Beggars Of Life
Posted: February 26th, 2012, 9:43 am
Spoiler Alert
I watched The Beggars Of Life for the first time right through this morning. I also wanted to discover Louise Brooks. Not knowing to much about Lousie Brooks, other than she was regarded as a flapper girl of the 1920s, I wondered if she was cast against type in this movie.
She plays Nancy, a girl adopted by a male single parent, who wanted to seduce her. She put up with his advances until he tried to rape her. In self defence she pulled out either a shot gun or a rifle and killed him. She must have realized, though it was self defence, no court would believe her, so she put male clothing to disguise herself. While this was going on a young tramp entered the house in search of food. He believes her story and decides to take her with him. After a failed attempt to get Nancy to jump onto movie train, he decides to take her to Canada.
It was great to see Brooks do her own stunt in jumping onto a freight train, but assume it was either a stunt woman or man, who doubled for her when a guard forced her to jump of the train at high speed. On their travels they run into a group of hobos led by Wallace Beery, who looks a bit like Chill Wills to me. He's a complex character, who at times appeared to be against the couple, but in fact gave his life so they had a fighting chance of reaching Canada.
The film shows if anthing how difficult it was for woman in abusive relations back in the 1920s, when Nancy had to flee for her life, mearly for defending herself
I watched The Beggars Of Life for the first time right through this morning. I also wanted to discover Louise Brooks. Not knowing to much about Lousie Brooks, other than she was regarded as a flapper girl of the 1920s, I wondered if she was cast against type in this movie.
She plays Nancy, a girl adopted by a male single parent, who wanted to seduce her. She put up with his advances until he tried to rape her. In self defence she pulled out either a shot gun or a rifle and killed him. She must have realized, though it was self defence, no court would believe her, so she put male clothing to disguise herself. While this was going on a young tramp entered the house in search of food. He believes her story and decides to take her with him. After a failed attempt to get Nancy to jump onto movie train, he decides to take her to Canada.
It was great to see Brooks do her own stunt in jumping onto a freight train, but assume it was either a stunt woman or man, who doubled for her when a guard forced her to jump of the train at high speed. On their travels they run into a group of hobos led by Wallace Beery, who looks a bit like Chill Wills to me. He's a complex character, who at times appeared to be against the couple, but in fact gave his life so they had a fighting chance of reaching Canada.
The film shows if anthing how difficult it was for woman in abusive relations back in the 1920s, when Nancy had to flee for her life, mearly for defending herself