Lorna Doone

An excellent silent film.

I like the modern music score on the version shown on TCM in March 2005. It was composed by Mari Iijima (if you're going to bad-mouth a composer, you ought to spell their name correctly...), and has nice Philip Glass-like qualities. I love modern music scores for old silent films generally (for instance, the Alloy Orchestra's work).

The film has some great cinematography, and it's worth seeing just for that. The shots of the water in several places, the beach where Lorna is kidnapped, and of mad villagers chasing on horseback are really excellent, with great texture and lighting.

Shockingly silly, abrupt ending.

Cineasts jaded and cynical as I might be surprised by the enjoyable nature of this recently restored silent film -- the decision to watch spurred more by the interest in seeing otherwise forgotten John Bowers whose suicide has punctuated many a Hollywood allegory. Imagine my thrill, then, at seeing an overlooked treasure that, while certainly not a classic, demonstrates many of the long unappreciated qualities of early filmmaking.

Filled as it is with the wild gesticulations, grimaces and posturing that define early films, "Doone" also has excellent direction, a swift pace that only occasionally lags, and good performances by the cast. One can easily understand Bowers' rapid rise to fame (making his suicide all the more difficult to understand) with his brooding presence and oddly-handsome face that stands antithetical to the "pretty boys" who were his contemporaries.

If one can overlook the oddities in this film that are a natural part of such early films (the overuse of makeup, the odd lapses in continuity) "Lorna Doone" will certainly hold one's interest as a seldom seem tale that deserves more attention than it has received.

With some good cinematography and a rather unsettling background score, LORNA DOONE is a movie my father always mentioned liking very much for story and content. He must have seen it when he was in his early thirties and often mentioned it as one of his favorite novels and movies.

It's the rather familiar yarn of two people kept apart by the class system who were teen-age lovers separated by fate and then reunited years later when the girl has been held hostage by pirates and reared as one of the Doone clan. The years pass and by chance, during a fateful incident in the rapids, the young man (JOHN BOWERS) drifts toward Lorna's territory. When he awakens, she's tending to him and thus their story begins again.

The title role is nicely played by MADGE BELLAMY who has a sweet, old-fashioned grace about her that makes her heroine appealing and vulnerable. She seldom goes into the silent film technique of acting, nor does Bowers, who does a splendid job as the stalwart hero.

In reading about the film, I discovered that the ruggedly handsome Bowers committed suicide by drowning fourteen years after making this film, when his stardom was on the wane with the advent of talkies. It's rumored that he was the man depicted in A STAR IS BORN, Norman Maine, who walks into the ocean toward the finish.

Summing up: Interesting tale, well told but almost too familiar for most of us who've seen variations of it or actual remakes of it over the years.

In 17th-century England, the outlaw Doone clan kidnaps a young girl, who grows up among them. The farm boy who met her just before the kidnapping eventually rescues her, and they fall in love.

I wasn't familiar with this story, having neither read the novel nor seen the various movie and TV adaptations. The bare bones of this boy-meets-girl tale are, of course, familiar to anyone; but (in this version, at least) it is fleshed out in a particularly engaging way. The graceful photography of Henry Sharp, under Maurice Tourneur's direction, is the movie's main asset. Both leads (Madge Bellamy in the title role and John Bowers as the hero) are strong. Frank Keenan, as the elderly leader of the outlaw clan and Lorna's protector, gives a fascinatingly florid performance (an improvement over his equally striking, but ridiculously slow-motion, acting in "The Coward" from 1915). Charles Hatton, who plays the hero as a boy, has a strong screen presence: it's disappointing to see from his IMDb filmography that he only made a few films and then disappeared.

The 2001 presentations of this film has a lovely background music by Mari Iijima; but unfortunately, Iijima didn't exactly score the film so much as write a few pieces for it, which are repeated without variation throughout the movie. The repetitiveness is a defect.

Continuing with a short Herr Maurice Tourneur film programme at the Schloss theatre and due to the fact that these are modern and strange times and in accordance with this and having in mind the aristocratic conservatism, it is always better and safer to invest in silent secure stocks and forget those risky and changeable talkie shares. For that reason it is always an excellent investment to watch any Herr Maurice Tourneur silent film.

"Lorna Doone" (1922) is another excellent work of the French director that belongs to his American period. The story is set in old Britain and is an interesting international Saxon mixture based on a famous and classic oeuvre written by Herr Richard Doddridge Blackmore, a novel that obviously this German count hasn't read because the first edition didn't include any illustrations.

But fortunately Herr Tourneur's silent film adaptation of that book provides plenty of illustrations that often resemble paintings. They film compositions are evocative, dramatic and beautiful, the kind of visuals for which the French director is well-known and they are perfectly done with a strong sense of background helped greatly by Herr Henry Sharp's sharp cinematography. Herr Tourneur's direction and the cinematography, combined with the superb art direction that is characteristic of the French director makes for a dramatic exercise in romanticism.

Although it is a short sequence at the beginning of the film, the first meeting as children between Lorna and John, is especially beautiful and remarkable and a perfect excuse for this German aristocrat to commend the delicacy and mastery that Herr Tourneur always demonstrates when he directs children ( those evil little creatures ); it is not a very easy task to try to dominate those miniature demons and achieve good and natural performances while avoiding insipidness or too obvious acting. The magic innocence and mystery of childhood is a usual subject in many Herr Tourneur films. It is a hard job but the French director always triumphs when he explores that primal and fascinating early age.

Besides the film has plenty of action, one of those classical adventure films full of wicked bandits who do wrongs that must be righted not to mention a larger than life love story that defies conventionalism or social class differences; that is to say, an immortal historical romantic drama.

All the merits of "Lorna Doone" can be appreciated nowadays thanks to the excellent film work restoration by the youngsters at "Kino", a superb effort available in one of those modern discs that the longhaired likes so much and it includes a beautiful and delicate score composed and arranged by Dame Mari Lijima .

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must keep away the Doones from the Schloss surroundings.

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