"Coquette" has the reputation for featuring one of the worst performances to win Best Actress in Oscar history. So maybe it was because I was expecting the worst that I didn't find Mary Pickford's performance to be THAT bad. It's certainly no worse than any other performance in the film, which are all bad. This was 1929, the year that proved that few in the movie business had a clue what to do with sound, and "Coquette" recreates the experience of watching a badly-directed high school play.
The story is some Southern claptrap about a ditzy rich girl who wants to marry someone below her and the father who won't let her. There's a murder, and the daughter has to testify at her father's trial, all before he blows his brains out in front of the audience with the gun submitted as evidence (that they leave it loaded during the trial is only one, and not even the most, ridiculous things about this movie). I know times were very different and films need to be watched in context, but it's difficult to watch a film like "Coquette" now in the middle of racially charged America and give a hooey about all of these rich white people and their problems while a black maid slinks around in the background having to comfort this dimwit daughter and keep a straight face while doing so.
Grade: D
The story is some Southern claptrap about a ditzy rich girl who wants to marry someone below her and the father who won't let her. There's a murder, and the daughter has to testify at her father's trial, all before he blows his brains out in front of the audience with the gun submitted as evidence (that they leave it loaded during the trial is only one, and not even the most, ridiculous things about this movie). I know times were very different and films need to be watched in context, but it's difficult to watch a film like "Coquette" now in the middle of racially charged America and give a hooey about all of these rich white people and their problems while a black maid slinks around in the background having to comfort this dimwit daughter and keep a straight face while doing so.
Grade: D