CURTIZ Né KERTÉSZ.

In the time since my publication of “The Man Who Ate Films,” the book I did with John Howard Reid on Michael Curtiz, a couple more of Curtiz' though-lost European silents have surfaced on You Tube. There’s nothing on show there to challenge my view that it was Hollywood which transformed Curtiz into the world’s most successful film director (that claim is verifiable) but they do offer a look at the virtually unknown Austrian pre-sound film industry and give us a hint of Curtiz’ development. To an enthusiast they are intriguing and they expand the Austrian section of the book.

Lucy Doraine

In 1921’s Frau Dorothys Bekenntnis / Mrs. Danes Connfession directed by Curtiz still Mihály Kertèsz and produced by Baron Sacha Kolorat, the cops are investigating a rather crowded crime scene in the run down British (?) Salfa hotel. We dissolve through the grill of a cell door to Mrs. Curtiz, Lucy Doraine/Miss Dorothy/Mrs. Dane locked away for the murder. However hopes for a proto film noir fade early - after the scene of the inspector arriving with the police car making its way through studio built side streets in pouring rain.

A series of colour-coded flashback follows the events that have led to her arrest.

Lucy is the despair of her wealthy uncle Otto Treßler, being interested only in sports - which we don’t get to see. A group of ruffians are outfitting themselves in kerchief masks to try to abduct her but Kurt von Lessen’s Harvey Horewood/Harwood is passing and helps her make her escape on horseback just missing the speeding train at the level crossing - contrived in editing.

Doraine & Fryland - gay.

They become an item, attending motor racing. However the uncle over powers a burglar who has entered by jamming a twig in the automatic door and finds on him a note, which he recognises as being in von Lessen’s hand writing. A call to the Delfine Engineering Works exposes the deception of von Lessen passing as the company’s director.

The burglar is caught with the uncle’s body in the room with the giant safe. The police decide “Your silence looks like an avowal” and convict him for murder. He doesn’t divulge his connection to von Lessen.

Lucy marries her rescuer and the pair attend a regatta with costumed rowers in long boats where aristocrat admirer Alphons Fryland asks her “Why are you so sad when the world is gay?” There’s an incoherent montage of horse racing, the regatta, the stock exchange and roulette, which is probably where the piece lost a reel in it’s English language release after re-editing by Don Bartlett as A Soul in Torment. Bailiffs reproach her. “Those who give such elaborate parties, should pay their debts.” She attempts to placate them with the pearls which were von Lessen’s wedding gift but they proclaim them false.

Lucy tells her spouse. “I have only been a pawn in your selfish search for wealth and pleasure” but he sees a way out. “The Duke seems to be very fond of you.”

Refusing to join his scheme to exploit her admirer, Lucy is faced with her husband’s suicide note, the auction of her possessions and squalor represented by working in a line of sewing machine girls. (“Poverty makes Dorothy realise for the first time the seriousness of life”) She collapses on the job and gives birth in the hospital where Duke Fryland lavishes comforts on her.

The burglar is released from jail and encouraged by von Lessen for not involving him and (green flashback) we learn that the Von suffocated the uncle by locking him in the strong room. Horewood lures Dorothy to the grim Salfa Hotel (“Let me in or I will shoot myself”) and manages to assert his old charm over her. “You went to him out of gratitude but you belong to me.” The Duke arrives also armed and there is a stand off but Dorothy now realises the danger Von Lessen represents to her baby and puts a bullet into her evil husband.

She is of course acquitted and lives happily ever after.

The unremarkable melodrama is chiefly an opportunity for Lucy Doraine to pose in attitudes of grief while displaying high fashion outfits. Her performance is as usual lamentable and the support (Fryland accompanied her in four of these at the start of his long career) fail to get our attention. Excessive eye shadow has to stand in for character development.

They are still using masking, with irises opening scenes and diamond shapes and horizontal rectangles around images. Curtiz’ technique is sharpening with constant cutting closer within the scene (leading to the occasional bad match).

Frau Dorothys Bekenntnis - Doraine

 Some compositions are recognisably his work - the arrival of the horse cart at the family home framed by the dark doorway, the swarm of girls in white engulfing the camera. The most interesting element is the high fashion costuming, to which add the vintage automobiles, including the uncle’s with it’s speaker tube to contact the driver.

Despite quite ambitious production values, it is hard to believe that  Frau Dorothys Bekenntnis ever commanded the admiration of audiences but it does have an interest to us as offering an indistinct version of Mildred Pierce, opening with the star’s murder of her unworthy husband and revealing his infamies in successive flash backs. The Cain novel from which Mildred Pierce is derived did not contain a murder.

 

Also surfacing is the Austrian Die Lawine / The Avalanche made two years later in 1923. This one is a weepy starting where Mary Kid, the new (and improved) leading lady of Curtiz’ company, is shocked to see a baby buried without a father at the hospital where her own child is being tended. In the retirement center, she seeks out the aunt of her lover Victor Varconyi,  a regular Curtiz lead. He had abandoned them and the aunt makes him promise on her deathbed he will claim the pair. This happens when Varconyi is in the flower decorated carriage on the way to his wedding to marry well with Lilly Marischka.

The reconstituted family set up in the icy mountains where Victor finds a job. However spurned bride Marischka follows him  to the ski resort Hotel and at the ski jump finals asks him why he persists when he could live in luxury with her. The two women confront at the rendez-vous that she has arranged on snow covered Hollen bridge.

Marischka has her revenge winning Varkonyi back only to leave him after he has taken her home (“You were always a gentleman, George”)  and then casting him aside. Meanwhile Kid is trapped in the snow and only rescued when her wonder dog brings a passing school teacher who takes her home and then follows the dog one more time to scoop up the child lost in the snow.

The brief glimpse of Marischka's palatial home, featuring checkered floor and wide staircase with drapes, livens up this unsurprising weepy.

Varkonyi strikes her down and the police are on his track for murder. His paternal urges are stirred by the little orphan match boy who visits his hideaway in the billiards bar and his escape takes him to Kid’s new home with the school teacher. (“For the love of God Marie, hide me. I killed a woman!”) She shelters him for the sake of their son but after a further ski pursuit with a leap off a bridge and a chase on the edge of the precipice, Varkonyi falls to his death and we end with the child placing a wreath on his grave.

Spot the shot framed in succeeding floral arches or the white iris, both recognisable from other Curtiz efforts.  Varkonyi manages to show a range of emotions and pass himself off as dashing without suggesting any great star presence.

This will have to stand in for the entire Mary Kid collaboration as it is currently the only one to survive - and in a nice tinted copy with a slightly abrupt end. She gets by, though not always attractively filmed.

Like some films from Greece at this time, the snow country material is contemporary with the similar early Arnold Fank Mountain Films which developed into one of the most admired cycles in silent film.

Die Lawine - rescuer & wonder dog.