Madame DuBarry

Like Norma Shearer's MARIE ANTOINETTE almost twenty years later, this is an attempt to tell a rags to riches tale set in the last years of the French aristocracy. We see Jeanne rise from milliner to mistress of all who would have her, finally married to her protector's brother so she could become the king's favorite. Negri and Jannings do well as Du Barry and Louis XV but this is no intimate drama so it lacks character development and depth. Jeanne, it seems, is ever faithful to her first love, the student, Armand, and looks out for him unbeknownst of course, only to be shamed when he learns who his benefactress really is. So like a man!

Negri is early in her career and far from the subtle actress she would later become. She is so heavily made up that she is often rather grotesque. Jannings always pulls off a characterization with professional aplomb but here he has little to do until his death scene, where he pulls out the stops. There is a lot of posturing and it tries quite well to give us a history lesson - although it succeeds, it is dullsville along the way.

The lavish and elaborate art direction is worthy of award consideration. Don't seek this out unless you are a fan of the two leads, the director or the subject matter.

Note: that same year Lubitsch would "go mad" and find his niche with the delightfully funnny OYSTER PRINCESS. While that film is also worthy of art direction honors, it is Lubitsch's marvelous directorial touches that deserve as high a consideration.

Both stars - along with director Ernst Lubitsch and cameraman Theodor Sparkuhl - not surprisingly went on to successful careers in Hollywood. But although apparently the first feature film to depict the French Revolution it does takes an awfully long time getting there. When the Bastille is finally stormed DuBarry's fate seems rather abrupt, as it was toned down upon its American release by First National and a hundred years later the full gory details apparently remain largely lost.

Pola Negri in a powdered wig (plus silent screen eye shadow that makes her resemble Theda Bara) makes an appealing Royal mistress, and although as Siegfried Kracauer observed, "the story's contempt for historical facts is matched only by its disregard for their meaning", one is content for the most part to let the richness of the production and Negri's allure work their magic.

Follows the rise and triumph of Madame DuBarry as she sleeps and teases her way from a worker in a millinery shop to King Louis XV's mistress and to Countess (at least in name). The final scenes showing her condemnation and execution during the French Revolution look like an afterthought.

A heavy historical spectacle, though the cast of thousands mainly is around for the Revolution scenes.

Pola Negri is the main bright spot and she can be quite enchanting when shy tries (mainly during the first third of the picture).

Why it was banned in France is unclear, though none of the major characters are very sympathetic.

Has little of the Lubitsch touch.

Another romantic historical film in the line of Carmen, Ernst Lubitsch adapted Memoirs d'un medicin by Alexandre Dumas and told the story of Louis XV's mistress, Madame DuBarry, bringing along his regular female star Pola Negri to lead the film. It's a story with a lot of moving parts and a lot of characters, but it has trouble managing all of that in the medium of silent film, leaving a lot to be explained in intertitles while juggling a large host of supporting characters that tend to look alike. There's a lot to admire in the film, but it has trouble reaching past the limitations of the silent medium to fully tell its story.

Jeanne Vaubernier (Negri) is a poor woman in pre-Revolutionary Paris with a job in a hat shop and a beau, Armond de Foix (Harry Liedtke). The single biggest problem in the film is probably the relationship between Jeanne and Armond. At the beginning of the film, we get a nice little scene of the two together, happily spending the afternoon until she needs to leave to deliver a hat. That plan is dashed when the Spanish ambassador, Don Diego (Magnus Stifter), nearly runs her over, destroying her hat, paying for the hat, and then becoming smitten with her and inviting her to visit him at the Spanish embassy. Presented with the opportunity to climb the unjust social ladder that was pre-Revolutionary France, Jeanne jumps at the chance, barely giving Armond much thought and dismissively leaving him behind as she goes into the embassy. There's no real sense of true love between Jeanne and Armond from the moment the ambassador shows up. I figured that Armond would simply not be very important to the narrative after she drops him, but he remains on the edges of the narrative until the final third of the film where he becomes extremely important.

Jeanne's rise in social status is driven by the Count DuBarry (Eduard von Winterstein) who meets her at the embassy and quickly becomes smitten with her as well, seeing a pretty girl that could potentially help him get out of his financial hole, preying on the weaknesses of the treasurer. When it doesn't work, though, he seems to be on the verge of casting her back out when she catches the eye of King Louis (Emil Jannings). I think you can tell how many characters are swirling around here, and it can be hard to differentiate between some of them since they all are running around in similar clothing and wigs.

