Review of Coquette (1929) by Bob V — 14 Apr 2011

Early talkie & first sound film for "Little" Mary Pickford, already established as the Queen of the silent film and Hollywood royalty with her husband Douglas Fairbanks (Senior). Pickford was best known for her little girl roles and her elaborate whorl hair-style. Transitioning to more adult roles had proved more difficult, but sound film, which was the ruin for many of the silent screen's great stars, actually helped her in this, basically starting afresh to the audience. Shearing off all her curls probably also helped.

The first of the movie stars to embrace the new medium, she had a sound stage build on in her own Pickfair, and she actually had the best equipment around. Many early sound films have barely any movement, since the slightest superfluous sound (the soft clinking of an actress' bracelet for instance) would be magnified on film and actually drown out the dialog. The camera was often placed behind clear glass plates to remedy this, but this still made it impossible to have scenes with a lot of motion. Because of Pickford's investments in technological advancements, "Coquette" has a lot of natural movement and different camera perspectives, a feat the major studios would not really accomplish until later in the Thirties.

While the story is old as dirt (even in 1929, when the dirt was still a lot younger), and the acting suffers a little from the too florid mannerisms of silent film melodrama - after all the area of Pickford's expertise - there are several surprisingly powerful scenes in which she gives a heart-wrenching performance (though admittedly, other than these scenes, she seems to do little more than pout and blink a lot) .

Pickford won the Oscar for her performance, only the second time it was given out. Of course, she was one (of only 3 women being the only actress, and of 36 total) of the founders of the Academy and the Oscar, leading to a lot of talk about using her influence to win, although there's no basis for this, as this film and her part in it were at the time highly esteemed by audience and critics alike. Pickford is also supposed to have defended herself once by saying that if she was going to cheat, she would have done it to win the very first Oscar ever, not the second.