Powerhouse silent film director Rex Ingram, lost his mojo when he moved operations from Hollywood to France*; films still good, Zeitgeist missing. His second, both impressive and influential, a horror film loosely based on a Somerset Maugham novel, strongly suggesting James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN/’31. It stars Ingram’s regular leading-lady (and wife) Alice Terry as a sculptor saved from paralysis by blandly handsome doc Iván Petrovich, their romance interrupted by ‘mad scientist’ Paul Wegener, hypnotically luring Terry to his castle to get his hands on the life-giving blood only she can supply for his experiments. Ingram, working for the last time with painterly cinematographer John Seitz (FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, PRISONER OF ZENDA, SCARAMOUCHE behind him; collaborations with Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges ahead), puts on a series of very creepy/very effective set pieces (a hallucinatory Walpurgisnacht; carnivals & snake acts; a laboratory in a thunder struck tower), but the story never acquires the sexy momentum Ingram drew from Terry with Rudolph Valentino & Ramon Novarro. While villainous Paul Wegener might be posing for stills, a tactic that worked better in his signature role of THE GOLEM/’20. Worthwhile, faults and all, especially in the fine edition put out by TCM (see it here: LINK - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl0dc5cB-8w), with a score by Robert Israel that uses lots of Tchaikovsky, Liszt & Chopin.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Ingram was miffed when Metro Pictures merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, doubly so when passed over for BEN-HUR/’25.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: British director Michael Powell fell into the movie business and worked his way up in three of Ingram’s French productions. Recalled in remarkable detail in the first (and better) volume of his auto-bio A LIFE IN THE MOVIES.
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