Rosita, chanteuse des rues

The restoration is a thing of beauty, with sharp images, good tints, a Handschlegel sequence that is charming, beautiful set design, and photography by Miss Pickford's regular cameraman in this period, the great Charles Rosher. Ernst Lubitsch, in his first American film, directs to show off everything, offers a few grace notes, and has turned out an overlong movie.

I admire Lubitsch's comedies endlessly, but I am not so fond of his historical epics. I understand their popularity at the time. With Europe in the last days of the Great War, and a couple of years coming out of it, looking at luxury on screen was all the escape audiences could get from a devastated continent. Yet showing that luxury takes up screen time, and Lubitsch seemed to feel no need to fill it up for those of us who exhausted that pleasure quickly. As a result of this, while the opening sequences of Carnival, waiting for Miss Pickford to appear amidst the innumerable extras, is exciting and fun and even a bit suspenseful, the constant barrage of magnificent clothes and high glass shots while Miss Pickford shows she is a great actress palled on me. She had already shown her range in an assortment of roles eight years earlier, when she played Indian girls, Scottish lasses and Madame Butterfly. In those movies, she had shown her range by offering her audiences drama and comedy. In this movie, it's Mathilde Comont and George who get the giggles, while Miss Pickford gets to do an 18th Century Suffering In Mink role in slow motion. Her features had been an hour in length. This one stretches to 100 minutes.

One of the reasons that Miss Pickford wanted to make this movie is she was tired of the popular movies she had made over the last few years, in which she played children or adolescents. "That little girl killed me" she later said. Did she understand the irony? An actor performs many roles, but when people go to see a star, they have expectations about what they'll be seeing. Miss Pickford was not going to play Lady MacBeth, even though she was undoubtedly capable of giving a bang-up performance. She stretched here to please the critics, and her fans accepted it and even enjoyed it, because it showed she was as good as they thought she was. Yet if it's that little girl killed her, it's equally true she made Miss Pickford one of the half dozen biggest stars in the history of cinema.

Mary Pickford was a stickler for preserving a large body of her films. She prized almost every movie she was in, and, unusual for an actress, she collected scores of prints of her work. One notable exception was September 1923's "Rosita." She demanded and was handed over almost every existing print distributed a few months after the movie was released. With the exception of one: a print 90 minutes long was found in 1960 in the Soviet Union, and given to New York's Museum of Modern Art, much to the consternation of an aging Pickford.

No explanation for Pickford's obsession in destroying the film was given. It wasn't because of any negative reviews. In fact, it was just the opposite. "Nothing more delightfully charming than Mary Pickford's new picture Rosita has been seen on the screen for some time," wrote the film critic for the New York Times.

"Rosita" was certainly a landmark motion picture, mainly because it was German director Ernst Lubitsch's first United States film after directing scores of German movies for nearly ten years. Pickford, just turning 30, had yearned to escape her popular child roles (played as an adult) and witnessed Lubitsch's sophistication on the screen as the panacea to that change. She contracted him to come to America and apply his craft with her as a lead. Once on shore, Lubitsch learned the actress wanted to make a film on the then popular genre of an elaborate costume drama. The director shot down one Pickford suggestion, while his desire to direct a version based on Faust was nixed by Pickford's mother because of a baby-killing scene. They settled on a 1872 opera about a libertine Spanish king who falls for Rosita (Pickford), a poor but very popular singer in Seville, Spain.

Pickford gave no reason for her unusual confiscation of "Rosita." One theory is she realized after seeing the finished print that she wasn't the heroine of the story; the Spanish queen is. Another is she wanted to forget what she later claimed was Lubitsch total authoritarian behavior. "I detested that picture," said the elderly actress years later to biographer Kevin Brownlow. "I disliked the director as much as he disliked me." But contemporary sources at the time of "Rosita's" production claim, beside a language barrier between the actress and the director, the two got along charmingly on the set. She wrote after the completion of "Rosita" that Lubitsch was " the best director in the world." They had planned to make more films together, but tight funds at Pickford's United Artists precluded such a working relationship.

"Rosita" turned out to be a tremendous hit, gaining the number six best box office position of 1923, and established Lubitsch's America's credentials. Warner Brothers signed him to a three-year, six picture lucrative deal, with total freedom to select his actors, crew and most importantly, final say in the finished product.

