Silent movies - Brown of Harvard

Have you recovered from last week's movie?
This week I bring you "Brown of Harvard" from 1926.

First the plot (with spoilers).

Meet Tom Brown. He's handsome and athletic and his parents are proud of him going to Harvard.
The first thing Tom does there is to start flirting with a young lady in a car - daughter of a professor - the second is falling out with his roommate Bob McAndrews (that's what the intertitles say, but there are pages calling him McAndrew, maybe that was the name in the original stage play?) who's just as handsome and athletic, but also studious.

Instead Tom moves in with Jim Doolittle who's shy and weakly. Tom defends Jim against the others in the dormitory and Jim idolizes him.

William Haines and Jack Pickford
as Tom and Jim

Tom meets Mary again and a rivalry develops between him and Bob over her which escalates when Tom forces a kiss on her.

No means no!

They continue their rivalry in sports, first rowing. Tom replaces Bob after an injury, but fails after a night of heavy drinking over Mary. He decides not to go back to Harvard after the vacation, but his father convinces him to go back if he loves Mary (the old "wear her out" tactics) and also to take up football instead of rowing.

On the day of the big Harvard-Yale game, Jim is lying in bed with a cold. Because of a newspaper article, Tom thinks he's not on the squad, but right after he leaves to pick up his parents, the coach calls setting an ultimatum of 20 minutes or Tom will be off the squad for good.
Of course Jim runs out into the heavy rain to let Tom know and he even hangs on to the streetcar to stop it which ends him up in hospital.

During the football game, Tom hurts his ankle, but when another player hurts himself, he goes back into the game and gains 90 yards before letting Bob make the crucial touchdown. Take that, John Wayne! Indeed this was John Wayne's film debut as a Yale football player, he was uncredited, and I didn't even notice him.

As Tom comes to the hospital to tell Jim, the nurse comes out of the room crying. Jim has died and Tom has a breakdown. But luckily Mary arrives and can comfort him.

The film ends with "The Dickey" (a private social club at Harvard) picking up Tom for a parade as one of the best men of the year, along with Bob.

This is the third "Brown of Harvard" film based on a Broadway play from 1906.

The movie was very popular and "helped" Haines getting typecast in the role of the wisecracking young man who finally gets his life together until the audience tired of that.
I'm already tired of it after just one movie.
While I readily admit that Haines played the role well, I find Tom utterly annoying, and not being a sports fan, I don't think winning a football game, no matter how important, is enough to forgive everything. He behaves "rotten to a very fine girl" (his own words to Jim), not once but twice, and when he doesn't get what he wants, he's like a toddler throwing a tantrum. I always hated that "boys will be boys" excuse.
To be honest, I would have been fine with Bob and Mary getting together.

If she doesn't walk back to the store with me
so I can spend more time with her, I'll
just smash the eggs, jam, and milk and
then she will have to go back.

Haha, what a hilarious idea. Not.
It didn't work, either.

I guess there's the fact that he's quite kind and caring towards Jim. The scene where he rubs liniment on sick Jim's chest is genuinely nice. The scene in which he learns of Jim's death is dramatic, but overacted in my opinion.

Another reason why this movie doesn't work for me is the football game. I have watched sports films, but the sports scenes can't be too long or I get bored. Also I'm not a fan of the "rah rah rah" atmosphere.
It might work for others, well, it obviously did and still does, but I was already too annoyed by Tom.
I will be watching other Billy Haines movies, we'll see if I will like them any better.

Silent movies - The Last Performance

Two weeks ago, we had "the profile", today I'm bringing "the eyes" back - Conrad Veidt.

The movie is from 1929 and it's called "The Last Performance".

Let's start with the plot and some spoilers.

Stage magician and hypnotist Erik the Great is in love with his pretty and much younger assistant Julie, but she doesn't really seem to be in love with him although he regards himself to be engaged to her.

One night, a burglar enters Erik's suite to steal food. Everyone including Julie and Buffo, Erik's second assistant, come running, but Erik assures them everything is alright and even offers Mark a job as his assistant on suggestion of Julie.

Erik plans to announce his engagement on Julie on her 18th birthday, but before the celebration starts, the jealous Buffo tells him about the secret love between Julie and Mark.

So instead, Erik announces the engagement of Julie and Mark, much to the guests' surprise and Buffo's anger.

During their next stage appearance, Buffo gets killed in a chest and sword trick Mark performs.
At the murder trial (with Sam de Grasse of villain fame from four movies I covered before as the prosecutor), Julie implores Erik to help Mark.

Erik asks the judge to let him perform the trick. He shows how he deceived the audience into thinking that Mark did the deadly stab by showing a bloody sword, but how actually he killed Buffo with a dagger he had hidden in his sleeve.
He explains having hoped that Julie might be coming back to him if he got rid of the disloyal Buffo and took Mark out of the picture by blaming him.
Then he kills himself with that dagger in front of a shocked audience.

