Gilbert Roland - A Latin Performer Unbounded

[pvitari]

Woah, I forgot the link! Here it is.

http://www.cometwesterns.com/

[JackFavell]

Oh holy smokes those photos are combustible! Golly.

[moira finnie]

And I think for my avatar I'll settle on the last picture you posted from We Were Strangers...oh my goodness, he looks like Clark Gable in that one!

Holy cats. That makes one heckuva captivating avatar, Miss G. Don't change it too soon, please.

[MissGoddess]

i won't be changing it anytime soon i assure you. do you think if i look at it long enough i shall dream of him tonight?

[moira finnie]

i won't be changing it anytime soon i assure you. do you think if i look at it long enough i shall dream of him tonight?

That might be an interesting effect...

[SILENTMAN]

Hi all, I've been looking for years The Woman Disputed (1928)to view it.
Norma Talmadge and Gilbert Roland are two of my favorite actors.
Hopefully see a copy of this highly anticipated film.





I invite you to visit my blog:
http://theseekerofsilentfilms.blogspot.com/

[moira finnie]

Nice images from The Woman Disputed (1928), Silentman. If you look back to the earlier in this thread here you can see more photos from this film and a link to a fact-packed article from Stanford University by Talmadge scholar Greta de Groat. I believe that a copy of this movie has been screened publicly in the past at that institution. It was also shown at The San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2010. Kevin Brownlow, who was among those who introduced the movie at that year's SFSFF, said “I have just seen The Woman Disputed and it’s a remarkable piece of filmmaking. The plot takes Maupaussant’s Boule de Suif to extremes, but it succeeds so well as a brilliant piece of film craft that it must be brought back to life.”

In its day, the movie garnered considerable praise, as seen in this Photoplay review from Dec. 1928:

"A dynamic drama in which Norma Talmadge exalts a Magdalen to the level of a patriotic saint. She gives a picturesque, yet powerful characterization of a demi-mondaine; it is undoubtedly Miss Talmadge’s greatest contribution to the screen. She plays with subtlety, delicacy, and restraint in a part which could so easily be morbid and maudlin.

One Mary Ann Wagner, an Austrian girl, is unjustly accused of murder. Two fashionable young army officers, a Russian and an Austrian, befriend her. She drops the life she has been forced into, and eagerly accepts the work they find for her. Both officers fall in love with the girl, and their life-long friendship turns to bitter hate. Russian declares war on Austria, and the three part.

The man go to their respective regiments, and Mary Ann to the fields with her countrywomen. She is regenerated through her love for the Austrian officer and her country. When the Russians seize Lemberg, her home, the unsuccessful lover, commanding the invading army, demands her embraces for the lives of many Austrians sentenced to death. The ensuing climax and denouement is drama of the greatest poignancy, powerfully handled by Miss Talmadge."

Above: an obligatory photo showing GR pining for his preoccupied mistress, Norma Talmadge (sorry, couldn't resist posting this one).

A 35mm print does reside in the Library of Congress, though I do not know if it will ever be completely restored and available. I have never heard of anyone owning a private copy of the film. Here's hoping it finds its way to a broader audience soon.

[MissGoddess]

The Woman Disputed sounds wonderful...that poster is beautiful, reminds me of belle epoque style; such artistry. If it is based on Boule de suif, or somehow about different people thrown together by circumstance, it may be the kind of story I nearly always enjoy.

[JackFavell]

I agree, it sounds marvelous. I guess I am going to have to be satisfied reading the story and inserting Gilbert into it with my mind's eye.

[moira finnie]

Hope all Gilbert Roland devotees have a working fan handy--look what I found on Tumblr, all from After Tonight (1933), when love does (*ahem*) appear to be in the air.

[CineMaven]

Whew! Hot!

[JackFavell]

Golly! What year was that? Whew! Steamy.

[moira finnie]

I thought you guys would like those images! Here is a bit more for those who are interested in Buster Keaton as well as GR. (Jacks, are you listening?)

From The New York Times in 1929:

Christmas at the Keatons, 1929:

“Although the sun shines at Christmas in Hollywood, and thin dresses are worn, the good old Christmas spirit is not lacking in the homes of film stars. Parties are given on Christmas Eve as well as Christmas Day. In the houses of Jack Holt and Buster Keaton, for instance, where children form such an important part of the festive season, the decoration of a Chrimstas tree for the kiddies is made an excuse for a Christmas Eve party for the grown-ups.

