PRINCE POPPYCOCK

She regarded Gable as lazy, not too bright, and an unresponsive performer (though she was always laudatory about his kindness and good manners to her). She could not understand how he could leave the set promptly each day at six p.m. as though he held an office job. She seldom left the studio until eight or nine at night and worked six, often seven days a week. "What are you fucking about for?" she would complain to Gable and Fleming when Gable took time out to rest. Gable admired his leading lady's vocabulary, as did Fleming, but otherwise he was a bit put off by her intellect and her dedication to work. Nonetheless he took it upon himself to teach her the game of backgammon. She proceeded to beat him each time they played.

--from Vivien Leigh by Anne Edwards

The Siren was interviewed by Lou Lumenick for an article in Sunday's New York Post, about the 70th Anniversary Blu-Ray Edition of Sex Kittens Go to College. No? You say you don't remember Clark Gable's smokin' rendition of "I Got a Gal, Miss Mamie Is Her Name"?

Oh all right, I'll stop now. Here's the link to interviews goddess Eva Marie Saint. At length. About movies and acting--not gossip. Drop everything for this one.

Glenn Kenny continues his series on Manny Farber's Top Ten Films of 1951 with The Thing from Another World.

Sheila O'Malley, never a woman to shirk a challenge, goes after The Birth of a Nation.

T. Sutpen at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger posts a series of World War II Red Army photographs. Posed or not, some of them are extraordinary.

Peter Nelhaus on 5 Against the House, part of the Film Noir boxed set from Sony that everyone, in diabolical concert, is trying to force the Siren to buy. And check out Peter's nifty bit of screen-grab detective work.

Finally, David Cairns' epic post on the very, very great Vertigo, complete with beautiful screen caps, clips and a fine discussion in comments.

Update: As promised in comments, Sam Wood shoots Belle's bosom, but it's a Breen Office bust:



The scene became something of a jinx, requiring multiple tries, like the opening scene with the Tarleton boys (Selznick sent out several memos reminding everybody that they weren't the Tarleton twins, as in the novel). One of those failures came when the boys' hair photographed bright orange, like a couple of Heat Misers went courtin' Miss Scarlett. Unfortunately I don't have a shot of that one.

Finally, jokes aside, Anagramsci is promising a King Vidor series, which gladdens the Siren's heart.

Hat tip for new banner: Mrs. Thalberg.

Last year the Siren was traveling from New York to Seattle with four-year-old twins and her 14-month-old in tow. Should you ever attempt this, the Siren has one word for you: Bribes. Our bribes consisted of factory-sealed juice and milk boxes, one for each kid, which careful reading of the relevant airline guidelines seemed to indicate was permissible.

The security guard, however, must not have read the same Web page, because she hauled out all of our toddler baksheesh and arranged it on the table with a scowl that said we were about to get busted, big time. "I'll have to call my supervisor," she said, with the air of one who says, "I'll have to call Judge Jeffreys." Said supervisor arrived, a small and stressed-out man in his uniform shirtsleeves. The guard took him aside and the Siren heard her saying, "It's too much, they're trying to bring way too much." But instead of glaring at the Siren and her rule-bending brood the supervisor cocked an eyebrow at the guard and the Siren heard him say wearily, "They're traveling with three kids, f'Chrissake. Let 'em take in the juice."

He turned and started to walk away and the Siren cupped a hand to her mouth and called, "HEY!" He turned.

"Merry Christmas!" called the Siren, with gusto that would have befitted the Cratchits. The supervisor grinned and mouthed, "You too."

To that supervisor, and all those who are willing to bend the rules to make a holiday brighter, the Siren dedicates this story.

It's from Anita Loos's completely charming book about her relationship with silent stars Constance and Norma, The Talmadge Girls. Anita, Constance, the third Talmadge sister, Natalie (who would later marry Buster Keaton), and the formidable Talmadge mother, Peg, decided one year during their 1920s heyday that a warm California Christmas just wouldn't do. So the four ladies took the storied Twentieth Century to New York City and arrived just after midnight on Christmas Day. They found a Christmas tree on Vanderbilt Avenue, but no decorations. They deposited the tree in their hotel suite and Peg went to bed but Constance, Natalie and Anita, being more adventurous sorts, went out determined to find something with which to trim the tree. After wandering the deserted streets they found a drugstore in Grand Central that was open and staffed by a handsome, but sleepy clerk. He immediately recognized Constance Talmadge, but sadly admitted that his drugstore had nothing for tree-trimming.

