Back Pay (1922) - Frank Borzage

Great film by the North American director Frank Borzage, a filmmaker not too well known but who rightly has earned the respect as director of the solemn period of the cinema, the silent cinema, period in which some works of great quality made. For this moment, Borzage, the director known as one of the greatest cinematographic exponents of melodrama, adapts a Fannie Hurst novel, a tragic story, of social climbing, of frustrated love, of remorse, and even some supernatural elements, a movie in which the filmmaker was already polishing his definitive style. Some critics affirm that still it would not reach his greater top, cusp that also is affirmed would not arrive until 7th Heaven (1927), or No Greater Glory (1934), but the certain thing is that this director had already defined enough not few of its audiovisual cornerstones. It is the story of Hester Bevins, a beautiful provincial girl who longs to change her town for the city, rejects a suitor who loves her, goes to look for work in New York, becoming the lover of a wealthy older man; but happiness was not so simple to achieve, and when she returns to her village, she will find her old love blind, returning from the war, and she must choose what to do. Without being a masterpiece, nor an extraordinary exercise, it is a pretty decent silent film.

In Demopolis, a secluded town, lives Hester Bevins (Seena Owen), who with determination desires to leave the countryside, leave the insipid pension where she lives, and go to live in the city. She is courted by Jerry Newcombe (Matt Moore), he goes to see her, and proposes that they get married, receiving a negative, because she aspires to a life of luxury and financial solvency, something that Jerry can not offer. Hester gets what she desired, she goes to New York, five years go by quickly, she has a very luxurious apartment, where she helds ostentatious parties, meets typhoon Charles G. Wheeler (J. Barney Sherry), becomes his lover, and he surrounds her of cars, trips, and all the luxury that Hester always wanted. But in her loneliness, she wondered if that was really the happiness she wanted, and she remembered Jerry; after traveling very close to Demopolis, she decides to return to her town, finds Jerry, they meet, but she soon returns to New York. Hester continues with his unbridled life, Jerry goes to war, where he loses his vision, and she, disheartened when returning and finding him blind, and even with little time to live ahead, marries him -who ignores his situation-, with consent of Charles. Jerry dies, and Hester has hallucinations with him, is tormented, she returns to live in Demopolis, takes back her old life, work and friends, and ends the torments, she recovers tranquility.

It is a very appreciable silent film, and although as it was said at the beginning, almost consensually are considered the greatest artistic achievements of Borzage 7th Heaven, and No Greater Glory, we have in the present exercise much of the cinematographic identity of the director, his style, his themes, his technical expression. In that sense, the initial frame is already remarkable, remarkable the photograph of that initial segment, where the solitude of her is exemplarily captured, the loneliness, the absence of what she longs for, the sophistication and luxuries that she will never find in the countryside; and the silent image is eloquent, with her back watching the locomotive (symbol par excellence of the industrial, technology) that moves away with the course that she longs for, the city, is masterful, a photograph full of that lack, of that frustration, the absence that governs everything. Personally, it even reminded the writer of some sequences of Dreyer, heirs and impregnated with the hermetic pictorial images of Vilhelm Hammershøi; it will be necessary to wait a long time to return to appreciate instants of such nature in the film. The filmmaker known as one of the masters of melodrama reinforces his reputation, and presents a typical story of heartbreak, in which the protagonists are torn between two opposite worlds, the bright and luxurious city, with its seductive glare, excesses and lust, against the simple and humble field, full of simplicity, and in the end, of redemption; it is a scenario in which love will complicate everything, but at the same time it will be salvation for her. Thus, we have the old rich man who seduces an upstart female, hungry for opulence and pageantry, indecisive woman who will be cornered by having to choose between her true love, crippled and on the verge of death, and the luxurious life she always wanted, but she, with her soul of crepe and satin, thanks to her beloved, will find tranquility and happiness, a happiness for which she left her native land to look for it in the city, only to discover that happiness was always in her home.