Mrs. Keaton, who was Natalie Talmadge, always invites ten or twelve friends to help her and Buster to decorate their Christmas-tree. The guests arrive about 8 o’clock when Joe and Bob Keaton are in bed dreaming of Santa Claus. Natalie gives all the girls a big overall, while Buster produces green baize aprons for the men. Then the serious business of the evening begins.

The tree is carried into the hall: a tall ladder is produced; and on a table, box after box of glittering baubles for the tree stand waiting to be used. Up the ladder goes Constance Talmadge, while Norma helps her brother-in-law to blow out a string of coloured balloons.

As a rule, the Keaton’s guests include, in addition to Mrs. Talmadge, Norma and Constance, such cheery people as William Haines, Dorothy Sebastian, Marceline Day, Gilbert Roland, Louis Woldheim—who is a tower of strength on these occasions—and probably John Gilbert.

While half the party concentrates on the tree, some of the others tie up dozes of parcels in gay holly-patterned paper, with huge bows of scarlet ribbon. The remainder get very busy with evergreens and mistletoe, making trails and those big green rings that hang in every Californian house at Christmas. The wireless set provides music, also the gramophone, and most of the workers sing while they toll.”

Gilbert Roland and his friend Buster Keaton in The Passionate Plumber (1932).


Norma Talmadge, GR, and Buster in the swim of things.


GR and Buster in Spain, where they vacationed together after making The Passionate Plumber. Is everybody happy?

[JackFavell]

That sounds like fun, as long as your villa is big enough to keep the little ones asleep whilst your friends are partying....

[moira finnie]

Above: This poster seems to promise exciting naughtiness, but a viewer is out of luck if looking for simply cheap thrills and an unbridled good time.

"If you are looking for the latest news, senor, you're out of luck. News reaches us like light from the stars--it takes a long time," comments Gilbert Roland as Captain Carbajal, a philosophical man who has been sent to a dreary, arid town to uphold the law after a scandal tainted his career. He could have been talking about the time needed to watch The Reward (1965) as well. This 92 minute film is being broadcast again on the Fox Movie Channel on Tuesday, Feb. 7th at 6am ET. If you're a Gilbert Roland completist like me, you may need to see it.


Above: Gilbert Roland confronts Emilio Fernandez in The Reward (1965).

I can't say it is a good film, though an examination of greed, conscience, a vicarious communion with nature or just another entertaining shoot-em-up oater might have emerged from the bare material of this movie with its talented cast, big budget, and potential. As it is, the lasting impression left by this movie was that the desert landscape is beautifully photographed by one of the masters of cinematography, Joseph MacDonald, but the story is shrouded in the murky script, drawn from Michael Barrett's novel and adapted by the director Serge Bourguignon (Sundays and Cybele, The Picasso Summer) and Oscar Millard (No Highway in the Sky, Angel Face). The story of six men and one woman making a hazardous trek across a desert on horseback introduces some potentially interesting but undeveloped characters but they are soon forgotten, as the director focuses on stomach churning closeups of bad guy played by the great Mexican actor-director, Emilio Fernández, who spends the movie sweating, scheming and occasionally strumming a guitar (revealing, I suppose, that even a devil has a soul and honing his future performances for Sam Peckinpah). The director was also transfixed by long helicopter shots of the tiny figures in a vast, bleak landscape (we're all gnats on the windshield of the universe, get it?).

Above: Max von Sydow casting a very blue eye on life in The Reward (1965).

Initially, we meet Max von Sydow, whose enigmatic crop dusting pilot gazes at everyone and everything with the same kind of condescendingly blank but understanding look he gave his naive apostles in The Greatest Story Ever Told. After crashing his plane into what looks like the only water tank in Northern Mexico, von Sydow continues to watch the plane's incineration with that same unchanging, enigmatically sad, small smile. Brought to the police station to pay for the damage, he spies someone he knows in a car across the street, recognizing an American who is a fugitive.

Above: Gilbert Roland and Henry Silva in The Reward (1965).


Above: The couple on the run, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and Yvette Mimieux in The Reward (1965).

In an intriguing change of pace, the outlaw is played by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.in a confused fashion (my sympathy goes with you, Ef). Zimbalist's character is on the run after a boy he may or may not have kidnapped was killed. His character seems overwhelmed by a chain of events, but he still drives a jazzy convertible (with the top down in the sweltering desert), his hair is still perfect, and he is arguing with a sulky blonde in the passenger seat (who is played by Yvette Mimieux, who was Madame Bourguignon at the time). Somewhat stubbornly, Yvette insists on staying with the man on the run, feeling obliged because he committed his impulsive crime in order to get money to marry the girl (even though she doesn't love him, just likes him). Confused, yet?

