Broken Lullaby (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

I’ve been watching a lot of Lubitsch’s famous pre-Code musical comedies recently, so thought it would be interesting also to see this little-known serious anti-war drama which he made at the same period, starring Lionel Barrymore. Broken Lullaby – also known as The Man I Killed, after the title of the original stage play by French writer Maurice Rostand – was a flop at the box office, persuading Lubitsch that he had better not try anything else in the same vein. However, watching this, I found myself feeling that it is a forgotten masterpiece, just as richly multi-layered as his early comedies. It is sad to think that, while many of them are being reissued in lavish box sets, this film has only ever been released on region 2 DVD in Spain and France.

The one part of the film which is remembered (and, I understand, occasionally shown at festivals apart from the rest of the drama, as something complete in itself) is its opening. This is an example of the breathtaking cinematography by Victor Milner, which uses many techniques from silent film. Fortunately this two-minute sequence is currently available at Youtube, so I can post a link to it – it’s much better to see it than to read my description! However, I will describe it too, since it really is the heart of the film. The film begins with a title card announcing the first anniversary of the Armistice, in 1919, and there are a series of short  clips cutting between the church bells ringing, memories of the fighting, the victorious French troops marching through Paris, and screaming soldiers in hospital haunted by their memories. The most striking image here is the  angle chosen to show the parade, where the camera is directed through the gap where the leg of a wounded soldier used to be, with his maimed silhouette standing between the viewer and the triumphant marchers.

Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933)

Back to the pre-Code period – and back to John Barrymore. I’ve already written about one fine, though little-known, film where he plays a lawyer, State’s Attorney (1932). The following year he starred in this even better legal drama, which must be one of his finest talkies, and is available on DVD from Kino, though in region 1 only. Barrymore gives a restrained but moving performance as a workaholic lawyer, who spends much of the film having two or three phone conversations at once. Sadly there are no courtroom scenes this time – but it’s an utterly compelling film, which repays repeated viewings. Indeed, you’ll need them to catch all the quickfire dialogue, especially in the scenes with Isabel Jewell chattering away irrepressibly as switchboard operator Bessie.

Like many early 1930s films, this drama is based on a stage play, in this case by Elmer Rice. It does betray its stage origins in the way that it is entirely based in one setting, within the Simon and Tedesco suite of legal offices in the Empire State building. However, where some films set in just one location might drag at times, Counsellor at Law, an early success for great director William Wyler, moves at a breathless pace. Rice, who adapted his own play for the screen, had trained and worked as a lawyer, and the legal background feels very authentic as far as I can tell, tackling still-current issues such as insider trading and professional standards.

The Sea Beast (Millard Webb, 1926)

Since reading Moby Dick a few years ago, I’ve been  interested in seeing different film and stage versions of it. I was especially intrigued to see John Barrymore playing Ahab, as sadly only one of his full Shakespearean roles survives on film (Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet). It is often said that Ahab is very near to Shakespeare’s tragic heroes in his monomania. Barrymore actually played the role in both the first two adaptations, this silent epic and a talkie made in 1930, directed by Lloyd Bacon, which I haven’t seen as yet. (I’m hoping this may turn up on Warner Archive before too long – I believe it is occasionally shown on TCM in the US, so there should be a reasonable print around).

I saw The Sea Beast online, at YT, in a very poor quality print, so I can’t really review it properly but just wanted to say something about it while it is fresh in my mind. There was a DVD release in region 1 by Televista, now deleted, but I gather from comments at the imdb that the quality of the DVD is also dire, very pale and washed-out. The film could really do with being restored and released in a double set with the talkie version.

Topaze (Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, 1933)

I’m always saying that I plan to write more shorter postings, but now I’m really going to do it, as I’m so busy these days that it’s a choice between writing short postings or not updating this blog at all. Anyway, I will hopefully put a good selection of pictures with each posting, and over the next week or two I’m planning to concentrate on John Barrymore. As I’ve said before, although Barrymore is best-known for his silent films, I have seen more of his talkies and these tend to appeal to me because of his beautiful speaking voice – however, I do want to see more of his silents too.

Topaze is a rather obscure but entertaining comedy-drama from RKO (sadly not on DVD, though it did come out on Laserdisc – but at time of posting it can be found online at YT), adapted from a French play by Marcel Pagnol, which sees Barrymore cast wildly against type. He plays Professor Auguste Topaze, a timid, down-at-heel teacher in a boys’ school who is also a brilliant scientist – and who gets caught up in a scam to sell tap water as a health-giving mineral water. For most of the film his  face is concealed by facial hair, and that famous profile is hardly glimpsed, though he does get a chance to look handsome briefly in the final scenes. I think he does a great job of playing a part which at first sounds like a surprising role for him – and it is interesting to see him if anything slightly underplaying rather than hamming it up. The other main star is Myrna Loy, as Coco, the sensible young mistress of a crooked baron played by Reginald Mason.

Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932)

I’ve been getting increasingly interested in the Barrymores recently and watching a lot of their films, so I want to write about some more of them here. Glossy drama Grand Hotel is one of three  films made in 1932 which starred brothers John and Lionel together – the others were Arsene Lupin, which I have seen but only in almost unwatchable bootleg form, and spectacular historical epic Rasputin and the Empress, also starring sister Ethel.

By far the greatest of these three is Grand Hotel, a breathtaking MGM drama – and one of the first films to boast an all-star cast.  Greta Garbo got top billing, with her name given in the cast list simply as “Garbo”, while the two Barrymores, Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford were the other big star names.  The film had a huge budget for the time, estimated at 700,000 dollars, and was a smash hit – one of the special features on the Warner DVD, which is included in a Joan Crawford box set, shows excited crowds turning up for the premiere and breaking through a police cordon to swarm towards their favourite stars.

State’s Attorney (George Archainbaud, 1932)

John Barrymore and Helen Twelvetrees

I’ll soon be writing about Wellman’s A Star Is Born (1936), but first wanted to post a few thoughts about a couple of earlier movies which have links with it. One, of course, is What Price Hollywood? (1932), George Cukor’s great pre-Code drama which is said to have been the inspiration for Wellman’s film. But there was also a lesser-known movie released just one month  before Cukor’s, which also had a plot strand of a younger woman trying to save a talented older man from his drink problem - the courtroom comedy-melodrama State’s Attorney (1932), directed by George Archainbaud and starring John Barrymore and Helen Twelvetrees. I’ve now seen this twice and really think it deserves to be better-known – both the leads are brilliant, and the dialogue is very sharp and witty. Sadly it isn’t on DVD, though it did get a US release on VHS. I think it does sometimes get shown on TCM in the US, though, and at present it is available for streaming on “YT”, though the picture isn’t that great. (I also found the film stuck in the second “reel”, but was ok  if downloaded to view on realplayer).

A Bill of Divorcement (1932)

John Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn

John Barrymore may be best-known for his work in the theatre and in films of the silent era. But, every time I see him in an early talkie, I’m struck by how great he was in these too – and A Bill of Divorcement (1932), a melodrama directed by George Cukor for RKO Radio Pictures, is no exception. Barrymore gives a heart-rending performance as a father coming home after 15 years in a mental hospital. However, although Barrymore was the star with his name above the title, these days the film is best-remembered (when it is remembered at all, that is!) as the debut role for Katharine Hepburn, playing the daughter whose world is about to be torn apart. She was fourth-billed and her name was actually spelt wrong in the final credits, but, even so, she is really a joint female lead with Billie Burke , and has several scenes where her unique film personality comes across.

The film is adapted from a play by British dramatist Clemence Dane, and set in England, although none of the stars worry too much about doing English accents. As with some other movies from this period, this is very much a filmed version of a stage play, with almost all the scenes taking place on the same set, so at times it gives a feeling of what it might have been like to see Barrymore on stage. I have seen some reviews suggesting that the film feels too static, but this is a movie where I think this works, as with Howard Hawks’ The Dawn Patrol (1930), because again the atmosphere is intended to be claustrophobic and intense.

Romeo and Juliet (1936)

The last Shakespeare production I wrote about was Orson Welles’ moody take on Macbeth.  George Cukor’s movie of Romeo and Juliet was made only 12 years earlier, but seems to belong to another world. Where Welles’ Poverty Row film looks rough around the edges, Cukor’s gives the Bard the full gleaming Hollywood treatment. MGM under Irving Thalberg poured two million dollars into this production, with half of that spent on building an ambitious replica of Verona on a backlot, while the budget also ran to enormous crowds of extras.  Kenneth S Rothwell’s book Shakespeare on Screen, which I’m finding invaluable for background on these older adaptations, recounts how the studio did even consider filming in Verona itself before deciding against.

Given the lavish feeling of the whole production, it’s quite surprising MGM didn’t go for Technicolor. Instead, they stuck to black and white, but the emphasis is very much on the white, with many scenes shot in brilliant sunlight, and Norma Shearer as Juliet dressed in a succession of flowing white gowns by Adrian – a long way from Welles’ cardboard crowns. At times I must admit I find the sheer glossiness of it all a bit much, and the opening shot of Shearer feeding a pet deer in a jewelled collar, as orchestral themes from Tchaikovsky swell in the background, reminded me of Disney. (Snow White was released the following year.)

