Du Barry, Woman of Passion

-- which is like saying, "It was more like a train wreck than being caught in a nuclear blast."

DU BARRY, WOMAN OF PASSION is a badly paced early talkie with the kind of melodramatic, declarative dialogue that got John Gilbert laughed off the screen in his sound debut. Norma Talmadge is certainly not braying out lines in a Brooklyn accent as Hollywood myth has it, but she is miscast as the enchanting yet vulgar Du Barry. It's hard to see how king or commoner could become so obsessed with her, and this goes beyond Talmadge being a bit long in the tooth to play a frivolous young thing. She does not exude sex appeal in the least nor the earthy sensuality the script demands.

Story-wise, the film is standard romantic sop: Talmadge is torn between the honest love of a good man and the wealth of a king. Oh, and the French Revolution happens. Honestly, you could change the character names and set this in Fantasy Land, and it would be about the same as setting it in 18th century France.

One gets the sense that Talmadge's heart wasn't in the work. Her performance is flat, with only flashes of the lovely expressiveness that made her name in silent pictures. This would be her last movie altogether-- she was not interested in a vain struggle against new technologies and younger stars, and to be honest, I empathize.

At the very least, the film opens with an intertitle declaring none of this is historically accurate. If only certain modern filmmakers could be so honest (side-eyes Ridley Scott).