Svengali

Svengali (1931)

"Svengali" is a strange strange film, half nightmare, half plain old German Expressionism thrown into an inventive Warner Bros. set. It's amazing at its best, and the set design and photography both got Oscar nominations. The plot that gets built up of increasingly new elements, comic outsiders (Englishmen who believe in bathing every day) and a overtly beautiful blonde model and her apparent love match (they have just met), until the crux of it clarifies--the title character is a madman who can hypnotize people at will.

John Barrymore in his archly long, dramatic is a creep, appropriately. When he hypnotizes, his eyes turn to these large glowing white orbs. He has fallen in love with a model and starts to control her, which her fiancé only gradually realizes. Other people just find Svengali a quirky artistic type, and see no harm in him at first.

The setting is odd--clearly shot on a studio lot rather than a real Parisian artists colony, it nonetheless is meant to be some kind of rambling set of rooms that are more or less attached, or near each other. For the whole first half, the main characters never really leave the irregular, sometimes offkilter chambers, which look like there were adapted from "Caligari" itself. The light and the framing, and the interesting very shallow depth of field, combine to make a mysterious and really beautiful effect.

The Barrymores, as a group, are amazing, but their theatricality, especially John's, doesn't always transfer well to modern movies. In a way, it's this leading man who cuts into the disarming surrealism and horror overall, simply because he's so campy. This might be just a matter of changing tastes, because his effect reminds me rather a lot of Bela Lugosi in "Dracula" which was released the same year (a few months earlier). The story of Dracula is more archetypal and wonderful for the ages, but in my view (I've seen both movies recently) this is much better filmed. The photography, lighting, and blocking (the way the actors move) are more fluid and involved. Archie Mayo, the director, has a handful of completely wonderful films to his up and down career (click on his name to see). As much as this one has some obvious and forced sections, and a plot that doesn't quite involve the viewer as you would hope, it's a really well made, well constructed movie. For 1931 it's sometimes a pure wonder.

I've only watched the film once – by way of Roan's fine if not outstanding DVD - and this happened fairly recently. SVENGALI follows its source novel ("Trilby" by George Du Maurier) pretty closely, which is rare for horror film-adaptations of the 1930s. Apart from John Barrymore's appropriately mesmerizing leading performance (here revisiting the genre after a whole decade), I recall one particularly amazing tracking shot demonstrating Svengali's hypnotic powers over Trilby, and there are even brief flashes of nudity (remember this was a Pre-Code film, but also that our heroine is a model)! Barrymore followed SVENGALI with the thematically-similar THE MAD GENIUS (1931) but, unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to watch that one

John Barrymore tackles the delicious role of Svengali, the evil musician who casts a spell over pretty young Trilby, an artist's model (portrayed by Marian Marsh). The chief reason to see Archie Mayo's production is the unique set design by Anton Grot (who, I am speculating, was rather inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari). Also of note are the splendid special effects, still impressive even after all these years. All of the hypnosis/possession sequences are remarkable, as great attention is paid to the piercing, penetrating eyes of Svengali as he mesmerizes the hapless ingenue. The weak link here is the lukewarm Bramwell Fletcher, playing Trilby's true love. He registers blandly, and behaves more as the passive mollycoddle than as the proactive hero.

It's been many years since I read DuMaurier's "Trilby." I was a young man then, probably much more impressionable than I am now. I didn't know that there had been a movie made based on the book - let alone several versions. When I came across the title on IMDb recently, I read the summaries and comments on all of them. It seemed to me that only one came close to the book - this 1931 Warner Brothers film, named after the villain of the story. Comparing the casts, one also could come to the conclusion that this would be the best of the films. So, I bought and watched the dvd of this film.

John Barrymore does an excellent job as "Svengali." Marian Marsh is very good as Trilby, and this is her first starring role after a few uncredited roles in films. The rest of the cast are fine in their roles. I did notice that the ending was different, if in the same vein.

The film didn't seem to be as sinister as I recalled Svengali from the book. Perhaps the front of gentleness displayed by Barrymore here assuages somewhat the terror of his character's demonic side. I don't recall if his character had a gentle or sweet side in the book.

The filmmakers did an excellent job in setting the story with the stark appearance of the lodgings and spacious empty hallways in the beginning. Once Trilby comes under Svengali's spell, it seems that the film moves very quickly to the end. I thought there was a little more to the intervening years in the book.

This was a very good portrayal of one person controlling another, especially with dark powers. DuMaurier's villain's name soon transposed into common language. A manipulating person who seeks to control someone is referred to as a Svengali.

The remark of an earlier commentator below caught my eye when he stated that the change in perspective from comedy to serious drama in this film didn't work for him. I've found this to be a most striking feature of the film as well, but I always thought it very effective in giving the film, and the characters, more scope than the average uniform, by-the-book comedy, thriller, horror film, drama, etc. A bit like real life, no?

Anyway, I've always been a fan of this film, and I don't think the acting is at all hokey for its era or genre. The stylized acting of the time, which appears artificial by today's standards, seems to me to go well with the weird expressionist set design in evoking a fantastic world where fantastic things can occur. Also, the chance to see Barrymore ham it up in grand style as Svengali is, in my view, a rare treat, like experiencing a bit of show biz history. I bristled a bit at the review of this film by Scott Weinberg of the Apollo Movie Guide (see "external reviews" link). He states that in 1931 you could entertain people by showing 75 minutes of an airport runway, and that his being born in the 70s may explain why this film put him to sleep. Maybe so. I myself was born in the 50s and also did not grow up with this style of filmmaking, though I probably saw more of it on TV than he did. That doesn't preclude my appreciation of it, any more than it precludes my appreciation for films of the 70s, the 80s, or the 20s for that matter. Good film is good film, and having no appreciation for the first 3 decades of cinema and some of its greatest innovators seems a severe handicap for anyone who writes about film, but at least he was honest about it.

I'm not saying that this film is on a par with the work of Murnau or Eisenstein, but I do think it's a fascinating and stylish look into a bygone era of cinema, and can be appreciated as such.