'Spanish People at Pickfair'
Item
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Title
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'Spanish People at Pickfair'
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Creator
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Videoed by Henry Sharp (Hollywood cinematographer
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Date
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1929
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Description
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Featuring Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jr., and friends in full performance mode on the grounds of their home, mocking courtship rituals and poking fun at normal gender roles
Including Charlie Chaplin’s sublime turn as a balletic sprite with a globe under his arm, who opens the video.
Douglas Fairbanks acts like a director to the women which pokes fun into societal traits.
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Scholarly Significance
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This shows so much.
Firstly it presents Fairbanks as a lover of films who, in his spare time with friends, loved creating films for fun not just as a business.
Powerful friends like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford show how big his influence was in 1920's Hollywood.
It situates itself aside from normal Hollywood and questions gender roles and courting of women. This shows an intelligence and interest in questioning societies normalities.
It does not however diverge from the heterosexuality of men even if this does resent Chaplin's characters consciousness of flaunting privacy where he pulls over his tunic and crosses his legs like a woman. Still sexuality is not questioned enough.
Mary Pickford stands out within the little film and that is perhaps of her stardom or of her figure against other women.
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Rights
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Museum of Modern Art
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Identifier
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Digital preservation on 35mm film
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Cataloguer
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Alex Bartholomew
