The Fourth Master of Suspense Blogathon: Twisted love in Notorious (1946)

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Image source: IMDB

NOTE: There’s gonna be spoilers. Just watch Notorious if you haven’t already. Treat yourself!

Few films appear as effortlessly taut and elegant as Notorious. Not a single image or line of dialogue are wasted. Every moment is packed with multiple layers of subtext. It might be the most crowd-pleasing example of why the Hitchcock style keeps movie lovers coming back for repeat viewings. No matter how many times I experience the suspense set-pieces and twisted love triangle of Notorious, I feel I always catch some new detail to intrigue me anew. What keeps me coming back to the film though is the central triangle at its core and the intriguing dynamics between the main characters.

A quick rundown of the plot for those needing a refresher: American partygirl Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) finds herself spied on by both the media and the federal government when her Nazi sympathizer father is convicted of treason. Drowning the shame and anger out with drink and casual romance does little to alleviate the pain. When she encounters a handsome stranger at a party (Cary Grant), Alicia expects she’s landed another conquest to keep her mind off her troubles. Turns out her mystery man is a government agent named Devlin and he’s wants Alicia’s help in ferreting out a band of Nazi emigres hiding in Brazil.

As both Alicia and Devlin learn after she accepts the task, the mission requires Alicia to seduce and spy on one Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), a former friend of her father’s who just happens to harbor a long-burning passion for the much younger woman. Essentially, she’ll be sleeping with the enemy. Devlin’s fellow agents have no problem with Alicia playing “Mata Hari” since her promiscuous past makes her nothing more than a whore to them. However, there is a complication: Alicia and Devlin have fallen in love.

Alicia wants to become a one-man woman while Devlin himself is torn between his budding love for Alicia and his prejudice against her as a “tramp.” In general, Devlin keeps up an icy facade to protect himself– ideal for spy work, less ideal for personal relationships. With Alicia, Devlin’s cold, even occasionally cruel facade is used to shield his heart and masculinity from being bruised. For her part, Alicia accepts the mission only when Devlin does not argue against it, making her think he views her cheaply.

In no time, Alicia marries Alex and moves into his exquisite mansion. She tries to evade the suspicions and controlling nature of her mother-in-law Madame Sebastian (Madame Konstantin)– a shrewd woman who questions Alicia’s sudden “attraction” to her son from the start. Soon it becomes clear there is a plot afoot among Sebastian and his Nazi cohorts… and that Alicia’s life is in more danger than she realizes.

I once read a mixed review of Notorious that claimed the spy plot was dull while the romantic “subplot” was good. This analysis has the movie’s focus backwards. Notorious‘ core is not the espionage, it’s the romance. Much has been made of Hitchcock’s concept of the “MacGuffin,” the central item that everyone in the plot wants but in and of itself is meaningless. In Notorious, you could say the spy plot is the MacGuffin. A mysterious object in Alex’s basement motivates the characters, but no one watching the movie is invested in that. It’s the dynamics between Alicia, Devlin, and Alex that make Notorious the endlessly rewatchable classic it is.

Spy work in Notorious involves elaborate playacting, an act which ties in well with the cautious love games between the central trio. In love or war, no one is who they appear to be and often performances are embedded in performances. Alicia plays the femme fatale playing a repentant would-be lover. Devlin plays the heartless cad both in his private dealings with Alicia and in public for Alex’s benefit. Alex hides his murderous Nazi ideals behind an affable facade, and later he hides his homicidal anger against Alicia by playing the role of caring husband. In truth, Alicia is a genuine and loving person, Devlin is terrified of his feelings, and Alex is a cowardly rat who needs his more competent Nazi mother to do the planning. (The moment when Alex tells Madame Sebastian of Alicia’s duplicity and she lights up a cigarette like a gangster’s moll might be my favorite moment in the entire film. It never fails to make me laugh.)

Much has been made of the key symbolism in Notorious. Alicia’s time in the Sebastian household recalls the Bluebeard fairytale, in which a young wife is given permission to explore every room but one in her older husband’s mansion. Like the heroine in Bluebeard, Alicia’s possession of one particular key becomes potentially fatal. However, the key images also evoke trust and vulnerability. To be given a key is to entrust someone with precious valuables. Alex, who for a long time idealizes Alicia as a beautiful and loyal prize, trusts his new wife freely… and to his peril. Devlin withholds trust despite Alicia’s many pleas for him to “believe in [her].”

If anything, with its focus on keys, forbidden rooms, and the increasingly suffocating atmosphere of the Sebastian household, Notorious resembles less your usual spy thriller than a domestic noir like My Name is Julia Ross, one of an entire subgenre of films in the 1940s focusing on the dark underbelly of marriage for women. Alicia’s marriage is a soul-crushing prison even before Alex discovers she’s cuckolding him with Uncle Sam. At the end of an early conversation with Alex, when Alicia agrees to start seeing him, Bergman takes on an expression of weary despair. Her performance so perfectly evokes this character’s heartbreaking resignation to a life of endless self-denial and loneliness, all because of the way the world– and seemingly the man she loves– sees her. Even little details in the costuming emphasize Alicia’s perilous situation, such as the teardrop pendants on a collar necklace suggesting not only her status as trophy wife but also a slit throat raining blood. At stake is more than her physical safety– it’s her inner world as well and that’s part of what makes the suspense in Notorious so effective.

It’s impressive that Hitchcock, Bergman, and Grant make the love between the two leads seem so credible because on paper Devlin is borderline monstrous. He gets physically rough when a drunken Alicia is initially affronted that he’s a federal agent crashing her party. Later, his sarcastic put-downs sting Alicia to the core and make me want to punch him. So how does he keep the audience’s sympathy? It’s the moments of vulnerability beneath the mask that sell it.

Early on, there’s a great moment when in a double close-up, Devlin turns and unexpectedly gets an eyeful of Alicia in gorgeous profile. Devlin looks struck dumb by the beautiful nearness of this woman and the affection for her that’s crept up on him (it happens in a split second, so forgive the inadequacy of my screen grabs above). Or there’s his defensive reaction to the suggestion that Alicia seduce Alex for information before his fellow agents break him down. The audience knows Devlin’s responses come from fear and that he is at war with himself. Plus, there’s the usual Cary Grant charm– can’t deny that’s a good factor in keeping Devlin in the audience’s good graces. Overall, Notorious does a much better job at complicating Grant’s usual screen persona than the more timid Suspicion from a few years earlier because Devlin is given a proper character arc. The shadowy elements of the character tie in well with the film’s themes about trust and his ultimate redemption is earned.

If Devlin is a hero who acts monstrous, then Alex is a monster who acts like a gentleman. Hitchcock loved his villains to hide their evil behind an friendly mask. For a while, Alex’s doting is more palatable than Devlin’s ice. There is a temptation to initially feel sorry for Alex, an aging man desperate for love. But then you remember the guy’s a Nazi weasel. Funny enough, he’s not a terribly dedicated Nazi either. When he learns Alicia is an American agent, he doesn’t fear for that the Third Reich’s resurrection will be thwarted by her snooping. He’s only terrified that his fascist cronies will kill him for his carelessness, just as they did one of their blabber-mouthed associates earlier in the film. There’s a delicious irony in the way the Nazis have no solidarity amongst themselves at all and keep pruning their own numbers, yet another embodiment of the film’s themes about trust.

Alicia and Devlin’s love ultimately triumphs over all misunderstandings and fear. Their final clinch reminds me of the climax of Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete, another classic from 1946. In Cocteau, Belle realizes how cruel she’s been towards the Beast and her confession of contrition and love rescues him from death. The same applies in Notorious: Devlin finally trusts Alicia and is able to admit his love for her, all the while rescuing her from a slow, painful death by poisoning at the hands of Alex and his mother. Considering so much of Notorious evokes classic fairy tales, this ending is nothing less than fitting. And the ending once again stresses this is first and foremost a love story and not a espionage yarn. A standard spy thriller would end with more focus on thwarting the villains’ plot or maybe even a fight to the death as in so many James Bond titles. Notorious resolves itself with the restoration of a romantic bond. This restoration just happens to coincide with the destruction of Alex and the Nazi conspiracy.

Honestly, I could go on forever about Notorious. I barely scratched the surface here. I know Vertigo and Psycho are more revolutionary, but this is the Hitchcock film that has my heart the most. And it all goes down to these fascinating characters.

This post is for the Fourth Master of Suspense Blogathon. See other great posts on Hitchcock’s work at this link.

Movie of the month: Uncle Yanco (dir. Agnes Varda, 1967)

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Image source: IMDB

I’ve been going through the work of the great French filmmaker Agnes Varda this summer. While I was long familiar with her masterful features Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond, the rest of Varda’s filmography has long lingered on my watchlist. While my schedule does not always allow me to fit in a feature film, the nice thing is that Varda made a lot of shorts over her sixty-plus year career. There are few things more pleasurable than starting the day with a cup of coffee and Varda.

