VOLPONE (1941)

In France, English Renaissance playwright Ben Jonson’s dyspeptic classic on greed & two-timing con artists is generally played in the Stefan Zweig/Jules Romains free adaptation seen here.  Major roles are eliminated and the ending significantly altered to give a definite winner, yet its basic appeal & amoral design remain intact.  Or do in this well-mounted film featuring a lively cast of avaricious zannies doing their worst to each other under Maurice Tourneur’s assured direction on André Barsacq’s splendiferous sets.  Harry Baur’s Volpone is a financially unsettled Merchant of Venice busy collecting extravagant gifts from rich ‘fair-weather’ friends, each hoping to get the ultimate fast return on their investment as sole benefactor in the new will a secretly healthy Volpone is rewriting before his 'imminent death.'  This venal offering the brilliant idea of Volpone’s ambitious servant Mosca (the Fly), a man who knows which side the bread is buttered on . . . plus the luck, should it fall, to have it land buttered-side up.  Volpone sees all these goods & services (favors from lovely brides & daughters; a disinherited son) easily falling into his lap, but Venetian authorities may have a say.  It’s a masterful set up for Jonson’s particular type of satiric social savagery and Tourneur provides the pace & panache to pull it off.  Jonson’s characters may be one-note creations, but there’s enough so we don’t tire of them.  And, in Louis Jouvet’s Mosca, a towering example of hubristic success in ace acting as well as devious plotting.

DOUBLE-BILL: Another free adaptation, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s THE HONEY POT/’67, even with Rex Harrison & Cliff Robertson in the leads, was a leaden fiasco.  But the next major adaptation, moved to Old West San Francisco, from TOOTSIE’s Larry Gelbart, a big B’way hit for (successively) George C. Scott, Robert Preston & Vincent Gardenia.  Alas, never recorded for commercial use in any medium.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Tourneur, in Hollywood during the silents, fathered two great Hollywood filmmakers. One literally: son Jacques, known for suggestive horror & film noir; one as boss/mentor: classic Hollywood craftsman Clarence Brown.  Two more different quality filmmakers can hardly be imagined.