BARBED WIRE (1927)

Yet another little-known, but exceptional late-silent, nicely handled by underused director Rowland V. Lee, later to specialize in big films with tight budgets, here on an A-list project @ Paramount for Pola Negri. Possibly the first WWI story made in Hollywood with a sympathetic German Officer as leading man. That’s Clive Brook, stoic & honorable as a P.O.W. on Negri’s converted family farm in rural France. The attraction between them undeniable, complicated not only by opposing sides, but because she’s lost a brother in the war, he a sister. But when he stops a French Officer from attacking Negri, and she stands up for him in court, she earns the town’s approbation and a heart-attack from a hardhearted father. Lee sets up a spectacular post-courtroom sequence going from Pola’s walk thru a despising local mob who view her as a traitor, directly into hundreds of grateful German P.O.W.s offering her moral support behind a prison fence. It’s the sort of sequence you’d expect in a King Vidor film, here seamlessly caught in Bert Glennon’s mobile lensing. (A shame surviving prints only hint at the quality.*) Some OTT melodrama intrudes here and there, but not the emotional ending, which is OTT in a good way, a pacifist ‘We Are All Brothers’ moral (that’s a literal we are all brothers, BTW), demonstrating some of the special æsthetic advantages available only to the silent film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Note the billing for Einar Hanson on our Swedish (?) poster. The handsome young Swede, no doubt a special draw in his homeland, got bumped up to co-star for his small role as Negri’s off-to-war brother. While a likely local favorite, it’s even more likely Hanson got pushed up because he died in a car crash, only 27, shortly before the film was released. He did co-star with Negri in his next, and final film, THE WOMAN ON TRIAL/’27, now lost.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Glennon earned a rare double Oscar® nom for a pair of 1939 John Ford classics: STAGECOACH (b&w); DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (color).

DOUBLE-BILL: This and the preceding HOTEL IMPERIAL/’27 (for Mauritz Stiller; remade by Billy Wilder as FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO/’43) are probably Negri’s best non-Ernst Lubitsch pics.