Let Joy Be Unconfined

Mae Murray is perhaps old Hollywood’s most serious mugger.

And that’s certainly saying something.

The reason Murray is of all the silent women to me the most endearing is because she’s such a goof. There is nothing pristine about her beauty. She doesn’t feel the need to protect or preserve it. On the contrary she goes out of her way to appear outre,  never losing sight of the comic potentiality of ‘the pose’. In scenes with outrageous bathrooms where Gloria Swanson seemed to at home, Murray makes felt the sense of travesty in all of it, and after watching her for an hour one finds that her incredible personal beauty is only secondary to her comic sensibility. She is so…impish

In a way that is unpredictable. Fascinating. Kind of like the Pickford prototype infused with the spirit of Pan.

~ by levantor on May 25, 2009.