Powderpuff picaresque… The Loves of Casanova (1927), with Stephen Horne, BFI, London Film Festival 2017

The BFI’s Bryony Dixon describes The Loves of Casanova as “… an exercise in ebullience…”, whilst Lenny Borger called it a “"Europudding" – albeit with plenty of flavour… and it’s hard to disagree. You could watch this film as a kind of biopic either of the life of Giacomo Casanova or of Ivan Mozzhukhin, possibly both… but either way there’s no absence of charisma.

The film was shot partially in Venice and it was good to revisit the location so soon after I recently returned there, albeit 90 years before… (it hasn’t changed much, but then I doubt it ever does, a little lower perhaps?). Entirely because sumptuous locations just are not enough, Casanova also features a veritable “kitchen sink” delivery of mise-en-scène throughout and not least for the climactic scenes with stunning Pathecolour during Venice carnival.

The camera is right amongst the action too, hand-held in Gance style, pulling the viewer into this glorious world of masked balls, illicit liaisons and romance… with a guy who can’t say no. There’s Casanova sword-fighting a dozen men, a colourized river-rescue, massed pursuit by gondola and horse and sleigh pursuit in the snow with everyone but the lead – audience and supporting players – in shock as our hero keeps his cool home and away…

Ivan Mozzhukhin: ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Bryony said the film was an attempt to out-Hollywood, Hollywood and it certainly has a good go. A tinsel-titled Casanova is followed by exploding fireworks and then dreams of dancers in Venice as our hero is revealed in his luxurious quarters. He is woken by his two, attractive blonde “assistants” just in time for the first bailiff of the day to attempt to arrest him.

The men find a famous dancer, La Corticelli (a shockingly topless Rina De Liguoro) in Casanova’s bedroom and the host then performs “magic”, persuading Menucci to accept his book of spells in exchange for the debt. Then we meet little Djimi (Raymond Bouamerane) who is the servant of Baroness Stanhope (Olga Day), he asks a man on the street where Casanova lives and all the windows in the street are opened by women who know the answer. The mood is playful, Russian whimsy filtered through French style as young Djimi plays tag with Casanova’s two assistants and then is chased by Baron Stanhope (Dimitri Dimitriev) as he tries to deliver a message from C to B… she reads the letter and then throws the torn pieces out of the window only for her husband to catch both them and their meaning.

A bit blue: Rina De Liguoro and friends

Next to a grand banquet in which Corticelli is host and we also meet a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Guard, Gregori Orloff (Paul Guidé) who has plans of his own… slipping round the back to watch the women dance naked as Casanova and the rest stare at the shadows their bodies cast on a screen… It is SO saucy and, when our hero picks up his favourite dancer – Corticelli of course – she is clearly naked (of course). Ooh, la, la!! Or, as they say in Liverpool, ooh, la, la, la…

But the Lieutenant is also interested and duels with Casanova but the dancer decides that they should be friends…  And that’s only the first half an hour!

Chased out of Venice on jumped up charges of sorcery, Casanova heads North and, in Austria, encounters Duc de Bayreuth (Albert Decoeur) and his party which includes a pretty-faced boy, Bellino… Casanova intervenes to stop a group of drunks abusing an old fiddle player showing that he’s a much Robin Hood as Don Juan and Bellino seems strangely impressed.

About a boy? Jenny and Ivan

During the night Casanova hears odd noises and Volkoff shows our hero imagining hazy images to go with the sounds as he leans, in sharp focus, against the door. There’s something afoot and the great lover once more springs to the rescue to find that Bellino is not at all a boy and that the Duc is trying to have his evil way with her… Thérèse (Jenny Jugo).

A dramatic rescue is cut short as sheer weight of men and horses overcomes Casanova… will he ever find her again? Here again there are some great shots from Volkoff and his team of cinematographers, Fédote Bourgasoff, Léonce-Henri Burel and Nikolai Toporkoff. With a camera pointing up as men on horseback race overhead you are reminded of the director’s work on Gance’s Napoleon.

He and Djimi are rescued by a passing stage coach containing M. Dupont who is en route to the court of Catherine II with the latest in lingerie and dresses… Casanova takes his stock and his passport – needs must and he has another court to conquer as Ivan and Alex make a dream return home.

Suzanne Bianchetti and Catherine's great, big train...

In St Petersburg we find Dr Mabuse himself, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, highly impressive as a fractious Tsar Peter III and Suzanne Bianchetti as a serene Catherine II… The queen takes rather well to her new friend and his fashions and as Orloff spots his old mucker, the two remember their pledge to remain friends just in time… and, soon, there are more important matters afoot. The Tsar is going too far, and regime change is in the air, he humiliates Catherine once too often and Casanova comes to her aid as the Empress’ forces re-align the gender balance at the top of government.

