L'abîme

I saw this screened at the Bay City/Saginaw show, and although I was skeptical and even jaded about it while I was watching it, the imagery, the atmosphere, and the intensity of the subject (not to mention of the performances) provided me with my most powerful memories of the festival. Barrymore is not a dapper figure here, but his appeal and his talent for projecting smoldering fire is 100% intact. He is ably abetted by the angelic blonde, Camilla Horn, and the fiery, wildly uninhibited Mona Rico (a late silent discovery quickly forgotten, but who does turn up dancing a bit in John Carroll's ZORRO serial.) Horn is a delicate beauty suspiciously strung together with steel wire, while Rico goes some lengths to out-spitfire Lupe Velez, and does she ever wear a jacket? Rico's character is sooooo hot, that she is hardly ever seen wearing costuming that can contain her writhing, lusting, scheming torso. That she is supported in her efforts every step of the way by her mother is no vote for quality parenting, not by any stretch of the imagination, and Heaven help poor John. Poor, poor John. There is something about physical attraction in silent cinema, it can be obvious, nostril-flaring, eye-popping (or, as in the case of Miss Rico, breast-heaving) but when it's subtle, as with Barrymore and Horn, it can scorch the screen along with your eyes and imaginations. They are met subtlety for subtlety by the second male lead, handsome Victor Varconi, a fine actor often underused in the talking era, and are matched in color by Hobart Bosworth as Horn's Reverend father, and Bodil Rosing as their housekeeper. Evelyn Selbie, who portrays Mona Rico's horrible hag of a mother, seems to have had quite a career playing mothers in the Silents, and parlayed such roles into lesser talking picture assignments such as "Screaming woman" or "Immigrant woman," or "Tenement Woman."

Ernst Lubitsch's second to last mostly silent film (there's a dedicated soundtrack, but it's just music and some sound effects), Eternal Love doesn't hit the same peaks as his previous film, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, and it's more in line tonally with his historical melodramas. However, it's more successful than any of those historical melodramas, though. Stripped of the need for the explanation of larger settings and situations in the medium of silent film, the story is much smaller in scale, offering more time on character in its limited runtime.

My only major problem with the film is its first twenty minutes or so. They're kind of weird, and I suppose they sort of tie into the rest of the film thematically, but you have to squint a bit to see it. It introduces our three main characters Marcus (John Barrymore), Ciglia (Camilla Horn), and Pia (Mona Rico). In a remote mountain village in Switzerland, at a time when the country has been caught in the middle of a conflict between France and Germany, the citizens of the town must give up their arms to placate their French invaders (whom we never see). The entire town complies except Marcus who uses his gun to feed himself by killing deer. The whole dynamic between the three principle characters here is off in my mind.

First, Marcus is an independent man who is willing to defend himself and his rights even in the face of oppression. That's admirable, but the only person who seems to see that as admirable at all is Pia, the wild girl on the edges of the small society (reminding me of Pola Negi's title role in The Wildcat), who loves Marcus for who he is. The "eternal love" of the title, though, is shared between Marcus and Ciglia. Ciglia, the daughter of the preacher, considers abandoning her love of Marcus in the face of his resistance to the gun ban, and her love for Marcus is only reinforced when he does just that. There's something off about how this opening works, and it bugs me. I get what it's actually doing, though. It's showing that Marcus does love Ciglia so much that he's willing to do something against his own principles to make her happy and retain her love, but in the face of a literal invasion from an outside country, it goes beyond just bending to the will of a girl you love. It's abdication of actual duty to one's home and liberties. It's...weird. Throw in the fact that Pia loves him for who he is, for his obstinance, and it's a bit weirder still.

That's the first ten minutes or so, and the next ten minutes is a different kind of weird. It ends up feeling kind of weirdly amorphous and directionless as the occupation (which we never saw) ends and we get an extended masquerade celebration at the local tavern. There's some mistaken identity stuff as Marcus doesn't know which masked woman is Ciglia while Pia tries to attract his attention. I wonder if this had opened the film instead of the stuff about the gun might it have worked better. I'm not sure, but it feels structurally and in terms of its pacing to be an effort to introduce characters rather than just the next scene. It takes a while to play out while doing little, is what I'm saying.

