Monday, June 11, 2012

1928 - THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES , entertaining drama from Griffith


A sneaky gold digger breaks up the family of Jean Hersholt (the Academy Awards humanitarian award is named after him).


As the gold digger, the actor Phyllis Haver is the whole show.  The first scene she appears in has her in a barber shop getting her hair bobbed while she is laughing at a copy of Little Women. Setting her sights on Hersholt a family man she expertly seduces him while modeling a bathing suit and asking him to tell her if she is bow legged.

 


This film was directed by the father of modern film technique D.W. Griffith.  The film is well photographed with one amazing shot of the camera showing the point of view of a suicide falling down a building.

Griffith has a lot of scenes in The Battle of the Sexes of Hersholt's family life.  The wife and children seem like a pretty drab bunch.  It's not much of a surprise that Hersholt would rather spend time with Haver than his dreary family.
 88 minutes.

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