Veidt was 36, Philbin was 27 at the time. Actually, this movie came out only one year after they had been a very believable couple in "The Man Who Laughs" (a post of mine that sadly didn't get any comments at all although I thought the movie was really fascinating).
So I didn't get the ick feeling from this that I've had from other movies before, not just because I'm a Veidt fan, even if they put the makeup and silver temples on thick to drive the idea of a huge age gap home. 

The movie was made on the set of "The Phantom of the Opera" and had two versions. The one that was part sound - we are at the end of the silent movie era and Veidt went back to Germany after this film - is considered lost (in the Hungarian version Bela Lugosi dubbed for Veidt).
The silent one included scenes that are considered lost.
I watched the print with Danish title cards which has a runtime of about an hour, so maybe some of the development is a little rushed.
I read there was one scene in which Erik had a breakdown. That must have worked well because it's hard to believe how he could have stayed so calm throughout the whole movie, well, except at the end of course.

Although it was quite predictable that Julie would end up with Mark, I definitely wasn't rooting for them even if that was probably what they wanted the audience to do.
Oh look, the old guy taking advantage of the young girl who only stayed because he had done so much for her.
I think I could have felt that more if Erik had been played by an older actor.
This way, I just felt sorry for him, well, until he killed Buffo. He should have fired him because he was annoying throughout the movie, but killing was a bit over the top.
I also didn't like Mark from his first whiny scene after Erik surprised him in his suite.
Another thing that made me wonder was how no one seems to have considered Buffo's death to be an accident. After all Buffo could/should have left the chest during the sword stabbing. A clear failure of Mark's lawyer.

So the highlight for me was really Conrad Veidt. In my opinion, they could have made more of the movie if they hadn't just concentrated on his sinister, hypnotic look that much. Like I said, though, maybe the missing footage would have made a difference.
Why some call this a horror film I don't know, by the way.
Anyhow, thanks to him I enjoyed the movie anyway while the other three didn't convince me that much. It made me even wonder how Julie's and Mark's story would have continued, they both didn't seem very capable to deal with life.

Would I watch it again? I think I would, but there are more Veidt movies to watch!


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Last Performance (1929) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, August 20, 2014
2. "Monique classique": The Last Performance (1929). On: Conrad Veidt Forever

Silent movies - When a Man Loves

I warned you. I said the profile would be back and here it is. Applause for Mr. John Barrymore, ladies and gentlemen!

I even broke my rule of the first picture
always being the theatrical poster if there's one.

Please also welcome his third wife Dolores Costello.
Today's movie is "When a Man Loves" which is based on the 18th century French novel "Manon Lescaut".

Here's the plot (as usual with spoilers).
A little warning first. My feelings towards the movie may have colored my description just a tad 😐

Young Chevalier Fabien des Grieux has devoted his life to church, but when he meets the even younger Manon who is taken to a convent by her brother André, they passionately fall in love at first sight. Fabien has only just received a medal sent by the Bishop to protect him against temptations of the flesh, but drops it to the floor on the first look.
Comte Guillot de Morfontaine, who has shared the siblings' carriage, offers André a lot of money for Manon. Of course Fabien rescues her and they escape to Paris where they spend a happy week together - even though Fabien has to hock his shoe buckles so he can buy Manon a locket. "But this silly locket isn't what I wanted!" Off to a great start.

This plan has not been thought through completely.
Or rather not at all.

Tiberge, Fabien's friend, finds Manon - as does her brother -, but while he can't persuade her to "give Fabien back to them", them being his father and God, André manages to make her leave with him by threatening Fabien with prison.
Fabien is devastated when he comes back and finds Manon's note - half of which André has torn off in order to deceive Fabien into thinking Manon has left him voluntarily - even more so after his friend Tiberge who has come searching for him tells him about her and Morfontaine and points out Manon driving by in a fancy carriage. Of course he doesn't know that Manon had escaped and almost been assaulted by a commoner before André has found her and taken her back.

"Oh Manon, Manon." All she left for Fabien is a note
and her kitten Fifi to take care of "until she's back".
Sorry to say that, but Manon is young, but also an idiot.
Not sure Fabien is much better.

At a club Fabien meets the couple again. Manon is delighted to see him, but he causes a scandal by throwing gold coins at her he has won gambling and leaves. Tiberge informs his father that he's back at the seminary studying for priesthood.
The night before he will take the vow of priesthood, however, Manon turns up at the church.

