Customer Reviews

The Gloria Swanson Collection

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Absolutely unforgiveable! Never never put logos/bugs in the corner of the screen on DVD releases. If I am going to invest money on buying a DVD, I do not wish for it to look like I am watching the program on television. Obviously Passport has a problem with people possibly copying the discs, but trying to prevent piracy this way is bad for business. Do not patronize this company or their inferior discs. One star because the "bugs" blew it for me!

Containing 10 films, 6 of them features, this set could be a nice way for someone on a shoestring budget to start adding some Gloria Swanson films to one's library. The shorts, 'His New Job' (1915, and really a Chaplin film), 'The Danger Girl' (1916), 'Teddy at the Throttle' (1917), and 'The Sultan's Wife' (1917), are a rather interesting change of pace for the average viewer who is probably only familiar with her work in later features. Gloria actually got started acting in Keystone comedies, and displays great comedic timing and ability in these shorts. They also show her paired with Bobby Vernon, an actor who now seems to be largely forgotten, and with her then-husband Wallace Beery in 'Teddy at the Throttle.' These shorts show that she wasn't just adept in dramatic acting. The depiction of India and Indians in 'The Sultan's Wife' is highly inaccurate, but one shouldn't expect too much in the way of cultural sensitivity and awareness in anything from 1917.

Four of the features are ones she made with Cecil B. DeMille, 'Male and Female' (1919), 'Don't Change Your Husband' (1919), 'Why Change Your Wife?' (1920), and 'The Affairs of Anatol' (1921). A lot of people think of DeMille as a director of over the top Biblical stories, decadent indulgent extravagant films, and preachy morality plays, but he actually did more films like these, light-hearted morality plays and comedies about romance and domestic life. While there are some of his trademark touches of decadence and over the top scenes, such as the Babylonian dream scenes in 'Male and Female,' overall they're enjoyable, believable, and down to earth. Gloria had some great co-stars in these films too, such as Wallace Reid, Thomas Meighan, Bebe Daniels, and Theodore Roberts. 'Sadie Thompson' (1928), believed by many to be one of her greatest silent roles, is another highlight of this set, though sadly the final reel is lost, making the remainder of the story be told through stills and explanatory intertitles, and just when the dramatic intensity was at its height and leading up to what was a really riveting final reel, too. 'Indiscreet' (1931) is a typical early talkie, with very still cameras, not a lot of action shots, and below-par audio quality. It's an interesting way to kill time, but not really that memorable or great. It's also not a good sign when the villain is a lot more interesting and believable than the supposed good guy. Still, Gloria does a great job with the mediocre material, and does it all--singing, comedy, emoting, and dramatic moments. Included as bonus features are a short documentary, a 'Hollywood Biography' episode, interviews, and a newsreel consisting of clips of her films and non-acting footage.

In spite of the good points, though, this is a budget set, and when it comes to technology, one generally gets what one pays for. After viewing the entire set, one can probably guess why so many great films were issued for such an unbelievably generous price. Most of them have already been issued on DVD, only the versions here do not have the same nice prints or custom-made soundtracks. For example, this version of 'The Affairs of Anatol' doesn't have the beautiful scenes near the end that are in early Technicolor on the official DVD. Finding out about how Passport Video has a history of pirating the hard work of other people makes one wonder if perhaps these too weren't taken without permission. There's also a bug on the lower right-hand corner of the screen, and while it can be tuned out periodically because it's a rather transparent white against black and white images, it's still annoying and distracting, and has no reason to be there. One expects that when watching something taped off of the tv, not on a supposedly professional DVD! Still, this is a really good price for someone who might not be able to afford all of the individual higher-quality DVDs that have these films, and it's not like one should expect a really high standard from such a budget boxed set.