As for the film itself and its content, we will find a film in which there are markedly two differentiated languages, and this is because when Borzage performs outdoors, his full potential is released with the shots in the field, consequently shots of great visual force, audiovisual poetry at times, the abundant vegetation that frames those instants and the large watery mirror of a stream. Thus, the director inserts shots where human beings cover the whole hierarchy of a plane, with others where the overflowing nature, the green life, the bright sun, relegate humans to almost one more element of the frame. Notable and differentiable, Borzage takes advantage of these environments, does not only show close frames of the couple, but mostly takes advantage of all that scenario and shows sequences where nature has important participation, because those shots, those of exteriors, are life, very opposed to the cold city, with its lights, asphalt, cars and large buildings. It is certainly in the exterior that the creative freedom of the director shines, the aesthetic domain manifests itself in all its splendor, always in marked contrast to the sterile interior images of the city, where it feels as if all that wasted aesthetic capacity is drowned, but of course it is a waste that has a north. This is reflected to the point that, visually, it looked like two different films, one in the field, with the luminosity, leafiness, amplitude and life of the area, and the other, city, deprived of those freedoms, reduced, confined, cold. Also, the camera is shown static during the great majority of the film, stillness is what dominates in an unfolding without major movements or ambitions, focusing in that way the attention in the action, in the drama that we observe, in the adventures of the characters. And it is that technical skills are not found, there are no zooms, there are no travellings, and only in the end we will observe some frames overlays; the narrative linearity, the realism is not broken in almost the whole film.

Borzage is in fact a master of melodrama, and he leaves it patent, he sacrifices the technical virtuosity in his film, as we have already seen, a work without major tricks or technical devices, -at least for almost the entire film, except for the end-, giving preponderance, again, to the drama, without distracting the attention of what is portrayed. Only at the end will that narrative plain be broken, with the overlayed frames, a resource fully belonging to the silent film, capturing the madness, the horror, the phantasmagoric, the soul of Jerry returns, he asks Hester to return to what she really is, she, with her soul of crepe and satin, deep down, never stopped being the country girl, from the province, she tasted the sinful honeys of Babylon, and then returned to her home. As the legend that is seen in the film says, she traveled to the bowels of Babylon, and escaped from her, escaped thanks to Jerry, to her true love, the love that changed everything, so much that when she returned to Babylon, to New York and its excesses, could not return as the same woman, orgies and wild parties had been left behind, love redeemed her. We also have a narrative virtue, opposes the filmmaker two key moments and opposites, enjoyment, pageantry, the debauchery of the life of Hester in New York, against the warlike hardships of Jerry, that narrative contrast, that contrast between one moment and another, parallelly shown, is an always appreciable and effective narrative and expressive resource, because when capturing two opposite moments, the effect obtained of what is portrayed is multiplied, thanks to the contrast; a resource wielded by different filmmakers, at different moments in history. Very nice and interesting are some compositions, apart from the first one already mentioned, the frame that opens the film, is the sequence of her, in the hospital, crying out in a window to God for what he considers an injustice to have Jerry in so unfortunate situation; again an absence, now enhanced by including a crippled Jerry on the shot, he towards us, while she, backwards, cries before a God who seems absent, again the absence seizes the frame, in those sequences of a composition and strength remarkable, different from the others. Again a superposition of shots closes the film, another of the few exceptions where the technical linearity that governs the film in general is broken, although the ending is somewhat simple, however, she "pays her debt", pays her commitment to Jerry, unjustly wasted that love, and although it is something late, because he has died, she can recover her tranquility. It culminates in this way a correct silent film, of very little media circulation, that without being a masterpiece, is a serious work, of a filmmaker who specialized in melodrama, and we have here a good example of his art, shortly before achieving what many consider his greatest artistic summits.

