Der König der Bernina

The problem with silent films, often, is that techniques or stories that seemed innovative at the time are old-hat and clichéd by the time a modern audience sees them. While the story of "Eternal Love" falls into that category of cliché--if you can't tell what's going to happen next at any given moment, you haven't seen enough movies--it's redeemed by its sets, its performances, and its director.

Those familiar with John Barrymore from his talking-picture roles, when mostly he was playing a caricature of himself, will be taken aback at his handsome intensity (except when he's wearing too much make-up). The two female leads, Camilla Horn and Mona Rico, are beautiful as well, although of the ice-queen and the lusty peasant varieties: Horn is like a Raphael Madonna, while Rico is more of a Caravaggio.

So, Barrymore loves Horn, while Rico lusts for Barrymore--and poor Victor Varconi moons after Horn in the background. Just as Horn gets her guardian's consent to a marriage with Barrymore, however, strong drink and a willing woman trap Barrymore into a marriage with Rico. (It is somehow unsurprising that strong drink should be Barrymore's downfall.) Varconi gets to comfort the grieving Horn--but how will it all end? Well, badly.

Along the way, however, Lubitsch manages some nice comic touches--especially at a village carnivale, to which Barrymore wears a pair of checked bell-bottoms that would have been at home in Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. And he gets terrific performances out of his actors, especially Varconi, who throws a wonderful sidelong glance at Barrymore during the trapped man's nuptial procession. Varconi and Horn also have some terrific moments when Horn betrays her still-burning love for Barrymore after she learns he's missing in a mountain blizzard.

The movie is short and the scenery is magnificent, so if the prospect of some big stars in their prime isn't enough, there's plenty to fall back on!

Ernst Lubitsch had directed his last silent movie earlier in 1929, his May 1929's "Eternal Love." John Barrymore stars as a Swiss mountain man who lives off the land by hunting prey with his trusty rifle. He finds himself in trouble when the French army demands everyone in the city turn in their firearms. He refuses, sending its entire city's residents against him. The Hans Kraly script, adapted from Jakob Christoph Heer's novel, 'Der Korig der Bemina,' involves a love-triangle. German actress Camilla Horn pays Ciglia, who loves Marcus (Barrymore). However, the lusty Pia (Mona Rico) literally throws her body at Marcus. In a weak moment, he succumbs to her advances. This was Mona Rico's cinematic debut. The Mexican-born actress was in ten films before leaving the industry in 1941.

The storyline, despite not being a typical Lubitsch rom-com, had its advantages in production. The German director got to film in the stunning mountains of Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, bringing home memories of his days in the Alps. As with most directors in the last year of silent movies, Lubitsch showed an extreme comfort level by photographing one of his most visually stunning features he ever made. "Eternal Love" demonstrated that cameras without the hindrance of early cumbersome sound equipment could be transported to any geographical setting to achieve eye-popping results.

Firstly, although Lubitsch had a pretty broad repertoire when it came to genres, there was nothing much he could bring to this particular one. The whole thing was already laid out for him, with the great settings (very convincing Swiss village and mountain scenery), and the whole story in place. Perhaps the one most significant thing one could attribute to Lubitsch was the shot of a lusting Barrymore panning slowly to the pile of clothes (I'll say no more so as not to spoil it). But the other odd thing was Barrymore, for me miscast as a pining young Swiss mountaineer. I think Lubitsch would have done better to cast Ramon Novarro, whom he had already used so beautifully in "The Student Prince." In short, the film is just a bit off kilter. Also contributing to the oddness is the film score of Hugo Riesenfeld, who contented himself with endless repetitions of two Brahms pieces, a piano intermezzo and the song "Von ewiger Liebe" (appropriately "About eternal love"), both rescored for orchestra. Were these at Lubitsch's suggestion? In the end, I'm wondering if the studio was trying to emulate some of those Heimatfilme being made in Austria and Germany by the likes of Leni Riefensthal.

Ernst Lubitsch's second to last mostly silent film (there's a dedicated soundtrack, but it's just music and some sound effects), Eternal Love doesn't hit the same peaks as his previous film, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, and it's more in line tonally with his historical melodramas. However, it's more successful than any of those historical melodramas, though. Stripped of the need for the explanation of larger settings and situations in the medium of silent film, the story is much smaller in scale, offering more time on character in its limited runtime.

My only major problem with the film is its first twenty minutes or so. They're kind of weird, and I suppose they sort of tie into the rest of the film thematically, but you have to squint a bit to see it. It introduces our three main characters Marcus (John Barrymore), Ciglia (Camilla Horn), and Pia (Mona Rico). In a remote mountain village in Switzerland, at a time when the country has been caught in the middle of a conflict between France and Germany, the citizens of the town must give up their arms to placate their French invaders (whom we never see). The entire town complies except Marcus who uses his gun to feed himself by killing deer. The whole dynamic between the three principle characters here is off in my mind.

First, Marcus is an independent man who is willing to defend himself and his rights even in the face of oppression. That's admirable, but the only person who seems to see that as admirable at all is Pia, the wild girl on the edges of the small society (reminding me of Pola Negi's title role in The Wildcat), who loves Marcus for who he is. The "eternal love" of the title, though, is shared between Marcus and Ciglia. Ciglia, the daughter of the preacher, considers abandoning her love of Marcus in the face of his resistance to the gun ban, and her love for Marcus is only reinforced when he does just that. There's something off about how this opening works, and it bugs me. I get what it's actually doing, though. It's showing that Marcus does love Ciglia so much that he's willing to do something against his own principles to make her happy and retain her love, but in the face of a literal invasion from an outside country, it goes beyond just bending to the will of a girl you love. It's abdication of actual duty to one's home and liberties. It's...weird. Throw in the fact that Pia loves him for who he is, for his obstinance, and it's a bit weirder still.

