THE BELLS (1926)

Sir Henry Irving, first knighted actor (at the turn-of-the-last-century), had two signature roles, his game-changing sympathetic interpretation of Shylock in MERCHANT OF VENICE and, paradoxically, the guilt-plagued murderer of THE POLISH JEW in a version of that international stage success he called THE BELLS.* The story, no more than an excuse to let Irving lose his mind in front of the footlights, has him die of terror after his debt-ridden Innkeeper/Burgomeister kills a traveling Jewish merchant for his money, dissolving the body in a lime pit while he sets up his marriageable daughter and pays off creditors. The eponymous tinkling? Ringing bells of the dead man’s sleigh which Irving can’t stop from jangling inside his head. Nor can he not see Banquo-like apparitions of his victim and creditors. Alas, our Innkeeper is no MacBeth. Even so, an enormous hit for Irving who brought the play from London to B’way in 1989, 1900 & 1901. And it should have made a grand Grand Guignol of a silent pic, here with Lionel Barrymore in a role Lon Chaney might have played.* Even a youngish Boris Karloff as a SideShow ‘mesmerist’ who leads to Barrymore’s confession. With lux production values, straightforward, if effective direction by James Young (though very little camera movement for 1926), and fistfuls of accomplished ghostly double-exposures (even better glowing light effects), the film would be twice as satisfying if it didn’t end so abruptly. Did they run out of cash? And a near mint print in the KINO restoration.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Even a French Opera Comique as ‘Le Juif Polonais’ in 1900, with no less than Verdi’s original Iago and Falstaff, Victor Maurel, as the murderer.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Lon Chaney director Tod Browning gave Barrymore two roles Chaney surely would have done had he lived in THE MARK OF THE VAMPIRE/’35 and THE DEVIL DOLL/’36.