However, once Marcus and Ciglia leave the party in order to take her home, the movie is finally on firm footing and never lets go. It's a shaky start (with the reappearance of Hanns Kraly in the credits as writer, I can only assume that a bit of it is his fault), but the pieces get laid nonetheless. The keys are that Marcus really loves Ciglia who really loves him back while Pia is a mischievous woman out to steal Marcus away. It all actually starts moving when Marcus stumbles into his house really drunk and finds a naked Pia on his bed (the nudity is implied, of course), and they sleep together. It was a calculated move on Pia's part, and the news quickly spreads. The irony is that Ciglia decides to remain by Marcus' side in a quiet moment where they hold hands after she figures out what's happened. It's not to last, though, since her father, Reverend Tass (Hobart Bosworth) obviously won't have the match anymore, and Marcus and Pia end up quickly married.

In an effort to get her over her sorrow, Reverend Tass arranges the match with another local man, Lorenz (Victor Varconi) who has held unrequited feelings towards Ciglia for a while. They are quickly married with Tass asking his new son-in-law if Ciglia still has thoughts for Marcus, an idea that Lorenz quickly laughs off.

Things swirl when Marcus is in the mountain when a snowstorm sweeps through. Pia is concerned for her husband, the man that offers her no love at all, and she goes from door to door begging for help. When she tells Lorenz of Marcus' situation with Ciglia off to the side, Ciglia can't help but gasp in horror at the situation which Lorenz immediately reads as him being wrong about her having let go of her old flame. The emotional stakes are clear, especially when Marcus shows up safe and sound, and we're due for a finale where the personalities, which can no longer all coexist together peacefully, clash in a final showdown. It's not a Mexican standoff, or anything, but people do die, and it's the kind of tragic ending that ends up working surprisingly well. There's the pursuit of true love in the face of societal pressure and even an embrace of much larger threats and promises from Nature and God. There are implications that feed the central idea quite well.

So, the opening twenty minutes is weird, but it sets the pieces well enough so that Lubitsch and Kraly can take their characters on a surprisingly affecting emotional journey. I suppose my only complaint from the twenty minute point on is that Pia kind of just disappears from the narrative (she becomes part of a mob and is never seen again).

Now, to try and connect the opening to the rest of the film. I think it has something to do with the idea of neutrality. Switzerland is neutral in the conflict between France and Germany, and Marcus, in his new life as Pia's husband, tries to remain neutral regarding the relationship between Ciglia and Lorenz. He doesn't interfere or involve himself. He sets himself apart, but Lorenz can't abide by it, needing Marcus to leave the area completely. His neutrality ends up being part of the downfall that engulfs him and Ciglia. That's not what actually happens to Switzerland in the opening, though. Nothing bad happens to them because they throw down their arms in the face of France's occupation (that we never see). France just leaves. The neutrality paid off. So, I sort of get it, but it's imprecise, misses the mark, and doesn't actually inform the later parts of the story.

The opening really just doesn't fit, but the rest of the film is really, really good. I wonder if simply cutting the first ten minutes completely and starting with the masquerade would actually improve the film, getting it actually started a bit earlier. You'd miss some stuff like Lorenz's unrequited appreciation of Ciglia and a couple of other things, but, on balance, I think it might be an improvement.

So, it's not The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, but it's not Anna Boleyn or Sumurun either. Overall, I'd call it pretty good, something that ends a whole lot better than it begins, but I kind of love a good chunk of it.