Of all the French New Wave masters, Varda feels the most approachable. Her work is intelligent without feeling obtuse or academic. That intellect is paired with a curiosity than can make any mundane subject feel magical and profound. Today’s subject Uncle Yanco is a great example of this quality. Ostensibly a record of Varda meeting a mysterious relative she’d never heard of before, it becomes something more over its eighteen minute runtime. Jean “Yanco” Varda was technically not Agnes’ uncle, but a cousin once removed. Greek by birth, he eventually moved to Sausalito, California and settled into a bohemian existence on a houseboat.

Varda presents the encounter with a whimsical tone and playful use of editing. I particularly liked the repeated action of Varda walking to embrace Yanco in what I took as Varda slyly ribbing the viewer about the line between documentary and artifice. The film would have us believe we are seeing their first meeting, while the reality is not so. The camera lies eloquently, but Varda lets us in on the deception.

Admittedly, Uncle Yanco is not the strongest of Varda’s short films. Elsa la Rose, Black Panthers, and Ulysse are all more focused, while Uncle Yanco which bites off a bit more than it can chew topic-wise. Varda packs in a lot of food for thought: how much does our country of origin play into our personal identity? What is the purpose of artistic expression? How does the existence of death affect our understanding of life? And that’s not even getting into the aforementioned ribbing of the idea that the camera doesn’t lie. That’s not just food for thought: that’s a buffet you can only sample in eighteen minutes.

Regardless, what draws me to this film is its warmth. Seeing Varda and her long-lost cousin share playful back and forth about anything and everything as though they’ve known each other for decades is a joy. Uncle Yanco himself is an engaging subject. He appears so confident in his own skin, gleefully evading the rat race of 9-5 work and constant accumulation of money. It’s a refreshing portrait of old age as something other than pure decline.

Liberty or death! A look at America (dir. DW Griffith, 1924)

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One of the running themes of my writing has been re-examining long-held assumptions about movie history. I have a bleeding heart for panned films and a skepticism towards broad claims. If you’ve dipped your toes into silent cinema, you’ll likely be familiar with “common knowledge” about controversial pioneer DW Griffith. “Griffith invented close-ups/tracking shots/[insert favorite cinematic convention here]!” “The Birth of a Nation was the first feature film! The first epic film! The first megahit!” All of these ideas have been challenged by historians and silent film enthusiasts alike. The more one familiarizes oneself with early cinema outside of Griffith, the easier they become to discredit.

Arguments for Griffith’s downfall in the 1920s are just as broad. (To be clear, I mark late Griffith as anything that came out after Orphans of the Storm, released in 1921. It seems a clear point to use since it was his last popular hit.) Hollywood came into its own in the Roaring Twenties, selling glamor and modernity to an eager postwar public. Consensus paints Griffith as an Edwardian relic in this context. His fall is blamed on an inability to remain in step with the fashions of the day or to continue to grow as an artist.

On examination, Griffith’s fall is not so straightforward. True, he was out of style and this explains the decline in his popularity in the 1920s. However, a century removed from that world of flappers and sheiks, Griffith’s late movies still appear a mixed lot. Some were unfairly maligned and contain more inspiration than one would expect. I admire the proto-neorealism of Isn’t Life Wonderful and think The Struggle plays with the fledgling medium of sound film in innovative ways. Most of the others are merely forgettable studio projects, though for the most part competently mounted. But among the weaker entries stands America, notable as Griffith’s final epic. It was centered on the American Revolution and intended to arouse patriotic sentiment in American audiences. Praised by critics on release, the film has fallen to the wayside in the decades since.

Image source: IMDB

The idea for a revolution-themed spectacular was suggested by Chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Will Hayes, who passed the notion along from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Griffith. A series of scandals had tarnished Hollywood’s reputation and perhaps Hayes felt a patriotic feature would generate positive press. For Griffith, the film was a chance to reinvigorate his own public image as the master of the cinematic spectacular. By the early 1920s, the likes of Cecil B. DeMille, Rex Ingram, and Ernst Lubitsch were displacing him as masters of the big screen historical epic.

Initially, Griffith’s film was going to center on Nathan Hale, the famous American spy. However, Griffith ultimately purchased the rights to a 1908 historical novel titled The Reckoning, which centered on the activities of Loyalist Captain Walter Butler, best remembered for his vicious attack on the rebel Americans in the Cherry Valley Raid. The novel’s author Robert Chambers worked on the screen version with Griffith, but the translation from page to reel wasn’t exact. Griffith and Chambers expanded the narrative to encompass many major episodes from the revolution, giving the project a wider scope.

Griffith also incorporated fictional characters borrowed from his unproduced play War, a melodrama about a Loyalist aristocrat and a working class Patriot who fall in love and find their happiness menaced by both the greater American Revolutionary War and a wicked redcoat. The play’s lovers largely emerge in the film version intact, while the evil redcoat is merged with the historical Captain Butler. Butler, already an unsavory, arrogant individual in the historical record, emerges as the devil incarnate in America. The real Butler’s alliance with Native American tribes is also emphasized in the film, though in a decidedly racist way by creating thematic links between Butler’s cruelty and the stereotype of indigenous groups as “savages.”

Griffith and his cast on location. Image source: Wikipedia

That’s enough context. Let’s jump into the movie itself. (Before we progress, I apologize for the low quality of the images. Every copy of this film I’ve come across looks like it was ripped from a VHS and given its low profile in the wider world of silent cinema, we probably won’t be getting a more dazzling transfer anytime soon.)

We start with a series of lengthy intertitles setting up the historical context.

Get used to lengthy intertitles. This is the film’s primary way of providing historical information to make sense of the drama. Griffith always loved himself a good, flowery title card, but they weigh on America‘s pacing quickly. Silent films excel best when the story is told through image and action, not walls of text.

Our leads are soon established: the minute man Nathan Holden (Neil Hamilton, best remembered as Commissioner Gordon in the Adam West Batman series) and the Loyalist belle Nancy Montague (Carol Dempster). The class difference between them is enough to bar Nathan from being a proper suitor, but his Patriot sympathies also fail to put him in the good graces of Nancy’s father, Justice Montague (Erville Alderson) or her crackshot brother Charles (Charles Emmett Mack).

These brief introductions are intercut with historical material leading up to the colonists’ break with the monarchy. Griffith repeatedly emphasizes the connections between the colonists and their mother country. Oliver Cromwell is one of Nathan’s ancestors. Nancy has returned from a successful season in London society. George Washington is introduced as a descendant of “the Washingtons of Sulgrove Manorhouse, Northhamptonshire, England.” When Nancy coyly asks Washington if he would oppose their king, Washington assures her that he only stands against injustice and that he is sure the English crown will be fair. Ultimately, his faith is misplaced, but even in regards to the monarchy, Griffith assures the audience that it is “evil counselors” behind the outrageous taxation, not good old George III. In fact, the titles go out of their way to emphasize that America is not going to be some anti-English smear job.

In America, the true villain is the fictionalized version of Captain Butler (Lionel Barrymore). An envoy to the Iroquois, Butler allies himself with the “savage warriors” to prepare for the coming war. He ultimately plans to “betray his king” then become viceroy of his own empire from the ashes of the colonies. And of course, he wants to ravish Nancy because being a rapist is damn near a requirement if you’re a villain in a Griffith movie.

With all the pieces set up, the rest of America intercuts between the historical events and fictional story. We see the impassioned meetings of the Sons of Liberty, Patrick Henry’s controversial speeches, Paul Revere’s midnight ride, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Valley Forge, and more. Everything builds to an emotional climax, where Nancy is captured by Butler and Nathan must choose between rescuing her from rape or informing the colonists of an impending British ambush.

When it comes to production design and physical detail, America was undeniably made with care. Scenes were shot on location across Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York. The beauty of the outdoor locations and lavish interiors are still somewhat perceptible through the muddy transfers most available today. The historical portions clearly had a lot of passion put into them too. Paul Revere’s famous ride is the highlight of the film, with exciting editing and stunt work. Revere is not presented as a perfect hero, but as a stumbling, all too human man racing against time.

Unfortunately, the same amount of care was not put into the characters and interpersonal drama. Usually in historical epics, fictional characters are meant to emotionally ground the greater social and political conflicts swirling around them. The closest America gets to providing the audience with interesting fictional characters are Justice and Charles Montague. Charles eventually becomes a Patriot and keeps his new allegiance a secret from his father. Justice is a fervent Loyalist whose beliefs about class and monarchy are challenged by Butler’s villainy and Nathan’s heroism. However, the more prominent Nancy and Nathan are duds. Despite the “lovers on different sides” angle, the central romance is chemistry-less.

It doesn’t help that the actors playing Nathan and Nancy are bland as can be. Neil Hamilton is solid but unexceptional as the soldier with a poet’s soul. Carol Dempster is similarly unimpressive as Nancy. I have defended her in the past as a limited performer who did better in more athletic or down-to-earth roles. Nancy is meant to be an enchanting, dreamy socialite and in that regard, Dempster is an ill-fit.

