User Reviews

On the streets of Paris, poor newspaper saleswoman Norma Talmadge (as Kiki) pines for debonair producer Ronald Colman (as Victor Renal). Encouraged by paperboy pal Frankie Darro (as Pierre), Ms. Talmadge spends her rent money on a new outfit and auditions for a position as chorus girl in Mr. Coleman's theater revue. She gets the job with some deception and performs on stage like Lucille Ball (likely in the audience), but makes audiences laugh. More importantly, Talmadge catches Coleman's romantic eye. However, he is engaged to blonde star Gertrude Astor (as Paulette Mascar)...

Superstar tragedienne Talmadge wisely shows her comic side in this first class success, produced with partner Joseph M. Schenck. They employed director Clarence Brown, photographer Oliver Marsh and amazing set artist William Cameron Menzies, to great effect. Comic servant George K. Arthur (as Adolphe) and veteran Marc McDermott (as "Baron" Rapp) contribute fine support. The unexplained relationship between Talmadge and young Darrow (he should have reappeared near the end) along with the "never been kissed" scene are meant to sell Talmadge as a teenager, which does not convince...

"Kiki" has been beautifully restored, and should hereafter be considered one of 1926's more important releases.

******** Kiki (4/4/26) Clarence Brown ~ Norma Talmadge, Ronald Colman, Gertrude Astor, George K. Arthur

If anyone has a complete version of this out there, I would love to get in touch with you. My copy is missing a couple of reels. So, I don't know exactly HOW Ronald and Norma met in the movie.

Despite the missing reels, I thoroughly enjoyed this little movie. Despite the picture quality not being very good, it was fun and playful and Norma Talmadge was a hoot - especially where she is "comatose"! Ronald Colman was also young, chipper, and handsome - and of course, there's the evil "other woman" in his life.

If you can find a copy of this film, even incomplete, do see it. It's not a masterpiece, but it is fun to watch, and I think anyone would be amused.

Norma Talmadge plays the title role. Kiki is a goofy young Parisian lady who wants to join the chorus. Using her wits and a bit of trickery, she is able to become a chorus girl. Unfortunately, she's also a ditsy nut and soon loses her job. The boss (Ronald Colman) feels sorry for her, however, and he takes her home. Kiki is in love with him but his thoughts are for the diva of his company--a sophisticated and very demanding lady. Can Kiki manage to steal away his heart or is nice-guy Colman going to throw his life away on the diva? Norma is pretty good in this film but sometimes her character is a bit too goofy--making the humor a bit too broad. This is not a major complaint but prevents the movie from rising to the level of the best female silent comedies (such as Marion Davies in "Show People"). Enjoyable but slight.

By the way, since this is a Pre-Code film, there is some sexual innuendo you just won't see in post-1934 films. The most funny and bawdy is the bed bouncing scene--which you'll just have to see for yourself.

This Clarence Brown comedy featuring Norma Talmadge and Ronald Colman starts fast but is unable to maintain it's dizzying pace Into the final reels as the title character's zany ways become tiresome, the situation fatigued.

Piaf like waif Kiki pushes newspapers on the streets of Paris and has dreams of becoming a stage sensation. By way of a fortuitous mix up she gets an audition and the attention of producer Walter Renal (Colman) who is being two timed by a diva. Kiki works her way into the chorus, creates a calamity on stage and becomes a sensation much to the consternation of Renal's headliner squeeze.

Talmadge ( A Woman of Paris ) whose career tanked with sound was a fine silent dramatic actress and in Kiki she displays the same aptitude for comedy with some hilarious mugging. Colman without benefit of his mellifluous voice still conveys suave sophistication and at times a surprising frustrated stridency seldom seen in his sound work. Brown and cameraman give Kiki a good look but he and Talamdge ultimately are unable to sustain the lack of Kiki's character depth seventy minutes in and the last half hour grinds slowly and unimaginatively.

Norma Talmadge, an actress who usually performed in melodrama during the 1910's and 1920's, displays her gift for comedy in "Kiki" (1926), a gift usually seen more often in the performances of her kooky sister Connie Talmadge ("Intolerance", "The Primitive Lover"). But Norma was a pro and could carry comedy off just as well as her sister (for example see Norma also in "The Social Secretary" (1916) for some witty moments).

"Kiki" starts off rather slowly and at first you are not sure you are going to like her character. She's a street kid who seems incredibly dumb, who lives alone but desires to get into the chorus line of a local show. Here she falls in love with incredibly handsome Ronald Colman, a tenor, and though she loves him instantly she puts off his advances by being silly and uncooperative. Through some really funny physical comedy the two eventually come together. Best part of the film is when Kiki pretends to be in a catatonic state just to be able to stay near her love. I was howling with laughter.

Kiki is definitely a worthwhile film to see if you are intrigued with the Talmadge Sisters. Too few of their films survive, but what does showcases enormous talent that should not be forgotten.

Romantic comedy starring Norma Talmadge who is terrific playing Kiki, waif who sells newspapers on a Paris street corner, she longs to sing in the local Follies revue, not to mention she's madly in love with the manager of the revue, who she admires longingly from afar. When the Follies needs a replacement singer, Kiki spends her rent money on a new outfit complete with gigantic checkered bow tie, piles of bangle bracelets, and beret topped with a long, wild feather - she soon tricks her way into the theater's office and into getting hired. Kiki is an energetic, feisty little fireball who is soon getting into fights with the manager's stuck-up girlfriend all in hot pursuit of the man she wants.

