Coquette

More than the silents that preceded it, this is a rare glimpse into a world that is almost impossible for our generation to imagine. The acting style seems bizarre by modern standards. The characters walk as if they were trying to dance, and they speak as if they would rather sing their lines. Okay, sound equipment may have been awful then - "talkies" were brand new in 1929 - but that fact does nothing to make it less pretentious when the characters stretch their mouths to yawn proportions to utter dated lines like, "darling, I love you more than life itself."

Then there's the plot, another feature of this film that is as quaint as the acting and the dialogue. "Norma," played legendary silent screen actress Mary Pickford at the end of her prolific career, becomes "compromised" by a night with a boyfriend, Michael. Michael vows to marry her but instead finds himself in an angry confrontation with Norma's father, the doctor.

Father takes a gun to avenge his violated daughter - who is played, remember, by a 37-year-old woman. And poor Norma, finding her lover on his deathbed, pours forth a mind-numbing, melodramatic declaration of her love that had to have been way over the top even in those days.

But the most amazing part is the end, where the doctor is on trial for murder. Norma takes the stand to accuse her lover of rape and thus save her father, which she does admirably and with all the flourishes and eye-batting appropriate for the era. Suddenly, the father's conscience is stirred and he rushes to the feet of his daughter - this in a court of law - and pleads with her to let him take the blame with honor. The doctor eyes the murder weapon, a revolver sitting on a table before the judge, and then stands before the court and demands that he pay his debt to the state. Imagine that!

Father then rushes to the arms of daughter and begs her to "hug daddy" as she used to. What follows was surely, even to audiences of the day, an excessively-long, gruesomely-sentimental embrace. To a modern viewer seeing it in the contemporary context, it would clearly suggest incest, though this was certainly not the meaning of the scene. That done, father grabs gun and commits suicide in the courtroom. To the film's credit, the event is conveyed well by the sound of a single gunshot - no blood.

Pickford may have been the darling of silent film, and she was undeniably a remarkable actress in that setting. But her talkie debut is flawed in every conceivable way, from the bogus southern accents of her and others' characters to the comical arm gestures she makes to emphasize her schmaltzy love-talk with Michael.

You have to cut this film some slack not only for the year it was made, but also because sound movies were then in their infancy. Still, the story line and script are painfully exaggerated and the acting horribly stilted.

But is it worth watching? I say yes. It's important cinema history. And it's fun.

The Broadway play COQUETTE ran for a year in the late 20s, starring Helen Hayes. Mary Pickford hoped that this vehicle would be a solid entrance into the new sound medium as well as scuttle her "little Mary" image that had plagued her for the last decade.

At age 37, Pickford is too old to play Norma Besant, BUT she looks great so the age factor is not really a problem. The problem is the play. It's creaky and far-fetched and doesn't work as a late 20s film. The fault is not with Pickford, who turns in a terrific performance although in a few spots it all gets rather stagy.

Also very good is Johnny Mack Brown as Michael. He exhibits some real fireworks in the argument scene with Pickford's father (John St. Polis). But these 2 good performers can't save the film from the rotten acting of St. Polis (he plays a despicable character) and William Janney who plays brother Jimmy. Matt Moore plays a sad-sack suitor to no great effect, and Henry Kolker is over the top as the prosecuting lawyer.

The screenplay is probably too close to the stage play, and director Sam Taylor seems to have absolutely NO ear for dialog or eye for composition.

Despite the antiquated story about southern pride and the value of truth, Pickford and Brown are well worth watching. Louise Beavers is also good as the maid. The court room scenes are solid with Pickford giving a terrific performance as the irony of the murder become clear. Her final scene, walking from the court house and down the street is quite memorable in its beauty and simplicity.

Yes, Mary Pickford won an Oscar for this performance, but the award is likely for the 20 years of films and superstardom she brought to this talkie debut. She was the biggest star in films for many, many years and deserved the Oscar for this brave performance, even if the film itself is not terribly good.

The earliest sound movies quickly became known as "talkies", as oppose to "soundies" as one might expect them to be called. It makes sense though, because these pictures tended to have a lot more talking in them than did the sound films of a few years later. The reason is most of them were culled from stage plays (where speech largely takes the place of action) because this was seen as the most appropriate material for the new technology. And back then, theatre was not the prestigious medium it is today. Just as there have been B-movies and dime novels, so too were there plenty of cheap and cheerful stage plays ripe for adaptation to the screen.

Coquette comes from a play by the rarely-remembered theatre legend George Abbott along with Ann Preston Bridgers, and is essentially a melodrama-by-numbers. All the familiar hackneyed elements are here – a flirtatious young woman, a disapproving father, a gun going off and so on. It is all a rather silly affair, putting some rather large strains on credibility in its final act. And in its translation to the screen it has retained the structure of a theatrical play. On the stage you can't cut back-and-forth from one place to another, so big chunks of plot will take place consecutively, often in the same room. And this looks odd in a movie.