"I love only you, Fabien, I have left him." (Going where?)
 "You still wear his jewels!" (So dramatic! And hammy.)
"I'm sorry, Fabien - but I'm just a woman. I shall always
love jewels and pretty clothes. Oh, and I have missed
you and Fifi so much." "Well, why didn't you say so?
Let's run away once more before you end up in the streets!"
Ok, not all of these are exact quotes, but still.

So those two fools run off again and lead a merry life - still unmarried, with brother André in the house, and have "golden days", thanks to FATHER'S CREDIT. You gotta be kidding me. Of course Dad stops the credit after hearing Fabien's back together with Manon.

"Oops. No money. That's unexpected. Why don't I tell
Manon to buy the expensive necklace?"
What the heck is wrong with you, Fabien??

Fabien can't bear the thought to deny Manon any luxury, though, so André suggests cheating at cards for which Fabien shows an amazing talent.

Back to Morfontaine who still isn't ready to give up Manon. He wants Cardinal Richelieu to convince King Louis XV to help him get her back. The King is smitten with Manon's beauty, though, and insists on gambling with Fabien for her. Two aces of diamonds are shown and of course the King can't be accused of cheating and thus wins Manon, but Richelieu convinces him that Manon would just drag the royal name through the mud and to leave her to Morfontaine instead.
Meanwhile, Fabien fights trying to save Manon. That's right, we are entering the swashbuckling phase now.

"That's right, I'm not just a pretty good cheat, but
also a great fighter. What are four or five men to me?"

Still refused by Manon, the Comte has her taken to the Prison of the Magdalen for deportation to Louisiana. Fabien rushes over there to ask the Prefect of Police for mercy. Surprise! The Prefect is Morfontaine who shows him Manon just boarding the cart taking the "fallen women" to the ship and promises Fabien the scaffold.

Not a brilliant idea, Monsieur le Comte, after all of
your experiences with Fabien you had expected
him to be caught quietly when he's quite
obviously mad (with love)? R.I.P.

Fabien follows the carriage and jumps in and follows Manon onto the ship as well.
And who catches the captain's eye? Well, it's Manon of course. Fabien's intervention gets him sent to the hellhold (no typo, that's what the title card says), but one of the other women helps Manon saying she's ill.

Fabien has plans of his own. He incites his fellow prisoners to mutiny and he's giving it his all jumping around in the cage until they break their chains successfully and take over the ship.

I'm getting definite Mr. Hyde vibes in here.

Manon gets saved yet again and she and Fabien leave in a small boat.
"Yonder - America! For us freedom - and everlasting love."

The happy ending the book doesn't have. If they
make it through the stormy sea in that tiny boat, that is.
They got that far, though, so they probably will.

A lot of people seem to like, no, love this movie. So romantic. Oh, the things he does for her. The amazing chemistry between the two lovers. Compelling performance. A wonderful period drama. Everything from romance to swashbuckling. I could keep going.

But I don't love it. In fact, I was sooo close to not finishing it. After about 15 minutes. These two annoyed me so much, and I wasn't sure it was because of the story (which, to remind you, is based on an 18th century novel (that I'm definitely not going to read)), because of the acting (I've seen overacting before, but it never bothered me this much), because of the chemistry (which I couldn't find, but I have to admit I had a problem seeing a 45 year old Barrymore supposed to be around the same age as a 23 year old Costello and couldn't get over that) or if it's my current mood.

Mind you, I loved the costumes ("I'm just a woman. I shall always love jewels and pretty clothes", you remember) and I honestly think I could have had a LOT of fun with Barrymore's acting - just look at the pictures I have chosen - but not with this story. Or those people.
You know, I really think that's it - I just couldn't put up with Manon and Fabien and their love story.
Heck, I had fewer problems with Morfontaine. At least Sam de Grasse made a great villain (just as he did as Prince John in "Robin Hood" and the pirate lieutenant in "The Black Pirate").

Then there was, as silly as it may sound to you, Fifi.
It made me nervous how they kept handling the kitten, it was always around, even when Fabien went out drinking. Then they showed Fifi once grown up and that was it which was actually better for my peace of mind.

I'm sorry, I know this is a lot of rambling, but that's exactly the feeling the film gave me.
Well, I said before that I will always tell you my personal opinion and in this case I didn't even use any sources.
The movie will not end up on my re-watch list, but that doesn't mean I'm going to give up on John Barrymore as well. The profile will be back eventually!

Oh, one last thing. Cardinal Richelieu. I just have to show you a picture of him. Makeup goals? A little cat on the cheek?

Silent movies - The Flapper

Flappers - the independent and adventurous young women of the 1920s.
Let me invite you to "The Flapper" from 1920, a silent film which is said to have made the term really popular.

As usual, here's the plot first (spoiler alert!).

Sixteen year old Genevieve "Ginger" King, daughter of wealthy and strict Senator King, is living in Orange Springs and she's bored because that is the kind of town where "girls who hobnobbed at the soda fountain were talked about", especially if they go there at the invitation of a young man - Billy in this case - without taking along a chaperone!

