Review - Tartuffe

March 20, 2020

Tartuffe – Germany, 1925

Seldom do I question a director’s decision to make a movie. During the studio system, directors had very little choice in the matter, and I prefer to give directors who made films after its collapse the benefit of the doubt since what we see on the screen does not always match what a director envisioned or intended. However, while I was watching F.W. Murnau’s 1925 film Tartuffe, that question kept resurfacing.

The film is based on the play Tartuffe, first performed in 1664, 65 years after the first staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and written by 17^th century playwright, actor and poet Moliere. I mention Hamlet because even if you’ve never heard of Tartuffe, you’re likely familiar with Shakespeare’s drama, and therefore, very little that happens throughout the film’s 63-minute running time is likely to come as a surprise. True, the same can be said of other films adapted from novels, but the plots of these films are not so well known that even people who haven’t read them know their beginning, middle, and end.

To test this notion, let me explain the set-up of Murnau’s Tartuffe: A manipulative housekeeper (well-played by Rosa Valetti) has convinced her elderly employer (Hermann Picha) that his grandson (Andre Mattoni), an actor and supposed playboy, leads such a sinful life that he should be punished for his wickedness. Soon, we watch him write a legal note making her the sole heir to his fortune. The grandson gets wise to the plot, dons a clever disguise, and shows a film to both the schemer and the schemed. Any guess what the point of the film will be?

I should mention here that what I have just described is not in Moliere’s Tartuffe. His play focuses on the impact that a supposedly pious man named Tartuffe has on the family of a man named Orgon, and it has a number of fascinating twists and turns. Unfortunately, most of them have been removed in an attempt to produce a concise and uncomplicated cautionary tale. Gone is Orgon’s mother, who also falls under Tartuffe’s spell; also removed are Orgon’s children, an odd choice given that his daughter’s forced engagement to Tartuffe provides Orgon’s wife with a powerful motivation for wanting to expose him for the fraud he is. In Murnau’s version, there’s just Tartuffe, Orgon, his wife, Elmire, and Dorin, one of their housekeepers.

The result of this is that Tartuffe becomes a brief, overly simplified cautionary tale told not to detail the tragedy that can befall people who trust far too easily, but to send the message I know what you’re up to, a message that Murnau apparently doesn’t think has adequately been delivered, given how quickly the grandson reveals himself and announces his suspicions to his grandfather. This robs Moliere’s tale of much of its power, and while I’m not a fan of making changes to films when the director is no longer around to approve them, I could understand if someone decided to remove the film’s bookends and re-release it as a short.

The film was released a year after Murnau’s groundbreaking The Last Laugh. That was the film in which Murnau freed the camera from its stationary tripod, enabling him to use it in new, innovative ways, one of which was to put in on an elevator and film while it moved. As a result, the camera came alive. Murnau’s work here is equally impressive. Watch the way the camera follows Tartuffe as he leaves his room and descends the stairs, his eyes fixed on the Bible in front of them. It is hypnotic. In another scene, he focuses his lens on a picture of Orgon, as his wife struggles to accept the passive, dutiful subject that her husband has become. Suddenly, a tear falls on it, then another. We soon see the woman press her lips against the picture and weep. It is an incredible moment, and Murnau’s camera makes it immensely personal.

I’m not sure Emil Jannings ever gets Tartuffe, playing him more like a depraved Igor-figure rather than someone who could believably attract followers with his religious messages. Only when he reveals his true nature does Jannings begin to play him as a flesh-and-blood character. Werner Krauss fairs better as Orgon, as does Lil Dagover as Elmire, and I admire the way Murnau’s camera enables us to see the world through Tartuffe’s lecherous eyes. We see exactly what he is lusting for, and it made me a bit worried about Elmire’s safety.    

Still, I could never shake the awareness that none of what I was watching really mattered. It was a play performed by an actor, a story told to shake a character of her sense of invulnerability. Eventually Tartuffe would again become something that Tartuffe the play was never intended to be, and I dreaded that. Now I can’t help lamenting what could have been. Murnau was a master storyteller; he fashioned images so powerful that they have become a permanent part of our cinematic memories. Tartuffe has its fair share of such scenes, yet they are diminished by the narrative they are used to support. Tartuffe could easily have been a masterpiece. In its present form, however, it is just a minor beauty - watchable, yet entirely forgettable, an example of what happens when a director and screenwriter don’t trust their source material. It’s a pity, really. Just read Tartuffe. It didn’t need any changes. (on DVD; on Blu-ray in April 28, 2020)

2 and a half stars

*Tartuffe is a silent film.

Review - Harakiri (1919)

April 28, 2018

Harakiri – Germany, 1919

I wish Haibblut and Master of Love were not lost films. Now, it goes without saying that I wish all lost silent films could still be seen, but I have an unusual reason for singling out these two. They were both directed by Fritz Lang, a director I’ve admired since I was awed by his 1921 film Destiny. See, Haibblut and Master of Love were the first two films that Lang directed, and if they still existed, there would be less chance that Lang’s The Spiders – Part 1: The Golden Sea and Harakiri would be the first two of his films that someone might watch, The Spiders being a narrative mess and Harakiri a film that is only intermittently interesting and which fails to capture the power and emotion that has made Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly one for the ages.

