Reflexive Ruritania

This, "The Runaway Princess," is the film I was most looking forward to from this year's online portion of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, as it completes my mission to see Anthony Asquith's four silent films. It has a bit of a reputation that dismisses it as lighter and less important than his others, which unlike this one have all been released on home video. Granted, two of them, "Shooting Stars" (1928) and "A Cottage on Dartmoor" (1929), are unequivocally masterpieces, and the other, "Underground" (1928), is also quite good, but "The Runaway Princess" shouldn't be so easily dismissed, either; indeed, I think it's excellent.

Fitting into the Ruritanian theme of this year's Pordenone festival, this one is especially of note in part because it's made by an actual aristocrat, the son of a British prime minister and Earl of Oxford who joined the disreputable movie business. I believe I'm beginning to see the appeal of these Ruritanian pictures, including thanks to Asquith, whose two silent masterpieces are highly and explicitly cinematically reflexive, about filmmaking and film spectatorship. Asquith in particular was in a position to understand that both the social hierarchy of aristocracy and royalty and the art of cinema were forgeries. Appropriately, then, the film deals in part with catching money forgers, as well as being a series of arranged scenes making a comedy of a royal arranged marriage and a gender-reversal anticipation of Eddie Murphy's "Coming to America" (1988), with the princess becoming a working woman. Other Ruritanian pictures would employ doubles for similar purposes, Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" (1940) being an outstanding example, and exploiting disguise continues in superhero fare such as "Black Panther" (2018).

There's a hint of sexism in this one, the male lead knowing more than the princess--discovering her disguise--and nominally he may even know more than some of the audience, although the ultimate reveal is foreshadowed early on and is quite obvious. He amuses himself at watching her attempts to find employment, quipping "You see you can't earn your own living," which is very pretentious for a guy who literally is only pretending to work himself, as he's mistaken for another detective after the forgers. The amusing thing, too, about the princess being mistaken for a forger is that, in fact, she is a forgery. She's a "princess," nay a "film star," the waiters serving her an expensive dinner speculate before suspecting her a forger, too. They got more right with each guess. The Ruritanian nature of these royals, being prince or princess of this or that country that doesn't really exist further underscores the ultimate illusion, the forgery that is film. There's even a bit of a fake infectious disease I've noticed in earlier films, as perhaps inspired by the real 1918 Influenza, with the princess disguising herself here for a while by wearing a veil--a mask.

And, if you mistake this for a filmmaker who wouldn't intentionally make such a connection, note the puns throughout: a gag of a hat foregrounded to obscure the princess' mouth "gagged" as she speaks, her pretend nervous "breakdown" cutting to a scene of her bicycle breakdown, the arranged marriage that is filmmaking, a series of mistaken identities, forgeries only mistaken when believed to be the real thing. The "Big London Tube Hold-Up" newspaper headline, too, seems a reference to Asquith's prior film "Underground."

Of course it's well made, to boot. There are some nice bits of montage, dolly and trucking shots, including for scenes of walking the London streets. Interesting how so many modes of transportation are employed in this one: besides walking, there's bicycles, roller stakes, cars, trolleys, a train, a boat, and she even looks up to see airplanes at one point. Also on media, including the newspapers and signage of the city lights. Some of these shots take on a documentary-type look--simply putting actors on the street and quickly filming from a car or some vehicle them among real people. At other times it looks like a travelogue, a montage of hotels to stay at during your visit included. We get something of a city and country contrast with this, tradition and modernity, minus the usual tired critique in these things concerning the supposed ills of the metropolis and virtues of the backwoods. Good, reel work from Asquith and company in service of his city and country.