Culpas de Amor

You might expect Joseph Conrad to be an author whose darkly ironic tales of colonialism were turned to romantic mush by the silent movies, yet here's an outstanding, completely unknown 1929 silent by Herbert Brenon that conveys much of his worldview in the course of a tale of desperate sea adventure. Colman plays Tom Lingard, a sort of Bogartish, cynical both-sides-of-the-law trader in the South Seas; a yacht run by a rich jerk gets becalmed near a dangerous island, Colman wants to keep the navy (any navy) out of his territory and sets out to rescue them, falling in love with Lili Damita as the rich jerk's bored wife. (When Ralph Richardson played Lingard in Outcast of the Islands, he was more Old Testament Patriarch than To Have and Have Not.)

Given the date, I worried this would be the silent version of a sound film, and painfully dull; what it actually looks like is that they wrote a talkie script, then filmed it silently anyway. So there are scenes that are a bit static at first, and overreliant on titles, yet it soon grows more visual and, more importantly, retains Conrad's sensibility, depicting the blundering, destructive ways of western powers in the east without holding back for the sake of the romance. A mature, well-made film (said to be missing one reel, but there is only one jump in the narrative that looks like a scene or two is missing) that deserves rediscovery as a major late silent. Shown at Capitolfest in 2018, and mostly in very good condition, this would be a worthy title for any festival or archival series.