Wine of Youth
{{short description|1924 film}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2018}}
{{Infobox film
| name = Wine of Youth
| image = Wine_of_Youth.jpg
| caption = Film poster
| director = King Vidor
| producer = King Vidor
Louis B. Mayer
| writer = Carey Wilson
| based_on = {{basedon|Mary the Third, a 1923 play|Rachel Crothers}}
| starring = Eleanor Boardman
William Haines
Creighton Hale
Niles Welch
| cinematography = John J. Mescall
| distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
| released = {{film date|1924|9|15}}
| runtime = 72 minutes
| country = United States
| language = Silent (English intertitles)
}}
Wine of Youth is a 1924 American silent comedy drama film directed by King Vidor,{{cite web |url=http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/W/WineOfYouth1924.html |title=Progressive Silent Film List: Wine of Youth |access-date=December 13, 2008|work=Silent Era}} and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, shortly after the merger which created MGM in April 1924. Vidor did not consider it important enough to mention in his autobiography,Eames 1988 p. 12 although it did advance the careers of three young stars-to-be: Ben Lyon, Eleanor Boardman, and William Haines.
An early "flapper" romance set during the Jazz Age and made following the box-office popularity of Flaming Youth (1923), the film tests the limits of presenting unconventional social behavior among American youth and then ends with a paean to parental authority.Durghat and Simmon 1988 p. 54 and p. 56: The film is "overridden with reassuring morality [where] a conscientious parent" intervenes.
Baxter 1976 p. 19 "One of the earliest ‘flapper’ romances..."
Plot
Mary (Eleanor Boardman) is a girl wooed by two suitors but made afraid of marriage by the quarreling of her parents. Eventually, she accepts Lynn (Ben Lyon), the more refined and poised of the two suitors.
Cast
{{Cast listing|
- Eleanor Boardman as Mary
- James W. Morrison as Clinton
- Johnnie Walker as William
- ZaSu Pitts as Lucy (scenes deleted)
- Niles Welch as Robert
- Creighton Hale as Richard
- Ben Lyon as Lynn
- William Haines as Hal
- William Collier, Jr. as Max
- Pauline Garon as Tish
- Eulalie Jensen as Mother
- E. J. Ratcliffe as Father
- Gertrude Claire as Granny
- Robert Agnew as Bobby
- Lucille Hutton as Anne
- Virginia Lee Corbin as Flapper
- Anne Sheridan as Flapper (as Gloria Heller)
- Sidney De Gray as Doctor (as Sidney De Grey)
- Jean Arthur as Automobile Reveler (uncredited)
- Aggie Herring as The Cook (uncredited)
}}
Production
Vidor's arrival at the newly amalgamated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would mark the beginning of a 20-year association with the studio. Wine of Youth is his first film appear under M-G-M.Durghat and Simmon 1988 p. 52-53
Theme
Wine of Youth is the first of four films that preceded Vidor's groundbreaking war epic The Big Parade (1925). In substance, these four "Jazz Age flaming youth pictures," of which three survive, bear little resemblance to the work to emerge in the late 1920s.
The film opens by contrasting the courtship rituals that characterized the mothers and grandmothers of the female "flappers" in the post-World War I period. The young women of the earlier Victorian Era swoon while reclining in their parent's parlor with their beaux and declare that "there's never been so great a love as ours." In contrast, the liberated flappers reject these conventions and organize a faux honeymoon with their boyfriends in the forest. They drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and cavort sexually, images very appealing to urban youth of that era. (Vidor described the movie as an "exploitation piece".)
Having defied conventionality and flirted with her virginity, the protagonist, Mary, discovers a new and genuine desire for her future husband that returns her to the fold: "There's never been so great a love as ours." Ostensibly an effort to present the virtues of a trial marriage - to discover "how a man is in everyday life before you give him your all" - Vidor contended that “there were so many restrictions and inhibitions that it really took the guts out of the idea.”Durghat and Simmon 1988 p. 54 and p. 56
Baxter 1976 p. 19
Preservation
The film is preserved at George Eastman House, Rochester New York.[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.mbrs.sfdb.1272/default.html The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Wine of Youth] In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.{{cite web|url=https://www.berlinale.de/en/press/press-releases/detail_8008.html |title=Berlinale 2020: Retrospective "King Vidor" |work=Berlinale |access-date=28 February 2020}}
Footnotes
{{reflist}}
References
- {{cite book | last = Baxter | first = John | year = 1976 | title = King Vidor | publisher = Simon & Schuster | location = New York | series = Monarch Film Studies | isbn = 978-0-671-08103-4 | lccn = 75-23544 | url = https://archive.org/details/kingvidor0000baxt | url-access = registration | via = Internet Archive | ref = none}}
- {{cite book | last1 = Durgnat | first1 = Raymond | author1-link = Raymond Durgnat | last2 = Simmon | first2 = Scott | year = 1988 | title = King Vidor, American | publisher = University of California Press | location = Berkeley | isbn = 0-520-05798-8 | url = https://archive.org/details/kingvidoramerica0000durg | url-access = registration | via = Internet Archive | ref = none}}
- {{cite book | last = Eames | first = John Douglas | year = 1988 | title = The MGM Story: The Complete History of Fifty Roaring Years | publisher = Crown Publishers | location = New York | isbn = 0-517-52613-1 | url = https://archive.org/details/mgmstory00john | url-access = registration | via = Internet Archive | ref = none}}
External links
{{commons category|Wine of Youth}}
- {{IMDb title|0015500}}
- {{Internet Archive film|silent-wine-of-youth|Wine of Youth}}
{{King Vidor}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wine Of Youth}}
Category:1924 comedy-drama films
Category:1920s English-language films
Category:American silent feature films
Category:American black-and-white films
Category:Films directed by King Vidor
Category:Films produced by Louis B. Mayer
Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films