There is Old Hollywood and then there is Germinal Hollywood (“Silent Era” Hollywood, if you prefer). The latter has been less a fascination in the public eye because it appears, on the surface, not to have as much “glamor” attached to it. But oh, how the silent film stars of the day were shellacked. Coated in a veneer of glitz that belied what was going on behind the scenes. Such debauchery and excess that could only occur at the beginning of the “film colony.” Before the rest of the world infiltrated it with its opinions and judgments, all so infused with “morality.” Before the Hays Code and sound in pictures came along to decimate the germinal era.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle’s preoccupation with “the Hollywood machine” was made evident with his sixth film, La La Land. A movie that, lest anyone forget, initially received all the much-deserved praise it got before a backlash suddenly arose about it exemplifying the #OscarsSoWhite phenomenon—and then came the controversial false announcement that it had won Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards (it was actually Moonlight, so way to fuck shit up for a Black triumph again). But despite all that, La La Land remains a timeless story about the “clawing your way to fame in Hollywood” narrative. However, it appears Chazelle might have thought Emma Stone too precious in that role (as Mia Dolan) and wanted to show an even more realistic, darker side of Hollywood. As Kenneth Anger wanted to with his notorious book, Hollywood Babylon, which, yes, speaks of the same scandalous lifestyles Chazelle is acknowledging in his latest underrated work, Babylon (what else would it be called?).
With this particular film (coming in at a sprawling three hours), Chazelle is adamant about immediately acquainting the viewer with just how debauched Hollywood in its infancy really was. We’re talking shit that makes the story of Harvey Weinstein look totally innocent. This is why Chazelle is certain to make reference to the 1921 Fatty Arbuckle scandal in the initial twentyish minutes of the movie, with a fat man being “entertained” (read: pissed on) by a naked actress who has just secured her first part in a movie. When the Fatty Arbuckle-esque actor, named Wilbur (E.E. Bell), has to inform Bob Levine (Flea—yes, Flea) of Jane Thornton’s (Phoebe Tonkin) passed-out, brutalized state (Virginia Rappe didn’t end up quite so fortunate, dying instead), Bob calls on Don Wallach’s (Jeff Garlin) all-around servant/jack-of-all-trades, Manuel Torres (Diego Calva). Having crossed the border with his family at twelve, it’s immediately made clear that Manuel is enamored of the movies, of what they “mean.” Never mind the sordid lives of the people who make them. The people who are deified by the masses, therefore can only disappoint in the end when the reality of their personal lives comes to light. As it always does, even back then… Thanks to gossip columnists like Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Louella Parsons type who skulks around every party and event stoically in search of some morsel to print.
And no one would love to be written about more than the as-of-yet unknown Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), who crashes the Don Wallach industry party the viewer is invited to observe as Babylon launches us into a world of depravity and devil-may-care antics. After all, this was a time when no threat of being filmed or photographed by some interloper was even a thought on anyone’s radar. That would come much, much later—with the full-tilt castration of any members of the “film colony.” But in 1926, where Chazelle sets the stage at the end of the silent film era, it was all free-wheeling and rabble-rousing. Which is why Nellie has no qualms about literally crashing the party as the car she’s likely stolen hits a statue when she rolls up to Wallach’s. While the gatekeeper of the house tells her she’s not on the list, Manuel plays along with her charade (which includes telling the guard she’s real-life silent film star Billie Dove) by calling out, “Nellie LaRoy? They’re waiting for you.” With that, Manuel effectively gives her the keys to the Hollywood kingdom, for it turns out she’ll be given the small part that was reserved for Jane Thornton in Maid’s Off now that she’s been decimated by Wilbur. Before this moment, however, she and Manuel will bond over a few piles of cocaine (mostly consumed by Nellie) as he opens up to her about “wanting to be part of something bigger.” Part of “something that lasts, that means something.”
