Amok (1934) (2023 restoration Pathé)

Fedor Ozep: Amok (FR 1934) with Inkijinoff as the Amok runner.

Suuri intohimo / Den stora lidelsen.
    FR 1934. D: Fëdor Ocep. Sog.: dal racconto Der Amokläufer (1922) di Stefan Zweig. Scen.: André Lang. F.: Curt Courant. Scgf.: Alexandre Trauner, Lazare Meerson. M.: Henri Rust. Mus.: Karol Rathaus. Int.: Jean Yonnel (Holk), Marcelle Chantal (Hélène Haviland), Valerij Inkižinov (Amok/Maté), Madeleine Guitty (cameriera del cabaret), Fréhel (cantante), Claude Barghon (Lili), Hubert Daix (Van der Tomb), Jean Galland (signor Haviland), Soura Hari, Toshi Komori (ballerini balinesi). Prod.: Pathé Natan. DCP. Bn. 88 min

    Restored in 4K in 2023 by Pathé with funding provided by CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original nitrate negatives and a first generation dupe positive.

    Copy from Pathé.

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2023: Recovered and Restored.

    E-subtitles in English and Italian by Charlotte Trench, Sub-Ti Londra.

    Introduced by Sophie Seydoux (Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé)

    Viewed at Arlecchino Cinema, 25 June 2023.

Lenny Borger (Bologna catalog 2023): " Adapted from a short story by Stefan Zweig published in 1922, Amok is a Malay word describing a paroxysmal state of fury induced by opium, perfectly illustrated on screen during the first ten minutes of the film, where we see a native overcome by a murderous madness in the Malaysian jungle. "

Fedor Ozep, heeding the lessons of silent pictures, the influence of colonial explorations and the fascination of French cinema with exoticism, glides his camera through the lush vegetation, lingering on faces and bodies in motion, immersing the viewer, without a single line of dialogue, in the humid, stifling heat of the jungle. "

" The opening scene is even more impressive considering the jungle was recreated from scratch at the Joinville studios by a wizard of set design, Lazare Meerson. Zweig’s plot follows the journey of a disgraced doctor, exiled to Malaysia, who drowns his despair in alcohol. Dr Holk is a wreck when he is visited by Hélène Haviland, who is carrying her lover’s child and seeks an abortion before the return of her husband. After the doctor’s haughty refusal, he later regrets his reaction and does everything to ensure that her honour remains intact, even at the cost of his own life. "

" To tell the story of the redemption of this fallen doctor, Ozep can depend on the brilliant lighting of the renowned Curt Courant, on the magnificent score of his habitual collaborator Karol Rathaus, as well as on formidable actors. Jean Yonnel, a stalwart of the Comédie-Française, gives one of his best performances; Marcelle Chantal gracefully plays the noble beauty who prefers death to dishonour; Russian actor Valéry Inkijinoff plays a dual role as the Malayan led to madness and as Mrs Haviland’s Chinese chauffeur. "

" Amok is one of the finest screen adaptations of Zweig’s novella, skilfully conveying the desperate atmosphere of the great Austrian writer’s work. " Lenny Borger

AA: Fedor Ozep had one of the most fascinating careers in the history of the cinema: from 1910s Imperial Russia to 1920s NEP era USSR, Weimar Germany, 1930s France, 1940s Hollywood and post-WWII Québec.

His landmarks include the screenplay to The Queen of Spades (1916, by Protazanov, starring Mosjoukine), Polikushka (from Tolstoy, starring Moskvin), the pioneering scifi movie Aelita, an appearance in Chess Fever, the NEP meta-comedy The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom, the Pushkin-inspired The Station Master, the action serial Miss Mend, The Yellow Passport (1928 with his then wife Anna Sten, this movie unconnected with the three American adaptations of Michael Morton's play and the two Polish films starring Pola Negri) and The Doll With the Millions, his last film in Russia.

