WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[Ann Harding]

Le Lion des Mogols (The Lion of the Mogols, 1924) by Jean Epstein with Ivan Mosjoukine, Nathalie Lissenko et Camille Bardou

Prince Roundghito-Sing (I. Mosjoukine) leaves his country on a boat as the nasty Great Khan is after him. On the boat, he meets a film crew. He notices immediately Anna (N. Lissenko) an actress...

This Epstein picture seems to enjoy a real prestige among the Albatros collection. I wonder why. It's a high piece of camp and kitsch. Mosjoukine appears on the screen dressed in the most hilarious costume (hot pants!) covered with pearls. The narrative is highly flawed and Epstein seems unable to build characters. Strangely, he manages to get an inexpressive performance from Mosjoukine, that protean actor! The beginning of the film tries to create an Arabian Nights atmosphere unsucessfully. When William Cameron Menzies' sets in Thief of Bagdad are a masterpiece, here we get something that looks like cardboard sets. The film peaks up when he boards a boat bound for France. He steps into a movie set where a camera crew is shooting a film. But what could have provided some amusing comedy relief turns quickly into a bore. The best aspect of the film is that we can get a glimpse of the Albatros studios in Montreuil. But, the idea of the film-within-a-film was not new. In 1920, L'Angoissante Aventure (Protazanov) was also showing scenes behind the camera. Epstein tries to use the latest technical advances, but they seem like showing off rather than an integral part of the film.
I saw yesterday a new print with restored tints (based upon a Pathé-Baby print). Tints or no tints, this film is the least interesting Mosjoukine picture among his French silents.

[moira finnie]

I envy you, Christine, even though those pearl-encrusted short-shorts sound pretty funny, (I wonder if Nazimova influenced the filmmakers' ideas for costuming in The Lion of the Mogols after they saw her more outlandish costumes in 1923's Salome?). I've only seen Mosjoukine in one complete movie, The White Devil (1930) on youtube, found here, which conveys some of his power as an expressive silent actor, though his reputation in silents from the Czarist era and in movies made in France certainly makes him of interest. I have wondered if some enterprising writer couldn't find all the elements of a tragi-comic story in the actor's experiences in Hollywood making Surrender (1927) for Carl Laemmle at Universal, when Ivan Mosjoukine unfortunately even submitted to rhinoplasty to appease those who felt his nose was too long. Do you think that Laemmle hoped to have found a second Conrad Veidt, whose expressive power made such an impression on audiences around the world?

Here is a clip from Kevin Brownlow's splendid documentary Cinema Europe that really made me want to see more of Ivan Mosjoukine and to learn more about the White Russian artistic community in Paris after the Russian Revolution.
[youtube][/youtube]

[JackFavell]

Ohh, he is so beautiful with his nose the way it is! What a shame.

[Ann Harding]

I wonder if Nazimova influenced the filmmakers' ideas for costuming in The Lion of the Mogols after they saw her more outlandish costumes in 1923's Salome?).
Do you think that Laemmle hoped to have found a second Conrad Veidt, whose expressive power made such an impression on audiences around the world?

I don't think so. Nazimova's Salome is based upon Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations of Wilde's play. In the Epstein picture, it looks like cheap Arabian Nights. No very successful. Actually, it's the worst Mosjoukine silent picture I have ever seen.

As for Laemmle, I guess he hired a heart-throb rather than a great actor like Veidt. That's Hollywood's greatest failure. They were not able to recognise a great versatile acting talent. Typecasting was a rule. Poor Mosjoukine was doomed after that. His career in Germany was already a swansong. He died destitute and forgotten in 1939 from TB. But, his body of work in France (from 1920 to 1927) is really incredible. I have now seen them all. I hope that one day some of his films will find their way onto DVD.

[Ann Harding]

Yesterday I saw the last film in the Albatros season at the Cinémathèque.

Lillian Hall-Davis and Sandra Milowanoff

La Proie du Vent (The Prey of the Wind, 1926) by René Clair with Charles Vanel, Lillian Hall-Davis, Sandra Milowanoff and Jean Murat

Aviator Pierre Vignal (C. Vanel) crashes with his plane. He is rescued by countesse Elisabeth (L. Hall-Davis) who lives with her sister's husband. He falls in love with her. But, one night, he meets Hélène (S. Milowanoff), her sister, who tells him her husband and her sister keep her captive in the castle...

This René Clair picture based upon a best-seller of the time manages to avoid the clichés and boredom of such novels. Charles Vanel (who had probably one of the longest career in cinema ever starting in 1910 and ending in 1988!) plays the leading man unlike his usual villains. One scene is even a foretaste of Flesh and the Devil when Vanel manages to exchange his cigarette for that of Lillian Hall-Davis. Another beautiful sequence shows Clair's mastery of the cinema. Vanel becomes madly jealous of Hall-Davis' brother-in-law. So we see on the screen what his mind imagines: he arrives in her bedroom and sees her with her brother-in-law. A violent scene ensues. But Vanel decides not to act. The Russian actress Sandra Milowanoff gives a brilliant performance as Hélène. She manages to convince Vanel she is captive and they run away in a car. The following car chase is beautifully edited. Overall, it's not Clair's best silent picture, but extremely worthwhile. The film accompanied by a jazz band. They were good musicians, but they failed to provide the transitions necessary for a successful film score.

