Review - Madam Satan

November 10, 2016

Madam Satan – US, 1930

The most important line in Cecil B. DeMille’s Madam Satan is uttered early on in the film by Mrs. Angela Brooks (Kay Johnson), the young wife of a wealthy playboy named Robert Brooks (Reginald Denny). It goes like this: “Is it worthwhile for a wife to break her back to please her husband?” The fact that she even asks this is proof that she is a kindhearted character, one whose own happiness would be willingly sacrificed in the name of love, and so she goes about tying to make her husband’s world as joyful as possible. She makes sure the servants have everything clean before he comes home, ensures that dinner is waiting for me when he walks in the door, and makes certain to look her best for him, even at very late hours. If only the cad did something to deserve this treatment.

That he doesn’t - not even at the conclusion of the film - is a problem, for it puts the onus on her to save the marriage. There’s even a moment in which Mr. Brooks tells her that she is to blame for the poor state of their marriage. As he explains it, she became cold and practical, a little too preoccupied with being married to actually spend quality time with her husband. In his words, she went from being a pal to being a wife, the insinuation being that when a woman gets married, she loses her sense of fun.

Early on in the film it is revealed that Robert has taken up with a spirited young woman named Trixie (Lillian Roth). We know she’s the villain because instead of enjoying classical music, she swings her hips to the sounds of jazz, smokes, and openly shows her legs. Decent women, this and films such as 1921’s The Affairs of Anatol imply, listen to classical music and attend formal parties. However, the film also subtly implies that keeping her man may require her to embrace, as one character puts it, flesh and blood. And so Angela sets out to meet and confront Trixie in an effort to win her man back, regardless of how unworthy he is.

Like many films from this time in film history, Madam Satan is an amalgamation of several film genres, and the combination is not an entirely successful one. The film includes moments intended as comedy, most of which involve Robert’s good friend Jimmy Wade (Roland Young). Then there are the film’s more dramatic elements, ones intended to reflect upon Angela’s status as a wronged woman, and the film continues the trend of adding musical numbers to stories that truly don’t need them. Far too often dramatic moments grind to a screeching halt just so characters can emote in songs that, which the exception of Trixie’s number, Low Down, have truly not aged well. There is also a storyline that resembles those found in many Shakespearean comedies. However, Shakespeare’s women were smart, and when they went out in disguise, it was often as wise and educated men who had some say in the fate of the people around them. That is not the case here. Here, she just cheapens herself.

And it’s not just her. The film includes a masque ball where men bid on women as if they were material objects, and at that same ball, skimpily dressed dancers bump and grind in a way that makes the whole scene resembles an orgy. It made me recall the ball in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. However, in that film, the ball was a metaphor for the morally-questionable situations that jealousy and anger can lead people to enter into. In Madam Satan, they’re purely sensational, and the creepy world it represents is portrayed as just another test of Angela’s love for her husband. In other words, she is not saving him from it; she is joining it, becoming a participant in its depravity for a guy who never stops being the schmuck he is revealed to be in the film’s opening moments.

Director Cecil B. DeMille is a legend, yet even he is not able to connect the film’s fragmented narratives into one cohesive thread. He is also unable to get his actors on track, and for most of the first half they are slightly off in their delivery of their lines. The pauses are too long, the emotions too flat, and the comedy too forced. Later DeMille seems to have instructed Denny to stand as if he were channeling a superhero from one of those early serials - his chest sticks out, his hands rest on his hips, even his voice becomes more animated. It’s more ludicrous than commanding.

Throughout all this, Young is the only one who really stands out. As Jimmy, he displays talents in comedy skills that in another film would have had audiences in stitches, and as the film unfolds, his is the only character to undergo real change. A smarter and more daring film would have taken this character and run with it. Here, he is simply underused. (Young acted steadily up until his death in 1953.)

Suffice to say, I was disappointed with the film. I wanted less comedy, fewer songs (or at least better ones), and more honest storytelling. Instead we get a patronizing approach to saving a marriage that essentially makes it the responsibility of the wife. She should be both sweet and wild, forgiving and driven. She should be willing to go to ends of the earth to save her marriage and to become whatever her husband wants her to become, and if she doesn’t, if she dares to have standards or self-respect, she has no one to blame but herself if her husband ends up in the arms of another women. Look. I get that this is an old movie and that it doesn’t reflect today’s sentiments. But I have to ask: Just when were such sentiments ever acceptable? (on DVD as part of Warner Brothers’ Archive Collection)