Catherine, who is pretty great, arranges a ball to celebrate and it’s here that Casanova spots Maria, Duchess de Mari (Diana Karenne) … He just can’t help himself “selecting” and it’s always “at first sight” as well… He’s a gentleman but he is more lion than human if you want to get zoological.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Paul Guidé

At the ball Empress Catherine has perhaps the longest train in movie history… the ensuing dance is a cauldron of human emotion with the director showing the faces of the main players, Casanova looking at Maria, Catherine, put out, gazing on with jealous concern, the Duke of Mari uneasy as his wife is romanced and Orloff concerned, as always, for his queen… The camera follows the movement around the huge ballroom and it’s another glorious set piece.

There’s more to come after Casanova and Maria escape from Russia and her husband and it’s back to Venice for a colourised denouement and more tough choices for our hero on the romance-front: it’s unrelenting and could easily carry on for Casanova in an endless loop of over-lapping love stories.

Diana Karenne and Ivan Mozzhukhin

Casanova is a dream of escape from responsibility and not just a tale of amorous addiction. Casanova always easily evades the officials and gallops off to love again …he always has a way out just as he'll always - nearly - get captured by his heart.

Stephen Horne had a ball with this, creating over two hours of musical variety in a four-hander with Ivan’s rhythmic mime. The plot and pacing may occasionally wander but Stephen held theme and tone driving the narrative onwards in characterful interplay with the lead’s darting eyes and feline grace.

As Bryony Dixon said, she could have picked any number of Ivan’s French films of this period – a golden streak for Mozzhukhin and Alexandre Volkoff, but this one is the most lavish and light-hearted and clearly all concerned were deadly serious about the project. It made us laugh and long for an era of powderpuff decadence.

House of cards… La maison du mystère (1923)

I must admit to some trepidation in taking on Flicker Alley’s three-disc collection of this serial – who has the time for the best part of seven hours of serial especially when the British summer is actually happening outside, as we speak!?

But, after a couple of episodes still peaking at the garden, nipping out to clear some weeds and eat salad, I was hooked and it turns out that you can very easily make the time to find out what happens in this tense thriller. Unlike many earlier serials, La maison du mystère (The House of Mystery), isn’t really episodic and plays like the chapters in the book, by Jules Mary, it was based on. It’s effectively one long narrative often picking up directly after the events of the previous episode.

Ivan

As such it holds your attention and you never feel there’s any padding or artificial rounding off to make the stories fit within the format: the film-makers respected their audience and only now can we see their full intent by watching each element back-to-back – there was no box-set gorging in 1923; you had to wait a week at a time!

For a French production this is, of course very Russian with Alexandre Volkoff directing and Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) acting and co-scripting with Volkoff. The two maintain a superb continuity throughout and keep a tight rein on the narrative which could so easily sprawl.

Caught

The tone is playful and inventive with each episode featuring a flick of the director’s wrist: a wedding shown entirely in silhouette, an overhead shot of a group of police officers suddenly emerging and circling around a wanted man and a breathless chase across a broken wooden bridge with four men holding hands to hold it together – a sequence that lasts for half an episode and could easily have come from a much later era.

The Human Bridge

Volkoff and Mozzhukhin never tire of their story and across the years it was made – 1921-23 – and the decades covered by the story, they maintain integrity and tension: they never repeat themselves and fit in stories within each episode which add extra weight and flavour. It’s a rich experience and you feel exactly like you’ve just read a good book.

Jules Mary was known for writing around miscarriages of justice and this story is no different and, whilst I usually hate stories about innocents proved guilty, you have to see this one through to make sure that justice, if at all possible, is done. To this extent it does feel very “modern” HBO or Netflix with victory not easily won and with a magnetic star every bit as capable as John Hamm or Kevin Spacey with a “European” sensibility quite unlike Hollywood at the time – Mozzhukhin looks at the camera with worrying intensity and is matched by the malevolent complexity of   the remarkable Charles Vanel who would enjoy a 77 year career including Clouzot’s Wages of Fear and Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

Charles Vanel

Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) plays Julien Villandrit the inheritor of a large mill who lives in a large country mansion in neighbouring grounds. When first encountered he is an excited youth, sprinting in shirt-sleeves to propose to the daughter of his neighbours, Régine de Bettigny (Hélène Darly). He’s so nervous he could burst and behaves with gauche uncertainty as he tries to build up the courage to pop the question to Régine’s parents.