To be fair to our leads, I am not sure superior actors would have done any better at saving the story from itself. It’s as though the film’s two purposes– to inform and entertain– want nothing to do with one another. And what’s more, it flounders in both departments. The fictional story is perfunctory and bland, and the history verges into the nonsensical.

Griffith’s interpretation of the American Revolution is dubious to say the least. Though the film pays lip-service to the differing views the colonists had over their relationship to the “mother country,” Griffith is mostly uninterested in the actual Enlightenment ideals of the revolution. If anything, he seems to think it a shame that the Americans and British could not stay as they were. As with all Griffith’s epics, political conflicts get boiled down to civilization versus barbarism. Noble, peace-loving heroes and heroines versus greedy, selfish, hedonistic tyrants. As I brought up when writing about Orphans of the Storm in the past, Griffith prefers setting moral themes against a sweeping backdrop to actual exploration of socio-political ideas inherent in the histories presented. That elemental sense of conflict can easily be curdled into outright vile material, as in The Birth of a Nation where civilization equals White supremacy and barbarism equals the demolishing of race-based hierarchies.

Here, civilization equals the unity between the “English-speaking peoples” of the United States and England, with the Iroquois pushed out of the circle entirely. The film ends with an intertitle celebrating reconciliation between the former (White) enemies, completely ignoring the tensions that would persist between them for a few more decades. The War of 1812 did not spring up from nowhere, after all. It is as though the moment the individual is out of danger, history stops entirely.

In recent years, it’s common to hear people snap back at critical voices like mine with arguments like, “If you want history, read a book! This is drama!” But as is the case with more recent cinematic history debacles like Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, my main issue with America is that it is both unhistorical and uninteresting. The actual history is more engaging than the melodramatic boilerplate the filmmakers dreamed up. Griffith never brings up that part of Butler’s enmity against the American rebels was rooted in their holding his mother and siblings captive for five years or the loss of his family property. The tribes allied with the British were not motivated by bloodlust, but by concerns over the colonists taking more of their territory. History and drama need not be seen as separate entities when there is already so much drama inherent in the historical record.

On further examination, it isn’t hard to see why America boasts such a poor reputation. Its history is often dry or dubious. The melodrama is pallid. The action is dragged down by excessive intertitles. I like challenging long-standing perspectives on dismissed movies, but the more one familiarizes oneself with America, the more one realizes the collective disappointment over the movie is well deserved.

Sources:

Schickel, R. (1996). DW Griffith: An American Life. Limelight Editions.

Toronto Film Society. (October 15, 2016). America (1924). Toronto Film Society. https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/america-1924/

Werther, R.J. (August 25, 2022). Walter Butler – The Dastardly Loyalist. Journal of the American Revolution. https://allthingsliberty.com/2022/08/walter-butler-the-dastardly-loyalist/

Movie of the Month: Desk Set (dir. Walter Lang, 1957)

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Image source: IMDB

NOTE: There are mild, nondescript spoilers here.

For such a lightweight comedy, Desk Set seems oddly prescient today. The film depicts the desperation of a group of research librarians at a TV studio when computerization is brought into the workplace. The head librarian Bunny (Katharine Hepburn) goes head to head with computer engineer Richard (Spencer Tracy), who wants to install a massive computer in the research center. Nicknamed EMERAC (short for Electromagnetic Memory and Research Arithmetical Calculator), the computer comes off like an old-school ChatGPT, spitting out answers to inquires on a giant ream of paper. The librarians fear they will be displaced by the technology, all the while Bunny and Richard find their professional conflict complicated by budding romance.

I wonder how seriously audiences took fears of automation in 1957. Computers were not yet the daily presence they are today. With so many as big and unwieldy as EMERAC, I have to wonder if AI seemed like something that would become reality in a far more distant future, one complete with flying cars. Desk Set‘s satire is ultimately gentle, its outlook on human-machine co-existence hopeful. One rarely sees that sort of optimism about AI in modern cinema (see the bleak ending of the recent black comedy No Other Choice).

I am not as familiar with the Hepburn-Tracy collaborations as other classic film fans, so I’m not quite sure how Desk Set ranks among the lot, but I enjoyed it. It probably helps that there is a speculative aspect to the story, as I am more drawn to science fiction than light comedy. However, the heart of the film is the Hepburn/Tracy romance. I appreciate how the lead characters in this film aren’t the usual pretty young lover types. I like seeing romances that allow people above the age of 40 to find romantic companionship. Way too many people– even now– seem to think life’s joys dry up by 30.

For all its ties to real world topics, Desk Set is a warm, fuzzy film. The rambunctious human characters make a great contrast to the soulless EMERAC. It is a particular pleasure to see Joan Blondell as one of Hepburn’s coworkers. The two actresses have a great deal of chemistry in their scenes. It’s a shame they never appeared opposite one another again! Another personal pleasure for me is the way the librarian life is depicted, as I used to be a reference librarian myself. I can safely say though there was not nearly so much drinking on the job!

The Audrey Hepburn Blogathon: The Nun’s Story (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1959)

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Image source: IMDB

WARNING: This post is going to indulge in major spoilers for The Nun’s Story. And by major spoilers, I mean basically the entire movie. If you haven’t seen it and care about being spoiled, just go watch it then come back to this post. It’s a great movie and it features Audrey Hepburn’s best performance, just take my word for it.

A title like The Nun’s Story is deceptive, particularly when you throw Audrey Hepburn into the leading role. You might expect something light and feel-good in tone, or some soapy melodrama in which romance contests with Jesus for the heroine’s devotion. Instead, the film provides us with one of the best cinematic examinations of an individual’s struggles with organized religion and personal conscience. We are called to observe this one character’s attachment to and struggle with her faith, and perhaps to reflect on our own relationship with religion, community, and ourselves.

The time is 1930. The place is Belgium. Our heroine is Gabrielle (Hepburn), a young woman who leaves the secular world behind to become a nun. Her hope is to be sent abroad to the Congo to serve as both nurse and missionary. Before she journeys anywhere though, she must undergo an extended period in training as a postulant and then a novice, learning to reorient herself to a life of selfless devotion to the Church. This includes taking on a new name: Sister Luke (a fitting choice since St. Luke the Evangelist is the patron saint of doctors).

Much of the story is concerned with internal spiritual warfare. Sister Luke is told over and over that the ego must be overcome to better align one’s desires with the will of God. Every pettiness, every distraction, every bit of personal pride must be effaced to attain this goal. A variety of practices are designed to help the sisters reach this state: public confession of faults, periods of silence, dropping all activities once the chapel bell rings, even a moderate amount of physical mortification. Individuality becomes a casualty of this process as well. For Sister Luke, her desire for spiritual perfection begins to grind against her personal hopes of nursing in the Congo.

The Nun’s Story can be frustrating to watch because the protagonist is operating within a system designed to prioritize her obedience to authority over her actual abilities to do concrete good. Take an early scene where a fellow sister is jealous of Sister Luke’s scientific prowess and anxious she’s going to nab her coveted spot en route to the Congo as there are a limited number of spots available. Told of this antagonism, one of Sister Luke’s superiors strongly suggests she fail her oral exam (which she needs to pass to get to go to the Congo) to prove her humility and smooth over the conflict. Later on, another superior says this was a well-intentioned but rather problematic thing to recommend (I doubt any potential patient will care how humble a nun their nurse is, so long as she knows what she is doing medically). However, it goes to show the mindset of the convent. No pride can be taken in one’s talents or achievements. Even smiling at receiving a bouquet of flowers from grateful patients is undesirable.

A highly driven person like Sister Luke naturally struggles with so-called “pride.” Her two goals of being the perfect nun and the perfect nurse become less and less complimentary, and often directly contradict one another. Sister Luke describes the catch-22 of her situation perfectly when she says, “Pride has not been burned out of me. When I succeed in obeying the rule, I fail at the same time by having pride in obeying.” Sometimes, Sister Luke’s disobedience can easily be seen as a fault, such as when she briefly works at an asylum and lets out a dangerous patient from misguided judgement. Oftentimes though, Sister Luke’s disobedience and pride seem the fruit of healthy confidence and independent thinking than anything that needs stifling.

The Nun’s Story is divided into two halves– Sister’s Luke initiation into convent life and then her re-entrance into the outside world when she is sent to the Congo– and the film’s style reflects the psychological qualities of each section. Though director Fred Zinnemann wanted to shoot the front end of the movie in black and white, he was made to compromise. Instead, black, white, and neutral colors dominate, reflecting the severe lifestyle of the nuns and the stark choice that dominates every area of their lives: obedience or disobedience. Much of this section emphasizes the clockwork rituals and devotional practices of the women inside the convent.

The second half begins with a move to the more vibrant Congo (though white remains a dominant hue), where what Sister Luke learned in the convent is thrown into the muddier waters of the world outside. This section was shot on location, giving the movie a more open feel in its middle chapters, tempting the audience with the idea that Sister Luke might at last be allowed to breathe. This notion proves deceptive because the Congo scenes are where Sister Luke’s goals and hopes continue to be complicated by cold reality.

