After four years of slogging, Joan Crawford had finally become a star, but this followup to her breakthrough role in OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS is a puzzlement. Her face, while strong, is not exactly beautiful and certainly not pretty. And F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous comments about her limitations as an actress have never been bettered: she is capable of showing only one emotion at a time, and those are telegraphed and italicized so that the dimmest audience member will know what her character is supposed to be feeling. Yes, the plot is nominally risque, but what did people see in Crawford at this period, since there is nothing extraordinary about her? Perhaps her aggressiveness, decisiveness and athleticism seemed modern. There is really nothing conventionally feminine about her, and maybe this was refreshing. Pretty Anita Page, playing the rather bovine 'nice' girl shows what Crawford might have seemed to be rebelling against.
Because the film was shot as a silent but had a music and sound-effects track added along with minimal titles, OUR MODERN MAIDENS moves quickly and is much less static than many early talkies. There are also some wonderful art deco sets here. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is good-looking but he gives as over-scaled a performance as Crawford does, Rod La Rocque seems epicene and old-fashioned, but there is bright support from blonde, slender Josephine Dunn as a droll bitch, and some camping from handsome Edward Nugent as her consort.
Because the film was shot as a silent but had a music and sound-effects track added along with minimal titles, OUR MODERN MAIDENS moves quickly and is much less static than many early talkies. There are also some wonderful art deco sets here. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is good-looking but he gives as over-scaled a performance as Crawford does, Rod La Rocque seems epicene and old-fashioned, but there is bright support from blonde, slender Josephine Dunn as a droll bitch, and some camping from handsome Edward Nugent as her consort.