November 9, 2014, 3:45 p.m. — Bare Knees (1928)
Bare Knees
1928. USA. Directed by Erle C. Kenton. Screenplay by Harold Schumate, based on a story by Adele Buffington. With Virginia Lee Corbin, Donald Keith, Jane Winton, Johnnie Walker. That rich late-1920s genre, the flapper comedy, is here explored by an independent studio, Gotham Productions. Corbin is the liberated big-city girl who visits her married, conservative sister (Winton) in small town Virginia—a village so sleepy that Virginia decides to wake it up by ordering thigh-baring uniforms for the girls’ softball team. The eclectic Erle C. Kenton (Island of Lost Souls) directed this engaging discovery, full of flaming youth and saucy intertitles (“Our mother didn’t leave us much...but she sure left it in the right places!”). Preserved by The Library of Congress. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Ben Model. 60 min.
