draw characters specific enough to carry the dramatic moments. It's a decent way to spend 70 minutes, but I have a feeling that Howard Hawks is going to be reaching far greater heights in his future.

This is not one of the more well known silents, or indeed one of Howard Hawks' more famous movies, but, that doesn't mean it is not a very good and entertaining movie. Set in two different ages, stone age at the start and the end and at the present time (the 1920's)in between, which is the major part of it, it deals with the battle of the sexes, in this case a married couple, Adam and Eve. The start is very very funny and very imaginative. The inter titles and the headlines in the newspapers had me laughing out loud, which believe me, is not something I do often. Then it dissolves into the modern day very nicely with Adam now a plumber and Eve, a discontented stay at home wife, the snake in the modern day being trouble making neighbour Alice. Out in the city Eve is knocked over by a car who's passenger's is hoity toity dress designer, Andre. This part of the story is the only sticking point as it seems to come across as a showcase for designer Adrian's gowns and slows the story down somewhat. That aside this is a terrific little film with super performances all around. A favourite, and slightly odd moment, is muscular he-man George O'Brien mincing as a woman ( not in drag, mind you), but, he always came across as an actor with no vanity and is all the more endearing for that. Heinie Conklin also shines as his sidekick and the female lead, Olive Borden does a great job as Eve. This is a neatly observed comedy that for the most part is excellent. If you have the chance I suggest that you see it and I wonder if you will be reminded, by the early sequences of a 1960's cartoon starring Fred and Wilma.