The Swan (1925)

Director: Dmitriy Bukhovetskiy
Writer: Dmitriy Bukhovetskiy, based on the play by Ferenc Molnár
Stars: Adolphe Menjou, Ricardo Cortez and Frances Howard

If The Rag Man was an emotional but highly predictable film for the whole family, then The Swan is all of those things but for women. This is a textbook weepie, the sort of stereotypical picture that men hated and women wept over.

It’s based on a Hungarian play, A hattyú, or The Swan, by Ferenc Molnár, a comedy whose comedy seems to have been lost in translation. On the other hand, it had tragic undercurrents which are emphasised in this version. Some of the scenes almost seem brutal in their tragedy and it’s hard to imagine comedy ever having been associated. And I say that as a devotee of the blackest English humour. I see Kind Hearts and Coronets as an absolute masterpiece. I have no issue with comedy and tragedy co-existing.

The story also seems to be so threadbare as to be archetypal. Was it successful because it’s the originator of a trope? I don’t know. Given that I liked the 1956 remake for its dialogue, a notion helped by actors of the calibre of Grace Kelly, Estelle Winwood and Agnes Moorehead, not to forget Alec Guinness, there to deliver it, I wonder if this struggles because it inherently doesn’t have much dialogue, as a silent movie.

We spend the entire film at Castle Beldonia or in its grounds. I don’t know if they shot this on location or on sets, but, wherever it is, it’s appropriately vast and impersonal, surely the best thing about the picture.

The story revolves around two heirs. Prince Albert of Hohenberg has arrived for a visit and is played with relish by Adolphe Menjou, who I have seen as handsome and debonair in many movies but never as lecherous or incorrigible. Princess Alexandra of Beldonia, on the other hand, is so aloof that Frances Howard almost floats through her scenes like she’s a beautiful cardboard prop rather than a human being.

They’re both single and highly eligible and their mothers, Princess Dominica and Princess Beatrice, want them to marry to bring a pair of historic houses together. Thus their betrothal is promptly announced at a grand dinner.

Of course, neither of them has any romantic interest in the other, but it’s not up to them.

Prince Albert is a inveterate womaniser and he’s already been distracted by a real slut of a lady in waiting, Countess Wanda von Gluck. At the ball spun up by Princess Beatrice to bring him together with her daughter, he sneaks off to frolic in the gardens with Wanda. To be fair, she’s played by Helen Lee Worthing, voted the “most beautiful girl in America”, but a glance at her life is as emphatic a tragedy as this.

Princess Alexandra is a good girl but she’s in love with the family tutor, Dr. Walter, also her fencing instructor. Then again, he’s played by Ricardo Cortez at his smouldering best. Here, of course, smouldering is what he’s there for. There are whole scenes between the two that spark into life with a single action, then sit for what seems like forever, the actors frozen into statues as they ponder on the ramifications of what they’ve just done.

And that’s pretty much the entire picture in a nutshell. The only thing in the script of any substance after the betrothal is that the truth outs. We already know that Dr. Walter loves Alexandra too, because of an incredibly tragic tale that he tells to depress the kids. It’s not as simple as saying that we spend an hour and a half waiting for her to return the courtesy but it surely feels like that.

This tale is the setup for the rest of the film, so I should explain. There’s a king and he has a daughter and everybody adores her, especially her page. The king wants her to marry one of his neighbours, who has wealth and power, so the page leaves. However, they meet again and hit it off romantically and the jester shows the king and the page is beheaded. And they lived happily ever after. Well, they didn’t, but that’s the point, right? It’s a real downer of a tale but the tutor seems to take it the hardest, because he’s living it.

The best scenes take place during a very ill-advised picnic that Princess Beatrice sets up so that her daughter can make Prince Albert see her as a woman not just a princess, by having her flirt with her tutor. After all, he isn’t a real human being; he’s just a servant. Or, to use her words, “He is merely a tutor—not a man.” How could this not go horribly wrong?

So Alexandra makes their excuses and goes off for a climb with Dr. Walter, which serves to give Albert free alone time with Wanda, but a sudden and violent storm interrupts the plans of everyone. And they all end up stuck for the night in a woodcutter’s empty cabin, which is opportunity enough for everything to happen.

Much of it does, including the tutor landing a serious kiss on Alexandra, which allows her in turn to explain that she’s a swan and, while she can respond to the wild birds, she can only mate with another swan.

Of course, it’s not remotely that blasé. The overacting is immense and, while that’s what the audience wanted in 1925, it’s such a dated style that few today could buy into it, even on a stage, let alone on a movie screen.

I’m watching today on a big screen TV and the immobility of these scenes is palpable but I wonder how it would have seemed on a huge cinema screen with twenty foot high Ricardo Cortez and Frances Howard literally unable to move because of the import of what they did a mere moment ago. It’s almost ludicrous.

It’s no more ludicrous than the sword fight that erupts late in the picture, which may well be the worst such I’ve ever seen. I despise the use of hyperbole but I can’t think of anything comparably bad, even in the worst B movies. And Dr. Walter is a fencing teacher! This isn’t a sword fight, it’s a slap fest between a pair of penguins who happen to have swords.

There are moments here. Menjou, as awful as Prince Albert is, does his job impeccably, as always, even if his transparent lechery almost prompts him to drool like a cartoon wolf. The mothers are excellent too, both Ida Waterman as a wishful Princess Beatrice and especially Clare Eames as a dominant Princess Dominica. As worthless as a character as she is, Helen Lee Worthing is alive as Countess Wanda too.

But did I ever care about the doomed love of Dr. Walter and Princess Alexandra? Not before the ice melted and not after either. Neither of them had any substance for me at all, like they weren’t moving images but photos cut out of a fan magazine and pinned to a bedroom wall.

It’s hard to imagine a world further adrift from The Rag Man or with the opposite amount of cinematic value.