For me, this movie felt like little more than an advertising vehicle for Joan Crawford and Anita Page. While not being a well known movie by today's standards, Our Modern Maidens still has some important reasons for viewing. It depicts a young Joan Crawford in one of her many influential roles, and was also the last silent movie she made. The movie itself is strange because it is silent but contains some sound effects, making it what I consider a "hybrid movie." I can't really think of any other films that are like this, off the top of my head anyway. The movie as a whole is not really that impressive, and is pretty short too. It's about Billie Brown (Crawford) wanting to marry someone named Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), but she starts to take a liking to another guy named Glenn. Billie has to see Glenn is order to make sure Gil, a diplomat, is assigned activities that pay well. Meanwhile, Gil himself is not attracted to Billie, and likes the blonde Kentucky Strafford (Page) instead. Still, he ends up marrying Billie, which turns out to be a mistake after Billie discovers Kentucky is the mother of Gil's child. This movie's storyline is the typical love drama that tries to pair people who don't really love each other together in order to create some kind of confrontation, so by my standards at least, it felt pretty tiring. I've seen this almost exact formula used in tons of other movies, and it's nothing special. Still, Anita Page is probably more iconic in this movie than Crawford is. As Kentucky, she has the the appearance of the typical 1920s girl: short hair, a short skirt, and a rivalry with another woman (Billie) that only gets more and more obvious as the movie goes on. They are both vying for the affection of certain men, but this in turn leads to the movie's main problem: the story is very, very simplistic. It's cute to see the characters interact with each other, and eventually get angry at each other once their secret relationships are revealed, but other than this, the movie doesn't offer much other than love stories. For this reason, I only cautiously recommend it to people, since the time period it depicts is long gone, and it is quite hard to relate to it in any way. If you're like me, you will enjoy it simply for the fact that it is not new, and this makes it stand out as a movie that embodies the 1920s. It's mostly uneventful, but it does do a good job at depicting a time period full of optimistic times and parties.
Review of Our Modern Maidens
