THE CHILDHOOD OF MAXIM GORKY
(Mark Donskoy, 1938).
Donskoy adapted all three parts of Gorky's autobiography, and this first
part was one of the 1930s most popular Soviet films. It tells of Gorky's
boyhood in a small village, living at the house of his grandfather,
who owns a dye works. Mikhail Troyanovsky is remarkable in the difficult
role of the old man--a creature in which cruelty and tenderness are
strangely intermingled. Gorky's uncles become involved in a poisonous
rivalry that gradually destroys their father's business, and the only
stable force in the house is the patient and long-suffering grandmother
(Varvara Massalitinova) who loves her grandson without reserve but can't
protect him from the beatings.
Donskoy and his cinematographer (Pyotr Yermolov) have a genius for conveying
the beauty and mystery of landscape--the visual compositions are breathtaking.
The vulnerability of the boy playing Gorky (Alyosha Lyarsky) makes him
an ideal witness of the family dramas, both brutal and sublime. The
film is several levels above the socialist realism that was standard
in films at the time. But the characteristic broad strokes of sentimentality
prevent it from achieving true greatness. The peasantry is idealized
in the person of Ivan, a dye worker who befriends the boy and embodies
a kind of holy simplicity. The grandmother is an angelic soul. A subplot
involving a crippled boy represents the hope of the downtrodden for
a better future. The choir music on the soundtrack tells us to be moved.
When a film doesn't look deeply into its characters, their trials and
misfortunes don't affect us as much as they might. The stylized image
of suffering ultimately seems tentative. On its own terms, Donskoy's
film can be enjoyed for its passion and pictorial sense. But the fictional
dream never comes fully alive. And for those with an historical sense,
knowing that the film was made under a regime practicing mass murder
and slavery lends its high-handed preaching against oppression an ambivalent
tone. One of the boy's friends is a Marxist intellectual. Eventually
we see him taken away by the authorities. But what was happening to
dissenting intellectuals in Stalin's time? Did any movies depict them?
There was a double world in Soviet Russia: the utopia that was officially
celebrated and the real world of fear that could not be discussed. Even
in the midst of The Childhood of Maxim Gorky's beautiful moments,
there is an inescapably hollow feeling.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (David Lean, 1946).
To attempt adapting Dickens for the screen is to always fall short in
some way, but this movie has the distinction of being arguably the most
successful realization of a Dickens novel on film. It conveys the moody,
gothic air of this late work, especially with the early scenes in the
fog and later at Miss Havisham's old mansion, beautifully captured in
Guy Green's black and white photography. The casting seems well nigh
perfect, with characters like Jaggers (Francis L. Sullivan) and Joe
(Bernard Miles) realized just as you would imagine them. The early scenes
with Pip as a boy are haunting and evocative--Anthony Wager is the young
hero ashamed of his poverty, and the 16-year-old Jean Simmons is the
personification of young Estella, proud and deluded. They grow up to
become John Mills and Valerie Hobson: something is lost in the latter
case, although not enough to spoil the picture.
The act of compression inevitably short-changes some characters and
plot-lines. Wemmick and his father ("the
Aged") are barely present, and Biddy's role as the voice of Pip's
conscience has been cut, but Lean rightly focuses on the gloomy drama
of Miss Havisham (an astonishing turn by Martita Hunt), and we are also
treated to Alec Guinness, wonderful in his film debut as Herbert Pocket.
The inward struggle of Dickens' young hero is realized in visual terms
by Lean's ingenious contrasts between the dark beauty of the Kentish
moors and the artificiality of city life.
The director sought to improve on the book by ending the film with an
emphatic flourish that resolves Estella's problems. I think this is
a mistake. Dickens' low-key ending is more convincing, although even
he spruced his original finale up on the suggestion of his publisher.
But this is a mere quibble--it's hard to imagine a more triumphant melding
of film and classic novel than what was achieved here. In Great
Expectations, and to a somewhat lesser extent in the following
year's Oliver Twist, David Lean demonstrated how to adapt a
masterpiece--with a combination of deep respect and brilliant reimagining.
I MARRIED A WITCH (René Clair, 1942).
A witch from the 17th century (Veronica Lake) returns to life along
with her father (Cecil Kellaway) to avenge
themselves on a politician (Fredric March) who is descended from the
man who had them executed. Part of the plan is to have the witch give
the politician a love potion, but she drinks it instead by mistake.
Clair was of course part of a French exodus to Hollywood after the Germans
invaded their country in 1940. He was fairly successful in America,
confidently adapting himself to studio methods. His work improved as
he went along, and unlike Renoir, he made money for the studios. Nothing
he did was run-of-the-mill, but in my view, this particular work has
dated badly.
Veronica Lake was never more beautiful than here, and her combination
of naughtiness and naivete is the picture's main attraction. Unfortunately,
it's not enough to compsensate for the film's weaknesses. For one thing,
the plot mechanics hang on the movie's neck like the proverbial albatross--the
witch and warlock here are actually supernatural beings, and the script
goes to great pains trying to spell out the implications of this, all
of which is irrelevant to whether the film's comedy or romance is effective.
