Alfred Hitchcock | Downhill / 1927

throwing him to the rats

by Douglas Messerli

 

David L’Estrange [Ivor Novello and Constance Collier] screenplay), Alfred Hitchcock (director) Downhill / 1927

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s fifth movie, the silent film of 1927 Downhill, strangely enough is one of his best. I characterize this as somewhat “odd” simply because several later films, far better known and admired by his audiences, are simply not as innovative and cinematically brilliant as this early work.

     The story, based on a play by the film’s star, the beautiful Ivor Novello and Constance Collier under the shared alias David L’Estrange, is far less important than Hitchcock’s cinematic telling of it.

      Roddy Berwick (Novello), his school’s star Rugby player, has a flirtatious relationship with a local waitress, Mabel (Annette Benson). On one such visit Roddy brings along his school friend, Tim Wakely (Robin Irvine) who takes the relationship with Mabel much further than the dances Roddy engages her in; and soon after the boys are called into the office of the school’s head, where Mabel sits, explaining that she is pregnant and that the father is Roddy, a lie told, in part, because she suspects she can get more financial support from Roddy’s wealthier parents. Tim must get a scholarship if he is to go to Oxford.

     Roddy accordingly takes the blame, although he knows the truth, and is not only ousted from his school but his family as well.

     As the title suggests, the rest of this film portrays his “downhill” progress, as he works, first in Paris as a bit actor, marrying one of the major actresses of the day Julia Fotheringale (Isabel Jeans), then suddenly receives a financial windfall from a relative, and loses it through Julia’s extravagant spending. She has also continued her affair with her former sleazy boyfriend, matinee star Archie (Ian Hunger).

     Psychologically broken and mentally and physically ill, Roddy ends up in a Marseilles fleabag hotel room, pitied by sailors who agree to “throw him to the rats,” which, in this case, means shipping him back home.  

     In the interim, his parents have discovered the truth, and have been desperately searching for him; so all ends well.

     But the director tells another story, tinting his images in sickly colors of pea-green, yellow, brown and blue to help us perceive the nauseous journey that our hero must undergo. More
importantly, Hitchcock, particularly in the later nightmare scenes, overlays images, focusing on machine parts and other mechanical devices that might make even Fritz Lang envious, creating a generally vertiginous sense of reality that he would not return to until the middle of his career with Vertigo and North by Northwest.

      Finally, the casting of pretty gay-boy Novello as the hero is brilliant because, just as in The Lodger of the same year, it makes the audience totally sympathetic with a character who otherwise might simply be seen as a spoiled schoolboy, or in the other film as a dangerous murderer. Here he becomes a tortured beauty from whom we hardly can pull away our eyes. Hitchcock was brilliant in this, often using handsome gay actors—Montgomery Clift, Cary Grant, Farley Granger, and Anthony Perkins to name only a few. One might argue that by using gays as potential or actual villains the great director was simply playing into the prejudices of the day; but I’d argue that he chose these beautiful figures in order to challenge and make us question our easy assumptions.

     And the many subtle homosexual relationships that Hitchcock concocted in his films help also to force us to query out assumptions. Are Roddy and Tim, in Downhill, more than simply “friends,” and mightn't that help explain why Roddy allows himself to become the guilty figure; he is later betrayed yet again by his wife, so clearly he is clearly a weak man who, nonetheless, attracts all those around him.

       Betrayal is, in fact, the common theme of this work. To the outsider Roddy has betrayed his school, his sport, and his family; but in truth, he is betrayed by his best friend, his school, a local girl, his parents, and his theater-star wife. Even though the Marseilles sailors ultimately save him, they too are ready to send him on his way to whatever fate might be await him, or, in short, to “throw him to the rats.”

       And given those facts, the tale is not a happy one, despite its restoration of the hero by the film’s end to familial status. But it is already too late in Roddy’s now ruined life to allow him to return to normalcy. If he wasn’t originally “queer,” the director suggests, he is now a permanent outsider. As in so very many of Hitchcock’s works, life after accusation, mistaken identity, inexplicable assault, or, especially, actual criminal involvement, can never be the same. In film after film, Hitchcock presents us with figures whose lives are forever altered by accident, chance, or simply involvement with the wrong people at the right time. And it is almost always a journey, by train, plane, or simply through the courts and conscience to a world from which you can never truly return and to which you live in horror of going back.

