Down and out in London and Marseille... The Lady (1925), Daan Van Der Hurk, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day 8

Now we have it, Norma Talmadge’s finest dramatic performance and a story in which she gets through two or three times the amount of work for a normal film and probably even more for Heart of Wetona. Directed by Frank Borzage, it’s tempting to visualise him coaching her through some of the heaviest emotional lifting, which occasionally stretches her technique but she always comes through, sometimes with cheeks soaked in tears, a dewdrop on her retroussé nose, working at a pace with even Gish or Garbo. It’s a remarkable film and it gives her the opportunities she often missed, partly through her own choice.

For most of her career, Talmadge called the commercial shots and as Jay Weissberg pointed out in his introduction, The Lady was too louche for middle American audiences and did not perform that well. As Talmadge herself said, quoted by Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs in their notes on the Giornate site, she wasn’t going to follow up the film’s style “… I am not going to do any more like it for a time, anyway. Not that I don’t like to do characterizations – I love it. But what can we do? We must play to the box office… So, for a while I am going to do modern things. I think they want to see me in gowns, in style.”

To European audiences, there would have perhaps have been less of a negative reaction but maybe Norma was also typecast to a degree and the idea of her playing a character making a living as a prostitute, no matter how understated, was not the "Norma" her public loved.

Frank Borzage had already worked with Talmadge on the more successful Secrets (1924) and must have earned her trust for this bolder film. Adapted by Frances Marion from Martin Brown’s play of 1923, the narrative is unusually structured with an older Talmadge running The Brixton Bar, a “British” pub in Marseilles, during the Great War before a flashback which explains how she got there. Apparently, the play was the first in mainstream theatre in which the heroine announces she is pregnant, be that as it may, it’s less “announced” in the film and the child appears allowing inferences to be drawn.

Two Tommies wander, one a young private the other a rather drunken sergeant, very very arf’arf’an’arf, who staggers around before squirting the landlady, Polly Pearl (Talmadge) comically in the face. That ain’t no way to treat a lady she exclaims to general mirth from some of the regulars before settling down and talking with the kindly Mr. Wendover (Marc McDermott). Wendover comes from the same village as Polly although the pictures he shares are of Magdalen Bridge and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, rather bigger than a village!

You wouldn’t believe that 24 years ago I was knockin’ them off their seats in a London music hall…

She recounts her history and how she came from England to this moment… the camera pulls across a swarming theatre floor and we meet Polly Pearl, the Girl with the Glad Eye, entertaining the throng with a song and a dance. Watching intently is Leonard St. Aubyns (Wallace MacDonald) a proper swell who, only has eyes for his Pearl as she arranges for a cigar-chomping stage boy to rebuff other visitors.

Soon the fantasy is rudely interrupted by the arrival of St. Aubyns, Sr. (Brandon Hurst, lovable as always) who offers her money to leave his son alone but it’s too late old chap, the couple have already married and, as quick as Senior can say “you’re disinherited” they’re off to Monte Carlo for an extended/belated honeymoon with fellow dancer Fannie Clair (Doris Lloyd) and her man Tom the Bookie (Alf Goulding). All seems fine until Leonard, unlucky at the tables, starts taking an interest in a Countess Adrienne (Paulette Duval) and, in front of her very eyes, Polly’s live crumbles. There are two moments in the film when Talmadge absolutely lets rip and here she attacks Duval’s character, knocking her swiftly to the ground. I’m not saying Borzage encouraged proto method but you don’t often see silent actresses engage in a proper Bank ‘oliday (c.f. your Cockney Music Hall Dictionary).

 

Polly is Friendzoned in the cruelest way...

Down and out on the Riviera, Polly finds herself in a bar run by one Mme. Blanche (Emily Fitzroy), completely unaware that it’s a bordello. It’s at this point that Polly’s baby appears and, out of options she finds friendship and a way to survive in the bar, whether by performing on stage or other means… you can see how some would have been displeased with Our Norma’s predicament.

