JEAN GABIN & BRIGITTE HELM.

How’s this for a trip to the far shores of film freaking? A large slice the generation ahead of mine had decided that Brigitte Helm was the most alluring female on the planet and, after I saw Metropolis at the age of twelve, a bit of that leached through to me.

I was vaguely aware that she had made other films but they were off in countries which had Cinémathèques and serious enthusiasts. 

In fact there were nearly forty of them. She had been paired with an extraordinary roll of leading men - Jean Gabin, Hans Albers, Ivan Mozjoukine, Joseph Schildkraut, Jan Kiepura, Gustav Diessl and Gustav Fröhlich, rolling over the transition to sound without pausing. 

A few of the films were brilliant - Hanns Schwarz’ 1929 Die wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna and George Wilhelm Pabst’s 1932 L’atalantide - and she was brilliant all on her own in a few more - Pabst’s 1928 Abwege, Karl Hartl’s 1934 Gold and Marcel L'Herbier’s 1928 L’Argent with her in the silver lamé number winding around financier Pierre Alcover to extract his secret during his murderous rage.

Now some of the rest are bubbling to the surface, I enjoyed Karl Hartl’s 1932 Die Gräfin von Monte-Christo (twice re-made in Hollywood as The Countess of Monte Christo) so my enthusiasm mounted when Gloria, one of her Gabin films, turned up on U-Tube. The German copy was fair but the piece was untranslated in a language where my peak achievement occurred in Vienna ordering two hot dogs, a bun and a cup of coffee.

Gabin & Helm

 However as a reward for my patience, the French dual language version appeared in a murky tinted copy with dodgy subtitles. I homed in on that and disillusion set in. Gabin is not one of those dashing aviator heroes of the day (think Henry Victor in L’Argent or Jimmy Cagney in Ceiling Zero). His character is closer to side kick parts offered to Frank McHugh. He gets to play a womanising navigator with a drunk scene. Gabin’s only in a couple of scenes where Helm appears. The lead is uninvolving but durable, brilliantined Andre Luget who tries hard to be imposing with no success.  Helm, who appears to speak faultless French, is notably more animated in German with her Metropolis co-star Gustav Fröhlich a much more commanding intrepid bird man. The two versions are otherwise pretty much interchangeable, beyond the fact that Luguet flies into a  Paris complete with Eiffel Tower montage while Fröhlich is greeted with a banner that says “Welcom in heimat.” The French version is slightly shorter.

Long serving director Hans Behrendt, whose career started with the 1923 Alt Heidelberg, is unable to make the central triangle situation compelling and the long distance flight generates only mild suspense. The piece is full of awkward transitions where an unrelated cut-away fails to cover the difference between the shots either side. Brigitte is not even attractively filmed, though she manages to generate a few characteristic moments on the dance floor or in big close up.

Peter de Herzog’s biography of Helm had her dissatisfied with the films they delivered her and eyeing the rise of the Nazis with unease, quitting at the age of  twenty nine to be a house wife in Switzerland.

Well you can’t win them all.

 

 

Barrie Pattison 2017