That's the first ten minutes or so, and the next ten minutes is a different kind of weird. It ends up feeling kind of weirdly amorphous and directionless as the occupation (which we never saw) ends and we get an extended masquerade celebration at the local tavern. There's some mistaken identity stuff as Marcus doesn't know which masked woman is Ciglia while Pia tries to attract his attention. I wonder if this had opened the film instead of the stuff about the gun might it have worked better. I'm not sure, but it feels structurally and in terms of its pacing to be an effort to introduce characters rather than just the next scene. It takes a while to play out while doing little, is what I'm saying.

However, once Marcus and Ciglia leave the party in order to take her home, the movie is finally on firm footing and never lets go. It's a shaky start (with the reappearance of Hanns Kraly in the credits as writer, I can only assume that a bit of it is his fault), but the pieces get laid nonetheless. The keys are that Marcus really loves Ciglia who really loves him back while Pia is a mischievous woman out to steal Marcus away. It all actually starts moving when Marcus stumbles into his house really drunk and finds a naked Pia on his bed (the nudity is implied, of course), and they sleep together. It was a calculated move on Pia's part, and the news quickly spreads. The irony is that Ciglia decides to remain by Marcus' side in a quiet moment where they hold hands after she figures out what's happened. It's not to last, though, since her father, Reverend Tass (Hobart Bosworth) obviously won't have the match anymore, and Marcus and Pia end up quickly married.

In an effort to get her over her sorrow, Reverend Tass arranges the match with another local man, Lorenz (Victor Varconi) who has held unrequited feelings towards Ciglia for a while. They are quickly married with Tass asking his new son-in-law if Ciglia still has thoughts for Marcus, an idea that Lorenz quickly laughs off.

Things swirl when Marcus is in the mountain when a snowstorm sweeps through. Pia is concerned for her husband, the man that offers her no love at all, and she goes from door to door begging for help. When she tells Lorenz of Marcus' situation with Ciglia off to the side, Ciglia can't help but gasp in horror at the situation which Lorenz immediately reads as him being wrong about her having let go of her old flame. The emotional stakes are clear, especially when Marcus shows up safe and sound, and we're due for a finale where the personalities, which can no longer all coexist together peacefully, clash in a final showdown. It's not a Mexican standoff, or anything, but people do die, and it's the kind of tragic ending that ends up working surprisingly well. There's the pursuit of true love in the face of societal pressure and even an embrace of much larger threats and promises from Nature and God. There are implications that feed the central idea quite well.

So, the opening twenty minutes is weird, but it sets the pieces well enough so that Lubitsch and Kraly can take their characters on a surprisingly affecting emotional journey. I suppose my only complaint from the twenty minute point on is that Pia kind of just disappears from the narrative (she becomes part of a mob and is never seen again).

Now, to try and connect the opening to the rest of the film. I think it has something to do with the idea of neutrality. Switzerland is neutral in the conflict between France and Germany, and Marcus, in his new life as Pia's husband, tries to remain neutral regarding the relationship between Ciglia and Lorenz. He doesn't interfere or involve himself. He sets himself apart, but Lorenz can't abide by it, needing Marcus to leave the area completely. His neutrality ends up being part of the downfall that engulfs him and Ciglia. That's not what actually happens to Switzerland in the opening, though. Nothing bad happens to them because they throw down their arms in the face of France's occupation (that we never see). France just leaves. The neutrality paid off. So, I sort of get it, but it's imprecise, misses the mark, and doesn't actually inform the later parts of the story.

The opening really just doesn't fit, but the rest of the film is really, really good. I wonder if simply cutting the first ten minutes completely and starting with the masquerade would actually improve the film, getting it actually started a bit earlier. You'd miss some stuff like Lorenz's unrequited appreciation of Ciglia and a couple of other things, but, on balance, I think it might be an improvement.

So, it's not The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, but it's not Anna Boleyn or Sumurun either. Overall, I'd call it pretty good, something that ends a whole lot better than it begins, but I kind of love a good chunk of it.

Ernst Lubitsch is remembered today as "the man with the golden touch". His droll and witty comedies of the sexes from the 30's and 40's such as THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and TO BE OR NOT TO BE certainly deserve their place in movie history. So do his silent films which thanks to present day technology are being made available to new generations of film lovers. MGM released one of his best known silent films THE STUDENT PRINCE IN OLD HEIDELBERG (1927) back in 1991. Image Entertainment released THE MARRIAGE CIRCLE (1924) in 2000. Now Milestone Films have released ETERNAL LOVE on DVD.

Made at the end of the silent era (1929) with music and sound effects discs, the film has been beautifully restored with original materials by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. I was surprised not only at its beauty but also by the power of its simple story. Ill-fated love stories have been around forever but here I found it unexpectedly moving. It takes place in a village in Switzerland (it was filmed in the Canadian Rockies) and deals with love, individuality, honor, and small town morality. The ending, though expected, was still very effective.

John Barrymore, while giving power and dignity to his character, is guilty of chewing the scenery from time to time. I was also quite surprised by the heavy makeup he used in the first half of the film. Camilla Horn, who was Gretchen in F. W. Murnau's FAUST, makes a beautiful and believable heroine. The supporting roles were well acted with Mexican actress Mona Rico as the "bad girl" a real standout. While ETERNAL LOVE is no masterpiece, it is well made by master craftsman Lubitsch who says farewell to the silent era in style...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.