Love Me Tonight (1932)

Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)

It was love at first sight for me. Rouben Mamoulian establishes something remarkably wondrous from the film's getgo: sleepy Paris waking up to the beat of a workman's hammer; the snores of a sleeping bum, noise from the city's chimneys, old ladies in their morning chores add to the rhythm of the city. Mamoulian's camera enters through the window of an apartment introducing us to still drowsy tailor Maurice Courtelin (Maurice Chavalier), singing a catchy ditty while walking and flirting his way to shop.

The enjoyable inventiveness of the initial sequence is matched when Maurice sings composer-lyricist duo Rodgers and Hart's catchy song "Isn't It Romantic." Way before Maurice meets his romance, Princess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald), the little tune he hums to his satisfied customer reaches her by being passed from customer, to traveling songwriter, to a battalion of soldiers, to a violin-wielding gypsy boy to the lonesome princess in her chateaus' balcony. It is only when the viscount of Paris (Charles Ruggles) neglects to pay his clothing dues that Maurice is forced to visit the chateaus, and by pretending to be a baron, finally get a chance to make his pre-destined princess fall in love with him.

It's truly ahead of its time. It's pre-code sensibilities made it possible for seemingly raunchy exchanges between the characters. The song "Mimi," sung by Maurice upon catching the fanciful princess parading in the chateaus grounds, waves around innuendos in its giddy melodics and rhythm while Mamoulian amuses us by utilizing close ups of Chavelier and MacDonald's faces with their evolving emotional reactions and reflexes. Witticism and underhanded humor, and a little touch of rhyme and rhythm in word selection, turn the always entertaining dialogues into delightful extensions of the film's lovely musical pieces.

Watching Love Me Tonight instantly turns Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (2001) into a hyperactive mess. It's quite nice to note that everything Luhrmann tried to innovate in the musical genre was already committed into film in 1932 by the inventive Mamoulian. Love Me Tonight has everything, and more importantly, the inventiveness is not splattered into the feature like a Jackson Pollock painting. Instead, the visual gimmickry are all placed carefully and in sensiblemanner. When Maurice pleads that the hunting party leave slowly and silently so as to not wake up the sleeping stag, Mamoulian cleverly captures the party's retreat in slow motion. Similarly, when Maurice and the princess finally exchange their vows of love to each other, the night sequence is followed by Maurice waking up to the dreamy titular song which is complemented by Mamoulian splitting the screen with the sleeping (and suggestively satisfied) princess.

A race between the horse-riding princess and a charging train caps this lovely film. Again, Mamoulian expertly edits the sequence. He masterfully times shots of the train's hardworking engines, the rapid landings of the horse's legs, and the lovers faces and creates an exhilerating sequence that is comparable to the delightful chase and race sequences of the films of the silent era. It's a reminder as to how Mamoulian (who before directing for films, worked as a theater director) understands the purpose of sound in film; that it is not enough that the feature feign excitement by pumping up the music or adding heart pounding sound effects. The visuals should catch up with the tempo of the sequence and that music and sound merely complement what should already be visually portrayed; it is a trait that adheres to silent film traditions, and remarkably works in this musicale.

Vampyr (1932)

Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)

Vampyr is Carl Theodor Dreyer's follow-up to his most popular work The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). Not wanting to be labeled as a saint's director, the Danish auteur decided to make an uncharacteristic horror film that stretched the film medium to its limits. Both The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr failed miserably commercially, and the latter resulted in a nervous breakdown for Dreyer. It won't be a decade until Dreyer releases another film, the short Good Mothers (1942), and a year later, a feature entitled Day of Wrath (1943).

Vampyr might not have the same kind of chills and scares that are provided for by today's more mainstream horror fare. Vampyr's horror is mostly composed of psychological battles between two extremes: of nightmares and dreams, shadows and light, madness and sanity, calmness and paranoia, good and evil. The film's form itself middles itself in a limbo of silent and sound film. Vampyr marks Dreyer's exit from the silent era. The film shows Dreyer making use of bare sound elements, with added dialogue, sound effects, and other aural elements. Yet, the plot is forwarded by intertitles, and much of the film's coherence is gathered from that which is written and seen, than what is heard. The dialogue is cryptic and mysterious. The sound effects merely add ominous air to the already ominous atmosphere. It's a discordant marriage between a fleeting film style and the newly born sound film, and it's interestingly ugly and creepy, which makes the film transcend the narrative's bare sources for horror.

The story is liberally adapted from Sheridan Le Fanu's novel. It concerns Allan Grey (Julian West), a student of the occult, who arrives at a town and spends the night at an inn. A mysterious visitor arrives announcing that "She must not die," and leaves a package that shouldn't be opened until his death. Being a student of the occult, Allan Grey naturally investigates and discovers images and sensations that display an unnatural imbalance in the town: an old man carrying a huge scythe ringing the bell upon Allan's arrival, a shadow of a peg-legged man, a moustached man and his strange companion. Allan Grey arrives at a faraway mansion where his night visitor gets killed, leaving behind two mysteriously afflicted daughters, and a go-signal for him to open the secret package: a book about vampires.

