|
A Spanish caprice, as Rimsky-Korsakov would have it, just as melodic. "Satanic revelry" in Seville, actually just a bit of carnival merrymaking but enough to get the king (Holbrook Blinn) away from his official duty of playing on seesaws with ladies-in-waiting. Carousing masses make the ideal audience for the eponymous street singer (Mary Pickford), the ruler is the topic of her satirical ditty, "I shall pay him with a song that makes his royal ears burn." She refuses the role of regal mistress even as her whole clan eagerly moves into a private villa, meanwhile the imprisoned nobleman (George Walsh) awaits his fate and the queen (Irene Rich) has machinations of her own. "A strange compact, indeed." Ernst Lubitsch moves to Hollywood, refines his historical canvas, gives America's Sweetheart a twinkle. Massive William Cameron Menzies sets and lavish Mitchell Leisen costumes, the heroine steps in and out of the frame to peck at a fruit bowl until the monarch enters like a cuckoo-clock figurine. An alliance with Stroheim during the blindfolded wedding, an anticipation of Renoir throughout—Nana principally, plus Boudu with luxurious bedsheets that double as breakfast napkins. (A supercilious servant feels water dripping on his peruke, and notices the plebeian clothesline set up in the palatial chamber.) Real and fake tears, fusillades with blank bullets, the stratagem that leads to a corpse rising from the chapel to take a bow. "This is hardly the time for laughter, Countess." It builds toward the victorious wit in the back of a carriage, practically re-created with a taxi at the end of Trouble in Paradise. With Charles Belcher, Frank Leigh, Mathilde Comont, George Periolat, Bert Sprotte, and Snitz Edwards. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |