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!

This is so like Mary Pickford.

Even in one her apparently not so good movies she deposits a number of special moments and some in this movie are totally enjoyable.

The long dance scene is wonderfully choreographed and hilarious, I had to keep watching it over and over.

People often forget that in the earliest talkies actors were hamstrung by the positioning and quality of microphones. It took them a while to work it out and for actors to work out how to free themselves up again.

This is by no means a bad movie. An enjoyable movie with some special moments and also great to see a different Pickford.

Pickford only made one more movie, mostly because external events and pressures were over taking her life. If only Fairbanks could have stayed true to Mary - we may have got a whole bunch of Mary Pickford movies and in a new genre.

The dance scene is what most people take away from this movie and that certainly was a 10 out of 10 moment. I have watched it many times and it is up on Youtube.

The rest of the movie suffers from direction and script and the need to make Mary over act to fit the part. This was a stage play not really suitable for film without a change. The stage productions earlier success was grounded on deliberate stage over acting. So it is not surprising it didn't suit film that well. The film without Pickford would have been irritating, it is Pickford that saves it and makes it watchable.

But we should also remember that at this time studios were still struggling with Sound and this made direction and acting quite difficult.

Mary could have easily taken this onto the stage and had a big hit with it, she was a veteran stage actor.

If anything this movies shows Pickford to be versatile and willing to step out of the box.

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 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!