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.