Gösta Berlings saga

There is, as I think I mentioned the past few years, a "National Silent Movie Day". With an occasion like that, it's unsurprising that TCM would show a day full of silent films, including some that don't get very many airings. Last year, I recorded a couple of those lesser-seen silents, including a Swedish film, Gösta Berlings saga.

It's the 1820s (roughly; I think early intertitles suggest the action happened a century ago and the movie was released in 1924) in the province of Värmland, which is in the western part of Sweden on what is now the border with the southern part of Norway -- take a train from Stockholm to Oslo and you should go through Värmland. There's a manor house called Ekeby right near a group of iron foundries, and Ekeby has now been given over to a group of "Cavaliers". These "Cavaliers" are men who had some sort of adventure followed by misfortune and, having suffered such misfortune and having no other home, are allowed to live here.

Among the Cavaliers is the titular Gösta Berling (Lars Hanson). A flashback story in a later act of the movie (the movie is divided into two parts and about ten "acts") tells how Berling was a country priest in the Lutheran church, although he was given to drinking heavily. Enough that his parishioners petition the bishop to relieve him of his duties. Berling does indeed get sacked, although not quite for his drinking. Instead, it's because he calls his parishioners hypocrites since they're all given to drinking too much on various occasions as well.

Gösta then gets hired by Märta Dohna to be the tutor to her stepdaughter Ebba. Märta's real reason is that there's a clause in her late husband's will that the estate should go to Ebba, instead of Märta's son Henrik. However, if Ebba marries a commoner, the estate will go to Henrik. So Märta would love Ebba to marry a commoner. Henrik had been spending time in Italy, where he, under no such restrictions, married an Italian girl Elizabeth (Greta Garbo in the role that made her a star).

At this point the movie starts to get complicated. The woman who owns Ekeby and the foundries, Margaretha, reveals that she was in an illicit relationship and that this resulted both in ostracism, and in getting Ekeby because the previous owner was the man she loved but couldn't marry. Elizabeth realizes that she too might have a thing for Gösta. This would normally be a huge problem, until Henrik gets word from Italy that because certain documents weren't signed properly, he and Elizabeth are technically not legally married even though they've been living together under the belief that they were in fact married. Imagine the fun the Production Code office would have had with that if the movie had been made in Hollywood in the Code era. Events continue like this until an eding that you can probably guess.

Having watched Gösta Berlings saga, I can see why audiences in Sweden in 1924 would have loved it. Apparently it was released in two parts in Sweden, while for international audiences it was edited down. What we have today is the most complete reconstruction known to exist from extant materials. This version is one that, I'm sorry to say, is going to be a bit tough to get into, largely because the movie is way too complicated for its own good. Not only is it long at a shade over three hours; I felt like it had way too many characters and subplots that it's difficult to keep everyboy and their individual subplot straight. The flashbacks definitely don't help in that regard. Still, Gösta Berlings saga is the movie that made Greta Garbo a star, and for that reason alone it's a movie that should probably be seen at least once.

Conquest

One of those movies that I had noticed on the TCM schedule several times but never got around to watching was Conquest. So with that in mind, the most recent time it was on the TCM schedule, I finally made a point of getting it on the DVR in order to be able to watch it and do a review here.

The movie starts off with an intertitle stating that the action is set in Eastern Poland in 1807. Now, for those who know your history, you may recall that over the previous roughly 40 years, Poland's neighbors: Prussia, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, had cooperated to take bits and pieces of the country until there was no longer a Poland as an independent entity. Count Walewski (Henry Stephenson) has worked for the last king, but now his estate is in Russian territory, and the Russians come in to commandeer the estate, running the horses into the house. This greatly distresses him and his young wife, the Countess Marie Walewska (Greta Garbo).

However, it's a chaotic political situation as Napoleon (Charles Boyer) has been moving from the west. Soon, the Countess' brother Paul (Leif Erickson) arrives to inform the Walewkis about this. And it's not long before Napoleon does make it as far as the Walewski estate and even is the guest of honor at a party there as he sets up what is a vassal buffer state in the Duchy of Warsaw. But at least the Polish people get to have something of their own for a little while. Anyhow, it's at that party that Napoleon first meets Countess Waleska. The two quickly develop an attraction to each other.