She is disappointed to learn she will be serving the white colonist population and not the Congolese natives as she originally wanted. Her growing doubts about her vocation are embodied in Dr. Fortunati, a worldly non-believing colleague who observes Sister Luke’s struggle to obey her order and begins to fall in love with her. I appreciate that the film does not pose this character as much of a romantic temptation for Sister Luke (viewers seem to disagree on whether or not Sister Luke returns his feelings at all– I personally don’t think she does), but instead as a philosophical counterpoint who brings out her more independent-minded side. He insists she is a “worldly nun” not cut out for a life of endless obedience to the rule. Though Sister Luke denies this, her concerns about her ability to fulfill the religious aspect of her vocation increase.

While Sister Luke’s relationship with Fortunati is a highlight of the film, the dated colonial politics on display during this section are the low point. The African characters are depicted as childlike, and in need of the nuns to save their souls and civilize them. It’s the one aspect of The Nun’s Story I dislike and I can’t be totally honest in my evaluation of it without bringing that element up, even if it is a reflection of the time in which the film was made. Glossing over the exploitative, racist aspects of the Belgian colonization of the Congo and the local resistance against it seems a missed opportunity too, given how the brutality of fascism and the question of rebellion provides ample fodder for Sister Luke’s development in the final third of The Nun’s Story.

These two shots from the final section of the film do such a great job emphasizing both Sister Luke’s isolation and her increasingly feelings of suffocation within her vocation.

If Dr. Fortunati could not make Sister Luke question her place in the convent, World War II does a much better job of it. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where Sister Luke grits her teeth for the whole of her life, quieting the doubts inside her. However, once World War II begins to engulf Europe, Sister Luke returns to Belgium and then a hospital on the Dutch border. Visually, this final section is a mix of the monochrome of the early sections and the more colorful Congo. The black, white, and neutral tones are more often offset with blues and greens.

As the Nazis ravage Europe, the nuns are told not to hate the enemy or do anything to oppose the occupying Germans. The evil of the Nazis and her beloved father’s death at their hands prove the death blow to Sister Luke’s faltering hold on obedience. Realizing her conscience cannot allow her to stand by and that she cannot forgive the Nazis, Sister Luke says that from now on what she does must be between herself and God alone. She chooses to leave the convent and join the resistance as a nurse.

With the heroine’s ultimate break with the convent and the story’s implicit criticism of the Church’s neutrality, it might sound like The Nun’s Story is an anti-religious narrative, but the truth is much more complicated. Though it’s easy to see Sister Luke as a prisoner of the habit, the reality is she chose this life and can leave at any time. When her fellow nuns encourage her not to renounce her vocation, it’s from a genuine desire to see her pull through what they perceive to be a universal internal struggle. Their intentions are good, but not enough to convince Sister Luke she’s cut out to be a nun.

The whole of The Nun’s Story is engaging, but the ending lifts it into the stratosphere of cinematic greatness. If you want to know how highly I regard this ending, I put it up there with the iconic conclusions of The 400 Blows, City Lights, and It’s A Wonderful Life. It is that perfect.

Sister Luke’s leaving her order is played like a divorce in which both parties are sorry they could not make it work. I always found it touching how Sister Luke still hides her hands in her robe out of instinct, even as she is leaving this phase of her life. Returning to her old name of Gabrielle, she enters the porter’s room where she is told to remove her nun’s habit, put on her old secular clothes, and press a buzzer to signal her readiness to leave. The weight of the finality of the act pours through Gabrielle’s slow undressing: the removal of her veil and wimple, the way she runs a hand through her shorn hair, and then removes the ring symbolizing her marriage to Christ.

Once she is back in her secular clothes, Gabrielle exits the building. The grayness of the room becomes emphasized when she opens the door, revealing a sunlit street outside. It always reminds me of that iconic shot from The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy moves from sepia-toned Kansas to the Technicolor glory of Oz. And yet here, the effect is bittersweet. Gabrielle is moving into a dangerous, uncertain future sans an external authority to tell her what to do. This freedom is frightening when one considers not only the war raging outside, but Gabrielle’s having to leave a community she’s been part of for years.

There is no swelling, triumphant score as Gabrielle exits. We are not privileged one final close-up to tell us how she feels. Back to the audience, Gabrielle walks away from the camera– legs stiff, as though she has to will herself to keep going. After a brief pause, she turns right, then stalks purposefully out of frame. End of movie.

Traditional narratives follow a character who wants something. If they obtain what they wanted, this is usually good. If they don’t, this is either good because the initial goal was not as worthy as the protagonist thought (see It’s A Wonderful Life) or it’s bad and the character ends the story a failure. What’s interesting about The Nun’s Story is that it is up to the viewer to evaluate whether or not this is a happy ending, a tragedy, or perhaps that intermingling of good and bad all too common in real life. While Gabrielle has undeniably done what is best for her conscience, she still seems to regret that she could not see her original vows through. It’s a somber but honest ending.

For all the story’s inherent depth, this film wouldn’t be so impactful without Hepburn’s performance, which in my opinion ranks as the best she ever gave. Sans haute-couture and romantic glamor, she shines in a more internal, almost stoic performance. When I use the term “stoic,” I do not intend to imply the performance is emotionless. A passionate inner world burns behind Hepburn’s eyes and minute changes of expression. The Nun’s Story is about a character asked to suppress her feelings and subordinate her fiery will, and this struggle is plain across Hepburn’s face without tipping over into mugging. To watch this back to back with a more famous Hepburn vehicle like Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a revelation, as Sister Luke and Holly Golightly could not be more different as characters, yet Hepburn makes them both so credible and real.

Just as important to the performance is body language. Her dancer’s body obscured in a nun’s garb and her hands often tucked in her sleeves (the sisters are instructed to keep their hands “still and… out of sight, except when they are needed for nursing or prayer”), much of Hepburn’s movement reflects the convent’s demand for silence and composure. This external stillness contrasts with the character’s internal struggles, and makes the few scenes where her feelings can no longer be restrained all the more impactful.

By all accounts, Hepburn took preparation for the role of Sister Luke seriously, observing nuns at a convent for research during pre-production. Zinnemann later stated that Hepburn was one of the most dedicated performers he ever worked with and that intensity shows in the finished product. Sister Luke was Hepburn’s favorite of her roles and the one that was the most personal to her. Though she was raised in a Protestant household, Hepburn connected deeply with Sister Luke’s character, perhaps most strongly with her drive to help others.

I connect to this film’s heroine on a deep level as well. Sister Luke’s break with her convent and all the bitter-sweetness that entails reminds me of my own conflicted thoughts on religion and how my relationship with faith has evolved over time. It probably helps that I was raised Catholic too. However, one need not be religious or formerly religious in any way to enjoy The Nun’s Story. Its a beautiful character study easily appreciated by anyone who has struggled to reconcile different ideals within themselves or had mixed feelings about being part of a community, enjoying the camaraderie it provides while also struggling to conform. Like the greatest spiritual movies, it does not demand conversions of the audience, but only earnest contemplation.

This post is for the Audrey Hepburn Blogathon hosted by the lovely Classic Film and TV Corner. You can access the other entries here: https://classicfilmandtvcorner.wordpress.com/2026/06/12/the-audrey-hepburn-blogathon-arrives/#more-34367.

Sources:

Cohan, S. (2024). On Audrey Hepburn: An Opinionated Guide. Oxford University Press.

Gustaffson, F. (May 3, 2019). The Nun’s Story. Fredrik on Film. https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-nuns-story-1959.html

Movie of the month: The Ball at the Anjo House (dir. Kozaburo Yoshimura, 1947)

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Image source: IMDB

For all the annoyances of social media, if there is one thing I love, it’s getting recommendations for films I’d never heard of previously. A Letterboxd list brought The Ball at the Anjo House to my attention a few weeks ago and I was lucky enough to find a watchable copy on YouTube. After seeing it, I cannot believe I had never heard of it before.

The Ball at the Anjo House largely takes place over a single evening in the lives of the aristocratic Anjo family. However, their privileges are dwindling in the world of post-WWII Japan. Sans peerage and wealth, the decades ahead will be quite different and no one in the family can agree how much of this will be good or bad. With old traditions dying and their grand house on the market, the family holds one last ball before saying goodbye to their former way of life forever.

Interpersonal drama intensifies the disruptions brought about by social change. Romance and sex across class lines, while no longer under the old taboos, still unsettle characters from multiple social stations, especially when the Anjo patriarch marries his longtime mistress or when the eldest daughter bristles after her former chauffeur proposes marriage. A ruthless businessman the family is indebted to hopes to take advantage of the new power structure by buying up the home. The older family members dread the future and cannot see any place for themselves in it, while the younger generation wrestles with both cynical bitterness and cautious hope.

