Rosita

Mary Pickford loved Ernst Lubitsch's Anna Boleyn and wanted to work with the German director, so she imported him to Hollywood to give him a contract at United Artists, the production company she founded with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. She was also dead set on changing her image which, at the time, was one of a child. She wanted to play adults, and so she wanted Lubitsch to direct her in a film adaptation of Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall by Charles Major. Lubitsch had little interest in the property, and an adaptation of the opera Don Cesar de Bazan became a compromise project. Neither seems to have been excited by it, and Pickford would say many years later that she and Lubitsch hated each other through the shoot (true or not, I don't know, but she said it). The end result is a film in the same tradition of his German historical tragedies (though this doesn't quite end the same way) with many of the same issues transplanted to a Hollywood production facility with a Hollywood star.

The King of Spain (Holbrook Blinn) is a frivolous man who happily spends his time with the young women of the court with the quiet and begrudging acceptance of the Queen (Irene Rich) who only wishes for the king to keep his dalliances in check. When news of a carnival being thrown in Seville, a celebration that will last for days and be filled with debauchery, the King decides that he must inspect the moral travesty himself. In Seville lives the pauper singer Rosita (Pickford) who sings bawdy songs, dances suggestively, and is all around happily a sex object (yeah, Pickford ain't playin' no child here). Her performance and audience on the street is ruined by the arrival of the king, and she sets out to get even by singing insulting songs about the sovereign. There's a delightful moment when the King, determined to hear this song for himself, goes out into town and ends up participating in the singing while masked.

I'll say that the first third or so of Rosita is my favorite part of the film which is a flip from my usual reaction to these types of movies in Lubitsch's early career. I usually found the early parts rough, under developed, and in desperate need for dialogue. Well, that's not entirely untrue here, especially the dialogue aspect, but it works best in Rosita because the characters seem to be better defined through their visuals and a more pointed usage of intertitles. There was something that Erich von Stroheim liked to do with his intertitles which was to employ a lot of poetic construction when setting scenes, and Lubitsch follows that example here which helps with the setting of the scene during carnival in Seville as well as establish Rosita in particular. Her flamboyance, cheekiness, and devil may care attitude are demonstrated well by Pickford in her performance as well as the intertitles, creating a surprisingly full character early and quickly.

The plot turns when Rosita is picked up by the king's troops (in front of the king, who is masked and gets drowned out by the crowd) for insulting the king, and Don Diego (George Walsh) comes to her aid, killing one of the soldiers in a duel. Both Diego and Rosita end up taken away into prison, and the two have a nice, friendly moment when they are both in handcuffs. They speak a bit (almost none of it in intertitles, so we get almost no actual dialogue between them) and they shake their hands behind their backs to introduce each other. I only have issue with this later when it becomes the basis for true love stuff that the final third hangs on, especially when, like in Madame DuBarry, Rosita completely forgets Don Diego for a third of the film's runtime, but the moment in isolation is actually quite nice.

The King, smitten by Rosita, brings her to his castle, dresses her up in finery, and expresses his desire to keep her around him. She insists on bringing her entire household with her including her adopted mother (Mathilde Comont), father (George Periolat), and several children. The situation grates on the servants of the villa that the King gives her, and it drives the family to demand more of the King, namely a husband for Rosita, one with a name to help raise her station. Well, the King has no desire to give her away so easily, so he agrees but only to Don Diego the morning of his execution, with an execution to follow. Part of his agreement with her is that she is to not know who she is marrying either, so when the two people in true love do get married, they don't know they are marrying their true loves. I mean...I get the whole chivalrous need for a woman to be with a man who saved her life, but this is, again, where the lack of dialogue really bites Lubitsch. Their entire relationship is his defense of her and then a few untranslated words while they're handcuffed next to each other followed by a brief exchange through some prison bars. It's thin.

But, true love it is, and we must go through the motions of it with Rosita pleading for Don Diego's life when she finds out the identity of her husband, something the King is not really happy about doing. He did accidentally marry his latest conquest to the man she actually loves. That's a cruel irony for him, so once Rosita is out of the room he demands that the ruse he promised to Rosita will not go forward. All of this is witnessed by the Queen just outside the door who swears that she will not let the King's infatuation with the beggar singer go too far.

Well, the final act plays out across a couple of different twists, the first one being relatively predictable and the second being rather delightful, giving the final moments of the film a cheery and really amusing quality that feels like the sort of thing that would attract Lubitsch to the material in general. I wouldn't go so far as to say it saves the film or is great, but it honestly put a smile on my face. The first act had been quite entertaining, the second act capable and competent, and the bulk of the third act had relied too much on the underdeveloped relationship between Rosita and Don Diego to really work. However, the final few minutes of the film just turned it into something of a delight for a few minutes.

I'm still not convinced that the silent historical romance was all that in Lubitsch's wheelhouse, but he could obviously manage well enough. Of course, Pickford brought him to America because she had greatly enjoyed his handling of the genre, particularly in Anna Boleyn. I am glad she did because he later went on to make much better films within the Hollywood system, but I just don't really see what Pickford saw. He handled the productions well, like any competent filmmaker would, but the only spark from his early work was really in the weirder comedies like The Doll. Rosita has its charms, including an ending that stands things on its head while giving a minor, thankless role the last laugh, and it's far from the worst Hollywood debut. However, Lubitsch was still really aching for spoken dialogue, even if he didn't quite realize it at the time.