But, there's a problem. Both of them are already married, even if it is a marriage of convenience for both of them: Walewska needed the sort of money and a good name that the Count could provide, while Napoleon needed a wife who could produce him an heir and was from a place that could serve as a political ally on the grander European stage, which is why he married Josephine.

Fast forward a couple of years. Both Napoleon and Waleska are still married to their respective spouses, but they've both been unfaithful. Seemingly happily for Marie, her husband is willing to seek an annulment. And Napoleon, not having been given an heir by Josephine, is planning to get an annulment of his own. So it's with this in mind that Marie heads off to Vienna where Napoleon currently is.

They resume their relationship, and Marie even winds up pregnant with what is presumably Napoleon's child. Sadly for Marie however, she can't really offer anything of political advantage for Napoleon, so he decides to get married to an Austrian princess instead. This is only 1810, which means Napoleon still has the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia ahead of him, as well as the first exile to Elba, the triumphant return to France, and then Waterloo before finally being sent way too far away to St. Helena. Marie pines for her Napoleon through all of this....

Conquest is the sort of material that may be it bit hokey for some, setting a silly romance against the backdrop of Great Events. But it's all based on real people, and how much of a relationship Walewska had with Napoleon is still a matter of debate. (DNA testing suggested that the real-life Marie may in fact have borne Napoleon's son.) And Conquest was made at MGM, which is exactly the right studio to make a costume drama like this, with all the gloss they could bring to the material. Garbo does a good job as Countess Waleska, but the movie is really Boyer's; after all, Napoleon in a proment place in any movie is going to be the natural focus.

Conquest is a fine example of the MGM magic in action, and definitely a movie worth watching.

The Mysterious Lady

Greta Garbo had a day in TCM's Summer Under the Stars this year, and one of her movies that I hadn't seen before and TCM showed was The Mysterious Lady. Recently, I sat down to watch it.

As you can probably guess, Garbo plays the titular lady of mystery; we first see her sitting in a box at the opera in Vienna sometime around World War I, or about a dozen years before the movie was made. Coming to the opera is Karl von Raden (Conrad Nagel), an Austrian military officer who doesn't have a ticket of his own, but is able to get a returned ticket in the same box where the mysterious lady is siting, she claiming to expect a cousin who presumably would have been the one to return the ticket.

This is, of course, a ruse, as we'll learn over the course of the movie, and not too far in to the movie in fact. But not having her cousin present, the woman, named Tania, has no cash on her to get home that night. And since it's raining, Karl kindly offers to take her back to her house, where the two fall in love with each other over the course of the night. This, despite Tania finding a telegram from the other man in her life, General Alexandroff (Gustav von Seyffertitz). He's in Warsaw, which was part of Russia at the time since Poland had been partitioned in the 1790s and wouldn't regain its independence until after World War I. So we learn that Tania is Russian.

And then Karl's uncle, Col. von Raden (Edward Connelly), who just happens to be the head of the Austrian secret police, informs Karl that Tania is in fact a Russian spy. Because who would ever think to use sex appeal to try to get military secrets? Now, at this point, what the colonel should have done is to give his nephew fake military secrets so as to catch Tania out and find out from her how she's getting her information and what-not. What he does instead is to give Karl real military secrets, about the country's defense alliance with Germany, and send Karl on his way alone on the overnight train to Berlin.

Unsurprisingly, Tania finds out about this and is able to get the compartment next to Karl, leading her to be able to get those military secrets. However, she also insists that she's really, truly in love with Karl, and doesn't want to betray him, except that the only way out of spying for her is death. This results in Karl being court-martialed, losing his rank, and sentenced to prison. His uncle, however, just knows that there has to be somebody else in military command feeding information to Tania about the Austrian military. With that in mind, Karl's uncle gets him sprung from prison so that Karl can get a fake passport to go to Warsaw and find who the real mole is.

Now, you'd think that somebody besides Tania would recognize Karl right away. The Russians all suspect him, but they don't quite know yet that he's really an Austrian spy. Tania, meanwhile, is getting increasingly sick of the abusive treatment from General Alexandroff, and sees in Karl a way to get away from being a spy once and for all.

The Mysterious Lady is the sort of movie where it's easy to see why Greta Garbo had the star power that she did. She's the center of attention whenever she's on screen, and she does well with what she's given here, even if some of the material seems unrealistic. Indeed, with a star vehicle like this, one finds oneself not caring so much about the material as much as the chance to watch Garbo do her thing, which she does effortlessly.

