"Back Pay" (1922) stars Seena Owen, Matt Moore, J. Barney Sherry, Ethel Duray, Charles Craig, Jerry Sinclair, and others. Directed by Frank Borzage and based on a novel by Fannie Hurst, this has every single element of a Hurst plot in spades! It also shows Borzage gaining a genuine grip on his métier, a mature love story with overlying romantic idealism clouding reality, making a savory plot forced to be mixed with sweetness, something modern audiences may find slightly saccharine, but put in context with the mores of the 1920s and 1930s makes the mix rich with sophistication. What it lacks in cynicism it makes up in a nobility that seemingly has gone away from most modern productions. Borzage at his height becomes an auteur. "Back Pay" is at the beginning of Borzage's rise to prominence.
The blocking is played much like a large stage production, with nearly all close shots having actors turn toward the audience to react to a counterpart so that we can see all reaction, sometimes even speaking, when the reality would be face to face conversation. The blocking would not be thought about by an audience in 1922, but has some curiosity today that sometimes puts it out of place.
Seena Owen does a magnificent job in the lead rôle of an outlying town (read small town) girl who is far enough away from the big city (New York) to feel a thousand miles away from any modern day "action", from parties to dancing - and especially...Mammon...money, wealth enough to have anything she wants, from clothes to cars to...and this is the catcher...what?...what will satisfy her needs? Does she really know? She has a suitor, Matt Moore, just a good guy, a nice guy, a simple guy, who loves her more than anything else, who wishes to marry her and give her what he can. She loves him, too, but not enough to not want the money, the parties, the cars, the...what?
She goes to New York, meets a man of Wall Street, a much older man, J. Barney Sherry, a very street-wise, ultra sophisticated, but smarmy sugar daddy whose god is Mammon and whose soul is either missing or now in the hands of fallen angels. He gives Owen anything she wants - up to a point. She claims she has a "crepe-de-chine" soul. But she learns that Moore has been wounded in WWI, and he comes home blind and with only weeks to live. It's been more than five years since she left the small town in which she formerly lived. She's now bored to tears with her life, but doesn't know how to give it up. She goes to see Moore... Here a reformation begins, but I'll not give the plot: it's the film after all. It's Borzage.
Really good piece of film-making! There are moments of antiqueness in acting technique, but they are few and far between. Direction is impeccable for its day, though slightly hindered by some sets. Art direction is perfunctory, but especially good in the country scenes. Owen, Moore, and Barney Sherry, two of them (Owen and Sherry) former Griffith actors, are really quite good. This restored silent, part of a Kickstarter restoration project, is nicely presented on DVD by Undercrank Productions video. A very nice piano score written for this restoration accompanies the film.
Recommended. 88 minutes.