Armond gets shifted to the very edges of the narrative when, at a party, he murders Don Diego and gets arrested for his crime. Sentenced to death at the same time that Jeanne is seeing her rise to power, she uses her favor with the king to grant Armond a reprieve. A little more than halfway through the film, we get an introduction to one of Armond's friends, Paillet (Alexander Eckert), a shoemaker, who must pay taxes in place of feeding his family. This look into the privation of the lower classes gets introduced really late, functioning oddly as a contrasting element against the opulent wealth of the upper classes that Jeanne is trying to join. It feels like Armond would be the ideal vehicle for that, but he spends a bunch of time in prison for a crime he definitely did commit.

Where the film really shines is in it's presentation of the spectacle of wealth in addition to some very accomplished large scale sequences like an early party and the later movements of the film after the kickoff of the French Revolution. The performances are also really good, especially with Negri at the center. Never dovetailing into the clutching of chests, there are a bevy of naturalistic performances that carry real emotional weight, especially from Negri as the world around her begins to collapse.

I get the purpose of Jeanne's torn loyalties, on the one side to her poor fiancé that she helps along in his military career as she rises in stature and on the other her need to look after herself in an unjust system, using her few resources as best she can. The problem, again, is really just that the actual connection between Jeanne and Armand isn't that well built and even feels like Jeanne doesn't really care for him all that much for long stretches. Instead of looking torn between her dual loyalties, she jumps at the chance of advancing herself, only reaching out to help Armand when he's about to be executed. She could have also taken him into her confidence early, but she's dismissive of him instead. This is an issue with the writing but also the limitations of silent films. In a sound film, we'd get dialogue scenes between the two that would be more solid building blocks than a few seconds of Jeanne sitting next to Armand on a couch. That limitation around dialogue also makes the film more opaque, especially in its overreliance on intertitles to give the story's details, most frustrating when we see the same note three times.

Still, it's a mixed bag. The performances and physical production are top rate, but the storytelling needed a new approach in the silent era that less relied on dialogue and told its story more fully through visuals. It seems obvious at this point early in Lubitsch's career, though, that his greatest successes are lighter, wittier fare.

The Ernst Lubitsch "touch" as it would later be known, was altogether little-known back in 1919 and for the curious looking back into the director's repertoire, Madame DuBarry is often seen a historical curiosity rather than a signpost to later greatness. It is my opinion however that this widely-regarded stance on Lubitsch's first major motion picture has just as much to do with the quality of prints available as it does with the feature's tendency to lean on drama more than comedy. Having recently viewed Eureka's newly- released blu-ray featuring a crisp new print backed up by a dynamic score by William Axt, it's clear that although "the touch" is notably lighter (or darker) than Lubitsch would employ in his films later on in his long career, there remain many scenes during the film's first hour where the director plays with his characters and plot in a manner which explicitly seek to extract laughs rather than varying degrees of pathos.

Writers Norbert Falk and Hanns Kraly tell the infamous story of Jeanne Becu, her rise to power's easily-swayed side, and in the end her ultimate fate at the hands of the Reign of Terror. Although they play loose and casually with the real events that the film is based upon, the writers do well in keeping key points together whilst telling a compelling character drama. Historians may well cry humbug, but the story is gripping, amusing and enlightening in spite of its inaccuracies. Lubitsch himself directs the script's calling for epic moments of drama well, though instils just enough humour and light-heartedness to break it up so as to not become overbearing. Lead star Pola Negri establishes herself in a seminal role here, and often makes a lot out of very little. Also of note is Emil Jannings as King Louis XV, Harry Liedtke as Armand De Foix and Reinhold Schünzel as Minister Choiseul who make scenes devoid of Negri as compelling as possible, even though the ham can get a little chewy at times.

This was my first time viewing Madame DuBarry so have no real reference point to other prints of the film other than having history with other silent-era movies with some terrible public- domain versions which never really do the films any justice and at times render them incomprehensible. It's for this reason that I thoroughly recommend viewing the film on Eureka's blu-ray if you have a means to do so. Not just because the image quality is outstanding, but also largely in part for Axt's score which complements the on-screen action superbly. It might not be as light and airy as Lubitsch fans would hope for going this far back, but there's still plenty here to enjoy and strikes a nice balance between lush historical-costume drama and darkly- amusing character piece.