Voltaire

"France - in the year 1762 - with its sumptuous and lavish court - was in a corrupt and bankrupt state. One man dared to speak out for the rights of an oppressed people. With a pen that dripped venom, he attacked intolerance and injustice. He educated the masses to think and act. This was the forerunner of the French Revolution, that gave the world the present Great Republic of France. This man - a hundred years ahead of his time - was Voltaire, the great mocker, the great wit, the great humanitarian of the 18th century," gives us a fine description of setting. The opening coach passing peasants on the street is a defining visual...

Once considered a friend of the French court, coffee-lover George Arliss (as Voltaire) stirs the masses with his revolutionary pamphlets. At first, white-wigged Reginald Owen (as King Louis XV) ignores his advisers' warnings about Mr. Arliss' treasonous activity. Arliss maintains a close friendship with King's mistress Doris Kenyon (as Madame Pompadour). With her help, he takes a cue from Shakespeare, "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King." The staged production only makes matters worse, but Arliss has more up his sleeve. This story never rises far above star vehicle status, but Arliss is always worth watching.

****** Voltaire (8/5/33) John G. Adolfi ~ George Arliss, Doris Kenyon, Alan Mowbray, Reginald Owen

The wigs in this film are an excellent example of "period" hairstyling, with a 1920s/1930s twist.

As with any period piece, the hairdressers working at the time of production must resist the urge to allow contemporary styling methods interfere with being true to the period they are representing. Inevitably, a hybrid of period styling with elements of the modern era is usually the end result.

This is the case for some of the looks in this fantastic adventure through Louis XIV France - in fact there are a few scenes with Voltaire desperately trying to choose a wig before his guests come in.

Regardless of not every piece being perfectly period styled, the wigs in this film are magnificent and an endless source of wonder for a veteran stylist like myself.

Reading Candide by Voltaire when I was a teenager was life-changing for me; in one go it opened up many new vistas to me back then and remains a piece of all too human knockabout inconsequentiality I delve into regularly decades later. I went through the best of the rest of his work: Zadig, Micromegas, Princess of Babylon etc but never knew much of the finer details of the man himself. After watching this I still don't, but I feel at least I'd know something if Disraeli had played an episode in his life. George Arliss was a great actor who ended up playing many great men on stage and screen, this time Francoise Arouet for Warners with big production values and an earnest populist screenplay getting over the essence of Voltaire to the cinema masses. Were they trying to "teach the People to think" too?

In 1762 at 68 years old Voltaire takes up the case of a man who is apparently executed for nothing - how very true of religion! He chivvies away at the King via Mme de Pompadour to posthumously pardon him and his extant young and beautiful daughter but the wicked Comte de Alan Mowbray manages to bring about Voltaire's arrest for alleged treason instead. It was based on a real series of events, but needless to say partly fictionalised by olde Hollywood. The acting is usually intense but believable, although Douglas Dumbrille as the Eastern King in the play had me involuntarily looking out for Abbott & Costello! As the film lasts only 72 minutes it's all taken at a cracking pace, but I thought it was detailed enough for me to come away with a little more knowledge than I had before. Voltaire was a bit of a wit - a wag in a wig - unfortunately not much wit is on display in here.

If he was living today his interpretation of egalitarianism probably would be equated by many people almost to fascism, so far has our wonderful world been "improved" over the years. Nevertheless, he was a brave man for his time - if he had not lived it would have been necessary to have invented him, as this film did admirably well.

"Voltaire" is set in Paris in 1762, as an aged Voltaire rallies the people and warns King Louis XV that the excesses of the French nobility will lead to revolution. This story provides another historical fiction vehicle for Arliss to serve as a great interpreter of historical figures.

George Arliss once again shows his talents in the lead role as Voltaire. He develops the character well through his careful mannerisms, dialogue and appearance. I enjoyed the supporting performances as well, especially Reginald Owen as the leisurely but proud King Louis XV.

