COQUETTE

 This early talkie, and the film for which Mary Pickford won her only Oscar, was based on a play and boy, would you know it; all that's missing is the Proscenium Arch. It's a melodrama that by today's standards would put "Madame X" to shame and as the "Coquette" of the title, a Southern Belle whose actions cause nothing but tragedy of the Greek kind and which are so over-the-top it looks like a spoof, (it isn't), Pickford just about redeems the picture and exudes something like star quality.

As the handsome lug who falls for her, (more fool him), Johnny Mack Brown isn't bad while director Sam Taylor is also credited with supplying the appalling dialogue. I suppose the best you can say about it is that it's an historical curiosity and a film that would never be made today. It's terrible but it's so bizarre neither can it be totally dismissed.