I am discovering that lost Atlantis known as the "silent" film. They were never silent, of course. Turner commissioned Marcus Sjovall to write a score for its print of "Souls for Sale" and the music adds to the melodrama. Eleanor Boardman is appealing in an early role as a woman escaping her husband (who hasn't really married her). The escape is improbable as is her rescue by a film star on a camel. The film being made is a Valentino takeoff, of course. But Eleanor must conceal her "marriage" as she, again improbably, emerges from a disastrous screen test to become a star. The allusion, of course, is to the scandals that were destroying careers in 1920 Hollywood -- Fatty Arbuckle, for example. The joy of this film is in its depiction of 1920s Hollywood at work. We get brief takes of Stroheim, Chaplin, and Marshall Nielan directing and some "films within a film," a la Buster Keyton and Woody Allen. While the ending is a somewhat confusing montage, it shows Director Richard Dix finding himself making a film about a circus fire instead of just a circus. We assume that this one will top the 4 other circus films being made at other studios (the Sheik craze having apparently passed by). Amusingly, we are told that Boardman's mother is staying with her in Hollywood, but that information is provided only to tell us that she is not there the night Boardman's former "husband" (a wonderfully sleazy Lew Colby) sneaks into her bedroom. The mother never makes another appearance. The title card that got her out of the house was totally unnecessary since we didn't know she was there in the first place. "Souls for Sale" is an exciting melodrama and also valuable -- as so many of these silents are -- for its detailed backgrounds of places that no longer exist. TCM is doing a lot to restore our vivid past to us, and I'm sure we are all grateful.
Review of Souls for Sale