The story is a decent one, and it is interesting to see the ways Voltaire manipulates his surroundings to his benefit. There is also a lot of well-placed humor in the film and great irony, particularly when Louis XV decries the traits which he possesses. Overall this film is worth seeing, in particular for another notable performance from George Arliss.

Most people assume that George Arliss was involved in motion pictures for only about a decade, from his performance in DISRAELI (1929) to his retirement after the failure of OLD ENGLISH in 1938. In actuality, he had made several of his sound films as silent films, in particular DISRAELI (originally made as a silent in 1921) and THE GREEN GODDESS. A few of his sound movies could not have been made as silents - THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD requires sound, because Arliss's pianist is losing his hearing after an explosion. A silent movie would have made this loss of a vital sense meaningless.

It has to be admitted that he was typecast a little after his Oscar winner in 1929. He became the actor who portrayed "great men" of history (preferably English, but not necessarily so). So he played Disraeli snatching the Suez Canal, the Duke of Wellington watching helplessly as his worthy old opponent (Marshall Ney) is judicially murdered by the restored Bourbon Monarchy, Cardinal Richelieu fighting court intrigue and making 17th Century France the center of Europe, Meyer and Nathaniel Rothschild building history's greatest private banking empire (and using their power to force Jewish Emancipation on Europe), and Alexander Hamilton giving America it's stable economic force (while defending his reputation against the scandal of the Mrs. Reynolds Affair). People tend to forget his performance as Bette Davis's lover and protector in THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD, or the Rajah of Ruhk in THE GREEN GODDESS or the proud old New England aristocrat in THE LAST GENTLEMAN. He did portray fictional roles as well as historical ones.

Voltaire (1933) is a lesser-recalled historical film. Arliss is the wit and writer and critic of the ancien regime, involved in trying to rehabilitate the name of an executed criminal: Jean Calas. This was an actual tragedy of the reign of Louis XV in 1764. Calas, a wealthy French merchant, was a Protestant. His son, an unstable youth, had been considering converting to Catholicism. One day the young man was found dead by hanging in a room in his father's home. The chances are pretty good that young Calas committed suicide, but in that period such tragedies were hushed up - due to their nature suggesting hidden weaknesses in the families of the deceased. Calas Sr. made the mistake of trying to cover-up the suicide. When the death became known, the authorities made the erroneous jump of thinking Calas Sr. killed his son to prevent the young man from becoming a Catholic. The elder Calas was arrested, tortured, given a rapid trial, convicted, and executed. His family were ruined by the tragedy. Voltaire, in real life, examined the entire affair and showed the shallow guesswork and investigation of the facts that led to a judicial murder. Although the government was unhappy to be shown to be in the wrong, they decided to agree to posthumously rehabilitate Calas Sr.'s memory. The family was also given some money as compensation (though not much).

The screenplay is using Voltaire's fight for Calas as the center of the drama, pitting Arliss against King Louis (Reginald Owen) and his chief minister Count de Jarnac (Alan Mowbray). Actually Mowbray's character is fictional, as no such chief minister existed in France in 1764 with that name or title. Much of the screenplay is fanciful, but does show some interesting historical images: Voltaire writing a play set in the ancient mideast (based on the Calas tragedy) and producing it to be shown at Versailles before the court (this was actually done by Voltaire, Moliere, Racine, Corneille, and Beaumarchaise through the reigns of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI). Also of interest is Voltaire shown getting correspondence from Frederic the Great of Prussia (they did correspond frequently - ironically they were friendlier when writing to each other than when Voltaire spent three years in Prussia in the early 1750s). Reading Frederic's letters by a fireplace, Voltaire also is reading the monarch's poetic effusions, which Voltaire must doctor up. Arliss is funny at this point, reading bathetic verses to himself and saying, "This is terrible", before calmly dropping the letters into the fireplace. This scene alone makes watching VOLTAIRE worthwhile.