Trilby (1915)

Maurice Tourneur: Trilby (US 1915). Wilton Lackaye (Svengali) in the painting. Clara Kimball Young (Trilby), Chester Barnett (Little Billee). This scene from the original tragic ending is lost. Photo: New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Please click on the image to expand it.

Trilby: konstnärsdrama i 5 akter (Sweden).

    US 1915. Prod: Equitable Motion Pictures Corporation. Dist: World Film Company (1915); Republic Pictures/Republic Distributing Corporation (1920). 

    Dir: Maurice Tourneur. Scen: E. Magnus Ingleton, based on the novel by George du Maurier (publ. 8.9.1894, Harper & Brothers, NY; serialized 1-8.1894, Harper’s Magazine), & the play by Paul M. Potter (3.12.1894, Park Theater, Boston; 15.4.1895, Garden Theatre, NY). Photog: John van den Broek. Des: Ben Carré. Ed: Clarence Brown. 

    Cast: Wilton Lackaye (Svengali), Clara Kimball Young (Trilby O’Ferrall), Paul McAllister (Gecko), Chester Barnett (Little Billee), ? (Taffy), ? (The Laird). 

    Première: 6.9.1915 (44th Street Theatre, NY). Rel: 20.9.1915. Copy: 35 mm, 4591 ft, 76'31" (16 fps), col. (from 28 mm, tinted); titles: ENG. Source: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.

    Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), Pordenone: Ben Carré.

    Grand piano: Philip Carli.

    Viewed at Teatro Verdi with e-subtitles in Italian, 6 Oct 2024.

Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec (GCM 2024): "By 1914 Ben Carré was becoming despondent, and homesick for Paris. There had been a huge fire at Éclair in March. Change was in the air. Ben recalled: “One day a man was roaming around on the stage. Étienne Arnaud came up to talk to him and they passed by me without an introduction. Later I learned that the man was a French director, and I heard that his name was Maurice Tourneur. I thought it bizarre that Arnaud did not want to speak to me of the newcomer before I met him. The next morning back at the studio I saw Tourneur sitting at a wood table on the stage reading a play. I said hello to him and went to find Arnaud only to learn that he had left for France. Shocked, I returned to the stage and went back to Tourneur to ask who was in charge now? He said ‘I am.’”"

"Such was Ben’s introduction to the director with whom he would make 34 films over the next 5 years, motion pictures which influenced the future of silent films and defined both of their careers for the remainder of their lives. It was an artistic marriage made in heaven. Tourneur had been an artist, knew Rodin and Puvis de Chavannes, and had worked in the theatre with André Antoine. He had a painter’s eye for composition and light. He and Ben understood each other."

"In 1915 finally came an exciting project that Carré could throw himself into. Trilby was the first important picture that he was to design since coming to America. The novel, written and illustrated by the artist George du Maurier (1834-1896) – a celebrated Punch caricaturist, father of actor Gerald du Maurier, and grandfather of novelist Daphne du Maurier, of Rebecca fame – was published in 1894, was a phenomenal bestseller that assumed cult status, and was quickly transformed into a hit play. It premiered to a rapturous reception in Boston in December 1895 and transferred to Broadway the following April, with Wilton Lackaye as the predatory Svengali. The English writer Max Beerbohm saw it, and told his brother Herbert Beerbohm Tree that this story of a trio of painters, the beautiful but tone-deaf artist’s model Trilby, and Svengali, the evil mesmerist who gets her in his clutches and turns her into a great singer, was “utter nonsense.” But Tree the actor-manager recognized a commercial goldmine and a meaty role, and took it to London; the proceeds funded the building of His Majesty’s Theatre. “Trilbymania” reached fever proportions. Trilby gave the world a new term, Svengali, for a person manipulating and controlling someone under his spell; the expression “the altogether,” to denote nudity; and inspired the Trilby hat."

"Surprisingly, all of this had passed Ben by, but he soon made up for it: “I had not known of the book or seen the stage play, but I finally read it without stopping and it appealed to me immensely. The people were very familiar, they were people that I knew, the story brought me back to Paris, with no time period established, it was [as] though it was yesterday. As soon as I had finished the book, I decided on my first set. I spoke to Tourneur of my intentions, and he told me to go ahead. Very enviously, in Paris I had admired those ateliers on the Left Bank and this I thought would be more appropriate for our English artists in the Latin Quarter than the Montmartre. So I put up an artist’s studio with a 16-foot wide window on the back wall to permit me to see the locale and Notre Dame.”"

"The art students who participated as extras in the classroom scenes were all recruited from New York’s Art Students League. One student with the look of a rakish matinee idol was a native of Brooklyn and a department store window dresser by day; his name was Cedric Gibbons, and he would eventually become M-G-M’s Supervising Art Director, and later Ben’s boss."

"Trilby was revived at the Shubert Theatre in New York in the spring of 1915, with Wilton Lackaye in his old role. The timing probably explains how he came to appear in the film, thus preserving his performance for posterity. Lackaye’s emoting is definitely stagebound, completely over-the-top in terms of cinema. So is his heavy makeup (those eyes!), and the beard stroking. The Jewish characterization is genuinely disturbing, on a par with Dickens’ Fagin. By this time Lackaye was in his 50s; he had played the role for over 20 years. At the other end of the scale is Clara Kimball Young, one of Vitagraph’s biggest stars, as Trilby O’Ferrall, lively as the carefree, uninhibited young model, swinging her dainty feet, and even smoking a cigarette, and ultimately passive, almost zombie-like under Svengali’s spell."