     Like a “downhill” skier, the good-looking kid of Hitchcock’s 1927 masterwork will probably never be able to be lifted to the top of the mountain again.

 

Los Angeles, June 10, 2018

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2018).

 

John Francis Dillon | The Crystal Cup / 1927 [Lost film]

crystal clear

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gerald C. Duffy (screenplay, based on a novel by Gertrude Atherton), Mort Blumenstock (titles), John Francis Dillon The Crystal Cup / 1927 [Lost film]

 

We might certainly wish that John Francis Dillon’s 1927 film, The Crystal Cup would have survived to be able to give us a better view not only of early female cross-dressing in cinema, but also a peek into a possible early link with lesbian cinema. Alas, like so many works devoted to women, its mysteries mostly remain silent with only fragmentary descriptions by males.

      This film, however, seems to have been a kind of early lesbian exploitation film, a movie that offered up male and female fantasies of watching a woman dress and behave as a man while all the while knowing that, in the end, she would be safely laid back into the arms of the “right” man.

It’s very much the kind of situation that was later played out, admittedly with much more sophistication, by German director Reinhold Schümzel’s Viktor und Viktoria in 1933 which audiences found so appealing that it was repeated by the British in Victor Saville’s First a Girl (1935), and eventually in the Julie Andrews / Robert Preston vehicle directed by Blake Edward  Victor and Victoria (1982), which went on to become a Broadway musical success, running for 734 performances—all of which suggests that as long as the lady stays true to her sex, men love to see her try to fool them by pretending to be a member of their preferred sexual club. I guess gays, when it comes to this patriarchal peccadillo, are just as guilty as heterosexual men.

      Even the promotional headlines of the day laid out the voyeuristic possibilities for both men and women:

 

a picture of the startlingly different woman of tomorrow.

it’s perfect for every woman who’s ever said—"god, i wish i were a man!”

for every man who’s ever said—“what’s the matter with these modern women?”

 

In other words, this work apparently was for any woman who might have had lesbian fantasies and every man who wanted to secretly to go to bed with his own sex without having to wake up with even a tincture of guilt.  And the promotional department was dead-on right; it is still, so it seems, a vital fantasy today, the future of way back then.

       In Gertrude Atherton’s hack psychological plot, upon which the film was based, heiress Gita Carteret (Dorothy Mackaill), having observed her father mistreat her mother throughout her childhood has become emotionally scarred, developing an intense hatred of males. Dressing in masculine attire and abandoning all feminine mannerisms, she attends a grand ball in a tuxedo, drawing gasps from most of the women and the admiration of at least a couple of men. Even Bette Davis in Jezebel hadn’t been that daring! The gossip grows, some describing her as a lesbian, in response to which her caregiver, Mrs. Pleyden (Clarissa Selwynne) demands she either bow the controls of a chaperone or find a man to marry.

       Having already developed a platonic friendship with the novelist John Blake (Rockliffe Fellowes), she suggests they marry but occupy separate apartments in his house. She goes through the painful process of a marriage ceremony simply to protect herself from having to endure the constant intrusions in her life of a chaperone.

       Meanwhile, however, to finds herself beginning to be quite attracted to a young physician, Geoffrey Pelham (Jack Mulhall), who, having seen her only in female dress, is love with her.

        When Blake finally becomes exasperated with the platonic marriage in which he has engaged, he bursts in on Gita in her bedroom, who shoots him. Dying, he suddenly realizes that Gita and Pelham belong together as a couple. As The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall quipped: “Needless to say Gita is not seen in mannish clothes in the last chapter of this film.”

         The film’s charm, evidently, was the visage of Dorothy Mackaill strutting about the screen in male outfits. Indeed Hall presents it almost as if it were a fashion show:

 

“The character gives Miss Mackaill an opportunity to appear in a variety of mannish costumes. Gita has long skirts with twin pockets, coats and white waistcoats. Instead of adorning herself with feminine finery for a dance, Gita appears in a black coat and skirt, a white waistcoat, a wing collar and a bow tie, not to mention a white carnation and a long cigarette holder. When she is introduced to a man she extends her hand and stands up. She even adopts a masculine method of speech and if perchance she is not puffing on a cigarette, she keeps her hands in the pockets of her skirt.”

 

       Obviously, the costumes were an important feature of this film. In her Girls Will Be Boys, Laura Horak noted that Gita’s attire was cited as one of the growing signs of sexual perversity in the cinema of the day.

