Molnár

Molnár

    

Dramatist Ferenc Molnár has a long running association with the movies. IMDB lists 119 adaptations of his work, though the more recent ones all seem to emanate from his native Hungary where he, Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz had once participated in the country’s WW1 boom in film production.

From the twenties to the fifties, Hollywood recycled work from the studio owned script libraries. This is one of the things that makes the output uniform. Molnar was no exception, with multiple versions of his “Liliom”, "Olympia", "A testör/ The Guardsman” and “A Pál utcai fiúk /The Pal Street Boys.” Probably the most revealing is the treatment of his "A hattyú" as The Swan.

The version people are most likely to have come into contact with is the MGM 1956 spectacular. It was a prestige undertaking of the Dore Schary administration and has top budget elements including European locations and big studio constructions to go with what is probably the best casting the piece ever got. Grace Kelly, who had done the lead in an Actors Studio TV production, is the right age and filmed gorgeous. Louis Jourdan manages sickeningly sensitive-handsome.  Brian Aherne, Jessie Royce Landis, Estelle Winwood and the loudly trumpeted American debut of Alec Guiness also figure.

The plot has throneless Princess Kelly being put in the path of royal heir Guinness by her deposed monarch-mother Landis and, when he shows no interest, they wheel in the nephews’ fencing tutor Jourdan to make the visiting royal jealous. Of course romance sparks between Kelly and Jourdan.

The Swan - Jourdan, Vidor (seated) and Kelly

The film is at best a practice run for the studio’s much more stylish Gigi which made better use of Jourdan. Charles Vidor, then considered the go-to director for Culture after his work on the 1945 Chopin subject A Song to Remember, just strands the talented cast and Molnar plot in a sea of production values. Someone should have told them about Vidor’s directing Gilda.

What caught my attention however is the discovery of the 1930 version hidden away on You-Tube under its alternative title One Romantic Night. This is notable, if for no other reason than being the last major film to star the luminous Lillian Gish. Don’t try searching her or Molnar or “The Swan”, the title on their copy.

The makers are struggling to come to terms with sound, starting with Russian violins swelling as the door opens into into Rod la Roque, the Prince of Moravia’s drunken party where Rodla is doing his best to be animated as a road show Erich Von Stroheim version of the royal. He tells them to keep going for the next four days till he can get back, after off-loading another princess his (off screen) family has set him up with.

Lillian Gish

Just like the first run audience, we wait to see how Gish will handle speech and there she is, the princess in the distant palace radiant and assured, being coached (“Don’t you want to be a queen?”) by mother Louise Dressler no less, on getting alone with the visitor prince in the studio exterior rose garden. This incidentally is the plot of  Edmund Greville’s 1947 Pour une nuit d'amour with Dressler excellent, anticipating the Sylvie role. 

Meanwhile tutor Conrad Nagel is teaching fencing to the royal nephews, who will finally be the only ones to see him go. Rodla arrives and gets along nicely with Lillian, dismissing officer Edgar Norton who has been set up to call him out of the Rose Garden meeting with her. Rodla’s arrival spurs Conrad to compete, when he is called in to accompany her to the ball and they develop a mature passion.

There are a couple of nice scenes with Padre-uncle, Australia’s own O.P. Heggie, who decides he can’t get stern with Conrad when his passion seems so understandable. ”You two brave children!” Similarly Rodla attempts to humiliate Nagel (“You forget yourself!”) but re-assessing the situation, backs off and Lillian packs to leave with the tutor. She is only diverted when it looks like a (non existent) princess will snag Rodla, after he sends himself a fake telegram stoking Lillian’s competitiveness - unsatisfactory way to alienate the sympathy Gish has built. Her “This is the first time I’ve seen a man in love and he happens to be in love with me” sounds like a rather winning piece of original Molnar.  She handles it with just the right touch of pride and confusion. There’s also a Beatrice and Benedict and a Nicolas and Alexandra to convince us of the literacy of the team.

One Romantic Night - Heggie, Billie Bennett, Dressler, Gish & La Rocque.