Above: Gilbert Roland, Max von Sydow, Henry Silva, Nuovo Castelnuovo and Emilio Fernández in a skirmish during the pursuit in The Reward (1965).

The good news is that for about 4 minutes, the plot moves along as the pilot unearths a dog-eared newspaper in the police captain's office claiming that the capture of Efrem will yield a $50k award. Von Sydow finds a kindred soul in the police captain played by the Hero of this thread, (GR, natch). Both men need money for contradictory goals, pronto. The pilot has to pay off the owner of the water tower so he can pursue his new goal, which he says is to get a sailboat, so he can get away from all civilization. Capt. Carbajal (GR) longs to get out of the dust bowl of a town to "live among men again," especially since he has contracted a nagging case of malaria, thanks to the climate in his district. Thinking themselves sly dogs for hatching the scheme to follow Efrem and Yvette and capturing him, von Sydow and GR round up the flunkies and leeches who hang around the police station to accompany them on the search. At this point I would have asked the pair if that was wise, since this motley crew includes a very old man (Julian Rivero) with bad arthritis, a smooth-faced boy (Nino Castelnuovo, fresh from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) who dreams only of becoming a bull fighter, the usually dangerous Henry Silva (of Johnny Cool fame), whose silent character Joaquin plays the flute, seems to be a horse-whisperer, and stares off in a mystical reverie...alot. Rounding out the posse, is the grossly insolent Emilio Fernández who couldn't be trusted to pick up a dime without pinching nine cents for himself. None of these men are aware of the reward. They are just ready for a roadtrip even if the chariot they all clamber into is one rickety truck, with bubble gum patches on four worn out, ancient tires. Of course, this proves unreliable, and they switch to horseback after finding the sports car abandoned by the runaway couple, who have also chosen horsepower for their next mode of transportation.


Above: Emilio Fernández leads the ragged group through the desert.

Eventually, they find the pair, almost dead with thirst, and begin their hegira back to civilization. GR and von Sydow don't tell any of the posse about the money on Efrem's head, though in English, GR explains to a recalcitrant Zimbalist that if the other men knew of the price on his head, dead or alive, his noggin would probably be the only body part returned to the authorities--and Yvette wouldn't be too happy with the consequences either. Soon, of course, the posse becomes aware of the reward and they start to pick each other off, one by one, even though GR and von Sydow agree to split the reward among all of them. The rebellious faction in the group is led by Senor Nasty aka Emilio Fernández spouting off in Spanish, cackling, over-acting all over the place and at one point, seemingly sharing an intimate moment with an old mission bell. Everyone else seems to ignore or tolerate this blow hard though his sanity seems to come unraveled with each passing day of their journey, leading to an ending that is as puzzling as it is anti-climactic.

Out of all the characters, the one person who almost escapes the director's dislike of characterization and humanizing detail is Gilbert Roland. His disgust at the behavior of his underling offends him, but, as we learn, the police captain's once poetic soul has been crushed by his disappointment in love for his wife. Roland's cop senses that he will never be able to make up for the lost years and his determination to survive wavers, though his dignity and presence ground this movie in a way that the story does not.

After trying to figure out what possessed the filmmakers to create this incomprehensible movie, I am wondering if this was one of those movies made as a tax loss or were the producers so impressed by the director's previous movie that they let him have his head? Seeing The Reward (1965), a film made near the very end of the studio system, it was startling to realize that this movie was made--ostensibly for the American market and the rest of the world--with most of the dialogue in Spanish and without subtitles of any kind. I could pick out the sense of about a third of what was said in Spanish, but how self-destructive could an American studio be that would have led 20th Century Fox to allow the director Serge Bourguignon to release a film this way? Was this due to some iron-clad clause in Bourguignon's contract? Did anyone really think that this was a wise business or artistic move? Weren't these big shot moviemakers in the business of communicating anymore? Or did they buy the director's belief that it was all self-explanatory thanks to his gifts as a visual storyteller?

I have found that the movie has a small cult following among those who revel in its hints of moral chaos, comparing it to The Treasure of Sierra Madre and other films. Btw,the director's first big international hit, his Oscar-winning first feature Sundays and Cybele was a beautifully told story in the Nouvelle Vague style and I even liked the critically trounced, last known Bourguignon movie, The Picasso Summer very much. I am not sure what led to this movie's disarray and lack of cohesion, but don't blame Gilbertito or the rest of the cast. They did what they could.