It is really hard to see why De Mille has such a relatively poor reputation, when one sees a film like Male and Female. He is often lambasted and compared unfavourably with other silent directors, but De Mille outlasted most of them, not least because he was a great storyteller. The story of Male and Female, adapted from J.M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, is amusing and an interesting comment on class difference. The performances are naturalistic and subtle showing silent acting at its best. This film offers an especially welcome opportunity to see a very young Gloria Swanson. Her famous bath scene is much less modest than one would expect in a post production-code film, though its hardly shocking by today's standards. Her descent into a Babylonian lion's den is quite startling and not at all gratuitous (as the DVD box would have it) for the film has a number of plot points which build up to this 'dream' sequence. This DVD is really top notch, for the print is first class with very little deterioration. It is well tinted, with appropriate colours and greys. The music adds to the viewing experience, fitting in well with the mood and the pace of the film. I have only seen two of De Mille's silent films and only a few of his talkies, this film made me wish to see many more.

I had read some of the reviews on this film, and although they do a good job of revealing the basic plot synopsis, they don't fully do it justice.

first of all, when the DVD cover says "lavishly staged", that was really an understatement. sure, i knew about the legendary "King of Babylon" scene and was expecting a lavish DeMille set for that segment, but this statement also applies to the rest of the film as well. for example, i was shocked by the scene of the ship crashing and sinking, with both an external ship torn up on the rocks, as well as amazing internal shots of the rock breaching the hull and Gloria trapped in the flooding water below deck.

the scenes on the island were always beautiful, although one thing that seems to be absent from other reviews is the point of ridiculousness that the castoways nearly descend to. to be frank, i wasn't expecting a depiction of shipwreck that so closely resembeled Gilligan's Island, but when you look at it, there are similarities between the cast: the millionaire, the movie star (Gloria Swanson), the girl next door, even a cowardly comic relief Gilliganesque character, not to mention the admirable Chrichton, whose outlandish inventions put him in the position of the professor. to modern audiences, it is a little absurd to see the grass hut mansion complete with modern furniture and other luxuries, but it isn't any less entertaining.

although the basic premise of the movie is well known, it has probably never been conveyed as well as it was in this film (reference the similar theme in either version of Swept Away). mostly, that credit goes to amazing direction and a stunning cast. one can easily see why Gloria Swanson was one of the world's biggest sensations, because she can evoke sympathy from the audience for even the most undesirable characters like Lady Mary. the cast deserves a standing ovation for their performance, which otherwise could have been just a silly melodrama. instead, we actually do care about the unjust caste system and how it affects the lovers on both sides of the spectrum.

This film is a masterpiece that gives you the feel of the time and place of the story line. Gloria Swanson is definitely a superb, passionate, and glamorous actress in the film. The picture quality is very clear and the orchestra sound added makes this movie a time capsule for years to come. This film, without a doubt, is one of gloria swanson's finest moments along with her other films "Sadie Thompson" and "Sunset Boulevard." I strongly recommend this film to those who appreciate a brillant silent film.

This compilation has poor video quality and - the largest sin of all - it leaves out the final reel of "Don't Change Your Husband"! If you are a silent film lover, leave this mess alone and buy the higher quality DVD's which are available for most of the titles. Now I still have to buy a copy of "Don't Change Your Husband" to get the entire film.

Saw it first on AMC Silent Sundays and loved it. An interesting look at a simpler and slower time. Interesting commentary on class and man's nature. At times, it got a little slow but the great thing about silent films is that in those days the director's challenge was to evoke emotion from the audience through action: the protanganist reacting to note just handed to him, the spying over the shoulder or the reactions to other actors. "I was a King of Bablyon and you were a Christian slave." I own it.

This movie is all about Gloria. One certainly understands that phrase "we had faces then" implying we didn't need talking from "Sunset Boulevard" much, much better after seeing this production.

From the very start Gloria as Lady Mary Lasenby is in a palatial home and wearing exceedingly elaborate gowns, even to go from her bed to her bath, and I mean trailing yards of fabric. She is a spoiled brat that complains that the toast is soggy in her breakfast to her handsome butler (Thomas Meighan) who is salivating for her and to her maid that the bath is not exactly the 90 degrees she expects. Eventhough her bath routine could have rivaled Cleopatra's, including the sunken pool and the shower with rose-perfumed water, one suspects that something is wrong with little poor rich girl and she is not totally happy.

