A roundabout path took us to this Marcel L’Herbier film, a very French telling of the Pre-Russian Revolution power-hungry peasant Monk Grigori Rasputin; his reputation for healing, his debauches, his ill-fated relationship with Empress Alexandra, and his alarming physical constitution against cyanide & bullets. A comment from a reader (thanks reader!) about the unhappy 1931 Talkie remake of C.B. DeMille’s 1915 THE CHEAT/’15, led to seeing the trailer for L’Herbier’s version of that story, retitled FORFAITURE. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV-CPpuEN3E) A wowser, but the complete film seemingly unavailable online. Why not try RASPUTIN, L’Herbier’s next production? Alas, though fine as far as it goes, it simply doesn’t go far enough. Harry Baur’s Rasputin almost makes it worth the time, but it’s probably most valuable as an example of the sort of French Cinema of Quality mediocrity that would drive the New Wave crowd to distraction a couple of decades later. One of those well-made, tasteful, impersonal films you can neither object to much nor get excited about. It’s also terribly, terribly French in tone. And while the Russian court spoke a lot in French, and dressed with a French accent, they were all Russian under their fineries as their world crumbled around them. Perhaps the film is accurate in the way it peters out and loses interest even during the elaborate, and nearly botched, murder sequence.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: L’Herbier best remembered, if at all, for ambitious, not quite good enough silents. Instead, LE BONHEUR/’34 with Charles Boyer, something of a revelation, the one to go for. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/le-bonheur-1934.html OR: Best of a bad lot on the Romanovs & Rasputin is probably the much dissed/better than expected M-G-M prestige item with Ethel, Lionel & John Barrymore, RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS/’32. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/rasputin-and-empress-1932.html
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