A Pola Negri Double Feature: The Eyes Of The Mummy And Carmen

Before Marlene Dietrich, before Ingrid Bergman, Sophia Loren or even Greta Garbo, Polish film star Pola Negri made the journey from Europe to Hollywood and found fame in America, the first European film actress to succeed on both sides of the Atlantic.

She was born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec in what is now Poland in 1897, fashioning the name "Pola Negri" for herself (after Italian poet Ada Negri) during her confinement to a sanitarium for tuberculosis. After Russian authorities sent Negri's father to Siberia as a revolutionary, Negri and her mother moved to Warsaw where Negri studied ballet and eventually found success on the stage and screen.

During World War I, she moved to Berlin where she caught the attention of Ernst Lubitsch who signed her to a movie contract at Universum Film AG ("UFA"), Germany's best studio and, until the Nazis took power in 1933, one of the most influential in the world. After a half dozen low-budget films with other directors, Lubitsch in 1918 cast Negri as the lead in Die Augen der Mumie Ma—"The Eyes of the Mummy."

We remember Lubitsch now for his witty, sophisticated comedies, but during his early career in Germany, he alternated between broad farces and serious dramas. The former usually starred Ossi Oswalda, the latter, Negri. Despite its lurid title, The Eyes of the Mummy wasn't a horror picture but a tragic romance, the story of a young woman (Negri) rescued from the Egyptian tombs where her captor (Emil Jannings) has held her for years only to find him stalking her anew through the posh capitals of Europe.

The Eyes of the Mummy is a minor entry in the Lubitsch canon, and Negri is still a raw young actress (she was just twenty-one when filming began), but somebody connected with the film—the screenwriters, Lubitsch, Negri—knew something about the psychology of stalking from the point of view of both the stalker and the victim, and Negri is effective as a lusty child-woman slavishly devoted to whichever man possesses her at any given moment.

Better is Lubitsch's next collaboration with Negri, a film version of Prosper Mérimée's novel, Carmen. Adapted to film as early as 1907, the story of a soldier who throws over his family, his fiancee and his honor for a beautiful gypsy smuggler with tragic results has spawned dozens of versions over the years and was familiar enough to audiences that Charlie Chaplin could film a spoof of it, A Burlesque on Carmen, in 1915. Stripped of its Spanish setting, Carmen is essentially a retelling of Eve and the apple, and while I agree with Nero Wolfe's sidekick Archie Goodwin that "[n]o man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables," that doesn't mean this oft-repeated formula doesn't work; indeed, it forms the basis of much of literature, film noir and some of the more brutal aspects of many of the world's cultures.

The key to Carmen is, of course, the actress playing the title role. You have to believe that an honorable man would throw away his good name, a promising career and a faithful fiancee for a romp with a treacherous tramp. Although the print of Carmen has deteriorated beyond repair in places, it's still possible to see what both Don José and movie audiences saw in Pola Negri's Carmen—she's ripe and sensual, with large eyes full of promises she has no intention of keeping.

Better men than Don José have given up a whole lot more for a whole lot less.

"Love is disgusting," Negri herself later opined, "when you no longer possess yourself."

Negri and Lubitsch made a total of eight movies together, each better than the one before it. In addition to The Eyes of the Mummy and Carmen, they made Madame DuBarry (a.k.a Passion) and Rausch (both 1919), Sumurun (a.ka. One Arabian Night) (1920), Die Bergkatze ("The Wildcat") (1921), Die Flamme (1923) and Forbidden Paradise (made in Hollywood in 1924 for Paramount).

Negri's collaboration with Lubitsch made her an international star, and so great was her reputation that the U.S. finally dropped its embargo of German films (instituted during the war) just to satisfy popular curiosity. After the success of Carmen (released in the United States in 1921 as Gypsy Blood), Negri signed with Paramount and arrived in New York in September 1922.

She quickly supplanted Theda Bara as silent film's top sex symbol and while (thanks to the vagaries of film preservation) I can't compare Negri to Bara's most famous role, Cleopatra, if Bara's surviving film A Fool There Was is any indicator, Negri was lightyears beyond her in terms of projecting sexuality on the screen. Was Negri a great actress? I'm not sure. But judging from the reaction of audiences when her European films finally made their way to America, she was revolutionary.

The films with Lubitsch also represented Negri at the top of her popularity. Despite begging her to come to Hollywood, Paramount didn't really know what to do with Negri and as her star faded, she became even more theatrical and haughty, which poisoned her relationship to both the studio and her audience.