Thanks to the "scandal", Ginger finds herself in a boarding school near New York very quickly. As luck has it, though, the military academy that Billy just joined is in the neighborhood and although the headmistress is very strict, the girls get to go outside. Ginger doesn't just meet Billy there, though, the girls are also fascinated by the stranger riding by every day and whom they find incredibly romantic.

Billy is trying his best to impress Ginger by boasting about his skills and invites her to a sleigh ride which is rather brave for a boy whose only experience has been with a rocking horse so far.

Unfortunately, the sleigh topples over and the horse runs off with it, Billy chasing after it and leaving Ginger lying in the snow. She gets picked up by the romantic stranger, Richard Channing, who gives her a ride back in his sleigh and whose question about her age she answers with "about 20", so he invites her to a dance at the Country Club.
Ginger is about to decline when she notices her schoolmates watching them. She can't resist, agrees and sneaks out that night.
Her schoolmate Hortense, however, informs the headmistress who doesn't lose a minute to bring Ginger back and reprimand Channing for inviting her in the first place. He complains to his friends by saying something mean about young girls which hits Ginger hard.
Hortense has different plans, she uses the headmistress's absence to get to the safe which is full of jewels (a bit weird for a school, don't you think?) to meet her accomplice Thomas later.

Hortense and Thomas escape to a New York hotel and send Ginger an anonymous telegram from there to make her come there once the school vacation begins. They want to use her to transport the jewels for them by threatening her, but they don't expect Ginger to open the suitcases and use the jewels for a plan of her own. She wants to pretend to have become a vamp in order to pay it back to Channing. Once she has shocked everyone at home with her new look, she sends the suitcases to the New York Police.

Then her father comes home and doesn't believe when she tells him that it was all just a joke, and it sure isn't helpful that the New York Police turns up as well and wants to know where her "pals" are hiding!
Luckily, that's when Hortense and Thomas arrive to get their loot back. They try to escape again, but get arrested.

Last but not least Channing comes to Ginger's rescue again explaining everything and even convincing the senator to let her go to the soda fountain with Billy.
Happy ending achieved!

There's a lot going on in these 85 minutes and some of the jumps between locations were a bit confusing, but really this is just about a young girl who wants to be an adult, who wants freedom, independence - and of course some fun! Can you remember what you were like at the age of sixteen? Maybe just as impetuous as Ginger and maybe as lucky regarding the consequences?
After all, W. P. Carleton, who played the "romantic stranger", was 22 years older than Olive Thomas (Ginger), not that something like that seems to be that unusual for older movies. I really didn't like Channing at the beginning, but he redeemed himself by helping Ginger out later.

I really liked Olive Thomas's acting, both as the young school girl (despite being 25 at the time) and as the vamp (she looked amazing in that stunning black outfit, by the way). She was cute, she was feisty, she was funny and very much the center of the film.
I also liked Billy as the young boy trying hard to impress his first love and his fellows at the military academy even if he wasn't that successful. Maybe you have met boys like him as well? (Theodore Westman Jr. died at 24, but I couldn't find any more info about him.)
 

Even the intertitles are cute!

It's sad that Olive Thomas's promising career was cut short and this was one of her last films.
Olive was married to Mary Pickford's brother Jack. Young as they were - both in their mid-20s - they led a rather wild life and in case of Olive also a very short one.
Although her death at 25 was officially ruled to be an accident, it caused a scandal in Hollywood, and there are still theories about what really happened. Olive and Jack, trying to save their marriage, had gone to Paris for a second honeymoon. Thanks to his infidelity, Jack suffered from syphilis (he died at 37, by the way) and was treated with mercury bichloride. Why Olive ingested this medication which was meant to be applied topically, isn't clear, but it was a tragic and ugly death.
Let me add that I didn't pick the film for this story, I only found out about this afterwards.

From what I read, most of Olive's films are lost, but I'm definitely going to see which ones I can find.
"The Flapper" was a cute comedy and it goes on my re-watch list.


Sources:

1. Jossalyn Holbert: The Illustrious Life and Mysterious Death of Olive Thomas. On: In Their Own League, March 15, 2020
2. Gordon Thomas: Beautiful Dead Girl: On Early Hollywood Casualty Olive Thomas (Oct. 20, 1894 - Sept. 10, 1920) and "The Olive Thomas Collection" on DVD. On: Bright Lights Film Journal, September 10, 2015
3. James L. Neibaur: The Olive Thomas Collection (Milestone Film and Video). On: Senses of Cinema, May 2006

Silent movies - Destiny

It's high time for a Fritz Lang movie and no, it's not "Metropolis" which has patiently been waiting in my DVD collection for many years.
Instead I have "Der müde Tod" (literally "The Weary Death") from 1921 for you, in English called "Destiny".