The film works well as a study of a society in transition. Every character faces their situation with nuanced reactions, some oscillating between hope and despair in a single scene. The titular ball genuinely feels like a whole society in miniature, trying to regain its footing in the wake of catastrophe. The movie is also rather suspenseful as it goes. This quality is intensified by the single location and limited time frame. Given the subject matter, one expects the pensive Cherry Orchard style drama, but not the persistent threat of physical violence. And yet despite that darkness, this is ultimately a life-affirming film that urges both its characters and the audience to face an uncertain future with courage. I definitely recommend more classic film fans give it a try.

The greatest hits of 1926, part two

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On the set of Don Juan. Image source: Wikipedia

It’s been a few months since I picked this series back up! What can I say? Things have been busy this year. Luckily, it’s not so busy that I can’t continue one of my favorite series on this blog: revisiting the hits of yesteryear and seeing how they hold up today.

If you have not read the first part of my Greatest Hits of 1926 posts, click the link here.

My usual note: It is difficult to get 100% accurate box office information from the silent era and this list is based on the top ten films offered up by Wikipedia as the big hits of 1926. Box office numbers can vary depending on the source (and here, I just stuck to the Wikipedia numbers for consistency’s sake; Wikipedia often cites research done by H. Mark Glancy on studio grosses based on studio ledgers for Warner Bros. and MGM), so just keep that in mind as we forge ahead.

#7 – Sparrows

Image source: IMDB

Release date: May 14, 1926

In the humid and dangerous swampland sits a “baby farm” run by the disreputable Mr. and Mrs. Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz and Charlotte Mineau). Cruel and greedy, they are more concerned with money than the wellbeing of their charges. When a kidnapped child is brought to the farm and Grimes thinks it practical to throw the kid into the swamp, the farm’s oldest child tenant Molly (Mary Pickforrd) decides to round up all the children and make a run for it.

Sparrows is a significant film in the Mary Pickford canon. It represents the last link to her Edwardian girl-woman persona before she shifted to more adult parts, first with the romantic comedy My Best Girl in 1927 and then with the pre-code daring of Coquette in 1929. Compared to previous Pickford hits I covered in this series, Sparrows is dark in subject matter and tone. It concerns a pre-teen girl named Molly living on a “baby farm” run by Dickensian villains in the middle of a swamp. Their safety threatened by the monstrous adults in charge, Molly and the kids make a break for it, traversing treacherous, alligator-ridden swamps in a desperate race for freedom.

Baby farms were a late Victorian phenomenon that involved poor parents or unmarried mothers giving their children over to other people in exchange for a regular fee. The children were given shelter and food, and sometimes put to work for their keep. This was a system that was easily abused. Cases of “baby farmers” neglecting or even killing the children in their charge were not unheard of at the time. The practice largely fell out of favor by the post-World War One period That Pickford decided to set her newest film on a baby farm seems outrageous given that real life context.

Reading a description of Sparrows can make the film come off like Little Orphan Annie meets southern gothic. The swamp setting is depicted with expressionistic gloom, a major contrast to the usual sunny pluck of Pickford’s characters. Scenes of slapstick mingle with threats of gruesome child murder. The sadistic baby farm owner Mr. Grimes crushes a doll’s head then throws it into the swamp quicksand, a moment which perfectly underlines his threat to the young ones in his charge. Some of the scenes plunge headlong into potential maudlin territory, such as when a vision of Christ appears to take a dying infant from Molly’s arms. Depending on your taste, this all might be a bit much, but I found the almost primal emotional qualities of the film compelling. Sophistication isn’t always better.

As usual, Pickford is funny and charming, if a bit obviously not under 16 years old, especially when standing next to her child co-stars. Sparrows is in many ways a last hurrah to the type of young girl character that made her America’s Sweetheart. She gets to be comical and touching throughout the film. Her chemistry with the younger performers is also very natural and sweet. Though plainly not a child herself, Pickford could make the audience believe she understood and empathized with the dangers and dreams of childhood, and this makes one able to suspend one’s disbelief when a film insists she is playing a kid.

Ultimately, Sparrows inhabits the dangerous world of the classic fairy tales, before popular culture defanged them. Fairy tales often deal with horrifying scenarios that are not mere nightmare fuel, but rooted in reality: abusive parents, ill-intentioned strangers, sickness, death, murder. While Sparrows has plenty of charm and entertainment value, the darkness is never far behind. That this is the final “Little Mary” film is almost fitting. She was far beyond the world of Pollyanna and Little Lord Faunterloy now.

Sources:

Sköld, J. (2020). Baby farms. In D. T. Cook (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies (1st ed.). Sage UK. https://access.infobase.com/article/2216101-baby-farms?aid=96851

Whitfield, E. (2007). Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood. The University Press of Kentucky,

6 – Tell It to the Marines

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Release date: December 23, 1926

Rude ne’er-do-well “Skeet” Burns (William Haines) applies to join the Marines in exchange for a free train ride to San Diego, after which he plans on ditching. However, he ends up in the Marines anyway under the command of Sgt. O’Hara (Lon Chaney), who is both annoyed by Burns’ attitude and intrigued by his potential. During his misadventures in the Marines, Burns falls for Norma (Eleanor Boardman), a Navy nurse who like O’Hara also harbors double-edged sentiments about the young recruit. However, O’Hara also has feelings for Norma and this creates additional conflict between the two men.

It’s common knowledge among Lon Chaney fans that his personal favorite of his films was not among the horror movies or macabre melodramas modern viewers associate with him today. The golden title was Tell It to the Marines, a coming-of-age war comedy about a young, lazy recruit who becomes a man during his time in the Marines. Chaney plays the protagonist’s mentor, Sergeant O’Hara, a tough guy with a heart of gold who secretly roots for his reluctant pupil and pines for a pretty nurse.

Much of Tell It to the Marines doesn’t strike one as especially novel after decades of other military comedies, but it was a huge hit in its day. It hits all the right beats and cribs much of its structure and themes from last year’s hit war comedy, The Big Parade. Having just rewatched The Big Parade last year, I was experiencing déjà vu rewatching Marines. We get the same use of military songs in the intertitles, the same central character arc, the same ra-ra-ra patriotism, only in a lighter, scaled-down package.

Chaney is indeed excellent in the film. While he tended to play troubled souls, anti-heroes, and straight-up villains, Chaney’s Sgt. O’Hara is an upright, honest man and a tough-minded mentor to the main character. He takes no nonsense and accepts no excuses. However, beneath the surface, O’Hara is warmer natured than he readily shows, especially towards Norma. He loves Norma but knows no relationship is likely to commence. Instead of threatening to blow up an opera house or rip his younger rival in half though, O’Hara approaches the situation with good humor and grace, making him the film’s most appealing character.

Unfortunately, I have never warmed to Tell It to the Marines. On one hand, it feels like a giant ad for the Marines. And then there’s William Haines…

I apologize to the 1920s and 1930s audiences who adored the guy, but I am just not a Haines fan. His screen persona, silent or sound, strikes me as obnoxious, juvenile, and pushy. Sure, his characters grow up a bit by the last reel, but I have to endure a whole movie of annoyance to get there and the end just isn’t worth it! Especially in this film where we have a scene of Skeet forcing a passionate kiss on an unwilling Norma and then he calls her a “squealer” when she reports his bad behavior to O’Hara. (Norma later regrets telling on him because it might ruin his career in the Marines—pardon me while I try not to break something.)

So I’m never going to get on board with the idea that this is one of Chaney’s best movies, but it does feature one of his best performances. I recommend it only for fans of the star, especially since it’s a great showcase of the man’s range, perhaps moreso than any of the more colorful figures he ever played. In fact, Chaney’s role was so successful that he was the first actor to be made an honorary Marine.

Sources:

Blake, M. (1995). A Thousand Faces: Lon Chaney’s Unique Artistry in Motion Pictures. Vestal Press Inc.

#5 – Don Juan

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Don Juan (John Barrymore) is the fifteenth century’s prime ladykiller. After witnessing his mother’s infidelity and his father’s death at the hands of a jealous mistress, Don Juan’s view of relationships takes a sour turn. He views women as playthings to be discarded when he grows bored of them. All this changes when he meets the innocent Adriana del Varnese (Mary Astor), whose purity challenges his previously held views. However, Don Juan has also attracted the attention of Lucrezia Borgia (Estelle Taylor) who wants Spain’s prime womanizer for her own and is willing to maim, manipulate, and kill to have her way.

Release date: August 6, 1926

Don Juan is best remembered as the first film to use the Vitaphone system which revolutionized cinema forever. You could argue it is the single most important Hollywood film from 1926 for that reason alone. What’s fascinating about this little fact is that it wasn’t intended to shake up the status quo too much. When the filmmakers discussed the possibility of sound in Don Juan, they weren’t thinking of spoken dialogue, but merely musical accompaniment and sound effects. The film has a pre-recorded soundtrack, but dialogue would still be presented through intertitles. Of course, a sound revolution that didn’t include dialogue would still have been financial disaster for the musicians employed in movie theaters, but it would not have changed the medium of cinema as dramatically. That being said, a series of Vitaphone short films also accompanied Don Juan at its opening and these would feature spoken dialogue and singing.

