Back Pay

Seena Owen is tired of the small-town life. Boyfriend Matt Moore may think she looks good in a calico dress, but she thinks she has a crepe-de-chine soul. So she takes the train to New York. Five years later, she is the kept woman of J. Barney Sherry, who refuses to buy her that $22,000 mink stole; he's just bought her a Rolls-Royce. How about a vacation to that resort instead? It turns out to be next to the small town where Moore is still living. She rejects him again, kindly.

The next time she encounters Moore is when he's just back from serving in the Great War. He's blind, and Gas has gotten into his lungs, and the doctors say he'll be dead in three weeks. So...

It's from a Fanny Hurst novel, and it's directed by Frank Borzage. How you like this movie depends on what camp you consider yourself part of. I consider myself in the Frank Borzage camp. I'm just not in the Fanny Hurst camp. Borzage was not the Great Director at this time. He was a good studio director, always ready to take on a western or weeper, comedy or cliff-hanger. I honestly don't believe he began to find his voice until LAZYBONE (1925), and SEVENTH HEAVEN was a breakout film for him as well as Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. So when he was assigned to this movie, it was a great opportunity to head into Demille territory, the story of a woman leading the high life, who finds salvation in the cross.

However, unlike Demille, Borzage doesn't show us the alluring spectacle of the high life; wild partying is limited to a couple of short scenes. J. Barney Sherry is a kind man, with a practical soul, who enjoys indulging Miss Owen -- within his ample but not infinite budget; and the cross she finds her salvation in is not the one Jesus died on, but the one on the Distinguished Service Medal that Matt Moore died for. That's very typical for Borzage: always little people.

However, this is more a Fanny Hurst movie than a Borzage one, and Seena Owen was a vamp star. So when she's miserable in a Fanny Hurst Misery Subplot (patent pending), she's going to be absolutely miserable for a long time. And I'm going to be bored while she is. In this case, it's a couple of months and ten minutes of screentime before she reforms. Goodness! Satan's snares must be easy to wiggle out of!

The sort of mystical power of love that shows up in Borzage's best and most typical works is not really in operation here.... or if it is, it lacks all sense of mysticism, and is more akin to Freudian dream analysis. In the end this is a good studio hybrid work. Borzage was still struggling to find his auctorial voice and the freedom to use it.

"Back Pay" (1922) stars Seena Owen, Matt Moore, J. Barney Sherry, Ethel Duray, Charles Craig, Jerry Sinclair, and others. Directed by Frank Borzage and based on a novel by Fannie Hurst, this has every single element of a Hurst plot in spades! It also shows Borzage gaining a genuine grip on his métier, a mature love story with overlying romantic idealism clouding reality, making a savory plot forced to be mixed with sweetness, something modern audiences may find slightly saccharine, but put in context with the mores of the 1920s and 1930s makes the mix rich with sophistication. What it lacks in cynicism it makes up in a nobility that seemingly has gone away from most modern productions. Borzage at his height becomes an auteur. "Back Pay" is at the beginning of Borzage's rise to prominence.

The blocking is played much like a large stage production, with nearly all close shots having actors turn toward the audience to react to a counterpart so that we can see all reaction, sometimes even speaking, when the reality would be face to face conversation. The blocking would not be thought about by an audience in 1922, but has some curiosity today that sometimes puts it out of place.

Seena Owen does a magnificent job in the lead rôle of an outlying town (read small town) girl who is far enough away from the big city (New York) to feel a thousand miles away from any modern day "action", from parties to dancing - and especially...Mammon...money, wealth enough to have anything she wants, from clothes to cars to...and this is the catcher...what?...what will satisfy her needs? Does she really know? She has a suitor, Matt Moore, just a good guy, a nice guy, a simple guy, who loves her more than anything else, who wishes to marry her and give her what he can. She loves him, too, but not enough to not want the money, the parties, the cars, the...what?

She goes to New York, meets a man of Wall Street, a much older man, J. Barney Sherry, a very street-wise, ultra sophisticated, but smarmy sugar daddy whose god is Mammon and whose soul is either missing or now in the hands of fallen angels. He gives Owen anything she wants - up to a point. She claims she has a "crepe-de-chine" soul. But she learns that Moore has been wounded in WWI, and he comes home blind and with only weeks to live. It's been more than five years since she left the small town in which she formerly lived. She's now bored to tears with her life, but doesn't know how to give it up. She goes to see Moore... Here a reformation begins, but I'll not give the plot: it's the film after all. It's Borzage.

Really good piece of film-making! There are moments of antiqueness in acting technique, but they are few and far between. Direction is impeccable for its day, though slightly hindered by some sets. Art direction is perfunctory, but especially good in the country scenes. Owen, Moore, and Barney Sherry, two of them (Owen and Sherry) former Griffith actors, are really quite good. This restored silent, part of a Kickstarter restoration project, is nicely presented on DVD by Undercrank Productions video. A very nice piano score written for this restoration accompanies the film.

Recommended. 88 minutes.

Seena Owen stars as small-town Hester, a woman who yearns for the bright lights and excitement of New York. She lives in a boarding house and has a dull boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who wants to marry. Hester wants more. She tells him she has a "crepe-du-chine soul." So off goes Hester, leaving Jerry to stand on the railroad track, watching the train disappear into the distance.

Flash forward. Hester is living the high life in New York. She has s sugar daddy (J. Barney Sherry) and a slew of fancy friends ... she even has a maid. She has everything she ever wanted, but there's a nagging in her soul because she's never quite forgotten Jerry.

She takes a trip with her friends to a spa close to her home town. While they go off for a ride, she wanders the old town and finds Jerry. They talk. He's still waiting for her. She goes back to the city even more unsure of her decision.

Flash forward. Sugar daddy has by now given Hester everything she ever wanted. She has a Rolls-Royce, a house on Long Island, furs and jewels. Jerry goes off to war and is wounded. When he's shipped back home she goes to visit, but he's worse off than she expected. He might have only weeks to live. What will Hester do? Ultra-sad weepie makes good use of Seena Owen's sad face. Even at her lavish parties, she always seems sad. She's excellent as Hester. Matt Moore is also excellent as the dull-but-loyal Jerry. Ethel Duray is also good as the selfish friend.

Sets designed by Joseph Urban and directed by Frank Borzage, this was a major Cosmopolitan production. The small-town scenes were likely filmed in upstate New York or rural New Jersey.