New York Times’ film critic Mordaunt Hall was beyond effusive in his review of Ernst Lubitsch’s 1926 comedy souffle SO THIS IS PARIS (’26) describing it as a “gay picture” which “hails from the workshop of that master director Ernst Lubitsch” and is doing its share to “uphold the screen art…’” He added that the “farce comedy is titivated with satire. It is a farcical yarn that keeps one amused from the start. The publication named the romantic roundelay starring Monte Blue, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lilyan Tashman and Andre Beranger, as one of the top ten films of the year.

Though several of Lubitsch’s silent Hollywood films have been released on DVD or aired on TCM, that hasn’t been the case with SO THIS IS PARIS, because the comedy didn’t have a score until now. The virtual TCM Classic Film Festival has the “Lubitsch Touch” Sunday evening with the world premiere of the new restoration of SO THIS IS PARIS, presented in a 2K scan off the Warner Bros. nitrate complete with a lively original organ score by and performed by Ben Model.

Over the years, TCM had licensed Model’s scores for silent films in the public domain he had initially done for home video including Baby Peggy’s THE FAMILY SECRET (‘24) and Marion Davies’ WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER (‘22). One of the top accompanists and composers of silent film scores, Model had long wanted to work with TCM to commission new scores for their scoreless silent films in their library. After discussions with Charles Tabesh, TCM’s SVP for programming and content strategy, Model was able to score SO THIS IS PARIS.

“I knew SO THIS IS PARIS had been shown at the TCM Film Festival a few years prior,” said Model. “I knew this is a film that Warners’ controls. It’s a film I don’t have to convince anybody about… It’s already on everyone’s radar. I also knew that the Library of Congress had material on it.” And, it turned out TCM had scanned its print of the film. “They sent me a file and I scored the film.”

Surprisingly, Model doesn’t compose or play on an actual mighty Wurlitzer, he utilizes a virtual one using a computer program that “behaves like an actual organ console would.” Model watched the film once and took a lot of notes for himself: “story notes where I’m writing down what happens in the scene, what mood I think it would be. Sometimes I’ll write down this should be a minor waltz or something like that. I will also notate for myself in boldface visual cues. Not in a Mickey Mouse coconut sounds when somebody gets hit on the head kind of thing, but just so I can see it at a dramatic moment. “

There’s a scene in the beginning of the film where the one couple is rehearsing this Arabian dance and there is a man playing the piano. “We get a glimpse of the sheet music,” Model noted. “I thought just in case there are any musicians who are reading [the sheet music], I actually transcribed the first eight or nine ears of the ‘Dance of the Despair’ and it kind of works. “

He doesn’t write all the music out when he’s composing. “I improvise, although when I’m recording, it’s more like I improvise until it’s right. It’s a form of composition where I’m not physically writing notes on a piece of paper. But I still think of it as composition and not just making music until the scene is over. Improvisation was a technique that organists knew.”

He learned as a young man from the legendary silent film accompanist Lee Erwin that silent film music “should be interesting enough to hold you, but not pretty enough to distract you. The idea is because silent film is its own universe. I think the idea it to support the film and help the audience. Boost then up into the world and keep them in that world.” The biggest challenge scoring the film is the three minutes and 13 second Charleston party sequence “where nothing happens,” noted Model. “The film is forward motion and dramatic action then the movie stops. It’s just shots of a lot of people dancing. I didn’t just want to play until the scene was over. I wanted to try and map something out.”

So, Model watched the sequence, took down the timing and even created a spreadsheet “so I could figure out not only how many seconds each the segments are. I was able to break it down and discover the internal logical of the editing. I came up with a tempo which is a Charleston tempo or a tempo that the Charleston would be played it.” He chose not to include the famous Charleston music in the sequence because he thought it would be a distraction. “I chose to play music that was at the Charleston tempo so you could concentrate on what was being done on screen.”