And we were on our way out when the clerk, seeing romance about to disappear from his life forever, called, "Oh, Miss Talmadge! Come on back!"

He proceeded to unearth a box of small objects wrapped in silver foil, which glistened in the light. When Nate asked what they were, he said evasively, "What does it matter? They look like icicles, don't they?

Dutch [Constance's nickname] agreed eagerly and purchased all he had of them. The young man now ventured further. "Could you use some balloons?"

"Terrific!" Nate piped up. At which our benefactor produced a package of small deflated balloons, which he explained could be blown up and secured with dental floss. After which our young friend bethought himself of surgical cotton to serve as snow. Then, in a parting gesture, he presented Dutch with the two strings of colored lights that were blinking above the cash register.

The drugstore clerk, utterly in love with Dutch at that point, carried the "decorations" back to the hotel suite where he, Anita and Talmadge girls decorated the tree.

"Let's wake Peg up to see it!" dared Nate. And it was agreed to risk Peg's fury. When she entered, wearing her nightie and sleepy-eyed, we waited breathlessly for her reaction.

"Why," she exclaimed, "it's absolutely gorgeous!"

Dutch's suitor now felt safe enough to introduce himself to the mother-in-law of his dreams. "Mrs, Talmadge," said he, "my name is Lester Noonan and I'm honored to make your acquaintance."

As Peg blinked at him, Dutch placed a caressing hand on his arm. "Lester dug up all the ornaments for our tree!" she announced.

But she spoke a little too fondly, for Peg immediately began to assess the young man's attractions. As if he were not even present, she asked, "And where did you dig him up?"

"At that all-night drugstore!"

"Drugstore!" Peg repeated in a tone that placed all drugstores in a category with cesspools. Suspiciously, she turned to remove one of the icicles from the tree, examined it, and then in smoldering fury she addressed Lester.

"Why you sonofabitch!"

"Peg!" we all remonstrated.

"Do you know what this thing is?"

"What?" asked Dutch.

"It's a suppository!"

Lester blanched and looked flat enough to creep under the wall-to-wall carpet.

"What's a suppository?" inquired Nate.

"That's right! show your ignorance!"

Now Peg yanked one of the small balloons from the tree. "And d'you know what this object is?...It's a goddamn contraceptive!"

"What's a contraceptive?" asked Dutch.

"It's only due to my upbringing that you don't know!" Again Peg turned on Lester. "It's scum like you who give movie stars a filthy name!...Take that nasty thing apart before Walter Winchell gets wind of it! Or Town Topics! Or, God help us, Louella Parsons!"

We removed the unholy objects from our tree and Lester found a trash bin in the back hall where he could bury them.

We had scarcely finished when Norma and Joe [Schenck, later Norma's husband] descended on us from Atlantic City...

"Merry Christmas!" exclaimed Norma. But then, spotting the tree with its unlit bulbs and gobs of cotton snow, she gasped, "What is that thing?"

...But at that point Joe was already coming to the rescue. He picked up the phone, called the hotel management, and commandeered the enormous Christmas tree that decorated the downstairs lobby.

By that time the bells of St. Bartholomew's were chiming 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' and through the windows we saw snowflakes drifting like a benediction. There is nothing in the world that can warm the human heart like a snowy Christmas in New York. And as Lester forlornly approached Dutch to say "Well, Miss Talmadge, good-bye," Peg, in an upsurge of Christian spirit, invited him to join the family party. In reaction, Dutch's gaze took on the nearest thing to love light I had heretofore encountered.

Happy Holidays and a joyous New Year from the Siren's family, to yours.

(Above, the Talmadge girls in San Diego. Left to right: Constance, Natalie, Buster Keaton, director Clarence Brown (identified for the Siren by Rudyfan1926), Norma, Peg. Middle, Constance. Second from bottom, Anita. Bottom, Norma.)

Oy, quite the week chez Campaspe. Mr. C is in Australia on business. Periodically he calls to tell the Siren how great the weather is. Things here in Brooklyn are hot, humid and rather frantic, as the Siren tries to come up with a New York blog post in time for the Derelict's blogathon.

