| Wine of Youth | |
|---|---|
 Film poster | |
| Directed by | King Vidor |
| Written by | Carey Wilson |
| Based on | Mary the Third, a 1923 play byRachel Crothers |
| Produced by | King Vidor Louis B. Mayer |
| Starring | Eleanor Boardman William Haines Creighton Hale Niles Welch |
| Cinematography | John J. Mescall |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (Englishintertitles) |
Wine of Youth is a 1924 Americansilentcomedy drama film directed byKing Vidor,[1] and released byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer, shortly after the merger which created MGM in April 1924. Vidor did not consider it important enough to mention in his autobiography,[2] although it did advance the careers of three young stars-to-be:Ben Lyon,Eleanor Boardman, andWilliam Haines.
An early "flapper" romance set during theJazz Age and made following the box-office popularity ofFlaming Youth (1923), the film tests the limits of presenting unconventional social behavior among American youth and then ends with apaean toparental authority.[3]
Mary (Eleanor Boardman) is a girl wooed by two suitors but made afraid of marriage by the quarreling of her parents. Eventually, she accepts Lynn (Ben Lyon), the more refined and poised of the two suitors.
Vidor's arrival at the newly amalgamatedMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer would mark the beginning of a 20-year association with the studio.Wine of Youth is his first film appear under M-G-M.[4]
Wine of Youth is the first of four films that preceded Vidor's groundbreaking war epicThe Big Parade (1925). In substance, these four "Jazz Ageflaming youth pictures," of which three survive, bear little resemblance to the work to emerge in the late 1920s.[4]
The film opens by contrasting the courtship rituals that characterized the mothers and grandmothers of the female "flappers" in the post-World War I period. The young women of the earlierVictorian Era swoon while reclining in their parent's parlor with their beaux and declare that "there's never been so great a love as ours." In contrast, the liberated flappers reject these conventions and organize a faux honeymoon with their boyfriends in the forest. They drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and cavort sexually, images very appealing to urban youth of that era. (Vidor described the movie as an "exploitation piece".)
Having defied conventionality and flirted with her virginity, the protagonist, Mary, discovers a new and genuine desire for her future husband that returns her to the fold: "There's never been so great a love as ours." Ostensibly an effort to present the virtues of a trial marriage - to discover "how a man is in everyday life before you give him your all" - Vidor contended that “there were so many restrictions and inhibitions that it really took the guts out of the idea.”[5]
The film is preserved atGeorge Eastman House, Rochester New York.[6] In February 2020, the film was shown at the70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.[7]
