LES VAMPIRES
(Louis Feuillade, 1915-16).
In the early years of the last century, a film genre was invented that
became hugely popular - the adventure serial. Just as the publication
of novels in installments had fired public interest for almost two centuries,
so the serialized film story had audiences waiting in suspense for each
succeeding episode. The most famous was Pathé's The Perils
of Pauline (1914). Ever in competition was France's other big studio,
Gaumont, and from that company came a series of works by its principal
producer and director, Louis Feuillade, that are still considered the
high point of the form.
Unlike Fantomas (1913-14), his first success in the genre, Les
Vampires was not based on previous material, but written by Feuillade
himself. The story concerns a criminal gang called The Vampires, mysterious
and resourceful, that terrorizes France with a succession of swindles,
robberies, and murders. Aiding the often ineffectual police is Philippe
Guérande (Edouard Mathé), a crusading journalist, and
his comic sidekick (and former Vampire) Mazamette (Marcel Lévesque).
On the other side are a host of villains, notably a woman with an anagram
for a name, Irma Vep (Musidora), Moréno (Fernand Herrmann), a
fiendish rival of the Vampires, and a master plotter named Satanas (Louis
Leubas) who includes a portable cannon in his arsenal of evil.
Shot on the back streets and alleys of Paris, the adventures have a
loose, improvised feel. Characters and plot threads come and go without
a great deal of logic or consistency. There are ten episodes, adding
up to about seven hours - all beautifully presented on a DVD from Water
Bearer Films (or on five videos). At first, it's slow going. A lot more
time is spent on mundane set-ups and establishing shots than a modern
audience is used to tolerating. The straight-on camera placement, medium
shots, and box-like confinement of the indoor sequences would be readily
accepted by the audience of that time, but tend to be tiresome for us.
Around the fourth episode, however, it seems that Feuillade and his
crew started getting more into the feel of things. The plots become
more and more outlandish, with missing bodies, trap doors, hypnotism,
death-simulating serums, daring prison escapes, and so forth. The introduction
of the Irma Vep character around this time also adds life to the proceedings.
Watching the episodes back-to-back (in my case, not all in one sitting,
but in three), while not the experience originally intended for audiences,
habituated my mind to the form, until I was captured (or perhaps worn
down) and under its spell. Eventually the film became a kind of alternate
world of imagined crime, living in my head like the vision of a lost
time.
In 1915, sensational crime stories were a relatively new thing to movie
audiences, so one can see why Les Vampires was so popular. (The
police even banned the series for glorifying crime, until they were
placated by a visit from the alluring Musidora.) Of course the stories
are implausible and ridiculous, but Feuillade intended them to be just
what they are - wild escapist entertainment. The fact that he made them
up as they went along, with scenes being determined by factors such
as the availability of an actor or a setting, gives the series a strange,
darkly amusing, almost surrealistic quality.
One cannot accurately evaluate the impact of the cinema without taking
melodrama into account. The most popular art form was shaped in response
to mass audience taste, and Les Vampires was a fascinating milepost
along the way.
THE DIVORCÉE
(Robert Z. Leonard, 1930).
Norma Shearer plays the witty and cultivated Jerry, whose marriage
to Ted (Chester Morris) falls apart when she discovers that he has been
unfaithful to her. Ted dismisses his adultery as a meaningless indiscretion,
but Jerry is so hurt that she ends up sleeping with Ted's best friend
Don (Robert Montgomery). When Ted finds out, he turns out to be less
forgiving than he had asked Jerry to be.
The film has a lot going for it: that glossy, high-key look that only
Metro pictures had, clever dialogue that manages to be adult (at least
in the first half), and the star presence of Shearer, whose charm and
unusual type of beauty seems so modern. It's refreshing that her character
rejects the sexual double standard. Made before the clamping down of
the Code, after which such controversial issues would be banished from
the screen for decades, The Divorcée at least expresses
an idea of freedom, even though it backs away from it later in the film.