The Mysterious Lady isn't Greta Garbo's best movie by a long shot, but it's certainly worth watching as a fine example of a Garbo silent movie.

Mata Hari (1931)

Ramon Novarro was one of the stars in Summer Under the Stars last month, which gave me the chance to watch -- or maybe re-watch, since I might be confusing it with some of the other pre-Code spy movies -- Mata Hari.

Novarro is obviously not in the title role, since that's the famous female spy from World War I. So Mata Hari is played by Greta Garbo. In this movie, she's in Paris, wowing everybody in 1961, including the Russian army officers stationed there. (From reading the Wikipedia page on Mata Hari, there was a force sent to the western front by Tsarist Russia before the February 1917 revolution took the country out of the war.) That force is headed by Gen. Shubin (Lionel Barrymore). Flying in to France is dashing young Lt. Rosanoff (Ramon Novarro), with some coded dispatches from Russia for Shubin.

Needless to say, the other side would like those dispatches. Andriani (Lewis Stone) is the head of those enemy agents, with a bunch of people working under him, including Mata Hari as well as woman named Carlotta (Karen Morley). Working for the allies is Dubois (C. Henry Gordon), convinced Mata Hari is a spy but unable to prove it.

Mata, for her part, works as an exotic dancer at one of those nightclubs in Paris that, at the time the movie was made, so about 15 years after the setting of the movie, would be employing people like Josephine Baker as the entertainment. Mata Hari's exoticism and beauty charm all the men, and the newcomer Rosanoff is no exception. He would like to see her after the show, not realizing that she'd only be usin him to get those dispatches once she learns he has a copy of them.

Rosanoff also doesn't know that his superior, Gen. Shubin, has been carrying on an affair with Mata Hari. But Mata Hari falls in love with Rosanoff, too, which is unsurprising because Ramon Novarro is a much more obvious romantic lead than Judge Hardy. It all leads to Mata Hari getting caught since that's what happened in real life, and sentenced to death, although Rosanoff, having been injured in a plane crash, doesn't actually know what's going to happen to the woman he loves.

I'm not certain exactly how much bearing in reality this version of Mata Hari has. It's got the sort of competence that MGM was able to bring to its programmers, although since we're still in 1931, it doesn't have quite the technical expertise that later movies would have. Still, the story is interesting enough.

If I were going to recommend any of the movie's stars to people, I'd recommend other of their movies first, although that doesn't mean that Mata Hari is bad by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that there's other stuff easier for people to get into.

The first talking picture rom-com

One of the movies that I had to chance to record during 31 Days of Oscar back in April is one that got nominations for its lead actress and its director, but one that gets fairly little attention nowadays: Romance. To be fair, I think it's with good reason that it's gon relatively forgotten.

The movie starts off with an establishing scene in the present day, that being 1930. Young Harry (Elliott Nugent) comes rushing in on New Year's Eve to see his grandfather, Rev. Tom Armstrong (Gavin Gordon, who in real life was five years younger than Nugent, although it makes sense when you watch the movie). Harry has fallen in love with an actress and is thinking of marrying her, but his parents are none too pleased, since she's clearly of the wrong social class. Grandpa looks in a small wooden box he keeps, and pulls out a handkerchief that clearly must have been scented at some point in the past, and tells his own story....

Flash back to some point around 1880 or so, when Tom was a young man just starting off in the ministry. He attends a party given by family friends the Van Tuyls, with father Cornelius (Lewis Stone) and adult daughter Susan (Florence Lake), who would be right for young Tom, a match made in heaven for the two families. However, another of the party attendees is opera singer Rita Cavallini (Greta Garbo). Since Harry is in love with an actress, we just know that Tom is going to fall in love with Rita. Also, since Grandpa has that faded handkerchief in the establishing scene, we know that the romance isn't going to work out, but we still have another hour or so to get there.

Well, actually, only about 40 minutes. Rev. Tom does indeed fall in love with Rita, and the feeling seems to be mutual as the two have a whirlwind winter romance set against the backdrop of some very obvious rear-projection photography. Obviously, Tom's family doesn't like this, and his Aunt Abigail (Clara Blandick) disapproves. More worryingly are the rumors that Rita is in fact Cornelius' mistress. Cornelius has been lying to Tom about it because he doesn't want to hurt Tom's feelings. But soon enough, the truth will come out.