Eternal Love (1929)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A strong cast saves this melodrama from pretty much killing itself. Set in Switzerland, the rebel Marcus (John Barrymore) would do anything for the woman (Camilla Horn) he loves but in a drunken state he sleeps with another. The Reverend makes Marcus marry this woman, which might be the end of his relationship with his true love but soon fate steps in. This later day silent isn't nearly as bad as one might think but there's no question that the screenplay goes overboard on the melodrama and the questionable ending almost kills things. I think fans of the stars as well as the director will want to check this film out but it's questionable what impact it will have on them. We'll start with Barrymore but he once again turns in a very strong performance and you can't help but feel that he is this character. I thought he handled the more athletic aspects of the film quite well and he certainly knows how to milk every ounce of drama out of a scene. Just check out his eyes during the scene where he's forced to marry the woman he doesn't love. Horn is also very good in her role as she perfectly captures the innocence of her character and Mona Rico is pitch-perfect as the "other" woman with the more sexual nature. Speaking of sex, this film offers quite a bit of stuff that would certainly not be film-able in upcoming years including the sexual act while Barrymore is drunk off his mind. We even have the two married people coming together towards the end, which is yet another act that would have been looked down on. Lubitsch's direction handles everything fairly well but what really impressed me were the visuals. There are several tracking shots that look incredibly good including one where we follow Barrymore walking through the mountains. The performances and direction make this worth sitting through but I'm sure many will be howling at the ending. The silent film was released with a Movie Tone track, which includes the music as well as several sound effects including wind gusts, knocking, gun shots and a few other things.

Ernst Lubitsch had directed his last silent movie earlier in 1929, his May 1929's "Eternal Love." John Barrymore stars as a Swiss mountain man who lives off the land by hunting prey with his trusty rifle. He finds himself in trouble when the French army demands everyone in the city turn in their firearms. He refuses, sending its entire city's residents against him. The Hans Kraly script, adapted from Jakob Christoph Heer's novel, 'Der Korig der Bemina,' involves a love-triangle. German actress Camilla Horn pays Ciglia, who loves Marcus (Barrymore). However, the lusty Pia (Mona Rico) literally throws her body at Marcus. In a weak moment, he succumbs to her advances. This was Mona Rico's cinematic debut. The Mexican-born actress was in ten films before leaving the industry in 1941.

The storyline, despite not being a typical Lubitsch rom-com, had its advantages in production. The German director got to film in the stunning mountains of Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada, bringing home memories of his days in the Alps. As with most directors in the last year of silent movies, Lubitsch showed an extreme comfort level by photographing one of his most visually stunning features he ever made. "Eternal Love" demonstrated that cameras without the hindrance of early cumbersome sound equipment could be transported to any geographical setting to achieve eye-popping results.

I'm pretty familiar with Barrymore's silent work, but other than "Lady Windemere's Fan" I had never seen a silent Lubitsch film before. It was not what I was expecting and that does not mean I was unpleasantly surprised. Lubitsch is well known for his unique "touch", and in my experience of watching his sound films that meant incorporating clever dialogue with insinuation. Without the power of speech, this Lubitsch silent film has all of the power of one of his talking films by using facial expression and some well-placed props.

Barrymore plays a hunter who is basically a loner who is in love with Ciglia, the niece of the town priest. How two such different people could fall in love is not shown in the film, but early on they do declare their love to one another, the occupying French army is driven from the area, and all seems to be well. The problem is that there is a wild girl of the village that has her heart set on capturing Barrymore by any means. Compounding difficulties is a respectable but bland fellow who also loves Ciglia and wants to marry her. These two rivals can't seem to understand that love can't be bought and it can't be trapped. The French being driven from the town is the cause of a great celebration that involves a masked ball and a great deal of liquor. It is this celebration that sets off a series of catastrophes for the young lovers.

What really stood out for me in this film were the very few intertitles used. The film really doesn't need them. Remember that 1929 was the last year that silent films were being made in the U.S. with the exception of a few holdouts like Murnau and Chaplin. It's interesting to look at this film and then compare it to "The Love Parade", a Lubitsch sound film made at the end of the same year - 1929. It is so sophisticated in its technique you'd think Lubitsch had been making sound films for ten years. His special touch was not hindered by the coming of sound - he didn't miss a step.