For some reason, all week the Siren has had Charlie Chaplin on the brain. Perhaps it is because she is child-wrangling by her lonesome. Chaplin was beloved by children around the world for such a long time. Do they still love him, if you show them the movies? Or is his art too faraway and antique now? The Siren plans to find out, soon.

Meanwhile, I couldn't stop thinking about this passage, from Griffith and Mayer's The Movies, and I had to share.

They were dreadfully poor. Charlie's parents were third-string strolling players. His father died early of alcoholism; his mother was often in asylums, whether through drink or because of periodic mental illness. Whenever this happened, Charlie and his brothers had to shift for themselves on the streets of London. Robert Flaherty used to tell the story of one of these times: 'It was a rainy winter night. Charlie, who was about eleven, had no place to sleep and was sheltering under an overhanging roof. A solid-looking man came by, took a look at the boy, and asked him what he was doing there. Charlie told his story. The man stroked his chin for a moment and said, "Well, I've a bit to eat at my place. I've only one room, but you're welcome to stay the night if you don't mind sleeping on the floor." They went to the man's furnished room, where Charlie slept on a pallet at the foot of his host's bed. Next morning when he woke, the man had gone, but Charlie found a note saying, "If you've no place to sleep tonight, come here." Charlie had to avail himself of his friend's help for many nights, but always in the morning the man had gone to his work. Charlie became curious about what that work might be. One morning he managed to wake early. The man was taking out of the closet and measuring in his hands a long, strong rope with a noose at the end of it. He was the common hangman.'

Out of such experiences came the greatest comedian in the world.

"You will get me to defend to the death a good melodrama any day of the week," Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films once said here. "It's an unfairly maligned form that I happen to love."

The Siren's been thinking about this most excellent observation (made on behalf of Million Dollar Baby, for the record) for the past few days, as the film blogosphere has one of its periodic kerfuffles. Remember when the Siren got rather worked up over the Oscar writer who dissed Sunrise right before the cinematography award? That was nothing compared to what Tom O'Neil of the Los Angeles Times dished out last week.

"Sunrise" is paper-thin, hilariously schmaltzy. All three primary characters are cartoonish clichés and their performances 3-inch slices of honeyed ham.

Mind you, I'm the kinda guy who'd normally side with the weepie. On my top 10 list of fave pix of all time are "Peggy Sue Got Married" and "Titanic." But I just can't shed a real tear when the farmer in "Sunrise" decides that he just — by golly! — can't off his sweet, dimpled wifey-pooh, after all. Nor could I cheer the scenes of the couple back together, all giddy smiles and kisses, posing for photos like newlyweds, dancing a happy peasant dance, joyous once he decided not to wring her scrawny little neck and hurl her over the side of the row boat.

What corn pone! Smothered in Cheez Whiz! "Wings" ain't Shakespeare or Scorsese, mind you, but it's better than that!

If hearing this gleeful philistinism from the paper of record in the world's movie capital depresses you, the comments section will cheer you up. This silent classic has far more fans than the Oscars may have led us to expect. The Siren isn't taking on Mr. O'Neil, not when he's been filleted for frying by the best, including Filmbrain and Glenn Kenny. At this point, as Molly Ivins used to say, it's called piling on, and there's a fifteen-yard penalty for it. No, instead the Siren wants to talk with her esteemed readers about melodrama, a word Mr. O'Neil's commenters use several times. Films labeled melodrama are too often maligned, but have a fine pedigree in the American cinema. And Sunrise is not schmaltzy (overly sentimental) nor is it purely a melodrama.

When the Siren's mother dispensed nasty-tasting medicine, she always gave a chaser, so here's our chaser, from The Parade's Gone By. Kevin Brownlow called this chapter "The Golden Path; or, The Curse of Melodrama":

Reassured by the belief that their prime duty was to entertain, film makers bought material of great potential and intelligence, stripped it of motivation and complex overtones, and reduced the action to basic, easy-to-follow melodrama.

Even the dictionary defines melodrama with a certain distaste: "Drama marked by crude appeals to emotion."

The purveyors of entertainment find melodrama an invaluable asset. It requires not the slightest effort on the part of the audience. They are not required to think, they merely watch. They will not miss any subtlety because there will not BE any subtlety. The values are simple, the threat is clear and
the resolution action-filled and straightforward. There is seldom any characterization in pure melodrama, never any complex motivation. Life is reduced to the infantile level of an adventure strip.