I.N.R.I. / Crown of Thorns (1923) - Robert Wiene

Robert Wiene became immortal after directing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1923), the imperishable and referential piece of silent cinema, heritage of german expressionism, and certainly of world cinema. In that decade, the 20 of last century, the most fruitful years of this giant filmmaker, the versatility of the director is manifested, producing works as diverse as the aforementioned, in addition to Raskolnikow (1923), and then, in that same year, the film that now occupies us. Wiene adapts, in a relatively free way, the life, passion and death of Jesus Christ, respecting most of the conventionalisms that we know, but naturally, adding something, his personal conception and filiation, to configure a film that, although it has not enjoyed as much diffusion as more mediatic works, does constitute a work of necessary viewing for the student or admirer of the work of this remarkable german director. Thus, we will see the Messiah, Christ, from his births, to his adolescence, observing the traditional Christian figures of his passion, his links with his mother, with Mary Magdalene, with his apostles, the treason that suffers from Judas Iscariot, his fall at the hands of Pontius Pilate, and of course, the final crucifixion with which it ends the earthly days. Attractive feature, of great visual strength and with extraordinary actors.

                   

In a humble stable, crowned by a star in Bethlehem, an unusual baby has been born, Jesus Christ, the son of God, has been born, awakening great hullabaloo. The baby is then an adolescent, surrounded by men who listen, hear his teachings, while his mother Maria (Henny Porten) cares for him. The news of an infant that stands out powerfully among the Jews soon gets to the ears of fearsome Pontius Pilate (Werner Krauss), who repeatedly is referred about the influence and attention that awakens the young man, he receives the news with moderate concern. The adolescent Jesus becomes a man (Gregori Chmara), receives the washing of the feet of the prostitute María Magdalena (Asta Nielsen), and surrounds himself with his apostles. But the atmosphere begins to blur, Caiaphas the high priest (Emanuel Reicher) observes him, in addition to Judas Iscariot (Alexander Granach), who begins to suspect of Christ. The roman authorities have begun to see Jesus as very dangerous, and his last supper with the apostles takes place, who already fear the imminent. Judas betrays him, gives the fatal kiss, Christ, after a public trial where Barabbas is freed, captured by the executioners, Pilate and Caiaphas determine it; finally he is mistreated and humiliated in front of the whole town, which ends up crucifying him with the slogan INRI. Christ dies on the cross.

This remarkable work of silent cinema, like many other exercises of the same nature, over the years, has been subject to many changes, alterations, often not agreed with the author, and there have even been mutilations, as lamentable as arbitrary. The completely silent version is the original basis of this feature, completely silent, without music, or narrators, elements that were annexed years later in the modified version and renamed Crown of Thorns, is an original base that has also suffered other modifications, to which I will refer in later lines. For this film, Wiene is now approaching the epic representation, without reaching the extreme of a mega production, but he delights us with his representations overflowing with abundant humans, many actors moving through large sets, in large stages, it is a great sample of the versatility of the filmmaker, which shows how capable he is of producing a film with some gargantuan dyes. Another almost indivisible and inevitable element that is usually seen in the expressionist works of Wiene is absent, it is left aside, and this is the resource of the superposition of frames, as well as any other visual trickery that were usually commonplace in the most memorable silent works of those years; all that customary visual package, which so much impact knew in its moment to produce, now yields to the realism that the picture implies, a realism in which linearity is not broken, the plain of montage. Yes, the master Wiene varies his style, his artistic expressionist vein now leaves space, his overwhelming and disturbing sets are left aside, his characteristically expressionist conceptions, however, retains some of the force of that current in the representation of some characters, of gloomy, raw and dark appearance.

In the section on acting, always a strong point in a film by Wiene, stands out, among a brilliant constellation, Gregori Chmara, who again, as in Raskolnikow, is fundamental, capital in the film, with his expressions, with his histrionic records, very intense at times, which completely cut him off from any contemporary conventional interpretation of Jesus Christ, he is one of the most prominent actors of those years, the years of silent cinema, an actor that by the way came from a russian theater company of actors. It is evident that this formidable theatrical actor had strongly impacted Robert Wiene since his previous collaboration, as only months ago they worked on the aforementioned adaptation of the gigantic and classical work of Dostoevsky, and his powerful interpretation of the murderous student Raskolnikov was his ticket to become a favorite actor of Wiene for those years. The intensity that Chmara prints is extraordinary, out of the ordinary, makes him almost a hermetic element to everything external, as if a parallel world inhabits his interior, his face being the main vehicle of escape of all that world. Indeed, Gregori stands out, who at times seemed even immersed in a trance, disconnected from the rest, hermetic in his particular universe, definitely the main pillar of the film, who heads a constellation of movie stars of that time, an actor of character certainly. Great choice on the part of the director of his protagonist, in this film that, despite some variations, normal in any artistic work, and the most striking being the traitor Judas Iscariote, is a true version of the life of the son of the Christian god, it could not be otherwise. The film, by the way, ends with the death of Christ, the miracle of the resurrection is not portrayed.

