Une voix dans la tempête

Rare that an independent film could be made of such maturity in a time of studio run films. Arthur Ripley helped create the character of Harry Langdon in the 20s. A skilled writer, he had a keen eye and his direction of him own screenplay for Voice in the Wind is tight, powerful and direct. I believe Francis Lederer gives one of his finest performances, with Sigrid Gurie as the wife he cannot remember. Best of all, keep your eyes on two character actors: Alexander Granach and J. Carol Naish. Both give in-depth character studies that are the backbone of this unusual film. Done on a shoestring budget during the powerful days of the major studios, the film is a character study in depth. If you can pick up a copy of it, it's more than worth it.

I wish I had more room to comment on this film, as I do know a few personal stories about how it came about. I knew Arthur Ripley when he was near the end of his career. Get a copy of this film.

***SPOILERS*** At first you think your watching the sequel of the movie "I walked with a Zombie" as the what looks like brain dead concert pianist Jan Volny, Francis Lederer, walking around the island of Guadalupe, with foghorns blowing in all directions, as if he was dropped off there from a UFO after being experimented on by the spacecrafts' alien crew members. Known by the people in town as "The Crazy One" Volny just sits in his shack endlessly playing on the piano Smetana's touching melody "Moldau" for endless hours at at time. Yes the guy is crazy but it was the music he played back home in Prague that got him to be that way.

It was in Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia that Volny makes the mistake in playing music forbidden by the Reich. That had him arrested and about to be interned in a mental institution to be deprogrammed by Nazi doctors and psychiatrists. On his way there Volny ended up killing the two SS men who ware taking him there thus making him a fugitive from the law, Nazi law, who was to be shot on sight for murder. With him now somehow getting to the island of Gaudalupe his troubles were far from over. It was his old lady Marya, Sigrid Gurie, who tracked him down there and is now herself suffering from double pneumonia because of the trip there that wrecked her health.

The film tries to show its audience that the Nazi's among other things didn't appreciate good music like hard rock rock & roll and country & western as well as the classics that Volny was so found off. It wouldn't have been a big deal for Volny to play the Nazie's music requests but his conscience wouldn't let him. He ended up playing himself into madness and obscurity that cost him not only his sanity but his both wife's, Marya, life as well as his own. And it wasn't the Nazis that did him in it was his fellow escapees from Nazi occupied Europe that did.

Jan Volny (Francis Lederer) is a concert pianist who has ended up on the island of Guadelupe. He had a lover Marya (Sigrid Gurie) and they both fled the Nazi occupation of their homeland and have ended up in Guadelupe unaware of each other's presence there. Jan has lost his memory and can't speak and lives as a vagrant. He still plays the piano, in particular, a tune that was banned by the Nazis and is a symbol of Czech patriotism. Marya is living a few doors away from him and is dying of pneumonia. She hears him playing this particular tune and is drawn towards the sound. However, she collapses and dies in the street - he finds her and slowly begins to remember who she is...... meanwhile, there are a couple of smuggler brothers Angelo (Alexander Granach) and Luigi (J Carrol Naish) who have fallen out over Jan as they blame him for setting fire to their boat......

The quality of this film is poor and the pace is slow. Its an atmospheric film that is told in flashback and its basically a depressing melodrama. The music score is very good and the moments when Jan plays the piano are the best moments in the film. Another good moment comes when Jan tells the Nazi interrogating officer what he thinks of him. Unfortunately, this leads to his head injury and subsequent amnesia. I'm not sure whether its a good film or not.

I saw this film at least six times. I grew up a fan of Francis Lederer and I am also a musician. This film was premiered by my uncle at the Hawaii Theater in Hollywood. It was unique in more than one way: Not only was it an intensive dramatic story of a pianist who tries to recover from abuse by the Nazis, but elegantly portrays nationalism. The Moldau by Smetana is the background music which holds the film together. Keep in mind that I saw the film in the 1940s, and not since; perhaps no one has since. Another uniqueness: my uncle managed to bring a pianist on stage; he began playing the Moldau and it bled into the film music. The pianist, as I recall, was Vladimir Brenner, who sought to restore a career after the war. I do not know if other theaters included an on-stage pianist. Critics suggest the film was moody, even dull, but I found it then, as I remember it now, a film classic.

As a teenager I rarely saw a movie I didn't like, but this was the first one I actually hated. I saw it in 1944 at a naval base in Newfoundland after months of isolation in the North Atlantic, so what few critical facilities I had were numbed and I was ready to enjoy any junk Hollywood threw my way. But this... I walked out of the theater actually angry!

So how come it still sticks in my memory? Nothing could be that memorably bad. I suspect from reading other reviews that it had many haunting, persistent film-noir images unlike anything the major studios were grinding out then.

If it ever shows up on Turner Classic Movies I'll certainly watch it with an eager, open mind.