I happened to see this one-reel drama in a public program of shorts and features featuring Mary Pickford, all made between 1911 and 1917. The first thing that struck me about A Manly Man, which was one of the earliest movies shown, is how primitive it looked alongside the other films, even ones made just a year or two later. Mary's performance is comparatively restrained, but some of the other actors offer embarrassing displays of the sort of eye-popping, arm-waving histrionics that give silent film acting a bad name. Once we adjust to their over-emphatic style, however, it becomes clear as the plot unfolds that the story is an expression of the blatant racism prevalent when the film was produced.
A Manly Man (reissued under the title "His Gratitude" in 1914) tells the tale of a young American fellow with an attractive blonde fiancée and a seemingly bright future. This man and his brother are sent to Luzon in a remote corner of the Philippines on a surveying expedition, related to an unspecified engineering project. But the setting might have just as well have been Honduras, a Pueblo village, or the Ivory Coast of Africa; the filmmakers made no attempt to depict anything resembling the real Luzon or to depict anything resembling genuine indigenous culture. All that was required for the purposes of their story was a primitive community populated with simple, brown-skinned "natives" in exotic garb. And it is here that our surveyor hero encounters an attractive peasant girl played by none other than Our Mary, who wears a shiny black wig and brown makeup slathered on her face and arms. The man immediately begins flirting and Mary (whose character name wasn't given in the print I saw) is of course flattered and responds happily. In reality, I believe, a girl in her situation would find the pale-skinned man repulsive looking and consider his overtures an insult, but even as early as 1911 the native girls of film-makers' fantasies are delighted by the attentions of white interlopers, as they would be in so many later Hollywood movies.
In any case, the surveyor's intentions towards his native sweetie are probably not all that honorable, at least initially, for after all he has a respectable blonde fiancée waiting for him back in the States, but the point becomes moot for he contracts a terrible fever and almost dies. Mary nurses him through the illness and saves his life. And then, calling upon the services of a missionary stationed nearby who is the only other European in the vicinity (the surveyor's brother having returned to America), our hero nobly marries the girl. A title card informs us that he does so fully aware that he is "sacrificing his future." During the ceremony he looks miserable, like a man doing something shameful, but we are given to understand that this expression of his gratitude is courageous in a self-sacrificing way, seeing as how the guy can never take her back home to, you know, meet anyone respectable. And sure enough, the surveyor stops dressing like a regular American and 'goes native' instead, and settles in with the locals. His brother and fiancée, meanwhile, have received an erroneous report that their loved one is dead, but when they learn otherwise and come back to retrieve him they take one look at his "wife" and shrink away in horror and disgust. But our hero stands by his woman and stays behind, thus demonstrating what a loyal and self-sacrificing person he is. He's a manly man indeed.
That's the attitude expressed in this little drama, and it may come as something of a shock to modern day viewers who aren't familiar with the attitudes of this period. Casually assumed White American Supremacy was the order of the day, and general audiences of the time would have shared the film-makers' assumption that, once our hero has married this native woman, he can never return to proper society however admirable his motives, as he's sullied himself. And no doubt many viewers sympathized with the reaction of the surveyor's brother and ex-fiancée who in the final scene regard him as an Untouchable.
A Manly Man is interesting for socio-historical reasons, but it's not exactly pleasant to watch. Mary Pickford fans may be interested to find her in such an unusual role, and it's a relief to note that she does not overplay or embarrass herself in this uncomfortable and unlikely setting. Getting back to the Pickford festival I attended, it was even more of a relief to leave this film behind and turn to Mary's more characteristic works.
A Manly Man (reissued under the title "His Gratitude" in 1914) tells the tale of a young American fellow with an attractive blonde fiancée and a seemingly bright future. This man and his brother are sent to Luzon in a remote corner of the Philippines on a surveying expedition, related to an unspecified engineering project. But the setting might have just as well have been Honduras, a Pueblo village, or the Ivory Coast of Africa; the filmmakers made no attempt to depict anything resembling the real Luzon or to depict anything resembling genuine indigenous culture. All that was required for the purposes of their story was a primitive community populated with simple, brown-skinned "natives" in exotic garb. And it is here that our surveyor hero encounters an attractive peasant girl played by none other than Our Mary, who wears a shiny black wig and brown makeup slathered on her face and arms. The man immediately begins flirting and Mary (whose character name wasn't given in the print I saw) is of course flattered and responds happily. In reality, I believe, a girl in her situation would find the pale-skinned man repulsive looking and consider his overtures an insult, but even as early as 1911 the native girls of film-makers' fantasies are delighted by the attentions of white interlopers, as they would be in so many later Hollywood movies.
In any case, the surveyor's intentions towards his native sweetie are probably not all that honorable, at least initially, for after all he has a respectable blonde fiancée waiting for him back in the States, but the point becomes moot for he contracts a terrible fever and almost dies. Mary nurses him through the illness and saves his life. And then, calling upon the services of a missionary stationed nearby who is the only other European in the vicinity (the surveyor's brother having returned to America), our hero nobly marries the girl. A title card informs us that he does so fully aware that he is "sacrificing his future." During the ceremony he looks miserable, like a man doing something shameful, but we are given to understand that this expression of his gratitude is courageous in a self-sacrificing way, seeing as how the guy can never take her back home to, you know, meet anyone respectable. And sure enough, the surveyor stops dressing like a regular American and 'goes native' instead, and settles in with the locals. His brother and fiancée, meanwhile, have received an erroneous report that their loved one is dead, but when they learn otherwise and come back to retrieve him they take one look at his "wife" and shrink away in horror and disgust. But our hero stands by his woman and stays behind, thus demonstrating what a loyal and self-sacrificing person he is. He's a manly man indeed.
That's the attitude expressed in this little drama, and it may come as something of a shock to modern day viewers who aren't familiar with the attitudes of this period. Casually assumed White American Supremacy was the order of the day, and general audiences of the time would have shared the film-makers' assumption that, once our hero has married this native woman, he can never return to proper society however admirable his motives, as he's sullied himself. And no doubt many viewers sympathized with the reaction of the surveyor's brother and ex-fiancée who in the final scene regard him as an Untouchable.
A Manly Man is interesting for socio-historical reasons, but it's not exactly pleasant to watch. Mary Pickford fans may be interested to find her in such an unusual role, and it's a relief to note that she does not overplay or embarrass herself in this uncomfortable and unlikely setting. Getting back to the Pickford festival I attended, it was even more of a relief to leave this film behind and turn to Mary's more characteristic works.
