Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/24/18

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, December 24, 2018

The Prisoner of Zenda (Rex Ingram, 1922)

Ramon Novarro in The Prisoner of Zenda

Rudolf Rassendyll/King Rudolf: Lewis Stone
Princess Flavia: Alice Terry
Col. Zapt: Robert Edeson
Grand Duke Michael: Stuart Holmes
Rupert of Hentzau: Ramon Novarro
Antoinette de Mauban: Barbara La Marr
Capt. Fritz von Tarlenheim: Malcolm McGregor

Director: Rex Ingram
Screenplay: Mary O'Hara
Based on a novel by Anthony Hope
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Art direction: Amos Myers
Film editing: Grant Whytock

What Rex Ingram's silent version of the old chestnut The Prisoner of Zenda needs is more Ramon Novarro as Rupert of Hentzau, the impish villain. What there is of Novarro's Rupert is delightful; more than almost any other member of the cast he shows the kind of awareness that the camera sees all, which would take him from silents into the sound era. It was near the start of his career, a year before became a star in Fred Niblo's Ben-Hur, and he's still billed as Ramon Samaniego, so it's possible that Ingram didn't fully see his potential. His Rupert is not quite as charmingly wicked as Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s in the 1937 John Cromwell version of the Anthony Hope tale, but that's partly because Ingram chooses not to play up the role, putting Rupert amid a cadre of Black Michael's henchmen until the final climactic duel with Rudolf. Lewis Stone plays the two Rudolfs with more reserve and less dash than Ronald Colman did in 1937, and Alice Terry is pretty but rather forgettable as Princess Flavia, a role that Madeleine Carroll brought to life in the sound version. Some spectacular sets make up for the tedium of Ruritanian intrigue that threatens to stifle the film whenever Novarro isn't around.