Review: Slapstick Festival: Chicago

Murder, adultery and all that jazz: Chicago has been a hit Broadway musical, a critically acclaimed film, and has sparked the imagination of anyone who secretly loves a little glitz, a moonshine cocktail and a bit of bad behaviour. And there’s something uniquely compelling, fun and totally unique about Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 silent Chicago that the other film versions just don’t have. 

1920s America is a period of history that captures the imagination. The boozy broads, the cabaret, the gangsters, the flappers with their sequins and gaudy beads: it’s an era immortalised in stories and films like The Great Gatsby, Boardwalk Empire and the wonderful Some Like It Hot.

However, what we rarely get to see is film from the actual, real 1920s. DeMille’s Chicago is a sneak peek into an infamous past with a sassy, saucy sense of humour. Screened at Arnolfini with a brilliantly performed live score courtesy of the European Silent Screen Virtuosi, this rare gem made for a great evening out.

The story itself has a fascinating history. Originally a play by genuine 1920s Chicago journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins, its murderous beauties Roxie Hart (played here by Phyllis Haver) and Two Guns Rosie (Viola Louie) are based on real-life killers. Chicago’s morally dubious press and legal system ensured that their crimes turned them into celebrities who basked in their infamy in front of a captivated public eye.

Chicago tells the story of flirtatious, vain and money-minded Roxie Hart, who is married to Amos Hart (Victor Varconi), a doting but penniless husband who simply can’t provide her with the trinkets and furs she so loves. So, Roxie takes a wealthy older lover, soon-to-be-deceased sugar daddy, Casely (Eugene Pallette).

When Casely grows tired of funding Roxie’s flamboyant lifestyle, he decides to ditch her. Roxie’s reaction is a bullet to the head. Panicked, she calls her husband, persuades him that Casely was a burglar who tried to take advantage, and he agrees to take the fall for the murder.

However, when Amos finds a very recognisable jingle-bell garter in the dead man’s pocket (seriously, girl, if you’re going to mess around behind your husband’s back, don’t wear such distinctive underwear), he realises what’s really happened. So much in love with the flirty vixen is the heartbroken Amos, that he forgives her. However, when the police realise what’s really happened, they aren’t so lenient.

For the rest of the film, we see Amos beg, borrow and steal to try and get Roxie out of jail and keep her away from the noose. He hires corrupt lawyer Billie Flynn (Robert Edeson) who, like Roxie, realises there’s money to be made from her beauty (and her desire for fame and attention). Flynn decides to make his own killing by ensuring she’s a hit with the press. Under his guidance, Roxie becomes the salacious murderer of the week in a town drunk on illegal liquor and obsessed by beautiful but deadly creatures.

As Roxie really gets into the role of delicate, damsel in distress (after Flynn gives her the classic line to perform in court ‘we both reached for the gun!’) she gains headlines, and becomes more and more vacuous and self-obsessed. The court love her, and she literally gets away with murder.

The moral to the story? When new brunette beauty Two Guns Rosie shoots her lover at the courthouse in front of the gathered paparrazi, Roxie’s antics are all too quickly ignored – by both the press and her long-suffering husband. Amos finally throws her out into the cold.

It’s a great film, and Hayver is a wonderful actress (she was formerly one of the ‘Sennett Bathing Beauties’, Mack Sennett being widely credited as one of the founders of the slapstick genre). Seeing a genuine Twenties performance by a money-minded, ditzy blonde temptress makes performances like Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot (“Why do I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop?”) all the more hilarious.

Darkly funny, wonderfully silly and historically fascinating, Chicago is a hot, naughty, raunchy and unique watch. What a great and rare addition to the always brilliant Slapstick Festival. 

Chicago was screened at Arnolfini on Thursday, January 21 as part of Slapstick 2016. For more Slapstick dates, visit www.slapstick.org.uk