The problem is, this comes out about 45 minutes into what is a 75-minute movie. After Tom learns the shocking truth, he still holds a candle for Rita, while she starts moping and claiming that she's going to be unable to sing at what is supposed to be her final American performance before returning to Europe. Worse, Tom is at the performance and wants to see Rita after the show to try to save her soul!

I called Romance a romantic comedy in the title of the thread. The romance part is obvious. The comedy, maybe not so much. But I found myself laughing during the final half hour in part because the script gets increasingly ridiculous, and in part because Garbo goes increasingly over the top. Romance was clearly intended to be more tragic, and with no comedy, but for me, that's not the way it turned out at all.

Then again, it doesn't help that Romance is the sort of movie that hasn't aged well. Perhaps audiences of the day would have been more amenable to it. Hollywood was still trying to figure out which stars were right for talking pictures, and the production here is nowhere near as stagy as films from even just a few months earlier were. So if you like Greta Garbo, you may find Romance interesting. The last I checked, it's available on a Warner Archive DVD.

The Lady of the Camellias

Where yesterday's selection Our Time showed a young, naïve love, today's selection shows a rather more craven kind of love: the 1936 version of Camille.

Greta Garbo plays the lady of the camellias, named not Camille but Marguerite. She lives in the Paris of 1847 (just before the revolution of 1848 that brought Napoleon III to power but which isn't mentioned here; I couldn't do a good enough calculation of how long the events in the movie are spaced out to determine when it ended), where women of her sort woo wealthy men. Her matchmaker -- to use a polite term -- Prudence (Laura Hope Crews) is taking her to a theater where it's hoped she'll meet the wealthy Baron de Varville (Henry Daniell).

Unfortunately, she mistakes another man, Armand Duval (Robert Taylor), for de Varville. The two like each other, but he's only a diplomat's son and so of just moderate wealth. Armand falls in love with Marguerite, but he's not going to be able to support her in the manner to which she is accustomed.

The Baron, of course, could, but he's not going to marry her, especially when he knows what kind of woman she really is. In addition to being in love with another man, she's also a spendthrift, constantly owing money because she wants to spend on herself and even more so help others when possible. Armand's father (Lionel Barrymore) knows that Marguerite is financial bad news for Armand, but when he meets Marguerite he realizes that the two are in real, if doomed, love.

That doom isn't just because of Marguerite's profligate ways, but also because she has consumption, which in those days mean an early death, especially if Marguerite is living it up as she is. Armand and the Baron come in and out of Marguerite's life, until the three legs of the love triangle all meet at the opening of a new gambling club in Paris. Armand wins the money to pay Marguerite's debts off of the Baron in a game of baccarat, but it leads to a duel between Armand and the Baron which ultimately forces Armand to leave France. Will he be able to return before the consumption takes Marguerite?

Well, you can probably guess that the answer to that last question is yes, but that Armand sure won't be able to save Marguerite. Camille is the sort of movie that MGM was really good at making during Irving Thalberg's lifetime. It's got excellent production values, and a story and performances that I'm sure audiences of the 1930s loved.

However, watching it 80-plus years later, I realize that it's not exactly my cup of tea, as I felt like a whole lot of nothing was happening. Still, it's easy to see the quality of the movie, so I have no qualms about recommending it for people who know what they're getting into. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, should you wish to watch for yourself.

Anna Karenina (1935)

During the TCM Spotlight on remakes back in December, they included a day of literary adaptations, which seems like a slight cheat since it's so easy to do adaptations and, since all of them are remaking a book or play, they're not necesarily remaking a movie. But it gave TCM a chance to run two versions of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Recently, I sat down to watch the 1935 version.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So begins the book, and the first of the unhappy families to be presented is the Oblonskys, with husband Stepan (Reginald Owen) having an affair with the children's governess, much to the consternation of Stepan's wife Dolly (Phoebe Foster). Dolly has a sister Kitty (Maureen O'Sullivan), who is going to be part of the general unhappiness, while Stepan has a sister Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo), who will be part of the major unhappiness of the movie.

Anna has visited Moscow to smooth things over between Stepan and Kitty, and while there she meets the dashing cavalry officer Count Vronsky (Fredric March). Vronsky has been toying with Kitty, who in her turn thinks Vronsky really loves her. The one who really does love Kitty is Levin, who lives out in the country which Kitty really doesn't want but winds up marrying him because there's nobody else for her.