Brownlow was writing about the silent cinema, where what he called "the lashed-to-the-tracks, saved-by-the-dog pieces of unabashed nonsense" of the early days eventually gave way to more sophisticated plot drivers. The early silents gave us melodrama on its most basic level. But does anything Brownlow says make you think of Sunrise? No motivation or complex overtones, crude appeals to emotion, no effort required and no subtlety?

Melodrama relies heavily on plot, but Sunrise does nothing of the sort. It's the characters who tug at your heart, if you've a heart to tug. Janet Gaynor cringing away from the husband she loves might strike some as melodramatic in the worst sense. But the mere presence of strong emotion, conveyed in the most nakedly apparent way, doesn't add up to melodrama. Where Mr. O'Neil saw schmaltz, the Siren saw primitive fear, Gaynor showing us the physical terror women have felt down through the ages from certain men, even men they loved. And George O'Brien's torment shows how that violence cuts men off from the love and comfort they crave. You may call it melodrama, but the Siren calls it a conflict more ancient than the Greeks.

Pulling out the stops to draw strong emotions from your audience doesn't make something a melodrama in the Brownlow sense. If, however, you want to expand the definition to include plot-driven pictures, that still have strong motivations and well-drawn characters, and are designed chiefly to give us a good, cathartic burst of emotion, then you get something closer to what Marilyn Ferdinand defends. And the Siren thinks you also run into some of the finest pictures classic Hollywood has to offer. Check out this fine article on Greencine, which lovingly details what the Siren is talking about although it uses the perjorative "weepie," a term the Siren loathes from the depths of her movie-loving soul. Filmsite.org also has a good article on melodrama, where you'll find a list that includes a lot of masterpieces.

In fact, just skimming the list on Filmsite--Caught, Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Bad and the Beautiful, Greed, Some Came Running, Imitation of Life, Stella Dallas, Camille, The Old Maid--makes the Siren wonder if there is some stealthy prejudice at work in the very fact that these are labeled melodramas at all. The appeals to emotion in these films are not crude, unless you consider any appeal to romance or sentiment to be crude. If you want blood-pumping appeals to emotion, without complex motivations or nuanced character development, then the genre that frequently offers that isn't the women's picture or a fable (a term the Siren is borrowing from Todd Holmes) like Sunrise.

You should look right here.

Here's one writer who can stay on strike for good, as far as the Siren is concerned: the one who decided it would be a kick to mock Sunrise during the Oscars. It takes some kind of four-door, chrome-plated, 400-horsepower nerve to diss that movie for being soooo old-fashioned and simple ("the Woman from the City"! "sounds like a fun shoot!" tee-hee!) when it's visually and thematically more sophisticated than a whopping majority of last year's Hollywood output. And then they hand that crass joke to Cameron Diaz, no one's idea of Janet Gaynor Redux, right before she gives out the cinematography award. Hey, if you're honoring cinematography, Sunrise is a natural choice for a bit of ribbing. Just like if you're handing out the Nobel Peace Prize, you wanna warm up the crowd with some well-chosen Martin Luther King jokes. The Siren only now has managed to get up from bed and remove the ice-pack from her forehead.

Aside from that moment, which should live in infamy, the Siren has a radical thought.

The Oscar show is too short.

Yes, you heard me, too short. Too short and too goddamn slick. No wildly inappropriate speeches, no gasps, no boos, no one going off teleprompter. Just patter, Oscar, speech, orchestra play-off. The show has become as exciting as watching a line of limos pull up to a drive-through bank and getting the statue from a Marchesa-draped teller. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart bringing back the charming young woman from Once, and Tilda Swinton putting her thumb in the eye of fashion editors everywhere with that deconstructed, proudly asexual velvet dress, like a monk's robe that the brothers forgot to finish sewing after vespers.

But that wasn't enough, was it? It's just no fun anymore. Between seeing some of the most talented people in the industry given the bum's rush off the stage, and stylists who insist on dressing every starlet like AudreyGraceAva, the Siren is seriously wondering if next year she should just watch old Oscarcast clips on Youtube.

...or helped to invent it, anyway. This one is for the Siren's beauty blogger pals at Bois de Jasmin, Beauty Addict, Koneko's (Mostly) Beauty Diary, MonkeyPosh and Now Smell This, but most especially Cavewoman and Annie of Blogdorf Goodman.




The year is 1925, and Astor is filming Don Q, Son of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks Sr.