I suppose suspension of disbelief was a more difficult affair for American
audiences in the 40s.
This wouldn't matter so much if the dialogue was sharp and witty. But
the humor is club-footed--silly and obvious rather than truly funny.
The team of writers seems to assume that having a witch exist in modern
times is inherently amusing, and they combine this with a sense that
showing a woman being as brazenly forward as Lake is here must be hilarious.
There's little inventiveness or zest. The picture just keeps mechanically
hitting the same notes over and over.
Fredric March was capable of doing comedy once in a while, but here
he's wooden and clearly uncomfortable.
Kellaway does his standard whimsical old gentleman role, and even Robert
Benchley fails to brighten things up. It's no compliment to note that
the scenario seems to have inspired the 1960s TV series Bewitched.
There's a musty old idea equating feminine guile with witchcraft somewhere
underneath all this. That might be material for a film studies paper,
but the picture is a mere bauble.
SEVEN MEN FROM NOW
(Budd Boetticher, 1956).
Former sheriff Ben Stride (Randolph Scott) is on the trail of the seven
men who killed his wife when they robbed a
stagecoach. Along the way he helps a married couple making their way
in a covered wagon to California. He has romantic feelings for the wife
(Gail Russell), which of course he won't act on. Then they run into
a pair of lowlifes from his town (one of them played by Lee Marvin),
who tag along, hoping that Stride will lead them to the gold the robbers
took.
This is the first in a series of seven excellent westerns directed by
Boetticher and starring Scott. It starts during a nighttime thunderstorm
in the desert. After the credits, Scott suddenly emerges from the bottom
of the frame, walking away from the camera. A brief, tense scene in
a small cave, where two of the seven outlaws are taking refuge, gets
the picture rolling. There's not an ounce of fat in the rest of the
film--every scene serves the progression of the story, and the themes
of guilt and retribution, in a brisk and utterly efficient manner.
Marvin had already made a career as one of the best villains around,
and here his self-confident, insolent wise-guy persona finds the perfect
contrast in the stoic man of honor played by Scott. Their matchup embodies
a transition from the older Hollywood western to the revisionist anti-western
movies of the 60s. Boetticher demonstrates some imaginative ideas--examples
include a tender scene between Scott and Russell where she talks to
him from the wagon as she sees him lying on a makeshift bed underneath
it, and the final shootout, which makes short work of all the usual
dramatic nonsense in such scenes.
Seven From Now is a modest and unpretentious western, whose
growing reputation over the years has perhaps made it seem better than
it is. In the days when films were produced for double bills at a reasonable
cost, a movie didn't have to knock you over to be good.
VISAGES D'ENFANTS
(Jacques Feyder, 1925).
One can view much of the silent era as a process in which filmmakers
gradually unearthed a narrative language appropriate to the new art
form. The Belgian-born Feyder, something of an outsider in the world
of French cinema, was one of the first to discard shopworn theatrical
affectations, bringing a natural ease and sensitivity to his work that
holds up very well today. In this film, everything comes together into
a satisfying artistic whole.
The picture opens with a funeral--the wife of a village mayor in the
Swiss Alps has died suddenly, leaving two children. The little girl
is too young to understand what has happened, but her brother Jean (Jean
Forest), a 12-year-old, is devastated. The boy faints at the graveside--this
sequence features extraordinarily rapid cutting that conveys his overwhelming
distress.
Jean puts a portrait of his mother on the wall and prays to it. He faithfully
goes to put flowers on her grave every Sunday. Meanwhile, the lonely
father decides to get remarried to a local widow, but is afraid to tell
his son. He gets a local priest to take the boy on a week-long excursion,
during which the priest eventually breaks the news to Jean, on the very
day of the wedding. The sense that this is an understandable strategy,
yet nevertheless cruel, is subtly conveyed. The entire film, co-written
by Feyder and his wife Françoise Rosay, demonstrates an acute
interest in psychology that is unusual for its time.
The sudden appearance of a stepmother, who has a daughter of her own
about Jean's age, causes the boy to feel displaced in many little ways.
Not allowed to express anger about this event, he vents his hostility
on his new stepsister (Arlette Peyran) in an escalating little war that
leads to a crisis of melodramatic proportions. This crisis, and the
ending that follows, is somewhat reminiscent of Griffith in its combination
of suspenseful cross-cutting and extreme emotion. But the film has taken
the point of view of a passionate grieving boy throughout, so the resolution
is a perfect fit with the subject.
Visages d'Enfants is constructed like a morality play, but
without the judgmentalism that one has come to expect from this kind
of story. None of the characters--the boy, his stepsister, the parents--are
archetypes of either virtue or vice. They do disturbing things, but
they are suffering human beings capable of love and deserving of forgiveness.
This is a portrait of grief, and its power over the mind of a child,
that seeks to understand rather than condemn. The film does not plod,
preach, or overemphasize its themes. It's a jewel.
©2007 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