Coquette is probably best remembered now as the movie for which (mostly) silent star Mary Pickford won her only Oscar for acting. The deservedness of this award has since been called into question. Her performance is an abundance of mannerisms, but while certainly overt it never quite goes over-the-top, which is a fair feat given the plot requires her to go through every conceivable emotional state. She is actually at her best when saying nothing, such as the odd little expression that crosses her face at the end of the court scene. The best turn however belongs to John St. Polis, who gives a nice solid performance. Theatrical, but solid. By contrast though, the unbearable woodenness of John Mack Brown is like an acting black hole, threatening to drag what little credibility the movie has left into oblivion, and would have succeeded if someone hadn't had the good sense to pop a cap in his ass halfway through. Ironically Brown was to have the most lucrative post-Coquette career of all the cast, albeit largely in B-Westerns.

The director may seem like a strange choice. Sam Taylor was first a gag man and then a director at Hal Roach's comedy studios, but lately he had got into drama. Staging in depth was always one of his fortes, and he makes some neat little compositions which really give definition to the limited number of sets. For example when Brown first comes on the scene, he has him in the background with Pickford on screen right and Matt Moore a little closer to the screen on the left, creating a zigzag pattern. He also makes some attempt to bring a bit of cinematic dynamism to what is essentially a filmed play, making sharp changes of angle at key moments such as St. Polis's walking in on Pickford and Brown, but by-and-large the fact that nearly everything takes place in one room – or rather a frontless set – is inescapable.

Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on Coquette, as its flaws are really only the flaws of its era. And in all honesty, if you try not to take it too seriously it can be enjoyed on a certain level, especially since it runs for a mere 75 minutes. But then again, there were also plenty of pictures from this early talkie era – yes, even as early as 1929 – that managed to rise above their circumstances. And after a look at how much talent and imagination there really was in Hollywood at the time, it's not difficult to see how Coquette could have been so much more.

I caught this film on TCM recently. This was actress Mary Pickford's first 'talkie.' At times, the acting is rather wordy and staged, but then it was a stage play before the film. But Pickford does shine in certain scenes, showing us why she was a superstar. In the film, Pickford plays Norma, a southern belle type whom we assume can have her pick of any beau in town. But she falls hard for handsome working class Michael (Johnny Mack Brown)someone her father considers beneath her. Things come to a boil when Norma spends the night with Michael at his cabin, and her father explodes with anger, killing Michael. Pickford is riveting in the death scene, and the courtroom scenes later where her father is on trial for killing Michael. This is not a perfect film by any means, and at times the actors' voices fades - not certain is this is the age of the film or the creaky new sound technology of the day. Either way, I had to crank up my television to hear what the actors were saying from time to time. Pickford's Oscar for this film was probably a way of honoring her for her many films and stardom rather than for her actual performance here. Still, the film is worth catching - despite its flaws.

The first few Oscar ceremonies were, perhaps inevitably, characterized by films whose appeal has faded with the passage of time; this one – which gave "America's Sweetheart", Mary Pickford, her Best Actress nod – is certainly among the biggest culprits in this regard! Indeed, the film has virtually no reputation outside of this fact – and it is not even favourably discussed among its leading lady's most representative work! Incidentally, this marks my introduction proper to this most beloved of Silent stars – having previously only watched her in a couple of D.W. Griffith one-reelers from the early 1910s and her uncredited cameos in two of even more iconic husband Douglas Fairbanks's vehicles; for the record, I do own SPARROWS (1926; her best-known effort), THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1929; the only official pairing of the famed Hollywood couple) and SECRETS (1933; Pickford's swan-song).

Back to COQUETTE: the plot is redolent of the hoariest stage melodramas – and the treatment is accordingly antediluvian. A flirtatious girl turns the heads of many local boys, but herself has her heart set on ne'er-do-well John Mack Brown (another popular name back then, but subsequently forgotten); however, their romance finds strong opposition from her doctor father – because the old man deems him below her station. Though Brown accepts to undergo a period of separation in which to prove his self-sufficiency and commitment, he turns up at a party three months in advance and even persuades Pickford to spend the night with him at a remote cabin. The next morning all hell breaks loose, as he presents himself before her father intent to ask for her hand, but the gruff patriarch will have none of it, goes after Brown with a gun and fatally shoots him! The lawyer father of one of the heroine's rejected beaux pleads with Pickford to save her dad from the gallows by making a "beast" of Brown; she refuses at first but relents when taking the stand at the subsequent trial. The doctor, understanding the nature of his daughter's sacrifice and mortified of his own actions, then takes the matter in hand and shoots himself on the spot with the very same gun that instigated the tragedy.

Despite having such luminaries as cinematographer Karl Struss and art director William Cameron Menzies among the credits, as I said, there is nothing remarkable about the film's style: actually, the whole Southern atmosphere drowns the interest all the more with the embarrassing repetition of such corny phrases as "honey precious" (the way in which Pickford addresses her father!), her pet phrase "adowable {sic}" and that of her younger brother, "jiminy"! With respect to the actress' personal contribution, I concede that the last act gives her ample opportunity to display a fair level of histrionics – but, having just watched fellow nominee Corinne Griffith in THE DIVINE LADY, I feel that the latter (mostly silent) performance, survives much better at this juncture…though I have yet to check out Ruth Chatterton in MADAME X, Jeanne Eagels in THE LETTER and Norma Shearer in THEIR OWN DESIRE (while the Betty Compson nod in THE BARKER, regrettably, seems lost to the ages)!