When in 1926, the press decided her engagement to the recently deceased Rudolph Valentino was a fabrication, the public was done with her. To her dying day, Negri insisted that the engagement was real and told the Los Angeles Times shortly before her death, "Rudy was the great love of my life. I remember him with great regret. Somehow, the fates changed what wasn't to be. You can't rage with anger against it, and even though you love someone, you like to be with them and want to marry them and hope that it will all work out this time ... but he died, just when we were engaged to be married."

She was also briefly engaged to Charlie Chaplin who jilted her soon after giving her a $15,000 engagement ring. Negri's revenge? She gave the ring to her Forbidden Paradise co-star, Rod La Rocque.

She later married a Georgian prince, Serge Mdivani, who left her for an opera singer after Negri lost her fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. After their divorce, Negri lived with Margaret West, a Texas oil heiress, until the latter's death in 1963.

"No one could believe that we were closest friends, that nothing sexual was involved," she wrote in her autobiography. "Yet it is true. She was as close a friend as I've ever had."

When talkies came in, Negri's thick accent relegated her to supporting roles. Despite a measure of success in such films as A Woman Commands—she had a hit with the song "Paradise"—she retreated to Europe and retired in 1943, making one last picture in 1964, The Moon-Spinners, at Walt Disney's personal behest. Her London press conference promoting the film was a sensation—she showed up with a live cheetah on a chain leash.

Negri died on August 1, 1987, in San Antonio, Texas. She was 90 years old.

And While We're At It, Three Looks At Richard Barthelmess

Richard Barthelmess was born in 1895 to a theatrical family and was working on the stage when a friend of his mother, film star Alla Nazimova, offered him a part in her next film, War Brides. He made twenty-two movies over the next three years, but it was his performance as the Chinese immigrant Cheng Huan in D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms that brought him his most lasting fame. He followed that up with two more classics, Way Down East and Tol'able David, the former for Griffith again, the latter at Barthelmess's own newly-formed production company, Inspiration Pictures.

He was nominated for an Oscar in 1929, the first year of the award's existence, losing to Emil Jannings.

Barthelmess continued to make movies during the sound era, including The Last Flight which I reviewed earlier this week, and The Cabin in the Cotton with Bette Davis (the one where she says "I'd like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair"), but by and large his acting technique was too stiff for sound pictures and the size and number of his parts quickly diminished. Probably his last great film role was as Bat MacPherson in Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings.

Barthelmess made his last movie in 1942 then joined the Naval Reserve. After the war, he returned to Long Island, New York, where he died of cancer in 1963.

A Musical Interlude: Marlene Dietrich In The Blue Angel

While I was working on my essay about the best picture of 1929-30, it occurred to me I've written about all of the nominees at some length—except for Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, the movie that made Marlene Dietrich an international star.

As stories go, it's nearly a carbon copy of Pandora's Box with Marlene Dietrich playing Lola Lola, a singer/prostitute who leads a stuffy college professor (Emil Jannings) to his destruction. Unlike Louise Brooks's innocent take on her spiritual sister, Lulu, Dietrich plays Lola Lola as more of a vampy femme fatale. Not bad, highly regarded.

There are actually two versions of The Blue Angel, shot simultaneously, one in English for American and British release, the other (Der Blaue Engel) in German for the rest of Europe. This was actually a common practice back in the day, it being technically easier at the time to shoot a scene twice than to dub the film with a foreign language. Which one you choose to see is up to you. Many cinephiles prefer the German version simply because Dietrich and Jannings are more comfortable with their native language, but it turns out I'm more comfortable with mine and so I am more likely to watch it in English.

Which, admittedly, makes me a philistine.

Anyway, the English language version introduced Dietrich singing what became her signature song, "Falling In Love Again," and I present it here for your entertainment.

So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Marlene Dietrich and "Falling In Love Again."

G.W. Pabst, Emil Jannings, Louise Brooks ... And Quentin Tarantino

Katie-Bar-The-Door and I just got back from a Thursday afternoon matinee (which somehow sounds dirty, but isn't)—Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. I won't say too much about it here since I'll no doubt be writing about it at length ten years from now when we get to 2009 ("Isn't it already 2009?" Katie asked reasonably), but I will say Inglourious Basterds is my favorite kind of movie, one where you can use the words "Fun-Stupid" and "Cinematic Masterpiece" in the same sentence. If you're a fan of Rio Bravo, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or North by Northwest, you know what I mean.

