Whip Stitch

Concluding Maurice Tourneur’s THE WHIP — in which things get very exciting.

Having failed to bribe the Whip’s jockey — small in stature, big in integrity — the evil Baron Sartoris now plots to derail the train bringing the horse to the racetrack. A bit extreme.

Unluckily for him, he plots this plot within hearing of Diana (heroine) and Myrtle (jockey sister). Unluckily for them, the overhearing takes place in a wax museum, and they get locked in overnight. Here, Tourneur is repeating himself a bit — FIGURES DE CIRE (1914), which is also in a much-battered-about condition, covers the old “lock me in the chamber of horrors overnight” chestnut.

Possibly due to cuts, Tourneur doesn’t make a great deal out of the horrors, but the overnight imprisonment allows the Baron to proceed with his excessive plan, and allows Tourneur to stage a full-scale derailment. But Lord Brancaster, tipped off by the girls, races to the rescue and gets his nag out of the cattle-car before the costly smash-up.

I get a kind of narrative whiplash at this point, since the train is en route to Saratoga. With it’s cast of lords, barons and hunts, the story has I assumed previously been laid in England, but suddenly this is not so.

Anyway, the horse arrives safely and the Baron is thwarted — but not for long. His new scheme is to have the Whip’s jockey arrested before the race — he has the pistol Harry (Dion Tetheridge — I just like typing it) carelessly left at his apartment, so he can get a crooked private eye to… well, I’m not sure this makes sense. If we’re in America, guns are legal, and can private detectives make arrests? But there might be a way to make this work. Oh yes — the charge is threatening the Baron’s life, and the gun is evidence towards this, although on the face of it, slightly flimsy evidence.

Remember, the Whip is a very persnickety steed — the only people he can stand are his jockey and Diana, so the former’s arrest would seem to doom Brancaster and ensure the Baron’s triumph — unless we’re all forgetting something.

This time the Baron’s plan comes off without a hitch. It’s by now been made clear that Kelly, the fat bloke to whom the Baron is somehow indebted, has bet against the Whip, and Lord Brancaster has bet everything he has on him. The literal stakes are high.

All seems lost — when, at the last moment, the Whip joins the race with a mystery rider in the saddle. Tourneur pulls out all the stops for the big finish, including a couple he might have done better to leave in. His travelling shots are superb, presumably taken from a flivver racing ahead of the horses, but he also quick-cuts in a somewhat incoherent manner to build up spurious “energy” and “excitement,” like a proto-Greengrass in jodhpurs.

The difficulty is perhaps that Tourneur is forced to intercut his dynamic moving-camera race shots with undramatic material — wides of the track and the stand, and medium shots of anxious onlookers. What’s needed is fast-cut closeups of the various interested parties urging their respective nags on, but evidently Tourneur, so far ahead of his time in most respects, hasn’t got quite that far. He does show the horses thundering (silently) up to and past low camera positions, but doesn’t have the other half of that idea, the reverse angle showing the same chargers hurtling off into the distance.

Diana — for she is the mystery horsewoman — wins the race and receives the cup. Presumably a happy ending with Lord Brancaster is taken as read, because the film then cuts to locomotive arcing off into or at least past the sunset, and the film abruptly finishes/runs out. Lady D’Aquila’s forged marriage certificate has presumably been exposed by Lord B’s private investigators (a single phone call ought to do it) and his reputation as a whole has presumably been disbesmirched, and he can now presumably wed Diana as soon as she’s out of her jockey drag, if not sooner, and, even presumablier, Baron Sartoris has been ruined or at least annoyed, but the film as it survives doesn’t bother to show any of this. I suspect in the lost director’s cut every one of these “i”s would be dotted, the “t”s crossed, and maybe even the “f”s as well. If you have any of M. Tourneur’s lost lettering mouldering in your attic, please report it to your nearest alphabet archive.

FIN

Mr. Whippy

A shakily spliced-in intertitle in a different font, clearly a later interpolation, declares the passage of a week. And we’re back to Maurice Tourneur’s THE WHIP (1917). Then a much nicer title card, in which someone (the wicked Baron Sartoris?) is proposing to make a bet on the gee-gees. It’s painfully obvious that the movie is missing vital connective tissue, as a result of which it’s none too obvious at times what is going on.