 

Polly has her standards though and has the boy christened by preacher John Cairns (John Herdman) who, along with his wife (Margaret Seddon, as featured in Just Around the Corner elsewhere in this Giornate). Who turn out to be crucial when St. Aubyns, Sr. arrives with the news that his son has died and that he wants to take possession of his grandson. He has the legal papers to do so and Polly has no option but to hand her baby over to the Cairns. Talmadge is at full stretch during the sequence, misery piled on misery and injustice. She launches herself at St. Aubyns, Sr… echoing the wishes of the entire audience.

The only gig in town?

Polly heads back to London in a forlorn search for her son, at rock bottom she’s shown in blue darkness trying to sell flowers and hoping beyond all reason to chance upon her boy. It’s desperately sad and, Talmadge judges it just right and there’s not a dry eye in our house… We fast forward another two decades and her old friend Mme. Blanche has helped set her up in this bar where she can life out what remains of her wasted life in relative comfort.

 

Wendover urges her to not give up, even as she displays every sign of having done so. But… well, you really have to seek this out and marvel at her final flourish!

 

The Lady thoroughly deserves its reputation and this restoration has balanced the meaning as far as possible given the state of the surviving materials. Now we can all see for ourselves what the reviewers and audiences of the time could see in this remarkable actress and I would echo Jay Weisenberg’s hope that this is just the start of Norma’s wider rehabilitation.

Wit's end?

As he said, Talmadge is also so generous with her co-stars, allowing them to shine alongside her; it was her production company after all but she knew the value of teamwork and of honest artistic expression as well as crowd-pleasing box office fare.

Daan Van Der Hurk accompanied with some gorgeous lines and the full measure of Talmadge’s ambitions here. This was delicately nuanced playing that, just like the star, never dropped into melodrama or over-expression. Wonderful stuff that, again, I really wish I could have been there to see live! Next year Pordenone, I’ll be Covid free and ready to buy round after round of Aperol Spritz… just you wait!

Talmadge’s career dénouement has long been a puzzle with legend having Constance reminding her that Ma’s trust funds meant that they didn’t need to work again and Norma saying to fans, "Get away, dears. I don't need you anymore and you don't need me." as quoted by both Anthony Slide and Denise Lowe. Jay suggests the words of her second husband George Jessel in his book Elegy in Manhattan (1961, after Norma’s passing), offer a clue with his poem, told from her point of view explaining that she’d never been a stage actress, only a silent one, and it was just too late to learn another craft. She’d done enough and now it was time to just live.

 

Norma Talmadge

 

Last clown, laugh… He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Barbican with Taz Modi and Fraser Bowles

To see this film projected from a 35mm print is a special treat and all praise to the Barbican team for sourcing this copy from a private collection in France. He Who Gets Slapped has not been digitally restored, which is a crime given its qualities, and probably has not been screened like this for many a year in the UK.

The event was sold out and I was second in the queue behind a woman who wondered why they were screening it without the "original score"… I put her right on the whole silent film thing but also on the importance of live music to the experience (she was no doubt pleased we didn’t end up sat together). Today we had a mesmeric and wistful score from Taz Modi who plays a kind of hybrid-jazz, accompanied by expressive cello from Fraser Bowles. Taz’s piano figures are influenced by electronica and in the manner of Nils Frahm, Hauschka and even Dawn of Midi, he weaves patterns over the narrative rather than matching specific events; a tonal rather than a harmonised duet and which, in the context of such a powerfully visual and humane film, worked very well.

I’d previously seen Taz accompanying the Polish silent The Call of the Sea (1927) at the same venue and his style is naturally cinematic and very supportive, with humble lines sublimated to the source material. Bowles’ cello contributed to what emotional specificity there was and the two produced a pleasingly-organic sound that contributed enormously to the connections being made between the audience and emotion on screen.