Vronsky and Anna meet at a ball although they kind of know each other since Anna and his mother met on the train down to Moscow. Anna, you see, has a husband (Basil Rathbone) and son (Freddie Bartholomew) back in St. Petersburg. Still, Anna and Vronsky fall in love, even though it's bound to be a doomed relationship.

Thanks to Tolstoy's radical Orthodox Christianity, he's going to present a morality tale about how evil it is for a woman to step out on her husband; this is a perfect coupling for Hollywood's moralistic Production Code. There isn't any way Anna's husband Alexei is going to grant a divorce, even if Tsarist Russia had been as open about it as 1930s Hollywood (in real life) was. So Alexei says no, you can't have a divorce, and if you're not going to stop seeing Vronsky, you're out of the house and don't even get to see our son Sergei.

So Anna leaves to think it over and spend more time with Vronsky, who's got problems of his own. There's a war going on between Serbia (part of the fractious area between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire at the time) and the Ottomans. Russia ought to remain neutral, and the Tsar hasn't joined the war. But there are a lot of folks in the military who see the Serbs as their Slavic brethren against those heathen Mohammedans, so they want to form a volunteer regiment and fight in Serbia because reasons. Vronsky at first wants to spend time with Anna (although I don't understand how he was able to get enough of a leave of absence to go off to Italy with her), but pressure mounts on him to join that volunteer regiment.

You probably know how the story ends although I'm not going to reveal it here. This isn't a bad retelling of Tolstoy's sprawling novel. Tolstoy's novel, depending on the translation, clocks in somewhere between 800 and 1,000 pages, meaning that for any movie, there's a lot that's going to have to be left out. Thankfully, when MGM made this version a big portion of what was left out was Levin, who serves even more than all the other characters as a vehicle for Tolstoy to expound upon his views not just on Christianity, but on treatment of the peasant classes. It makes the novel a slog at times, and not having much of it in the movie makes the movie move at a much brisker pace.

This is also the sort of material that was right up MGM's alley in an era when they still had Irving Thalberg. The lush MGM style works here instead of causing the problems it would in other genres, although I did at times find the movie trying a bit too hard to dollop on Russianness and not always succeeding. Still, it's an entertaining primer to Tolstoy's source material, if you don't want to deal with all of Tolstoy's philosophy.

Several of the versions of Anna Karenina are on DVD, including this one which got a release courtesy of the Warner Archive.

TCM Star of the Month April 2019: Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo (l.) and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939; airs Friday at 10:00 PM)

Now that we're in the first full week of a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time out, it's Greta Garbo. However, this month is also a bit different. Since this month is the 25th anniversary of TCM, the channel is running a bunch of special programming features over the course of the month. That means instead of the usual one night a week every week for a month, we get Garbo's movies five straight nights in prime time over the course of one week, and this first week of April is it.

The Garbo movies will be running roughly chronologically, at least for four of the nights. (Thursday has three silents and Queen Christina.) So tonight is several silents, while Ninotchka, pictured above, doesn't show up until the final night.

Interestingly, I apparently hadn't ever used any photos to illustrate a post about a Garbo movie, according to a brief search of the blog, so I had to do another image search for the Ninotchka photo.

The Painted Veil (1934)

I'm not a big fan of Greta Garbo. But I do have to say that it's not her fault that The Painted Veil is a mess. The movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so you can watch and decide for yourself how much of a mess it is.

Garbo, at 28, plays unmarried Katrin, an Austrian who still lives with her parents. Her kid sister gets married, and one of the attendees is British Dr. Fane (Herbert Marshall), whose career involves studying cholera in Hong Kong and dealing with any outbreaks on the mainland. Garbo is so desperate that she decides to marry him and go off to China with him!

Katrin, now in Hong Kong, doesn't know anybody there, so she's bored out of her mind until she meets British civil servant Townsend (George Brent), also stationed in Hong Kong. Townsend seems to be relatively wealthy by Hong Kong standards, and is also intersted in Katrin. Katrin has nothing else to do because her husband is spending all his time on his epidemiology studies, so she naturally does what any woman in her situation would do, which is to take a lover in the afternoon.