The scene develops — it’s not Sartotis, who is looking on in surprise and alarm. Who is it? The disgraced Brancaster? Then we get a blipvert subliminal shot of a note, which is from Sartoris, addressed to Myrtle Anson — I haven’t spoken of her yet but she seems to be the jockey’s young sister — the traditional ingenue role included in some films, we have learned from an indiscreet Raoul Walsh I think it was, to give the filmmakers someone to transactionally screw. At least here the sister has an actual role, with stuff to do, or at least here is evidence that this will be the case.

The title “Later that day” is a touch confusing to me, since nothing seems to have really happened in this first part of the day. Somebody made a bet and somebody sent a telegram. Whoever sliced and diced this film didn’t delete or preserve all the right bits, I fear.

The telegram is delivered. Well we certainly needed a transitional title card otherwise we’d have been astounded by the speed of the local postie. Myrtle (Jean Dumas — later Buster’s mum in OUR HOSPITALITY) receives the note in one of Tourneur’s regular high-contrast interiors, with real daylight blowing out the background and rendering the figures atmospherically shaded. With slightly redundant care, we get a shot of the completed telegram, which is of course identically worded to the note, but at least now we get time to read it. Strong evidence that before mutilation this film would have been carefully clear and coherent.

The jockey, played by the splendidly-named Dion Tetheridge, looks on suspiciously.

Then there’s some very rapid cutting — Sartoris and the bookie character (don’t really know who he is), a young Black switchboard operator, somebody begging someone not to call the police. Myrtle seems to have been lured to Sartoris’ flat and now all this stuff is kicking off, and now her brother arrives. What? WHAT??

Finally we get some kind of sense. It’s implied that Sartoris has debauched (and maybe even impregnated) Myrtle. He offers to marry her to avert disgrace if Sartoris will throw the race (he says “pull the horse” but I think that’s what he means). Sartoris himself is being blackmailed into this scheme by the fat chap (a bookie, a rival stable owner? Something like that). So we have a vague notion going forward.

Tetheridge, sound chap that he is, attempts to murder Sartoris rather than comply, but Myrtle wrestles the gun from his hand (he’s only small). The meeting breaks up in disarray, with the blackmailed blackmailer Sartoris having failed to start a blackmail chain that might have, had it succeeded, extended even unto this day, with chaps blackmailing chaps who blackmail other chaps unto the crack of doom, or at any rate some adjacent crack.

But the outraged jockey has left his pistol behind and Sartoris, who knows his Chekhov, picks it up with a thoughtful smirk. What fiendish scheme now animates his weasel’s forebrain?

I was hoping to have seen the wretched and disgraced Brancaster, drunk and unshaven, mourning his loss of love, funds and memory (a triple burden of grief supportable only if the third causes you to forget the other two, but no such luck here) but maybe that’s Coming Soon…

TO BE CONTINUED

The Sunday Intertitle: Whip Saw

Last we saw, as I recall, the dull hero of THE WHIP had survived a car crash engineered by his rival. Now he languishes in his sickbed, suffering from partial amnesia (the only real kind — despite what the movies tell us, you can’t have amnesia bad enough to forget your own identity without suffering serious impairment to the point where you would be unable to even say “Where am I?”)

Any hint of realism in this scenario is dismissed when we learn the certainty of the diagnosis:

This news comes as a relief to the eavesdropping baddies Baron Sartoris and, um, I think she’s called “Mrs D’Aquilia” per IMDb.

Another great intertitle — what we want to say is that the noble Brancaster is making a good recovery, but why illustrate that when you could have a skull-faced embodiment of Death chasing his fleeing shadow towards the exit? Go towards the light, Brancaster! Oh, wait, that’s wrong, isn’t it? Stay away from the light!

Moments later, the same illo is recycled, and it’s even less appropriate this time.

There hasn’t been much about the Whip, so far, has there? (The titular Whip is a racehorse, if you recall.)

While the mangled Brancaster languishes in his sickbed, cared for by (checks notes) the lovely Diana Berverley, Sartoris and D’Aquilia, shrouded in Tourneuresque shadow, plot over a forged marriage license. This will attempt to prove that Brancaster is already married to D’Aquilia, clearing the field for Sartoris to ooze in and catch Alma on the rebound. I did have to rewind and freeze the license insert in order to glean this, so I’m not sure if this is something I’m supposed to understand yet, or if it’ll be explicated later. Brancaster and Diana intend to announce their engagement at the hunt breakfast, so we’ll hear more then, no doubt.