I mention Inglourious Basterds here because as Katie said after the show, "Quentin Tarantino has been reading your blog." Which is to say that the movie is chock full of references to G.W. Pabst, Emil Jannings, German Expressionism and an allusion to Louise Brooks ("There is no Dietrich, there is no Riefenstahl, there is only von Hammersmark!").

Great stuff, an afternoon well spent.

The Katie Award Nominees For 1928-29

If the Academy was in the ballpark the first year it handed out Oscars, it completely blew it the next. This year the winners were chosen by a five-member panel—The Central Board of Judges—and while the previous year's smoke-filled room used the awards to settle scores and promote their own interests, at least they felt the need to pretend they were motivated by artistic concerns. This year the panel seemed interested only in handing out awards to the Academy's founders and the man who hand-picked them for the job, Louis B. Mayer.

It was not until the following year that the full membership of the Academy voted on the awards.

The Broadway Melody is one of the weakest best picture winners ever, and that's saying something. It's the story of two sisters who go to New York and fall for the same guy. As musicals go, it did feature the classic title tune, but the story is trite and the acting, especially among the supporting cast, is too awful to be believed.

At least the Board of Judges made Mayer happy—it was his studio, MGM, that produced The Broadway Melody.

Another two of the top awards went to co-founders of the Academy. Mary Pickford, who won the Katie as best actress in 1927-28, took home the best actress trophy for her first talkie, Coquette. Audiences flocked to see "America's Sweetheart" talk for the first time but critics reviled her performance and only the first Oscar campaign in history secured the award.

Likewise, best director Frank Lloyd, who won for the dull and overly-long The Divine Lady, was one of the founding members of the Academy and his win raised eyebrows among the press.

As for the best actor winner, I encourage you to go to Turner Classic Movies and watch some clips of Warner Baxter's performance as the Cisco Kid from In Old Arizona. If your head doesn't explode, you're made of sterner stuff than I am. Check out the clip entitled "Ham and Eggs." Ostensibly, the ham refers to the Kid's breakfast, but don't you believe it.

Two of the Academy's choices, best screenplay winner, The Patriot, an Ernst Lubitsch movie which also provided a best actor nominee, and The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, which earned MGM set designer Cedric Gibbons the first of eleven Oscars (he was nominated thirty-nine times), have both been lost. That is, unfortunately, an all too common story when it comes to the early history of motion pictures—Hollywood took no care when it came to preserving these early films and let thousands of movies deteriorate or vanish altogether. Aside from losing irreplaceable works of art, Hollywood's negligence makes my task of handing out coveted Katie awards all the more difficult. They have a lot to answer for.

Hopefully, this round of Katie awards will improve on the Academy's choices. At least I don't owe Louis B. Mayer anything.

The nominees for the 1928-29 Katie Awards are:

PICTURE:
The Cameraman (prod. Buster Keaton)
The Docks Of New York (prod. J.G. Bachmann)
The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (prod. Société générale des films)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck)
The Wind (prod. Victor Sjöström)

ACTOR:
George Bancroft (The Docks Of New York)
Douglas Fairbanks (The Iron Mask)
Buster Keaton (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)
Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March)

ACTRESS:
Marion Davies (Show People)
Maria Falconetti (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Lillian Gish (The Wind)
Bessie Love (The Broadway Melody)

DIRECTOR:
Luis Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou)
Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Victor Sjöström (The Wind)

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Wallace Beery (Beggars Of Life)
Lewis Stone (A Woman Of Affairs)
Ernest Torrence (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Olga Baclanova (The Docks Of New York)
Mary Nolan (West Of Zanzibar)
Anita Page (Our Dancing Daughters)

SCREENPLAY:
Jules Furthman; story by John Monk Saunders (The Docks Of New York)
Joseph Delteil and Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion Of Joan Of Arc)
Frances Marion (The Wind)

I'll start handing out Katies a couple of days from now, beginning with Best Screenplay ...

The Must-See Movies Of 1927-28

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich has called 1928 the greatest year in the history of movies, which is definitely saying something. If we expand the time frame a bit to include both 1927 and 1928, I will agree that he's on to something.