It’s hard to think of a Hollywood silent film as hard-hitting as He Who Gets Slapped nor a performance as raw and convincing as that of Lon Chaney. Based on a Russian play and directed by Swedish silent master Victor Sjöström, it is a tale of unflinching honesty which doesn’t shy away from the need to show full consequence. Chaney’s range of facial expression is, as I’ve previously noted, “supernatural” and the various extremes of clown make-up enable him to reach new heights of happiness and deeper troughs of despair.

But, it’s the Chaney face without makeup that is the most impactful as dedicated scientist Paul Beaumont is doubly betrayed by his benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott) and his wife, Maria (Ruth King). Just as his research into the origins of man bear fruit the Baron takes all the credit at the science Academy, before his wife reveals she is leaving him for the “better” man… it’s an agonising moment and one that Chaney handles with measured alacrity: he could so easily go over the top but he nails the moment so convincingly, his mind snapping as laughter becomes the only response to unbearable humiliation.

After every “act”, Sjöström inserts the image of a clown laughing hysterically at a spinning world. At the start the clown morphs into Paul spinning the globe in his office and after his bitter failure, the spinning globe is joined by clowns who sit around its circumference and watch as it turns into a circus ring. So many images in the film are used to match with others and move the focused visual narrative along in a very economical way.

Lifes a walking shadow, nah-nah-na-na-nah

The action shifts to Paris six years later where Paul, now a sensational clown called HE – who gets slapped, has taken the city by storm. In a World in which nothing is funnier than a man getting hit in the face, repeatedly HE’s act is elaborate, featuring massed ranks of clowns of all sizes, ushered into the arena by an enthusiastic orchestra, syncopating wildly. HE is at the back of the parade on stilts alongside the senior clown Tricaud played by Mack Sennett veteran Ford Sterling who is very effective here acting and not fooling.

HE enters to grand applause and a wave of hilarity and proceeds with a painful pantomime based entirely on the humiliation of his previous existence, the clowns carry large books in mockery of the years he spent in fruitless study and as Paul/HE looks to the audience he sees the faces of the Academy’s mocking scientists laughing down at him.

In mockery of his failed scientific career he is slapped for every statement and the entire troop takes turns in beating him to the ground. Eventually he is beaten down to the ground and his heart, held against his chest by a cloth pocket, is ripped out by Tricaud, and he is trampled into the sand…

Silent Shearer and pre-Greta Gilbert chain daisies

Elsewhere in the circus is the handsome horse-rider Bezano (John Gilbert wearing fairly indecent tights…) who notices the arrival of a pretty girl, Consuelo, (shiny new, silent Norma Shearer so different from her sophisticated pre-code persona) who is to join his act. Consuelo’s career is being masterminded by her father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall, having a ball…) a hard-up nobleman who aims to use her exposure to marry her off to the highest bidder.

The two young equestrians bond immediately whilst HE is also smitten with the young woman; a reminder of the love he has lost. Inevitably, all balance is soon lost as the Baron comes to watch the show. He doesn’t recognise the man whose life he stole but Paul certainly spots him just as the old cheat eye up Conseula. Sjöström cleverly mingles scenes of Conseula and Bezano falling in love on a bucolic picnic with the negotiations between the Count and the Baron... clearly the World is troubled and love, faith, honesty and greed all must be reconciled.

This is Chaney’s greatest clown, one who mixes extreme pathos with a laugh that is so engulfing you truly believe the switch from bliss to bedlam that has brought it forth. HE is contorted by the misfortunes of existence into someone who can only take solace in further violence from an unfair world but, in the end, he has to find a way to rise above treachery and defeat... this is no easy melodrama; we're all getting slapped, every day.

The globes spin, the crowds laugh and the clowns all fall down in the end, cast off into eternity…

Lon, Norma, Victor and John Gilbert's tights...

A river runs through it… The Bride of Glomdal (1926), John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

For a good portion of this film the narrative ebbs and flows in pleasing ways without really hitting you hard. The scenery is, of course, stunning as photographed by Einar Olsen and the cast, especially willowy, steel-blue-eyed Tove Tellback, are superb making a believably real rustic romance with stubbornness, jealousy, a fight and an injury… but suddenly, just when you think the narrative is ready to wind down, events take a dangerous turn and in a closing sequence of jeopardy, thrilling stunt work and fast-paced, anxious direction you find yourself thinking once again that no one can quite “play” fast moving water like John Sweeney!

