Beyond the Rocks

When 'Beyond the Rocks' had its initial and only performance at the London Film festival, it was undoubtedly one of the events of the year. The cinema was booked out in advance, and queues formed at the box office in the hopes of obtaining returned tickets. Irrespective of its artistic merits, the miraculously-rediscovered film was guaranteed to arouse interest.

It has to be confessed, however, that the storyline of 'Beyond the Rocks' is in itself complete and utter tosh...

It became apparent to the audience what to expect within the first few shots, where the breathless and far-from-deathless prose of the title cards raised more than a few chuckles, although the attitude in the auditorium was good-natured throughout. The film is no great work of art and never pretends to be; the plot is women's-magazine stuff, told with a straight face as it whips through a quick world tour of stereotypes, from the English seaside to the quaint Alpine inn and a desert oasis. One of the biggest -- and to give it its due, probably in this case intentional -- laughs was raised by the heroine's bewildered husband voicing the audience's own reaction to the revelation of some very undersized Egyptian ruins: "Is that all?"

I was favourably impressed by the restraint and sensitivity of Rudolph Valentino in handling this material. His performance appealed to me considerably more than that of Gloria Swanson, whose role here, to be fair, consists of little more than a series of coy, tragic or would-be dramatic poses; she suffers also, I suspect, from being the designated Star and thus made up far more heavily in the contemporary style than the other female characters. The actress whom I actually admired the most was June Elvidge, playing the small role of Valentino's sister (randomly referred to in various title cards as Ann, Anne or Anna). She gave a very sympathetic and vividly-drawn rendition of her part that contrasted somewhat with what struck me as Miss Swanson's mask-like demeanour.

Despite an expressive performance from Valentino, unfortunately we have to take the central love affair more or less on trust. There is not a great deal of chemistry in evidence. Indeed, the heroine Theodora comes across to me as rather more animated and concerned about the fate of her husband in the final scenes, than about her lover in all that precedes; I must admit to half-hoping for a last minute twist that would have her realise she has grown to love this unprepossessing figure instead! But convention is met by a different set of clichés, and young love duly has its day.

It is interesting to compare the film with the references in Swanson's own memoirs, written many years after it was deemed lost: unless it has been lost in this print to censorship or decay, there is no sequence showing 'the tango as it was meant to be danced; by the master himself', let alone featuring in this dance 'a gold-beaded and embroidered lace evening gown so shimmering and beautiful that movie-goers talked about it for the next year'. Nor, even in this 'European' version, are there any of the 'torrid kisses' of which she observes 'Poor Rudy could hardly get his nostrils flaring before the American version was over'. Either the relevant sections are forever missing, or her memory must have been confused by other Valentino pictures of the era.

The film shown in London was the 'archival version', full-frame and silent, as opposed to the print with attached soundtrack to be made available for future exhibition and sale. In place of the Vrienten score with its allegedly intrusive sound-effects, we were treated to accompaniment by the National Film Theatre's justly renowned Neil Brand. I am unable, therefore, to comment on the music other than to commend the improvisation on this occasion!

In conclusion, I cannot honestly recommend 'On the Rocks' other than as a curiosity: true, it is a relatively early production in a style unfamiliar to modern eyes, but even so I have seen earlier film that I have appreciated more. The beautiful Theodora remains largely a helpless cipher of events, the melodrama of the plot is superficial rather than absorbing, the literary standard of the titles is on occasion risible and the screen lovers fail to kindle a convincing spark. Contemporary critics reputedly disdained it, and only the innovative star pairing and mythical 'lost' status have resurrected its appeal.

But it *is*, without question, a curiosity, and as such worth seeing once by any amateur of film history or Valentino fan. Just don't expect too much...

The silent era continues to have surprises for us, such as this one, "Beyond the Rocks," a film starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino once thought lost but since rediscovered and restored.

Based on a novel by Elinor Glyn, it's a potboiler that doesn't hold up well today, but so little does at age 84. It's the story of a young woman, Theodora, the hope of her family (i.e., the one with the youth and looks to nab a rich husband) who meets a British nobleman (Valentino) when he saves her from drowning.

Then she meets her betrothed, a short, old thing. She's disappointed, but for the sake of her father, marries him. She runs into Valentino on her honeymoon and this time, he saves her from falling off a mountain during a climbing expedition. They seem Meant to Be. But both are determined to honor her marriage vows.

