passion / betrayal / treachery
by Douglas Messerli
Hans
Kyser (screenplay, based on The Iliad), Manfred Noa (director) Helena:
Der raub der Helena (Helena: The Rape of Helen) / 1924
———Helena:
Der Untergang Trojas (The Fall of Troy) / 1925
This
3 hour and 20-minute film released in two parts by its producer Bavaria Film,
was long thought to be lost until an almost complete copy was discovered in
Lausanne, Switzerland which, along with forgotten copies in film archives in
Rome, Madrid, and Moscow, allowed the Film Museum München
to issue fully restored DVD copies which included the tints used in the
original.
The sheer magnitude of sets, costumes, and
casts might have challenged even D. W. Griffith’s epic films Birth of a
Nation and Intolerance, and Noa is far more cinematically
experimental than Griffith, with the kind of cinema tricks that would be
further explored later in the decade by William A. Wellman, Fritz Lang, Jean
Epstein, James Sibley Watson, and Melville Webber. Yet the retelling of the
complex narrative of The Iliad is surprisingly linear and straight
forward in Noa’s script, with only a few major changes of events from the
original, namely that, after the bird of Adonis visits Helen (Edy Darclea), declaring that she has been chosen to be
the female representative of the Spartan Spring celebrations, her husband
Menelaos (Friedrich Ulmer) is only too happy to show her off before the entire
city as the celebrant that award the crown of victory to the winner of chariot
race, presumably himself. So vain is Menelaos that he cannot even heed Helen’s
own fears that appearing so openly in public may bring problems to a marriage
in which to claims complete happiness.
Her visions of what the future may lead
to reveal Paris’ image, a face so beautiful that she almost willingly goes
forward with her plans which will lead ultimately to the betrayal of her
marriage vow.
Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the Trojan
capitol, Paris (Vladimir Gajdarov) dreams,
revealing his own visions of Helen and events that he could otherwise have not
imagined. What the shepherd boy cannot know is that he is the child of the
Trojan King Priam and Queen Hecuba whose birth foretold the downfall of Troy in
dreams to both Hecuba and the seer Aesacus.
In a world of dreams, signs and
prognostications, Paris (similar to Oedipus) is handed over to the chief
herdsman Agelaus to remove the child and kill him, an act that like Priam and
Hecuba before him, he could not follow through, raising the beautiful boy as
his own son.
The story is not revealed in full in Noa’s version, but we know enough
that we realize Paris is part of the Gods’ plans, particularly when in his
dream he is asked to choose between the three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and
Aphrodite—the goddess of love bribing him with the love of the most beautiful
woman in the world, Helena. Who might resist? The very next day, in Noa’s
retelling, Paris is on his way with a sacrifice of his and Agelaus’ best calf
to the Spartan island wherein lies Adonis’ shrine at which Helen must spend the
night.
The images of Paris’ dream and voyage are
some of the most memorable of Noa’s film, each of them more fascinating the one
just previous.
So far, as anyone with knowledge of Homer’s
work or the ancient Greek mythology might have expected, Helena is a
heterosexual fantasy. Yet back in Sparta, as the men prepare for the chariot
race which Helen, the director focuses for a rather long while on the
relationship between Achilles (Carlo Aldini) and Patroclus (Carl Lamac). Presuming
the relationship between them was a result of the customary Greek paiderasteia
relationship between an older and younger man, Ancient and modern historians
have endlessly argued which was the older erastes (lover, protector) and
the younger eromenos (the beloved), Aeschylus, for example placing
Patroclus in the role of the eromenos, while Plato saw Achilles as the
younger loved one.
Noa basically presents them as being of
the same age, and thus suggests that their relationship is a romantic one, or
at the very least that Patroclus is only slightly younger than the
more-experienced and better muscled Achilles. No matter, Achilles spends a
great deal of time showing off his musculature to his friend, while just before
the race begins, wherein they appear together in the cart, hardly keep their
hands off of one another.
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Should one happen to miss their physical
expression of the sexual desires, Noa relates Menelaos’ own fears that the
buff hero Achilles will surely outrun him in the race, and asks Tersites
(Rudolf Meinhard-Jünger) what he might do about the possibility of his wife
having to offer the crown of victory to another man. The elder Tersities
assures him that it will be no problem, and as Achilles and Patroclus ready
themselves in the final moments before race begins, taunts the hero, “Since
when does Achilles fight for a woman’s wreath?” suggesting that it is only for
the male gender that Achilles poses and fights. Offended by the suggestion, he
throws a small discus, hitting the old man without truly harming him. But he
does unloose the horses, and bows, temporarily out of the chariot race.