I delve in the subject just mentioned, the most interesting element, at the level of characters in the film, is Judas Iscariot, the traitor, who in this version of the german betrays the messiah but not for the causes that Christian history teaches, not being the main reason the classic bag of money, but now the filmmaker dyes a certain political halo as the origin of that betrayal. A political halo that has been seen with greater or lesser vigor, depending on the critic who appreciates it. However, to a large extent Wiene respects the most iconoclastic Western Christian figures, we see Jesus surrounded by children, we see the traditional washing of feet to Christ by Mary Magdalene, the preference to liberate the sinner Barabbas before Christ, and of course, the inevitable figure of the last supper, sequences represented with all the solemnity of a silent film, and with all the visual force that this silent cinema giant always knew to generate. As for the structure and treatment of the story, it respects to a large extent the guidelines set by two other major titans of cinema, such as David Wark Griffith in Intolerance (1916), and the danish Carl Theodor Dreyer with his Leaves from Satan's Book (1920); the established staging is respected by filmmaker, but adds Wiene the details of his art, like the aforementioned human representations of some characters. As for the staging, the work done by the expressionist master is impeccable, his setting is impeccable, the costumes, the decorations, without excessive ornaments or mannerisms, but a simplicity that leads to a more intimate closeness to what is portrayed, and it contrasts with the reloading efforts of representation that can be seen in these days, so artificial and postiche that they end up eliminating a genuine approach to those days. It is the representation of Christian birth, passion and death, the tribulations of Christ on earth, and I think it is pertinent at this time to point out, however, that the film on which the present article is based is a reduced version of footage, inferior to that originally conceived, of more than one hour and forty minutes; in this reduced version, inferior in half an hour of duration, an effort is made to maintain the main edges and events that history contains. A sadly famous film anecdote more, but in the end, wether you have access to one or another version of the film, what you should do is appreciate that immortal filmmaker in action, giving a unique sample of his versatility, his ability as audiovisual creator of a wide range of possibilities. There are probably few who classify the film as the most accomplished by the director born in german, now polish lands, an enriching work to appreciate.

Raskolnikow / Crime and Punishment (1923) - Robert Wiene

The present film is one of the most famous adaptations of the gigantic classic of Russian literature, and of the universal literature as well, since the Russian realism had in Crime and Punishment and in Fyodor Dostoevsky, respectively, a novel and an author that were among his senior representatives. This adaptation, not the first nor less the last, is not far behind and is the work and grace in turn of one of the greatest exponents of film expressionism, Robert Wiene, the conspicuous german director is responsible for melting the intense and psychological Russian novel with the powerful expressionist vein, with all the plastic force -and also with his own psychological vigor- of this cinematographic current to give us one of the most interesting versions of the text, as it could not be otherwise, if we consider that powerful symbiosis of cultures, and of artistic styles. The great Wiene in this way adapts the universally known history, Raskolnikov, outstanding student in topics of criminology, author of a remarkable thesis, is in serious economic problems, this despair will lead him to liquidate an old and avarice lender, stealing her money; guilt will shatter the student's mind, which will eventually crack before mental torment. A film that has gone through problems since its conception, a real jewel of silent films.

