As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Louise Glaum, who made such a memorable appearance in Hell's Hinges, is the star of Unknown Video's 9/10 DVD of Sex (1920). Despite the come-on title, however, Sex is the dreariest of dreary movies. True, it has some fascinating night club scenes, but over-rated director Fred Niblo can do little with the clichéd plot. What's worse, Niblo not only allows Peggy Pearce to steal most of Glaum's scenes, but Irving Cummings to dominate her as well. So, despite the fact that she has the star role, Miss Glaum does not emerge from the movie at all well. No wonder she retired from the screen in 1921 (although she did make a half-hearted attempt at a comeback in a Hope Hampton vehicle, Fifty-Fifty, in 1925).

Louise Glaum is pretty much forgotten today. Despite a less than glamorous name, she plays the lead--a nightclub performer who LOVES to seduce married men. She seems heartless and selfish. Eventually, however, this vamp marries a very rich man and is surprised to see how much she enjoys domestic life. However, her beloved husband, Dick, begins cheating on her--with one of the dancers that Glaum instructed on how to be an über-vamp! Talk about irony.All in all, this is a very good silent film with a nice moral lesson. So, despite the very salacious title, the film is actually a nice endorsement of fidelity...though like so many of the Pre-Code films, it takes a long time getting there and glories adultery in the process! Apart from the interesting story, I also really loved the costumes. Seeing Glaum wearing a spidery outfit as she performs was a hoot! My only reservation is the very end--it looks as if perhaps part of the film is missing and they just tacked a very moralistic intertitle card there to try to hide this.

This film was released on VHS by Grapevine Video Inc. in the 1990's but seems to be no longer in stock. The print is a little fuzzy but does not suffer from nitrate decomposition.Despite the enticingly frank title this is actually a morality tale of a woman who is done to as she has done unto others. The costumes and sets are deliriously bizarre and outré and the direction solid. Miss Glaum, a Theda Bara competitor, is a solid and attractive actress who seems a touch wholesome compared to more recent screen hussies. Whereas Theda Bara seems to have played women who were beyond redemption, Glaum does succumb to the lure of marital contentment only to discover that her former protegé has snagged her rich, indolent playboy husband. Ms. Glaum in her full vamp mode wears a lot of loose, off the shoulder gowns, smokes up a storm and knocks down alcoholic beverages with gusto. Except for some smooching and a few legs on the lap, not much of the titular activity is seen on the screen though heavily implied.

Shortly after its premiere, in New Jersey, this film was shown in Pennsylvania, where the State Board of Censors changed the title for screenings around that state to SEX CRUSHED TO EARTH, which is comprehensible for the time, but the work is after being a morality play, with the lead character, Adrienne Renault(Louise Glaum) realizing what the wages of her superficial existence are to be. Adrienne, star of the Frivolity Theatre in New York, enjoys stealing husbands with her major acquisition being Phillip Overman (William Conklin) whose wife she scorns when Mrs. Overman begs for his return; a chorine, Daisy (Peggy Pearce) is impressed by Adrienne's victorious self-absorption, and when the latter disposes of Overman in favor of a millionaire, Dick Wallace (Irving Cummings), the two performers find themselves in competition for him, which buckles the flooring of Adrienne's harsh philosophy. Although baldly a melodrama, SEX has many good moments and effective scenes, is well directed by Fred Niblo, and is a proper showcase for Glaum, who at the time of filming outdistances Theda Bara in the sweepstakes for America's favorite vamp; the titles offer witty art design, editing is smoothly done and Cummings, as a wealthy man about town, gives an outstanding, nuanced performance as the axle of the story.