At one point she is counseling a friend-aristocrat Lady Eileen Duncraigie (Rhy Darby)not to marry her chauffeur (Henry Woodward) who is a handsome hunk of a man who seems to really care for her. We get a glimpse of him helping her out of the car and I totally understood their relationship: Anyone that does as much touching, holding, supporting and clutching in such a brief period of time is bound to be a great lover and it helps that he looks like a model wearing a uniform that seems to emphasize all his good points.
Gloria however counsels her against the match on principle, and as part of her own prejudiced, limited vision of life.

She also spends a considerable amount of time searching for the second volume of a book of poems by a third rate writer, which has actually caught the fancy of her butler also. He has been reading the poems to a fellow servant in the library, a pretty maid (Lila Lee) that is very attracted to him and can not help but caress his shoe while he reads the line "I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian slave" with a very sensuous persistance that would suggest a foot/shoe fetish passion was at work.

The statement of the poem itself is an idiocy as there were never any Christians in Babylon, much less enslaved ones. The reason being that Babylon was at the time of Christ already largely abandoned as a city (from about 141 bc onwards) for over a century. The movie however does have a Babylonian scene that reenacts this poem in the most extravagant fashion, it happens much later when all the characters are stranded in an island after their yacht is shipwrecked in a deserted island, but it deserves coverage in detail.

The shipwreck scene is quite dramatic and very suggestive of a mini-Titanic, piano included. Needless to say all the characters survive and get to a deserted island, some like her father (Robert Cain) atop a chicken box, in rather comical ways, and soon find out that there are not only wild goats and abundant clams and lobsters, but also leopards. The Butler at this point becomes the leader of the pack and turns engineer-handy man: he buids a fire, cooks the food, builds a hut, soon expanded into residential proportions and decorated with the latest 'native' style. As they all start living a Robinson Crusoe lifestyle, one can not help but think of this set up as an ancestor of the Gilligan's Island TV series.

Gloria also changes from her art nouveau gown to a huntress look that could have been thought up by Chanel and that applies to a lesser degree to the rest of the cast, she has a primitive-fabric suit with a hat that supports two pheasant feathers "a la savage" and she learns to hunt with arrows from her butler, now become king of the heap who is similarly attired but with the obligatory leopard skin hunting cape.

It is precisely at this archery lesson that we see their feelings for each other are growing, (reminiscent of a similar deserted island story romance done in "Swept Away" which has two versions, (1975) and (2002) and soon after we have the dream sequence into Babylon when they mention the poem again.
This is a most elaborate scene that most have sent the budget of the movie through the roof; There is a palatial hall in the Hollywood Babylonian style with the wrong sculptural motifs but otherwise quiet believable, and with a heavy dose of Art Deco stylization that would make for an impressive lobby in Radio City. The butler sits on the throne, a large cocktail-shaker crown on his head, metalized tunic and high sandals complete the outfil, worn with a brooding expression of tyrannical granderur that never lifts through the entire scene. Behind him there is a guard that surely had a career in dancing, standing in a Deco-Babylonian uniform and to his right a favorite of his harem decked out in an exquisite follies girl costume, complete with a crown that would be phenomenal in a Brazillian carnival but would be soon eclipsed by Gloria's appearance as the rebellious beauty, all done in a white peacock theme that includes the stuffed bird in her head, complete with tail fanning out as a tiara. It takes real glamour not to make this get up completely farcical, and Gloria not only makes it, she looks beautiful in that crazy thing, amazingly she can walk in it too, and goes to meet her fate in the lion's den with a doomed heroine's aplomb.
A wedding scene soon develops for Gloria and her butler that is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a ship that finally rescues them all and brings them back to England where they all go back to their former lives without interruption, as if the Babylonian dream had also extended into their past and made it all a complete fantasy.