Pickford did, however, preserve one reel of "Rosita," a sequence that has gone down in classic film lore where she uses a fruit bowl as a prop to ward off the aggressive king as he tries to seduce her in his suite.

Long relegated to incomplete 16mm reduction copies, "Rosita" was finally restored a couple years ago by the Museum of Modern Art after the repatriation from Russian archives of the only known surviving 35mm nitrate print. I'm elated to finally put a picture to the production history--and its somewhat notorious afterlife. To the bafflement of film historians, star Mary Pickford suppressed it--encouraging its demise into the obscurity it found itself after its initial release and up until its recent restoration--and in later years, such as for Kevin Brownlow's book "The Parade's Gone By...," stated her detest for the film. I took a class on Ernst Lubitsch in college, too, which only wet my appetite more for a film already on my wish list. While the classic studio system was emerging in Hollywood and elsewhere by 1923, it's important to remember what big deals director Lubitsch and actress Pickford were. He become unrivaled as having been the most esteemed director in two nations, Germany and, then, the United States, became the only director to head a major Hollywood studio, and at the time, he was fresh from a string of successful costume spectacles after having mastered classical continuity editing in "Madame Dubarry" (1919). He demanded complete control of his films and got it, including running his own production unit at Warner Bros. after making his first American film. "Rosita" is the exception to this authorial control.

That's because in emigrating to Tinseltown, Lubitsch ran into an even greater force of the movie world in "America's Sweetheart." Pickford was the author of her image. One of the four founding stars of United Artists, along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith--the four biggest names in 1919 Hollywood, in other words--she exerted far more control over her films and the business behind them than have just about every other movie star ever. She was already running her own production company, and Lubitsch became her employee. Later, she was also a founder of the Academy, later best known for the awards they hand out annually (take a look at a photograph of the Academy's founders sometime to see the one woman in a room full of men). In recruiting the German-Jewish filmmaker, the 30-some-years-old hoped to break away from her usual roles of playing prepubescent girls and otherwise non-sexual child-women. It was a formula that was largely established and continually repeated since at least "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917).

Contrary to later claims by Pickford and repeated by some writers, "Rosita" was a financial success--probably making over a million dollars, a healthy box office back then. One study (published in "An Evening's Entertainment" by Richard Koszarski, who ironically later repeats the falsehood that it was a failure) estimates that it was tied for the fifth most popular film of 1923. Moreover, as film historians like Kristin Thompson ("Lubitsch, Acting and the Silent Romantic Comedy") have discovered, Lubitsch and Pickford appear to have had a good relationship in the 1920s. If not for the financial shortcomings of United Artists, they planned to work together again--signing Lubitsch to make films for the studio, including Pickford vehicles. Even when that fell through, she later called upon him to help with the editing of "Sparrows" (1926). Correspondence shows her at the time claiming, "I still believe he is the greatest director in the world," which is in stark contrast to a quotation from Brownlow in her later years stating their supposed mutual dislike of each other and remembering "I thought he was a very uninspired director." Although, elderly Pickford was quite right that Lubitsch was "a director of doors." Seriously, nobody was better at it. For Lubitsch's part, biographer Scott Eyman claims that despite squabbles over production control and insensitive mockery during filming by cast and crew of his thick accent and poor English, he never spoke ill of her, publicly at least. Regardless, neither star would work on a film with someone with such comparable clout in the industry as themselves again.

As for the film itself, I wish I could say it was an artistic triumph. To be sure, it has its moments, and while Pickford couldn't quite pull off the Pola Negri type here of a vixen Spanish street singer turned concubine to a womanizing king in a royal love triangle, or rather rectangle, it's hardly the embarrassment she later made it out to be. If one wants to see "The Girl with the Golden Curls" give a truly humiliating performance, check out her Oscar-winning (proving the industry has always been awful at rewarding themselves) role in "Coquette" (1929), a creaky and ludicrous early talkie. And, if you want to see her successfully escape typecasting, try "My Best Girl" (1927), her last and one of her best silent films.

Lubitsch surely deserves some blame here, too. There is a brilliantly comedic scene where the camera remains stationary as Pickford repeatedly passes by a fruit bowl before plucking from it, which recalls a similar scene in "Lady Windermere's Fan" (1925), and the picture is mostly technically competent. All-time-greats cinematographer Charles Rosher and art director William Cameron Menzies are credited on the production, so it of course looks good. There's a good double exposure for a shot as seen through a mirror, and a camera pan does well to indicate further spying in the same sequence through a window. And there's some genuine carnivalesque atmosphere with scenes full of countless costumed extras amidst large sets. But, despite Lubitsch's later insistence that American silent films were too wordy, there are a good many title cards here, too.

Worse, there's a huge missed opportunity in the wedding scene. Earlier in the picture, when Don Diego and Pickford's Rosita are being arrested, there's an insert close-up of them holding hands. Later and since estranged, their marriage is a convoluted arrangement made, ironically, by her rival suitor, the King, to make her a countess before executing Diego. Y'know, so that her servants will respect her. And, Diego goes along with it because he wants to be shot to death like nobleman supposedly are, I guess, and not hung like an animal.... Anyways, the two are to be married without seeing or knowing who they're marrying. Of course, we know that won't work, but Lubitsch and company entirely blunder the opportunity for the two to recognize each other by touch--recalling that prior arrest scene--when they again hold hands during the blindfolded wedding ceremony. Instead, Pickford breaks into histrionics and wild gesticulation as she uncovers their masks. That right there in a nutshell is why "City Lights" (1931) is a masterpiece, and this isn't (if you've seen that Chaplin film, you know what I mean, and if you haven't seen it, see it already--it's a masterpiece).

Speaking of Chaplin films, Lubitsch would kick this pseudo-historical, costume quasi-drama habit after seeing another 1923 release, "A Woman of Paris." As Thompson, among others, discussed in her essay and I cover more about in my review of Lubitsch's next film, "The Marriage Circle" (1924), he hit upon the sophisticated romantic comedies, including the comedies of remarriage, for which he'd become best known--films full of visual wit and nuanced acting and that were directly influenced by Chaplin's film. One may see some hints of what's to come here, including with the amusing scenes of infidelity early on as the King chases after countesses and, better yet, with the reactions to such by the Queen. Interestingly, the Queen is played by Irene Rich, who would play a more elaborate variation on the game of looks she participates in here and in a more central part in Lubitsch's first American masterpiece, "Lady Windermere's Fan." By then Lubitsch understood and had the control to rely on visual humor and not on intertitles--to the point that his Oscar Wilde adaptation includes not one of the playwright's famous epigrams. Rich managing to steal the show in her few minutes in "Rosita," hinting at the comedy-of-remarriage formula, may've been instructive, too, for Lubitsch to give her the most important part in his later film.

Nevertheless, this is a fine restoration, including tinting/toning and some hand-coloring for fire and fireworks. The score, too, was reconstructed from the original. It's a pleasure just to finally put a face to the production narrative oft repeated in silent film history writings.

I'm sorry, but the audience who rejected this movie in 1923 were right: Mary Pickford just can't play it sexy. Neither is she convincing as a fiery ridiculer of authority. Her usual childlike impishness is sorely out of place here; when the king lusts after her, you have to suspect him of child molesting tendencies. However, the movie does have its funny moments, in a very Lubitsch way; the amusing efforts of the king to avoid the monogamous-minded queen make up for some deficiencies.

The King of Spain (Holbrook Blinn) visits the carnival in Seville where he listens incognito to Rosita (Mary Pickford) singing a cheeky song that criticises his rule. Rosita is arrested, though Don Diego (George Walsh) intervenes while she is being dragged off to jail, only to be jailed himself. Of course the lecherous king has become interested in the pretty street singer - but so has Don Diego, who is now being sentenced to death because he killed the officer who had arrested Rosita... and so on. What follows is a quite convoluted affair, and that is one of my points of criticism. The whole setup is so complicated that there would have been material enough for a couple of films. As it is the whole thing feels rushed, despite the one hour forty minutes it takes. A consequence of this is that the characters remain pretty one-dimensional (this is my second point of criticism). The king cannot control his sex drive, Don Diego is noble, Rosita not above accepting favours but nevertheless sweet, pretty and lovable. At the end of all this the queen appears more or less like a deus ex machina to resolve the complications. The settings of the film are sumptuous, as are the costumes that place the story roughly in the Napoleonic era (when Spain had other problems than the king's libido). In sum: Fundamentally this is a watchable picture, but there are a number of weaknesses that make it more difficult to enjoy than many other silent films.