This film is both fun and funny, Talmadge is just great in her part - there is one scene where she is pretending to be catatonic and she holds her body stiff as a board while the characters manipulate her legs up and down, pick her up, move her stiff hands back and forth, etc. - well done and highly amusing. Ronald Colman, who plays the manager, is dashing and extremely handsome in this, as usual. There are also some amusing scenes with a rather prissy valet who is constantly in conflict with Kiki as she has managed to get herself ensconced in Colman's house and won't leave. An excellent silent film.

(1926) Kiki SILENT ROMANTIC COMEDY

Kiki (Norma Talmadge) acts like a kook who is naturally clumsy, with it's goal was it to live and marry the typical wealthy owner of a stage show. It happens to be the Ronald Coleman character as he plays, Victor Renal. Which if you can get past the first 30 minutes, since the other slapstick stuff was routinely old fashioned and rather predictable, than you might be able to make it the rest of the way. As some of the comedy bits is similar to other comedy stuff of that era, even though comedic giants such as Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd and other shorts...had done some of those comedic scenes better. The only difference with this movie as opposed to the others is that there is a story to be told here, with the slapstick serving nothing more but a backdrop.

Report from Cinesation 2006: KIKI (****) As Jeanine Basinger says in her book on Silent Stars, perhaps the biggest hole in our understanding of silent stardom is the career of Norma Talmadge-- she likens it to knowing talkies without ever seeing Bette Davis. This sparkling new Library of Congress restoration of a 1926 Parisian showbiz farce is atypical for the grande dame roles Talmadge usually played, but as with Marion Davies and Show People, it wouldn't be the worst fate for a star to be known mainly to history for a first-class comedy.

Talmadge, at thirtysomething more game than gamine, is a plucky street gal who weasels her way into producer Ronald Colman's chorus line, his home, and his heart. Because a number of folks present had seen it just a month before at Cinecon, I was prepped for the idea that it was something of a screwball comedy with neither lead behaving in any way that real humans would. (The word "stalker" was used on alt.movies.silent, and aptly so.) But taken as kind of a silent Twentieth Century or Bringing Up Baby, it had lots of laughs, and Talmadge pulls off the comedy beautifully (as does George K. Arthur, as her archrival among Colman's servants).

This is a delightful and very funny film starring Norma Talmadge, possibly at her best. She was a natural and vivacious comedienne, although she often played serious roles. As I pointed out in my review of THE SOCIAL SECRETARY (1916), she was a fine actress, and she played two roles instead of only one in THE FORBIDDEN CITY (1918, see my review). Immediately after this film, she switched tempo entirely and played the tragic Marguerite Gautier in the silent version of Dumas's CAMILLE, a role to be made famous later in the sound version with Greta Garbo. I wonder whether Talmadge's performance here as Kiki may have been inspired by the many performances of Clara Bow, who had made 32 films by this time. If so, the inspiration worked, and the Bow was successfully tied in a double knot just this once. Ronald Colman is superb and very much 'the Ronald Colman we know' in this film, despite not being able to hear his mellifluous voice. It needs to be stressed that this is not a film about the famous Kiki de Montparnasse of that era, even though it is set in Paris and this Kiki is, like the real Kiki, a lively scamp who came from total poverty as a waif. The film is based on the successful play KIKI, which did well on both Broadway and in London, by André Picard. Picard probably decided to call attention to his play by calling his character Kiki, knowing that it would arouse curiosity because of the notoriety of the real Kiki, and this worked. The film was remade in sound in 1931 with Mary Pickford in the lead, and she 'bombed', so they say, though I have never seen that version. It was remade again twice in 1932, in both cases with Anny Ondra in the lead, with two different directors, one filming in French and the other filming in German, but these films seem to be lost, and in any case there are no IMDb reviews of them. So Picard's amusing play was filmed four times in six years, and in three languages. In this version, George K. Arthur is very amusing as Ronald Colman's valet and butler, Adolphe. This film was directed by Clarence Brown, who later made such famous films as NATIONAL VELVET with Elizabeth Taylor (1944) and several films with Greta Garbo including ANNA KARENINA (1935) and MARIE WALEWSKA (1937). Earlier than those, he made ANNA Christie with Garbo in 1930, the same year made the terrible ROMANCE with Garbo, from which he wisely had his name removed, and he also made INSPIRATION with Garbo in 1931. That was three Garbo films in a row over those two years. The film he made just before KIKI was THE EAGLE (1925) with Valentino and immediately after KIKI, he made the famous FLESH AND THE DEVIL with Garbo and John Gilbert, which was when they began their famous love affair. Brown was one of the Hollywood Greats. It is thus not at all surprising that this film is lively, and often wonderfully funny. It was a First National Picture and has been restored from an old print, the negative obviously having been lost. This is a silent classic to be treasured.

This is a real surprise - an entirely enjoyable comedy based on character, not slapstick, expertly directed by Clarence Brown and with a quartet of subtle performances, none of which is exaggerated, all perfectly natural and heart-warming.

Talmadge is very inventive and very funny as the waif, yearning for Colman, who is dapper, assured and certainly the handsomest leading man in silent films. Astor is a scream as the desperate gold-digger and Arthur almost steals the film away from Talmade as Adolphe, her valet nemesis. Facial expressions are natural, movement is as well. It is very much a photographed stage play with only ten sequences, the first running a third of the film's length. Yet, it never seems stagey or stiff.

Were there Oscars then, I'd have bet Talmadge, director Brown and supporting actor Arthur would have snagged noms, plus the ornate Art Direction.

A winner on every level and one of Talmadge's best. The Kino DVD of the LOC restoration is impeccable, clear, crisp and bright.