The Sunday Intertitle: Swarthy Opponent

Maurice Tourneur’s version of TRILBY (1915) foregrounds his renowned lighting effects right from the get-go, and though he doesn’t move the camera at all, he breaks up his tableaux staging with lively montages of close-ups, especially when the heroine sings. Our juvenile lead (31-year-old Chester Barnett) is introduced beside a shadow which looks like it should be his, except that he’s standing still while it rocks with laughter.

In the title role is Clara Kimball Young, whose name I knew but whom I’d never seen act. From her name I expected a plump Victorian matron, even though that wouldn’t fit the role created by George DuMaurier at all. That never stopped the Victorians. But CKY is young, spry and ebullient — she dominates the room, which makes her transformation under Svengali’s influence all the more affecting. CKY may play it big a lot of the time, but she’s never broad — the quicksilver transmutations of her expression draw the eye and keep it fixed upon her. She’s certainly more boisterous than Marian Marsh, the only other actress I’ve seen in the part.

Though set in London and Paris, with a few stock shots of the City of Light, the movie is a product of that other magical place, Fort Lee, New Jersey, the predecessor of Hollywood as America’s movie capital.

It’s slightly surprising that there were so many silent versions of this (full adaptations and even sample scenes — the story was so well-known early audiences could simply fill in the rest themselves), since the plot revolves around singing, but it’s also surprising to me that there haven’t been more recent versions. The character names and set-up are familiar even if the novel isn’t much read, so there’s an exploitable framework. I think the problem may lie in the somewhat semitic nature of Svengali, played here by the corpulent Wilton Lackaye as a sort of telepod fusion of Rasputin and Fagin. The Brits allow this evil Eastern European wanderer into their circle, he borrows their money and he steals their woman. It’s also about how women should choose marriage over a career. Virginal artist Billie is shocked that his sweetheart poses nude for artists, and then he tears her away from her successful stage act. Woman, know your place!

Plus, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA stole the best bits of the story and added deformity, masks, an underground lair and fifty more thicknesses of melodramatic excess. How do you go back to the stolid British original after Lon Chaney?

Fiona named her cat after Trilby because her purr turned to a trill in moments of extreme happiness. Here is the late Trilby ~

Like her namesake, she had a fine singing voice, as you can see.

Headgear

“He’s worse with a hat on!” I declared, and Fiona agreed with me.

The subject of discussion was Regis Toomey, star of the spicy pre-code triumph UNDER 18, which we enjoyed very much. And it was a strange discovery to make. I’d thought I just didn’t much like Toomey, didn’t like his face, like that of a juvenile clown whose makeup has become grafted to his skin; didn’t like his voice, a raspy instrument more suited for frightening cats than human speech. But when I saw him sans chapeau (a rare condition for a male actor in 30s movies), I found him not without a certain vulnerable appeal. Let once a cap, fedora or helmet adorn his brow, however, and repulsion, anger and intolerance made hay with my disposition.

I mean, look at this (UNDER 18) ~

And this (SHE HAD TO SAY YES) ~

And this (THE FINGER POINTS) ~

And normally I like hats. I’ve never found an attractive one that would fit my bulbous, William-Hurt-sized head, but I like them on other people. Normally. It’s just that on Toomey, his pursed, shrunken clown face takes on a new and ghastlier hue when shaded neath the brim of an otherwise inoffensive lid, be it homburg, boater, fedora or Moorish tarboosh.

Still, that aside, Toomey is sympathetic in a difficult role in UNDER 18 (the title is an irrelevance): anybody who has to act cross with Marian Marsh is doing very well to not make the audience hate him. And she does well too — a peaches-and-cream cutie playing a naive ingenue type with big googly eyes, she could easily become punchable, but she holds the film together, aided by Warners Brothers’ typical no-nonsense approach, which hits story points hard and fast, and even manages to deliver sentimentality in a blunt manner.

Case in point: the movie begins with Marsh’s sister getting married (to future director Norman Foster, so we know there’s trouble ahead). Director Archie Mayo holds a long shot on the girls’ dad, as he slowly tears up. It’s sweet and gently funny, but it’s followed by a quick dissolve to the old guy’s gravestone, as we move into the future, the stock market crash, and marital difficulties which for the big sister which soon have Marsh questioning the viability of romance. And when a girl’s in that frame of mind, the arrival of a feckless millionaire played by Warren William is apt to represent a temptation.

WW, who gets to smirkingly emit the line he was born to say — “Why don’t you take off your clothes and stay awhile?” — is on very good form, as is Mayo, one of the less distinguished but still damn good Warners directors. Here, his attention to the bit part players is especially commendable.

“Watch your step,” says the elevator operator (Otto Hoffman) to Marian as she alights at Williams’ penthouse fuck pad. And then he drives his double entendre home with a meaningful look.

This delivery boy (name unknown) gets TWO looks, a bored/nosy/dopey one as Marian signs for her delivery, and an obsequious/lecherous one when he makes eye contact. The guy makes his mark.

The movie also finds space for sparky Claire Dodd, cadaverous Clarence Wilson, an unusually camp Edward Van Sloan, and many other attention-grabbing artistes.

And for 1931 this is a remarkably fluid piece of work, with long camera moves and expressive angles unhampered by the demanding microphone. Here, setting up Williams’ shagging palace, Mayo proves himself a regular pre-code Ozu with the three building-block establishing views he uses ~

Of all the pre-code parties, this may be the best, even if the host suffers a near-fatal injury.

For B. Kite.