Who do you want? Barabbas!

Oops! Major mistake in my previous post on Feuillade’s 1919 serial BARABBAS: the murdered woman was not a sex worker, but the mistress of a rich American banker, previously introduced, but whom I inexplicably failed to recognize.

Anyway, an innocent man — innocent of this crime, anyway — is now under sentence of death. Now read on.

The recap intertitles in episode two seem to clarify points not fully made in part one, which is either sheer narrative cheek and impudence or a fault in the translation. Strelitz, the head of the underground organisation, is now revealed to be Barabbas himself, whereas I got the impression that this was merely the name of his group. Also, the innocent man bound for Madame Guillotine’s sharp caress is an aristocrat — I did think his country house was rather nice for an ex-con.

At “the registry” they snip off the prisoner’s shirt neck. Any guillotine that could be jammed up by a starched collar is not worthy of the name, in my view, but I suppose this is to stop condemned men from smuggling iron rings under their chemises, deflecting the blade with a mighty SPANG! into the assembled dignitaries, which would never do.

As he heads for the basket, his daughter experiences Griffithian telepathy. (In some examples of Griffith, intercutting is not used solely for suspense, but to imply some kind of preternatural awareness or relationship between incidents at far remove — what Einstein would probably call spooky action at a distance.)

With a kind of restraint that is nonetheless slightly tacky, Feuillade portrays the fatal chopping indirectly, by showing one of his heroes, the noble cheese shop proprietor, peeking over his hat and then fainting away. Comedy relief even in a moment of high tragedy.

And then we cut back to the daughter looking tragic, as if the tone had NOT just been shattered.

The cheese man is one of several heroes meticulously established in part 0 but who have not yet really done anything: there’s the lawyer, a friend of the murder victim who at least TRIED to defend the falsely accused decapitee, and his chum, a journalist. And there’s cheese shop block and his wife and daughter. They’re all concerned about the missing American banker who MAY have been abducted. But now we’ve had two deaths so things are on a more definite dramatic footing.

A message from beyond the grace! The executed man has underlined in pencil certain letters in the prison library’s copy of The Three Musketeers (a suspiciously slim volume: either the text is microscopic or it’s an abridged edition of Dumas’ doorstop). This he gifts to the lawyer, who finally notices the encoded j’accuse. The message tells him to turn up at a Barabbas club meeting, where the password is, naturally, Barabbas. And all doors will be opened…

Our hopes of an EYES WIDE SHUT clusterfuck of enhanced orgiasts are dashed — Barabbas himself even keeps his silk hat on at the planning table.

Barabbas/Strelitz is one Gaston Michel, a Feuillade fave also featured in JUDEX, TIH MIHN, and LES VAMPIRES. A great face! His nose cuts through the shadows like a hunting knife.

A shame his big villain role doesn’t have the iconic status of Fantomas or Irma Vep, though I have no doubt the dude would look magnificent in a catsuit.

As the lawyer is recruited, forcibly, into Barabbas’ cult, Biscotin the cheese shop proprietor is plagued by uneasy dreams — is it the memory of witnessing a decapitation, is it just all that cheese, or is it that Griffithian psychic connection again?

TO BE CONTINUED

The King and Eyetuck

Things get dicey now in A KING IN NEW YORK. As Shadhov considers selling out, Chaplin gives himself a closeup in which his gaze almost meets ours. A timid version of the easy rapport with the audience he once enjoyed.

Dawn Addam’s character is not only an advertising actor and agent but also it seems a photographer. Not exactly plausible, but she does look very nice in skin-tight trousers.

Chaplin has never taken much advantage of the screen’s moments of licentiousness: he was never a pre-code filmmaker per se, avoiding sex in his late twenties and early thirties work. Now he shows signs of wanting to get into it — Addams’ character is introduced nude and inviting a peepshow scenario. But, as the screen loosens up, Chaplin will more or less retire, so we have only this dodgy scene to judge his prospects as an erotic filmmaker.

Overcome by the intimacy of Addams applying her light meter, King Shadhove pounces —

The nonconsensual clinch is interrupted. Addams’ character then has to decide whether she wants the interruptor to stay or leave. Her indecision is both telling and disturbing — it’s clear that, whatever her attitude to King S, she wasn’t ready for his all-out assault and doesn’t quite know what to think of it. And Chaplin, behind the camera, wants us to see this: in other words, he wants the scene to feel momentarily rape-adjacent.

Addams then decides to send her rescuer away, meaning she’s willing to have Shadhov jump on her again, so that’s all right, but it’s an icky moment, and I don’t really enjoy seeing CC at this age getting frisky. So it’s a relief that we dissolve to an unspecified time later, when she is repairing his makeup. Hmm, this seems a non-so-subtle clue that some strenuous activity has intervened…

Then we get the filming of a whisky commercial, a very long build-up to an inevitable gag about the stuff’s undrinkableness, allowing Chaplin to trot out all his hot mustard expressions from THE GREAT DICTATOR. It’s fine.

Another photo shoot leads to a discussion about King Shadhov’s aging fizzog, which leads to the film’s weirdest and most unsettling attempt at humour, which I have to admire somewhat for its sheer grotesquely. Shadhove decides to roll back the years with some age-corrective surgery. The results are… well.

It’s a remarkable job: since no actual surgery was performed, we have to assume this is some form of “Croydon facelift,” with the skin taped up under a toupee, or clamped together at the back or something. The Chaplin nose acquires a very League of Gentlemen “local” quality. Chaney’s PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is evoked.

It’s all a bit upsetting and it goes on for quite a while as we wait for the features to snap back into proper alignment, like Tom reconstituting himself after a flattening blow from Jerry. It eventually happens. It might be the film’s best comic idea, though it doesn’t exactly make me laugh. It’s bold, at least.

In another bit of weirdness, Shadhov attends a swank nite club where the floorshow is a slapstick wallpapering routing. As usual with CC, attempts at portraying the high life are strangely off — at least there are no plates of spaghetti this time. And, since olf stagers from Keystone are not to be had in the UK, the comedians aren’t particularly amusing, but I guess this is better than a stand-up routine would be, as written by fifties Chaplin. He’s no Lenny Bruce, whatever else he is.

So the face snaps back, and we, and our writer-director-star’s epidermis, can relax again.

The episode is queasy and sort-of humorous and does at least suggest that Chaplin is aware that skirt-chasing at his age is sort of undignified, that the middle-aged roue is prone to making an ass of himself.

TO BE CONTINUED

My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

I think that’s all!