       In short it was the sheen and luster of The Crystal Cup, the surface, that truly mattered and not the actual contents of what that cup held. No need for tea and sympathy for Gita; for she was a woman within, not a truly to be dreaded sexual freak. Like the woman dressed in a tuxedo and monocle in Rowland Brown’s Blood Money (1933), Gita isn’t truly serious about her affectation of dress. Within, she’s a good ‘ole heterosexual gal at heart, in whose banner Dillon’s movie eventually drapes itself after its audiences have gotten a good gawk at the alternatives. The same was true, of course, for many a male actor affecting gay mannerisms or who was involved in plot devices which might have suggested his sexual deviance; generally, he married a woman by film’s end, whether his name was Roscoe Arbuckle, Cary Grant, or Rock Hudson. At least a pansy was still a pansy after the screen turned dark.

 

Los Angeles, August 31, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review and My Queer Cinema blog (August 2021).

 

Richard Eichberg | Der Fürst von Pappenheim (The Masked Mannequin) / 1927

on the lips

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robert Liebmann (screenplay, based on the operetta by Franz Robert Arold and Ernst Bach), Richard Eichberg (director) Der Fürst von Pappenheim (The Masked Mannequin) / 1927 [Difficult to obtain]

Egon Furst (Curt Bois) believes that he has the perfect job in this filmed version of the German Weimar operetta Der Fürst von Pappenheim believes that he has a perfect job, managing ten beautiful runway models at a high scale Berlin fashion house. His job becomes far more complicated, however, when the beautiful Prinzessin Antoinette (Mona Maris) shows up on the runway, her face hidden behind a mask as she flees from an arranged marriage with a prince in whom she has no interest. 

  

    I have been able to piece together a plot only from sentences from several sources, but apparently Egon quickly falls in love with the princess, and when the family sends out Antoinette’s uncle to retrieve his rebellious niece, he gets the wrong girl.  

     Commanded to organize a Pappenheim company fashion show at the castle, Egon and his models appear along with Antoniette. In this case, Antoniette takes over the role of the emcee, while Egon dresses up as a beautiful model to replace her in the ranks.

     Bois as Egon was evidently quite a stunning crossdresser. He is best known to US audiences as the pickpocket in the early frames of Casablanca (1942). At the end of the show, apparently, the female in male drag emcee kisses her new boyfriend Egon appearing again as a male, her unsuspecting father who has observed this, responding with a kindly wink of the eye, “I may be old-fashioned, but I still prefer to kiss a woman’s lips.”

      The Berlin Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv evidently holds a remaining copy of this silent work.

 

Los Angeles, October 6, 2021.

Matthew Diamond and Stephen Wadsworth | Rodelinda / 2011 [HD-live broadcast]

the conscience of a king

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Frideric Handel (composer), Nicola Francesco Haym (libretto, based on a libretto by Antonio Salvi), Stephen Wadsworth (stage director), Matthew Diamond (film director) Rodelinda 2011 [Metropolitan Opera  HD-live production]

 

    On the surface Rodelinda seems a somewhat confusing story about a King, Bertarido (Andreas Scholl) who has just been defeated, and presumably killed, by Grimoaldo (Joseph Kaiser). The former queen, Rodelinda (Renée Fleming) and her son Flavio have been immediately arrested and put into chains, sequestered away—at least in the Met production—in what seems like an abandoned bedroom somewhere in the bowels of the castle.

     Before Grimoaldo's usurpation of the throne he had been offered the hand of Bertarido's sister, Eduige (Stephanie Blythe), which would have made him the heir apparent to the throne, but she has several times denied him, and now that he has illegally taken over, he lusts for Bertarido's widow, Rodelinda. When he approaches her with his desires, however, she is outraged and insists upon her devotion to her former husband and the protection of his child.

     Meanwhile Grimoaldo's advisor Garibaldo (Shenyang) prods his master on to more evil deeds, insisting that only the forceful, even the brutal are fit to rule. He has his own plans, moreover, to take the throne for himself, by marrying Eduige and becoming the rightful ruler.

      Only the court advisor Unulfo (Iestyn Davies) knows that Bertarido is still alive, pretending death in order to evaluate the situation and retrieve Rodelinda and his son from harm's way.