2 stars

Review – The Godless Girl

March 5, 2009

The Godless Girl – U.S., 1928

Cecil B. De Mille’s The Godless Girl begins with a warning that at first sight seems far-fetched. It seems something many people hold dear to them is in danger of being utterly destroyed, something as precious to some people as life itself – Christianity. The peril apparently comes from Atheist Societies, groups of non-believers who value science over religion and refuse to believe in a god until science conclusively verifies that one exists. To witness just how real the danger is, we step into an average high school somewhere in North America. There, a girl in her teens is cautiously stuffing fliers into her fellow students’ lockers, ever so careful so as not to be seen doing so. The fliers announce a meeting of a group known as “the Godless Society,” which from the rest of the slogans on the flier is certainly not advocating a civil discourse on theology and science. “Kill the Bible,” the announcement reads. “Man made God. God did not make man.” To the school’s principal, the distribution of the fliers and the words writing on them are crimes worthy of a jail sentence, and he declares that such acts blasphemy must be stopped.

Watching the students as they hear this proclamation, it appears that many of the students already have an idea who is behind the anonymous fliers. However, instead of revealing that the perpetrator is Judy Craig (Lina Basquette), a classmate named Bob Hathaway (Tom Keene) asks the principal to give the students permission to handle the situation their own way. The principal acquiesces on the condition that there is no violence. And yet it is clear that there will be. Later as Judy officially begins the meeting, a mob assembles outside and begins to make their way into the building and up the stairs. At the meeting, which resembles a town hall lecture more than it does a high school club session, we see signs declaring this to be the age of science and a new recruit being asked to declare his disbelief by taking a oath while touching the head of a monkey, whom Judy refers to as their “relative.” As Bob’s group of believers confronts Judy’s group of non-believers, a melee resembling nothing you’ve seen on film erupts. Bob makes the first threat, a member of the Godless Society throws the first punch, and within minutes, there is a dead body at the bottom of the stairs.

From here, the film takes a rather unexpected turn. Instead of staying focused on the two groups involved in the riot, the film takes Bob and Judy out of their comfort zone and places them in a place that strips them of all of their power to wage war or promote peace. The result of this is that what the film had presented as a national situation is reduced to a personal grudge. Bob and Judy, as well as a boy named Samuel Johnson (Eddie Quillan), are sent to a reformatory for their roles in the riot and their classmate’s subsequent death. At the reformatory, they are stripped of their identities, physically abused by ruthless guards, and punished for trying to be kind to others. In essence, they are no longer the aggressors. That role now falls to the guards and wardens of the reformatory, and it a role that they play so well that the film sees the need to remind viewers that not all reformatories are like the one depicted in the film. While I have no doubt that reformatories or prisons do in fact affect prisoners profoundly, I felt that by changing the roles of the central characters, the film was trying too hard to make them likeable. Whereas before their incarceration, they were quite willing to attack others in defense of their beliefs, now they are victims, good people in a rather horrendous place. With such a set-up, it’s not hard to predict what comes next.

In spite of this predictability, The Godless Girl remains interesting throughout. We meet a fellow inmate named Mame (Marie Prevost), who ever so slowly seems to be convincing Judy that those who believe in the Bible may indeed be onto something. For humor, even though it is not necessary in a film such as this one, we have Samuel, who seldom misses a chance to be clever or naïve, but who will nobly defend a friend in need in the blink of an eye. And then there’s the head guard (menacingly played by Noah Berry), a brute so violent and merciless that the prisoners under his watch are in very real physical and mortal danger. In one scene, the head guard beats a young boy so severely that the boy loses consciousness. He then turns to another boy and says, “I’ll…be…back!” Even in intertitles, his delivery of the line is frightening, and we understand the dire implications of these words.

Having established the beginning of a change in Judy’s way of thinking, the film stops give screen time to the opposite opinion, so when Judy’s hands are burned by an electric fence and the scars on her palms resemble a cross, no one even mentions that the scar could simply be an imprint of the fence she was holding onto. The film then is clearly about Judy’s eventual acceptance of a higher power. Moreover, as Judy and Bob slowly overcome their initial hatred of one another and come to see the world and religion in the same light, it is not surprising that the film has them fall in love. However, their emotions occur very quickly in an environment in which they are kept apart most of the time. Yet in a film like this, even that makes a bit of sense. Judy and Bob are teenagers after all, and young love does have the tendency to come on unexpectedly and with a great deal of intensity. That said, I was still much more intrigued by the opening conflict than anything that came after it. (on the third disc of Treasures from the American Film Archives III: Social Issues in American Film)

