Freckles (1912) A Silent Film Review

But are they freckles? John Bunny decides to indulge in an at-home beauty regimen and hides this plans from his wife. She suspects adultery and is ready to catch him in the act.

Home Media Availability: Stream courtesy of EYE.

Hits the Spot

John Bunny was one of the top comedians of 1910s cinema and he made his reputation with a series of domestic comedies, often co-starring Flora Finch. These Bunnyfinches covered an array of topics but a great many touched on the very sensitive subject of adultery, all for laughs and good fun, of course.

In this case, Bunny plays a man plagued by spots on his face. (The title of the film calls them freckles, they look like something else to me but we will get to that in a moment.) His wife (Julia Swayne Gordon) is a beautiful, elegant and fashionable woman and Bunny feels that he isn’t good enough for her.

One morning a breakfast (melon and pancakes, for anyone interested in vintage meals), Bunny spots an ad in the newspaper: your skin cleared in the comfort of your own home! Ideal!

Gordon is going to a card party at a friend’s house, so Bunny makes his appointment but his strange behavior triggers his wife’s cheating sense. Why is he so eager to get her out of the house? Why is he fluttering and constantly looking at his watch? Why did he tear her vanity drawers apart in his haste to find her scarf? She mulls over these mysteries at the party.

Meanwhile, Bunny’s guest (Flora Finch) arrives with a collection of potions guaranteed to clear his face. She quickly sets to work on the gleeful Bunny. Meanwhile, Gordon cannot concentrate and feigns a headache so she can go home to see what her husband is up to.

There’s a saying that you shouldn’t adjust your hat under a neighbor’s plum tree. That is, even innocent behavior can be misconstrued if done in a particular context, you could have been reaching for a plum, so adjust your hat elsewhere. Well, forget that, Bunny realizes his wife is returning and hides Finch in the bathroom. Gordon kisses Bunny, smells an unfamiliar perfume, sees Finch’s hat and goes on the warpath.

Bunny and Finch quickly explain what has happened, Gordon apologizes to them both, Finch leaves with her fee paid and everyone is happy. Bunny’s spots even seem to have faded but that could just have been the makeup being wiped off.

I rather liked this one! Bunny and Finch play their usual characters but the addition of Gordon makes for a welcome change, one that was equally successful in The Troublesome Step-Daughters. Normally in these pictures, the jealous wife would have been played by Finch and her response would be quite exaggerated. (Check out Diamond Cut Diamond for an example.) Gordon was used far more often in Vitagraph dramas—you can see her as Lady Godiva, for example—but she fits in well with the Bunnyfinches.

One of my issues with how these adultery comedies were framed by Bunny and Finch is that Finch’s jealousy is presented as ridiculous from the word go. Nobody likes to be deceived or cheated on, so it feels like a cheap, hollow shot. In Gordon’s case, and likely helped by the fact that she was a conventional beauty, Vitagraph allows her some dignity in her suspiciousness.

There’s a very nice, lengthy shot of Gordon in her taxi as she is being driven to the card party. She goes over all of her husband’s odd behavior in her mind and you can see both hurt and anger rising up. She tries to hold it together but it finally becomes too much and she has to know. Gordon plays this very well, slightly exaggerated to keep up with the comedy, but certainly not a caricature or a mockery of her character’s emotions.

Flora Finch is great fun as the skincare expert (and possible huckster) as she tries to hock her wares even as she is being removed from the flat. Her miracle cure is never revealed, of course, and is rather beside the point but the film’s titles bring up a very trivial mystery but a fun one that touches on patent medicine of the period, always a fascinating topic. The print that I viewed was translated into Dutch and the Dutch titles do not say “freckles” but rather “roode puisten” or red pimples. Now, title card vary slightly between languages but a freckle and a pimple are very different things.

I would put this down to a translation quirk but John Bunny’s makeup seems to support the Dutch interpretation rather than the English. At the time, freckles were seen as blemishes, “not considered a mark of beauty by persons obliged to wear them,” as one review of the film puts it. Silent era makeup could be exaggerated but I have never seen freckles like these, they resemble the kind of makeup used for measles. Or pimples, perhaps?

So, I wonder if the story was originally planned as a tale of pimples but was changed just before its American release in order to pivot to a more genteel topic—or to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the release of the play Freckles, based on the novel of the same name and no relation at all to this John Bunny comedy. (Freckles was later adapted into numerous silent and sound movies.) Or maybe it was just a case of a Dutch translator deciding pimples fit better.

To make the plot thicken all the more, when you look into freckle treatments of the era. In the case of patent medicine, often advertised prominently in movie fan magazines of the time, treatments for pimples and freckles (and burns, and dog bites, and skin cancer) were exactly the same! So, it’s really academic since Flora Finch would likely had treated Bunny in an identical manner no matter what his complaint. Arsenic wafers, anyone?

Oh and I tried my best to read lips, Gordon in particular has clear and easy to read enunciation, but I really couldn’t spot any all-important instances of either “freckles” or “pimples” being spoken aloud.

Freckles is one of the more enjoyable John Bunny comedies. I like him generally but the humor in his films can sometimes be mean-spirited. Freckles is all motivated by love, even though it is sloppy and wrongheaded, at least everyone’s hearts are in the right place. It’s a cute picture and you will have to see it and judge for yourself whether the English or the Dutch title cards are more accurate.

Where can I see it?

Stream with Dutch titles courtesy of EYE.

☙❦❧

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