"It Does Something to a Girl. I Don't Know What": The Problem of Female Sexuality in "Applause"

Abstract

Rouben Mamoulian's first film, Applause, released by Paramount on 8 October 1929. The film, as Mamoulian himself noted, largely a critical than commercial success. Both the initial and more recent critical reception show that one possible reason for the film's box office failure a noted split between the narrative, which critics found unsatisfying, and Mamoulian's bravura treatment of that narrative. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times, for example, finds the story uninteresting, but notes of Applause's striking camerawork that Mamoulian rather lets his penchant for camera feats run away with suspense.' This same line of criticism has more recently been upheld by Tom Milne in his auteurist study of Mamoulian. Milne suggests that without Mamoulian's handling of the story, Applause soon have foundered in a sticky mess of sentiment as just another of those tearful mother-and-daughter epics that Hollywood is so fond of.2 Similarly, an American Film interview with Mamoulian states, His [Mamoulian's] lyric style, his technical innovations, and his instinct for the dramatic made his treatment of even hackneyed material like Applause distinctive.3 Mamoulian himself expressed a comparable sentiment in a Velvet Light Trap interview published in 1982. Mamoulian believed that the commercial failure of Applause due to the presence of too many new things in it, and also that the story of a fading burlesque star was so far away from the general run of apple blossom romances.4 The emphasis on stylistic and formal elements in Applause is characteristic of the way that the film has generally been treated by film critics and historians. Given the film's historical position as an early sound film and musical, the emphasis on form and style in Applause has made the film particularly useful in debunking prevalent myths of early sound cinema. These myths, which seem to have been based on the model of The Lights of New York, portray early sound films as dialogue laden, theatrical, static, and visually dull. Moreover, these myths appear to have been fully formed by the time of Applause's release. One reviewer, for example, finds it unthinkable that Mamoulian, a noted stage director making his first film, could have directed anything but the film's dialogue scenes.5 This critic's disbelief that someone trained in theater would be capable of the stylistic flourishes in Applause also shows just how remarkable the film's formal qualities were within the context of early sound cinema.