Between January 1, 1927 and the end of 1928, more than a dozen films were released which might reasonably make a list of the best movies ever made, including The General, Metropolis, Napoleon (released too early in 1927 to qualify for this year's Katies), Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, The Crowd, The Man Who Laughs, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The Circus, Wings; Laugh, Clown, Laugh and a handful of late 1928 releases, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, The Wind, The Cameraman, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Docks Of New York and The Wedding March (eligible for next year's Katies). Greta Garbo was never more popular, Gloria Swanson was still doing great work, Emil Jannings hadn't joined the Nazi party. Lon Chaney, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish gave the best performances of their careers. Directors Murnau, Chaplin, Keaton, Lang and Dreyer were at or near their peaks, and Lubitsch was emerging as the next great director. Movie audiences wouldn't see such an outpouring of quality again until 1939, the year most film historians fix as the best ever, and it's clear, at least in retrospect, that silent movies had reached their highest ever level of artistic achievement and were poised for even greater breakthroughs.

And yet, once The Jazz Singer hit theaters, studios couldn't pay audiences to see anything but talkies. Silent movies were better than ever but for the audiences of the time, they might as well have never been made. It's as if the "Mona Lisa" were hanging in Louvre unseen while art lovers rushed past it to crowd around a McDonald's placemat.

There wouldn't again be such a disconnect between quality and box office receipts until the present age.

Commercially speaking—in the long run, the only language Hollywood speaks—silent movies were dead and there was no going back.

Unfortunately, the new sound technology was primitive, relying on large, immobile cameras and unreliable microphones that glued actors in place and returned movies to that place from whence they had just escaped, the stage-bound theater. It took about five years for sound technology to become workable enough for directors to move the camera again and more than a decade for Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland to remember that they could.

In the meantime, in case you need reminding, this is my list of movies that I consider the must-see movies of 1927-28. Unlike my list of Twenty Silent Movies To Cut Your Teeth On, not all of these movies are equally accessible to a viewer unfamiliar with silent movies, but I do believe every one of them is worth the time and effort is you are so inclined.

The Circus—Charlie Chaplin's comedy of a tramp who finds love and work in the circus

The Crowd—King Vidor's gritty tale of the American Dream turned nightmare

Laugh, Clown, Laugh—Lon Chaney as a man destroyed by love

The Man Who Laughs—a macabre love story about a man with a face that inspired Heath Ledger's Joker

The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg—a bittersweet romantic comedy about a prince who falls for a commoner

Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans—my pick for the best movie of the year, about a marriage in crisis

Wings—a rip-snorting war picture about World War I flying aces and the girl they left behind

All but two of these movies, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg and Wings, are available on DVD.

You might also check out Sadie Thompson, the 1928 Gloria Swanson-Lionel Barrymore movie based on Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain." Time hasn't been kind to the print and the last reel has been lost, but film historians reconstructed the ending with the use of still photographs and what remains is very good. Sadie Thompson earned Swanson an Oscar nomination, the first of three, and might have earned her and Barrymore (the latter in a supporting role) Katies for their work if I could have been more certain of what I was seeing. Sadie Thompson is available on DVD.

What can I tell you? This whole business of handing out awards, even with eighty years of hindsight, is a frustratingly subjective business. It only gets worse the closer to the present we get.

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards For 1927-28

PICTURE: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox)

ACTOR: Lon Chaney (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)

ACTRESS: Mary Pickford (My Best Girl)

DIRECTOR: F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Clara Bow (Wings)

SCREENPLAY: King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd)

SPECIAL AWARDS: The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin) (Best Picture-Comedy); Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer) (Best Actor-Comedy or Musical); Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd) (Best Actress-Drama); George Groves (The Jazz Singer) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Toot Toot Tootsie" (The Jazz Singer) (Best Song); Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) (Cinematography)

MUST-SEE MOVIES OF 1927-28: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans; The Man Who Laughs; The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg; The Circus; Wings; The Crowd; Laugh, Clown, Laugh

The most popular movie of 1927 was The Jazz Singer, which introduced synchronized sound to the movies at last. Audiences were thrilled not just to see Al Jolson singing but to hear him singing—and after plowing through dozens of silent movies in the past couple of weeks, I can't say I blame them. You forget how much information you process through your ears and how much pleasure you can get from a human voice—at least until you do without for a while.

Only one problem with The Jazz Singer: it's a terrible movie. Really. I mean, yeah, being able to put sound in a movie was a tremendous breakthrough and audiences ate it up with a spoon, but beyond it's importance now as a historical footnote, I can't recommend it.