Of course, Dr. Fane finds out and he's none too pleased. He has no desire to divorce her, but what's a good way to punish her? (Never mind the fact that he should have paid attention to her.) Well, the good doctor but lousy husband is in luck! A cholera epidemic has broken out on the mainland, and Dr. Fane is needed to treat the patients and find the source of the outbreak. Only this time, he's not going to leave Katrin behind to romance Townsend. Oh, no, he's going to take Katrin with him to middle-of-nowhere China even if it kills her. Or especially if it kills her. Of course, he's the one to get cholera eventually.

The Painted Veil is sunk by its thoroughly ludicrous plot. Garbo as a woman who is unmarried and not by her choice is nonsense. If she weren't married, it's because she didn't want a man, like the characters in the recently-mentioned Antonia's Line. The movie also completely overlooks the fact that both of them screwed up in the marriage. George Brent is also the sort of actor who would be right in Herbert Marshall's role, but not as the lover Katrin takes on the side. And the resolution of the whole cholera thing left me shaking my head at the improbability of it.

Still, as I said at the beginning, you may want to judge for yourself. The movie was based on a story by Somerset Maugham, and was remade about a decade ago. The 2007 version has actually been released as part of a box set, but not the Garbo version, which is only on the pricier standalone Warner Archive DVD.

The farmer's daughter

Of the movies airing for Greta Garbo's birthday, the one that I'd really recommend is Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, airing at 1:15 PM.

Garbo, unsurprisingly, plays Lenox, although at the start of the movie she's playing a young woman named Ohlin. She's the illegitimate daughter of farmer Jean Hersholt, who has decided to marry her off to another Swedish immigrant farmer, played by Alan Hale (Sr.; the Skipper from Gilligan's Island would have been much too young to play this role). So she runs off, winding up in a cabin being rented by Rodney (Clark Gable, in the only movie he made with Garbo). The two fall in love, but she can't stay there forever. So she runs off with the circus, more or less with an agreement that she's got her job because she's sleeping with the circus manager (John Miljan). With her named now changed to the Susan Lenox of the title, she meets Rodney again, only for him to be disgusted by the way she's making her way through life. What's a girl to do? Keep sleeping her way to the top, only to have the one man she truly loves keep being repulsed by it. Eventually, she gets some sense in her head, and decides she's going to run off to Latin America to be wirh Rodney!

Susan Lenox is pure melodrama, of the sort that was popular in pre-Code movies. In fact, it was based on a book written about a quarter-century earlier. Why is Garbo's character being so dumb? I mean, in the opening you can understand why she's running away, and why she has to run away from Gable's character even though she doesn't want to, but once she starts meeting him again you'd think she'd tell him the full truth of her life and that he'd respect her. And isn't it just amazing that these characters just magically seem to run into each other over and over? I suppose the idea of pairing Gable with Garbo is interesting, but Garbo's not one of my favorites and neither actor was helped by a not very good script.

TCM's schedule page claims that Susan Lenox is not available on DVD, but Amazon says that they're selling a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive. This is one you might want to record and watch before deciding whether to spend the money on the DVD.

Bloggers come, bloggers go, nothing's ever posted

No, I'm not quitting the blogging game; I'm just recommending Grand Hotel tonight at 8:00 PM ET on TCM

Grand Hotel is one of the earliest of the all-star movies, with MGM using a bunch of its stars against the backdrop of Berlin's "Grand Hotel"; each star with his or her own story. Greta Garbo, who got top billing, is the dancer who would rather just take a break from work. Her story collides with that of John Barrymore, playing a "Baron" who is in fact a scammer trying to get not at Garbo, but at her jewels -- he needs the money. In the hallways of the hotel the Baron meets "Flaemmchen" (Joan Crawford), a secretary to a renowned industrialist (Wallace Beery). The Baron falls in love with her, but she's not so certain she's in love with him. The problem is that she also has to deal with the unwanted advances of her boss. Flaemmchen isn't the only one of Beery's employees at the Grand Hotel, either. Unbeknownst to him, one of his clerks (Lionel Barrymore) has taken an unexcused absence because he wants to enjoy life for a bit, believing that he's terminally ill. Oblivious to all this is the hotel's doctor (Lewis Stone), who famously quips, "People come, people go; nothing ever happens".

