Troupes

I recently watched Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers back to back with Wild Strawberries. They are two old favorites. Revisiting Wild Strawberries was a birthday treat to myself. What struck me when watching them in such quick succession was the way Ingrid Thulin mastered such vastly different roles filmed some 15 years apart. In Wild Strawberries she plays the protagonist’s daughter-in-law who is trying to save herself and possibly her husband from a typically hellish Bergmanesque marriage. The depth of her pain and her longing for resolution are powerful. Her role in Cries and Whispers couldn’t be more different. She plays the aristocratic, uptight and literally strait-laced sister of the dying woman. The pain she exhibits at any encounter of emotion is palpable.

Thulin in Wild Strawberries

Thulin (r) in Cries and Whispers

Getting reacquainted with these performances made me think about how Bergman used the same actors over and over again, in quite varied roles. I thought of Gunnar Björnstrand, who appears briefly as Thulin’s husband, chillingly soulless in Wild Strawberries. And yet, he was lightness itself playing the comic role of the philandering lawyer Egermann in Smiles of a Summer Night.

Many of the ‘Pantheon’ directors use the same troupe of actors in film after film. It is apparent that the great directors rarely stereotype their stables of actors. In fact, the actors often play greatly contrasting roles as they appear over time in the same director’s work.
It is as if the director is a sculptor who likes the way a certain clay responds. He might make vastly different objects with that clay, but he knows he will be able to achieve the desired result using it. I thought it would be interesting to look at some of these sculptors and their particular brands of clay.

Ingmar Bergman: Along with above-mentioned Thulin and Björnstrand, many other actors appear over the years in his works. Harriet Andersson became an international sensation starring as the incarnation of adolescent desire in Summers with Monika. Some twenty years later, she is the dying sister with the enormous soul in Cries and Whispers, and still later the bitter, vengeful, decrepit housemaid who is the nemesis of the children in Fanny and Alexander. Liv Ullmann created a powerful gallery of characters from the psychosomatically mute actress in Persona, to the sexually manipulative younger sister in Cries and Whispers to the wife in Scenes from A Marriage.

John Ford: Ford’s iconic actor is John Wayne. Wayne appeared in all sorts of films under Ford’s direction ranging from adaptations of O’Neill (The Long Voyage Home) to war films (They Were Expendable) to Irish Blarney fantasies (The Quiet Man). Of course the range of characters is great here, but even in the genre that Wayne is best remembered for in his work with Ford, the western, it is hard to stereotype him. His memorable first appearance as the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach (who can ever forget that slightly out of focus zoom shot?) set the Wayne legend in motion showing an upright, heroic, beautiful man with a hint of a dark side. As the years went on the Wayne characters became more and more nuanced. The aging, wise Nathan Brittle of She Wore A Yellow Ribbon could not be more distant from the monomaniac and, frankly, scary Ethan Edwards of The Searchers – his greatest role. Towards the end of his career with Ford he played a character that was almost the logical end of the Ringo Kid in the brilliant The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – a man who was a relic of the Old West who knows that his time is over and that ‘civilization’ will be taking over.

The Ringo Kid

Wayne (l) in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Henry Fonda was another Ford favorite appearing as characters as varied as Abe Lincoln, Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and the picture of virtue in his turn as Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine. None of his appearances in other Ford films prepares you for the egotistical, wrong-headed and reckless Lt. Col. Owen Thursday in Fort Apache.

Like many other directors who use a stable of actors, Ford has a troupe of supporting players who beautifully offset whoever assumed the starring roles. Actors like Victor McLaglen, Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr and Ben Johnson.

Preston Sturges used his supporting players in a similar fashion. He didn’t really have a stable of lead actors, but whoever was starring could count on superb support from the likes of William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn and all the demented members of The Palm Beach Story’s Ale and Quail Club.

This discussion of troupes of actors is not to be confused with the way certain directors use actors, usually women, as muses. Von Sternberg had Marlene Dietrich, Godard had Anna Karina, Fassbinder had Hanna Schygulla. This differs from what we were talking about before in that the works of these directors seem to have come into being strictly to set the actress off as a rare jewel. That might be an idea for a later post.

Ways of Considering The Blue Angel

Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel) 1930

directed by Joseph von Sternberg starring Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich

Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt,

Denn das ist meine Welt. und sonst gar nichts.

Das ist, was soll ich machen, meine Natur,

Ich kann halt lieben nur und sonst gar nichts.

Männer umschwirren mich, wie Motten um das Licht.

Und wenn sie verbrennen, ja dafür kann ich nicht.

Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt,

Ich kann halt lieben nur und sonst gar nichts.

(I am completely tuned into loving,

that is my world and nothing else.

That is….what can I say?…. my nature!

I can merely love and do nothing else.

Men flutter around me like moths around a light

And if they get burned, well, I can’t do anything about that.

