Archive for June 2012
Tempest (1928)
0Tuesday 5 June 2012 by owlish
Tempest
(1928)
A Joseph M.
Schenck Productions Film. Distributed by United Artists.
Ivan Markov (John Barrymore) is a peasant
soldier under Bolshevik reign. His dream is to reach the rank of officer,
something he achieves in the first half of the film amidst a display of ability
(the words excellent and perfect are used pretty frequently). It’s as a part of
this that he meets Princess Tamara (Camilla Horn), the royal daughter of the Czar
he serves. What begins as infatuation very quickly turns into obsession as
Tamara spurns him and Markov aggressively pursues. The film is classified as a
romance, but in many ways, it watches more as some sort of sexual thriller.
The first thing to know about this film is
that the script is really not very good. It’s full of convenient and blatant
plot devices, coincidences and really stunted dialogue. The second thing to
know is that it has lady-issues. A part of me says 1928, but none of the other
films I have seen so far have had this exact sense of woman as commodity. Not
just that, but the film devotes a good forty minutes to justifying Markov’s
behaviour (which is all in all pretty sexual predator), like it’s a-okay that
he violates Tamara’s boundaries, space and privacy. He forcefully kisses her,
invades her bedroom (and her bed), touches her things and the script tells us this
is okay too because she’s infatuated right on back (she just doesn’t know it).
There’s a part of me that thinks, in the
hands of a better writer, you could have a really interesting film. Markov’s
obsession with rank could make a seamless transition to his obsession with the
princess. He’s reached officer and, by being infatuated with Tamara, it’s
another way of climbing up a social ladder and a society that disparaged him
for so long. That said, I think that would be a very different film than what
this one was trying to be.
So thematically the film isn’t good, but it
does have some pretty great elements. The performances are generally solid,
Barrymore continues to have an excellent profile and honestly, the location and
the costumes all hit it out of the park, so if nothing else, it’s worth the
watch for that alone. The birthday party in particular is wonderfully shot,
from the dancers to watching the events through the glass. Camilla Horn also wears
some pretty ace dresses as the princess and later as a sort of political
refugee.
Rating: 6 / 10
Director: Sam Taylor
Writers: George Marion Jr. & Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko
Cast: John Barrymore, Camilla Horn & Louis
Wolheim
Nominations: Best Art Direction (won)
Category 1928, 6, BW, Drama, Nomination:Art Direction, Oscars01, Romance, Silent, Won:Art Direction
About Me
- owlish
- Sophie Overett is a 22-year-old writer from Brisbane, Australia. She has a propensity for thermal singlets, white wine and making bios sound like terrible dating profiles. Her work has been published in Voiceworks and Writing Queensland. She’s also a fortnightly online columnist for Lip Mag where she writes about representations of women on TV. She has two cats and a blog. You should probably check out that last one.