Indeed, Babylon is all about the chase for immortality that only the medium of film (and its various offshoots at this point) can provide. Unlike the once revered medium of literature, someone is actually brought “to life” every time one of their movies is played decades or (now) centuries later. That’s what someone like Nellie, channeling her Pearl-esque obsession with getting famous (and Pearl, too, existed around the same timeframe Babylon touts), wants more than anything. The same is true for an already-established star like Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), whose personal life is modeled after Douglas Fairbanks (married three times), while his aesthetic and career are modeled more after John Gilbert’s (married four times). For it was the latter who adhered to the advice of the day re: transitioning from silents to “talkies”: use proper stage diction. This pronounced “eloquence” on Gilbert’s part is what often led audiences to laugh openly at his movies with sound. A scene recreated in Babylon when Conrad sneaks into a theater to see the audience’s reaction to his new feature. In 1929’s Redemption, Gilbert has a line that goes: “I’m going to kill myself to let the whole world know what it has lost.” It seems Conrad is ultimately of this belief by the conclusion of Babylon.
But before that, we witness the last days of Babylon (the OG way to phrase “the last days of disco”) as the elephant we’re very bluntly introduced to in the first few minutes comes out to distract the partygoers from Jane’s body being carried out. Not that they would really need an elephant to distract them, for it all looks like the stuff of Eyes Wide Shut: everyone fucking everyone in any given square inch of the room. Manuel is instructed to take Jack home, enduring his various ramblings about the movie industry and how, “We’ve got to dream beyond these pesky shells of flesh and bone. Map those dreams onto celluloid and print them into history.” After he falls off his balcony during this urging to innovate the medium into something better, something more than “costume dramas,” he invites Manuel to accompany him to work, asking, “Have you ever been to a movie set before?” He admits, “No.” Jack assures, “You’ll see. It’s the most magical place in the world.”
It is in this moment, “only” thirty-one minutes into the movie, that the title card finally flashes: BABYLON. And with that title mind, let us not forget how Anger commenced his own Hollywood Babylon, with the Don Blanding poem called “Hollywood” from Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove. It goes:
“Hollywood, Hollywood
Fabulous Hollywood
Celluloid Babylon
Glorious, glamorous
City delirious
Frivolous, serious…
Bold and ambitious,
And vicious and glamorous.
Drama—a city-full,
Tragic and pitiful…
Bunk, junk and genius
Amazingly blended…
Tawdry, tremendous,
Absurd, stupendous;
Shoddy and cheap,
And astonishingly splendid…
HOLLYWOOD!!”
Yes, Hollywood is all of these dichotomies. And, to the point of being “amazingly blended,” Chazelle focuses on the trials and tribulations of people of color in early Hollywood, including Manuel, who will later Americanize his name to Manny (which is what Nellie calls him from the beginning). There’s also Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li), who appears to offer some nod to the “Dragon Lady” trope of Anna May Wong, though Wong was never reduced to writing title cards for silent movies, which we’re given an up close and personal look at as Zhu writes dialogue for “The Girl” that starts out, “Sweet sixteen and never—well, maybe once or twice.” There’s also Black trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), reduced to eventually putting on blackface makeup to make himself look “blacker” for the purposes of lighting issues within a certain film.
A meta element in terms of how much Babylon pays homage to Sunset Boulevard with regard to subject matter (“the dark side of Hollywood” and the putting out to pasture of silent film stars—complete with cameos by the likes of Buster Keaton) occurs during a moment where Jack Conrad is speaking to Gloria Swanson on the phone, using reverse psychology to get her to play a small part for cheap in his movie. Swanson would famously star as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece. With failed screenwriter (a newly-made profession after the “title writers” of the silent movie epoch) Joe Gillis (William Holden) standing by to watch Norma’s madness, her delusions of still being relevant as he narrates, “I didn’t argue with her. You don’t yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck. That’s it. She was still sleepwalking along the giddy heights of a lost career—plain crazy when it came to that one subject: her celluloid self. The great Norma Desmond! How could she breathe in that house so crowded with Norma Desmonds? More Norma Desmonds and still more Norma Desmonds.”
Watching old movies of her celluloid self projected onto a screen every night, she is made youthful and immortal any time she desires, contributing to the delusion. Nellie, whose character is inspired by Clara Bow, has fewer delusions, especially after hearing two men talk shit about her at another party. One of them says of the silent film stars, “It’s the end, I’m telling you. It’s the end for all of ‘em. All the frogs.”
