Koenigsmark

Storm Tossed Masses.
 

Elissa Landi

People think Euro Pudding movies appear with the Common Market and operators round The Continent scrambling to put together talent with name recognition who they might be able to flog as a bundle to the US. In fact the practice was established in the nineteen twenties and thirties and you might consider it as having a finest hour then when they all piled into England and France looking for a dollar income or escaping the Nazi threat.

The Germans Robert Siodmark, Fritz Lang and Georg W. Pabst found a home in Paris while Hungarians, Frenchmen, Russians and Czechs set up, slogging away in London next to Arthur Robison and Karl Grune, Raoul Walsh and Alan Dwan. The local British talent by and large took a dim view of this and during the war the Film Union organised to keep all these hand kissing foreigners out of their industry, though Duvivier and Edmund Greville did slip under the wire in the forties and fifties.

The 1935 Koenigsmark had always triggered my curiosity, a costume melodrama fronted by Pierre Fresnay and the glamorous Elissa Landi and directed by Maurice Tourneur. There at last it was in it’s English language edition Crimson Dynasty on You Tube and in not a bad copy ripped off the BBC too. 

I was prepared for the worst. These interesting looking pudding pictures are usually disappointments, with Robison’s The Informer and Alex Korda’s Henry VIII, Don Juan & Rembrandt notable exceptions. 

 

However Koenigsmark opens imposingly with Elissa making a forced for reasons of state marriage with older Grand Duke Alan Jeayes who never gets past her bed chamber door. His monocle twisting brother John Lodge, a pillar of pudding pictures, looks on disapprovingly. Royal wedding, lines of suits of armor, household cavalry and a grand ball are all displayed with the imposing imagery of Tourneur’s best silents. The visuals, script and performance are pretty good.

Then Pierre Fresnay brilliantined, coated with more Pancake 5 and lipstick than they are using on Elissa and speaking English with just the right amount of accent shows up for the spot of tutor to Lodge’s young son (what happens to him?) and things slide.

 

Maurice Tourneur's fun La Main du Diable Noël Roquevert & Fresnay

Fresnay could be an imposing actor. Think Le Courbeau or even the thirties Man Who Knew Too Much but his “comic little French professor” is a feeble pivot to put next to Jeayes broken hearted aristocrat, Marcelle Rogez' maybe lesbian confidante and Frank Vosper’s loyal henchman who is not what he seems.

An expedition to the Congo disposes of Jeayes and Elissa, in what looks like Marlene Dietrich’s cast off outfits from Scarlet Empress, declines to be a passive executor of his legacy. Pierre uncovers a sinister plot for which Lodge torches the (model shot) palace and Elissa calls in some old  favors before taking to the Swiss highway in the big white Rolls.

Two things ultimately do this one in. While it’s crucial that action unrolls in the tangled web of pre WW1, it screams 1930s, particularly in the clothes of the romantic leads. Second, it’s all so British. We can’t help feeling that the parallel French version for which they summon Antonin Artaud and Jean Debucourt to back up the stars, would play better. This is the thing for which Hollywood historical films were constantly derided by British critics put off by American accents. From this distance those U.S. films play better than their British counterparts.

All up, this one can hold it’s own with the similar films Greta Garbo was putting out at the time, even if it’s not in the event against Mayerling.

Beyond it’s ninety minutes as uneven entertainment, it has the appeal of it’s companion cosmopolitan ventures - include Swede Victor Seastrom’s  Under the Red Robe, German Luis Trenker’s The Challenge, Czech Karel Lamac’s They Met In the Dark, Frenchman Edmund Greville’s Mademoiselle Docteur, Russian Eugene Frenke’s A Woman Alone. It’s more interesting to see people who knew how to do it thrash about than to watch later home grown British talent like John Harlow or Arthur Crabtree plod though assignments.

Maurice Tourneur's sound career is miserably documented in English film literature. Inconsistent, it does have peaks with the war time La Main du diable and early sound Au Nom de la loi. I'd really like to do a quick run through. Put it on my to do list.

Barrie Pattison 2020