Charles Laughton fascinates me. His performances in such movies as The Private Life of Henry VIII, Island of Lost Souls, 1939’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Witness for the Prosecution, and Spartacus made him seem larger than life. Even his sole directorial effort, The Night of the Hunter, proved extraordinary.
Directed by Alexander Korda, 1936’s Rembrandt takes full advantage of its star’s natural charisma, to the point that even when the story becomes routine and predictable, Laughton single-handedly rescues it from mediocrity.
Despondent over the untimely death of his beloved wife (and muse) Saskia, renowned artist Rembrandt von Rifn (Laughton) suffers a series of financial disasters. His longtime housekeeper and new lover Geertje (Gertrude Lawrence), who assisted in the raising of Rembrandt’s son Titus (played as an adult by John Bryning), tries to persuade the stubborn artist to seek a commission from the Prince. Rembrandt, however, finds himself drawn to the beggars and the homeless, seeing in them a nobility he feels is sorely lacking in the aristocracy.
Rembrandt further angers Geertje when he tosses her aside, falling in love instead with the new household maid Hendrickje (Elsa Lanchester). Though shunned by creditors and eventually even the church, Rembrandt and Hendrickje live simple lives, and are happy, even if their time together may prove shorter than they realize.
As with The Private Life of Henry VIII and The Rise of Catherine the Great, Korda and his team did a remarkable job recreating both the time (the 17th century) and place (Holland) in which Rembrandt is set, with wonderfully realized costumes and set pieces. Yet as great as the movie looks, it is Laughton who, from start to finish, commands our attention. Whether sullen and depressed over the loss of his beloved wife Saskia (who, even when alive, never appears on-screen) or defiantly challenging the upper class (one of his paintings, commissioned by the Civic Guard, is ridiculed for not being austere enough), Laughton’s Rembrandt remains a fascinating character. The story does occasionally tread in familiar territory (the struggling artist not respected by his peers, love conquering all, etc), yet Laughton rises above the banality, delivering a series of monologues - on everything from Solomon to love - that garner our undivided attention.
Laughton’s performance, coupled with Korda’s eye for detail and some well-staged scenes (the near-silent sequence in which Rembrandt is first attracted to Geertje has a sexual energy that is palpable), helped lift Rembrandt above the standard biopic, transforming it into something much more substantial.
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
The aging Don Juan (Fairbanks), who is rumored to have seduced as many as 900 women in a three-year span, has returned, incognito, to Seville. It isn’t long, though, before every frustrated housewife in town knows of his arrival, starting with Don Juan’s own wife of five years, Dona Delores (Benita Hume), who has purchased her husband’s debts and is threatening to have him thrown in jail if he doesn’t visit her.
To make matters worse, young Rodrigo (Barry MacKay) idolizes Don Juan, and spent most of the previous night pretending to be his aging hero, climbing onto balconies and kissing every woman that welcomed his advances. When Rodrigo, posing as Don Juan, seduces Carmen (Joan Gardner), her jealous husband, Don Alfredo (Gibson Gowland), bursts in and kills Rodrigo in a swordfight. With everyone now believing Don Juan is dead, the real Don Juan, aided by his chief advisor Leporello (Melville Cooper), attends his own funeral, then heads out of town.
Settling in a small village for some much-needed rest, Don Juan lays low, living under an assumed name, and is amused when he learns a best-selling book about his exploits, titled The Private Life of Don Juan, has been published. But when the infamous lover finally comes out of hiding and returns to Seville, he has a hard time convincing anyone, even the beautiful dancer Antonita (Merle Oberon), who he seduced just months earlier, that he is the real Don Juan!
In his last starring role, Douglas Fairbanks, despite showing his age (he was in his 50s when this movie was made), is near perfect as the notorious lover who longs for peace and quiet. Handling the physical demands of the role with ease (leaping from balconies and jumping over railings), he also proves himself quite adept at comedy. The scene in which Don Juan and Leporello attend his “funeral”, watching with amusement as dozens of women he never met weep openly for him, is quite funny. And whenever Don Juan applies his “trade”, attempting to seduce a woman, he uses the exact same lines on each and every one of them!
Equally good are Melville Cooper as the doting assistant who offers sound advice (that Don Juan rarely follows); and the lovely Merle Oberon as 19-year-old Antonita, an ambitious dancer who relishes the fact she was, in all likelihood, Don Juan’s final tryst before he was "struck down".
The dialogue is often witty, the set pieces are impressive, and the energetic pace that Korda maintains throughout ensures his audience will never be bored. As much as I love Alexander Korda’s more straightforward (if not historically accurate) biopics, The Private Life of Don Juan shows the filmmaker also had a great sense of humor.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Russia, 1745. Princess Sophie Auguste Frederika of Prussia, who would adopt the name Catherine (Elisabeth Bergner), arrives at the court of Empress Elizabeth (Flora Robson) to meet her future husband, the Grand Duke Peter (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr), Elizabeth’s nephew and heir to the Russian throne. Though he initially rejects this arranged marriage, Peter has a change of heart when he meets the shy but beautiful Catherine.
Alas, their relationship would be rocky from the start. Peter refuses to spend their wedding night with his new bride, and over the course of several years will have a number of affairs, all the while hoping and praying that his elderly aunt will die, making him Emperor of all Russia. As for Catherine, she grows very close to the Empress, from whom she learns how to be a strong, just ruler.
When Elizabeth dies, Peter becomes Emperor, yet his volatile behavior angers both the military and members of the court, all of whom press Catherine to overthrow her husband and become Empress in his stead.
Directed by Paul Czinner (with an uncredited assist from Korda), The Rise of Catherine the Great is an ambitious, elaborate motion picture, with wonderful costumes and grand set pieces that bring both the time (the mid-18th century) and place (the Russian Imperial court) vibrantly to life. But like The Private Life of Henry VIII, this 1934 film focuses more on the plight of its title character than the pomp and majesty of its setting. Elisabeth Bergner delivers a solid performance as Catherine, conveying first her naivete as a young bride-to-be and, eventually, her strength and intelligence. When Peter first takes power, he issues a decree banishing many of his late aunt’s supporters to Siberia, a declaration that Catherine, using guile, convinces him to withdraw.
Yet as good as Bergner is, she is overshadowed at all times by both Robson as the strong-willed Elisabeth (their scenes together are superb) and Fairbanks Jr. as the impulsive, unstable Peter. Upon hearing that his aunt Elizabeth was on death’s door, Peter lets out a cheer, shocking members of the court, and later on has Catherine banished from her room in the palace, all the while carrying on an affair with one of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting. Whereas Bergner and Robson manage to win over the audience, Fairbanks is, for most of the film’s running time, the villain of the piece, and like her advisors, we pull for Catherine to issue the order placing her husband under arrest.
It may not be as factual an account as Korda and his team would lead us to believe (there’s a terrific scene in which Catherine makes Peter jealous by falsely claiming she has had lovers, though history tells us the real Catherine had more than her share of dalliances), but The Rise of Catherine the Great works perfectly as a dramatic telling of its title character’s early years, and is presented with such bravura that we are fully engrossed from the first scene to the last.
Rating: 9 out of 10