Madame X (Lionel Barrymore, 1929)

Madame X (Lionel Barrymore, 1929)

Cast: Ruth Chatterton, Lewis Stone, Raymond Hackett, Holmes Herbert, Eugenie Besserer, Ullrich Haupt, Mitchell Lewis. Screenplay: Willard Mack, based on a play by Alexandre Bisson. Cinematography: Arthur Reed. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: William S. Gray. Music: William Axt, Sam Wineland.

Perhaps because Lionel Barrymore had directed a few silent films and because he had acted on stage before giving over his career entirely to movies, MGM drafted him into directing Ruth Chatterton, making her own transition from stage to screen, in this remake of the old chestnut Madame X. Alexandre Bisson's 1908 play had been a hit starring Sarah Bernhardt and was filmed twice as a silent before being dusted off for the novelty of the talkies. The 1929 film was enough of a hit to put Barrymore and Chatterton in the running for the second annual Academy Awards. There were no official nominations that year -- only winners were announced -- but Academy records show that they were under consideration for the Oscars that went to Frank Lloyd for The Divine Lady and Mary Pickford for Coquette (Sam Taylor). That they were considered at all is a sign of how weak the direction and performances of the year were -- it was the first time talking pictures were allowed to compete for the awards. Barrymore boasted of one feat he achieved as a director on the film: He improvised a boom microphone with a fishing pole. But even that claim has been contended by others, and it's likely that MGM's novice sound engineer Douglas Shearer was as responsible as Barrymore for the innovation. Otherwise, Madame X is stiffly staged and filmed, betraying not only its theatrical origins but also the difficulty filmmakers were having with recorded sound. Scenes are often badly framed, with a character's nose and mouth peeping into the shot or the lower half of a face disappearing at the bottom on the screen. In a scene in which Lewis Stone and Holmes Herbert are at a table for an intense discussion, Herbert keeps standing up and sitting down, and you can sense the cameraman's effort to tilt the bulky sound camera up and down to follow him. As for the acting, Chatterton starts off badly in the opening scenes in which her character is still a lady. She retains the intonations of stage elocution, with "cruel" coming out as "crew-ell" and her voice pitched and her mannerisms exaggerated so they can reach the recesses of the theater.  But later in the film, after she has "fallen," she's often quite effectively naturalistic as the weary, tough woman of the world, and she pulls off her drunk scene well. The plot of Madame X is familiar stuff: Woman sins, woman suffers, woman achieves a kind of redemption, and woman dies. But it's substantial enough that it continued to be remade, as soon as 1937 with Gladys George directed by Sam Wood, in British, Philippine, Greek and Mexican versions, in a glossy Ross Hunter-produced version starring Lana Turner directed by David Lowell Rich in 1966, and even in a 1981 TV film with Tuesday Weld. 

Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper in Morocco

Tom Brown: Gary Cooper
Amy Jolly: Marlene Dietrich
La Bessiere: Adolphe Menjou
Caesar: Ullrich Haupt
Mme. Caesar: Eve Southern
Sgt. Tatoche: Francis McDonald
Lo Tinto: Paul Porcasi

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Jules Furthman
Based on a play by Benno Vigny
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Film editing: Sam Winston
Costume design: Travis Banton
Music: Karl Hajos

At one point in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco, Tom Brown literally sweeps Amy Jolly off her feet and then tries to guess her weight. She scoffs at his estimate of 120 pounds and says his low estimate must be because he's so strong. In fact, Marlene Dietrich had slimmed down noticeably since she made The Blue Angel for Sternberg only a few months earlier in Germany, though she's still not quite as svelte as she would become after his transformation of her into a Hollywood icon was complete. The pounds are gone in her first American film, as are the realistically tawdry cabaret costumes Lola Lola wears in the German film, replaced by a wardrobe designed by Travis Banton. She is also filmed lovingly by Lee Garmes, who helped her locate the key light whenever the camera is on, a lesson she never forgot long after Sternberg's star-making was over. Morocco was a sensation, earning Dietrich her only Oscar nomination, though it's hardly her best performance or even a very good film. Sternberg still maintains the slightly halting pace of a director making a transition from silent films to talkies, chopping up Jules Furthman's dialogue by pausing too long between lines, losing the snap that would be present when Sternberg and Furthman worked together two years later on Shanghai Express. What action there is in the story, such as the attack by thugs outside Amy's apartment or the taking out of the machine gun nest, is tossed off casually, all in service of romance. And even the celebrated ending, with Amy kicking off her shoes to join the camp-followers into the desert, is more likely to elicit laughs today. As handsome as Gary Cooper's legionnaire is, it doesn't seem likely that a tough cookie like Amy, once capable of tearing up La Bessiere's card into small pieces while he's watching, would be such a careless lovesick sap. Still, Morocco is worth sitting through for its legendary moments, including the celebrated appearance of Dietrich's Amy in men's evening wear, taking a flower from a woman whom she kisses on the mouth and then tossing it to Cooper's wryly amused Tom, who tucks it behind his ear. It's an entertaining flirtation with what the Production Code would, in just a few years, and for several dreary decades, egregiously label "sex perversion."