Jacques Feyder | Daybreak / 1931

a testimonial to the hero

by Douglas Messerli

 

Cyril Hume and Ruth Cummings (screenplay, based on the fiction by Arthur Schnitzler), Jacques Feyder (director) Daybreak / 1931

Jacques Feyder’s Daybreak, not to be confused with Marcel Carné’s 1939 masterwork, Le Jour se Léve (also released under the title Daybreak), was based on one of Viennese Arthur Schnitzler’s heterosexual long tales concerning Lieutenants serving the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian army, men who lived lives of sexual excess, knavery, and honor. Since the Emperor himself had to approve of any marriage, those such as the central figure in this work, Willi (played quite intelligently by Mexican-born gay actor Ramon Novarro), felt safe in almost nightly seducing innocent young women or visiting the local whorehouse to pick out their favorite girl, and leaving early the next morning with the excuse that they had to be in formation or lose their comfortable mode of living. These men, as Willi’s wealthy uncle General von Hertz (C. Aubrey Smith) describes his nephew late in the work, were trained for nothing of importance in the world but soldiering, none of them imagining that in their own lifetimes they might actually see war, as well as the end of the Empire which supported them.

    On the first night of this story, Willi, having just been scolded once more for his womanizing and gambling, takes in the whorehouse of Madam Saguss—a plump cigar-smoking “tough old bird,” whose demeanor hints at lesbianism—wherein he is about to join his friends for dinner and a pretty girl of the house, when he catches a glimpse of a young innocent waiting by the door, Laura Taub (Helen Chandler), a music teacher, being guided upstairs by the notorious wealthy reprobate, Her Schnabel (Jean Hersholt).

     Suspicious of the incident, he follows them upstairs only to hear the young woman pleading with Schnabel to leave her alone. Like a hero of a melodramatic tale, the role many of Schnitzler’s handsome soldiers perform when not themselves playing the villain, he enters the room, demands Schnabel unhand her, slugs him out when he refuses, and walks back down the stairs, just as his soldier friends might imagine, with Laura on his arm.

      Before the end of the night, and after a great many attempts on her part to play the proper young woman, he seduces her into a wine garden, gets her drunk on wine and the lovely nearby river full of swans, and ferries her back to her apartment in his carriage.  

      The obviously inexperienced commentator who wrote the description of this film for Wikipedia, seems almost outraged that Laura should take these incidents so seriously, arguing they represent “nothing more than two or three harmless smooches and getting her a bit tipsy on a couple of glasses of French wine.”

     Obviously he or she doesn’t speak the language of Schnitzler nor MGM motion pictures, which has made it clear that when Laura awakens the next morning to serve Willi breakfast, she has spent night in bed with him. Sharing a soldier’s cape, even the night before, is the same basically as sharing blankets with him in the morning. 

    What truly outrages the young girl, who even admits she has plotted a bit to get the handsome Lieutenant to be seated at the breakfast table where she serves him strawberries, is that unthinkingly the suave operator leaves her a 100 Guilder note, which she quickly perceives means, that for Willi she seen is a kind of prostitute, a young girl whom he intends to pay instead of marry, a fact that he confirms the next time he meets her, e and which earlier we have heard expressed in his quip, “Love has nothing to do with marriage.”

     Her reaction is not at all typical of Schnitzler women, who sometimes become hardened, but just as often feel shamed and retreat to unfortunate consequences. Laura determines to take the lesson as the first of many, returning to the arms of the ugly Schnabel, who can at least provide her with a more regular source of money than her beloved Lieutenant might be able to.

      But in that act, and the continued assurances of Willi that he does, in fact, love her, it is Laura who has entrapped in unfortunate circumstances.

      Unable to change her mind, Willi goes back to his regular ways, at the high point of the film, proving his male collegiality by trying to help out a fellow soldier who admits he is married and whose wife is about to have a baby which he cannot afford. Taking up a collection from his peers, Willi has still far less than the necessary 200,000 guilders, his friends suggesting that he take the money he has raised and bet it at the gambling tables.

 

     He does so, and wins big, betting at the Baccarat table against Schnabel, handing over the winnings to his needy friend.

      Laura, however, having observed the events, hints that perhaps she might be won back if he were to go up against Schnabel for far more serious winnings, a suggesting which at first Willi rejects. But suddenly imagining the he is impervious to failure, he takes up the challenge, ending up owing 14,000 Guilders to the villain.

      Without any money, and finally feeling it inappropriate to approach his wealthy uncle to bail him out over his love of a woman, Willi must face the consequences, which we have witnessed early in the film when another soldier has put a gun to his head and pressed the trigger If you cannot pay by the next morning, suicide is prescribed as the only honorable way out.

       Hearing of the situation, General van Hertz appears in Willi’s quarters, offering him the money, but only if agrees to marry the woman of wealth and breeding he has chosen for his nephew, Emily Kessner (Karen Morley)

       Surprising, perhaps, even himself, Willi, appreciative as he is for this uncle’s attempts to save his life, he refuses the terms, the General about to leave in exasperation and despair. At that very moment, however, Schnabel’s representatives appear at the door to remind him that he is due at Schnabel’s office with the money by noon. 

       Willi assures them he will do the honorable thing.

       Again, recognizing what that means, his uncle agrees to give him money without his stipulation, as Willi immediately pays off the debt and runs off to see Laura, who after the gambling incident has finally left Schnabel and returned home to teach piano lessons.

       So, in a sort of tepid version of Schnitzler tales (one need only compare this basically comic version with the association of terrors which Lieutenant Gustl conjures up in the superior Schnitzler titularly titled novella as he contemplates his suicide for much lesser reasons), the hero is saved, resigning from his military position to become a healthy member of Viennese society.

       But even Laura’s family seems to miss Willi’s handsome uniform, he lying to them by suggesting he is off to a costume party. And most certainly Willi’s servant, Josef (the wonderful Clyde Cook) will miss him and the uniform.

       Even Feyder could not free himself in this film from the pernicious pansy craze, forcing Josef in the early scenes of this film to wear his employer’s underwear over his own as he bathes Willi in a bathtub next to another fellow soldier.

      When Willi has entered his rooms early, Josef has thrown a towel around his waist. And when Willi, having finished being scrubbed down, pulls the towel Josef has claimed as an apron he recognizes the sight of his own undershorts. Joseph quickly explains: “You see, the laundry shrunk them and I’m wearing them to stretch them out.”

 

       Asked if he likes them, Joseph positions himself into full pansy mode, declaring with emphasis, hands a flutter: “I think they’re beautiful!”

       At which point Willi kicks him in the butt, demanding he immediately take them off!

     In this manner, we needn’t hear it from a woman that our hero is a fully proportioned man from his very large size of his white underwear to the cut of his coat, we have heard it from source closest to the man in the buff.

 

Los Angeles, December 4, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).