I consider this film to be a prime example of how truly powerful an impact silent film can have on the viewer. This was the first noncomedic silent I can recall seeing--about 30 years ago on local TV--and I only caught the end of it, including the tremendous prison confrontation scene. In the intervening years, I never forgot that scene, and noticed when it was imitated in other romantic melodramas (e.g., 'The English Patient' and the saffron thimble bit).
When the upcoming DVD release was described, I realized that this probably was the movie that had haunted me all these years. And it was! I was thrilled to finally be able to see the whole thing--and it didn't disappoint, even though it had to compete with powerful old impressions.
I'm very grateful to David Shepard for this release--and to the great Philip Carli, whose piano score is magisterial. The cobbled-together orchestral soundtrack is OK--mostly snatches of stuff like the waltz from "Eugene Onegin"--but the sound quality is not up to modern standards; oddly enough, I found that more distracting than the occasional visually scratchy portions of the print. Carli's performance and score are, as usual, as elegant as the images (and that's saying something with this film), but never distract from them.
Barrymore's inescapably "aristocratic" looks do sometimes interfere with the suspension of disbelief, but he overcomes this handicap--and not with a resort to grotesque makeup, but with a truly committed and engaged performance, overcoming even the more serious handicap of his age.
Cinematographer Rosher's interview in Kevin Brownlow's great book "The Parade's Gone By" mentions that "Barrymore was especially pleased with [the cameraman's Rosher Kino Portrait Lens] because its softness smoothed away his dewlaps. For the first time he could be photographed properly full-face; before they had to favor the famous profile." Barrymore's mad scene is another example of great acting working in tandem with great cinematography.
The ending is quite abrupt, but all that comes before is completely satisfying. If you are in the mood for a good, old fashioned romantic epic, you can't do better than this movie!
"Out of the Tempest comes an enduring Love.."
Ivan Markov, a young son of poor peasants, is granted an officer's commission in Czarist Russia. He falls in love with Princess Tamara. Caught in her room, Markov is thrown into prison. But, then comes the Red Terror...In 1927, United Artists signed John Barrymore to a 3-picture contract at $100,000. each. The second of these projects was 1928's "Tempest". Barrymore had starred in "Hamlet" in London just 3 years before. A battery of directors(Victor Toujansky, Lewis Milestone, and Sam Taylor) all worked on "Tempest". A fourth director(Erich von Stroheim) wrote the script. "Tempest" cinematographer Charles Rosher won the first-ever Academy Award for Photography for "Sunrise". Art Director William Cameron Menzies won the first Academy Award for Interior Direction for his efforts on "Tempest(He received another Oscar in 1939 for a little movie called "Gone With the Wind")". So much talent. So much promise....Recalling Jack Barrymore years later, co-star Camilla Horn reported that "When we were dancing together in a beautiful ballroom scene..He fell down with me on the floor because he was so drunk." Barrymore's acting here is fine. But his love scenes with Horn feel cold and contrived; a clear departure from his roles opposite Costello and Garbo. Grandly mounted and lavishly filmed, "Tempest" unravels as an expensive souffle; fattening and dull. Image Entertainment's brand new "Tempest" DVD is a 1.33:1 full-screen release. A marvelous extra is the rare home-movie "Vagabonding on the Pacific". Filmed in 1926, it chronicles Barrymore aboard his 93-foot schooner, The Mariner, his holiday on Guadalupe Island, and rare elephant seals. The details can be found in Gene Fowler's "Good Night Sweet Prince". I enjoyed watching the fascinating Barrymore in "Tempest" for the very first time. But,non-fans may not be so intrigued. 1928's "Tempest" fared well in New York, and faded in the suburbs. Barrymore's contract was not renewed. Happily, a brand-new cinema novelty was just around the corner. It would usher in some of John Barrymore's finest roles and greatest films...It was called sound.
TEMPEST Will Make You a Silent Film Fan
I concur with Peter George's remarks about this wonderful film but let me add a few additional points. The rather abrupt ending is indeed due to some missing footage. Contemporary reviews of TEMPEST mention a sleigh ride chase to the nearby Austrian border whereby Markov and Tamara make their escape from Soviet Russia. Some years back, the late, great film historian William K. Everson, told me that when the negative and prints of this film were discovered in the early 1950s, presumably including the one used for this dvd, all material had the chase sequence cut out. Everson surmised that it was used as stock footage for some other film. A brief intertitle bridging the action would smooth things out but this is such a minor point that it does not impact one's overall impression of this fine film.
It's difficult to resist comparing TEMPEST to a more celebrated silent of that same time, the classic SUNRISE, especially since Charles Rosher worked as a cinematographer on both films. Yet in my opinion, and I'm probably a majority of one here, I think that while SUNRISE is an easy film to respect, TEMPEST is more entertaining and will probably do more to whet the appetite of a viewer today to explore films from the silent era. Back in the 1970s I ran TEMPEST several times with live piano accompaniment and audience reaction was always the same: they didn't know a silent film could be so enjoyable. TEMPEST is so eloquent visually, it's easy to understand why dialogue would be superfluous. And John Barrymore gives a wonderfully underplayed performance that puts the lie to the stereotype of silent screen acting characterized by exaggerated gestures. With all the legends of great silent film stars who flopped in the talkies, it's sometimes forgotten that Barrymore effortlessly made the transition and was a greater star than ever in sound films until alcoholism undermined his health in the mid-1930s.
I wish the producers of this dvd cleaned up some of the flecks and specs in the picture but I realize that's an expensive process so I can't really complain.
With the release of TEMPEST, we can now view on dvd John Barrymore's three United Artists films (the other two are The Beloved Rogue, 1927; and Eternal Love, 1929, directed by Ernst Lubitsch) made when both Barrymore and the silent screen were at their peak. If you weren't interested in silent films you wouldn't be reading this review, so don't miss this film!
Oscar Wilde's 1892 retelling of the Bible story of Salome, who danced before Herod to win the death of John the Baptist, was considered so depraved that the High Lord Chamberlain of England refused to grant it a license for public performance--and in the wake of Wilde's scandalous exposure as a homosexual and his subsequent imprisonment, all of Wilde's plays were swept from the stage. Wilde, who died in 1900, never saw his play publicly performed.
The worth of Wilde's plays were reestablished by the 1920s, but even so SALOME, with its convoluted and exotic language and hothouse sense of depravity, remained something of a theatrical untouchable--and certainly so where the screen was concerned. No one dared consider it until Russian-born Alla Nazimova, who is generally credited with... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Charles Bryant DVD Release Date: Released the 15 July 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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Everyone has already said it better than I, so simply drop everything...and purchase this remarkable film.
And thank you, again, KINO, for allowing us the chance to behold these masterworks. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Paul Leni DVD Release Date: Released the 30 September 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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The story of Lois Weber is one of the saddest in all of early American cinema. One of two prominent women producer-directors to emerge during the silent era (the other Alice Guy Blache' has a very similar story), she was at one time considered to be the equal of D.W. Griffith and by 1916 was actually the highest paid director in the world. She had total control over her films tackling such inflammatory material as religious hypocrisy, drug addiction, birth control and abortion. Along with her husband Phillips Smalley she ran her own studio where THE BLOT was filmed. By 1921 when this film was released her career was in decline (this was her last independent production) and the studio system with its old world patriarchal attitude began to take hold creating the Hollywood of legend where... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Lois Weber - Phillips Smalley DVD Release Date: Released the 09 March 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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This Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a sweeping soap opera about the guests at the Grand Hotel. Several plots intertwine, but mostly it's about Stars! Stars! Stars! Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and both Barrymore brothers head up the cast. Garbo is luminous as Grusinskaya, the neurotic and famous-but-slipping dancer and, yes, she "vonts to be alone." John Barrymore is a cat burglar with blue blood and a heart of gold, and Lionel Barrymore happily caroms off him as Mr. Kringelein, a dying man who wants to live out the time he has left with the rich. Joan Crawford is perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie: as Flaemmchen, a young career girl trying to decide between secretary and tart, she is uncharacteristically funny, vivacious, and downright bubbly. Along the way... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Greta Garbo - John Barrymore - Joan Crawford Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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An absolutely terrific silent comedy, wittily played and polished like a gem. Jazz-age cutie Corrine Griffith stars as a showbiz-minded girl who leaves her humble family of bakers ("I could never be satisfied making pretzels all my life") in Budapest. In a hilarious sequence, she tries her hand at hifalutin "opera singing" while employed at a distinctly questionable cabaret in Paris. Somehow this leads to impersonating royalty at a fancy hotel in Monte Carlo, with the expected confusions and complications. The delightful blend of sophistication and slapstick recalls the comedies of Ernst Lubitsch, but it was directed by Lewis Milestone, best known for the Oscar®-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, made two years later. Adding fun is the delightfully debauched presence of... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Lewis Milestone DVD Release Date: Released the 04 March 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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