Synopsis
Emil Jannings plays Boss Huller, the director ("carnival spieler") of a lewd variety show that lures its audience in with its sex appeal. He is bored with this life, longing to return to the days when he and his wife made their living as part of a trapeze act. Now, they live a ho-hum domestic life together with their young son.
After a sensuous younger woman, Bertha (Lya De Putti), joins his troupe, Boss falls in love with her and they have an affair. Desperate to reclaim the glory days of his youth, Boss leaves his wife and child for Bertha, and they run off together to live as trapeze performers.
All goes well until the third member of their act, Artinelli (Warwick Ward), also falls for Bertha and forcibly seduces her. At a carnival, Artinelli and Bertha are discovered by a passerby, who finds them spooning behind a bush; but the couple is unaware that they have been discovered.
This passerby later doodles a humiliating cartoon on a saloon table that depicts Boss as a cuckold. Boss discovers this by accident after returning to the room for something he left behind. Mad with rage, Boss waits for Artinelli in his room and forces him into a duel with knives. Artinelli is killed in the ensuing fight. Stepping outside, Boss is cruelly reminded of his abandoned wife and child by a rooftop advertisement for life insurance that reads "DON'T FORGET YOUR WIFE AND CHILD."
Boss turns himself into the police and is sent to prison for his crime. Repentant for his sins, he turns his life over to God for forgiveness.
Technique
Narrative
When it opens in the prison yard, Boss Huller, shot entirely from behind, is simply "Prisoner 28." He has refused to explain the story behind the crime that landed him there; but upon reading a letter from his wife, expressing her mercy and forgiveness, he breaks down. "It began in Hamburg..." he relates, and the story begins.
This is a simple but highly effective editing technique that ties the end and the beginning together, as Sternberg would later do to even greater effect in another Jannings-led picture, The Last Command. This kind of "It all started when..." storytelling device would become a convention of film noir, and can be found in such classics as Sunset Boulevard.
Performances
Varieté is melodramatic on the verge of bursting into operatic arias. The inner thoughts and feelings of the characters are bared through the expert performances of all the cast members, but especially Jannings, who always impresses.
Cinematography
Equally melodramatic is the remarkably expressive camera work of Carl Freund. In one memorable shot, the camera pushes all the way into Artinelli's ear to illustrate his eavesdropping. We would see the development of this kind of moving camera work in films like Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary.
Another notable example is Artinelli's murder scene, where the struggle between him and Boss takes place totally outside the shot. An anguished hand thrusts upward into frame and then falls limp. We are left to wonder who was victorious, until Boss staggers to his feet again. This kind of technique we're more likely to associate with someone like Hitchcock today. Speaking of whom, the scene where Boss discovers the cartoon on the table demonstrates the building of suspense just as well as the best works of the master himself.
The first-person POV shot of the trapeze artists swinging over the audience is echoed in Abel Gance's Napoleon, in which the camera swings pendulously over a crowd of revolutionaries.
Perhaps most blatantly is the message in the rooftop advertisement, "DON'T FORGET YOUR WIFE AND CHILD," which is an idea that would be artfully repurposed by Joseph von Sternberg in Underworld, and then shamelessly ripped off in Howard Hawks' Scarface, with "THE WORLD IS YOURS."
Tangential Thoughts
It's a shame that Verieté survives only in its abridged form, because it does seem to jump forward a bit too quickly in a few places; thankfully, the core of the drama remains intact. And although the restoration of the Kino Blu-ray is quite laudable, the condition of the print (which is apparently the best there is) still leaves something to be desired. It is incredible how these films have been forgotten and neglected over the years, especially after leaving such a profound impact on the medium.
As a side note, it struck me while I was watching this how strange it is that color tinting also went the way of the dodo with the advent of sound, even though the three-strip technicolor process would not be adopted for several years to come. While not particularly prominent or remarkable in Varieté, it is executed with great effect in other films of the silent era and must have been very exciting in its own day.
There was truly a great deal lost when sound came into the picture, most of which will scarcely enter the consideration of people today -- even the so-called cinephiles -- abandoned, like Boss Huller's wife and child, for a seductive novelty.
Comments
Post a Comment