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Coquette
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by MGM (Warner)
Sales Rank: 11099
Price: $19.98
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Mary Pickford won an Academy Award for her performance in <I>Coquette</I>, her first "talking picture." Billed as "a drama of the American South," the movie features Pickford as a classic Southern belle. However, as the film takes place during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, not the antebellum South, Pickford's version of Scarlett O'Hara is a flapper. (The party scenes with dancers wildly doing the "black bottom" are a hoot.) To play socialite Norma Besant, Pickford had her famous golden curls bobbed, and she "flits about from one fella to another like a butterfly." But Pickford's fans would never have permitted her to portray a real Jezebel, so as soon as the plot gets underway, her character quickly falls head over heels in love with just one man. ("Of course, I never wanted to play a role that would ever offend the little girls who love me," declared Pickford in a 1917 <i>Motion Picture Classic</i> interview.) <I>Coquette</I>'s story eventually turns quite tragic, pitting daughter against father and giving Pickford the chance to act up a storm. <p> Pickford had experience on stage before appearing in moving pictures, so her progression to sound films was not as awkward as that of some silent-movie performers. Throughout her silent-film career, she made a point of keeping her acting real and free of extravagant gestures. "I always had in mind the fact that I might want to become a real actress, and so never allowed myself to indulge in more gestures than if I had a speaking part." (<i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, 1913.) Still, <I>Coquette</I> is unmistakably an early talkie and the acting is clearly transitional. At times the actors instinctively pause and pose before speaking their lines, an acting style that would quickly disappear as silent pictures almost immediately went out of favor with audiences. <I>--Laura Mirsky</I>
Viewer Reviews
I love Mary Pickford but I guess I like her better in romantic comedies and comedies. The sound isn't that great, it's her first talkie. It's nice to hear her voice but it's too melodramatic for me. I miss her long curls too.
That's why I'm elated to find this newly released collection Mary Pickford Signature Collection which has 4 films for $4.
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Coquette
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