Anna Boleyn

Considering this movie is now 104 years old my first thought while watching it was that it's held up well, and whatever work of restoration/preservation was done to it was done very well because it's a very impressive looking movie. I also thought that both technically and based on the performances from its cast it's actually a better movie than most of what the early Hollywood silent film industry was putting out. This is a German production, telling the story of Anne Boleyn, beginning with her return to England from France through to her execution (although the beheading isn't actually depicted - she's just shown walking from her cell towards her fate.) Anne was played by a German actress named Henny Porten - unknown to me, but who had quite a long career, extending far beyond the end of World War II. Porten was quite effective in the role, but the movie really was stolen by Emil Jannings' performance as King Henry VIII. I'm familiar with Jannings as a name although a quick look at his filmography doesn't reveal anything I would have seen him in. But I thought his performance as Henry was very good. He portrayed Henry - not inaccurately - as a glutton and a lech who was also desperate for a male heir. The film takes us from his marriage to Catharine of Aragon to his budding marriage to Jane Seymour, following Anne (as the title implies) from being the "other woman" in Henry's first marriage to being supplanted by another "other woman."

The movie was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, who had already had a long career in the German film industry and who not long after "Anna Boleyn" made the move to the United States, where he became a very successful director. His abilities as a director are on display here.

I found it interesting that the German movie industry would produce such an "English" movie. I'm just speculating but I wonder if its release not very long after the end of World War I was almost a poke at the English, by offering this story (a very historically loose version, mind you) centering around the excesses of England's most notorious king - a king who long pre-dated the coming of the Hanovers as England's German royal dynasty.

Continuing with the exclusive film programme about complicated relationships in some European courts, last night in the Schloss theatre was shown "Anna Boleyn", a film directed by the great Teutonic film director Herr Ernst Lubitsch. The film depicts the terrible story of the Queen consort of the British King Henry VIII. She was executed by her husband ( well, not exactly, the King ordered the executioners to do his dirty work) not to mention that this marriage caused an important political and religious historical event, the English Reformation.

The film stars Dame Henny Porten, Germany's first screen superstar during those early years and Herr Emil Jannings, Germany's fattest actor in that silent era. Both play their characters in a suitable way; Dame Porten as an innocent aristocrat who becomes progressively interested in the power that the court offers her and Herr Jannings as the unscrupulous, whimsical and womanizing British monarch, a character very suitable for this German actor who overacts appropriately, given the extravagance and excessive personality of the character himself.

In the early film period Herr Lubitsch was known for his outstanding costume films, colossal productions with big budgets ( "Anna Boleyn" cost about 8 million marks, a fortune even for this German count ) taking great care in magnificent decors as can be seen during the coronation procession in Westminster Abbey scene which employed 4.000 extras ( idle Germans of that time were used, causing revolutionary workers to create a fuss when German President Friedrich Ebert visited the set during filming).

Besides the spectacle, one of the most important aspect of this and every film of Herr Lubitsch, even during his epic period, is the complex relationship between the main characters. We experience a game of different interests, double meanings, and the complicated art of flirting but what is treated lightly at first ends in tragedy. The importance of those historical facts is brought to bear in an effective way but Lubitsch is really more interested in the changing relationship between Henry VIII and Anna Boleyn.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must take care that one of his fat and rich heiress doesn't lose her head for this Teutonic aristocrat.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

In those years when the cinema had no voice it was truly an international medium. Stories from other lands could be brought to the screen by the movie industry of another country. One of Greta Garbo's sound films for MGM had her playing an English lady. And here Emil Jannings whose inability to speak the King's English and forced him to return to Germany plays that most English of monarchs Henry VIII. In this Jannings joined a great pantheon of English speaking players like Charles Laughton, Montagu Love, Charlton Heston, and Robert Shaw who all played the monarch who changed wives like some change underwear.

Jannings is an impressive looking and acting Henry VIII. A man whose pleasures mingled with his impassioned search for a woman to bear him a male heir and the politics of Europe. Henny Polen whose career spanned five decades in the German cinema plays the luckless Anne.

By the way another reviewer thought her not sexy enough to leave a king panting. In fact director Ernst Lubitsch must have seen Tudor era portraits of Anne because Polen look a lot like Boleyn.

The Lubitsch touch which everyone talks about in his talkie Hollywood films is not here as such. But Lubitsch was quite detailed in his sets and costumes in what must have cost many marks in post war Germany. They look very much Tudor England and compare them with those of Warner Brothers The Prince And The Pauper where Montagu Love was Henry VIII.

This is worth a look.

I have always been surprised by the fact that the great German born director Ernst Lubitsch first made his reputation by a series of large scale silent costume dramas such as THE EYES OF THE MUMMY, MADAME DU BARRY (PASSION), and this film. Today he is remembered and revered for his comic touch in such talking films as NINOTCHKA and SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and that is how it should be. His epic films are gorgeous to look at with large scale sets, elaborate costumes, and hundreds of extras but nothing that D. W. Griffith hadn't done better a few years earlier.

Unfortunately the acting in most of these movies has dated badly and is so over the top that any sense of drama is quickly lost. That is especially true of ANNA BOLEYN (1920) one of four DVD releases from Kino highlighting Lubitsch in Berlin. Henny Porten as the title character is so emotionally overwrought as to be laughable which is clearly not the intention here. Emil Jannings, not exactly known as the subtlest of actors, seems positively restrained in comparison and it's clear to see where Charles Laughton got his portrayal of Henry VIII from.

It's a good thing that Lubitsch discovered comedy otherwise he would have wound up only a footnote in cinema history. For a look at where his true talent lay, check out the comic double bill THE OYSTER PRINCESS / I DON'T WANT TO BE A MAN also in this group of new releases along with THE WILDCAT. They are as funny today as they were in 1920 and point the way to the great Ernst Lubitsch of the future...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Nothing dull about this movie, which is held together by fully realized characters with some depth to them. Even the hooded torturers have body language. Jannings' performance is brilliant, all will, want and need. A Henry VIII as he must have been. Henny Porten is, maybe, nobler and purer than Anne Boleyn, but she plays the part as written: A victim caught in the jaws of a big (huge) baby.

Sparkuhl's cinematography is gorgeous in the restoration, the tints sensuous. Lubitsch lets these characters breathe and reveal their corruption down to the tiniest of meannesses. He takes his time, which can try the patience of an audience accustomed to being carried away by action, but the time is worth spending. Slow your heartbeat and watch this minor miracle of German silent film.