Perc and Ern Westmore were handling makeup and hairdressing on Don Q: As I remember, it was the first time these departments had been created. Greasepaint came in a stick--somewhat like a big lipstick. Stein's Pink #2, I remember, was what I used. And it was pink, whitish pink. It was applied in streaks all over the face, then smoothed until it filled every pore. With a towel wrapped turbanlike around the head, you leaned over and using a powder puff loaded with a pinkish powder slapped it all over until the grease had absorbed it. [Sounds sexy, yes? -C.] Really very similar to the method clowns use. Eyebrows disappeared, eyelashes were coated, lips covered. Then it was brushed off nice and smooth.

Lipstick was a dark red. Reds went black on film, but if the tone was too light one's mouth would look white. The men used a lighter lipstick and less base makeup. There was eyebrow shadow, brown, and mascara, black, and then something that was called "cosmetique," a black cake of guck that was melted over a spirit lamp and then applied to the ends of the eyelashes with a match or a toothpick. This was "beading": It accomplished what false eyelashes do today.

As technical improvements made the film faster, the makeup began to look even more masklike and white on the scren. It was no good using darker tones of pink because they tended to "go black" if you moved into a shadow.

One day in the makeup room Perc Westmore and I played around with mixing the Stein's Pink with a just a touch of the brown eyeshadow. We melted it together, and stirred it up and put it on, and there was an ivory cast to the color that had never been used. On the screen it was miraculous. Bones began to show, skin looked natural and the tiny muscles of facial expression that had blanked out before were more evident. It was the beginning of panchromatic makeup. I wish I had held a patent on it!

The above is from Mary Astor's memoirs of her career, A Life on Film, which the Siren has been happily re-reading this week. What a good book it is, full of details other stars leave out. She gives you the nitty-gritty of casting, costumes, what the lighting was like and how it changed, the drudgery of on-set life, the weirdness of seeing yourself on screen and the split most stars make between their real selves and the "product." Astor even emphasized that split by writing her autobiography in two stages--the first, My Story, going into her many personal travails but pretty much leaving the movies untouched, and the second, A Life on Film, covering her professional experiences.

She was quite beautiful, with ethereal looks that never read as blatantly sexual on film, although she was a convincing (and hilarious) nymphomaniac in The Palm Beach Story. As with many actresses before and since, looks were deceiving. Of the two heroines of Red Dust there seems little question that it was Astor, not Jean Harlow, who was steaming up the sheets when the cameras stopped rolling.

That became clear during Astor's custody battle for her daughter, which occurred during the making of Dodsworth, the Siren's favorite Astor performance. Her ex-husband got hold of her diary and introduced it into evidence. Astor found her red-hot affair with George S. Kaufman splashed over the newspapers. If you believe Kenneth Anger the diary was practically pornographic; if you believe Mary the diary was mostly romantic doodlings, no more steamy than a Book-of-the-Month club selection. In any event, the diary was eventually destroyed by the court so we'll never know for sure. Samuel Goldwyn, who was producing Dodsworth, was asked at the time if he would use the morals clause in her contract to fire Astor. To his everlasting credit, he thought about it and said, "A mother fighting for her child? This is good!" Astor stayed in the picture.

Without question her role for the ages was the scheming Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon. Astor says that to get the breathless quality she wanted when Brigid was about to spin another pathological whopper, she would hyperventilate before takes. The result was that with lines such as "I--I don't know what you mean," Astor's throbbing contralto voice gave lying a uniquely sexual quality. You relish hearing it as much as Bogart does, until he finally kisses her, no doubt to see if there's another way to get her to hyperventilate. Later film noir femmes would try similar tricks, but Astor provided the template.



She was pressed into a film career by her parents, who energetically sponged off her for years until Astor went to court to pull the plug. Perhaps the fact that she didn't choose her own career is part of why Astor often underrates herself in A Life on Film, dismissing something like Beau Brummel, which the Siren thought quite fine. She brought discipline and high standards to her work at all times, but acting evidently never engaged her full intelligence.