Let's start with the plot (with spoilers) as usual.

A young couple is riding in a carriage whose driver also picks up a stranger.
Having arrived in a small town, that stranger buys a plot next to the cemetery and builds a huge wall without a visible door around it.
Later, the young couple meets him again at the tavern. While the woman goes to the kitchen, her lover and the stranger disappear and she goes searching for them. When she comes to the wall, a group of ghosts walks through her and the wall into the realm of Death, one of them her lover.
She confronts the stranger who is of course Death himself, begging him to give back her lover because love is stronger than death.
He tells her that he is weary of seeing the struggle and earning hate for obeyeing God's orders, so he would be glad for her to conquer him. He shows her three flickering candles and says that he will revive her lover if she can save one of these lives.

Each of the stories of the three lights are told with the young couple as the lovers in different roles.
The first one is about Zobeide, the Caliph's sister, who's in love with a Frank. He is caught by the guards and sentenced to death by the Caliph. Zobeide is not able to save him and Death claims his life.
The second one is about Monna Fiametta in Venice. She's engaged with one of the Council of Fourteen, Girolamo, but she hates him. Her lover is Gianfrancesco whom Girolamo wants to have executed. Monna's plan to invite and then kill Girolama goes awry when he sees through her ploy and Gianfrancesco dies instead. The second light burns out.
The third one tells the story of a magician's assistants, Tiao Tsien, who catches the Emperor's attention, and her lover Liang. They try to escape, but the Emperor's archer catches up with them and kills Liang.

Although she hasn't been able to save any of the three lives, Death has pity with the young woman and offers her the life of her lover if she manages to find a soul to replace his within the next hour.
Several of the old people in town refuse to give her their lives.

When a building catches fire, everyone can escape, but a small baby is still in the house. The young woman sees her chance and runs inside, but when Death comes to claim the baby's soul and she sees the desperate mother through the window, she can't give it to him. She lowers the baby out of the window and offers Death her own soul instead, happy to be reunited with her lover in death.

Let's get to the elephant in the room first (not the actual one in the movie) to have that out of the way.
As you can imagine for a movie of that time, the stories of the first and third light felt awkward, not for the plot, but the stereotypes of the cultures depicted, the third one more than the first one.

It's a pity because I really liked the movie itself.
It's said to have been inspired by the Indian tale of Savitri and Fritz Lang's experience when he was sick with a fever as a child, but I can easily see this in a fairy tale from another country as well.
Actually Lang called it "ein deutsches Volkslied in sechs Versen" (a German folk song in six verses).

If you know fairy tales, especially original versions instead of the cleaned up ones, the ending may not even be that surprising. I know I read more than one that didn't have a happy ending for everyone. That might be something very German, more so at the time if you keep in mind that World War I had not been over for that long and still influenced everyday life.
However, the movie wasn't well received by German critics at first for not being "German" enough because of all the foreign settings. In the USA where it was released three years later, the intertitles had been changed in a way that suggested the young woman was to blame for her lover's death in all verses which was not the intention of the creators, so it wasn't successful there as well. It was better received in France which then also brought it more acclaim in Germany.

To me, this expressionist movie had a great mood, but it wasn't dark throughout. There was the scene in the carriage or the depiction of the town's elders which definitely showed humor.
I was really impressed by Death, beautifully played by Bernhard Goetzke, a reaper who was not just grim, but also kind and weary of the heavy burden he had to carry eternally.
He was also the reason why I loved the main story itself more than those of the three lights.

A surprising turn for me was the young woman searching for a soul she could give to Death for that of her lover. To be honest, I had expected her to sacrifice herself earlier which is something you know from many other stories. She, however, rather boldly begs several old people in town to give up their lives, but they refuse "Not a single day, not a single hour, not a single breath".
She's tempted until the last second when she storms into the burning house and has almost handed the baby to Death already. Now that would have been very selfish.

There were some nice special effects too which worked well, for example the double exposures, the flying carpet or the dancing scroll.

Will this movie end up on my rewatch list? A clear yes from me.


Sources:

1. Daniel Lammin: Destiny (Fritz Lang, 1921). On: Senses of Cinema, June 2018
2. David Vining: Destiny. On: David Vining, Author. August 5, 2022
3. Jay Weissberg: Destiny. Essay. On: San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2016

Silent movies - The Last Command

My choice of silent movies sometimes is quite random, but this one may have been the most random so far. I got here when I looked up something else on my favorite silent movie blog and got distracted by the link to a post about the myth that silent movie performers lost their job because of their voices when the talkies became big. In the post, William Powell was mentioned, so I looked up a silent film with him and ended up here, without a clue if that was a good idea or not. Let's see, shall we?