For although Chazelle started us in 1926, he then takes us to 1927, with the advent of sound in movies changing everything. A proverbial “Video Killed the Radio Star” effect for the silent movie titans. This is the innovation Jack has been crying out for, unaware that it will be the cause of his own undoing. “You think people want that though? Sound in their movies?” Jack inquires in a public restroom before the sound of someone taking a fat shit in one of the stalls ensues. The studio executive, Billy (Sean O’Bryan), who Jack asks this of replies, “Yeah, why wouldn’t they?” In the next instant, Jack is declaring to Manny and George Munn (Lukas Haas), “This is what we’ve been looking for! Sound is how we redefine the form!” Munn insists, “People go to the movies not to listen to the noise.” This as Olga (Karolina Szymczak), his latest wife, is having a major tantrum involving the bombastic smashing of dishes.
In a moment of “passion,” she shoots him, but this doesn’t stop Manny from carrying out his instructions from Jack to go check out a screening of The Jazz Singer in New York. Seeing the audience reaction there, Manny informs Jack that everything is about to change (running out of the theater while the picture is still playing to do so). Chazelle then cuts to 1928. Specifically, to a sound stage in 1928, where, in contrast to the noisy, chaotic vibe of the “sets” we saw in 1926, the signage everywhere calls for silence as we note just that in the various shots of the sound stage in question.
With this new era in cinema birthed, Chazelle gets to the heart of the many challenges to navigate during the infancy of sound in film, complete with one of the sound guys forced into a hot box of an operation that eventually causes him to die for some non-masterpiece, a total throwaway movie. Death is, indeed, everywhere in Babylon, reinforcing the notion that it’s not so serious so long as one knows they’ve been a part of that something “greater” that Manny was talking about. That they’ve secured a small piece of immortality even if they were “only” part of the production crew (after all, their name will still be in the credits). On a fitting side note, Babylon has only been able to enter the race for an Oscar because of the work done on the film by those “behind the scenes.”
But back to the silent movie era. Another point of this phase in cinema history seemed to be to reiterate that everything in life is just scenes. “Vignettes.” And in the time of the silent movie era, that’s all that could be captured. The advent of cinema—therefore the ability to “document” as never before—changed everything. The way people were suddenly motivated by the performance of life rather than actual life.
The chaos of onset life before the “talkies” is told in bursts and fits, with abrupt pauses to heighten the sense of calm that comes only when filming stops. An extra’s death after being impaled by one of the props prompts George to note nonchalantly, “He’s dead.” Another man says, “He did have a drinking problem.” George shrugs, “That’s true, probably ran into himself, huh?” Thus, yet another person has sacrificed themselves very literally to the art of filmmaking. And, to that end, there is an iconic scene of Nellie at the party during the opening of Babylon where she lies on the floor, her arms splayed out in “Christ position” as though offering herself to the celluloid gods. That’s what all of these actors and actresses were willing to do. Whatever it took to “get themselves up there.” To become gods to all “those wonderful people out there in the dark,” as Norma Desmond calls them.
Not only is Nellie able to secure that place thanks to the dumb luck of Jane being subjected to Wilbur, but also because of her unique ability to cry on cue without any aid whatsoever from glycerin. In awe, the director asks, “How do you do it, just tear up over and over again?” Nellie replies, “I just think of home.” For she’s the quintessential type of person who comes to Hollywood determined never to go back to the bowel from whence they came. Appropriately, we find out that the place that makes Nellie cry on cue is New York as she tells Manny, “Why would Conrad send you here? God. I got out of this place first chance I got.” And yes, most of Hollywood’s early film community had “immigrated” from NYC. Proof that the East Coast has always known that the West holds more promise despite their cries of “inferior!” While back in her hometown, we find out that Nellie has a mother in a sanatorium—how very Marilyn. Though Clara Bow would have a mother in one of those long before Norma Jeane did.
As Manny continues to climb up the Hollywood ladder behind the scenes (more in love with Nellie than ever), Nellie, in turn, proceeds to tumble down it. Not just because her voice and persona aren’t “translating,” but because she’s also started up an affair with Zhu (who has been eyeing Nellie from the beginning of her career, only able to entice her once she sucks snake poison out of her neck in the desert). Manny, determined to keep protecting Nellie any way he can, warns Zhu, “There’s a new sensibility now. People care about morals,” presaging what’s to come with the Hays Code.