3 stars

Review – Carmen

November 21, 2008

Carmen – U.S., 1915

It occurred to me as I was watching Cecil B. De Mille’s 1915 powerful and tragic adaptation of Carmen that some people may hold tightly to righteous standards as a defense mechanism. Perhaps such people are subconsciously aware of the danger they’d pose to others and themselves if they were ever suddenly unable to keep their emotions in check. And such a man is Carmen’s tragic protagonist Don Jose. As Carmen opens, Don Jose (Wallace Reid) is in an enviable position, at least from his perspective. He’s the new officer in charge of preventing smugglers from bringing their goods into a seaside town, and he approaches the job with a remarkable sense of professionalism and moral certainty. Witness the way he doesn’t even bat an eye or consider for a moment the local tavern keeper’s not so subtle references to financial reward coming to those who would simply look the other way as smugglers passed through the town’s gates. Upon seeing Don Jose’s incorruptible nature for himself, the tavern keeper Pastia (Horace B. Carpenter) – who just happens to be in league with the island’s smugglers – instructs the smugglers to head to the mountains and wait for an opportunity to bring the goods in to present itself.

That opportunity comes courtesy of Carmen (Geraldine Farras), a local gypsy who knows the ways of men perhaps a bit too well. Everywhere she goes – no matter whether it’s Pastia’s tavern or outside a local factory – men flock to her, and some of them do not have her best interests in mind. This is a reality that Carmen is well aware of, and she had developed mannerisms to deal with it. One moment she’s attracting men to her and relishing her ability to do so, and the next moment she’s kicking or slapping overzealous men away and proclaiming, “My kisses are not so easily won.” She is fully aware that she is breaking hearts by doing so. It is interesting to note though that this approach is not successful in keeping her away from those who could be seeking a way to satisfy the lust in their hearts, an observation that Carmen herself seems unable or subconsciously unwilling to make. Perhaps it is this conceit, this overconfidence that causes Carmen to offer herself as the solution to the smuggler’s plight. To the joyous band of smugglers and gypsies around her, she announces that everyone can be bought by something and proclaims that she will deliver Don Jose “bound by love.” And with that, she sets off to alter Don Jose’s character just long enough for her friends to bring their illegal products into the city.

One of the impressive aspects of Carmen is how perfectly cast the film is. Wallace Reid is a wonder to behold as a man undone by his own passion. When first approached by Carmen, Reid shows an enormous amount of conflicting emotions. He tries to remain stoic and unaffected, but grins creep in, revealing against his will how surprised and pleased he is to be the object of Carmen’s interest. Even in black-and-white, his red cheeks are clearly visible. This variety of emotion makes his later obsession all the more believable. For her part, Geraldine Ferras exudes great confidence as Carmen. She is a woman in complete control of her life, and she has most certainly decided to make the most of that fact. Her every motion is carefully choreographed, from the swaying of her hips to the lifting of one of her shoulders, and her power to both entice and emotionally undo the men around her is completely believable. Their scenes together have an amazing degree of intensity.

It is safe to say that Carmen is the villain of the first half of the film, as it is her scheme that initiates Don Jose’s fall from grace. However, a case could be made that she is the more sympathetic character in the second half of the film. From the smugglers attempts to not compensate Carmen fairly for her work to the very clear danger that Don Jose’s colleague poses to her physical safety, it is clear that the life Carmen is leading is not one that lends itself to an easy, happy ending. However, I still found myself pulling for her somewhat. Sure it was she who set this series of events in motion, but why shouldn’t she be able to live out her life with her one true love, a toreador named Escamillo, a man who may be just one bull fight away from greatness? Why shouldn’t she be able to lead a life of wealth and prominence? Yet as the town erupts into violence – violence that Carmen in many ways is responsible for – it is also hard not to feel for the fallen man that is Don Jose. As he puts it, “I have paid the full price to make [Carmen] mine.” He is correct in this. His downfall is certainly not what Carmen had intended, and yet it is never a result that she regrets being the catalyst for - at least not until it’s too late. (on DVD from Image-Entertainment)