Only when the others have gone round
once, and Achilles again witnesses the beauty of Helen, does he determine to
retie the chariot to the horses and participate in the race.
Of course, Western commentators from the Elizabethans to the present
have gone out of their way to point out that Achilles was also attracted to
women and that both he and Patroclus’ married women, debunking for some the
idea of their homosexual love. But obviously even the ancients comprehended
bisexuality, and as we shall see in most of the movies from 1887 until the
mid-1960s, homosexuals generally kept a lower profile if they were perceived to
follow conventional heterosexual marital patterns. But for the ancient Greeks,
more importantly, to be married and have homosexual affairs was not at all a
contradiction but a common pattern of behavior. Sexuality was not perceived as
a structure of closure but of openness. There is absolutely no contradiction in
Achilles’ love for Patroclus and finding Helen so sexually attractive that he
might wish to flirt with the possibility of bedding her. And Noa does not blink
in this possibility when as Achilles finally wins the race, Menelaos grows
angry that the young hero will have the honor of escorting is wife by boat to
Adonis’ shrine where she will spend the night alone in order to bring the god’s
blessings upon the Spring season.
But, of course, she does not spend the
night alone since Paris arrives, the two fall deeply in love with each other’s
beauty, imagined long before by each of them, and sleep together, breaking
every vow and code of the ancient world imaginable. When morning arrives, and
the boat returns to take Helen home, the soldiers discover that Helen has been
raped, the older meaning of that word suggesting that Paris has abducted her
and carried her away to Troy.
By the oaths Menelaos himself and others
have taken, nearly all the men of Sparta must now fight the Trojans in order to
get her back.
Troy, having offended the gods in many
ways by this time, is suffering a plague against its infant children, a cyclone
destroys one of goddesses’ image, and a lightning bolt destroys another’s. The
seer predicts a fate that even he dare not speak aloud. Priam, seeking out a
new god to protect his city, finds it in Aphrodite when a mast from Paris’
presumably destroyed ship is brought back, the image of the goddess featured
upon it since it was stolen from the holy shrine. But even then the gods do not
seem avenged. Lions are eating the Trojan cattle and sheep. And Priam,
realizing that Paris has died on the voyage home, finally confesses to fact
that he has saved and raised the royal son.
A lion hunt is ordered up, while
simultaneously we discover that Paris and Helen have survived having struggled
ashore only a few miles from Troy itself. Paris takes her back to his
shepherd’s hut wishing and praying for a kingdom he might award to her. In the
midst of this island upheaval, Agelaos discovers Paris is alive and is
introduced to Helen. When the lions are ready to attack both Paris and his
shepherd father, Helen stands as a sacrifice, strangely calming the beasts,
after which all return in celebration to Priam and Hecuba, even the King and
his wife now delighted to see that their son, brother to the young Prince
Hector (Carl de Voght), is alive.
This time when Aesacus warns once more of
Troy’s fall, Priam has him shackled and imprisoned as Troy begins to celebrate.
But it is already too late. The Spartans fleet has arrived, and the battle
begins, with Hector soon near death. Paris of Iliad with his bows and arrows
instead of his sword and armor, is hardly a warrior, but in Noa’s version he
rises up for the challenge, leading those still within the walls of Troy to
join him in battle, the crude Trojan navy somehow managing to rout the Spartan
ships and saving his brother.
At the end of Part I of Noa’s film, the
Trojans finally have a great deal to celebrate.
Los
Angeles, July 15, 2022
*
If Part I of Noa’s epic film is highly
entertaining and simply fascinating with regard to how he has adapted Homer to
the screen, Part II, The Fall of Troy, has to be one of the greatest of
psychological dramas of all of silent film history.
Even at the beginning of the film, the
Greeks are described as being highly demoralized after years of battle with no
major success, and a plague has begun to take life of some of their soldiers.
The desire to return home, the central subject of The Odyssey, begins
here on the shores of the Trojan empire.