For of course the supposedly carefree life of a divorcée fails
to compensate Jerry for the loss of her husband, whom she still loves.
Shearer (who won an Oscar for this role), does less well after the divorce,
when she must act the part of a woman who is fighting back tears as
she desperately tries to have fun. The script starts to get soggy, and
a soap opera subplot about a former suitor whose wife's face was disfigured
in a car crash (she wears a veil to cover her shame) is atrocious. Things
might have been better if Montgomery, who is funny and appealing here,
had played the husband, and Morris, who is a stick, had played the best
friend. As it is, The Divorcée delivers a not uncommon
disappointment - bold and interesting in its set-up, far too conventional
in its resolution.
Still, it's not bad. The movie clips along, sustaining interest most
of the way, and Shearer is most definitely worth watching. In fact,
the film reinvented her as a star, from a sweet ingenue to an image
of chic, worldly sophistication.
THE BLUE ANGEL
(Josef von Sternberg, 1930).
After failing to achieve much box office success at Paramount, Sternberg
went to Germany on the invitation of the great actor Emil Jannings (with
whom he had previously worked on The Last Command), to make a
film of Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrath. The result was
this stunning work, one of Sternberg's greatest pictures, that launched
the career of Marlene Dietrich.
Jannings plays a stuffy provincial schoolteacher at a boy's boarding
school, hopelessly old-fashioned, mocked and despised by most of his
students. When he discovers that they are sneaking out at night to a
local nightclub (The Blue Angel), he goes himself in hopes of catching
them and of reprimanding the club for corrupting minors. There he sees
the main attraction, a singer named Lola Lola (Dietrich), but instead
of saving his students from her bad influence, he himself becomes infatuated
with her. This relationship leads him down the road to humiliation and
a complete loss of dignity.
Sternberg was a master of light and shadow. The Blue Angel
displays his great instincts for the telling shot, ingenious use of
screen space, and chiarascuro. The scenes with the professor walking
alone through the streets on the way to the nightclub (with the wonderful
sets by Otto Hunte) seem to sum up an entire visual style in German
film, from Caligari to Lang, Pabst, and Murnau. And although
much of it seems static compared to the director's later work, it's
also earthier, less baroque, more emotional and moving.
Marlene Dietrich was 28, and had been in movies for a decade, usually
in supporting roles. Sternberg chose her for the role of Lola against
all advice, and of course she turned out to be perfect. The image of
her singing "Falling in Love Again" in her top hat and black stockings
has become legendary. (The outrageously tacky nightclub costumes are
a hoot). But she's also convincing in her quiet scenes with Jannings
- tender, gently humorous without mockery or contempt. Even later when
she is cruel to him, there is sadness mixed in with it. Dietrich's confident
sexuality caused a sensation on the film's release, but the ambiguity
of her performance - she really does love the old man - has given it
staying power.
In truth, the film presents contradictory ideas that aren't reconciled.
Overtly, it tells a simple story of degeneration - an upright old man
foolishly gives in to his carnal nature and is punished for it. The
trouble with this story is that the professor is clearly a strict and
unlovable authority figure at the beginning of the film, but is humanized
by his love for the cabaret singer. Sternberg is always poking fun at
the teacher's prudishness - as when we see him staring dumfounded at
the naked breasts on a statue. The film's sympathies are secretly with
Lola and her world. But in 1930 audiences could only be treated to decadence
if it was wrapped in moralism, and thus we have The Blue Angel's
double message - sexuality will free you, and it will destroy you.
In the early sound era, before dubbing, studios would often shoot a
film twice in different languages. The Blue Angel was made in
a German and English version, both of which are included in the Kino
restoration on DVD. Naturally, the German version is better, because
the actors seem less comfortable speaking English. The print seems almost
pristine - it was like seeing the film for the first time. They've done
a beautiful job presenting this truly great film.
PORTRAIT OF TERESA
(Pastor Vega, 1979).