As for everything else that was released between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928 (I'm following Oscar's convention of straddling the two years), the Academy actually did a pretty good job of distinguishing the wheat from the chaff even if the awards were largely parceled out as a result of insider politicking and studio manipulation.

Wings (Best Production) and Sunrise (Unique and Artistic Production) won the two best picture awards, Emil Jannings was a well-respected actor and won for The Way Of All Flesh and The Last Command (remember, the award in those days was handed out for a body of work rather than a specific picture), and best actress winner, Janet Gaynor, was the star of the best movie of the year, Sunrise.

There were two best director trophies that year, one for comedy, one for drama. Lewis Milestone, who would win another Oscar for directing the classic All Quiet On The Western Front, won for the former; Frank Borzage, another two time winner, won the latter.

All respectable choices. With the benefit of more than eighty years worth of hindsight, however, I think the Academy could have done better.

That's where the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards come in.

I've done away with the splitting of categories—one director instead of two, one best picture award instead of the unexplained and unexplainable Best Production and Unique and Artistic Production awards.

I'm also doing away with Academy's habit of spreading the award for writing across a wide variety of ever-changing categories, including best original screenplay, best adapted screenplay, motion picture story, story and screenplay, screenplay and even this year's award for "title writing." With the Katies, it's one award, Best Screenplay, regardless of whether it's based on another source, wholly original or, as is often the case, a thinly disguised rip-off of last year's popular movie.

As I did with the career achieve- ment awards for the Silent Era, I will explain my choices in a series of essays over the next couple of weeks.

I've also included here a list of what I think are the must-see movies of the year, and will include a must-see list for each year I hand out awards.

Finally, I have included choices for best supporting actor and actress even though the Academy did not create those categories until 1936. I felt I otherwise would have ended up ignoring too many performances worth recognition. Besides, it gave me another excuse to see even more movies—and what could be wrong with that?

Notes: I don't have an official Fun-Stupid movie pick for 1927-28, but two might fit the bill: Wings is overly long for a silent movie and a bit corny but it also has at least an hour's worth of some of the best stunt flying and aerial dogfights ever filmed; and Charlie Chaplin's The Circus features a lot of physical comedy and acrobatic stunts and is readily available.

Best Actor Of The Silent Era: Charles Chaplin (Part One: "And The Nominees Are ...")

Decades after the demise of silent movies, one star from that era remains instantly recognizable: Charles Chaplin. And when it came time to choose the best actor of the Silent Era, I didn't hesitate. I'm a Chaplin man, through and through.

My feelings on this matter, however, are not universally shared, nor should they be, this being a democracy of aesthetic preferences rather than a tyranny of objective certainties. But I think I can explain my choice in a way that will at least show it's an informed one.

First, let's run through the nominees one by one.

Arguably, Emil Jannings was the most respected dramatic actor of the Silent Era and in fact, he won the very first Oscar for his performances in The Last Command and The Way Of All Flesh (early Oscars were awarded for a body of work in a given year rather than for a specific performance).

But you don't hear much about Jannings anymore—and not just because he returned to Hitler's Germany in the early 1930s and became an ardent Nazi. As I have written before, silent movies didn't lend themselves to straight drama and watching Jannings work now is, in my opinion, strictly for film students.

Another fine dramatic actor was John Barrymore, a handsome matinee idol known as "The Great Profile." Still, to my mind, his best performances (until alcoholism destroyed his career) came during the early days of the sound era.

Then there's Rudolph Valentino, the male pin-up star of the Silent Era. He made thirty-eight movies, The Sheik being the best known. Frankly, though, Valentino was more of an icon than an actor—pleasing eye candy if that's your idea of a good time—and his appeal lies more in the idea the name evokes than in any actual performance.

Equally famous in his day was Douglas Fairbanks. He was in some fine movies, co-founded United Artists and was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1940. But fairly or unfairly, I think of Fairbanks primarily as the Silent Era's greatest stunt man and swashbuckler than its greatest actor.

The strongest choice for best actor of the Silent Era not named Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin would be Lon Chaney, forever known, thanks to his brilliant makeup jobs and varied characterizations, as "The Man of a Thousand Faces." The title roles he played in the silent versions of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera are among the most indelible in the history of motion pictures.

Nevertheless, as great as Chaney was, there are only two real possible choices for title of Best Actor of the Silent Era: Charles Chaplin or Buster Keaton.

Next up, Part Two: "Chaplin Or Keaton: The Never-ending Argument"