THE SONG OF LOVE (1923)

One takeaway for newbies to silent cinema is discovering how unexaggerated, natural, even modern some of the acting is, with little of the exaggerated face-pulling they expect.  There may be no dialogue (though modest lip-reading skills often acquired), but early as the late ‘teens ‘miming’ rarely seen, actors having learned (largely thru Mary Pickford’s example) to trust their eyes to do half the work.  And then there’s Norma Talmadge.  Now forgotten (her one Talkie didn’t help), this top romance star of the ‘20s is the exception that proves the rule; rolling her eyes left, right, heavenward; flinging limbs for emphasis; posing in profile to defuse her substantial nose, she’s all dumb-show.  Here, she plays a fair-skinned Algerian dancer, tantalizing Arab freedom fighters when they’re not plotting to crush their French overlords.  Two actually battling over her favors.  But only one (tru-love Joseph Schildkraut) is secretly also an undercover French agent.  And with a French beloved on the hunt for him. Yikes!  Talmadge will have to offer herself up to save him, but she’ll have to beat both the local insurrectionists and the French relief column.  Scripter Frances Marion (who co-directed*) did better by Talmadge in SECRETS/’24 and THE LADY/’25, this one just worth seeing for its striking production values & for the astonishing lighting from cinematographer Tony Gaudio (later of many a classic at Warners) in an early shoot using Kodak’s new panchromatic standard stock rather than orthochromatic.  What sensitivity to color and grey scale now at his disposal!  The sole surviving print (from a German archive) has a fair amount of nitrate decomposition and is missing the U.S. release happy resurrection ending, but, faults and all, this is something to see.  KINO has it in their PIONEERS: WOMEN FILMMAKERS series.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Marion, with nearly 200 writing credits, only directed three films, this being last & least.  Her first was Mary Pickford’s THE LOVE LIGHT/’21, co-starring Marion’s soon to be husband Fred Thompson (later a kiddie cowboy star) whom she also cast in her second, JUST AROUND THE CORNER/’21.  Not currently available, but in gorgeous condition at the Library of Congress, CORNER is taken from a Fannie Hurst Big City/tenement novel and looks utterly mesmerizing (story and production) in beautifully tinted orthochromatic stock shot by Henry Cronjager.  (Link to the clip below.)  How can the whole film not be available for viewing?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1rDX8EZqwU