Mr Sweeney was on excellent form throughout, pastoral accompaniment holding the story easily within his hands and a pitch-perfect flavouring for the romance and the resentment on route to the rapids that engulf the finale. These are moments to cherish when player and projection are completely in sync each adding to the other’s efforts and taking away nothing at all.

Harald Stormoen and Alfhild Stormoen look on...

Lillian Henley was in similar flow at the start of the evening as she accompanied newsreel of actual Pankhursts in startlingly clear action from 1913 and earlier as a Bioscope tribute to a century of suffrage (at least for those women of standing who got the vote in 1918). Lillian has form her of course having scored the BFI’s excellent Make More Noise compilation and her sympathy for the period and the cause was in evidence again as we saw the, so called, Trafalgar Square “riot” and 66,000 marching through London in a suffragette “pageant”. There were banners celebrating Sylvia and declaring that Fortune Favours the Brave. Odd that, in 2018 you could almost be certain that it’s favouring the deceitful and the salesman…

In 1913 people believed in democracy and, of course died for it. Two films showing the 1913 Derby were screened and there was a collective gasp when Emily Davison collides with the King’s horse – whatever her motivations, her death still carries meaning. There was footage of her funeral and a poignant sight it was too; we can each take our own meaning, but this isn’t just history but an ongoing process, just like Ireland, the Union and Parliamentary democracy itself.

Good on you Widnes!! My Granddad Bill no doubt was one of them.

A little light relief followed in which a confused fellow becomes A Suffragette in Spite of Himself (1911) after schoolboys tack a “votes for women” sign on his back. He gets into a fight with some chaps at an anti-suffrage meeting and is saved by the suffragettes before being enlisted to walk, shoulder to shoulder. There are some wonderful backdrops of Trafalgar Square and Bloomsbury and the gent is played by Marc McDermott who went on to feature in Hollywood, in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, Blind Wives, Flesh and the Devil and many more.

We even had time for Charley Smiler Takes Up Ju-Jitsu (1911) and early and very brief comedy from Fred “Pimple” Evans which featured some sisterly slams from a suffragette trained in the martial art in question.

George Lewis faces off against Rex Lease both in the race and for Mildred Harris...

Finally, we saw one of the US Collegians series, this one a racing tale called The Last Lap (1928) in which our hero Benson (George Lewis) must overcome the college bully to win the freshers vs sophomores cross-country race and the heart of Mildred Harris. It’s predictable and slightly infuriating but has its moments… maybe if we saw more of the series? This was episode 37!

It wasn’t in the same league as the main feature but then Dreyer is one of the most accomplished film makers of the era, and well beyond. Whilst I’ve seen some of his early films, The President, Leaves from Satan's Book, Michael as well as Joan and Vampyr, he was so productive between the first of those films and the last producing about one feature a year. This film came after Master of the House and before Joan and stylistically it’s quite different.

As John Sweeney said in his introduction though, it is interesting to see yet another strong female lead, in this case, Berit Glomgaarden (Tove Tellback) whose insistence on making her own choices drives the story.

Berit chooses her man

Based on the novel by Jacob Breda Bull, John said that the photo play was partly improvised – led by Dreyer - which might explain part of the differences from the film around it. Filmed in the Norwegian countryside, this is also a canvas wide enough to make the dedicated fan of Joan’s compact, claustrophobia, more than usually agoraphobic. It almost feels like a Victor Sjöström film so glorious is the backdrop. Also, what we now see is some 75 minutes long and just over half the original length although this doesn’t impact the story too much apart from rendering the jealous lover/would be murderer, Gjermund Haugsett (Einar Tveito) a little under-developed.