By all accounts, Don Juan‘s use of Vitaphone caused a stir, particularly when it opened at the Warner Theater on Broadway and Fifty-second Street. Scott Eyman puts it well in his classic text, The Speed of Sound: “[T]o an audience in 1926, when electrical recording had only been in use for a year, and with those records being played in small living rooms, the theatrical amplification of Vitaphone, its clarity and range, were a revelation.” So impressive was the sound quality that one audience member “hovered near the stage door,” convinced there were actors speaking behind the curtain during the shorts before the feature (93).

Outside of its historical significance, Don Juan isn’t too different from other narrative films of its era. The set design by Ben Carre (who also designed the stunning sets for The Phantom of the Opera) is opulent and baroque, giving the movie a distinctive atmosphere. In general, Don Juan plays like a gothic variation of a late-career Valentino vehicle. It has all the steamy romance, wry humor, and swashbuckling action to be found in The Eagle or The Son of the Sheik, but with a more horrific undercurrent. With its Italian Renaissance setting, lewd villainous nobles, menaced virgins, and shadowy torture chambers, Don Juan recalls the gothic tropes of eighteenth century writers like Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Gregory Lewis, now combined with the gloss and glamor of Jazz Age Hollywood. It’s a beguiling blend of the crowd-pleasing and the perverse.

For those who think the pre-code era of the early 1930s had a monopoly on cinematic sex and violence before the 1960s, Don Juan can be a bit of a shock. Within the first few minutes, we have an unlucky paramour being walled up alive and a man’s mistress kissing his underage son on the mouth. Don Juan juggles multiple women in his home at once and has mastered the art of charming and deceiving their suspicious husbands by the time he encounters innocent Adriana, played once again by Barrymore’s former co-star Mary Astor. As in their previous collaboration Beau Brummel, Astor doesn’t get much to do other than swoon in love or fear. She is beautiful but reactive and easily overshadowed by the other major feminine presence in Don Juan, Estelle Taylor as the wicked Lucrezia Borgia. Now THAT is a fun performance, a melodramatic villain played to the nines!

But it is John Barrymore who is undeniably the star of the show. He runs the gamut from wily mischief to hotblooded romance, all the while cramming in a great deal of physical action that would make a Fairbanks hero jealous: sword-fighting, balcony-jumping, and wall-scaling. As was the case with his lead performance in The Sea Beast (covered in my previous entry in this series), Barrymore’s Don Juan is a psychologically tormented character. He is not a joyful lady’s man, but a traumatized individual who views sexual conquest as a way of staving off humiliation and heartbreak. In his essay on Barrymore’s screen lover persona, critic Douglas McFarland goes as far as to call Don Juan a figure trapped in pathological habits. When Don Juan realizes Adriana is not only disinterested in being his next conquest, but also terrified of his aggressive advances, “His anger is not that of a rake who has failed to ravish a virgin but that of a man who has recognized, in a still confused way, his own pathological behavior. It is an anger emanating from his own frustration at being the person that he is” (74). Don Juan doesn’t undergo the world’s most complicated character arc, but it does lend a bit more weight to his characterization.

I’m not going to argue Don Juan is one for the ages, but it is still a great stylish romp and a fine showcase for Barrymore as a performer. It has just that little bit of everything you could want from cinematic escapism: action, romance, thrills, comedy, and atmosphere. To be honest, it is my favorite of his silent films. It’s the kind of deliriously melodramatic confection I just cannot resist.

Sources:

Eyman, S. (2015). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster.

McFarland, D. (2018). “From Rome to Berlin: Barrymore as Romantic Lover.” In Murray Pomerance & Steven Rybin (eds.) Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen (pp.71-84). Edinburg University Press.

4 – The Volga Boatman

Image source: Wikipedia

Princess Vera (Elinor Fair) finds her betrothal to Prince Dimitri (Victor Varconi) complicated by a variety of factors. Number one, it’s the Russian Revolution– the peasants are revolting against centuries of tsarist rule and they want aristocrats like her to trade in their crowns for a bullet between the eyes. Second, she’s infuriated and intrigued by one Feodor (William Boyd), a hunky Volga boatman and revolutionary leader who also hates aristocrats but is less inclined to want a bullet between Vera’s eyes. As the revolution rages on, the princess and the peasant keep crossing paths. I wonder what’s going to happen to that previously mentioned betrothal?

Release date: April 4, 1926

Russian Revolution romances were a hot trend in 1920s Hollywood. The revolution both intrigued and horrified Americans. As presented through the romanticized lens of Hollywood, the event was basically the French Revolution sans guillotine. Expect lots of nobility on the run and frenzied mobs of angry patriotic peasants. Don’t expect much in the way of actual political discussion.

The Volga Boatman was DeMille’s contribution to this trend and while not the most celebrated by modern critics (that would be Von Sternberg’s The Last Command, which moves into perverse psychological territory), it is arguably the most definitive of the storytelling tropes prevalent in this micro-genre. The heroine is a beautiful noblewoman dressed in 1920s-style gowns and the hero is a peasant-born communist leader who doesn’t believe in buttoning his shirt above the navel. When the two meet, it is “enemies to lovers” branded lust at first sight. All that’s preventing their tumultuous relationship’s consummation is that pesky political situation.

Sadomasochism permeates every scene. A leering White Russian officer uncorks a bottle of champagne as he watches Vera (her class status disguised by peasant’s garb) forcibly stripped, the foam surging over the top suggestively. Characters are tied up and tortured. Feodor and Vera constantly shift positions in the movie-long power play between them, each character taking on the roles of captor or prisoner at different points. It’s a bit like the dynamic between Errol Flynn and Olivia DeHavilland in Captain Blood, only way more openly horny.

The highlight of the film occurs when Vera is in the Red Army’s clutches. She is to be executed by Feodor. The two are conveniently sequestered alone in a drawing room. Instead of putting a bullet in her head right away, Feodor engages in a battle of wits and nerve with his prisoner. Vera mocks Feodor as a brute without honor. Feodor basically goes “nuh-uh.” The editing and suspense in this sequence is masterful, aided by the smoking hot sexual tension between the two characters. Ultimately, Vera’s patriotic love for Russia wins over Feodor. (Like The Last Command, which also features forbidden romance between a White and Red Russian, The Volga Boatman never goes into the fact that people from these two ideologies would not have the same ideas about what makes a “good patriot,” but once again, Hollywood Russian Revolution movies don’t care about all that.)

William Boyd, later to gain cinematic immortality as Hopalong Cassidy, is great as the swashbuckling hero. Elinor Fair projects wit and spunk as the heroine. The chemistry between them was apparently genuine, as the two performers married shortly after the film’s release.  Unfortunately, the supporting cast veers between merely competent and outright bad. The award for “outright bad” is a toss-up between DeMille regulars Julia Faye and Theodore Kosloff as a pair of bumbling communist villains. Faye’s character is basically Dickens’ Madame Defarge, only horny and dumber. Kosloff is her smooth-brained, bearded consort. Together, they are absolutely obnoxious.

Luckily, those two don’t sink the movie. While DeMille made better silent films, this one is still a good campy time. Like Don Juan, it’s the kind of melodramatic nonsense I enjoy heartily.

Sources:

Eyman, S. (2010). Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille. Simon & Schuster.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of the Greatest Hits of 1926!

Movie of the month: The Signal Tower (dir. Clarence Brown, 1924)

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Image source: Wikipedia

Long thought lost like so much of the silent era, a copy of the 1924 thriller-melodrama The Signal Tower was eventually discovered in 16mm. Directed by Clarence Brown before he became famous for his handling of several women’s melodramas in the 1930s, The Signal Tower is a simple, brisk, and effective piece of work. You can watch it in rather muddy quality on YouTube, but since it’s made the rounds at a few film festivals, I’m hoping it will be available in a nicer home media edition soon enough.

The plot is quintessential home invasion material. In need of some extra income, railroad worker Dave (Rockliffe Fellows) gives new co-worker Joe (Wallace Beery) a room in his own home. Dave’s wife Sally (Virginia Valli, whose greatest claim to fame now is playing the lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature, The Pleasure Garden) isn’t too happy about Joe’s presence. He’s a shameless playboy for one thing, flirting with Sally’s visiting cousin and hitting on Sally herself repeatedly. Dave ignores Sally’s misgivings about Joe. However, one night, when a possible collision on the railway requires Dave to do his duty, Joe sets his sinister intentions on Sally, forcing her into fight or flight mode. The couple’s young son (Frankie Darro) escapes to inform his father of the attack, forcing Dave into a classic trolley problem scenario.