Valentino and Swanson are heavily made up, and both actually looked much better with a more natural appearance. In the beginning, with her hair down and less Max Factor, Swanson is lovely - petite, with amazing eyes and beautiful skin. Later on, however, she looks older than she is due to the make-up and hair-do. Her character has a great wardrobe, and Swanson wears it well.

Both actors give good performances. Valentino had a tendency to be obvious in some of his emotions - it was more the style then - but he gives a more relaxed performance in "Beyond the Rocks." Most of the movie looks beautiful with its sepia tones though there are some damaged sections. It's quite a find and a chance to see two big stars of the silent era together.

Swanson wrote of parts of the film that don't seem to exist any longer - but as one of the comments here suggests, she perhaps was mixing this up with another film. Given the plot, it would be easy to do so.

I had a full range of impressions and emotions while watching this recently rediscovered silent film. I saw it on a big screen in Orlando (before DVD release) and my husband and I sat in the very front row so we would be right on top of it and wouldn't miss a thing.

Story aspects: Beyond the Rocks is a romantic melodrama, based on a story by Elinor Glyn. It had some typical silent film clichés and overacting, but to a veteran silent film fan this will not be distracting. Gloria Swanson plays Theodora, who loves her father and family enough to sacrifice for them by marrying an older man she does not love just because he is rich. Afterward she falls in love with Hector (Rudolph Valentino), a rich romantic young gentleman who rescues her from the clutches of death not just once, but twice. A series of circumstances leads the husband to understand his wife is in love with another man, and he goes off on a dangerous exhibition to Algeria with the aim of sacrificing himself so that the young couple can be together.

Swanson and Valentino obviously enjoyed working together, they had a nice chemistry together on screen, though it didn't strike me as a terribly passionate one. In fact there was not one single kiss scene in the entire film, a major disappointment to me (unless there was one in missing footage). The closest they come to it is one scene where she rubs her cheek against his head. There was instead much talk of duty and doing the right thing by staying away from each other as much as possible, so that the husband would not be hurt.

Style aspects: Gloria's clothes in the film were gorgeous. Valentino on the other hand looked like he was shortchanged in the wardrobe department in several scenes, where he wears a tweed suit that ill becomes him. It looks too tight and only one top button is buttoned on his suit coat, which looked odd to me. For one brief scene he looks incredibly dashing all dressed in white. This was also the first time I noticed that Valentino had a rather large horizontal scar on his right cheek! You can see details like this much better on a big screen. I have never noticed it in any Valentino film I've seen on DVD. In the beginning scenes Valentino looks so young he looks like a teenager. Delectable. Gloria on the other hand had so much makeup on that she looked much older than her years, older even than she looked in Queen Kelly! That kept putting me off. It got a little better when she started wearing sophisticated, glamorous clothes, when she did age as part of the plot.

The art direction was pretty good for a 1922 movie. The scenes on the water and in the desert were quite realistic. The interior of homes looked authentic to the time period. Obviously a great deal of thought was dedicated to the overall look of the film, to make it artistic as much as possible.

Technical aspects: The film started at 7 pm and ended at 8:15 pm, so it was roughly one hour and 10 minutes long (with a 5 minute intro). My first impression of the film was that I was disappointed the beginning titles and credits were obviously lost. The font they used for the title and star credits was a modern, simple one and not impressive. If I were restoring it I would have designed opening credits with a strong vintage look to them, perhaps using a decorative flower design border. They could have gotten ideas from similar 1922 films. To just announce their magical names, Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, with a boring, ugly modern font was not appropriate and didn't do justice to the importance of this film find.

Most scenes had artifacts galore and missing frames. A pageant sequence was partly missing, leaving the audience with unanswered questions as to what went on during those important scenes. There were some deteriorated scenes and decomposition but most of the film was in watchable condition, and we should be thankful we have it at all.

Musical aspects: The score was a strange mixed bag of new age music with some jazzy refrains thrown in at inappropriate times. One flashback scene received some vintage sounding music but it wasn't impressively authentic. There was one nice bit of music in a hotel scene where a musician was playing some kind of elaborate string instrument and people were dancing. That was my favorite part of the score, but alas, all too brief. Overall I feel the composer was trying to sound like James Horner's music, the fellow who did James Cameron's Titanic soundtrack, but this new age, Celtic sound is just not what I prefer when I watch my silent films. Enough with the pan flutes already! I prefer period music for silents.