Gjermund’s father, Berger Haugsett (Oscar Larsen) agrees with Berit’s father, Ola (a moody Stub Wiberg) that she should marry his boy but, rather crucially, the bride-to-be has not signed off on the deal. Indeed, Berit has a different romantic course in mind, she is in love with Tore Braaten (Einar Sissener) the son of a small farm holder, Jakob (Harald Stormoen), who has big plans to expand operations and works feverously laying out new fields.

Einar Tveito

Once this preference is known tension bubbles across the village… Gjermund fights with Tore and the two have to be pulled apart. But Haugsett has made his choice and refuses to budge. Berit runs away as her father takes around wedding invitations and falling off her horse is rescued by Tore who takes her home for recuperation. Time for a reconciliation you’d think but there’s no chance as Haugsett hardens his heart, confounding expectations of a simple resolution – these farmers are so stubborn!

But there’s more to come as we head for the final nerve shredding conclusion!

Well played Bioscope, Mr Sweeney and Ms Henley, another memorable night at the Cinema Museum and this time I was early enough to grab a slice of the KB’s excellent home-made quiche!

Everywhere you look in Kennington, there are treasures…

Jeanne and John… Man, Woman and Sin (1927)

“The popular opinion that Miss Eagels is highly temperamental and is hard to work with has no foundation in fact, I know of no other actress I would rather have working under me than Miss Eagels.”

Monta Bell clearly believed in Jeanne Eagels who seems to have been one of those charged characters whose startling expressiveness drew heavily on an inner turmoil. A major star on Broadway, when her creative energy would tune with the live audience, she apparently doubted herself more in front of the camera and as a result, this film took a little longer than expected to make.

Jeanne also had problems with drink and drugs or rather her self-medication in response to stress-induced anxiety we can only guess at. She deserves the utmost respect for what she achieved all in spite of those personal odds.

Joining her in body and the spirits was of course John Gilbert – maniacally handsome and a winsome performer again in this film, top-billed, co-writer and giving an outstanding performance not only against type but also one of genuine pathos and subtlety. JG's a man as much sinned against as sinning and one whose only crime was to love the wrong woman (in fact and fiction...).

Jeanne Eagels and John Gilbert

Only a few of Jeanne Eagels films survive, including Man, Woman and Sin and The Letter – an early talkie also produced by Bell, for which she would receive a posthumous Oscar nomination. She died aged 39 in October 1929.

Having starred for four years on stage in Rain she was more than ready to play Vera Worth a street smart, society editor who just happens to be having a relationship with her paper’s owner Mr Bancroft (Marc McDermott). She’s a tough-talking hot-metal vet whose heart beats pure ink and which has healed over so many times it’s unlikely to ever break again.

Into her life walks Al Whitcomb (Gilbert) a cub reporter so green and trusting in the nobility of female spirit that surely she’ll just find him a laugh, toy with him and cast him away once boredom and the need for her expensive treats-in-kind kicks in.

Jeanne Eagels strikes a pose for the film's publicity team

We first see Al as a child (played by Philip Anderson) who lives in very humble circumstances down an alley where his mother earns a crust by ironing. The alley is mixed race and, strikingly for a film of this vintage, little is made of this: the neighbours just get on.

Out in front is the big house where rich folks live. Al takes the laundry round for the mother and falls for her pretty and completely unattainable daughter. One house in the street is said to be haunted and one day Al goes in and emerges as cool as he can, impressing the whole gang but especially the girl. One kid remarks that gangsters probably hid out there whilst the girl above his station drops her candy in admiration.

She’s already on a pedestal and her mother will make sure that Al never pulls her down.

Al at work

Fast forward and Al is now John Gilbert, still attached to his mother and still very earnest. He gets a job packing newspapers for delivery and starts to make his way.

Shockingly, aroused by pictures of movie stars in the paper, he decides to visit a brothel where, before things can develop too far, he has to come to the aid of one of his journalistic colleagues who has gotten too drunk and opinionated for house rules to accept. Sobered up and grateful he tells Al to report for a junior reporter’s job the next day.