Public domain

The movie is "The Last Command" from 1928 by Josef von Sternberg. You probably won't remember, but I sure had my problems with the only other Sternberg movie I know so far, "The Scarlet Empress" about Catherine the Great.
This one is set in a time a little closer to ours, though. We jump between the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and in 1928 Hollywood.

The plot, as usual with spoilers.

Lev Andreyev, a Russian director in Hollywood, is going through a stack of photos of actors for his next movie. When he comes to the photo of Sergius Alexander, who claims to be the Czar's cousin and a former commanding general, he tells his assistant to cast the man and fit him into a general's uniform. You get the idea that these two men have a common history.
Alexander arrives for work. In makeup, the actor next to him complains about his shaking head and Alexander says it's the result of a great shock. His mind goes back to Imperial Russia in 1917.

Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, a general of the Russian Army, arrives for an inspection of the troops. He's told that the revolutionists have intercepted most of the supplies.
Two of those revolutionists watch Alexander from a window above, Lev Andreyev and Natalie Dobrova. "Let him strut a little longer! His days are numbered!" Lev tells Natalie.

Then they are called in for a passport examination the next day. Alexander questions them personally because he's taken with Natalie's looks. When he doubts Lev's courage, Lev talks back. Alexander hits him in the face with his whip and has him locked up. Natalie, however, gets invited to Headquarters because the general has clearly fallen for her.
Before a dinner, he even presents her with a pearl necklace while his officers eavesdrop at the door.

During dinner, Alexander gets a call. The Czar wants to visit the front and see an offensive, but the general declines sacrificing soldiers for the Czar's entertainment, much to the surprise of everyone at the table.
Meanwhile, we see a soldier in prison turn on the other soldiers and enabling Lev and the other prisoners to escape.

After dinner, Natalie invites the general to her room for coffee. She intends to shoot him, but she can't go through with it. When he asks why she didn't shoot him, she replies that she couldn't kill anyone who loves Russia as much as he does. Alexander declares her his prisoner of war ... and prisoner of love (I'll admit that I cringed reading that).

Next the general, his men, and Natalie board a train. They don't know that the engineers are Bolsheviks. They stop in the next town and the train is taken over.
Natalie turns against the general and demands that he should stoke the train to Petrograd where he will be hanged.

When there's a chance, though, she slips him the pearl necklace, so he will be able to leave the country, and when a revolutionary wakes up - there has been a lot of vodka -, she embraces him, so he won't see Alexander escaping. The man thinks she's telling him that she loves him, but her looks go to the general.
He smacks the fireman with the coal shovel and jumps off the train.
Before his eyes, the train derails on the bridge and falls into the icy river, taking his love with it. This was the great shock that caused his head shaking.

Back to Hollywood.
Lev is determined to have his revenge and humiliate Alexander. He gives him a whip and a coat that looks much like the one he wore years earlier and puts him in a trench setting.  Then he orders the crew to play the Russian National Anthem.
Beforehand, he has instructed an extra to yell at the general that the soldiers are sick of fighting.
"You have given your last command! A new day is here! Down with your Russia!"
In this moment, madness takes over. Alexander whips the extra and grabs the flag. His mind is showing him the memories of the revolutionaries.
"The command is forward - - to victory - Long live Russia!"
Then he grabs his chest and falls over.
Held by Lev, he asks "Have we won?" which Lev affirms before Alexander dies in his arms.

When Lev's assistant says he was a great actor, the director replies "He was more than a great actor - he was a great man."

Soooo. Was it a good idea to watch then film?
If I wanted to see mainly William Powell, not that much probably because he didn't have that many scenes.
Also I'm not a fan of movies with war and military content, but somehow I had expected a bit less 1917 and a bit more 1928. I was definitely wrong about that.

The plot was inspired by a real life story that director Ernst Lubitsch told a newspaper columnist. It was about a Russian general he knew who fled the revolution and opened a restaurant, but was forced then to work as an extra in Hollywood to survive.

The movie was very dramatic, not just because of the plot, but also because of Jannings. I had expected that from reading about him, but had only seen him in a comedy before.
At the time, he was said to be the best actor in the world and he got an Oscar for this movie (and another movie that is lost).
Although he was a bit much for me, it was still impressive how he portrayed the general before and after, and the ending was amazing.

Nevertheless, I had a problem with the love story. I don't want to sound superficial saying that I can't imagine a young woman like Natalie falling in love with an older man. What I can't really imagine, though, is just how quickly she fell for the enemy because he did one thing right by declining the Czar's request. In that moment everything else he had done was forgotten? Sorry, but I didn't really buy that. Also the general was fine with her contemplating assassination just a moment ago? He had seen the badly hidden pistol, how could he be so sure she wouldn't shoot him?
And not only did she love him, but she loved him so much that she risked her own life by helping him to escape? Cos, you know, I don't think her comrades would have taken it so lightly if they had found out. Luckily, though, they never got a chance to because they all drowned. Oh wait, that isn't any better. Maybe someone should have taken the engineer's vodka, so he wouldn't have fallen asleep.