The absolute worst thing about this score was the constant sound effects. It was ridiculous. No audience would have heard that many sound effects when going to watch a silent film in 1922. They wouldn't have heard that many sound effects if they had seen a silent-part sound film in 1929!

My rating: I'd give this film a 7 out of 10 for the storyline itself, a typical melodrama that wasn't original, an 8 out of 10 for set design and locations, a 4 out of 10 for the "restoration" work done, a 6 out of 10 for the music score (I might have raised that to a 7 without all the sound effects!), and an 8 out of 10 for the acting.

Addendum: I have since read the 1906 novel by Elinor Glyn, it's much better than the film. I would strongly suggest people interested in this film seek out the novel.

I have to start by saying that I am probably the worst possible person to write a comment on "Beyond the Rocks", as it is the only silent movie I've seen to date. However, since not many people have yet had a chance to see this movie, I thought it my duty as a movie enthusiast to review.

In "Beyond the Rocks" a poor young woman, Theodora Fitzgerald (Gloria Swanson), briefly meets the handsome Lord Hector Bracondale (Rudolph Valentino). They like each other, but soon part ways. Some time later Theodora marries a rich man, even though she has no feelings for him whatsoever, in order to make her father and sisters happy. On her honeymoon she runs into Hector again, and they continue to meet each other socially. Soon they realise that they love each other, but Theodora is now married, which makes it impossible for them to be together.

I found the beginning of "Beyond the Rocks" a bit slow and uneventful. Things do happen, but somehow I couldn't really get 'into' the story. The reason for this is, most likely, that the love between the two main characters at that point hasn't fully developed yet, nor have their problems, and there is little to get emotionally involved with the characters about. But this 'slow' part doesn't last long, and the rest of the movie is as interesting as such a love story can possibly be.

"Beyond the Rocks" is famous for co-starring two silent movie greats, Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. I was a bit disappointed with Valentino at first. During much of the first half of the movie, he has little to do but smile and look good, neither of which requires much acting talent. Fortunately he has more emotions to convey later, and then finally gets the chance to show what he's capable of. But Swanson remains the star of this movie. Whenever she is on the screen, whatever she is doing, she's the one you're looking at. Even when Valentino acts at his best, he is very much in his own world inside the movie, while Swanson transcends the bounds, radiating off the screen and drawing you into the story.

Not long ago, only one minute of this movie was known to have survived. Then, a few years ago, a copy of the whole film was found in The Netherlands, where it was restored by the Nederlands Filmmuseum. The quality is, as far as I can judge, usually very good. There are only two moments in the film where there is a lot of damage, and it briefly becomes extremely difficult to see what's happening on the screen. The first of these moments is very short, and the shot rather uninteresting, so that it is no great loss to not be able to see it. The other is longer and happens in the middle of a considerably more important and interesting scene. It is a shame that this part of the movie didn't survive in a better condition, but one can't expect miracles, and an advancement from one minute of film to all 80 minutes whereof perhaps one minute damaged is doubtless a great one.

Dutch movie composer Henny Vrienten has made a soundtrack for "Beyond the Rocks". Unique of this soundtrack is that it not only contains music, but also sounds from the surroundings of the characters: cars driving up, footsteps on the stairs, knocks on the door, etc. The general opinion on this seems to be that it makes it easier for people to follow what's happening. I personally can see the other view - that silent movies weren't meant to have sound effects - as well, but the sound as it is didn't bother me. There is one thing, however, that I think should have been left out, and that is the sound of people talking in the background, which is sometimes used. If the actors don't talk audibly, I really don't think it's appropriate to have talking (and sometimes laughing) heard in the background, even if it only occurs in 'party' scenes, where it would be a normal sound to expect. The music is often good and fitting enough (though sometimes rather early-21st-century), except in one scene where the music played in a fancy hotel/restaurant is of the kind you would expect to hear in a saloon in a bad western. This soundtrack is not my favorite part of the film as I saw it, but it certainly isn't so bad that it ruins one's viewing experience, and naturally the movie can't be blamed for it.

All in all, this is a great movie. I hope that it will soon get distributed around the world to give everyone the opportunity to see it.