Now things start to move, and Al is asked to attend the Presidential Ball with Vera. Kevin Brownlow has said that parts of the film had been cut because originally Gilbert was to be seen interviewing President Calvin Coolidge and locations were filmed around the White House. Eventually the politicians got cold feet and pulled these intriguing scenes... which is a shame as they would have lent considerably more depth to this broadsheet morality tale.

The presidential ball

John Gilbert, who co-wrote and partially directed said that the film “…could have been great but it wasn’t…” quoting “private reasons” which may have been Jeanne Eagel’s challenging working practices or, more likely, this interference from the Executive.

Al’s coverage of the Ball goes down a treat and Kevin Brownlow has described the sequence when he returns to the Bull Pen eyes glazed with the story he now has to write, as silent film at its best. There are no title cards just close-ups of Gilbert’s intensity: he has found his forte and maybe more…

Al in the newsroom

Even Vera, whom he describes as the most beautiful woman at the Ball, is starting to be won over by his puppy dog presence and, tiring of Bancroft’s variable enthusiasm, she starts to encourage his affections.

But can it last and once Bancroft discovers the two alone in her apartment – provided by him naturally – Vera tries to protect him by saying he’s been pestering her, but Al won’t have it and keeps on wanting to say the truth. Tempers flare and Bancroft lifts up a heavy lamp… the camera drops to focus on the men’s flailing legs as they battle for the weapon only for the older man to fall, dead, to the floor.

No spoilers!

This much the film’s promotional posters give away, but the question is now about consequences and whether Vera will work with Bancroft’s men to cover up and push the blame on Al – or will she finally commit to her own truth and save him…

Man, Woman and Sin is an unusual film for the period in its handling of relationships, leading men, smoking – Vera’s intake is mentioned a number of times – and race. Politics would have been on that list too… no doubt Louis B. Mayer would have hated it!

John Gilbert gives an outstanding performance – up to The Big Parade standards, whilst Jeanne Eagels shows what a strong performer she was: it was a privilege to see one of her few films and good to find a new, old name to remember.

Man, Woman and Sin is officially hard to find but I was lucky enough to attend a private screening on 35mm: maybe one day it will be shown again?

He who cries last, laughs longest… He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

This film hits hard and whether that’s down to the Russian source material, director Victor Sjöström or the genius of Lon Chaney is difficult to say, but it’s one of the most genuinely affecting of films. He Who Gets Slapped doesn’t just succeed in playing the clown and the “life’s a walking shadow, nah, na, na, nah, nahh!” pathos it wrestles it into the air, walks around on stilts with it and then pushes the viewer backwards into a pale of cold water.

This is my third Chaney circus film and he really does make a fantastic clown… his range of facial expression is supernatural and the various extremes of clown make-up enable him to reach new heights of happiness and deeper troughs of despair.

But the secret of this clown is all in the back story…

Life's a walking shadow...

Based on the 1914 Russian play Тот, кто получает пощёчины  by Leonid Andreyev, He Who Gets Slapped is about betrayal, cruelty, fear and love – in that order.

Chaney plays scientist Paul Beaumont who is innocently pursuing his research into the origins of man, funded by Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott). Finally he achieves the breakthrough he has worked years to achieve and goes to tell his wife, Maria (Ruth King) and the Baron.  The papers will be presented at the academy and the Beaumonts take their leave of the Baron knowing that the next day will see Paul finally get the recognition he deserves.

Lon Chaney and Marc McDermott

But, as they leave, the Baron steals the papers from the safe.

The day arrives and, with hardly an inter-title, we see Paul’s face contort into anger and disbelief as he hears the Baron take full credit for the discoveries. He tries to reason with the Baron and gets a slap in the face – the first of thousands – which sends the academy into roars of laughter. He is utterly humiliated and, when he gets home there’s far worse to follow as his wife reveals she’s leaving him for the Baron.

Slumped at his desk, surrounded by all of his useless books, Paul laughs at his own ruin.

The man who laughs...

After every “act”, Sjöström inserts the image of a clown laughing hysterically at a spinning world. At the start the clown morphs into Paul spinning the globe in his office and after his bitter failure, the spinning globe is joined by clowns who sit around its circumference and watch as it turns into a circus ring. So many images in the film are used to match with others and move the focused visual narrative along in a very economical way. 

All the World's a stage...

The circus ring is in Paris and it is now six years later. A sensational clown has taken the city by storm: HE – who gets slapped – can you guess who he is?

HE’s act is elaborate, featuring massed ranks of clowns of all sizes, ushered into the arena by an enthusiastic orchestra, syncopating wildly. HE is at the back of the parade on stilts alongside the senior clown Tricaud (Mack Sennett veteran Ford Sterling) and enters to grand applause and a wave of hilarity.

As the spectacle unfolds it’s clear that it is entirely based on the humiliation of his previous existence, the clowns carry large books in mockery of the years he spent in fruitless study and as Paul/HE looks to the audience he sees the faces of the Academy’s mocking scientists laughing down at him.

Clowns and judges...

The procession ends and HE is knocked backwards off his stilts: down to earth and there’s more to come as he is flanked by Tricaud and another clown who take turns in slapping him as he tries to make statements about the World… it is flat – slap! – it is round - slap! – it is soft – slap!! IN mockery of his failed scientific career he is slapped for every statement and the entire troop takes turns in beating him to the ground.

Eventually he is beaten down to the ground and his heart, held against his chest by a cloth pocket, is ripped out by Tricaud, and he is trampled into the sand…

But, it’s all in fun.

Elsewhere in the circus is the handsome horse-rider Bezano (John Gilbert – didn’t really need the “handsome” there did I?) who notices the arrival of a pretty girl, Consuelo, (Norma Shearer so different from her world-weary, pre-code persona a decade down the line) who is to join his act. Consuelo’s career is being masterminded by her father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall, looking swell in his evil beard!) a hard-up nobleman who aims to use her exposure to marry her off to the highest bidder.

The two young equestrians bond immediately whilst HE is also smitten with the young woman; a reminder of the love he has lost.

All balance is soon lost as the Baron comes to watch the show. He doesn’t recognise the man whose life he stole but Paul certainly spots him.  But it’s not the clowning the Baron has come to see but the beauty on the horse. After the show he is introduced to Conseula and her father sets about negotiating a deal to sell her off.

Norma Shearer and John Gilbert

Sjöström cleverly mingles scenes of Conseula and Bezano falling in love on a bucolic picnic with the negotiations between the Count and the Baron…. One couple reach a spiritual balance and the other purely a fiscal one.

HE gets wind of this and resolves to save the young girl he loves and revenge himself on the man who threatens to take everything once again… but, no spoilers.

I’m not sure I like clowns in general but I like Chaney’s clowns and this is possibly his greatest mixing extreme pathos with a laugh that is so engulfing you truly believe the switch from bliss to bedlam that has brought it forth. HE is contorted by the misfortunes of existence into someone who can only take solace in further violence from a world that won’t listen and which refuses to understand him.

Marc McDermott, Norma Shearer, Tully Marshall and John Gilbert

 How will it end? You hope for a peaceful resolution and an end to his suffering.

The supporting cast are excellent with Tully Marshall excelling as the Count just about keeping up appearances in order to cash in on Conseula whilst Marc McDermott plays the pantomime villain with subtlety – he genuinely doesn’t see anything wrong with what he does.

Norma Shearer

Norma Shearer is a picture of vibrant youth – possibly too young for Mr Gilbert – and a world away from the wise-cracking, self-assurance of her talkies.  Her Conseula is an important part of HE’s story and may ultimately help connect him back to the world he left so completely.

Mr Chaney

It’s also worth mentioning the cinematography of Milton Moore who helps his director maintain such a consistent tone throughout this symmetrical tale: the globes spin, the crowds laugh and the clowns all fall down in the end.

I watched the Warner Archives disc which comes with a new score from the Alloy Orchestra which mixes found sounds with cut up orchestrations to good effect. It’s available direct  or from Amazon.