In the latest installment of "Honorees in Summer Under the Stars for whom I have a movie on my DVR that's showing up on TCM", the actor in question is John Gilbert, whose career spanned the silent era and the early part of the sound era. Among his silent films is the 1926 adaptation of La Bohème, which comes on overnight tonight, or in the wee hours of the morning, at 2:15 AM (which makes it still August 19 in the Pacific time zone).
La Bohème tells the tragic story of Mimi, played here by Lillian Gish. But we don't meet her first; instead we meet the future man in her life and his friends. It's the early 1830s in Paris, and bohemianism is already a thing, having taken its name in French from the idea that the wandering gypsies (now referred to as the Romani) came from the Bohemia region in what is now the Czech Republic. But the bohemians here are fully French. Rodolphe (John Gilbert) is a writer who would like the write the Great French Play. But he needs to pay the bills, so he resorts to writing articles for some sort of magazine, at least as they existed in the 1830s.
Rodolphe lives with Marcel, a struggling artist who at least has a girlfriend in Musette (Renée Adorée) who is able to provide Marcel and his friends with some food. The two men have two other roommates, musician Schaunard and Colline (a very young Edward Everett Horton). As for Mimi, she lives in the same building as the men, in a garret apartment where she does piece-work as a seamstress. She, like the men, has a lot of difficulty coming up with the rent money.
It's the first of the month, and the men are somehow able to scrounge up the rent money, but Mimi isn't, which means she's about to be thrown out. She couldn't even get enough money from pawning the few things she owns. But when Musette invites Marcel down for dinner, and he invites his friends, Rodolphe, the last to get invited, sees poor Mimi about to get thrown out and takes pity on her. However, the rich Vicomte Paul, seeing Mimi's beauty, tries to proposition her under the guise of offering her some work.
Mimi rejects Paul's advances, but accepts Rodolphe's, and as you can guess, the two fall in love. This love gives Rodolphe the inspiration for his play. However, he spends so much time writing his play that he runs way behind on the articles he's supposed to be writing for the magazine, to the point that the editor basically fires him. However, the editor only does this when Mimi brings over Rodolphe's latest piece, he being too busy working on his play to go over to the editor's office himself.
At this point, Mimi does something profoundly stupid. She doesn't tell Rodolphe that he's been fired, and is going to have to find some other writing job to pay the bills and give him the time to write that play. Instead, she decides to work double time so that she can earn more money herself and give the extra to Rodolphe, who thinks those are his wages. Mimi promptly works herself to an early grave, and the rest, as they say, is history.
To be honest, I haven't seen either the opera La bohème, or the musical Rent which is based on the opera. This version of the story, however, is at least reasonably well-acted, even though the story is melodramatic and might be eyeroll-inducing for some. Just when you think it can't get tragic enough, it gets more tragic. But that's the fault of the source material, not the actors or director.
While I'd have to say I prefer other movies from the silent output of John Gilbert and Lillian Gish, this version of La Bohème is definitely worth watching.
No comments:
Post a Comment