BABYLON (2023): Damien Chazelle takes on Vintage Hollywood During the Era of Sound

Damien Chazelle Helms Huge Cast in the Tinseltown Talkie Transition Era

Versatile director/writer Damien Chazelle takes on vintage Hollywood as his next foray, Babylon, during the late 1920’s to early 30’s, corresponding to a crucial point in the industry’s transition from ‘flickers’ to ‘talkies.’

We can only wonder if Chazelle means to examine the impact of sound film had on the lives and careers of two giants of the silent film era, among the dozens of other celebrities of the day associated with Babylon. It’s no secret that this technical innovation bolstered careers for some and devastated it for others, so it makes sense that this must be more than merely incidental.

Not that sound innovation confined to Hollywood. Filmmakers in Europe, Western and Eastern, were making their own inroads, as did Australia. During the 1920’s Japan matched the United States in terms of film production. But the phenomenon known as ‘Hollywood’ evolved into a different creature altogether than its global counterparts. It became something uniquely American, a sentient creature where creativity, politics, loot, and invention became an iconic, infamous hybrid found nowhere else on earth.

More to the point, Hollywood projected, and still does, just as much about human nature behind the screen as the films themselves, and even today sustains (and sustained by) story after legend after myth, a curious continuum of gossip and truth.

The tantalizing question is, where will Babylon end up on this continuum?

It depends on how Chazelle might seed the fertile fields in his vision of early Tinseltown. To what extent will he present well-known facts against the stack of debunked fallacies? What brew would make the most exciting drama and still give posterity its full due?

We must be patient until we know the answer to that. But meanwhile, we do know that two screen romantic icons of yesteryear are represented in the cast, taken on by present-day powerhouse performers. Among a huge cast, Brad Pitt as the ‘Great Lover’ John Gilbert pairs up with Margot Robbie as the ‘It Girl’ Clara Bow.

John Gilbert, the matinee heart-throb of the silent screen, found a fair amount trouble making good in the talkies. But not, as rumor had it, that his voice was deliberately gelded, but the fact that the diction he cultivated for the stage did not always translate well to the screen. A series of flops and triumphs stymied Gilbert’s career over time; his retreat into the bottle ended his life at 38.

It has been speculated that Rudolph Valentino, Gilbert’s main competition, would have suffered the same fate, had he lived. And like Valentino, ‘Jack’ was a simple guy. He loved his work and craved his fame, weaned as he was on the stage by his often abusive stock-actor parents.

Despite Brad Pitt’s formidable talent, I must admit it was something of a challenge to picture him as the dapper and debonaire Gilbert. I couldn’t seem to get the image of Lt. Aldo Raine out of my head–until I reflected on his surprisingly deft portrayal as Louis in Interview with the Vampire, which made it much easier.

The decline of flapper Clara Bow, considered the first female sex symbol of the screen, was rather short, relative to Gilbert’s; it was complicated and smeared all over the media. Smart, athletic, courageous, and spontaneous, she stood out from the very beginning and topped at the box office for her silent films.

While Bow was not a fan of sound film, citing dialog as restrictive, she soldiered on, and it paid off. She stayed on top with nine of them until 1930. Then overwork and one scandal in particular laid Clara low, essentially for good. Falsely accusing her loyal assistant, Daisy DeVoe, of pilfering funds, it was discovered later that in fact her fiance Rex Bell and her father were the culprits. On the flimsiest of evidence, plain-Jane Daisy got 18 months in the slammer, while tough jazz baby Joan Crawford edged out Clara as queen of the screen.

Though she triumphed again in 1932 with Call Her Savage, Clara’s ultimate issue wasn’t technique but temperament. Under studio pressure, she was branded schizophrenic and retired at age 28 under a doctor’s care. She became a hermit until her death at 60, living on DeVoe’s shrewd investments on Clara’s behalf.

Margo Robbie has already offered some outstanding performances of famous women, specifically that of Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Robbie’s candid, forthright, breezy, and downright charming portrait of the ingenuous actress/model strongly suggests she could coax Clara Bow to life again.

Damien Chazelle has triumphed in a wide variety of genres, both critically and financially, with drama (Whiplash), the musical (La La Land), and science fiction (10 Cloverfield Lane). As such we can reasonably assume he’ll have free reign, and with so much pick and choose from the Dream Factory mythos, one could go crazy, in a nice way (at least I did) speculating on what he’ll will come up with.

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Babylon will be released in U.S. theaters through Paramount Pictures on January 6, 2023. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, and Flipboard.