3 and a half stars

Review – Manslaughter

October 31, 2008

Manslaughter – U.S., 1922

Cecil B. De Mille's Manslaughter is ultimately a film about the redemption of three characters during a decade in which a certain form of decadence has taken hold of many of the young. Coming of age in the aftermath of the First World War, a conflict that left many of them orphans, many young adults had suddenly found themselves affluent not due to their own diligence but because of the death of one or both of their parents. One of the effects of this I’m told was that a generation grew up not understanding the transitory nature of wealth or the value of hard work, and thus in the decade that is sometimes called the Rolling 20s, fortunes were needlessly squandered. In fact, many of the youth we see in Manslaughter are more interested in the sound of the trumpet and the jitterbug than in putting in a hard day's work and saving for the future. It is in this time of waste youth and squandered incomes that De Mille's film takes place, and its chief example of someone caught up in the glamour and the excess of the times is Lydia Thorne (Leatrice Joy), a woman overjoyed at the sight of a pogo stick, flattered by male attention, and possessing a carefree attitude regarding alcohol and men. She is a woman who thinks nothing about trying to outrun a train or bribing a police officer with jewelry. And yet by some people's standards, she is an incredibly fortunate woman. After all, it is not every woman that is pursued simultaneously by three men with enormous earnings potential.

Of the three men competing for her affection, two are worth mentioning, for each of them loves Lydia for very different reasons. First, there's the former governor Stephan Albee (John Miltern), a man who loves the freewheeling, wild side of Lydia, the side that alcohol, music with a frantic beat, and a lively party bring out. Morally bankrupt, he thinks nothing about trying to deceive a drunken unreserved woman into marrying him. Then there's the Distict Attorney Daniel O'Bannon (Thomas Meighan), the film's hero. We know that because he loves Lydia not for who she is but for who she can be. Yes, he sees the woman behind the outlandish, juvenile behavior, a woman with the potential to be so much more than she is when in the company of Governor Albee and his wild crowd. Getting to that woman could prove tough, though, for it is Lydia's belief that there's nothing wrong with a woman not restraining herself to the roles prescribed to the more traditional women of the times. As she explains it, “Modern girls don't sit around and knit.” And so off she goes to partake in the excesses of the moment, while Dan is left to curse the falsity and immorality of the times, times that cause him to reminisce on ancient Rome and the lustful orgies and sinful behavior of its time.

The film then introduces Evans (Lois Wilson), Lydia's faithful but increasingly desperate maid. Evans, it turns out, has a sick son, and unless she finds a way to send him to a place with a warmer climate, their doctor warns, he could die. Having only $20 to her name, Evans is forced to make a terrible decision. Later, when she is questioned about the theft of one of Lydia’s many pieces of jewelry, it is her body language that gives her away. Discovered, she becomes physically weak and collapses into Dan's arms. This is unfortunately witnessed by Lydia, and her heart is hardened to Evans' family emergency. Evans will have to come before judge and jury in spite of Dan's initial pleas for mercy and compassion.

I expected Manslaughter to turn against Lydia and for Dan and Evans to find each other in the end. However, I was mistaken. Instead, we are taken back to the story of the police officer who Lydia paid off with a bracelet earlier in the film. Seeing how tarnished he is by the incident, how he loses stature in his own home and is told he is no longer worthy of Chevrons bestowed upon him for bravery made me realize the destructive effect - albeit somewhat unintended - that Lydia can have on others. However, Officer Drummond's domestic fall from grace is nothing compared to the damage that Lydia’s inflicts - again not completely intended - upon him later when he attempts to put matters right. Her actions then, as well as her subsequent behavior during her eventual trial, cause her to be seen in an entirely different light.

As I said in the beginning, Manslaughter is ultimately a story of redemption. As one character falls from grace, another rises to prominence. As one becomes vengeful, another embraces peace. For some, it takes mental strength to recover; for others, it requires a bit of divine intervention. Perhaps in the hands of a lesser director, this may have seemed contrived. However, in De Mille's hands, it is moving and engaging. In Manslaughter, we witness a D.A. charging the woman he loves with manslaughter, a woman suddenly realizing the serious nature of her crime and trying the look remorseful, a widow clutching the torn, blood-stained uniform of her deceased husband and then verbally and physically assaulting the person she blames for his death, and a man losing faith in himself and his judgment simply because he followed the law to the best of his ability.

The performances in Manslaughter are all worthy of praise. Thomas Meighan, in particular, delivers a powerful performance. Equally up to the task are Leatrice Joy, Lois Wilson, and Julia Faye as Officer Drummond's wife. Mrs. Faye's performance during Lydia's trial was particularly moving, as she struggles to testify against a woman who doesn’t seem to comprehend the agony that her actions have caused her. It is a credit to the film that Lydia's redemption does not include being forgiven by Mrs. Drummond and that Lydia actions never completely stop harming those around her. After all, in an age of moral ambivalence, one person's redemption may be another person’s golden opportunity. (on DVD from Kino)

4 stars