Not saying the middle part was all bad, but it was still too much and too long for my liking. Everyone was very passionate, there was loud laughing, dramatic crying, a lot of yelling, and a lot of either broody or glaring looks.
I could have done with a little less of that and a little more background instead. How did Lev make it to the USA and land a job as a director (maybe connections as he had been a theater director in Russia?)? Had he left the country immediately after breaking free from prison? Why didn't it try to get back to the revolution? How did Alexander make it to the USA and how did he get to be a low-paid actor?

Oh, and why exactly did Lev call the general a great man at the end? What had he done that Lev suddenly forgave it all? Sorry, it didn't make sense to me. I'm fine with him not gloating over his death, I would understand a certain amount of pity over his downfall and end from someone who was luckier, but from "I need some kind of revenge" to "he was a great man"?

Part of the movie is a satire of Hollywood at the time, the crowds of actors waiting outside the gate for their chance, the way the outfits are handed out from piles of clothes, boots, rifles, but as mentioned it's a rather small part of it.
I'm not quite sure what the other part is. Are we supposed to be on the Czarist side? Times were not very nice under his rule either, if you didn't belong to the Russian aristocracy.
Or is it simply about Alexander as a man? A man we don't really know that much about, definitely not enough to call him a great one.

Again, was it a good idea to watch the movie?
Yes. I might not love it, but I also didn't hate it, and it was undoubtedly a experience worth making.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Last Command (1928) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, July 28, 2015
2. Scott Nye: Scott Reviews Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command [Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray]. On: CriterionCast, August 12, 2016
3. Alistair Nunn: The Last Command (1928). On: Movie Musings, November 9, 2023

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I know it's a shame, but although I knew the basic content, I had never actually read "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and I had never seen an adaptation of it, either.
So I welcomed the movie from 1945 being part of Lisa's Summer of Angela on Boondock Ramblings. Maybe I'll even try to read the book - Oscar Wilde's only novel - eventually (update: I did).
You can find Lisa's post here.

Fair use via
Wikimedia Commons

The plot ((partial) spoiler alerts for some, but probably not for all).

Lord Henry Wotton visits his friend Basil Hallward, a painter. There he meets the young, handsome aristocrat Dorian Gray who poses for Hallward. He convinces him that only youth is worth having and Dorian makes a wish in presence of an ancient cat statue, the wish that his portrait should age instead of himself.
Inspired by Wotton's words to enjoy his youth, Dorian turns to the half-world where he meets the tavern singer Sibyl whom he falls in love with and even wants to marry although her brother James, a sailor, isn't happy about it at all.
Wotton recommends to put her to the test, when she doesn't react to Dorian's liking, he breaks off the engagement.
The next day he regrets it, but it's too late, Sibyl has killed herself. Hallward is shocked at Dorian's callousness when he brings him the news.
Afterwards, Dorian notices for the first time that the painting has changed and he hides it away from others.

For years, Dorian is leading a life full of vanity, pleasure and sin, but he never changes which makes people suspect and avoid him. The painting, however, is showing a hideous creature by now.
One day he shows Hallward the painting, but then murders him to keep the secret, and blackmails his friend Campbell into disposing of the body for him. Campbell can't bear the guilt and kills himself.
Then Dorian asks Hallward's niece Gladys to marry him.
Sibyl's brother comes home after many years in which he has tried to find the man who is to blame for his sister's death. Following him to his country estate, he gets accidentally shot during a hunting party.

Dorian realizes he can only save Gladys from similar misfortune by leaving her. He breaks off the engagement by letter and seeing a small change for the better in the painting he hopes to overcome the spell by stabbing it.
When the blade hits the painting, however, he screams terribly and falls over. His friends find him dead in front of the painting, turned into the hideous creature while the painting once again shows the young handsome Dorian.

Painting by Henrique Medina,
now believed to be in a private collection

First of all, let me say that I don't know what exactly I did expect Dorian to look like (I didn't know he was described as blond with blue eyes and very emotional in the book, for example). Maybe I thought of someone classically handsome (whatever that means), someone more angelic exuding innocence, someone "shining", whatever, but not Hurd Hatfield. It nagged me just a tiny bit all the way through the movie.
It also made me wonder how I would have imagined Dorian if I had read the book first.