The threat to home and hearth links The Signal Tower with earlier suspense dramas like Griffith’s The Lonely Villa and Weber’s Suspense, but being a feature film, the characters are fleshed out a bit more. There is some tension between husband and wife– she voices her suspicions about the new lodger, while her husband laughs them off. As critic Paul Cuff points out in his review, “The film is about a man whose duty it is to see danger, but who spends the first half of the film ignoring the warning signals from his own family.” Similarly, Joe is under the impression that he is catnip to women and often interprets any “no” as a case of playing hard to get. His sense of entitlement escalates from being merely annoying to outright disturbing.

The film is ultimately a handsomely mounted slow-burn thriller that kicks into high gear within the last third. Even in the crummy YouTube version, The Signal Tower‘s breathtaking location footage shines through. The editing of the climax where Joe makes his final assault on Sally and Dave’s home is nail-biting stuff, the physical threat Joe represents absolutely palpable. While it doesn’t hit the highs of Brown’s more famous silent work like The Eagle or Flesh and the Devil, The Signal Tower is still a marvelous work and worth checking out for silent film fans.

Sources:

Cuff, P. (July 25, 2023) The Signal Tower (1924; US; Clarence Brown). The Realm of Silence. https://therealmofsilence.com/2023/07/25/the-signal-tower-1924/

The 12th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon: Marion Mack and The General (1926)

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This post is part of the 12th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon hosted by Silentology. Check out her blog for more Buster goodness.

In the grand context of silent era Hollywood, Marion Mack’s film career was a minor one. Her onscreen credits are few and her writing credits number about the same. As it sometimes happens, she found a kind of screen immortality because of a single movie role: that of Annabelle Lee in Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General.

When people discuss why The General is considered one of the greatest comedies of all time, Marion Mack doesn’t often come up. We discuss the film’s thrilling stunts, narrative symmetry, Matthew Brady-inspired visuals, attention to historical detail, and exhilarating blend of action and comedy. Mack’s performance can get lost in the critical shuffle. This is a shame because she is one of Keaton’s most distinctive leading ladies.

My appreciation for Mack was shared by Raymond Rohauer, the film distributor who helped reissue Keaton’s work in the midcentury. In his foreward to Richard Anobile’s Film Library book on The General, Rohauer described Mack’s performance as more active than the usual Keaton heroine: “Since she does not just passively wait but helps to effect much of her own rescue alongside him, there is more interaction between them than between the protagonists of any other Keaton film… Thus, Marion came closest to making a flesh-and-blood girl out of a Keaton leading-lady role, and the only one whom we might believe capable, at the end of the film, of actually bringing him down to earth.”

Now, I think Rohauer’s statement Keaton’s other great leading ladies like Kathryn McGuire, Dorothy Sebastian, and Sybil Seely. While some of Keaton’s heroines are merely decorative “breathing props” for the hero to win by the final reel, others serve as comic partners who take an active role in the narrative and the gags. Mack is among that latter category.

But who was Marion Mack?

A glamor shot of Mack in a 1922 issue of Screenland. During this period, she was performing under the name “Elinor Lynn.” Image source: Wikipedia

Marion Mack was born Joey Marion McCreery in 1902. Her childhood in Utah was marked by her parents’ divorce when she was still a toddler. Like many teenagers in the 1910s, McCreery was mad about the movies. Perhaps hoping to emulate her comedienne idol Mabel Normand, McCreery wrote a letter to the Mack Sennett studio, asking for work and including a few photos of her in a bathing suit in the envelope. The studio wrote back that she could secure an interview if she managed to make it out to Hollywood. Though her father was wary of his daughter taking on movie work, McCreery’s stepmother agreed to act as chaperone.

In true “only in the silent era” fashion, McCreery’s interview secured two offers: one from Sennett and the other from producer Thomas Ince. She had already accepted Sennett’s offer before Ince’s and was soon working for $25 a week. Shortly thereafter, McCreery met Louis Lewyn, a movie producer. The two hit it off quickly and would quietly marry in 1920. Unlike most Hollywood unions, the Lewyns’ would last for a lifetime.

Around this time, McCreery’s career shifted from Sennett comedies to two-reel westerns at Universal. McCreery would change her stage name twice in the next few years. First she rechristened herself “Elinor Lynn” (perhaps meant to evoke the famous scribe of steamy romance novels Elinor Glyn), then changed it to the punchier Marion Mack.

Lobby card for Mary of the Movies. Image source: Wikipedia

Mack’s most significant pre-General release was Mary of the Movies, a comedy about a country ingenue who journeys to Hollywood in search of a lucrative career. She struggles to find acting work, settles for a waitress job, then gets her big break when a star falls ill and a last-minute replacement is needed. Mack did more than play the titular lead—she also co-wrote the script with her husband, basing much of it on her own experiences as a young movie actress.

While the contemporary reviews I’ve come across are lukewarm, Mary of the Movies was still a hit. The big draw appears to have been the numerous star cameos sprinkled throughout. Zasu Pitts, Louise Fazenda, Wanda Hawley, Bessie Love, Carmel Myers, and Barbara LaMarr are a few of the notables who made appearances. Mary of the Movies exists in only partial condition today and I could not find a second of it available for viewing. Mack must have been proud of her work in it though because when she was brought to Buster Keaton’s attention for the leading lady part in The General, she had it screened for him.

As fans of The General know, what initially brought Mack to his attention was not her acting but her hair. Keaton wanted his Civil War epic to be “so authentic it hurt” and this included hair length. Keaton grew out his own hair to better embody a mid-Victorian man and he sought a leading lady who hadn’t yet bobbed her hair as any fashionable Jazz Age woman was likely to do. Percy Westmore, Mack’s make-up man from a drama titled Carnival Girl, told Keaton’s sister-in-law Norma Talmadge that Mack had kept her locks long and curly. However, by the time Talmadge related this to Keaton and he had the chance to reach out to Mack, she had sheared her hair. Ultimately, Mack managed to secure the role in spite of the bad timing, apparently impressing Keaton during a meeting following his screening of Mary of the Movies.

When she arrived in Cottage Grove, Oregon for filming, Mack’s initial impression of Keaton was that he seemed aloof. However, she soon realized this had more to do with shyness than anything else and Keaton opened up the more Mack got to know him. This opening up involved plenty of pranks both on and off the set.

Among the first of these pranks involved Mack getting hung upside down by some of the crew at Keaton’s insistence. Once she got back down, Mack punched Keaton in the face, giving him a black eye that postponed shooting for a week. (To be honest, I would probably react the same way to suddenly being hung upside down.) “This was before I understood that he meant no harm,” she later said, as she came to learn Keaton regularly played practical jokes on co-workers and friends.

If anything, Keaton appeared to have a great deal of confidence in Mack’s comic abilities and physical resilience. While she was initially told she would be doubled for more strenuous sequences, Mack ended up doing many of them herself, such as a scene in which Annabelle, hidden in a burlap sack, is accidentally stepped on by Johnnie. Mack said in an interview with Raymond Rohauer (also printed in Richard Anobile’s study of The General), “I didn’t get mad at [Keaton] that time, I must say he knew just how to do it so it wouldn’t hurt me. I guess it was his vaudeville training.”

One of Keaton’s most elaborate pranks stayed in the finished film. It occurred during the scene where Johnnie and Annabelle stop to take on water as they rush back to the southern lines. The two accidentally dislodge the spout from the water tower, resulting in Annabelle’s being soaked through when Johnnie pulls the wire connected to the structure. Mack was under the impression that she would only be present for part of the scene and ultimately doubled for that moment, so her alarmed onscreen reaction was genuine. Said Mack, “It really knocked me down. It’s a good thing we didn’t have sound movies at the time!”

Overall, Mack’s memories of the shoot were positive. Keaton turned out to be a great director to work with and Mack even contributed to the creation of some of the film’s gags. However, The General would be the high point of Mack’s onscreen career. By the late 1920s, she swapped focus from acting to writing due to her husband’s concerns about their being apart so long while she filmed on location. Since Mack preferred writing to acting anyway, it was not a large sacrifice.

Her personal life was eventful in the meantime. During the 1930s, she would help out personal friend and former screen star Clara Bow, who found a temporary home with Mack and Llewyn when she needed to sell her Beverly Hills home. The two women remained lifelong friends until Bow’s death in 1965. By the 1940s, Llewyn’s health declined, prompting Mack to leave the film business altogether. Mack pivoted her career to real estate, which sustained the couple until Lewyn’s death in 1969.

Mack’s retirement years coincided with The General‘s gradual rediscovery by movie fans and critics. As a result, she was in demand for appearances at screenings. Mack was surprised but delighted by her resurgence of celebrity and happily discussed her memories of the film at screenings all over the world. She lived to be 87 years old, finally passing away in 1989.

Mack as Annabelle Lee

Mack’s performance in The General reflects the film’s preference for reserve over easy sentimentality. There is no mugging, no overemphasis on emotional reactions like one would expect from a silent comedy. Critic Tim Brayton’s words on Keaton’s performance– “a lot of situational humor [is] made all the better by [Keaton’s] incomparable discipline, refusing to mug for added yuks when simply inhabiting the role and playing it honestly and as straight is both funnier and more human”– can also be applied to Mack’s work in the film.