The Trojans, however, are no better off, exhausted and frustrated by the
continual battles of war, some of the court demanding that Helen simply be
handed over to the Greeks to end the war. Obviously Paris loudly protests,
pleading to his father Priam to continue to protect his lover. But Priam has
already begun to show signs of a Lear-like madness, handing over the decision
to a court of his close advisors. In the midst of their deliberations Helen
herself appears, her beauty immediately altering any negative feelings, as they
vote unanimously to continue to protect her.
I should interject the fact that, while
we know that anyone performing the role of the most beautiful woman in the
world cannot live up role, and given that beauty is always a slippery
designation, Noa and his associates might have chosen a more conventionally
beautiful woman to play Helen. Edy Darclea is willowy and lithe and has a
rather “classical,” look whatever that means. But to be honest Vladimir
Gajdarov’s Paris is far more beautiful than his consort.
The decision to stand by her, however, represents one of several later
such incidents to blame Paris and Helen for the death and desolation facing
both sides, not all of them ending so felicitously. Meanwhile, as the Trojans
gear up for yet another attack, Helen is able to convince Paris not to
participate in the battle, particularly given his inexperience as a warrior and
her own Greek ethnicity. Andromache (Hanna Ralph), Hector’s wife, is less
successful, given the fact that Priam’s only other surviving son is the hero of
the Trojan forces. His mother Hecuba, desperate throughout the entire work to
protect her sons, asks Helen to intercede, hoping that she may be able to
convince him to remain at home.
Helen makes her case and almost succeeds,
Hector at first refusing but finally breaking down in a long embrace indicating
that he too has fallen in love with her, which forces him to realize even more
fully how much he must resist his feelings and return to the battlefield. In
one of the most subtly significant moments of silent film, when he leaves
Helen, the door remains slightly open as Andromache stands outside watching
Hector leaving in a rush, one might almost say of embarrassment, with Helen
heaving in shock and sorrow in the back.
Andromache, at first, simply attempts yet
again to convince her husband to stay, holding up their child as evidence of
what she sees his true responsibility, to be the boy’s father. And the child
himself refuses to be held by the hero until finally Hector removes his helmet
to hold him.
But in the end he becomes more determined
and leaves Andromache and his son’s side. Andromache now turns to Helen to ask
if her husband loves her, the Greek beauty, and Helen’s silence reveals
everything to the wife, who must now settle with the fact that her husband has
betrayed their mutual marital vow.
Betrayal becomes a major theme, indeed,
in The Fall of Troy, as back in the Spartan camp we see Agamemnon (Karl
Wüstenhagen) and Menelaos arguing over whether or not to kill Helen for her
betrayal of his love. Menelaos is still torn, unsure whether or not she is
truly responsible—as well as being inwardly guilty for having dared to show her
off like the “trophy” wife she represented to him. But when Achilles, still
seeking his infamous wreath from Helen’s hand, demands the right to fight
Hector to the death, Menelaos insists that it is his right only, Agamemnon, his
brother, agreeing, which basically eliminates the Greek’s best hero from
serving any role other than a soldierly footman. And in his pride, Achilles
suddenly refuses to even participate in the upcoming struggles, ultimately
betraying his own country and his fellow soldiers.
His “friend” Patroclus, in Noa’s
rendition, attempts to calm Achilles down and convince him that as the best of
the soldiers he must suit up for war. The director represents this in a series
of loving strokes of Achilles’ body that comes just shy of showing the two
making love. Certainly, cinema had never quite shown previously two males in
physical contact while nearly naked.*
Obviously, neither Vito Russo, in 1981 or
even second edition of his The Celluloid Closet in 1987, nor Richard
Barrios as late as 2003, had encountered this work or surely they would have
cited it for its important homosexual revelations. In this instance, not only
does Patroclus “feel up” his friend, but when Archilles calls for women and wine
in order distract him from the sounds of
warfare, and a woman dances enticingly
over Achilles’ body, Patroclus turns away in an obvious huff of disgust, while
Achilles, observing his behavior, sends the women away.
What Noa makes far clearer than Homer,
and which shall soon have great significance, is that this is a tale not only
of a great heterosexual passion, that of Paris and Helen, but of a crucial
homosexual love of Patroclus and Achilles.
So Hector goes to war, while Achilles
stays behind, the Greeks being pushed back to their ships and even some of
their boats being burned by the Trojans. Time and again agents from the
battlefront beseech Achilles to rethink his decision and to join in the battle
to rout the Greeks as only he would be able. But Achilles stubbornly refuses to
participate.