Dorian didn't show much emotion throughout the movie and that was what Albert Lewin wanted. It can't have been easy for Hatfield to keep that up, but Lewin wanted his face to be like a mask. He even shot closeups in the morning, so Hatfield wouldn't look tired (you should see me in the morning, that would definitely not work) and stopped filming with him at 4 p.m.
So the transformation of Dorian from an innocent young man to a man with a rotten soul has to be shown merely through his sins - of which we only get a few to see, however, so we can let our fantasy run wild - and his eyes, and I think Hatfield did that really well which also helped me mostly getting over his looks, actually before I knew this was Levin's intention.

George Sanders made a great Henry. He's elegant, witty, and utterly unlikeable. Yet it's not hard to understand how someone like he would be able to corrupt a young man like Dorian although even Henry seems to be surprised at how quickly and deeply Dorian's transformation is going.
I don't understand that well why Basil is friends with him, but I've seen it in books before, a villain having a good friend, good in every sense of the word, probably hoping for the villain to mend their ways eventually.
What annoyed me about Basil was that he didn't really seem to try to counter Henry's bad influence with anything but telling Dorian not to listen to him. From someone who was obviously in love with Dorian, may it be for himself or for his art, I would have expected a bit more effort. It might have saved his life, but of course we'd also have a very different book and movie ...
Talking about being in love, Gladys didn't convince me at all, either. In what kind of dream world was she living?
Actually, in what kind of dream world were they all living regarding Dorian's everylasting youth? How did no one grab a pitchfork and torch and try to get him?

I loved Angela Lansbury's performance for which she got an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe.
In the book Sibyl is an actress, not a singer, but of course the change worked perfectly for Lansbury.



Often when a young man falls for an actress or singer from the half-world, they are described as women hardened from their experiences, calculating their chances with a rich man, gold-diggers, blood suckers.
Sibyl is nothing like this although she has such a woman for a mother. You can tell when she takes the money from her mother and gives it back to Dorian.
She's innocent, trusting, romantic, and sweet. She loves him so much that she gives in to his demand to stay overnight just so she won't lose him (still sounds all too familiar today).

All of that makes Dorian's behavior towards her even more cruel, it's his first step into the abyss. To top that, he regrets it the next day, but then rather quickly shows indifference when he hears of her suicide, a sure sign he has chosen his path now.

The film is beautifully shot in black and white which gained it an Academy Award for "Best Cinematography, Black-and-white" (Harry Stradling), only the portrait is shown in Technicolor four times, both in its beautiful and in its ugly state which emphasizes its importance.

Painting by
Ivan Le Lorraine Albright,
now at the Art Institute of Chicago

The sets are very Victorian and there's a good contrast between the two different worlds, but as pointed out rightfully in one blog, the men's costumes don't exactly scream Victorian.
Levin seems to have been so keen on capturing the mood right and even sticking to the novel's text closely in parts that I don't understand why he would be okay with that.

I enjoyed the movie a lot although the only persons I actually liked were poor Sibyl and her brother James (although he shouldn't have trusted their mother to take care of her, but I doubt he could have done much being off to Australia when he had just found out).
I even enjoyed it so much that I went straight onto YouTube to look for another version for comparing, and I did watch another one.

This one is a television play from 1976 (someone complained about a novel by a playwright being turned into a play on television) with Peter Firth as Dorian, Jeremy Brett as Basil, and John Gielgud as Lord Henry.
It's an episode of the BBC series "Play of the Month".

I have known Peter Firth for a while, but had never seen him that young before. Except for his blond locks being a tad too luscious for my taste, he definitely matched my image of Dorian better, but - intended or not - he overdid the camp a bit too much sometimes.
The scene in which he left Sibyl - a very young actress in this case - was really good. She was completely broken and he didn't give a fig and was so mean to her.
Oh, and the scene in which he asked his friend Campbell to get rid of Basil's body was a lot more emotional.
I really liked him, but much to my surprise I liked Hatfield even more. So much for looks, huh?
I definitely preferred George Sanders to John Gielgud which probably had to do more with age than his play. Somehow I didn't see Dorian and Henry that far apart in years.
Not to my surprise I liked Jeremy Brett although the death scene was over the top.

Obviously the sets were limited to a few interiors, a television play isn't a feature film, but I enjoyed it nevertheless, also that there was a narrator introducing some of the scenes.

I don't think I feel like watching another version anytime soon, I already couldn't finish another one that didn't work for me at all.
So the next stop was the novel instead.


Sources:

1. Jay Jacobson: 151. The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945. An unforgettable and thought provoking supernatural thriller. On: Jay's Classic Movie Blog, April 30, 2024
2. Trystan L. Bass: TBT: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). On: Frock Flicks, October 5, 2017
3. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) - A Timeless Reflection of Vanity and Corruption. On: Surgeons of Horror,  March 2, 2025
4. "hurdhatfieldluv": Hurt Hatfield in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945) ... Is he really a good actor?. On Tumblr