Nothing like having the dead hang around to comfort the living. This ectoplasmic notion particularly appealing during & after big international wars; popping up on stage & film a lot around WWI & II. There’s really no other explanation for claptrap like SMILIN’ THROUGH getting three big screen outings: Silent - 1922; Early Talkie - ‘32; Musical - ‘41. It’s the one where the generation after a tragic love triangle (jealous, rejected lover aims for the groom, shoots the bride . . . Yikes!*) can’t get blessings to marry from the surviving, embittered ex-groom. Stolid megger Sidney Franklin directed the first two*; Frank Borzage the Jeanette MacDonald musical. And while you’d think this sentimental fantasy would work best as a silent, this unimaginative telling is so dependent on explanatory/expository title cards and chatty billet-doux, any stylistic advantage is lost in the Black Hole of epistolary cinema. Now largely forgotten, Norma Talmadge, the women’s weepie star for most of the ‘20s, who naturally plays both brides, does her tricky eye rolls in place of acting (she's far better in THE LADY/’25, guided by Borzage) while cinematographers J. Roy Hunt & Charles Rosher do what they can with the unfortunate Talmadge nose. (Sister Natalie, Buster Keaton’s wife had the same nose, as seen in OUR HOSPITALITY/’23.) So, acting honors go to (an earlier) Harrison Ford, handsome & surprisingly modern as the next generation fiancé who returns injured from the war and doesn’t want Norma to marry ‘a cripple’ out of pity. Poor Norma, always out-acted in the few films we have available to judge her by.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Consider yourself warned! Nevertheless, here’s SMILIN’ THROUGH 1932. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/smilin-through-1932.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *All you really need to know about SMILIN’ THROUGH is that the ghostly bride who was shot on her wedding day is named Moonyeen. MOONYEEN?! Pronounced Mooney-Een?; or Moon- Yeen?
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