This breakfast looks set to be a tricky event for a 1917 director to cover — dozens of characters, with several key ones emoting and interacting at once. With the shot-countershot schema still in its infancy, Tourneur may be driven to risky experimentation, which of course he’s very good at.

The second prong, if you’ll pardon the expression, of the attack is felt when Brancaster learns that his bank has just honoured a cheque for 10,000 Big Ones to the scheming D’Aquilia, leaving him overdrawn as well as amnesiac. It’s quite a smart scheme — how can he deny with certainty either the marriage license or the pay-off when he’s missing several days’ worth of memories? In all the amnesia movies I’ve witnessed I can’t recall such an elegantly devious plan.

Suavely done, M. Tourneur! A wide shot establishes the table with Diana’s dad speaking. He gets an intertitle, then a medium shot as he finishes, then Sartoris comes slinking down the stairs and is hailed as new Master of the Hunt in a reverse-angle wide shot. Spatial clarity and continuity is maintained with plenty of variety.

Sartoris reacts happily to his election (a repeat of the stair shot) and joins the happy throng (repeat of the original wide shot). Economy as well as variety. Strictly speaking I’m against repeating wide shots (thereby messaging the audience that the scene hasn’t progressed), but when a new figure is joining the group you could argue that it’s not an EXACT repeat.

Tourneur really knows how to construct scenic geography. Diana enters in her own shot, is greeted by the wide-shot revellers, some of whom join her in a new grouping. Sartoris, skulking in a single by the mantelpiece, checks his pocketwatch and glances off left, cueing his POV, showing D’Aquilia arriving at the front door to fulfil her part of the ploy.

Maybe there’s a slight flaw in the shooting and cutting — Sartoris looks at his watch and FROWNS, even though the cutting has shown us that the person he’s waiting for is arriving. In this case, montage trumps the actual performance within the shots, and we perceive that the conspiracy is running smoothly.

D’Aquilia’s arrival summons forth what may be my favourite intertitle yet, in a crowded field:

The flurry of shots following this actually manages to live up to it in dramatic impact, or almost. A full-figure solo shot of the vamp gives her an imposing presence. A VERY quick reaction from the crowd, who stop and turn in mid-toast. A smirk from Sartoris, still propping up the mantel.

And then a wide, which I will admit confused me momentarily as I hadn’t understood that the front door was upstairs, but there have been visual clues to that effect, I think I just missed them due to the low picture quality. The wide is beautiful, showing D’Aquilia towering over the hunt from her elevated position, all eyes on her.

Tourneur now trips over an eyeliner match, atypically for him. Brancaster rushes left to confront D’Aquilia and arrives from screen left, creating the feeling of an abrupt change in direction. It’s not too serious though.

The vamp produces her forged marriage license, witnessed by Sartoris — if only there were some way of telephoning the marriage bureau and asking if they have a record of this thing! But Brancaster himself is now in doubt — he rubs his heroic chin anxiously. Fake events are being shovelled into the gap in his recollections, and he lacks the most elementary mind-cordon to keep them out. Christopher Nolan should remake this.

D’Aquilia now inserts the stiletto between the shoulder-blades: “I was weak and yielded, but Mr. Brancaster is a man of honor as this paper shows.” Implying, I take it, that the dirty deed was done. The marriage was, as it were, consummated ahead of time. The story is told with such confidence (by conspirators and by filmmaker) that we can believe nobody is going to dig into the actual records, at least until after the damage is done.

Sartoris now backs up his co-conspirator’s yarn and Diana is overcome. Tourneur’s earlier line-crossing comes back to haunt him as the rapid cutting between mismatched angles does create a bit of confusion here, though one could make a case for it mimicking the disorientated condition of his lead characters.

Absolutely nobody has any sympathy for Brancaster’s amnesia — he can’t really be blamed for attempted bigamy, I would have thought, if the early promise has slipped his mind due to brain trauma. I take the broad view of these things.

And — SCENE!

You can watch along on the YouTube here. I can’t wait to see how that racehorse is going to sort the whole mess out. It must be one smart filly. TO BE CONTINUED