Image of the Day
Apr. 26th, 2010 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byers
Kiki (1926)
Kino recently released two DVDs featuring the Talmadge sisters: The Constance Talmadge Collection and The Norma Talmadge Collection. They unexpectedly turn out to be quite a William Cameron Menzies fest. You wouldn't know it from IMDb, which lists him as the art director for Constance's Her Sister from Paris (1925) (which I thus watched first of the four movies on the two disks), but doesn't mention that he served as the same for Constance's Her Night of Romance (1924) and Norma's Kiki, screen-capped above. The other thing all three romantic comedies have in common is the impossibly debonair love interest played by Ronald Colman. The design work is gorgeous, but it benefits particularly in Kiki from the pictorial skills of director Clarence Brown. Brown loves depth effects, captured here in the mirror's frame, which reveals two lovers turning their backs on each other, although only one of them sees it.
