Coquette (1929)

(On Cable TV, September 2020) I do better when I approach 1920s movies with low expectations. To its credit, Coquette is one of the first dramatic films of the sound era—and it features then-megastar Mary Pickford in her first non-silent role. Unlike many movie actors who couldn’t deal with the transition to talking movies, Pickford did well: Her theatrical experience showed in her use of a rather pleasant voice, and Coquette is a decent showcase in a different acting style than the silent movie roles that led her to fame. Her character here isn’t the kind of cute girl that she played throughout most of the silent era, though: cutting off her curls, she here plays a young woman trying to reconcile her romantic feelings for a young man against the wishes of her father. The stage is set for a very melodramatic film, and that’s what we get, all the way to a somewhat glum ending shot. From a technical perspective, the film is clearly from the 1929, with the flickering images of the time supplemented by the rough technicalities of the early sound era: scratchy low-fidelity dialogue, and bolted-down cameras in their own soundproof booths. It does make the film a bit harder to watch for non-initiates, but I can guarantee that it’s better than if it was constantly interrupted by title cards, as it would have been even three years earlier: Enabled by sound, Coquette does get to use the tools of theatrical dialogue to good effect. I wouldn’t exactly call the result compelling, but Coquette is interesting both as a representative technical milestone of the films of the early sound era but also as its own melodramatic narrative, presenting a somewhat downbeat story the likes of which would largely disappear from Hollywood mainstream until the New Hollywood of the 1970s. It exceeded my low expectations, which is about as nice a thing I can say about 1920s drama films.