1928-29 – Corinne Griffith
The Divine Lady
This was an ok movie. Good but not great. If you want a better telling of the story of Lord Nelson’s lover, watch That Hamilton Woman from 1941. But Corinne Griffith did a competent job. She certainly had a lot of costume changes, and the tale was an epic one that spanned years. Everybody seemed to age properly except Griffith’s character, Mrs. Hamilton, which, I suppose, wasn’t the actress’s fault. The most they did for her was to update her hairstyle to a more matronly coif, but nothing more. Well, it was just something that I noticed.
As far as I know, this was the last silent film from the 1920s that had a nomination in any of the acting categories. It is also interesting to note that the version of the film I found on YouTube had been altered slightly. Someone had taken all the dialogue cards and translated them into Spanish. Unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish, so I missed out on that aspect of the film. But silent films are made to tell a lot of the story without dialogue.
Corinne Griffith did a good job of doing this, moving the story along with the expressiveness of her face, her eyes, her movements. And she looked beautiful doing it. There was one scene in particular where she was made up to look gorgeous. It was a wonderful romantic scene between her and Victor Varconi, playing the part of Horatio Nelson. The cameral had been focused on a tight close-up of Griffith’s face, as she held a flower between her lips and those of her lover. Griffith was widely considered one of the most beautiful women of the silent era, and after watching that scene, I can understand why.
And her more dramatic scenes were also played pretty well. I can understand why she was nominated for Best Actress, but after watching all of the other nominees’ performances, I can understand why she didn’t win. She was good, but to put it bluntly, I thought others were better.