She turned to writing novels in later years, and the Siren actually read one of them. As a teenager in Alabama the Siren was the sometime babysitter for a toddler with a quadruple-barreled polysyllabic Southern name that everbody shortened to P.D. His parents were movie buffs and on their shelves were, as the Siren remembers, an early version of David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film, some David Shipman and a few books of stills. After P.D. was coaxed into bed the Siren would curl up with the books, and one night she discovered A Place Called Saturday. The book, published in 1968, concerns a married woman who is raped, conceives a child and decides to keep and raise it anyway. The Siren doesn't remember much about the quality or the plot of the book, although she did read it all the way through, but she does remember that it opens with a very squirm-inducing scene of the wife in the aftermath of the rape. The book was the last one Astor wrote, and she died in 1987, aged 81, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House.

The first picture shows Mary Astor in the 1920s, the next as she appeared in Don Q. Her hair was auburn and naturally curly, and A Life on Film describes how novelist Elinor Glyn came up with a way to make it look "Spanish" on film. At a dinner party, Glyn pulled Mary over and proceeded to slick her hair back, piece by piece, with the butter from the dining room table. This was before hair gel as well as panchromatic makeup. Astor assures us that they found something less off-putting to use under the blazing hot lights of the time.

The middle picture shows Astor in the 1930s, and the bottom one is from The Maltese Falcon. While looking up Astor the Siren came across this vituperative essay about how she's the worst thing in The Maltese Falcon. Poppycock, says the Siren. But, to echo one of the Siren's favorite blogs, what do you think--allure?

(This marks the Siren's slightly belated contribution to Goatdog's 1927 Blog-a-thon, which was this past weekend. Please follow the link to Goatdog's place and read the other contributions as well, for a wonderful trip in the 80-years-back machine.)

Why is the word "modern" considered an accolade, much less the word "realistic"? When she wants modern, the Siren watches modern. Most of the time, the Siren prefers old-fashioned things, like romance and superimposition shots and duels filmed in silhouette. There are times when it is a good thing to show your age. When you're a bottle of vintage port, for example, or when you're a rare manuscript, or when you are 61 years old but, by God, you are Helen Mirren. And, the Siren would argue, it is a fine and glorious thing to show your age when you're a silent movie like Flesh and the Devil. Very little of this movie's atmosphere or plot smacks of 1927 (or 1926, when it was filmed) and in fact there are some decidedly 19th-century aspects to it. The clothes are 1920s-looking, but the rooms are lit by candles, people travel via horses and the settings are military boarding schools, castles and the like.

To put it mildly, there is a lot of baggage attached to this one. Baggage, hell, it drags a freight train full of Hollywood history, foreshadowing and hindsight into your living room the second you hit "play." This lavish MGM production was made to showcase the pairing of their most valuable male star, John Gilbert, and their soaring new female star, Greta Garbo. When Flesh and the Devil was released in early January 1927, The Jazz Singer was only 10 months away. The release of His Glorious Night, the movie that all but ended John Gilbert's career, was just two and a half years in the future, and in less than a decade Gilbert would be dead--of a broken heart, said his friends; of cardiac arrest brought on acute alcoholism, said the doctors. Garbo, for her part, was just three films into a Hollywood career that would defy all attempts at comparison, then or since.

The movie also began their celebrated love affair, though some maintain that was more image than reality. Maybe. For those who argue Gilbert-Garbo was the real romantic deal, Flesh and the Devil is mighty strong evidence. Gilbert caresses a flower stolen from Garbo's bouquet, Garbo purses her lips slightly to light a cigarette, they play a horizontal love scene as Garbo hovers over her man's face and kisses him with lips slightly parted. Eighty years on, the erotic charge between these two still flashes off the screen, despite the older acting style, despite the 1920s fashion for putting lipstick on a leading man.

Going strictly by the plot, the true love in the movie is between John Gilbert's character, Leo von Harden, and his best friend, Ulrich von Eltz, played by Lars Hanson. Their attachment probably draws some titters from "sophisticated" audiences unacquainted with eras when passionate declarations of love and fidelity weren't limited to those sharing a bed. It is a movie truth universally acknowledged, however, that two single men in possession of a good friendship must be in want of a vamp. So here comes Felicitas (Garbo, of course), ready to fascinate and seduce Gilbert from the moment he spots her at a train station. They meet again, they waltz, they smoke and then they burn. Gilbert tosses a lit cigarette out the window, alerting Garbo's husband, Count von Rhaden (Marc McDermott), to the goings-on in his wife's boudoir. Husband? did she mention a husband? Gosh, no, she didn't, but there he is in the doorway, giving director Clarence Brown a marvelous shot--a Garbo-Gilbert clinch viewed through the wronged husband's outstretched fingers. A duel must follow, of course, and its filming is justly celebrated. We see it in long shot, the actors as silhouettes. Leo and von Rhaden march ten paces to the side of the screen, each stops just out of the frame, and we see two puffs of smoke.