Scarlet Street (1945) and artist John Decker

I’ve just finally got round to seeing the  film noir classic Scarlet Street, directed by Fritz Lang – one of the many greats I had somehow managed to miss up to now. I’m not going to write a full review, but will be going off at a tangent about the artist whose work is featured in the film, John Decker. However, on the film itself, I will briefly say that I was struck by the darkness and feeling of menace building up all the way through, and especially by the haunting  final scenes, which are justly the most famous. Many copies of the movie around on the web and on budget DVDs are bad public domain prints, but the picture and sound are much better on the remastered version issued by Kino.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920)

I’m intrigued by the idea of watching different movie versions of classic novels and seeing how they vary, but often come unstuck when doing this, because I find I’ve forgotten one version by the time I watch another! However, I’ve managed to watch three versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in a relatively short space of time, so they are still all quite fresh in my mind.
The earliest of the three – though the third version I actually saw – is the silent 1920 movie starring John Barrymore, directed by John S Robertson. Having mainly seen the somewhat wrecked figure of Barrymore in talkies like Grand Hotel and Dinner at Eight, when years of alcoholism had taken their toll, I was half-startled to see just how weirdly beautiful he was in his silent heyday. As this early version hasn’t been released in Britain on DVD, and I can’t fork out for imports of everything I’d like to see, I watched it online at the public domain site  www.archive.org . I’m sure it would be much more striking if seen on a larger screen – but, even peering at a smaller picture, it still makes a powerful impression, full of eerie light effects. Barrymore’s face is strikingly white, almost ghost-like, during the scenes he plays as Jekyll. By contrast, as Hyde, he is always in darkness, and wanders through crumbling Victorian streets full of sinister shadows.

John Barrymore as Jekyll, with Martha Mansfield as Millicent Carew, and Barrymore as Hyde, with those creepy prosthetic fingers.

Since Barrymore was so strikingly good-looking at this point, with that “great profile” at its greatest, it’s all the more unnerving when he somehow twists his face into a hideous caricature of itself to become Mr Hyde. The first time he undergoes his transformation, he hardly uses any make-up, doing most of it with expression and posture – although he does have prosthetic fingers, which, in close-up, suggest how his whole being is becoming deformed. Later on, as Hyde’s evil grows, he does acquire heavy make-up, as well as ghastly false teeth. He walks hunched up as Hyde, shrouded in a black cloak – I found myself reminded of Olivier as Richard III, so was interested to read that Barrymore was actually playing Richard III on Broadway at the same time as filming Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I wonder how much the two performances influenced one another – and also whether Barrymore influenced Olivier?

Barrymore has a spidery quality as Hyde, with those long fingers… and there’s a remarkable dream sequence where he goes to bed as Jekyll, then a giant spider steals on to his bed, moves towards him and somehow envelopes him, and he wakes up as Hyde.  I’ve only seen a handful of silent movies as yet, but have been surprised to see how much experimentation they include with things like this dream sequence… and how many special effects film-makers did manage to achieve so many decades before the advent of CGI.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s original novel, there is no love interest at all. However, all the three movie versions I’ve watched feature central love plots, involving ”good” and “bad” women, with Jekyll clinging to his virtuous fiancee in a desperate hope she might save him from himself, while Hyde glories in dominating and terrifying the “bad” and sexy woman. Also, in all three versions, the “good” woman is rich and the “bad” woman is poor! I’ve read that all three versions draw on an early stage adaptation.

In this early movie version, Jekyll is a saintly doctor who spends all his time concentrating on his work with the poor, until his sophisticated friend, George Carew, persuades him that he should really delve into other areas of experience. Reviews at the imdb point out that Carew seems to be based on Sir Henry Wootton in Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray – and I noticed that Carew actually uses a line taken straight from Wilde: “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”  Ironically, Jekyll is in love with Carew’s daughter, the virtuous Millicent (Martha Mansfield), but the father’s suggestion destroys his daughter’s chance of happiness.
When Jekyll transforms himself into Hyde, he embarks on a destructive relationship with an Italian singer, Gina (Nita Naldi), but then discards her – there’s a chilling scene where he looks at her with contempt and turns to a new, fresh-faced young girl who he plans to corrupt in turn. I thought this version gives the feeling of Hyde carrying out a whole career of hidden corruption better than the  later versions – but the women are really just cardboard cut-outs and not developed as characters.

I was quite surprised to see that the parallels between the central character’s split personality and drunkenness are already brought out in this early version – there’s a scene where Hyde sees a man in a bar who is squirming around in agony, and is told that he thinks he is being attacked by red ants. Very similar to the spider.

The melodrama and the exaggerated movements of silent movies have now stopped worrying me, but  the jangling musical box-style soundtrack accompanying this version is definitely an annoyance, often sounding unseasonably jolly at a scary or agonising moment. I found the film improved a lot when I turned the sound off!