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Respectfully acknowledged in academic studies, Shooting Stars has
nevertheless suffered for being book-ended by Hitchcock classics and ignored
during the resurrection of other treasures from the 'golden age' of late British
silent cinema, belying its importance in terms of both technical and thematic
innovation. It marked the fiction feature debut of British Instructional Films,
whose change in direction fostered a remarkable sense of freedom. Now also
recognised as Anthony Asquith's directorial debut, the film was credited to
supervising veteran A.V. Bramble, though Asquith was given an authorial credit
beneath the title for his script, a spiky satire of the domestic film industry.
In a virtuoso opening sequence, star couple Mae Feather and Julian Gordon
enact a romantic scene for their latest 'epic,' but as the camera pans back the
artifice of moviemaking is exposed, as is the fragile state of the couple's
marriage, establishing the film's key theme of 'real life' versus 'the movies'.
As Mae flounces off set, the sequence grows in ambition, demonstrating
Asquith's technically intrepid style, with a camera high in the rafters tracking
her through the cavernous studio.
Performance style is another distinctive feature: Mae's unhappiness and her
love for comedy star Andy Wilks are conveyed through subtle body language, and
Asquith's controlled direction of the three leads is further demonstrated in the
scene in which Julian catches Mae and Andy kissing, the significance of the
situation dawning on each of them in turn. Similar discipline is exhibited in
the use of visual prompts in place of superfluous intertitles.
The art direction and photography lend a melancholic air to the studio
scenes, not least in the poignant epilogue, in which a humbled Mae is faced with
the consequences of her selfishness. Shooting Stars begins as a witty and
affectionate look at the smoke-and-mirrors world of filmmaking, with many a wink
to its audience, but as the paranoia associated with adultery takes its toll,
the mood becomes somewhat darker.
Julian initially wishes that life were "more like the movies" and takes
refuge in the cinema to watch himself and Mae perform a fantasy of virtue and
heroism (the innovatory 'film-within-a-film' motif is inescapable). Yet
Asquith's vision is far from idealistic, and the tawdry pretence of Mae and
Julian's action-romances and Andy's sub-Chaplin slapstick routines serve as a
reminder that real life contains far greater drama and pathos than anything
churned out in a film studio.
Simon McCallum
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1. A night out (5:19)