Next shot ... Garbo, trying on mourning bonnets, the slightest of smiles on her face as she decides which veil is the most becoming. A perfect sequence, in 1927 or any other era.

Gilbert is exiled for five years. To protect the honor of Felicitas, he pretends the duel was about a dispute at cards. Hanson is enlisted to take care of Felicitas while his friend spends a few years in South Africa living in a hut. Okay, take a wild guess what happens next. Why, yes, that's exactly right. Hanson falls in love with Garbo, and they marry. Flesh and the Devil has many virtues; a surprising, twisty plot ain't one of 'em. So Leo comes back, but the love between him and Felicitas still burns. Leo is determined not to betray his friend, but Felicitas has other ideas.

Ah, this movie is lovely to look at, delightful to behold. Visual techniques of silent film were at an incredibly high point, about to plummet back to ground-bound staginess when the talkie craze took over. Shot after shot from William Daniels, who also lensed Greed and The Merry Widow, makes you want to pause the film and drink it in, whether it's a view across a frozen lake to an island with a man-made folly on it, or a simple close-up of Garbo's silk shoes, covered with snow. (Legend has it that the ethereal beauty had big, decidedly clod-hopping feet. To the Siren, Garbo's feet look fine, but her gams were no threat to Marlene.) Cedric Gibbons did the art direction and gave the interiors that certain fairy-tale look common to MGM's every depiction of aristocratic life.

Gilbert gets dissed quite a bit by modern critics, and the Siren isn't sure why. He is very dashing and handsome, less effete than Valentino if less menacing than Barrymore. As for Garbo, most critics note that she was sui generis, a brand-new type for the movies. The Siren adds that this quality was Garbo's alone, not the script. Felicitas is written as a man-eating vamp like dozens of others in films of the era. It is the actress who conveys a soul behind the frippery. Favorite moment, for the Siren: Garbo nonchalantly touching up her lipstick, as a priest denounces her from the pulpit as a modern-day Bathsheba. Second-favorite, minutes later: the priest passes the communion cup, adjusting the rim to give each family member an untouched place to sip. Garbo stops him, turns the rim back to where Gilbert's lips had just touched it, and drinks from that spot. Her body and the angle of her head are perfectly ladylike and composed, but her expression of abandon is worthy of Salome. (Now there is a part Garbo could have torn up.)

Among the cast is an ingenue named Barbara Kent, playing Hanson's sister Hertha. Her pure unselfish love for Gilbert must compete with the evil, manipulative Felicitas, and naturally Hertha doesn't stand a chance. She is rather charming, however, her tiny frame used to compose several amusing shots. She survived the talkie transition and made some other pictures, including the 1932 Vanity Fair and the 1933 Oliver Twist, then retired from the screen in 1949. Incredibly, she is still alive today, having turned 101 on Dec. 16. According to Wikipedia, she is one of only three prominent silent players still surviving, the others being Anita Page (age 96) and Dorothy Janis (who turned 97 on Feb. 19). Alas, Ms. Kent refuses all interviews. Still, it is wonderful to think that somewhere in Idaho there lives a link to the more sumptuous, romantic world of 1927 and this film.

It's that time of year again, and the wonderful film blogger Edward Copeland has unleashed another of his Oscar surveys. This time, we rate the Best Actresses, naming the five best, in descending order, and the five worst, also in order. Polish your rear-view mirrors and sharpen your hindsight, and send Mr. Copeland a ballot. Here is the Siren's.

Best of the Best:

1. Janet Gaynor Sunrise, Seventh Heaven, Street Angel
The Siren is cheating a bit here, since she has seen only Sunrise. But Sunrise, she assures you, is sufficient unto itself. One viewing of Gaynor's performance is worth hours of wrist-crippling typing about the lost art of silent acting. She will break your heart.

2. Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday
Apologies to Diane Keaton, but this is the greatest comic performance to win a Best Actress Oscar. Holliday's reactions are a joy forever. The first time the Siren rented this, she kept rewinding the shot of Holliday inching her head toward the dictionary when the corrupt Congressman uses a word she doesn't know. So many wonderful touches, like her imitation of the drum rolls on "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" - a sure sign Billie Dawn is playing the whole record in her head, the better to tune out Broderick Crawford. Holliday didn't even have to deliver her matchless "Drop dead," because the Siren was already on the floor laughing from just watching her turn around on the staircase.


3. Jane Fonda, Klute
Screen acting at its most truthful. An amazing demonstration of disappearing into a character, all the more so when you consider that the movie is good but not great. It's a standard prostitute-in-peril yarn, with a problematic plot that reveals the killer in mid-film and leaves the wheels spinning afterward. But the Siren was astonished at the layers of personality Fonda brought to the character of Bree. This should have been the screen hooker to give all the others the hook. (Aside: does IMDB really have to link to external "reviews" that are just rants about "Commie Fonda"?)

4. Maggie Smith, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
We're frequently admonished to appreciate our hardworking, underpaid teachers. What is left unmentioned, though, is that bad teachers can affect your future as much as the inspirational ones. For many women, Maggie Smith's performance lingers as an emblem of some past teacher whose mark on their lives was more like a stain. Smith makes Jean Brodie, a Fascist sympathizer who damages lovers and students, both monstrous and moving. Miss Brodie's artistic affectations, her carefully cultivated posture and self-dramatizing gestures, are rendered in minute detail, and such is Smith's talent that at no time does the portrayal shade off into caricature.

5. Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce
Practically the Siren's first thought upon learning of this survey was, "Damnit, I'm including Joan." Bear with me here. In no way is this a naturalistic performance. Who cares? It is an endlessly re-watchable piece of High Hollywood Acting, with Joan Crawford hurling her star power around like a flamethrower. Is she subtle? Hell, no. It isn't a subtle movie. But Crawford grabs your attention, sympathy and yes, belief as she rips apart her marriage, home and the scenery to Sacrifice All for her worthless daughter Veda. Look the Siren deep in the eye. Would you really, truly rather watch Sophie's Choice again, or see Joan haul off and slap Ann Blyth?

Worst of the Best:

1. Loretta Young, The Farmer's Daughter
Understand, please, that the Siren loves corny. She lives for corny. Well, actually, she lives for romantic, followed closely by sophisticated, then witty, then spectacular and THEN she lives for corny. But there is corny, and there is saccharine. And this could induce diabetic coma. If Young's yumpin' yiminy accent doesn't appall you, her Princess Leia cinnamon-bun hairdo will. The Siren couldn't find a picture of that, but the braid crown at left is almost as bad. Young was quite bearable in a few movies, but she hasn't the ability to make this purehearted rustic believable or even interesting. The Siren has no idea why Young won.

2. Katharine Hepburn, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
The Siren feels churlish naming this, because we all know Spencer Tracy was dying when this movie was made, and it must have affected Hepburn a great deal. But what does Kate really do here, besides gaze mistily at Spence?

3. Bette Davis, Dangerous
She wasn't even nominated for Of Human Bondage, so this is one of those consolation Oscars they give out to this day, and shouldn't. You would never know Davis was a peerless screen artist by viewing this shrill, silly, damn near unwatchable performance in an extremely tiresome movie.

4. Grace Kelly, The Country Girl
"It's the biggest robbery since Brink's," cabled Groucho Marx to Judy Garland, whose career-topping performance in A Star Is Born lost to Grace Kelly's willingness to wear eyeglasses and a frumpy dress. The Siren swears she isn't naming Kelly out of pique. She loves Grace Kelly, who doesn't? But this performance is pedestrian, with the actress unable to suggest her character's longing or her sense of entrapment. Instead, what she projects is primarily petulance.

5. Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8
"Even I voted for her," remarked wronged wife Debbie Reynolds, when a dire illness landed Liz in the hospital and gave her this sympathy Oscar. To her immense credit, Taylor has always said she knew she didn't deserve the award. Unfortunately, she was right. Granted, Gloria Wandrous is a ludicrous projection of misogyny, possibly unplayable as written. Plus there's the problem of Taylor's leading man, of whom Jane Fonda said, "Acting with Lawrence Harvey is like acting by yourself. Only worse." Still, it is evident that Taylor made this movie while on an actress setting we could call Slut Auto-Pilot.

So that's the Siren's list. Tell her what you think in the comments, but do send your list to Mr. Copeland by Jan. 20.