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A splendid corrosion of Der Rosenkavalier, "dedicated to the lovers of the world." Twilight of imperial Vienna, St. Stephen and "The Iron Man" are its guardians, naturally for Erich von Stroheim the brute in medieval armor overshadows the petrified saint. The royal couple (George Fawcett and Maude George) are not morning people, meanwhile their son (Stroheim) chases his latest hangover by grabbing the chambermaid. "Imposing but crumbling" nobility, parental advice is swift and direct: "Blow out your brains. Or marry money." The Corpus Christi procession allows for the gaze of the plebeian maiden (Fay Wray), the mounted Prince with plumed helmet and erect saber is romanticism itself while her sneering beau (Matthew Betz) munches on a sausage. (The lout is not wrong in his complaint of wasteful opulence, celluloid switches to spectral two-strip Technicolor just as an ambulance carries away the fainting lass.) Purification through love is the presiding illusion, a beer garden turns into an orchard of apple blossom petals but swines are never far off. "A drive through paradise," the enchantment of the stalled carriage (cp. Hitchcock's Stage Fright) comes with a bent nail, Renoir in Partie de Campagne remembers the flooding river in the aftermath of the deflowering. A Hogarth perspective for the palatial bacchanalia full of piggybacking courtesans and chained Nubians and champagne ejaculations, regent and corn-plaster magnate (George Nichols) slumped in a corner belch out a "gentleman's agreement." Only half of the epic envisioned by Stroheim is seen, its poisoned grandeur nevertheless survives and engulfs. The castle and the butcher shop, the melted wax on the floor of the cathedral, the pitiless camera that gloats sublimely. A bucket of rain and tears for the heroine at the close, the limping heiress (ZaSu Pitts) has her own dreams broken as she stares at the bridal gown. (The eponymous hymn is a requiem for them all, hands on the organ keyboard are suddenly the Reaper's.) Only Barry Lyndon can inherit its interrogation of beauty. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |