When Erich met Irving... Merry-Go-Round (1923), Flicker Alley Blu-ray

  

“…inexcusable and repeated acts of insubordination… extravagant ideas which you have been unwilling to sacrifice… and your apparent idea that you are greater and more powerful than the organization that employs you.”

Irving Thalberg’s letter of termination to Erich von Stroheim

I’d seen the new restoration of this film at last year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone but sometimes in the rush of a festival you don’t always pick up everything about a film, especially one with such a complicated backstory as this. According to von Stroheim biographer Richard Koszarski in his book-length audio commentary, Erich spent something like 33 days directing the film, 20-25% of the total according to the accounts of Universal’s new Head of Production, Irving Thalberg, who fired him and Rupert Julian who replaced him and yet this film could hardly be more “Von”.

 

Koszarski quotes from the meticulous diaries of James Winnard Hum who was sent to man-mark the Austrian spendthrift by Thalberg, a 24-year-old “Boy Wonder” who was busily turning Universal into a business with a command-and-control structure that was not going to co-exist with the old ways of director-led films. Thalberg had more to offer than just a belief in budgets and schedules but having already had to intervene on the director’s over-spent Foolish Wives (1922), when von Stroheim wanted to keep on shooting, was not going to allow him to risk Universal’s financial well-being not matter how “inspired” the ideas. Foolish Wives had been a smash but maybe studios will one day learn that Thalberg’s creative due diligence was a necessary counterbalance to unfettered and expensive creativity.

 

So, enter Mr Julian, a director badly in need of a hit and who would later claim more of the film’s ideas as his own than were his due. Koszarski reads out von Stroheim’s script outline during his commentary and it’s quite clear that not just the story but the shooting instructions were followed pretty faithfully with the result that the film, with most of the original cast and crew intact, carries the hallmarks of its author and original director.

 

This means a film that is marked by the harshness of certain characters and the cruel fate of others all against a backdrop of a fantasy Viennese noble demimonde that von Stroheim convinced everyone was his too. The extremes of the characters’ backgrounds makes the cruelty all the more painful as fairground organ grinder Agnes Urban (Mary Philbin) is forced to keep on playing just as her mother is breathing her last by her monstrous boss, Huber (George Siegmann). This is further contrasted with her soft-focus flirting with handsome Count Franz Maxmilian von Hohenegg (Norman Kerry) who has the luxury of visiting her incognito feigning to be a necktie salesman.

 

The Count’s life is unreal as a matter of course though, marked by duty and ritual that obscures feelings and curtails freedom. He is due to be married to the daughter of the Minister of War (Spottiswoode Aitken), the Countess Gisella von Steinbruck (Dorothy Wallace) in a decision Emperor Francis Joseph (Anton Vaverka) has decided is in everyone’s best interests. All of this is far from the carefree Count’s mind as he slums it in Vienna’s playground, the Prater amusement park, and seeks out its main attraction, the Merry-Go-Round.

 

The film opens with a mix of stock shots of Vienna showing the gothic history, the night life and the sordid underbelly as a young mother says goodbye to her son and throws herself off a bridge into the Danube. Then we join the Count as he shakes off a luxury hangover care of his manservants’ attentions including a risqué glimpse of the Kerry derriere which caused issues with the censors – more so, according to Koszarski, than the sexual violence later in the story. You can always count on the moral arbiters to miss the real point can’t you?

 

Life is so different for the workers at the Prater fairgrounds with Huber treating everyone, including his wife Marianka (the great Dale Fuller!), who he pointedly gives a tiny portion of his meal to, not to mention Agnes and her father Sylvester (Cesare Gravina who will later play alongside her in The Man Who Laughs) as they try to care for Ursula, his wife, her mother, who is in the last stages of serious illness.

 

The visit of the handsome stranger lifts Agnes spirits and, given the poverty of her life, the comparison with his true status is almost comical still wheel of fortune wheel of fire… the Merry-go-Round if life and just in case we’re not sure about the cyclical nature of fate and despair, every so often a silver0skinned devil appears laughing over a carousel spinning helplessly below.

 

The pathos is broad-brush but the finesse of the cruelty is such that this is merely another tragicomic aspect of the hopeless duality of love, life and grinding duty. I really don’t know exactly how socialist von Stroheim was but this critique of naked greed and careless class couldn’t be more on point for the times. He may be mourning a “lost Vienna” but not if it was this unfair.

 

And still comes the misery, Nicki (Charles King) is Agnes’ friend, and he loves her even though his deformity and humped back preclude her romantic interest – in his mind at least. He has an orangutang which is his livelihood, but also a friend who looks at Huber with savage eyes (no less than the rest of us). He watches in anguish as she falls for the handsome Franz as there is nothing he could or would do to stop it.

 

The greatest indignity of all awaits Agnes when, inevitably, the truth will out and she endures a humiliation in front of her “betters” and her father that is difficult to watch. This is as intended by von Stroheim but the director of 75-80% of the film deserves a lot of credit for largely taking script, cast and crew and making the film in the uncompromising fashion we identify with his predecessor.

 

There are also some very fine performances on screen and is this the best Mary Philbin role? She’s full on committed and never really crosses over the line towards purely melodramatic being believable sad and humiliated and in love all at the same time. Cesare Gravina is so intense and has just the face for this kind of gothic tale in which the cavernous depths of man’s everyday cruelty to man are ultimately compared with the First World War. Norman Kerry is, of course, a big lunk, but that’s what the role demands and many a better actor would struggle to complete his story arc… you have to see it!

 

The restoration features a newly commissioned orchestral score composed and conducted by Robert Israel, which contributes greatly to the emotional vibrancy of the cast and story and it’s a very rewarding watch and re-watch.

  

The restoration is fabulous and there’s an extra looking at it in more detail and much more:

 

·         Audio Commentary by Richard Koszarski - Go behind the scenes of the troubled production and explore Merry-Go-Round’s incredible filmic legacy with an in-depth commentary track from cinematic historian Richard Koszarski

·         Vienna Actualities - Explore Vienna in the years before World War I with 17 minutes of historical footage, courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria

·         Old Heidelberg (1915) - A new restoration of a feature from director John Emerson and producer D.W. Griffith, which served as an influence on Merry-Go-Round and also boasts Erich von Stroheim’s very first acting role

·         Restoring Merry-Go-Round - Go behind the scenes of the brand-new restoration with film restorer Serge Bromberg

·         Photo Galleries - Production stills, publicity, and other rare documentation

·         Souvenir Booklet - Featuring a new essay on the production by Richard Koszarski and notes on the restoration by Serge Bromberg and Lucie Fourmont

·         English SDH Subtitles

·         Reversible Cover Artwork – always a bonus!

 

Full details are available on the Flicker Alley website and those that re-sell US Blu-rays to the UK. It’s a fascinating part of the changing face of Hollywood as well as being one of Erich’s best concepts brought to life with a little help from his “friends” Rupert and Irving!