                    

We see the young Rodion Raskolnikow (Gregori Chmara), outstanding student, who is going through financial problems; this young man is then approached by Marmeladow (Mikhail Tarkhanov), a down-at-heel policeman, an alcoholic, who makes his daughter Sonia suffer. Raskolnikow is desperate, he is going through serious money problems, his mother (Elisabeta Skulskaja) and sister (Alla Tarasova) suffer similar position, and the student must survive by pawning things to the usurer Alona Iwanowa (Toma). His desperation grows, and, after much hesitation, he ends up killing the old moneylender with an ax, with the bad luck that the old woman's sister visits her moments after the crime, and he must kill her too. Raskolnikow manages to escape from the scene of the crime, but soon he is summoned to the police station, he is suspected, and despite certain incriminating evidence, and despite his increasing nervousness, he manages to initially overcome the interrogations. Knows Rodion then Sonia (Maria Kryshanovskaya), daughter of the drunk Marmeladow -and friend of the dead sister of the usurer-, she is the only one who brings peace at that time to the student, and Rodion confesses his morbid crime. The detective in charge tells Raskolnikow that he knows he is the killer, but it is not necessary to force statements, the torture of remorse causes Rodion to turn himself in to the police.

Thus ends a very appreciable adaptation of a gigantic, immortal, referential literary work, there is no need to explain, to the duly educated reader, the complexity and enormous challenge that often involves the transfer of an artistic work, of its original field, to another artistic discipline. It is always a complex undertaking, it has always been and always will be that way, due to the obvious distances -insurmountables sometimes- from one artistic universe to another, adopting the authors, in each case, different positions, respecting more or less the original text, and of course, infusing his particular artistic feeling into the adaptation. But if, in addition, it is a work of such high caliber as the present one, the challenge is certainly tenfold; however, there are geniuses who can rise to the challenge, geniuses such as Wiene, who shows us an exquisite and seductive version of the russian and universal literary classic. As this is a silent film work, and although it is obvious to mention it, in a film like this, since it is already complex to jump from literature, from words, to the audiovisual, verbal dialogues are completely dispensed with, so the transition of the drama, of the tension, it lies almost entirely in the image, in the performances of the actors, and it is the first frame of the film, exemplary in that sense, when we see that close-up of Raskolnikow; we see the foreground of the man with his hands on his head, a troubled gesture, the eloquence necessary to express without words the despair and haste that our protagonist is feeling. The decomposed face of Gregori Chmara is a pillar of the film, and the actor fully fulfills the required torment, some may criticize the interpreter's age, perhaps too old to be the student of Dostoevsky's work, but his performance is remarkable, excellent his representation of a man that goes through a slow mental descent. Silent acting force is vital, it was another moment of cinema, guilt and remorse are all in history, the basis of psychological torture, and the final moments reinforce what is appreciated, are the epitome of the film in that sense, again a close-up of Raskolnikow flows, and as well as opening the picture, now closes it to us. As at the time, and later, Peter Lorre would made in another memorable adaptation, Crime and punishment (1935), by the great Josef von Sternberg, showing off with his characteristic histrionic records, this time the gestures and body language of the actors are capital, and in this case they end up being vital to print that suffocating insanity, the madness, the guilt, the remorse, that end up unsettling Rodion.

One of the strongest points of the film is the aesthetics, the powerful expressionist aesthetic that is manifested in the sets, the environment, Robert Wiene is expressionism, and shows us the streets, the passages, the interiors of the houses, the windows, at his way, everything is deformed to configure the dark and sordid world of german expressionism merging with Dostoevsky's narrations. These characteristic expressionist structures, of a conformation and configuration simply unmistakable for the lover of the silent cinema, find more sense than ever in their twisted lines, those curves and irregular lines transmit the dementia of Raskolnikow; yes, more than ever that aesthetic is expressive, externalize the inner dementia of the tormented student, the structures, as twisted as the thoughts of Raskolnikow, turn the vicinity of the city into nightmarish scenarios where his tribulations do nothing but increase; formidable example of artistic differentiation from one discipline to another, because where the cinema does not arrive, to the precision and descriptive detail of the word, the expressionist image serves as a perfect vehicle to externalize Raskolnikow's unhingedness. This cited use of distorted structures, twisted, in addition to a very powerful play of light and shadow at times, with the consequent chiaroscuros, make this film a very attractive exercise of one of the referential directors of the undying german film current. Continuing along that line, among the technical resources used in the film, we have the traditional tricks of image overlays, an ineluctable resource at that moment of cinema for almost all the great filmmakers were the overlapping frames to express various emotions and feelings, might be  dreams, whether it is growing madness or torment, etc. The superimpositions of images thus serve to portray the growing dementia, the torment that is magnified in the head of Raskolnikow, his tribulations are surpassing him, and those overlapping shots will flow. Likewise, the superpositions return in the form of a nightmare, to multiply and exaggerate the horror of a monstrous and already murdered old usurer, who returns from death to torment the unfortunate criminal student. The result is already spectacular, it is irrelevant that, and as was normal at the time of making the film -we speak of almost a century ago- the representations of death and violence are rather moderate, timid. Likewise, music, musical accompaniment, initially absent, as in the great majority of silent cinema classics, later added to its premiere, strengthens and reinforces the film's top situations.

