Maurice Tourneur

[hearthesilence]

I haven't seen any of his films, but The Last of the Mohicans and The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England are two I've been looking out for in repertory theaters. (At least one of them did screen in 35mm at MoMA in recent years, but unfortunately I missed it.) I may have to settle for what's out there on home video.

[Ann Harding]

Good news: some Tourneur talkies are being released with English subs. First LA MAIN DU DIABLE is coming out from Eureka in the UK. Later this year, another Tourneur talkie will be released by Severin Films in the US.

[domino harvey]

Interesting, I wonder which one Severin would be interested in

[Stefan]

"La main du diable" is splendid. But, really, who wants a cover like this? https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-devils-hand/

[Ann Harding]

I agree it looks hideous. Maurice must be turning in his grave.

[Stefan]

And his son too.

Could it be that current Blu-ray covers are getting worse again? Those at CC are becoming increasingly pedantic, along the lines of “anyone who has already seen the film ten times will know what is meant.” In German there's the word "spitzfindig" for this, "all too clever".
The same goes, in my eyes, for the BFI "Film Classics" series:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/bfi-film-classics/

[Altair]

On Ann's recommendation, I saw Cécile est morte! (1944). Very entertaining, with some beautiful mise-èn-scene as Maigret (Albert Préjean) roots around a boarding house, looking for a murderer who has beheaded his victim, reminiscent of the poetic realism of the '30s. Made in occupied Paris by the German-controlled Continental Films, there are no references to the war, yet it is slyly subversive, with virtually all of the authority figures shown to either be buffoons or astonishingly corrupt (the reveal as to who did it is not surprising, but the why-they-did-it is very amusing and far more explicit than a Hollywood film of the period could be). The humour works - I treasured a scene where Maigret has to cycle after his quarry - but it never slips into outright comedy-thriller territory, insteading remaining an immensely satisfying detective film.

[Stefan Andersson]

Lorna Doone (1922), restoration world premiere:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/ucla-festiv ... eservation

[Michael Kerpan]

>> Cécile est morte!

Is the out on BD/DVD? If so, subbed or unsubbed?

[Altair]

Kino put it out on a BD double feature with another Maigret film, Picpus, in 2022, and it’s streaming via them on Amazon too.

[Michael Kerpan]

Altair --

Thanks

[Ann Harding]

And I got my first review of Maurice Tourneur - Weaver of Dreams from Midwest Book Review:
https://www.midwestbookreview.com/wbw/a ... reCinemaTV

Critique: An exceptional, seminal, and groundbreaking study of extensive research and meticulously documented scholarship, "Maurice Tourneur: Weaver of Dreams" by Christine Leteux is informatively enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a Foreword by Robert Byrne, numerous B/W illustrations, a two page Introduction, a two page listing of Acknowledgments, twenty pages of Notes, an eighteen page Filmography, a two page Selected Bibliography, and a twelve page Index. This hardcover edition of "Maurice Tourneur: Weaver of Dreams" from the Wisconsin University Press is a unique and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Film/Movie History/Criticism collections and supplemental Cinematic History/Biography curriculum studies lists.

[MichaelB]

Yes, Victory is outstanding. It's one of the few island-adventure movies that really incorporates the threatening-volcano convention well into the tension of the story and the psychology of the characters. I also really like the performance of the actor who plays the leader of the gang -- it's like a prototype for all the "gentleman villains" to come (including James Mason's in Lord Jim). I understand that this was the only adaptation of his work that Joseph Conrad ever saw; I wonder what he thought of it...?

I've just recorded a commentary for the Mark Peploe version of Victory, and did quite a bit of digging into this, but it all seems to be speculative; Conrad certainly could have seen it, what with him still being alive at the time (and would remain so for another five years), but I couldn't find any evidence that this was actually the case, let alone what he thought of it. Although he definitely wasn't that keen on the cinema in general, dismissing the entire medium as "just a silly stunt for silly people". (Although he was happy to sell the film rights to his novels; £3,000 might not sound like much, but the Bank of England's inflation calculator reckons that that would be worth nearly £136,000 today, so a tidy sum that few authors would turn down.)

I was unexpectedly able to dig up four out of five pre-1996 adaptations of Victory (plus an even more unexpected bonus in the form of a radio-play adaptation of Harold Pinter's never-filmed screenplay for an abandoned Richard Lester version), and I have to say that the Tourneur version stood up incredibly well. In fact, at one point I explicitly say that:

Thinking of the visual treatment of the various versions of Victory, I don’t think any has managed to improve on the very first film, way back in 1919, which was forced by dint of it being a silent film to devise a visual language as a viable equivalent of Conrad’s prose. None of the later versions pulls off anything similar; they’re much more focused on a straightforward presentation of the narrative—which is of course one of the reasons why Conrad is so hard to adapt; at base they tell a rattling good yarn, and it sometimes seems as though that’s enough. Watching the Mark Peploe version, I can’t help but wonder how it might have turned out if the same excellent script had been directed by a genuinely visionary filmmaker like Nicolas Roeg or Jerzy Skolimowski.

[Stefan Andersson]

Tourneur´s Rose of the World (1918) rediscovered, in a 35mm nitrate print:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38876

[Ann Harding]

Stefan posted the news before I had a chance to do it. Yes, it's a lovely 35 mm nitrate print and hopefully it will get the state-of-the-art restoration it deserves. It was well worth the trip to Brussels.