A ★ review of A Florida Enchantment (1914) (2024)

I imagine a lot of the people who've watched A Florida Enchantment in the last year are doing so because of its mention in Charlie Kaufman's novel, Antkind. Kaufman—whom you may recognize as the scriptwriter for such landmark films as Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (among others)—drops a lot of film references (the protagonist is a film critic) and A Florida Enchantment is one of them. The in-novel writer is researching his next project, wherein he traces transgender themes throughout film and A Florida Enchantment is, per his judgment, the earliest example.

At barely over an hour long, and a snappy synopsis that sounds more like a piece of erotica than an actual story, I figured ignoring the low Letterboxd ratings was, at the very least, low risk.

Unfortunately, while the LGBT+ themes are actually more interesting than I'd have expected from a silent film from 1914, this is without a doubt the most blatantly racist film I've ever seen. Like, most racism in films is lazy stereotyping or subconscious dehumanization—which are awful, don't get me wrong—but A Florida Enchantment is actively trying to inflict harm on the Black characters (all performed in blackface), both physically (one scene has the main character sucker punching her Black servant for no reason) and by creating any excuse to get them on screen to look as stupid as possible. Racism doesn't usually equal hatred (a reason it flies so slyly under the radar so regularly), but in A Florida Enchantment it's actual hatred.

Anyway, the quick synopsis finds a well-to-do woman, Lillian, discovering some magic pills that her grandfather dug up on his travels. When consumed, they turn someone into the opposite gender. Other stuff happens (aside, even, from the racism), although the narrative is so poorly constructed that the actual plot points are hazy, making it feel like A Florida Enchantment is just swinging from random scene to random scene.

As a viewer, the only thing to extol about A Florida Enchantment is the way Lillian (acted by Edith Storey) transforms into a man. Rather than use a male actor, they simply lean on Storey to sell the idea through expressions, mannerisms, body posture, the way she walks, how she talks (particularly with men), etc, etc. Certainly, in a hundred-plus year hindsight, this sort of portrayal of gender is problematic due to its stereotypical reliance on conformation of gender roles, but that's not really on Storey and she does a fabulous job selling her character's masculinity. (It's especially impressive when, towards the end of the film, we see a man take the pills. That actor's attempt to exude a sense of femininity is horrifically exaggerated: A cruel caricature.)

If the racial component wasn't so key to A Florida Enchantment's identity, I'd enjoy talking about the LGBT+ stuff. But as is, it just doesn't feel important.

One star for Storey's performance.
Zero stars for the rest of this film of literal hatred.