The narrative feels more like a ghastly nightmare rather than an understandable horror piece. The film is shot the same way, like an unforgettable nightmare where anything and everything can happen at a whim, where religious and cultic symbols take life-like forms, where logic is forgotten for visual impulses. Much more than almost every other element, the biggest contributor to Vampyr's level of hallucinatory madness is Rudolph Maté and Louis Née astounding camera work. With the aid of Dreyer's typical austere style of filmmaking, Maté and Née create indelible images that portray a striking and immediately memorable visual representations of what a nightmare should look like. The camera wafts through the claustrophobic corridors to reveal shadows gleefully dancing in ununderstandable joy. The camera patiently awaits a boat being revealed from dark thick fog. Perhaps the most memorable of all is the camera being used as a disturbing point-of-view of Allan Grey inside a coffin being carried and buried, in a strangely yet effectively chilling nightmare (within a nightmare).

Vampyr is truly a work of genius. It is an expressive result of experimentation by Dreyer and his crew with the newly emerged sound film, while still retaining silent film sensibilities, resulting in a confusing yet satisfying limbo that is also depicted in the limbo that Allan Grey suddenly finds himself in. The film is unescapably terrifying in its dreamlike aesthetics yet prayerfully pious in its reverent use of religious, symbolic, and literary imagery.

Freaks (1932)

Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)

It's an inevitable psychological response, humans tend to repel, disassociate, or react violently when shown something that is foreign like an unnatural misrepresentation of the human form. These unnatural misrepresentations however are not mere fantasies found in story books, they are real and more often than not, are hidden from the public eye, creating an unconscious stigma. It's an inevitable reaction, as let's say in the opening sequence of Tod Browning's infamous film Freaks where a man barters off his wares, a spectacle of sideshow freaks, that the men would get wide-eyed in suspicion and disgust, and women would shriek in horror. The man then explains to his customers how the freak came to be, and Browning invites us to partake of a story of carnival freaks intermingling with the rest of the human world.

The story of Freaks concerns itself with Cleo (Olga Baclanova), a trapeze whose grace and beauty have wooed Hans (Harry Earles), a wealthy midget, into showering her with praises and expensive gifts. Cleo, along with her lover, a strongman named Hercules (Henry Victor), comes up with a plan to steal Han's vast inheritance, by Cleo marrying the lovestruck midget and eventually poisoning him and thus inheriting the midget's vast fortune. Cleo and Hercules' plan does not end as intended, as the other sideshow freaks guard their brood with fraternal zeal. The duo get what they deserve, as plan for vengeance is brainstormed by the malformed and their sympathizers.

Freaks has been misunderstood over time. It is only now that the film is getting the recognition it deserves. Quickly disowned by MGM after being hugely criticized by the public for its seemingly exploitative use of real freaks, the film was later on exhibited in freak shows, and was added an introductory statement that whitewashes its supposed exploitative intent. The film was also shortened by thirty minutes, and a happy ending was eventually introduced in exchange for a much more bothersome one: which reportedly involves Hercules would be singing soprano, after being castrated by the vengeful band of freaks. The original ending would be lost forever. The present form of Browning's film is far from his vision. Entire sideplots have been erased, and characterization has been sidetracked in favor of quick and easy spectacle.

Interestingly though, the present form of Freaks still showcases Browning as a talented filmmaker. Browning was able to envision and realize visuals and scenes that elicit nightmarish horror while maintaining a natural and bothersome ease. Browning shocks, but is not intent on merely shocking for he eases his film with the utilizition of the freaks' unnatural bodily form as centerpoints for his intentions of both horror and sympathy. In one scene, Browning shows a group of pinheads, limbless individuals, and dwarves playing in a forest clearing. What is evoked is not only a discomforting spectacle of horror but a sense of innocence and childlike naivety these freaks also exude. They are in fact the ones fearing those who would oppress them. That fear enables them to band together, creating a code that would guide and protect them from the whims of the non-freaks. The code is highest in their hierarchy of beliefs, making them overcome both inherent fear and innocence with the motivation of protecting their own. That becomes the centerpiece of Browning's horror, that psychological transformation of these seemingly safe and friendly beings from playful children to murderous and vindictive monsters.

The pinnacle of such horror is depicted in the final sequences which were depicted with frightening sensibility. The carnival caravans being driven in a row underneath a dark rainy sky where the slight light from the scarce lamps and the occasional thunderous lightning are the only sources of illumination. Within these caravans, the freaks are brainstorming a plan for vengeance. One brilliant scene involves Hans revealing that he knows of Cleo and Hercules' plan, forcing Cleo to recant when she becomes surrounded by three other freaks carrying a knife, a gun, and one playing an uncomfortable tune with his flute. The sequence climaxes in the culmination of the freaks' plan for revenge. The filmmaking is absolutely impressive. Browning mixes shock and creeping horror when the freaks slowly crawl, walk, squirm towards the villains. It is thus unfortunate that Freaks became a victim of studio politics and misconceptions since what we have now is a mere abridged film. One wonders if we'll ever be granted the brilliance of Browning's original vision.