Despite a switch of directors from Paul Stein to George Fitzmaurice, it all unfortunately plays like a piece of Broadway theatre that they turned the cameras on - fade in on each new scene and the characters start talking. There is a ball (complete with the tracking simulating the dancers passing Nagel ). In their all white outfits Gish and La Rocque look like they are posing for a wedding cake. 

However the film has another claim on our attention. It is designed by William Cameron Menzies (in his then collaboration with Park French) Every time there’s a new change of scene, the settings earn another little gasp - particularly the observatory terrace with it’s piled up staircases and a telescope against a studio sky, that evokes Menzies' Things to Come. The finale, where the betrothed couple drive off, represented by a soso model shot of a toy car going down the painted country lane, prompts us to query whether the entire film was shot in the studio.

One Romantic Night makes an interesting comparison with Borzage’s near contemporary film of Molnar’s Liliom, both not completely tuned to a movie audience but more intriguing than many more cinematic productions.

Unfortunately watching the film now is something of a downer, knowing the miserable trajectory all the leads' careers would follow soon after it.

The You-Tube copy has quite good visuals but loses sound in the middle for about a minute.         

The Swan- Cortez & Howard.

Movie versions of "The Swan "get better the further back you go. Dimitri Buchowetzki’s 1925 Hollywood silent is the best we’ve got. The palace intrigue comedy shows a lighter touch than the director’s German Emil Jannings vehicles and, once he hits his stride, monocled Adolphe Menjou is able to carry the playboy prince role with style. “The lorgnettes are on us Wunderlich” he tells aide Mikhael  Vavitch, faced by the crowded ball room.

The opening contrasts the disturbance created by having a blood royal visitor in the Beldonia  palace (“He stretched his feet and rolled over” the servants relay in awe) with the assurance of tutor and fencing instructor Ricardo Cortez teaching the two young princes and telling the stylised story (small number of performers against black) of the princess loved by the page who is betrayed by the evil jester and has his head chopped with a large broad sword.

This sets up an unwelcome, sombre expectation. It takes a while to realise that Buchowetzki’s take on the Molnar original is going to be romantic and amusing. There is a Blue Danube ball room scene which doesn’t run to a decent wide shot of dancers and palatial ballroom. Prince Menjou chases Countess Helen Lee Worthing into the studio built garden - kiss with close-up of feet lifting. 

Adolphe Menjou

Frances  Howard, who was Mrs. Sam Goldwyn, is a plausible Swan princess - with the birds of passage flying over her. Menjou makes the shift from spoiled and lecherous heir-apparent to pathetic to quite sympathetic, with some skill. It gives him the edge on glum Cortez in a felt hat.

Menjou sets up a royal picnic to be with Worthington and invites  Cortez along because, as a commoner he’s not a person and will not draw comment squiring Princess Howard. Things go wrong (of course) with a deluge having Ricardo and Frances shelter in a convenient wood cutter’s cottage where Ricardo declares his love. They are joined by drenched Adolphe and his squeeze, proving unable to adjust to the rudimentary comforts.

Next day Crown Princess Ida Waterman, Adolphe’s mum shows up and arranges the marriage to Howard and that night Adolphe carouses with his uniformed officers, inviting Ricardo along because they number thirteen, only to announce his plans to continue with his little ballet girl after the marriage. Outraged, Ricardo insults him and sabres are shared out with Ricardo knocking Adolphe’s from his hand, telling him he’s drunk. Colonel Vavich (excellent in Victor Fleming’s Wolf Song) takes over - a surprise Michael Curtiz style duel compete with silhouettes and shadows on the wall, ten years before Curtiz got around to his. The other versions could have used a good saber duel.

Adequate, mainly studio filming. A couple of the character people register - notably Waterman and Vavich. Parading ranks of uniformed extras are missing and the film lacks the scale of comparable productions like Stroheim's The Merry Widow or Rex Ingram's Prisoner of Zenda. The only imposing decor is the corridor between two tall doors. We do get another silent movie model clock tower - or is it the same one back again.

The DVD on this title is fair.

Mapping the progress of film activity through comparisons like these has an appeal of it’s
own - an add on to the pleasure of watching the work.

Barrie Pattison 2021