Proud Flesh (film) explained

Proud Flesh
Director:King Vidor
Starring:Eleanor Boardman
Pat O'Malley
Harrison Ford
Cinematography:John Arnold
Distributor:Metro-Goldwyn
Runtime:70 minutes
Country:United States
Language:Silent (English intertitles)

Proud Flesh is a 1925 American silent comedy-drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Eleanor Boardman, Pat O'Malley, and Harrison Ford in a romantic triangle.[1]

Plot

A San Francisco earthquake orphan, Fernanda (Boardman) is adopted and raised as a gentlewoman by relatives in Spain. As a girl she is courted by Don Jaime (Ford), but spurns him and returns to her gauche relatives in California. There she falls in love with a young bathtub manufacturer, Pat (O’Malley).[2]

Reception

Mordaunt Hall, critic for The New York Times, called the film "a bright entertainment in which there are a slight touch of heart interest and plenty of amusement."[3]

Theme

Vidor made this film, the last of a cycle of four films, in the years just following World War I. The isolationist outlook of many Americans with regard to war-ravaged Europe prompted Vidor to locate the sources of “sexual experimentation and marital triangles” and other social infidelities of the Jazz Age in the Old World. Decadent European manners were contrasted with the fundamentally commonsense virtues that Vidor believed would prevail in the United States.[4]

References

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Progressive Silent Film List: Proud Flesh . September 3, 2009. silentera.com.
  2. Baxter 1976 p. 20: Baxter refers to O’Malley’s Pat as “manufacturer, not “plumber”
  3. News: Hall . Mordaunt . Mordaunt Hall . The Screen . . April 14, 1925.
  4. Durgnat and Simmon 1988 p. 54, p. 56