Kiki

Iam not a Pickford fan,and i have only seen her sound films.So i came to this with no precoceived notions.I thought that the first half an hour was fairly entertaining particularly the musical number.However when the scene changed to Reginald Dennys flat the film eventually dissolved into a tedious bore.Wildy overacted by Pickford clearly in a failed attempt to give herself a new screen image.Denny must have been chosen as a leading man as he would provide no competition in the acting stakes.After all who would want to fight over his affections.I see that 54 viewers out of 73 have given this film a score of 10.Well all i can say is that you must have been watching a different film.All i will say is if this film is so good why has it remain largely unseen.Even Halliwells description is "long unseen musical".I have given it a rating of 3 because of the first half hour.Otherwise it would have been a single digit!

In a woefully inept performance almost completely absent of charm and nuance Mary Pickford embarrasses herself in her second to last feature. Utterly miscast as a Parisian floozy she does everything but stand on her head to try and make us believe the unbelievable. She has one cute dance/clown number although even there she relies on googly eyed exaggeration to get the point across that the audience is to find her adorable. In this instance she isn't.

For a goodly portion of the movie she wears a stupid hat with a feather that seems to form a question mark, she should have looked in a mirror used that as a cue and asked herself why she'd agreed to disgrace herself in this dog of a film. Stay away!

Mary Pickford had made 240 films before the advent of sound movies. She was the darling of filmdom until then. But from 1929 to 1933 she made just six films. Although she won the second Oscar as leading actress for "Coquette" in 1929, her last films bombed. "Kiki" is one of those. The plot isn't very good, and Pickford 's role was probably the worst possible thing she could have had. She had a squeaky voice, and in this film she has a French accent and talks, whines, talks, whines, and talks. She quickly becomes tedious and agitating.

Pickford is the classic example - and perhaps the most prominent, of the big name stars of Hollywood whose careers soon ended with talking pictures - mostly due to the sound of their voices. Audiences of her day must certainly have reacted the same way to "Kiki" as most would in modern times. The image of the darling and coquettish actress certainly changed with sound.

Pickford supposedly downplayed the prospect of movies adding sound. It's not hard to imagine that someone with such a squeaky voice could realize that it would soon end her acting career. But, while sound was her undoing in front of the camera, Pickford stayed in Hollywood producing films for another 16 years before calling it quits at age 57.

Reginald Denny is the male lead here. He too had a long run in silent films since 1915, but he was able to transition well with his voice in sound films and he made movies into the mid-1960s. Denny had some lead roles, but most were in a variety of supporting roles.

The production and technical qualities of this United Artists film still show some of the raw techniques of silent films. Pickford was a 1919 co-founder of United Artists, along with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks who was soon to become her husband.

Except for curiosity of movie buffs who might like to see Pickford in a sound film, this one isn't worth the time.

Having been aware of Mary Pickford only by reputation up to this point, it is kind of a shame that I chose this to be the first film of hers I watched. But to be fair, I didn't watch it for her. Busby Berkeley choreographed a number early on, and that madcap farce ended up being the best thing about this. As for Pickford, let's just say she, along with practically the rest of the film, is a hot mess. Everything about her performance, from the exaggerated gestures to the atrocious French accent, screams trainwreck. As the quote I chose headline with might indicate, the best parts of this, few as they are, happen when she isn't talking. Beyond that, the source quality on YouTube was barely watchable. I don't see myself sitting through this again, but it was fun enough this once.

In spite of its notoriety amongst Mary Pickford fans, "Kiki" is far from the disaster it is reputed to be.

Legend has it that this film was an attempt to sex up the Pickford image, with results so catastrophic that she appeared in only one more film. That "Kiki" was a resounding box office flop is irrefutable. But it proves to be an entertaining, fast moving comedy with a dazzling tour de force from its star.

There is nothing at all embarrassing about Pickford's performance. She may not be at her most subtle, and there is notable absence of pathos, but she gives a credible performance and seems much younger than her 39 years. Her French accent may not be all that authentic, but it is consistent.

And she has clearly not lost her knack for physical comedy. Indeed her entrance - being hurled into a room flat on her posterior - is as memorable as anything in the Pickford body of work.

The supporting cast is not up to much, and the direction flags at the mid point - though Sam Taylor does offer a fine opening backstage sequence. "Kiki" may not be the best comedy of its type, but its very far from a write off.

As we are now removed from the Pickford mystique, its much easier to see her performance for what it is, rather than as a violation of a hallowed image. Its far too late for "Kiki" to find a popular audience, of course, but it is certainly due for a reevaluation.