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Thursday, January 7, 2021

MIKAËL / MICHAEL (1924)

Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer (PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC/’28; DAY OF WRATH/’43) made this unusual film at UFA Germany.  Unusual in subject matter, that is, a relatively frank gay-themed story, perhaps only possible at the time from Weimar Germany.  (Two other rare gay oriented silents, DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS/’19 with Conrad Veidt and GESCHLECHT IN FESSELN / SEX IN CHAINS/’28, also Weimar based.)  Beautifully designed in Secessionist style by Hugo Häring and lensed by Karl Freund, assisted by Rudolph Màte, what luck to have it so well preserved, restored and near atonally scored in a 2016 edition from the F.W. Murnau Foundation.  Fellow Danish director Benjamin Christensen stars as an aging master painter, painfully losing his young male model (pale/fair Walter Slezak in his slim youth) to a wicked Countess whose portrait Christensen is unable to bring up to his exacting standards.   Adapted by Thea von Harbou between scripts for husband Fritz Lang (DIE NIBELUNGEN; METROPOLIS), it’s one long descent for the elderly artist with Dreyer in the zombie mode of his late period, doggedly charting Christensen’s abject acceptance of loss of affection, loss of art, loss of finances, from the unworthy boy he loves in spite of his selfish behavior depressingly believable.  (The vibe between these two very Oscar Wilde/Boosie.)  Finally, a late masterpiece comes out, bringing artistic apotheoses even if no lessons have been learned.  Compelling in its deterministic attitude, snail-like pacing and objectivity, best for Dreyer completists and for the suggestive sexual inclinations with an incestuous note when Christensen refers to Slezak as ‘being like a son.’

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lenser Freund takes a role on screen as an art dealer, his roly-poly physique a match for Walter Slezak in his Hollywood character actor days.  (Slezak was the German passenger in Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT/’44)  Odd to think that Freund’s next film, Murnau’s THE LAST LAUGH/’24 would revolutionize camera movement with a new sense of roving freedom, after this film which hasn't a single pan or moving shot in it.  (Freund also an evolutionary force, inventing basic three-camera sitcom setup techniques when he was lighting cameraman on I LOVE LUCY in the ‘50s.)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: And speaking of I LOVE LUCY, see Dreyer’s next, back in Denmark for MASTER OF THE HOUSE/’25.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/du-sal-re-din-hustru-master-of-house.html

OR: For something by Christensen, skip his Hollywood films to see him as writer/director/actor at his best (and weirdest) in the bizarre documentary-style witchcraft investigation of HÄXAN/’22.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/09/haxan-witchcraft-through-ages-1922.html

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