"The leading lady was also still married to actor-director James Young. Apparently the producers made some accommodation with Young that allowed him to direct the “B-camera” for Trilby, not an easy situation. Clara evidently was on Tourneur’s side. Carré’s solution was to have the carpenters build some muslin covered folding screens to separate the two sets and directors."

"Ben’s memoirs also tell us more about Tourneur’s innovations: “Maurice Tourneur did something in Trilby that the historians of motion pictures do not mention coming from him or any other. That is the succession of locations created on the stage. For that picture, we used backings, and many different backgrounds, to illustrate traveling or the mood going through a lapse of time. A few of these sets gave me lots of work but every one of them was a notable addition to the quality of the work.”"

"Equitable was a new independent, and Trilby was its first big production. Motion Picture News (4.9.1915) observed, “from what those who have seen it say, Equitable has spared no pains or expense to turn out a feature of the supreme class.” Motography’s Charles R. Condon (25.8.1915) declared, “Technically, the production is perfect.” Ben’s version of Paris also came in for praise: “The Paris scenes made in this country, are excellent examples of motion picture ingenuity.” (William Bessman Andrews, Motion Picture News, 18.9.1915)"

"The film was released in 1915, and then reissued twice, with changes. From descriptions, the original 1915 version had Trilby’s death scene, well-known from the play (seemingly free at last, she sees a portrait of Svengali, and falls dead). By the time the film was re-released in 1917, the ending was altered, perhaps with newly filmed footage: she doesn’t see the fateful portrait, and is reunited with her artist friends, destined for happiness with her sweetheart Little Billee (the final intertitle reads “A promise of good old times again.”). What we are seeing is the 1920 reissue with the “happy ending,” all that exists, preserved via a tinted 28 mm print. Other changes may have been due to censorship; one publicity photo features Clara Kimball Young in an artistic pose worthy of a life modeling class."

"The two actors who played the prominent roles of Little Billee’s artist cohorts, Taffy and The Laird, remain uncredited (an omission first pointed out in Variety’s review, 10.9.1915)."

"There were various Trilby films over the years. Tourneur’s, the first in America, was preceded by Harold Shaw’s British production of 1914, with Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Svengali. James Young directed his own version in 1923. Future screen Svengalis would include Arthur Edmund Carewe, John Barrymore, and Donald Wolfit." – Thomas A. Walsh, Catherine A. Surowiec

AA: I see for the first time Maurice Tourneur's Trilby, a film that was missing from the 1988 Maurice Tourneur tribute at Le Giornate. I have seen two other film adaptations of George du Maurier's novel: Gennaro Righelli's Svengali (DE 1927 with Anita Dorris as Trilby and Paul Wegener as Svengali) and Archie Mayo's Svengali (US 1931 with Marian Marsh as Trilby and John Barrymore as Svengali). Those films I saw in my viewing marathons for the book Musta peili: kauhuelokuvan kehitys Prahan ylioppilaasta Poltergeistiin [Dark Mirror: the Development of the Horror Film from The Student of Prague till Poltergeist] (1985, Antti Alanen & Asko Alanen) - too long ago to make a meaningful comparison.

In the same marathons I also viewed Henry Hathaway's Peter Ibbetson (US 1935 with Ann Harding and Gary Cooper) based on George du Maurier's debut novel. Its Finnish title is Ikuinen liekki which means Eternal Flame. It is about a love that transcends material boundaries and takes place in a shared world of dreams. In the centenary year of surrealism it is appealing to remember this favourite film of surrealists about l'amour fou.

A much criticized feature of George du Maurier's novel was its crude antisemitic caricature of the Ashkenazi Jew in the portrait of Svengali taking possession of the naive Shiksha. This aspect was toned down in numerous stage and cinema adaptations, but a shock in Maurice Tourneur's Trilby is the blatant openness of its anti-Jewish caricature, in direct lineage to the fabrications of Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, and Der ewige Jude in Nazi Germany. Might this be a reason why this film has not been more widely seen anymore?

The monster caricature is performed by Wilton Lackaye, who had played Svengali on stage for almost twenty years. Thanks to this background the movie is a precious document of a legendary performance, to be compared with the revelation of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes (US 1916, D: Arthur Berthelet) in Pordenone in 2015.

The merging of the souls theme, reminiscent of Peter Ibbetson, is engagingly executed. The visual world contributes in every way to the ambience of a fairy-tale and a shared dream, as in The Blue Bird. The mise-en-scène by Maurice Tourneur, the art of light and shadows by John van den Broek, the haunting design by Ben Carré and the deft editing by Clarence Brown contribute to the grand illusion. Everything is artificial, but the deep emotion is genuine in the tragedy of Trilby (Clara Kimball Young) under the mental superpowers of Svengali.

A moving and disturbing experience.

A charming print from 28 mm origins. The toning is appealing.