The Lily of color

Twenty years ago, when TCM was more flush with money, one of the things they did was to have a young film composers' competition in which the winner won the chance to score a silent picture that had an extant print, but no accompanying score. One of the silents that was reintroduced to the world in this way was The Red Lily. The last time it showed up on Silent Sunday Nights, I recorded it, and recently, I finally watched it.

Ramon Novarro is the star here, playing Jean Leonnec, who is the son of the mayor of a small town in western France. He's in love with Marise (Enid Bennett), daughter of the local cobbler. They're even thinking of getting married, at least until Marise's father summarily dies. She's sent to live with her nearest relatives, who treat her like dirt to the point that she wants to escape, even in the middle of a driving rain storm. She meets up with Jean again, but his dad doesn't approve of their relationshp.

So the two young lovers leave for Paris, and just as they're leaving, Jean's dad discovers that there's money missing from the municipal safe, which to him obviously means that his own son must have stolen the money. The lovers reach Paris; at the train station, Jean looks for an information booth to find out where they can go to get married. Instead, he's approached by a couple of gendarmes who inform him he's accused of larceny back in his home town and he's going to have to go with them. He doesn't even get a chance to inform Marise of this, so she sits for hours at the train station waiting for Jean to come back.

Eventually, we learn that the real thief admitted his crime back in the small town, but Jean escaped from the train before he discovered this, so for the rest of the movie he thinks he's a fugitive. Marise, meanwhile, needs a job. She's able to get one in a factory at first, but circumstances turn against her and she eventually turns to prostitution, because the movie insists on piling on more and more for the two lovers to overcome.

Jean makes it back to Paris, always living in the shadows, when he mets Bo-Bo (Wallace Beery), part of the gang of thieves that populated Paris of this era, at least in the imaginations of writers. Jean keeps looking for Marise while trying to stay one step ahead of the police. But what's going to happen if he finally meets her and discovers that she's been forced to turn to prostitution?

The Red Lily is relentlessly melodromatic, at least until the final reel, in that it makes the situation worse and worse for the seemingly doomed young lovers. In that regard, the plot is ridiculous, although I suppose it may have been the sort of material that audiences of the day absolutely loved. While this sort of story line isn't quite my cup of tea, I do have to say that in terms of the acting and the technical aspects of filmmaking, The Red Lily is definitely very well made. It's definitely worth a watch.