Finally, realizing the severity of the situation, Patroclus begs his
friend to allow him to go dressed in his armor, perhaps enough to frighten off
the enemy, Achilles reluctantly agreeing.
Seeing Achilles on the war field, Hector
immediately demands a duel, and the two begin the bloody fight, Patroclus
revealing his identity when his headwear falls off, but nonetheless losing his
life to Hector’s sword.
The Greeks bring Patroclus’ body back to
Achilles’ tent where the great warrior breaks down in a torrent of tears and
sorrow, realizing that he has betrayed his lover as well. His laments are
surely some of the saddest of film history.
The Trojans have won the day once
again. The cost for Achilles and the Greeks has been far too much. As the
victorious Trojans return to the city, Hector has been left upon the field
after his encounter with Patroclus. Achilles rushes to the battleground
encountering Hector and challenging him, in revenge of his lover’s death
killing the Trojan leader quickly, before tying up his body to his cart and
racing back to the Greek outpost.
We can point to this very moment, the
death of his son and the loss of the Trojan’s greatest soldier, as the moment
when Priam first proves his insanity, not only lamenting the death of his son,
but raving, demanding to once more visit Aesacus, who has been imprisoned now
for eight long years (our first indication of just how long these wars have
been going on). Priam insists that Aesacus predict a different future for him
and his beloved city, but when the prophet refuses, insisting it is fated, he
further punishes him by cutting out his tongue, and finally killing him.
When the first Greek prisoners are
brought behind the Trojan walls, Priam insists that Helen place the laurels
upon their head, the signification of their capture and deaths. She challenges
him by not only refusing but reminding him that she is Greek (some of the
prisoners have hailed her as their queen), he threatens her with imprisonment.
Priam, Andromache, and Hecuba travel
unarmed—even their route littered with the bodies of the dead—to plead with
Achilles for the return of Hector’s body; he at first refuses since his sorrow
for Patroclus’s death has not been slacked. He finally agrees only if Helen
tosses down from the city’s walls the crown that was to have been his, so that
he might now place it upon his beloved’s bier.
They agree that he will approach the
city walls upon witnessing the smoke from the funeral pyres for Hector’s
cremation. His captain warms him of danger and demands he accompany him for
protection. But Achilles resists his advice.
Priam, meanwhile, has become truly
treacherous, creating a deadly poison into which he dips the arrows that he
demands his son Paris shoot at Achilles when he arrives. Given Helen’s pleas,
once more Paris refuses to be involved, but this time Priam will not be
crossed, pronouncing, since Paris refuses to kill Achilles, any man who
accomplishes the feat shall have Helen in marriage.
Torn between his love of Helen, the
family honor (both the contradictory commitments of revenge and the pledge to
not harm Achilles on this visit), and Helen’s pleas to resist Priam’s command,
Paris turns once more to the impulses of Aphrodite, taking up his bow and
shooting the arrow into Achilles’ heel, betraying not only family honor but
Helen’s love.
At first Achilles is merely amused,
perceiving his foe as a bad marksman, but he soon realizes that the arrow has
been dipped in poison—no mention in Noa’s version of Thetis’ dipping of him as
an infant into the River Styx to protect all but the heel by which held him.
With the death of Achilles, Paris has suddenly lost Helen’s love, and
for his hateful challenge of Priam in response, is himself locked away in the
dungeon. There is no indication that Helen finds love for him again, even when
late in events, freed from prison through Hecuba’s machinations, he accepts
death rather than being separated from Helen.
What is apparent is that the now
treacherous Priam is mad. And in that madness he orders the gift of the clever
new Greek leader Ulysses, the Trojan Horse dedicated to Athena, be brought into
the gates, even dismantling the doors to do so.
While the Trojans celebrate their
victory, Priam is haunted by ghosts of destruction of which he had been warned.
Helen is captured, permitted to live by Menelaus and taken off to be returned
to Sparta, while the city is ransacked and burned, its men killed and its women
enslaved, all of which Noa spectacularly portrays in frames tinted in red.
*The obvious exception to this
statement was the film attributed to Bernard Natan, the 1920 short movie Le
Ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly, which showed both male / male, female /
female, and heterosexual cunnilingus sex and copulation, with all body parts
exposed. But that film was basically underground and not shown in popular
theaters as was Noa’s film.
Los
Angeles, July 16, 2022 / Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (July 2022).
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