Boring

I experience this problem occasionally. I'll watch a silent movie, looking forward to a great story and amazing acting, yet BORING comes along. There will be an actor or actress in a leading role who has all the depth of a paper napkin. Fortunately, this happens rarely in silent films (yet much of the time in modern films), but it does happen, and makes the experience painful.

This happened the other night with The Volga Boatman, part of my Cecil B. DeMille collection. It was one of the few I hadn't seen from the set. I was already wary, since the male star was William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd. I saw him in Lady of the Pavements last year at the silent film festival in Pordenone. "Hello," he seems to be saying, "I'm boring." Nice-looking man, but not an exciting presence. I think he tries, but he comes across better as part of the decoration rather than as an actor.

The Volga Boatman, though - that was a double whammy. First there was Boyd. Then there was Elinor Fair, whom Boyd later married. I can think of a couple of things they had in common; they were both film people, and neither of them had screen presence. Fair was even worse than Boyd, constantly striking Statue of Liberty poses - I expected her to pull out a torch at some point - and, in general, looking two-dimensional. The plot was interesting; the supporting cast was fine; the leads might just as well have taken off for an extended vacation, leaving cardboard cutouts of themselves to be used in shooting. It would have been more cost-effective, and the audiences would never have noticed.

I expect more of the silents, because they give more. There are far fewer incompetents in them; they have better stories, richer performances, and more memorable faces. When a film falls flat, it's all the more disappointing. The most interesting part of The Volga Boatman is the knowledge that Boyd proposed to Fair onscreen, towards the end. I was looking for it, but I must have blinked and missed it. I was too busy being irritated by Fair, with her hair hanging around her face, still thinking that standing still and looking stupid made her glamorous, to paraphrase Hedy Lamarr.