The Mill and the House

Permission duly granted he bounds off home unable to contain himself and literally bumps into his best friend, Henri Corradin (Charles Vanel) who has also, secretly held hopes for Régine. As Julien hangs upside down from a tree, Corradin is speechless, full of loathing for this undeserving loon…

Hélène Darly and Ivan Mozzhukhin

And so it begins, as Hell has no fury like an industrialist scorned, and hatred brews that will shape the lives of this unequal triangle for ever.

A retired banker, Marjory (played by Bartkevitch) is a gentle giant who seems exceptionally fond of Régine but also her mother (Nina Raievska) gently embracing her hand as her ailing husband sleeps outside their opulent “cottage”. Then there’s the woodcutter Rudeberg (Nicolas Koline) a man of no fixed moustache and a keen amateur photographer…he is a camera and the camera rarely lies… although sometimes it withholds what it knows…

Nicolas Koline

We move forward to Julien and Régine’s happy marriage which is shown in a stunning sequence of silhouetted tableaux – it’s the type of device that sets silent hearts all a flutter and had me calling the rest of the family in to re-watch it. It’s a remarkable play – like shadow puppets but with each actor clearly discernible and in character: Julien and Régine tender and Corradin, thwarted, sneaking down stairs; making plans.

Corradin schemes

The pieces are in place but it will take a full seven years before the drama will really begin… this is a “long firm” of  a story: payback will take all but every one of the serial’s 400 minutes. Moving on… the young couple now have a precocious daughter, Christiane (Simone Genevois) – their family complete. Already turning slightly grey with the agony of disappointment, Corradin smirks when Julien struggles with the Mill’s financial difficulties and is determined that he must not only succeed, his friend must fail… totally.

Julien confronts Marjory

He focuses attention on the kindly Marjory who, in addition to secretly bailing out the mill –  repeatedly paying their outstanding bills – is also inordinately fond of Régine: really, really fond. Julien’s not made of stone and he soon begins to doubt the old man at first banning him from their house after one generosity to many and then violently confronting him. But, as Julien storms homeward, the old banker follows and, collapsing from the effort, reveals the truth: he is Régine’s father but this must never be revealed.

Julien runs for help but whilst he’s away, another assailant appears and is caught on camera by the shocked Rudeberg who snaps the old man’s final moments; its grim struggle mirrored in his lens.

Rudeberg's lens sees all

By the time Julien returns with help the picture he has described is far from what is found: it’s murder and he is very much in the frame…

Thus begins Julien’s epic struggle to prove his innocence and, after he is incarcerated, to get free to rescue his family and to bring the murderer and his traitorous friend to justice. Over the course of the series he adopts many disguises: itinerant, clown, foreign legionnaire – they all serve in the war – and disabled veteran who works for the Mill unrecognised.

It's an epic

Christiane grows up (to become Francine Mussey – whose open, pretty face impressed my son no end…) and never forgets her father – meeting him once when she is seven and then again after the war when she begins to help him. She form a life-long attachment for Pascal (Vladimir Strizhevsky), Rudeberg’s son which is bitter-sweet as his father has used his photographs of the murder to not only blackmail Corradin into supporting the boy but has, as a result, condemned her father to his half-life in prison and then on the run…

Francine Mussey

It’s a complex tale that unfolds at novel pace… and watching it almost all at once is not the way to fully appreciate it – filming took two years for various reasons, and audiences would have agonising waits between each episode: a huge dramatic tension guaranteeing their interest. More like old analogue TV and not digital-on-demand.

The actors are all superb, Varnel treading an expert line between friend and foe and Hélène Darly enduring years of faint hope and almost certain degradation. Nicolas Koline epitomises their shared skill of character consistency and the film’s efforts to show the moral frailty in extremes as he does the right thing by his son but is largely to blame for the whole long mess.

Hélène Darly

And Ivan… Ivan is simply magnificent; one of the very best performers of the era here allowed to go the full Alec Guiness/Lon Chaney in a succession of disguises whilst all the time his charcter gets older, worn down by war and defeat… yet still with hope and the unqualified, unwavering love of his wife and daughter.

The set is available direct from Flicker Alley or Amazon and comes with an energetic new score from Neil Brand: a musical marathon which retains common themes and under-pins events in perfect sympathy – it’s full of winning lines and carries a steadfast charm that is very much the story of Julien and Régine’s love and hope.

Ivan of many faces

Also included is a slideshow of rare production stills and a 12-page booklet featuring extensive notes about the serial’s cast and crew compiled by Lenny Borger and David Robinson.

It’s essential for all fans of Monsieur Mosjoukine and inventive European silent cinema.