It was a landmark film of the silent era. Using German Expressionist style and filming scenes on location, director King Vidor tells the story of everyday life in the film THE CROWD (’28). A pinnacle of filmmaking today, at the time it was viewed as an experimental and artistic film. “The average fellow walks through life, and sees quite a lot of drama around him. Objectively, life is like a battle,” Vidor told Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Irving Thalberg, according to the book The Big Screen: The Story of Movies by David Thomson.

Mark A. Vieira’s Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince recounts that Thalberg green-lit the film, saying he could afford to make a few “experimental pictures.” The idea of the film was to show that no matter what you do in life, you are always part of the crowd. Vidor co-wrote the screenplay with John V.A. Weaver. To exhibit swarms of people in daily life, Vidor filmed on location in New York City. He hid cameras around the city and in the backs of trucks to film crowds candidly and have them look authentic.

Vidor wanted an unknown, fresh-faced actor to play the lead role of John Sims, the man who is followed from birth to adulthood in the story. An established star would tarnish the “every man” aspect of the story. Vidor walked by extra James Murray, who he tracked down to test for the role, and Murray won the part. For the role of Sims’s wife, Mary, Vidor cast his own wife, actress Eleanor Boardman. As John and Mary meet, marry, honeymoon, experience marital issues, give birth and face tragedy, they are always just part of the crowd.

“The protagonist does nothing unusual, nothing that everyone can’t understand. Birth, youth, school, love, business struggles, married life, always the background of the crowd,” said Vidor.

Crowds are a part of the story telling. They gather at the bottom of the stairs as John learns his father has died. John works in a crowded office. A crowd gathers after tragedy strikes with one of John’s children. And in the end, John and his family are part of the crowd, laughing at a vaudeville show. To exhibit the dwarfing effect of being one of many people, Vidor was inspired by the expressionism of German cinema, which he incorporated into his cinematography. Without the camera technology of zoom lenses and booms that came later, Vidor had to be creative. He described his techniques in the PBS documentary series on directors The Men Who Made the Movies (’73).

One of the most striking camera shots is as 12-year-old John Sims, played by Johnny Downs, walks up a seemingly endless flight of stairs to learn that his father has died. He walks for an eternity as the only light comes from outside the open door with a crowd of neighbors watching below. In this shot, Vidor and his crew found an extremely long stairway and put it against the stage door of the stage. Another signature shot is when the camera zooms up 22 stories of a New York City skyscraper and then sweeps inside a window, showing 200 men working at 200 desks.

To achieve this effect, the crew constructed the building lying down on the stage with a bridge work above it, so the camera could zoom up the building. Cables then dropped the camera into a window, which had a photo of the interior shot behind the window. For the shot above the desks, an overhead track platform moved the camera forward, and then cables dropped the camera to zoom in on James Murray’s character of adult John Sims working at his desk — one of the crowd. In his Feb. 20, 1928, review, New York Times film critic Mordaunt Hall calls this skyscraper sequence the “finest photographic feat in this film.”

Upon its release, THE CROWD was neither a blockbuster nor a failure, though it met critical success. “It is, on the whole, a powerful analysis of a young couple’s struggle for existence in this city,” Hall wrote in his New York Times review. However, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio head Louis B. Mayer hated the film. He especially hated that Vidor showed a toilet as the couple argues that nothing is working in their apartment (including their marriage), according to Scott Eyman’s book, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. When the film was nominated in the first Academy Award ceremony, Mayer refused to vote for it. According to Eyman, Mayer hated the film for the rest of his life and would bring up THE CROWD when admonishing the “artistic picture.”

And unfortunately, Vidor’s new star James Murray did not skyrocket to fame. After THE CROWD, Murray acted in 30 more films, but often in a small or uncredited role. His last film was SAN FRANCISCO (’36), where he is credited as “earthquake survivor.” Murray died in 1936 at age 35, after drowning in the Hudson River in New York City. Some accounts say that he jumped in the water as part of a gag, others suggest suicide.

Like John Sims, James Murray was lost in the crowd.

