PAINTED DAUGHTERS

Australia, 1925, Black and White.
Directed by F. Stuart Whyte.

Painted Daughters was popular silent cinema entertainment of the mid'20s. Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper give a great deal of background to its production. While it had Australian flavour, "this was not meant to obtrude" and the film had the popular ingredients of the sophisticated comedies of the '20s.

The film has a show business background. This gives the possibilities for presenting a lot of glamorous girls, stage costume, production numbers. The sets and the costumes were quite elaborate - an echo of audience interest in the life of the wealthy.

The plot is quite melodramatic - in retrospect it seems quite hackneyed. There is the show business romance, the separation of the romantic couple and an unfortunate marriage, financial breakdown and suicide - and the attempt to reorganise the members of a dance troupe, the Floradora Company, for a final production. This gives the heroine a chance to meet her long lost love. In the meantime a new generation has grown up and fallen in love. There is a melodramatic fire at the ending - and the chance for a happily romantic ending.

Pike and Cooper also give some background to the sophisticated cinematic techniques used - from the opening with the painting by Father Time of the lips of the star and a DTs attack.

While of no major interest in plot and content, the film is interesting historically as indicating the tastes of the time and the developing techniques in Australia.