Chazelle then gives us another time jump to 1930 as Jack watches the dailies for his first sound feature. Something he can’t seem to enjoy without George’s presence. For he’s since killed himself in the wake of another female jilting. The film turns out to be a huge flop and, by 1932, Jack admits to Elinor, “Well, my last two movies didn’t work, but I learned a lot from ‘em.” That doesn’t stop Elinor from printing what she really thinks about the washed-up actor, giving him a cover story with the headline, “Is Jack Conrad Through?” When he goes to her office to confront her directly about it after it causes Irving Thalberg (Max Minghella) to dodge all his calls to the studio, she explains simply, “Your time has run out. There is no ‘why.’” The conversation that ensues is one that applies eerily to Brad Pitt’s own career, as he begins to willingly declare a state of semi-retirement now that he’s approaching his sixties. A thought unthinkable: a movie star getting old. But it happens. The only difference now is, the public has an easier time tracking and critiquing the aging process. For, as Elinor says, “It’s those of us in the dark, the ones who just watch, who survive.” And those in the spotlight are left to watch it cruelly dim.
As Nellie’s certainly has while Manny continues to stick his neck out for her, causing him to be taken to L.A.’s underworld by a seedy character named James McKay (Tobey Maguire). It’s in this den of far bleaker iniquity than what we saw in the true halcyon days of Babylon that Manny is shown a Nightmare Alley-like geek that eats rats. While Babylon might “revamp” history (unlike Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood all out revising it—and yes, Babylon is something Murphy might be able to create if he was capable of more seriousness and less camp), it is entirely accurate in wielding this metaphorical image as McKay delights in saying to Manny, “He’ll do anything for money!”
In the end, that’s what cinema is about, despite MGM’s logo declaring, “Ars gratia artis” (“Art for art’s sake”). It has never been fully about art, which is partially how a 1915 Supreme Court case ruled that the right of the First Amendment shouldn’t extend to film, with Justice Joseph McKenna insisting film was a “business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit.” But as, Jack Conrad tries to explain to his snobby theater actress wife, film is an art above all else. Even if it caters to “low culture” for the sake of a studio’s profits. And, speaking of studios, as it did in Sunset Boulevard, Paramount Pictures is happy to play the part of the soul-crushing studio that chews up youth and spits it out when the audience is done with the actor in question. In Babylon, it’s “disguised” as Kinoscope (Sunset Boulevard didn’t bother changing the name at all). Where Manny eventually returns with his wife and child in 1952 to see how it has changed. And oh, how the whole town has changed since he was chased out of it thanks to Nellie (the foolish things one does for love, etc.). Marilyn Monroe is clearly all the rage now—along with Technicolor and Cinemascope, tools designed to emphasize that television remains no comparison for the big screen. And it seems in this instant, we’re meant to understand the disappointment of each original generation seeing what comes with the new, and the increasing bastardization of film. At the same time, progress is what all the forebears wanted. To see the industry grow and change and flourish—even if it meant they could no longer be part of it. That is the unsung selflessness of moviemaking.
As Manny enters a movie theater near Paramount to take his seat, we experience, with him, a “wonderful people out there in the dark” moment as he watches Singin’ in the Rain, stunned into tears as he recognizes the story of Nellie’s own botched transition to the talkies in Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), whose voice is too “unpolished” for dialogue. Chazelle then makes the daring move to break away from this movie and reveal a montage of other scenes from films that have proven themselves to be benchmarks in the incremental progress of the medium. So it is that Elinor’s consolation to Jack is proven, the one in which she asserts, “When you and I are both long gone, any time someone threads a frame of yours through a sprocket, you’ll be alive again. You see what that means? One day every person on every film shot this year will be dead, and one day all those films will be pulled from the vaults and all their ghosts will dine together… Your time today is through, but you’ll spend eternity with angels and ghosts.” And yet, somehow, that unique form of immortality doesn’t take away from the sadness of watching oneself atrophy in real time. It was Chloë Sevigny who once said she disliked the idea of watching herself age onscreen with each passing film. And yet, is that not a small price to pay for the “privilege” of immortality? Even if Hollywood is no longer “the crowd of cocaine-crazed, sexual lunatics” it once was in the days of Babylon. Even if, as Anger put it, “…the fans could be fickle, and if their deities proved to have feet of clay, they could be cut down without compassion. Off screen a new Star was always waiting to make an entrance.”
Babylon reiterates that point (and so much more) about Hollywood, the greatest dream ever sold. The greatest (and only) means by which to remain truly immortal.
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