“Why Be Good? when it’s so much more thrilling to be bad!”

So claimed a 1929 ad. But really, WHY BE GOOD? remains a million-dollar question, even 91 years later.

The film ranks among my all-time favorite discoveries of my 10 years attending the TCM Classic Film Festival. Not only was it a vibrant, relatable movie long feared lost, but the energy and reaction from the crowd was unlike any other theatrical experience for me; it’s rare to hear raucous applause, let alone multiple times, at a classic film screening, but that was the case at TCMFF 2015.

In WHY BE GOOD?, a young woman with the most apt name in film history, Pert (Colleen Moore), spends her evenings dancing and generally fitting the flapper stereotype to a ‘T’, but it’s really all for show; she’s a good girl at heart. However, when she falls for Winthrop (Neil Hamilton), one of her department store bosses, her reputation precedes her, and he puts Pert to the test to see where her morals really lie.

As we enter the 2020s (whether they’ll be just as roaring as the 1920s, we’ll have to reserve for hindsight), I wanted to revisit WHY BE GOOD? At its TCMFF screening, I reveled in the ways the movie felt incredibly modern. Despite the film arriving late in the silent flapper era, it still hits me as a progressive picture that took a page from its age and brilliantly examined timeless issues that young people still grapple with today, particularly gender and familial politics.

WHY BE GOOD? was praised by many for its relatable premise in 1929; it’s “a story that might have happened to almost any girl in a big city,” an Indiana newspaper declared. The same can be said for young, single women in 2020, who would likely be sympathetic to Pert’s good girl/bad girl dilemma, like the pressure to fit in, appear cool and suppress your true self. (The film’s original title, interestingly, was That’s a Bad Girl.) Ads for the picture hurled taglines such as, “If a girl stays out after midnight, she’s a runaround; if she doesn’t she’s a wallflower. If she kisses she’s loose; if she doesn’t she’s the loser.” 

Indeed, Pert’s rousing reprimand to Winthrop near the end of the picture when he tests her by taking her to the Stumble Inn, accurately captures the paradoxes women face in the dating world. “You men! You insist on a girl being just what you want – and then you bawl her for being it,” Pert protests. Sure, she and Winthrop end up hitched after her steady barrage, but title card after refreshing title card speak a truth just as spot on in 1929 as it is today. “Listen! I’m a good girl! And what I do and what I wear – is because you fool men demand it!” Preach it, Pert.

Speaking of clothing, Pert gets into that debate with her father one evening. “– And what’s more, no decent girl would wear a dress like that,” he warns her. “Well I’m wearing it – and I’m decent!” is her grand reply. Pert also points out that she contributes just as much to the house as he does, so she should be able to wear and do what she wants. Despite that exchange, I found the parents in WHY BE GOOD? particularly genuine in their diverse approaches to child rearing. Pert’s father is overly protective, while her mother better understands and trusts their daughter. Winthrop’s dad speaks sensibly at times, but he too is looking out for his son, just a tad too much: He scares Winthrop into thinking Pert’s a bad girl based on what he sees on a dance floor. Modern technology has made parenting more complex, but similar age-old anxieties still prevail today.

In a 1929 interview, the two stars of the film intelligently touched upon parenting and female social mores during the 1920s. While the slang may be different, the struggles remain the same: “Is it any worse for a girl to call kissing ‘necking’ and admit she does it, than it was for her mother to call it ‘spooning’ and deny it?” Moore asked. In her opinion, strict parents who denounced makeup and dancing forced their daughters to rebel to prove their point. “If young flappers didn’t think they were being reckless and disobedient, the chances are they wouldn’t get as much fun out of their superficial sophistication.” Hamilton added his two cents: “It’s all in the point of view… Our parents probably scandalized our grandparents, and our kids will probably look back on us as a lot of old fogies.” Some sure do, Neil Hamilton, but WHY BE GOOD?’s point of view largely stands the test of time, even nearly a century later.