I am completely tuned into loving,

I can simply love and do nothing else)

– trans. M. Brown

The Blue Angel is often regarded as a fable of the upstanding member of society brought low by the siren. This is certainly a valid reading, if also a cliched one. The lyrics to Lola-Lola’s famous song (see above) belie a nonchanlance regarding the effects of her carnality which borders on amorality, and Professor Rath is burned by her flame. If the film were only this, it would be no more than a moralistic sermon, albeit an entertaining one. The Blue Angel is more than this, however, for reasons of intention by its creators, and reason of coincidence of history.

First, let us look at the reasons of intention. The main character of the story is Professor Immanuel Rath, played by the great silent film star, Emil Jannings. His last name, Rath, means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice’ in German. It is a fitting name for a man of erudition . (The title of the Heinrich Mann novel on which the movie is based, is Professor Unrath, is a pun on this name. Unrat means ‘filth’ or ‘garbage’, the name that students taunt him with.) It is Professor Rath’s decline and fall that is the thrust of the story. He is the embodiment of Prussian rigor and bourgeois self-satisfaction. He marches through his world as the flaming sword of virtue and social correctness. His downfall is painful to watch. His destruction is total.

Were this merely a moral tale, Rath’s fall would be tragic, and the cause of that downfall would be depicted as totally evil. Surprisingly, the catalyst for that fall, Lola-Lola, played by Marlene Dietrich in a legend-making performance, is a beautifully nuanced character. Instead of depicting her as a mindless, oversexed hussy, the creators of the film take great care to show Lola-Lola’s awareness of her effect on men. This is especially apparent in the scenes in her dressing room with the students. One senses that she is keeping her sensuality at bay. She knows her power, but doesn’t use it. Of course, it is still enough to drive the boys mad. If the film followed the conventions of a moral tale, we would expect that she would unleash the full power of her attraction when Professor Rath appears on the scene to upbraid her for corrupting the morals of his students. Instead, she is mildly amused at him and continues getting ready for the act.

The surprise in this relationship happens when the Professor defends her honor before the drunken sailor. In a beautifully modulated performance by Dietrich we see how Lola-Lola is touched by his gallantry. The way she plays this scene paves the way for what otherwise would have been unbelievable: the marriage of Professor and Cabaret Singer. The intention of the film’s creators to portray Lola-Lola as less than evil and the Professor as less than sympathetic undermines any interpretation of the film as a simplistic moral lesson.

The coincidences of history lead to more symbolic readings to the film. Two particular historical readings are interesting to consider.

1- When the film was released in 1930, Germany was on the verge of great upheaval. The staggering inflation of the post World War I era had crippled the country. The Weimar Repulic, which had been the government of the country, was in free-fall. Weimar-era Germany is often portrayed as a decadent society that collapsed as the Third Reich was on the rise. Professor Rath can be seen as the decaying social order that was dealt a death blow in World War I and had a long slow slide into death. In this construct, Lola-Lola can be seen as the seductive side of National Socialism which hastened the end of Weimar. Of course, the creators of the film could have no idea what was to happen in Germany in just a few years from the release of the film, but I don’t believe that precludes this historical reading of the film

2- The Blue Angel is Emil Janning’s first sound film. He was among the most lauded screen actors of the silent era and was hoping that this film would be an auspicious launch to the next phase of his career. Marlene Dietrich was one of the ‘immortals’ of the sound era. Her silent film appearances were negligible and largely forgotten. With the release of The Blue Angel she became the very definition of screen goddess. It is fascinating to watch the two characters in light of this tension. Rath, as portrayed by Janning’s silent era acting style in comparison to the sound era style of Lola-Lola, as played by Dietrich. Janning’s is an outsized, histrionic performance, relying on exaggerated facial expression and large physical gestures. Dietrich performance in comparison, is all about the voice and the small gesture.The acting is subtle and modulated. Of course, the grandly theatrical style of silent film quickly perished and was completely replaced by the style represented by Dietrich.

Sideline on Silent vs. Sound film acting:

It was inevitable that the silent film acting style would have died out. When sound was added, a huge artificiality of film was removed and it became more a recording of reality. The gestures and movements of the operatic silent movie style of acting had to go. Even though they were once the standard, they now were incongruous. Looking at a world as shown in a silent film is odd since one of your five senses is excluded and the sense of sight has to compensate for what is missing. Once sound comes in, the balance of the senses is back and the compensation is no longer necessary.

I think it is safe to say that the actors who survived the shift to sound are not necessarily the actors who has good voices, but the ones who knew how to scale things back, or were already naturalistic in the silent era. I’m thinking of Greta Garbo in particular. Valentino didn’t have a chance. Of course, dying before sound came in precluded a success in talkies, but still he would have been a disaster.

An interesting case is Chaplin. He was a particular screen presence. The Little Tramp was so ingrained in the consciousness of the world, that when he made talking films with that character, they were essentially silent films with a soundtrack. I am thinking of Modern Times and City Lights. When he made true sound films, the Little Tramp is gone and the films are less successful.