American Aristocracy

Lloyd Ingraham: American Aristocracy (US 1916) written by Anita Loos and starring Douglas Fairbanks as Cassius Lee. Photo: Museum of Modern Art, NY.

AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY (US 1916)
(Nel mondo dei miliardi)
regia/dir: Lloyd Ingraham.
scen, did/titles: Anita Loos.
cast: Douglas Fairbanks (Cassius Lee), Jewel Carmen (Geraldine Hicks), Charles DeLima (Leander Hicks, il re degli spilloni/the Hatpin King), Albert Parker (Percy Peck), Arthur [Artie] Ortego (il “portiere misterioso”/the “mysterious porter”), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. [strillone/newsboy].
prod: Fine Arts Film Co.
dist: Triangle Film Co.
uscita/rel: 12.11.1916.
copia/copy: 35 mm, 3491 ft (5 rl), 49 min (19 fps); did./titles: ENG.
fonte/source: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.
   Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone. Corona emergency security: half programming, half capacity, COVID certificate required, temperature measured, hand hygiene, face masks, distancing.
    Grand piano: Donald Sosin.
    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 2 Oct 2021.

Gabriel Paletz (GCM 2021): "More research is needed to show whether Loos adopted the “dash style” for Fairbanks as a consistent strategy in her scenarios for him. However, from the start of their collaboration the writer recognized that her challenge in writing a Fairbanks hero was that he “always had to be on the move.” She met this challenge by shaping the changing form of the scenario to her understanding of his star personality."

"In American Aristocracy, Loos increases the action in both speed and size. Fairbanks’s character Cassius Lee progresses from chasing butterflies to hopping guardrails and scaling the side of a mansion, piloting a racing car and hydroplane, and swimming out to board a yacht to foil the plot of a “filibuster” — the freebooting ship of his love rival — to supply gunpowder to Mexico. American sensitivity to arming Mexico would cause a rupture with Germany on the release of the Zimmermann Telegram (a secret diplomatic communication proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico) in March 1917, just months after the film’s release. Loos’s story anticipated the U.S. advance into World War I with a screenwriting style which was particularly suited to turning Fairbanks into Hollywood’s international action hero."

"At the same time, as the film’s title proclaims, Loos merrily satirized the pretensions of American elites. Loos lets Fairbanks leap over the stuffy snobs of “Narraport-by-the-Sea” (lampooning the society resorts of Newport and Narragansett, Rhode Island, and shot in nearby Watch Hill). Her mix of high and low language, in what were then called “subtitles” or “subcaptions,” distinguishes Fairbanks’s Cassius Lee among the “American Aristocracy” as both an entomologist and a “bug hunter.” The range of Loos’s language for the character mocks both old and new money. Lee has the pedigree – “F.F.V.” (First Families of Virginia) – and the leisure to pursue his insects. He also possesses the energies of a captain of industry, but, typical of a Fairbanks hero, he displays it in physical prowess, rather than the crass manufacturing of hatpins like the father of his love interest, or his love rival’s cunning without bravado. By the end, Cassius’s zest for action and new capacity for invention — hatpins, eureka! — unites both sets of American aristocracy."

"Loos could form tight teams with directors as well as stars. She made four films in 1916, including American Aristocracy, with actor-director Lloyd Ingraham, whose experience in the circus and roadshows must have been useful to the film." – Gabriel Paletz (GCM 2021)

AA: Douglas Fairbanks the human dynamo is let loose in a wild and crazy plot involving "American aristocracy" at a society resort, portraying a millionaire entomologist (bughunter) called Cassius Lee.

The leading lady, Geraldine Hicks (Jewel Carmen) is bored with Percy who never does anything outside business, and she promises to kiss the first man she meets.

Inevitably that man is Cassius who is in certain ways a credible double for Percy, and so he gets to "drive like a devil" in Percy's clothes and even fly a hydroplane. Geraldine, however, sees through the trick.

But because the disguise is convincing, Cassius accidentally learns about Percy's involvement in a gunpowder smuggling plot to Mexico, in alliance with Germany in WWI.

The film is predictably full of incredible and funny acrobatic stunts by the irrepressible and hyperactive Fairbanks.

It is equally full of funny satirical barbs and witticisms from the pen of Anita Loos.

The sunny action comedy keeps us smiling from the beginning to the end. Not one of the greatest, but pure fun all along.