      Through her lovely arias we know that Rodelinda is loyal to her husband, denying the approaches of Grimoaldo. But when Bertarido shows up, to be hidden away in a nearby horse barn by his friend Unulfo, he overhears yet another encounter between Rodelinda and Grimoaldo in which she first insists of her love for her dead husband, but then suddenly seems to change heart, accepting Grimoaldo's proposal for marriage. What the two men hiding in the barn have not seen is that Garibaldo has threatened to kill her son if she does not give in, the knife put to the son's neck.

     Suddenly Bertarido's world collapses around him as he believes that his wife has not been able to remain faithful. Unulfo attempts to cheer him with an aria that relays the underlying theme of Handel's work: what seems unbearable today will look different in the future. Performed as it is between the two countertenors there is a slightly homoerotic suggestion in the plea that Bertarido should try to forget his wife's faithlessness.

     Unulfo suggests that Bertarido tell his wife that he is still living, an idea which, at first, Bertarido rejects, but then perceives that it will help to torture her for her deeds. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Rodelinda has no intentions of becoming Grimoaldo's wife, insisting that if she is to marry him that he must personally kill her young son, that she cannot be a mother to the boy would have been king and wife of the throne's usurper both. The ploy works, as Grimoaldo backs down, and Rodelinda is freed, temporarily at least, from any vows.

     Meanwhile, Eudige discovers that her brother is still alive, meeting him upon a pathway in the night, reassuring Bertarido of his wife's constancy. Unulfo brings Rodelinda to him, and the two are lovingly united, joyful to be in each other's company again. At that very moment, however, they are discovered by Grimoaldo, who orders Bertarido's arrestment and death.

     In collaboration, Eduige and Unulfo plan Bertarido's rescue, she secretly passing him a sword, Unulfo determined to lead him through a secret garden passage to his son, Rondelinda, and escape. However, when he comes to guide Bertarido to safety, in the dark room where he lies Bertarido mistakes the intruder as one of Grimoaldo's henchmen come to kill him, and he stabs Unulfo, who, although badly wounded, still pulls Bertarido to safety.

     Grimoaldo, meanwhile is in deep torment. All that he has sought has slipped his fingers. His first love Eudige has rejected him and Rodelinda has declared him a monster. Power has not fulfilled him, and he is tormented by conscience and his dark deeds. Finding him in such despair, Garibaldo is disgusted with his lack of will and determines to put a sword through his heart. At that very moment Bertarido and his family are passing, and the former king leaps into action, killing Garibaldo and, in so doing, saving Grimoaldo's life.

     Recognizing his position, Grimoaldo is only too happy to give up the throne to its rightful king. Turning again to Eudige she finally accepts his apologies, and the happy survivors sing in celebration of the future.

     Just recounting this breathless plot nearly exhausts me. One by one each of the major performers sing marvelous arias revealing their feelings and situations. This production was particularly blessed with the glorious soprano of Renée Fleming who premiered Rodelinda at the Met in 2004. Both countertenors were splendid, while Stephanie Blythe performed with her usual high artistry. The surprise of the opera, to me, was the tenor voice of Joseph Kaiser, who as the opera proceeded changed in both costume and voice from a seemingly pompous and puffed-up murderer to a handsome man of sorrow and conscience. It was a remarkably revealing performance both in its musical expression and acting abilities.

     In all this was a marvelous opera. If only the director, Stephen Wadsworth—who the singers all highly praised—had not felt it necessary to keep everything in motion by bringing in and out ancillary individuals during each aria, and arming his singers with flowerpots, books, even toys which at some point were often flung or crashed into the set. We understand that Handel's arias are structured with a beginning theme that elaborated on and repeated several times before returning us again to the original theme to be repeated once more, but that does not mean that we need be continually distracted. If the singers are good enough actors—as all of these were—to revitalize and slightly revise each repeated phrase, the music enwraps us into a kind of trance that works against this production's realist interruptions.

     Although the set was quite lovely, and the concept of moving horizontality through different sets across the gigantic Met stage worked well in several scenes, it appeared that the designers and director feared that the audience might fall asleep without the constant interruptions of everyday life. Although he is a powerful storyteller and a masterful dramatist, Handel is not Verdi.

      Nonetheless, with such great singers I would love to see the Met look into yet more Handel and other Baroque operas. Rodelinda was a joy.

 

Los Angeles, December 9, 2011

Reprinted from Green Integer Blog (December 2011).