After being introduced in a daugerrotype Johnnie keeps framed in his engine interior, Annabelle enters the scene in a charming way, trailing an oblivious Johnnie as he marches to her home to court her. Johnnie is already followed by two young admirers who are directly behind him. Annabelle gets to the back of the line. The parade of characters evokes a train on a track, prefiguring the chases to come. The moment also pulls double-duty in establishing characterization: it shows how Johnnie has almost literal tunnel vision (a characteristic which contributes to much of the trouble Johnnie often finds himself in) and that Annabelle has a playful, mischievous side that complements Johnnie’s stoic earnestness. Of course, this mischievousness just as easily curdles into cattiness when Annabelle believes Johnnie is a coward. She side-eyes him in public then gushes over her brother’s medals, all to spite him.

While rewatching The General recently, I could not help but compare Mack to Kathryn McGuire, who also played some of Keaton’s more active heroines in Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator. Both get to be comic partners to Keaton, but their demeanors are different. McGuire eludes cool aristocratic reserve while Mack seems more vulnerable, particularly when she is a prisoner of the Union raiders. While there is never the sense that her Union captors intend her any harm, Mack makes Annabelle’s distress and uncertainty palpable without going over the top.

Another element which distinguishes Mack’s Annabelle from other Keaton heroines is how much rough-housing she endures. Though introduced to the audience as the stereotypical southern belle who must be protected by her menfolk, Annabelle gets caught in a bear trap, stuffed into a sack, tossed onto a train, stepped on, and drenched with water. In the BFI Film Classics analysis of The General, critic Peter Kramer sees an element of vengeance in the way Annabelle is treated in the latter part of the film. (He also reads sexual meaning into Annabelle getting doused with water which is… a take.)

I don’t think it’s quite that mean-spirited. Keaton liked subverting typical movie conventions, one of them being the ever-pristine appearance of Hollywood leading ladies, no matter the scenario. As Keaton said in a 1965 interview at the Venice Film Festival, “Oh God, [Mack] had more fun with that picture than any film she’d made in her life! I guess it’s because so many leading ladies in those days looked as though they had just walked out of a beauty parlor. They always kept them looking that way – even in covered wagons, they kept their leading ladies looking beautiful at all times. We said thunder with that, we’ll dirty ours up a bit and let them have some rough treatment.”

A punitive reading of Annabelle’s ordeals also ignores how game she proves to be once the race back to the southern lines kicks into high gear. She confidently climbs onto the engine, ignoring Johnnie’s offer of giving her a boost, and comes up with some traps for their Union pursuers on her own—goofy plans admittedly, but they end up working!

The dynamic between Annabelle and Johnnie is at its most amusing in the second half. In the early scenes, Johnnie is worshipful and Annabelle glows from the attention. But once the two are in harm’s way, they interact with mingled stress and affection throughout the pursuit. Both are bumbling figures, with Johnnie trying to appear heroic while he’s barely a step ahead of the obstacles in their path and Annabelle often more concerned with aesthetics than practicality. They take turns showing who might be the most dopey between the two. Annabelle throws out potential firewood for the engine when it has a knothole. Johnnie– still disguised as a Union soldier– doesn’t get why the Confederates are firing at him when they cross back into southern territory.

Some of Annabelle’s more harebrained moments elicit hilarious frustrated reactions from Johnnie, like when she tosses him a pathetic bit of wood to help build a fire and Johnnie angrily throws it back at her, or when he sarcastically offers her a twig to use as kindling in the wood-burning engine and Annabelle happily throws it onto the flames. Johnnie proceeds to playfully throttle then kiss her. The latter of these scenes was largely improvised between Mack and Keaton, and it remains a high point in a movie filled to the brim with memorable moments.

It’s easy to boil a classic’s success down to one or two broad factors, but when you take a close look at any work which has stood the test of time, there are a million smaller components that contribute to the heavy lifting. Mack’s performance is one such factor in the success of The General. While she never became a major star, her performance here is the right blend of funny, dramatic, and charming. If anything, it’s a shame she never went on to further screen work as a comedienne. At the very least, she made her mark in one of the great film comedies of all time and we can still enjoy her work today.

Sources:

Ankerich, M. G. (1993). Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 silent film stars. McFarland & Co.

Brayton, T. (January 13, 2011). The best films of all time: 6-15. Alternate Ending. https://www.alternateending.com/blog/the-best-films-of-all-time-6-15

Curtis, J. (2022). Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life. Knopf.

Gillet, J & Blue, J. (1965). Keaton at Venice. In Kevin Sweeney (Ed.), Buster Keaton Interviews (pp. 219-231). University Press of Mississippi.

Kramer, P. (2016). The General (BFI Film Classics). British Film Institute.

Smith, I.S. (2008). Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy. Gambit Publishing.

Rohaer, R. (1975). On The Track of The General. In Richard J. Anobile (Ed.), Buster Keaton’s The General (pp. 7-17). Universe Books.

Movie of the month: The Fan (dir. Otto Preminger, 1949)

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Image source: IMDB

The Fan is rarely anyone’s favorite Otto Preminger film, but it happens to be mine. I admit it is neither the best nor most groundbreaking movie he ever made, yet it is the one I am always the most eager to revisit. There’s something comfortable about it for me.

Adapted from Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play Lady Windemere’s Fan, it focuses on a series of misunderstandings and near-scandal in the world of late Victorian England. Mysterious adventuress Mrs. Erlynne (Madeleine Carroll) makes a splashy entrance into high society. Strapped for cash, she convinces young newlywed Lord Windemere (Richard Greene) to supply her with the needed funds to pay for her lavish lifestyle and entice potential suitors. However, Windemere’s generosity becomes fodder for gossip and the salacious rumors soon reach the ears of his principled (some might say uptight) wife, Lady Windemere (Jeanne Crain).

Believing her husband is having an affair, Lady Windemere is tempted by society bad boy Lord Darlington (George Saunders) who has long harbored a grand passion for the pure young woman and seeks to convince her to run away with him. However, Mrs. Erlynne is not what she seems. Ultimately, it is up to the so-called bad woman to prevent personal tragedy and social suicide for all involved.

I first heard of The Fan when I came across critic Imogen Smith’s IMDB review from 2008. She gushed about the movie, describing it as a mature but sparkling melodrama/comedy-of-manners hybrid that deserved more attention. This take was quite the opposite reaction to most other reviews of The Fan— from the 1940s onward– which struck a universal chord of underwhelmed and annoyed. Wilde fans think the film gutted the wit and humor, everything they admire about Wilde as an artist. Even Walter Reisch, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ross Evans and none other than literary giant Dorothy Parker, felt the final product was an uninspired drag.

Au contraire, The Fan always struck me as a poignant, charming piece of work, beautifully shot and packed with good to great performances, especially those of Madeleine Carroll and George Saunders, who breathe humanity into their roguish characters. Wilde’s original text walked the fine line between melodrama and comedy, and the film version excels at this balancing act as well, all without falling victim to tonal whiplash. Maybe that is because there is a persistent strain of melancholy throughout the movie that keeps it feeling consistent, no matter the content of the scene.

It probably helps my appreciation for the film that I do not view Lady Windemere’s Fan as sacred scripture. I admit I might be bothered more by the film’s excision of much of Wilde’s dialogue if I were a Wilde devotee. I’m a fan of Wuthering Heights, so trust me, I understand that loving something makes you a bit more particular when it comes to adaptations that play fast and loose with a cherished text. However, as with the better film versions of Wuthering Heights, I can at least appreciate when an adaptation is good on its own merits despite unfaithfulness to its source. That is certainly the case with The Fan.

The largest (and arguably most controversial) change to the original play is one of my favorite things about The Fan. The screenplay writers added a framing story set in the post-WWII present where an octogenarian Mrs. Erlynne is trying to reacquire Lady Windemere’s old fan from an auction of unclaimed property. To prove she is the true owner of the coveted item, she has twenty-four hours to find someone else who can vouch for her. She tracks down Lord Darlington, whom the years have transformed from a dangerous drawing room rouge to a crotchety “museum piece” young women find amusing rather than alluring. The Windemeres are nowhere to be seen. We quickly learn from Mrs. Erlynne that they were killed during wartime bombings, so the fan is all she has left to remember them by.

The framing device lends an air of wistful nostalgia to the main 1890s plot. As Smith notes in her review, “The frame gives the costume-drama portion a wistful edge; instead of the usual Hollywood gloss, here the past gleams through nostalgia like a flower buried in a paperweight.” The gulf between the elegant but repressed world of the Victorian past and the industrialized but relatively less tightlaced world of the mid-twentieth century is compelling. What results is a multifaceted film that strikes me as far more interesting than a straightforward, faithful rendering of Wilde’s original play would have been. It’s a real gem and I hope more people give it a fair shot.