The New Adventures of Zachary Scott

The Sunday Intertitle: Doone among the Dead Men

Beautiful art titles from Maurice Tourneur’s hundred-year-old film of LORNA DOONE:

Tourneur’s technique, having been more advanced than nearly everyone’s in the teens, is now closer to standard in 1922, but his grasp of atmosphere is second to none. His version of Hollywood Olde Englande feels unusually authentic, allowing for the necessary romanticism. He’s not moving the camera, but the lighting is shadowy, the design detailed and original, the performances sensitive. the photography diffuse. Even the landscape shots are appropriately misty: did they go somewhere damper than California or just produce smoke on an industrial scale? I expect Christine Letuex, Tourneur biographer, knows the truth.

Ironically, with all this moody fuzz, the cinematographer’s name is Henry Sharp. He became a fixture at Paramount (DUCK SOUP, IT’S A GIFT), a studio addicted to soft focus.

Magic hour is scary hour!

The idea of highwaymen rising en masse — a merrie men-sized unit — is ahistorical, but dramatic. And here’s a not wholly successful forced perspective, where they’ve added period detail to their landscape in the form of a munchkinesque shack:

Quite strange — you would have to enter it bent double — was it designed by an ancestor of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH’s Captain Mertin?

Ringletted moppet Lorna (a name invented for the novel — passed on to my older sister) is abducted by the highwaymen — they plan on keeping her till she can grow up and marry one of them — an unlikely idea in several ways.

The Doone carriage, having been diverted into the sea like a bathing machine so the ruffians can abduct its little passenger. This is what we look for from Tourneur — a shot which achieves an emotional story point in an oblique way: it’s the aftermath of an event, not the event — no characters appear — but it summarises the calamity and is visually beautiful in itself. The first reaction is to the beauty, but it’s not just an attractive image, it’s what Fellini called meaningful beauty. It’s like Kane’s abandoned, snow-covered sled as the train whistle sounds…

The first appearance of Madge Bellamy as grown-up Lorna:

Beautifully composed — rather than popping on a longer lens, Tourneur takes the time to shoot the medium shot from a new camera position. The backlit halo effect on her hair is extraordinary — does Sharp have a little light hidden right behind her, or a huge one above her, or could possibly it be natural?

The film’s first interior shot depicts the villain, disgraced nobleman Sir Ensor Doone (!)

The cloud of pipe smoke makes it, but note also the silhoutted chair, the hazily lit hall beyond the doorway, the pool of light on the floor which picks out the black-clad highwayman in stark relief.

This film is too full of riches, I’m going to go through it in episode fashion. So this is

END OF PART ONE

Ollie

Sergio Sollima’s THE BIG GUNDOWN led me to the same director’s REVOLVER, which led me to write a piece for The Chiseler about Oliver Reed. Here.

There’s so much to say about this guy. I didn’t even get around to my favourite story, about when the producers of TOMMY made the mistake of putting Reed and Keith Moon in the same hotel. The two substance abusers hit it off, and one time Moon knocked on Ollie’s door and asked for some help moving his waterbed. Now, a waterbed contains an insane weight of water, you simply CAN’T move them when they’re full, but Ollie was game to try, so he grabbed an end and wrenched. Succeeded in bursting it. The water flooded the room, which then collapsed into the room below.

You have to give him credit: many rock stars have been accused of destroying hotel rooms, but they generally only destroy the CONTENTS. They merely DEFACE the rooms. Here, Reed and Moon succeed in literally demolishing two rooms, and they weren’t even trying.

I should write more about REVOLVER too, and when I’ve watched more poliziotteschi, something on the genre, which is really interesting. Cop movies always have the ability to be progressive, though that path is strewn with pitfalls. REVOLVER is a bit sexist — how long does it take for us to meet a clothed woman? — but it puts the blame where it belongs.