Teresa (Daisy Granados) is a textile worker in Cuba. She's also the
organizer of the factory's cultural program, and her fellow workers
have come to depend on her. But the extra hours she spends on rehearsals
don't sit well with her husband (Adolfo Llauradó) who wants her
to spend more time taking care of him and their three children.
Sexual equality was becoming a major issue in Cuba, as it was everywhere,
and Vega's film confronts the problem of machismo. The husband makes
the traditional assumption that a woman's place is in the home, and
that her happiness resides exclusively in the roles of wife and mother.
He resents having to share housework, expecting her to do all of that.
Teresa wants to have a wider range in her activities and to experience
fulfillment and a sense of being useful in society. Her married life
seems more and more like slavery to her, and even though her mother
and friends caution her to give in, she won't turn back from her drive
to have more independence.
This all seems rather programmatic, especially looking back on it today.
And Vega's technique is anything but daring. (It's interesting to see
how the typical 1970s film style - right down to the cheesy music and
use of freeze-frame - extended even into Castro's Cuba.) But the film
succeeds more often than not, due to the matter-of-fact naturalism of
the performances, and the attention to little details of everyday life
in a struggling, working class family. Granados is fine in the title
role - the scenes of conflict between Teresa and her husband are compelling
and emotionally honest.
The conflict ends up being more about sex and the double standard concerning
infidelity (shades of The Divorcée, except much more realistic)
as it is about equality and independence. And that's par for the course
in 1979, I guess, or even today. Portrait of Teresa is, in fact,
a little flat, like a TV message movie. The difference is that it doesn't
go quite where you expect it to - things aren't so easy in life as they
usually appear in films, and this is one movie that recognizes that.
THE LOST WEEKEND
(Billy Wilder, 1945).
Don Birnam (Ray Milland), an alcoholic writer, promises his devoted
girlfriend (Jane Wyman) that he'll stay sober, but instead falls off
the wagon and goes on a frightening three day binge.
The first movie to focus on the ravages of alcoholism is extraordinarily
relentless in its portrayal of each stage of the main character's descent
into a private hell. Birnam lies and steals in order to get money for
booze. Eventually he ends up in a hospital and goes through delirium
tremens. Wilder starts by having us identify with his hero, and then
we share Birnam's desperate point of view as he tries, and fails, to
fight against his compulsion to drink. The audience experiences the
demoralization and collapse of the main character so directly and intimately
that the result is compasson and understanding rather than judgment.
Milland turns in a great performance, for which he won an Oscar. Any
addict will tell you that the picture is deadly accurate about the way
a drunk behaves, the anxiety and self-loathing, the resourcefulness
about hiding his condition and finding ways to get more alcohol. Milland
plays it with self-awareness, charm, pathos, humor, terror. You see
the way he lies to himself, and you see that he can see it too. He knows
he can't stop, and that's the scariest thing of all.
Some of the film's methods are a bit heavy-handed, though. Miklós
Rózsa's score, with its creepy Theramin-style theme, is way too
insistent, piling the dramatic effects on so thickly that it becomes
distracting. The hospital sequence features a male nurse (Frank Faylen)
whose bitterly humorous attitude is meant to be cautionary but is instead
grotesque. Wyman's noble suffering girlfriend can be hard to take. And
there's no solution in sight - the unconvincingly hopeful ending begs
the question of how exactly Birnam can recover, unless it's in AA, which
is never mentioned.
Yet despite these flaws, The Lost Weekend still holds up, because
Wilder and Charles Brackett had the integrity to adapt the Charles Jackson
novel without softening it, and because Wilder always had the ability
to get into the point of view of loners and outsiders without alienating
the audience. Paramount thought it would flop. So did most of the press.
But he proved them wrong. Not only was it a critical success, and an
Oscar winner (picture, actor, director, and screenplay), but it made
big money at the box office. It might seem old-fashioned today in some
respects, but its psychological power remains impressive.
©2002 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