[JackFavell]

This movie sounds quite serious, is it different from most of the Clair films I've seen, like Le Million, Sous les Toits de Paris, etc? Was this before he was able to create his own form?

[Ann Harding]

This movie sounds quite serious, is it different from most of the Clair films I've seen, like Le Million, Sous les Toits de Paris, etc? Was this before he was able to create his own form?

Clair is mostly famous for his comedies. But, among his most famous pictures in France, there are quite a few dramas such as Les Grandes Manoeuvres where Gérard Philipe seduces Michèle Morgan to win a wager or La Beauté du Diable a version of Faust with G. Philipe and Michel Simon. During the silent era, he made also some brilliant comedies: An Italian Straw Hat and Les Deux Timides. But I wouldn't call him just a director of comedies.

[JackFavell]

I need to dig deeper into more of Clair's films. I really love him, everything I have seen is superb, but I have only seen his five most famous comedies, a short, I Married a Witch and And Then There Were None.

[drednm]

Watched The White Sister tonight and enjoyed the tragic romance set in Italy. Lillian Gish was terrific as always as the younger sister cheated out of her birthright by an older sister (Gail Kane) and even losing lover Ronald Colman to a military expedition to Africa. All this set against an imminent eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Also watched the bizarre The Last Laugh with the great Emil Jannings as a lowly doorman who loses his job only to have money left to him in a twist ending.

The Viking was a dull MGM adventure with Donald Crisp oddly cast as Leif Erickson and Pauline Starke as the blonde Helga. Other than the 2-strip Technicolor, there wasn't much to recommend this one. However, Starke was terrific in Captain Salvation, which I finally watched. Lars Hanson starred as the minister driven out of town for befriending Starke, who basically washes up onshore in a sea wreck after being chased out of Boston. They sail away with Ernest Torrence only to discover they have been tricked into booking passage on a prison ship. Torrence lusts after Starke who is trying to be good. When Hanson intercedes he is cast into the hold with the prisoners. The subtle ending when Hanson returns to town is quite magnificent. I thought this was a great film.

[JackFavell]

I am probably showing my ignorance and lack of taste here, but I found The Last Laugh unbearable. Yes, Jannings is great, but it's so awful to actually sit still and watch him so degraded and depressed. I hated it!

[drednm]

I believe, and I may be wrong, that the original ending to The Last Laugh has Jannings die in that basement men's room. The "happy" ending certainly seems tacked on. The original title for the film was The Last Man. Perhaps the new ending was added for American consumption. In any case, Jannings is an amazing actor, probably the greatest actor of the silent era. Although this is a nearly unrelenting descent into the doorman's degradation, Jannings is fascinating to watch, plus Murnau's sets and camera work are terrific.

I recently found a 1941 German film about the Boer War called Ohm Kruger starring Jannings. Can't wait to see his work in a talkie... even if it is in German with subtitles.

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm sure the version of The Last Laugh I saw had the ending you described. I'll have to dig it out and watch it again.

Yesterday I watched the strange but quite compelling Hatchet Man 1932 with Edward G Robinson and Loretta Young playing Chinese/Americans. Robinson the hatchet man is the man who has to avenge his tong when the tong has been upset. He puts his hatchet in the back of the head, he has to do this to his best friend who bequaeths his daughter to him, first to bring up then to marry, the daughter once she's grown up is Loretta Young who dutifully marries him but is lured off by another man. The hatchet man refuses to exact revenge on the lover as he promised to always keep his wife happy. He is shunned by his community once his wife's affair is discovered and ends up labouring in the field.

It's interesting to see popular actors of the day playing Chinese, Edward G Robinson and Loretta Young areskilled enough to not make the film feel ridiculous, to me it feels a shame that they couldn't cast from within the Chinese American community but I guess they thought it wouldn't bring in the dollars.

[MichiganJ]

I believe, and I may be wrong, that the original ending to The Last Laugh has Jannings die in that basement men's room. The "happy" ending certainly seems tacked on.

There was only ever the one "happy ending" to The Last Laugh. According to Jannings' memoir, he asked for the happy ending because he wasn't satisfied presenting only the negative side of things. But the likely reality is that Ufa demanded screen writer Carl Mayer add the happy ending to make the film more commercial. Thus Mayer and Murnau add the one intertitle to introduce the ironic but happy turn of events. The tacked-on ending used to bother me, but now, knowing that it's coming, I find it absurdly funny.

Great film, pure cinema and amazing cinematography by Karl Freund.

[drednm]

Good info... thanks. It's an absurdist film but it's so cinematic and Jannings is so totally into it, it's very watchable. I liked the almost total absence of intertitles.

Have you seen Captain Salvation ?

[ChiO]

drednm wrote:
The original title for the film was The Last Man. Perhaps the new ending was added for American consumption.

Yes, it was. THE LAST MAN was considered a too depressing title by the American distributor.

MichJ wrote:
Great film, pure cinema and amazing cinematography by Karl Freund.

Ditto. Although Freund wasn't the first to use a moving camera, like the aftermath of Toland's work in CITIZEN KANE, he took the camera in DER LETZTE MANN to new and dizzying heights of freedom and created Art to go with the entertainment. A work of four virtuosos: Murnau, Freund, Mayer and Jannings. One of those rare films that I never tire of. Dazzling.

And, as one gets older, plan a movie night of: THE LAST LAUGH, TOKYO STORY, IKIRU, UMBERTO D. and MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW. (I'm selling tissues at the concession stand.)