The acting throughout is superb, and very nuanced, it makes the story, which can be slow at times, very enjoyable. The Babylonian sequence is an unexpected bonus and like seeing another film altogether. I find DeMille's treatment of the theme extremely conservative, if not altogether retrograde. 1919 when this movie was released, was a time of huge social change throughout a world that had just toppled all the European empires at the end of the First World war, and DeMille's commentary is that going back to the old is the best way. I think it remarkable that he chooses that topic and that way of telling the story at that particular time period. We see here an artificiality and make-believe that is the root of Hollywood distortion of socio-historical phenomenon that is going to be an extremely strong tendency in the future: The desire to create a reality that copies the details of real life, but achieves a 'fantastical reality" far from the actual, and also dramatically divorced from the tendencies that were developing in European Contemporary film, such as German Expressionism. Even before the advent of drugs DeMille had detected the strong escapist tendencies in the culture and had decided to "give them more of what they want".

PARAMOUNT's largest grosser of 1919, Cecil B. DeMille's MALE AND FEMALE is loosely based on a J.M. Barrie play called "The Admirable Crichton." (Barrie is best known as creator of "Peter Pan.")

In this story, the privileged class gets a comeuppance. William Crichton (Meighan), a capable and educated man, is butler to a noble British clan headed by Lord Loam (Roberts). Crichton is secretly in love with the Lord's daughter, Mary (Swanson) and the scullery maid Tweeny (Lee) is in love with him. The family and servants are shipwrecked during a South Seas excursion, and Crichton, by virtue of his many survival skills, becomes leader and rule setter. This power reversal and Crichton's betrothal to Lady Mary last only while they remain on the island. Once back in England, he instead marries Tweeny and the couple emigrate to America.


"Male and Female" is available (along with 16 other movies) in PASSPORT's budget-priced DVD set, THE CECIL B. DEMILLE CLASSICS COLLECTION.


Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(8.0) Male and Female (1919) - Thomas Meighan/Theodore Roberts/Raymond Hatton/Robert Cain/Gloria Swanson/Lila Lee/Bebe Daniels

A previous reviewer raised an interesting question. He asked "It is really hard to see why De Mille has such a relatively poor reputation, when one sees a film like Male and Female."

This is not really a hard question to answer, but one must understand De Mille and the nature of his politics. De Mille has a poor reputation for many of the same reasons that Elia Kazan was treated so poorly at the Oscars a few years ago by so many in Hollywood and the same reasons why Robert Taylor's name was removed from a building on the old MGM lot.

De Mille was anti-unionist, anti-communist, conservative, Republican; profoundly religious the other things that tend to destroy one's reputation in Hollywood. In the 1940's De Mille was forced out of the host position of Lux Radio Theatre because he refused to join the union of AFRA, (now Aftra).

What is often forgotten about De Mille is that he was, along with Samuel Goldfish, and Jesse L. Lasky, one of the founders of Paramount and in the early days of that studio, he was the creative force. He not only directed and produced many of the company's films, but also was in control of the company's entire output, writing scripts and directing sequences in films assigned to other directors. De Mille is often credited as the first man to film (the 1914 Squaw Man) in Hollywood. He did more than any other man to make Hollywood the greatest film center of the World. He handled every genre in film and even invented some that never existed before.

In the mid 20's, De Mille sold his shares in Paramount and joined MGM briefly where he made some of his worst films such as the eccentric Madame Satan.

De Mille doesn't deserve the poor reputation that he has. He was a cut above most of his competitors in narrative skills, pacing of action, in gauging public tastes and anticipating the changing moods of the nation. He developed some of Hollywood's brightest and most famous stars. He was a master storyteller and his films almost always entertained. But in Hollywood, as the truely blacklisted Kazan, Adolph Menjou and William Dmytryk found, your reputation is often judged on your politics and not by your product.