The Red Mill (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/24/2018

The Red Mill was our ninth film from 1927, and our second starring Marion Davies. It was directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle under the pseudonym William Goodrich, which he used after his career was virtually destroyed in 1921-1922 by the famous scandal and subsequent trials. The Red Mill was one of the more high profile films he made in his post-scandal career, though at the time of his death of a heart attack in 1933, his fortunes had begun to improve, and he had even begun acting under his own name again.

This film is essentially a romantic comedy, unusual only in its foreign setting. Marion Davies stars as a servant in a tavern who falls in love with Owen Moore, a well-off visitor to Holland. There are a variety of shenanigans and misunderstandings, and a prominent secondary plot about another romantic couple played by Louise Fazenda and Karl Dane. Dane looked familiar to me, and, looking him up afterwards, I realized that I recognized him as one of John Gilbert's friends in 1925's The Big Parade. He apparently was also in 1926's The Scarlet Letter, which we saw at the Packard Theater in Culpeper, but I have less clear memories of him in that. He has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page that tells the cheerful story of his career decline during the sound era -- due to his Danish accent -- and subsequent depression and suicide in 1934.

There is not much surprising in this film, excepting maybe a slightly suspenseful ending sequence. Dane and Fazenda play their parts a shade broader than Moore and Davies, but nobody in this film is pitching their performance at any great level of subtlety. Davies is as charming as you would expect her to be, given that this is essentially a vehicle for her, as was the previous film we'd seen her in, 1922's When Knighthood was in Flower. That too was a romantic comedy, but it also had some aspirations as a period piece, and depicted events that vaguely lined up with the historical record. This movie has no such aspirations, but is in the main pleasant and agreeable.

Next week, before finishing up 1927, we're going to skip ahead to 1928, watching The Passion of Joan of Arc, our second film from that year, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Maria Falconetti. The list of upcoming films, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT