Film concert Merry-Go-Round (2023 Blackhawk Films Restoration) with music by Mauro Colombis, Frank Bockius and Romano Todesco

 

Rupert Julian, [Erich von Stroheim]: Merry-Go-Round (US 1923). William Daniels, Erich von Stroheim, Norman Kerry, Mary Philbin on the set. Credit: Bison Archives, AMPAS-Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles. From: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2023. Please do click to enlarge the photo to fill the screen.

Donne viennesi / Elämän valhe / Livets gyckelspel.

    US 1923. regia/dir: Rupert Julian, [Erich von Stroheim]. asst. dir: Edward Sowders, Louis Germonprez, Jack Sullivan. scen: Finis Fox (adapt.), Harvey Gates (story). did/titles: Mary O’Hara. art titles: Harry B. Johnson. photog: Charles Kaufman, William Daniels. mont/ed: James McKay, [Maurice Pivar]. scg/des: E. E. Sheeley. set dec: Richard Day. cost: Erich von Stroheim, Richard Day.
    cast: Mary Philbin (Agnes Urban), Norman Kerry (conte/Count Franz Maximilian von Hohenegg), Cesare Gravina (Sylvester Urban), George Hackathorne (Bartholomew Gruber), Edith Yorke (Ursula Urban), George Siegmann (Shani Huber), Dale Fuller (Mariana Huber), Dorothy Wallace (contessa/Countess Gisella von Steinbrueck), Spottiswoode Aitken (ministro della Guerra/Minister of War), Al Edmundsen (Nepomuck Navrital), Maude George (Madame Elvira), Charles L. King (Barone/Nicki, Baron von Nubenmuth), Fenwick Oliver (principe/Prince Eitel Hogemut), Sidney Bracy (stalliere/Gisella’s groom), Jane Sherman (Marie), Helen Broneau (Jane), Lillian Sylvester (Mrs. Aurora Rossreiter), Albert Conti (barone/Rudi, Baron von Leightsinn), Anton Vaverka (imperatore/Emperor Franz Josef).
    prod: Irving Thalberg, Universal Super-Jewel. dist: Universal.
    première: 1.7.1923 (Rivoli Theatre, NY). uscita/rel: 3.9.1923.

    Helsinki premiere: 18 Oct 1924 Bio Bio (Adams Filmi).
    copia/copy: DCP, 120'40" (da/from 35 mm, 8,125 ft/2,476 m, 18 fps); did./titles: ENG.
    fonte/source: Blackhawk Films, Burbank.
    Restauro/Restored Blackhawk Films, con / in association with Lobster Films, Filmarchiv Austria, Det Danske Filminstitut.
    Con il sostegno di / Restoration funded by Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts.

    Musical interpretation: Mauro Colombis, Frank Bockius, Romano Todesco.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornato del Cinema Muto: The Canon Revisited, 9 Oct 2023.

Richard Koszarski (GCM 2023):

“ Whose film is this?

“ Irving Thalberg, who fired Erich von Stroheim in mid-production and replaced him with Rupert Julian, insisted that it was the studio’s film, citing “your apparent idea that you are greater and more powerful than the organization that employs you.” Lewis Milestone later claimed this as the moment when “the age of the director” was supplanted by the producer system. “

“ In a 1927 legal deposition Stroheim claimed he had shot one third of the film before he was fired. Rupert Julian, in a letter to the New York Times responding to those who attributed everything good in the picture to Stroheim, claimed only 600 feet of Stroheim’s footage remained, and that he and Harvey Gates completely rewrote the script, an assertion supported by the screen credits and the film’s domestic advertising campaign (though not always echoed overseas). “

“ On its release in 1923 Merry-Go-Round proved extremely profitable, earning almost enough to offset the losses on Foolish Wives. It also did very well in the annual Film Daily critics’ poll, second to The Covered Wagon and ahead of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Robin Hood. There was plenty of credit to go around. Thalberg went on to M-G-M, Julian to The Phantom of the Opera, and even Stroheim, though frustrated at his inability to complete the project, somehow emerged with his reputation enhanced. For the rest of his career he would return to the story of the handsome prince and the lovely Süsse Mädel. “

“ Soon after the release of Foolish Wives Stroheim decided to set his next film in Vienna (McTeague, which Universal had already bought for him, was put on hold). He had left Vienna in 1908 and would not return until 1930, but was well aware of its desperate post-war situation through contact with his mother and younger brother Bruno, who remained behind. On one level, his script is an updated version of Old Heidelberg (he had worked on John Emerson’s 1915 film version), with its action transposed to the Imperial capital before and after the War. Elegant characters are first seen reading the works of Sigmund Freud and even Arthur Schnitzler’s Reigen, but the post-war world is a nightmare of corruption, profiteering, and decay. Stroheim was horrified by the political and economic turmoil that shattered the elegance of Franz Josef’s great city. In reality, as a Jew, he was never one of its insiders. His family operated a millinery shop on Lindengasse (which finds an echo in this film), though in America he identified as the noble son of a German Baroness and Austrian Count. This was not just a myth he concocted for the movies, but, as far as his wives and children knew, his actual family history. Only years after his death did they learn the truth. “

“ Merry-Go-Round allowed him to use the resources of Hollywood to recreate this dream world. The industry assumed he was working from memory, and was impressed by the “realism” of his conception. Would they have been more impressed to learn how much was simply a figment of his imagination? In any case, Irving Thalberg drew the line at allowing Stroheim himself to play the handsome prince — a costly lesson Universal had learned on Foolish Wives. Stroheim found an acceptable substitute in Norman Kerry (birth name Kaiser), whose lackluster career subsequently took off. The female lead, Mary Philbin, he discovered while judging a beauty contest in Chicago (she won second prize). The heroines of previous Stroheim films were little more than prey, but from this point he became increasingly interested in them. By the time of Queen Kelly and Walking Down Broadway the role of the seducer almost seemed an afterthought. “

“ Stroheim began shooting on August 25, 1922. The studio’s resources were overtaxed from the start. Electrical generators blew out, settings were poorly finished, uniforms ordered from Western Costume improperly detailed. Kerry would not always arrive sober, while the studio’s resident orangutan, Joe Martin, proved impossible to work with. Not all of this was Stroheim’s fault, but his fastidiousness and proclivity for late night shooting sessions quickly came to Thalberg’s attention. “

“ Executives began consulting their legal options and lining up a replacement. On October 6, Stroheim was fired after only six weeks’ work. Although there were earlier examples of a studio removing a major director during post-production, this was the first time a noted auteur was fired in the middle of “his own” picture. “

“ When Merry-Go-Round opened in New York on July 1, 1923, the main topic of critical discussion was authorship. Julian was correct when he told the Times that Stroheim had filmed the opening scenes with Norman Kerry, the “banquet” scene, and the scenes establishing the Dorothy Wallace and Sidney Bracey characters, including “the elopement of the countess and the groom” (often censored after the first run). We know this because of the diary maintained by a supervisor attached to the production by Thalberg. That diary also indicates that Stroheim directed the Kerry-Philbin seduction scene at Madame Elvira’s, but this footage appears to have been reshot by Julian (“your flagrant disregard of the principles of censorship” was another point cited by the studio in their termination letter). “

“ That does add up to about 600 feet. But in addition to directing all the other scenes, Julian also claimed to have conceived “the love story,” while suggesting that he and Gates had rewritten everything else as well. My impression, after reading several versions of the shooting script, is that the new team did whatever they could to finish the picture as quickly and efficiently as possible. They were not interested in writing new material or ordering new costumes and sets. The actors and key technicians remained the same (although George Siegmann seems to have been newly hired for a role intended for Wallace Beery). “

“ So while Stroheim did not personally direct the bulk of this film, we should realize that the man brought in to wrap things up, Rupert Julian, hewed as closely to von Stroheim’s script as the budget, the schedule, and the principles of censorship allowed. When that script called for a moving-camera shot, Julian moves the camera. On the other hand, he was not about to reject an exterior setting because the grass was the wrong shade of green, or a costume because it had the wrong decorations. Was he as hard on the actors as Erich von Stroheim, or did he simply accept what they gave him? Julian had not been brought in to sweat the details, and this is where the absence of a great director really makes itself felt. The aching sense of loss that permeates the script never made it to the screen. On its release, critics and audiences loved Merry-Go-Round, but how much more they might have loved it if Stroheim had been able to fully realize this dream we will never know. “ – Richard Koszarski

Serge Bromberg, Lucie Fourmont (GCM 2023): 

The restoration 

“ In April 1948 Universal Studios junked most of their silent film negatives, regarded as costly for storage and of no commercial value. Many vault fires had already taken their toll on most of the early Universal production, and the remaining negatives were shrunken and could not be printed with satisfactory results at the time (step-printing was not available). Most of all, the money – if any – would come from the remake rights, not the original films themselves. “

“ This is why what was left of the production of a major studio during the 20 years of the silents was destroyed by a corporate decision. Although Merry-Go-Round was among the 17 titles marked for retention (along with Foolish Wives and The Man Who Laughs, both junked in February 1949), no one knows what happened to its camera negative as of that date. “

“ Besides a mediocre dupe negative of the European abridged version printed by Henri Langlois in 1960, it was thought that Merry-Go-Round did not exist in any film archive until the end of the 1980s, when an incomplete 16 mm print was discovered by David Shepard of Blackhawk Films. He published a DVD in 2003 through Image Entertainment from the best video transfer possible at the time. The restorers of this new version spent 20 years conducting a worldwide search, and identified several surviving elements: (1) three original “Show-at-Home” direct reduction 16 mm prints made in the 1920s from the main A camera negative, two of which were tinted (Blackhawk/Lobster Collection/ Silent Movie Theater); (2) an abridged 35 mm nitrate print (1,236 m/4,055 ft) found at Filmarchiv Austria in very poor condition, struck from the lesser B (export) negative, severely cut down with the original Hungarian titles but retaining the original tinting log; (3) a black & white print in the Danish Filmmuseum collections struck in 1951 on nitrate stock from a now-disappeared original Czech nitrate dupe negative with flash titles (1,886 m/6,188 ft). By comparing each of these elements shot by shot, we were able to reconstruct the entire film in its original form, with its original titles and tints. “

“ The best shots in each print were scanned in 5K (wet-gate) at Blackhawk Films Laboratory (Burbank), Eclair Classics (Paris), and the Danish Film Institute, and restored archivally in black & white. The original tinting of the original nitrate materials was then applied in all the digital elements. Blackhawk Films carried out the full image restoration in Burbank. The restoration was entirely funded by the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. “ – Serge Bromberg, Lucie Fourmont

AA: I had never seen a good print of Merry-Go-Round before and had always registered it as a minor entry in the Erich von Stroheim curriculum, like Hello, Sister! (Walking Down Broadway), films from which he was fired and which were finished by others. But at the same time it was obvious that Merry-Go-Round belongs to the core in the Stroheim oeuvre. The Wedding March was the magisterial fulfillment of the project that was interrupted when Stroheim was fired.

In this 2023 restoration, Merry-Go-Round not only looks better but is a better film: more rich, more subtle, more profound. The revelation is similar to the restored versions of Die freudlose Gasse which fully reveal its qualities. God is in the detail. This time, I discovered in Merry-Go-Round more emotion, both passion and despair. The hurt experienced by the Urban family and the crippled Bartholomew feels more acute than before.

The romantic glamour of Imperial Vienna is juxtaposed with images of despair (a mother jumps from a bridge) and oppression (sexual harassment is a major theme).

Stroheim casts familiar members of his stock company: Dale Fuller, Maude George and Cesare Gravina. The male lead has clearly been cut for Stroheim himself, but he has been replaced with Norman Kerry, a reminder of similarities with another Universal blockbuster, the 1923 adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In order to imagine what Stroheim might have achieved in the lead, one only has to view The Wedding March. In the female lead, Mary Philbin excels. She is now best remembered from the Universal horror milestones The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Man Who Laughs. Philbin had also been cast in an uncredited bit part in Foolish Wives as the crippled girl.

Merry-Go-Round belongs to the fascinating cycle of silent films in which the amusement park / the circus / the fair / the magician / the acrobat / the clown was charged with allegorical meaning like never before or since.

In Merry-Go-Round, the Wiener Prater is a playground of tenderness, amusement, thrills and cruelty. Seen today, it is also a stage of diversity, and the characters of the Prater are viewed with an affection that evokes Fellini.

Like Foolish Wives, Merry-Go-Round is informed by a deeply felt sense of the philosophy of history, covering three periods: the Belle Époque and the last days of the Double Monarchy - the War - and the post-war misery. Aristocracy has been stripped of its privileges, and Agnes and Franz can meet as equals.

Like in The Wedding March, there is a chilling vignette of an arranged marriage. Count Franz Maximilian is ordered by none other than Kaiser Franz Josef to marry Countess Gisella. Dorothy Wallace conveys in knowing looks her attitude to the arranged marriage and the qualities of her future husband. There is no love lost. 

The wedding march is played here, as well: Richard Wagner's "Treulich geführt" from Lohengrin. The new restoration and the commitment of the musicians Mauro Colombis, Frank Bockius and Romano Todesco elevate Merry-Go-Round to a higher level in the Stroheim legacy.