In Weimar Germany Ozep directed The Living Corpse (from Tolstoy, with Pudovkin) and The Brothers Karamazov (from Dostoevsky, with Fritz Kortner as Dmitri, Anna Sten as Grushenka and Fritz Rasp as Smerdjakov). He also directed its French parallel version, plus German and French parallel versions of Grossstadtnacht. Amok was Ozep's first purely French production. In Hollywood Ozep directed only a recycled version of a Soviet film on the Finnish Winter War, Three Russian Girls, remade from Viktor Eisimont's Frontovye podrugi, again starring Anna Sten.

The last of Ozep's three Québécoise films was La Forteresse / The Whispering City, produced in two parallel language versions. The theme of the transference of guilt brought Ozep to the terrain common to Dostoevsky and Hitchcock (especially I Confess).

Classified by later scholars as film noir, this movie makes of Ozep the only director to have worked in all major film currents relevant to the genesis of film noir: Imperial Russia, Weimar Germany, 1930s France and 1940s America.

Amok is Ozep's powerful contribution to the 1930s French cinema of agony and despair, a film wave launched during the breakthrough of sound. The wave flourished for a decade and culminated on the eve of WWII with La Bête humaine, Hôtel du Nord, Le Quai des brumes, Le Jour se lève and Pièges.

This wave, often misleadingly called "romantic realism", started in tandem with Weimar cinema, in the parallel French language versions of German films by Lang, Siodmak, Wiene and Ophuls. They were accompanied by all-French movies such as La petite Lise (Cavalcanti), La Chienne (Renoir), Dans les rues (Trivas), Cœur de lilas (Litvak), Le grand jeu (Feyder), La Rue sans nom (Chenal) and Rapt (Kirsanoff).

Amok is a work of pure cinema, an oneiric, nightmarish account of obsession, addiction and unrequited devotion, conveyed in spellbinding long takes and crane shots by Curt Courant, hypnotic superimpositions and almost abstract montages by Henri Rust, all photographed in a studiobound Java created by the art director wizards Alexandre Trauner and Lazare Meerson. Ozep's trusted composer, the Ukrainian born Karol Rathaus, wrote the score and the searing songs "J'attends quelqu'un" and "La Légende de Bali" for Fréhel, who had already been launched as the voice of fate in Cœur de lilas and La Rue sans nom before her rise to world fame in Pépé le Moko.

The colonial dreamscape emerges in a magic forest with snakes, idols, sacred dances, uninhibited sensuality and topless native beauties. We are reminded of Joseph Conrad's early stories such as Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, An Outpost of Progress and The Rescue, but also of Alfred Hitchcock's first film, the Weimar production Irrgarten der Leidenschaft / The Pleasure Garden. Might there be a bit of voyeurism in the spirit of the odalisque worship of male gaze painters and sculptors, under the excuse of Pacific Ocean colonial exoticism.

The amok run, the kris dagger, the gambling tables, the Chinatown, the opium den, the harbour and the ship appear as potent poetic images. Amok is a movie about nausea, self-destruction, the lure of the abyss, the descent into the vortex. Amok is explained to erupt when the heavy air of Java irritates nerves to a breaking point.

Early on I was thinking about Sartre and that he might have been influenced by this film to write Les Orgueilleux (originally called Typhus, 1943, four years before La Peste by Albert Camus), another story of an alcoholic, self-hating doctor struggling in the squalor and the heat of a remote village, dreaming of a seemingly unattainable white woman. Les Orgueilleux belongs to the post-WWII films still under the spell of the classics of the 1930s, thanks also to the presence of Michèle Morgan in the female leading role.

Amok is a compelling and unforgettable film, but not a perfect one. Towards the end there are heavy-handed passages. The dialogue is clumsy. Among the weaknesses is the casting. None of the leading actors rises to the full level of the potential of his/her character. Let us add to the catalog's cast listing Jean Servais, as Jan, the lover of Hélène and the father of her illegitimate child, at the beginning of a long career.

Inkijinoff is memorable in his dual role as the amok runner and the chauffeur.

Excellent visual quality in an important restoration.