When the restored version of Beyond the Rocks received its American premiere earlier this week at the New York Film Festival I was fortunate enough to be in the audience. The amazing story of this film's recovery and reconstruction by the staff of Amsterdam's Nederlands Filmmuseum is told elsewhere on this page, so it's not necessary to repeat it here; for my part, ever since I first heard about this rediscovery over a year ago I've been curious about one thing only, and that's the quality of the movie itself. It's great that Beyond the Rocks has been found, but how good is it?

Well, it was certainly exciting to see the movie with an audience, and a thrill to see Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino in something "new," but frankly I don't think anyone will mistake Beyond the Rocks for a masterpiece of the silent cinema. It's like a sumptuously produced Harlequin romance, a 1922 soap opera in which the two stars model lots of great outfits while they suffer nobly in picturesque locales. I'm not saying it's a bad movie, it's actually a lot of fun on its own terms, but it's the kind of fun you get from reading a "guilty pleasure" beach book. There's nothing wrong with a beach book as long as you're not expecting Chekhov, and nothing wrong with this film as long as you're not expecting Murnau.

The screenplay was based on a novel by Elinor Glyn, an eccentric lady best known for coining the term "It" to describe sex appeal. Madame Glyn (as she preferred to be addressed) is sometimes called the Barbara Cartland of her day, but Glyn's novels were far more outlandish than most anything you'll find in today's bookstores. Her plots were just flimsy excuses to place aristocratic lovers in exotic, secluded settings fit for delivering purple-prose speeches and engaging in steamy love-making on tiger rugs. Just consider the names of some of her characters: Princess Ardacheff, Madame Zalenska, Lord Bracondale, and let's not forget Bracondale's jilted fiancée, the unfortunate Morella Winmarleigh. Considering the silly source material it's remarkable that the filmmakers who adapted Beyond the Rocks for the screen managed to convert Glyn's tale into something halfway respectable, with a touch of dignity. At the screening I attended there were occasional giggles at moments of blatant hokum in the plotting, but I wouldn't call the film absurd over all. I think it's safe to say (although I haven't read the novel) that this is a case where the movie may be considerably better than the book.

Before seeing the film I wondered how two such iconic figures as Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino would pair on screen. Having seen it, my conclusion is that although Rudy looks great and gives a nicely nuanced performance, this is Gloria's picture all the way. Her character is at the center of the story, and it's what happens to her that matters. Swanson rises to the occasion with a stylized performance that is larger than life without ever going over the top, not even in the wrap-up sequence in the dunes of the Sahara, when the story reaches its climax and emotions peak. Gloria retains her poise and, like all the best silent stars, conveys a great deal with her eyes. Swanson was often called a "clothes horse," and throughout this film she and her co-star are both given the opportunity to show off a number of terrific costumes, most notably in a couple of gratuitous historical flashbacks apparently included solely to give the stars the opportunity to display themselves in exotic finery. A friend of mine who also saw the film said that the costumes worn in Beyond the Rocks are the real stars, and I quite agree. Mind you, this isn't solely a fashion show; this movie features not one but two bold rescues of the heroine (at sea and in the Alps) and a wild desert siege by bandits on horseback, but this isn't an action flick at heart, it's a chick flick, and the real action lies in the smoldering looks exchanged by the stars.

The print of Beyond the Rocks is in remarkably good shape for the most part, but there are some rough stretches where decomposition is noticeable, and a couple of junctures where footage is obviously missing. At the festival screening I attended, unfortunately, live music was not provided. Instead we were shown a print with a score by Henny Vrienten, and while I liked some of the music I found it a little too modern-sounding at times: at one point there's a bluesy jazz theme that's more Miles Davis than Jelly Roll Morton, pleasant enough but, in my opinion, not right for a film of this vintage. It was also unfortunate that the people who prepared the soundtrack found it necessary to dub in sound effects. I have no problem with certain ambient sounds (seagulls, dogs barking in the distance, etc.) but on this track we heard doors opening and closing, documents being unfolded, and even the sound of one hand patting another. They seemed to be trying to make the film "less silent," but for me these noises were excessive and only emphasized the absence of voices.

In sum, Beyond the Rocks is an enjoyable experience and of course a fascinating one for fans of the two stars, but it's not a film I'd use to introduce a newcomer to silent movies. God knows there are better examples of silent drama, but I'm nonetheless grateful that this film has unexpectedly emerged from obscurity as a special treat for the connoisseur, a slickly-produced, unabashedly old-fashioned romance served up with all the trimmings.