The film is simultaneously unnecessarily long and unwisely short. This is an odd description, I realize, but I have a feeling that were certain scenes shortened and a particular character removed, the film would have been better. Conversely, were more scenes added that fully developed the relationship between the film’s ill-fated lovers and which better explained the motivation of another, the film may have had the necessary backdrop to achieve the level of tragedy that the story truly deserves.

By now, I imagine most people are familiar with the story of Madame Butterfly. In Lang’s film the lead character’s name is O-Take-San. O-Take is the daughter of a successful businessman who is not quite as devoted as the priest that advises him would like him to be. In an early scene, we see O-Take playing with a western-style doll and very much acting her age, providing that the character is supposed to be as young as she is in the opera rather than a mature woman in her twenties. (The movie does not explicitly state her age.) The priest wants O-Take to become a priestess and warns her father to beware the wrath of the Buddha.  However, O-Take’s father tells him that the decision is hers and hers alone to make. This dilemma is resolved in one of the film’s more peculiar moments. In it, O-Take appears to be talking to one of her dolls, and as a result of this “conversation,” she offers the doll up as a sacrifice instead of herself. I’m sure someone at the time believed such a scenario was realistic; looking at it today, it’s hard to believe people could have been so misinformed.

The priest soon gets his revenge, and the walls begin to close in on O-Take. Cue the heroic music, for no sooner does it look like it’s the priestess-hood for her than her knight in shining armor arrives to crash the party and rescue her from a life she dreads. He does this of course by trespassing on her father’s land and hitting on the first woman he sees. Fortunately, he’s charming enough to make it all seem so romantic, and just like that, O-Take falls hard. No more talking to dolls for her. From here on out, it’s love, secret rendezvous, marriage… and eventual heartbreak, of course.

Unfortunately, the film rushes the couple’s initial encounter, and while this may work when two characters sing a duet onstage, it is a misstep when they do not. O-Take simply starts to smile, and her supposedly dreamboat, a seaman named Olaf, just stands to the side and slightly smiles. I wasn’t convinced that either of them suddenly couldn’t live without the other, and while this might make sense for Olaf, given his later actions, it hurts the audience’s ability to take O-Take’s later ones seriously. From here on, the film seems to be playing a variation of that children’ activity, paint-by-number, for it just starts to go through the motions, hitting all the parts of the story it should, but never establishing the connection with the audience that it needs in order to truly impact viewers emotionally. As O-Take, Lil Dagover gives it her best effort, but this is a story that desperately needs to be felt, and Dagover is only partially successful in making the audience understand what is going on in O-Take’s heart and mind. Perhaps a song would have done the trick.

Alas, the film was made eight years too soon, so instead of a stirring emotional ballad, we’re treated to a lot of dead moments, ones in which characters travel on sedans, look menacing, and storm off shaking their heads. Also, a character named Prince Matahari remains a bit of a mystery. He is first seen eves-dropping on two men as they discuss O-Take’s plight, and then just a few moments later, there he is rushing in to take O-Take’s defense and offering himself up as a possible husband because by this time Japanese law no longer recognizes O-Take’s marriage to Olaf. Is the prince a cad trying to take advantage of a woman in a terrible situation or another love-struck soul whom fate has seen fit to strike with one of Cupid’s arrows? The film seems to be taking the second position, but I was never entirely convinced.

Perhaps it is difficulty of the source material that makes Harakiri so much of a letdown, yet as a say this I’m reminded of Anna May Wong’s moving film The Toll of the Sea, which was also inspired by Puccini’s work. That film worked, partly because it focused on her character and kept the story moving along at a suitable pace. Harakiri, in contrast, can feel like a chore; the film moves through inconsequential moments at a snail’s velocity when it should be doing so rapidly, and it should slow the pace when emotional moments arise. In this, it succeeds only part of the time, and I must confess that my eyes began to close several times during the film.

There’s little here that reminded me of Lang’s later, more accomplished work. For the most part, he plants his camera in one place and leaves it there. Few of the visuals are as memorable as those he created just two years later, and he seems unsure how to present moments that were illuminated onstage by professionals with rather impressive-sounding operatic voices. Here, all too often characters just stand around, and we are meant to see something meaningful in their inactivity. It’s asking a lot of the viewer.

Still, I didn’t hate the film. When the narrative moves along briskly, which it does more successfully in the second half, the film is indeed watchable. It just didn’t resonate that much with me, and this is a problem. In Madame Butterfly, we have a tragic tale that should bring tears to the eyes and make us lament the callousness of a man more interested in having a memorable experience than in keeping his promises. I just didn’t feel it, and the film suffered as a result. (on DVD as part of Kino’s Fritz Lang: The Early Works)

2 stars