ZaSu Pitts

Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942)

Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942)

(On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s one thing to have star vehicles, and it’s another to have a series of films tailored to your screen persona. Anyone unfamiliar with Lupe Velez’s brand of comedy as an attractive but stereotypically tempestuous Latina will know everything they need to know from Mexican Spitfire at Sea, the fourth in a seven-film series all featuring Velez and her “Mexican Spitfire” moniker. Here, we’re aboard an ocean liner as our heroine thinks she’s finally getting her honeymoon but instead gets tangled in a mix of social climbing, husband shaming, impersonations and rapid-fire dialogue often punctuated by comic rages from the protagonist. At 72 minutes, Mexican Spitfire at Sea has no time for niceties, and no appetite for subtlety: this is classic community theatre farce material with mistaken identities and misunderstandings powering much of the plot, with the actors mugging for the camera so that we don’t miss a single double take, confusion or lustful thought. The ending is a bit weak, but it actually works quite well if you’re in the mood for that kind of sitcom-level comedy … and it works even better if you like the “Mexican Spitfire” archetype that Velez plays so well. Added attraction may come from the easy-to-digest pace of life aboard an ocean liner (you can cut production costs by going through the same five sets), funny dialogue and a performance from veteran actress Zasu Pitts that’s far funnier than anything she did in Greed. What may limit the appeal of the film is that the series is focused so extensively of a specific screen persona.  I was curious about Velez and sympathetic to that kind of role, but I’m not so sure that I’d watch all seven movies back-to-back. As a small discovery, though, Mexican Spitfire at Sea is just good enough to make me happy.

Greed (1924)

Greed (1924)

(On Cable TV, April 2018) Diving into classic movies is often best done in stages: some of it is accessible to modern audiences, some of it takes a little bit more work and sympathy and some of it will frankly bore the pants off casual viewers. Knowing this, I’m convinced that I have seen the reconstructed four-hour-long version of Greed far too early in my development as a classic movie fan. The back story is worth explaining: 1924’s Greed is widely acknowledged as one of the finest dramatic films of the silent era and a masterpiece for screenwriter/director Erich von Stroheim. But the 140-minute version that has been shown on-screen since the 1924 is reportedly a mere shadow of the 462 minutes of the lost original director’s cut. In 2012, however, film experts reconstructed a 239-minutes version of the film using the original script and photos taken during the production of the film. That reconstruction was the version I saw and, well, it maximized all of my issues with silent movies: The pacing is mortally slow, the use of photos (zoomed, cropped, panned) as placeholders for missing scenes is jarring and the new material did seem extraneous from the bulk of the story. It takes a lot to convince me to sit down to watch a four-hour movie, and Greed did not match that level of interest. This being said, I can see why this version would be interesting to someone already fascinated by the movie. Alas, this strikes me as Greed 201 rather than the 101-level lesson I’m ready to digest at this point. All of this being said, there’s quite a bit that I liked about even this interminable version of the film. The story is complex and strong, being adapted from a novel, and it does explore its central theme with the cleverness we’d expect from more contemporary examples. The writing of the title cards is a noticeable cut above most silent films, being sometimes reprinted from literary material. Gibson Gowland makes quite an impression as the protagonist of the story: it’s not a good impression (“punchable face” comes to mind), but his is not a good character either. Meanwhile, ZaSu Pitts looks like an alien with her wide eyes and unusual hairdo—hers isn’t a good-natured character either, and the drama she creates is tragic. Strong actors, a strong script and some really interesting period detail make for a film with definite strengths, but I have the clear impression that I would have enjoyed the cut-down version more. Thanks, TCM, I guess, for providing more than I needed—but I’ll get more out of the reconstructed Greed whenever I’ll be more familiar with 1920s cinema.