When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922)

Originally posted to Facebook on 10/16/2017

As mentioned last week, our sixth and final film from 1922 arrived late, after we'd watched all of our other films from 1922 and 1923 and most of 1924. The reason for the late arrival was that the film, while not lost like so many other silent films, was not readily available streaming or via DVD, and the version we received was as a result of a Kickstarter project by Ben Model, funded by ~300 contributors, including me.

When Knighthood Was in Flower was similar in some ways to 1922's Robin Hood and also to 1923's Scaramouche, in that it was a big-budget historical entertainment, setting personal stories against the backdrop of some approximation of real events. It is probably a little more concerned with the historical side of things than Robin Hood, but not so much as Scaramouche, which seemed genuinely if fitfully interested in the events of the French Revolution.

Marion Davies stars as the sister of Henry VIII, played by Lyn Harding -- already portraying him as the overweight, capricious, man of appetites that is now, and may have been then, the standard depiction. Davies is set to be married off to the King of France, but falls in love with a captain of the royal guard, played by Forrest Stanley, who is well below her class. This and subsequent events are surprisingly not that far from the actual historical truth (based on my typically cursory Wikipedia research), but they are played very much in the vein of a romance, and the plot could easily have been transplanted a hundred years earlier or later. Marion Davies is charming and charismatic, and mostly eclipses her costars, though apparently Stanley, Davies, and the director (Robert G. Vignola) were a recurring trio at around this time, and collaborated on several movies.

Next week, we return to 1924 to see our fifth and final film from that year: He Who Gets Slapped. This will be the second film we've seen starring Lon Chaney, and the fifth directed by Victor Sjöström -- but the first after his move to Hollywood. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT