SENSATION SEEKERS
Scen.: Lois Weber. F.: Ben Kline. Int.: Billie Dove (‘Egypt’ Hagen), Huntley Gordon (Ray Sturgis), Raymond Bloomer (Reverend Lodge), Peggy Montgomery (Margaret Todd), Will Gregory (Colonel Todd), Helen Gilmore (Mrs Todd), Edith Yorke (Mrs Hagen), Phillips Smalley (Mr Hagen), Cora Williams (Mrs W. Symme), Sidney Arundel (Deacon W. Symme), Clarence Thompson (Rabbitt Smythe), Nora Cecil (Mrs Lodge), Frances Dale (Tottie), Lillian Lawrence, Fanchon Frankel (Tibbett sisters), Hazel Howell (Guest). Prod.: Universal. Pri. pro.: 20 marzo 1927 35mm. Bn.
Film Notes
One of three films Weber made in the late 1920s that sparked a brief resurgence of her career, Sensation Seekers is a masterful example of her mature work. Here she returns to her interest in gossip and scandal, updating the context to the Jazz Age. Billie Dove stars as Egypt Hagen, a society ‘flapper’ who renounces her hedonistic lifestyle for a more ethical path. It was the second role Weber had written for Dove, catapulting the actress to stardom after several years of playing leading roles with little impact. Critics noted that Weber’s direction had brought out “the full talent of an actress who heretofore has been more or less purely decorative”, noting that Dove’s performances demonstrated that she had become “virtually overnight an actress of the first rank”. Late in life Dove remembered Weber as “the best director I ever had… If I’d had anything to say about it, I would have had her direct all my pictures. I had a lot of men directors that I liked too, but she understood women”. It is ironic that Sensation Seekers propelled Dove to fame – before filming was even complete she had signed a five-year deal with First National – for the film stands alongside 1926’s The Marriage Clause and Weber’s subsequent release, The Angel of Broadway, to mark a trio of films offering remarkably reflexive meditations on the performance of femininity in Hollywood’s glamour culture. If The Marriage Clause and The Angel of Broadway both explore female stardom in the theater – a clear stand-in for the movie industry – Sensation Seekers comes at the question of performance and celebrity from a more oblique angle. A well-known socialite, Egypt lives her life on a kind of media ‘stage’, where her every move is watched and reported upon. The ‘sensation seekers’ evoked in the film’s title are just as much Egypt’s neighbors and fellow church-goers (eager for a scandal between their pastor and a handsome young woman) as they are Egypt’s own ‘ultra-jazzy wealthy set’. Intercutting equates the group’s racy social gatherings with the ruthless behavior of Egypt’s neighbors, gathered to watch the ‘sinful’ goings on, gossiping mercilessly in church, and crowding around to read newspaper coverage of Egypt’s arrest. There is little difference, the film asserts, between those who seek sensation through alcohol or sex and those who seek it through scandal and gossip mongering.