Our second Dupont movie after Variety. Rather than Anvil/Alloy we went with the music on the blu-ray, which was fine. After a talkie introduction scene, simply terrible, awkwardly tacked on (starring John Longden who I just saw in Quatermass 2) we get a proper silent film with glamorous costumes and camera moves. The setup is that Valentine (Claudette’s fiancé in It Happened One Night) runs a successful club with star dancers Victor (Hitchcock’s Blackmail) and Mabel (star of The Devil Dancer two years earlier), then after a falling out, the dancers are replaced with kitchen worker Anna May Wong, a vast improvement. Tensions build in the second half – Mabel is jealous that Valentine is sweet on Anna, and maybe murders her, but in the ensuing court drama we learn that Anna’s boy Jim (not her brother, as she’s told people) did the crime. Smooth little drama, mostly noteworthy for its Anna May content.
Tag: EA Dupont
Varieté (1925, E.A. Dupont)
Another great night with the Alloy Orchestra. Probably the number one advantage to living in Lincoln is that they come through every year with a different silent film – last year was Man with the Movie Camera, the year before was Son of the Sheik. Now I’ve bought their Phantom of the Opera on DVD, and I’ll see if I can sync the CD of their Lonesome score with the Criterion blu-ray – unlikely, but it’ll be fun to try.
Emil Jannings (same year as Tartuffe) is introduced as a sonofabitch who mistreats his woman, soon leaving her and their young child and running off with Lya de Putti (Murnau’s Phantom and the Joe May Indian Epic). They work circus acts until noticed by trapeze star Artinelli (Warwick Ward, who became a producer in the 1930’s) and asked to join his act. Artinelli easily steals away Emil’s girl while Emil spends all his time drinking and gambling (don’t trapeze performers have to stay in shape?), and when he realizes the betrayal he plots revenge. Some fun first-person shots from the trapeze were this film’s main attraction when it opened. Emil envisions his boss having a fatal “accident” – somehow he can’t bring himself to drop the guy, but is okay stabbing him to death
Ouch from Dave Kehr:
The blatancy that makes it so easy to teach is also its chief drawback as art. Expressionism needed the taste and insight of a Murnau to be transformed from a manner to a style; this film, untransformed, is the work of the negligible E.A. Dupont.
