June 8, 2008
Silent Sunday: The Kiss of Mary Pickford (1927)
In 1926, while visiting Moscow, Hollywood supercouple Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks starred in a film about a young man who wants to become a movie star to impress his girlfriend. Pickford only learned about the film late in life, and Fairbanks died never knowing about it. The director, Sergei Komarov, had posed as a newsreel cameraman and convinced the superstars to clown around for him, including getting Mary to play a silly love scene with a bearded Russian actor (he loves me, he loves me not), at the end of which she kisses him. Around this footage, he constructed an American-style slapstick comedy about the unhealthy obsession with fame.
Posted by mike, June 8, 2008 10:58 PMThis movie sounds fascinating. How does it compare to it's American counterparts Show People and Souls for Sale?
Posted by: Dame James at June 9, 2008 8:50 AMAs my co-programmer at the theater said in his capsule for All About Eve: "the only thing Hollywood relishes more than looking in the mirror is a light spanking," and movies about the movies are one of my favorite sub-genres. I haven't seen either of those you mentioned, but they're on my list. Perhaps I will track them down in time for the "Movies About Movies" blog-a-thon, which I'm tentatively scheduling for August 22-24.
Ooh, that blog-a-thon is a fantastic idea. Movies about movies is one of my favorite sub-genres as well. Seriously, how could you go wrong with Sullivan's Travels, Day for Night, 8 1/2 or Sunset Boulevard? I always find them fascinating no matter how out there they are.
Posted by: Dame James at June 9, 2008 5:21 PMThat's a pretty cool way to do a movie. Was Pickford upset when she found out about it?
Posted by: Brian at June 14, 2008 9:26 AM