It is extremely interesting and attractive the final amalgam offered by Wiene, where the mix is ​​not only of aesthetic, narrative, literary or cinematographic styles, audiovisual languages, but also of cultures, the art director, Andrej Andrejew, was Russian, like the theater company of actors involved, the Stanislavski Moscow Art Theater, generating a unique combination of culture and temperament, sensibilities, in addition to having made necessary at some moments of filming the presence of translators. That detail, by the way, of the actor's theater company, acquires another meaning when we appreciate the treatment in the film, the conception of the scenes, which hints at that theatrical aura, intensified by the stage and embryonic moment of the cinema. Thus, since cinema was still in its formative years, when the sound did not even reach the world of the seventh art, naturally the resources of the cinema were not fully evolved, this facilitates in part the theatrical aura, the theatrical treatment that is perceived in repeated sequences; an irresistible audiovisual product that ends up configuring Wiene. On the other hand, the picture has had an unfortunate journey over the years, suffering some unfortunate mutilation, because the original version, the director's one, lasts more than two hours, 135 minutes to be exact, which are significantly reduced in the yankee version, modified and adapted for DVD, an assembly whose extension is reduced by about an hour compared to the original work. As is normal in a change of this nature, of this magnitude, the integrity of the film is severely violated, and it is as relevant as regrettable to indicate that this article is based on the DVD version, the altered, mutilated version, which sadly is the one that in great majority circulates around the world, and in which much of the embodied force is lost, the insufferable pressure that corrodes and destroys Raskolnikow will not look so coherent and powerful in the modified version; it is an arbitrariness more than the cinema world must tolerate, but not without losing the hope that one day a restored version will appear, or some appreciable benefactor will take the time to restore it. It would not be the first time. Returning to the story, Sonia is the calmness of the tormented Rodion, with her returns the tranquility, the calm that with her comes back extends even to the treatment that is given to the sequences in which she gets involved, changes the tendency and the sordid tone, all the twisted expresionist power disappears with the female, all the umbrageous expressionist dementia that represented the psychological fall of the student; she is the love of Rodion, who in the novel has differences by the way, accompanying Raskolnikow to his exile to Siberia, because he loves her. Also, another difference with the text, substantial by the way, is that Raskolnikow becomes a Christian by Sonia in the film -he makes the sign of the cross, in that final sequence that closes the film, and gives us an outcome that differs significantly from the book-, which does not happen in Dostoevsky's world; similarly in the book Rodion is convinced that his murder, under certain circumstances, is not a negative thing, because the old woman was despicable, his murder can stop being an abominable and execrable act. The film may not be counted among the most immortal classics of expressionism, perhaps not at the level of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), by Wiene himself, or by Die Nibelungen (1924) or Metropolis (1927) by Lang, or the work of Murnau, perhaps does not reach the brilliant technical perfection of those exercises, however it is impossible to stop being seduced by the excellent rapport between the dark and nightmarish aesthetics of the german current and the growing feelings and dementias that tear Raskolnikov apart. Referential and inescapable feature, exquisite silent classic, that has undergone lamentable modification and mutilation, but that encloses a great cinematographic treasure, at the same time as an indelible history within the universal literature.