And yet, quite a bit happens. Despite the fact that there are a lot of stories going on, it's not too difficult to keep them all straight: Grand Hotel interweaves its stories like Dinner At Eight and unlike those anthology movies which present one story at a time. To be honest, some of the stories aren't as good as others. I personally am not the biggest fan of either Greta Garbo or John Barrymore, so care less about their stories. But all the stories do more or less work together, and are helped by good acting.

That and the production values. The hotel in Grand Hotel is as grand as is implied by the title, with large and opulent art deco sets. Even when the story isn't so interesting, Grand Hotel is a beautiful movie to look at. It's probably the combination of all this that helped Grand Hotel win the Best Picture Oscar. (Being up against relatively weak competition wouldn't have hurt, either.) Grand Hotel has unsurprisingly made it to DVD, and is well worth watching.

Garbo spricht!

Overnight between Sunday and Monday, TCM has its weekly Silent Sunday Night movie, followed by TCM Imports. This week's import is Anna Christie, at 2:00 AM ET. The thing is, it's not really an import, but a German-language version of MGM's earlier English-language Anna Christie, famous for being the first talkie for Greta Garbo.

What MGM did isn't unheard of. At the beginning of the sound era, studios would sometimes save money by making the same movie in more than one language. They'd make the English version first, and then keep the same sets for use by the crew making a movie in, say, French or German. Alfred Hitchcock did this, for example, when he made the "German" movie Mary, which is really just a remake of Murder!. And if you want to see Adolphe Menjou acting in French, you can try to find one of a couple of movies he made, such as the drawing-room comedy Soyons Gais, a remake of Let Us Be Gay. The latter has been shown on TCM; I don't know about the French version. Also Menjou made two foreign-language versions of the early Paramount talkie Slightly Scarlet, one in French and one in Spanish!

That having been said, this German-language version of Anna Christie also stars Garbo in the title role, but the rest of the actors are different.

Ernst Lubitsch, 1892-1947

Comic director Ernst Lubitsch was born on this day in 1892. I see that I've already recommended Heaven Can Wait and To Be Or Not To Be. I would have liked to recommend his final completed movie, Cluny Brown, which I first saw when TCM aired it this past Christmas Eve, but it's not available on DVD here in the US. Instead, you can't go wrong with his 1939 movie Ninotchka.

The scene is the Paris of 1939. The Soviets are trying to sell off some of their crown jewels for desperately needed foreign currency. However, the three envoys who are supposed to sell the jewels decide that Paris is much better than Moscow, so they'll do everything they can to extend their stay. That is, until faithful, no-nonsense Communist Ninotchka Ivanova (played by Greta Garbo) shows up to see what's going on.

Ninotchka seemingly has no sense of humor, and no desire for any of the finer things that the West has to offer. That is, until she meets the Leon, the count who is acting on behalf of the seller of the jewels (played by Melvyn Douglas). At first, Ninotchka maintains her icy exterior, but eventually, she falls in love with him, which causes a whole host of problems.

Who knew that Greta Garbo could do comedy? Ninotchka shows that she indeed could, and she's outstanding. Hers is, for the most part, a deadpan humor, with the laughs being found in the stark contrast to everything else that's going on around her. Paris is supposed to be a place for lovers, but when Ninotchka sees the Eiffel Tower, she's much more interested in all the technical aspects of the tower. When the Count tries to tell Ninotchka jokes in a proletarian restaurant, she finds none of it funny -- untill the Count inadvertently does a slapstick fall out of his chair! Melvyn Douglas is fine, too, although he generally serves as more of a foil for Garbo's deadpan. Although Douglas is technically the male lead, he's really playing second fiddle to Garbo. This isn't to demean Douglas; he was a fine supporting actor, as we saw last week in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House; also, Douglas went on to win two Supporting Actor Oscars.

Ninotchka is one of the better anti-Communist movies made by the studio system, and it's interesting that the message (even if wrapped in comedy) could be so clearly made in the Hollywood of the 1930s, when it was generally thought that socialism was the wave of the future. Lubitsch's portrayal of the privations of the Soviet Union isn't that heavy-handed or inaccurate, except in that a real-life Ninotchka would probably have been part of the elites and enjoy a better standard of living. Of course, Lubitsch was helped immensely by a screenplay written by Billy Wilder before he became a director.

Ninotchka is available on DVD, and even though Soviet Communism is a thing of the past, this movie still glitters and remains fun 70 years on.