"The Godless Girl" is a riot; indeed, it features two full-blown riots. If this late silent film were intended earnestly--and given that Cecil B. DeMille, director twice over of "The Ten Commandments" (1923 and 1956) and other straightforward religious spectacles, along with usual writer Jeanie Macpherson, made this, I assume it was--all the better, for being amused at its outrageous ostentation. It's basically a campy exploitation film, including a critique of atheism that's as sophisticated as the treatment of marijuana in "Reefer Madness" (1936), followed by scenes in an adjoining boys-and-girls prison (a so-called "reform school," for our 20-to-30-something-aged actors playing teenagers here), but produced with all the polish and panache characteristic of DeMille's usually-simplistic fare. Often, such a patently-ridiculous scenario would only work as a so-good-it's-bad film, but this one is well made throughout. It's a joy whether one is laughing at its holier-than-thou piety, shocked by the sensational brutality, excited by a chase and last-minute rescue, or if to merely appreciate the beauty films attained at the end of the silent era--before the church of talkies set the art back to the dark ages, if only for a few years.
I wonder how those not as daft as DeMille could take this film seriously otherwise. The Atheist Society plays like an exaggerated mirror-image of a proselytizing fundamentalist cult, with Judy, the godless girl, raving and gesticulating like the Maria robot inciting the workers to revolt in "Metropolis" (1927), while her fellow pupils pledge allegiance by placing their hand on the head of their evolutionary "cousin," a monkey (remember, the Scopes Trial was recent history when this was made). Judy's propaganda pamphlets and posters are absurdly heavy-headed satirical cartoons. Meanwhile, the godly boy, nicknamed "Angel" (played by an actor who would further pioneer camp in Ed Wood films) convinces the schoolmaster, who informs the student body that distributing atheistic pamphlets is punishable by imprisonment, to allow him to take the law into his own hands. He's granted the right on the condition that Angel do so without violence. Naturally, the film's first riot ensues in the subsequent sequence. The offensive portrayal of atheism is hardly alleviated by Angel's gang of holy warriors being no better, although it does make for some outrageous amusement.
After that, things quickly turn to overripe melodrama with an interfaith romance between Judy and Angel, as well as a bit of a love triangle with the inclusion of the other girl. In one scene, Judy laughably baths and frolics about in nature--her a grown woman, eye-rollingly, pretending a schoolgirl nymph. And, I don't even know what (or don't want to try) to make of two flirtatious scenes involving sausages. While Archie Angel must decide between Betty and Veronica, the reform-school inmates suffer abuse from a sadistic guard (played by a fuming Noah Beery, seemingly always on the verge or in the process of a violent outburst). As expected, Judy also begins to convert to Christianity, including after her embrace of an electric fence leaves cross-shaped stigmata on her hands. Subtle, DeMille was not. Whereas the film takes time out in the middle of all of this action for a title card explaining that not all reform schools are so bad, it makes no apologies for its religious bigotry. Appropriately enough, the whole thing climaxes in a hellish fire. I mean, William S. Hart already beat them to the punch here in "Hell's Hinges" (1916), for obvious symbolism, but it still makes for an exciting, if blunt, finale.
DeMille had a varied filmmaking career, which isn't much of a surprise given its longevity--spanning from the static Western "The Squaw Man" (1914) to such a Technicolor and VistaVision extravaganza as his 1956 "The Ten Commandments." He had some arty pictures early, including the chiaroscuro lighting in "The Cheat" (1915), then moved to alternating between sex comedies and biblical pictures, but some of his late silents and early talkies are enjoyably odd. These films often include a sensational climax, whether it be some form of construction falling apart as here or in, say, "Dynamite" (1929), or courtroom theatrics, as in "The Cheat" and his unofficially-directed "Chicago" (1927). "The Godless Girl" sits at the end of one and the beginning of another era; DeMille's last silent film, it was also released in a goat-gland version with added talkie scenes, but this adulteration doesn't seem to be in circulation, if it even exists anymore. Oh well, actors saying some of the already-over-the-top lines in the intertitles here would likely be even too much for my appreciation of bad taste.
I wonder how those not as daft as DeMille could take this film seriously otherwise. The Atheist Society plays like an exaggerated mirror-image of a proselytizing fundamentalist cult, with Judy, the godless girl, raving and gesticulating like the Maria robot inciting the workers to revolt in "Metropolis" (1927), while her fellow pupils pledge allegiance by placing their hand on the head of their evolutionary "cousin," a monkey (remember, the Scopes Trial was recent history when this was made). Judy's propaganda pamphlets and posters are absurdly heavy-headed satirical cartoons. Meanwhile, the godly boy, nicknamed "Angel" (played by an actor who would further pioneer camp in Ed Wood films) convinces the schoolmaster, who informs the student body that distributing atheistic pamphlets is punishable by imprisonment, to allow him to take the law into his own hands. He's granted the right on the condition that Angel do so without violence. Naturally, the film's first riot ensues in the subsequent sequence. The offensive portrayal of atheism is hardly alleviated by Angel's gang of holy warriors being no better, although it does make for some outrageous amusement.
After that, things quickly turn to overripe melodrama with an interfaith romance between Judy and Angel, as well as a bit of a love triangle with the inclusion of the other girl. In one scene, Judy laughably baths and frolics about in nature--her a grown woman, eye-rollingly, pretending a schoolgirl nymph. And, I don't even know what (or don't want to try) to make of two flirtatious scenes involving sausages. While Archie Angel must decide between Betty and Veronica, the reform-school inmates suffer abuse from a sadistic guard (played by a fuming Noah Beery, seemingly always on the verge or in the process of a violent outburst). As expected, Judy also begins to convert to Christianity, including after her embrace of an electric fence leaves cross-shaped stigmata on her hands. Subtle, DeMille was not. Whereas the film takes time out in the middle of all of this action for a title card explaining that not all reform schools are so bad, it makes no apologies for its religious bigotry. Appropriately enough, the whole thing climaxes in a hellish fire. I mean, William S. Hart already beat them to the punch here in "Hell's Hinges" (1916), for obvious symbolism, but it still makes for an exciting, if blunt, finale.
DeMille had a varied filmmaking career, which isn't much of a surprise given its longevity--spanning from the static Western "The Squaw Man" (1914) to such a Technicolor and VistaVision extravaganza as his 1956 "The Ten Commandments." He had some arty pictures early, including the chiaroscuro lighting in "The Cheat" (1915), then moved to alternating between sex comedies and biblical pictures, but some of his late silents and early talkies are enjoyably odd. These films often include a sensational climax, whether it be some form of construction falling apart as here or in, say, "Dynamite" (1929), or courtroom theatrics, as in "The Cheat" and his unofficially-directed "Chicago" (1927). "The Godless Girl" sits at the end of one and the beginning of another era; DeMille's last silent film, it was also released in a goat-gland version with added talkie scenes, but this adulteration doesn't seem to be in circulation, if it even exists anymore. Oh well, actors saying some of the already-over-the-top lines in the intertitles here would likely be even too much for my appreciation of bad taste.