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Marion Davies is an absolute knock-out in "The Patsy" -- beautiful, sexy, funny. One begins to suspect that William
Randolph Hearst may have had a subconscious motive for not wanting to see her in vehicles like this, something beyond a feeling
that knock-about comedy was too undignified for his beloved mistress. She is so adorable and sexual and appealing in this
film, she shares herself with the audience in such a free and generous spirit, that it might have made Hearst jealous -- better
to keep her overdressed in prestigious costume dramas, swathed in respectability, at one remove from the audience's intimate
affection.
The film is a charming little domestic drama hamstrung by its stageplay origins. It's title-heavy -- the result, apparently,
of wanting to squeeze in every bon mot from the play it's based on. The editing often seems to be dictated by an attempt to
set up the timing of the punch lines in the titles. The problem is that the bon mots aren't so bon -- with a few delightful
exceptions the humor of them is strained and tiresome.
But meanwhile, there's a delicious movie that struggles to get going between the titles -- and eventually it does, thanks
largely to the energy and enchantment of Davies's performance. She plays the younger daughter in a dysfunctional family --
weak father, bullying mother, self-involved older sister. The mother favors the older daughter and does everything she can
to wreck the self-esteem of the younger -- the father sees the injustice of it all but is helpless to intervene. Davies's
character is hopelessly in love with her sister's boyfriend, a nice guy who doesn't seem to realize that the older sister
is a vain and scheming jerk, who's just playing with him.
We never really feel sorry for Pat, Davies's character, the Cinderella of this tale, because we sense in her dogged energy
and high spirits the determination that will eventually win the day for her. The question in a slight comedy like this is
simply when and how she'll triumph -- and one way or the other we know it's going to be fun.
It ends up being moving as well, because of the courage and good grace Pat displays along the way, and because the father's
eventual decision to take charge of things, not for himself but to rescue the psyche of his younger daughter, is so well-played.
Marie Dressler, who incarnates the whining, selfish mother with ghastly effectiveness, melts into emotional relief when her
husband takes her in hand, and Pat's reaction shows that she appreciates what's happening -- the father is rescuing everybody.
The print shown recently on Turner Classic Movies is beautiful. The director King Vidor is not working at the top of his
form here, but his good taste and the occasional visual flourishes he supplies make for a kind of quirky elegance that elevates
this modest movie above its station as a studio programmer. And he has the good sense to let Davies dominate the film -- at
least between the titles.
She takes full advantage of the spotlight -- moving effortlessly between adolescent mooning, over-the-top eccentricity,
movie-star impersonations, womanly force. It's an authentic interpretation of delayed adolescent confusion -- always observed
with a sweetness that endears her to us. Pat is the sort of wise girl-woman that Pickford specialized in playing, and seeing
that character brought squarely into the jazz age echoes the same sort of movement Pickford's persona was beginning to make
in "My Best Girl".
As Kevin Brownlow has remarked, "The Patsy" is a kind of proto-screwball comedy -- you can see the origins in
Davies performance of a mode Lombard and Stanwyck and Hepburn would develop in the 30s and 40s. But the sweetness and self-possession
and sense of indomitable female power which Pickford and Davies could convey did not survive the transition to sound -- something
hard and brittle and permanently infantile crept into the persona of the screwball comedy heroine . . . the reflection of
a more neurotic age, with a more neurotic view of sexuality and female strength.
Like many of the best silent films, "The Patsy" is paradoxical or downright conflicted on so many levels that
it's hard to keep track of them -- social, sexual, aesthetic, dramatic. It's this intrinsic discombobulation, rather than
any issue of technical film language, which makes it so hard to penetrate and fully appreciate the medium of silent film.
The ham-handed over-reliance on titles in this movie banging up against brilliantly choreographed episodes of pure visual
comedy, the sweetness and innocence of Davies's character banging up against her serene sense of empowerment and her invincible
wit, the hyper-real visual gags banging up against moments of wonderfully observed and wonderfully underplayed emotion . .
. all these make for a challenging experience to a modern viewer.
It's a challenge worth taking on however -- because Davies's performance in this film is a real treasure.
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