MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: ADAM'S RIB (1923)

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Sunday, October 8, 2023

ADAM'S RIB (1923)

Alongside the historical/religious epics that marked his career (from JOAN THE WOMAN/’16 to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56), Cecil B. DeMille directed fistfuls of Westerns and even more High Society Melodramas & Sex Dramedies. This one, a surprise critical & commercial flop (note playbook poster ad copy), repeats DeMille’s current formula of sticking a period flashback in near the end of Act Two, tying his modern story to matching characters in, say, Ancient Rome or here, Prehistoric Times. The idea should have seen characters of the past point the way forward to the parallel characters of today. But DeMille regular scripter (and mistress) Jeanie Macpherson merely used copycat figures in period drag to retell the same story we’d been watching, just in historical guise. Here, wheat speculator Milton Sills’ ignored wife (Anna Q. Nilsson) is nearing the dangerous age of forty and ready to take on a new lover. Yikes! Not if perky daughter Pauline Garon can stop it! She’s only got eyes for a nerd paleontologist (really!), but vamps Mom’s new beau unaware he’s the Exiled King of some Ruritanian country. (Really!) And that’s just the half of it. DeMille is already falling into stiff habits here (his creative prime came very early) and lets loads of bad acting (corny even for 1923) pass. (Garon exceptionally poor.) Fortunately, Nilsson and especially Sills know what they’re up to; Sills even carries off his caveman outfit.* But this flashback adds little besides bare limbs and fans caught on to the emptiness . . . though not for long when DeMille moved his next historical flashback to the front as prologue to his otherwise modern version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS out later the same year. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/ten-commandments-1923.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Yes, the same Anna Q. Nilsson who’s plays bridge with Gloria Swanson as one of ‘waxworks’ in Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BLVD/’50. For Sills at his formidable best, try older deMille brother William’s excellent domestic drama MISS LULU BETTS/21. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/miss-lulu-bett-1921.html Or in manly swashbuckling form for Frank Lloyd in the superb first version of THE SEA HAWK/’24. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/sea-hawk-1924.html

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Sunday, October 8, 2023

ADAM'S RIB (1923)

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