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Cecil De Mille era figlio di un commediante; dopo aver studiato arte
drammatica a New York, scrisse alcune commedie, e, col ricavato si trasferì a Hollywood e vi
fondò una casa cinematografica.
Il suo primo film, The Squaw Man (1914), fu un western melodrammatico.
In order to pay his debts, a despicable English earl, Henry, steals money from
a trust fund for orphans that he is supposed to administer. His family places
the blame on his brother Jim, who had already decided to leave for America
because Henry was jealous of him (Henry's wife being fonder of Jim than of
her own husband). Jim lands in America and moves west,
buys a ranch and starts a new life. One day he witnesses the murder of a man
who had cheated an Indian chief, and protects the real murderer: the
chief's daughter. She returns the favor by saving his life when he is
lost in the snow. They get married and have a child.
He is now bankrupt, but just then the good news reaches
him that, on his dying bed, Henry has confessed, thus clearing Jim's name
and allowing him to become the new earl. In the meantime, Diana is traveling
towards the ranch to find again Jim, whom she has probably secretly loved
all the time. Nobody knows that Jim is married to a squaw and has had a child
from her. That child is now entitled to the life of an English nobleman,
but the squaw can't possibly become an English lady. Worse: the sheriff is
under pressure to solve the murder. Eventually he finds out the truth and
organizes a posse to go capture the woman. Diana arrives at the ranch, and,
after being disappointed to learn the news, accepts to take the child with her
to England, while Henry stays to defend his wife. The squaw realizes that
she is only a burden now, and commits suicide.
Il melodramma
The Cheat (1916), photographed by DeMille's usual cinematographer Alvin Wyckoff,
rappresenta un significativo passo avanti dal punto di vista tecnico.
Giostrando con i chiaroscuri e imponendo una recitazione più misurata
De Mille ottenne un effetto più violento.
Il film inauguro` anche l'enfasi sul sesso che rimarra` una delle sue
costanti.
Richard is a businessman who has invested all his money in a major deal.
His wife is vain and likes to waste money, and resents being told to stop
spending. She likes the company of a wealthy Burmese king, who is getting on
the nerves of her husband. At a party for the Red Cross, she is approached
by another business man who tells to invest everything into a different deal.
She steals the money of the Red Cross and gives it to this man to invest.
But she loses all the money. Terrified at the idea of being exposed as a thief,
she accepts to become the lover of the Burmese king, who was only waiting for
his chance. But just minutes before the night appointment with the king,
her husband walks home with the good news that he made a fortune. She asks
for the sum she owes, pretending to have lost it at cards, and he gives it
to her. Now she can pay back the king, but he demands that she sticks to the
agreement and even brands her with a hot iron. She grabs a gun and shoots him.
Her husband, suspicious of her storys, has followed her and arrives just as
the man is fainting and she is running away. He understands what has happened
and tells the police that he is the killer. He goes to jail, and the king,
when he recovers, the king does nothing to change his version of the facts,
despite the woman's begging. In fact, he hates the woman so much that he
accuses Richard at the trial, and Richard loves her so much that he accuses
himself. So the jury finds him guilty. But then the woman erupts and tells
the whole story. The crowd in the court tries to lynch the Burmese king,
who is barely saved by the police. The judge sends the couple free.
His first historical movie was the 139-minute Joan The Woman (1916), about Jeanne d'Arc.
The Whispering Chorus (1918) was a pioneering psychological drama.
Alla fine del decennio passò alla commedia di costume, con film leggeri
e briosi,
attinti dal teatro leggero,
che avevano per interprete Gloria Swanson:
Male and Female (1919), tratto dalla commedia teatrale
"The Admirable Crichton"
(1902)
di Barrie,
e soprattutto
The Affairs of Anatole (1921), il primo "all stars film"), tratto dalla commedia "Anatol" (1893) di Arthur Schnitzler.
I soggetti erotici (ispirati alla amoralita` dell'epoca), più ancora che le coreografie sfarzose, soddisfarono la sete di spregiudicatezze del
suo pubblico.
The Affairs of Anatole (1921) is a rather tedious (and misleading)
adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's "Anatol" (1893), an example of male
chauvinism at its worst.
The socialite Anatole is married to the vain Vivian (Gloria Swanson) and getting
quite frustrated. He goes out to party with friends and meets the
loose cabaret girl and old flame Emilie, who is controlled by her elderly
lover Gordon.
Anatole decides to rescue her, while Gordon laughs at the young man's naivete.
Anatole's wife is offended. Anatole funds Emilie's education and she becomes his
mistress. However, Emilie also continues her relationship with Gordon, who
showers her with jewels. When Anatole finds out, he is willing to forgive her
if she throws the jewels in the river. She only pretends to do so, because she
is too selfish, just like he is too selfish to divorce his wife for her.
Eventually Anatole finds out that Emilie is still partying with Gordon and
destroys the apartment he furnished for her. Gordon offers Emilie another jewel
and she's all his. Anatole goes home to ask his wife for forgiveness.
After an Indian hypnotizer embarrasses her in front of all her friends,
they decide to take a trip to the countryside. Anatole has to rescue Annie,
a farmer's wife who has used church money to buy herself some pretty clothes.
Annie pretends to be unconscious so that Vivian goes to call for help, but then
Annie seduces Anatole and steals his wallet. When she comes back with a doctor,
Vivian sees them kissing and, furious, takes off with the car. Annie gives
her husband all the money she found in the wallet, pretending that it was a
gift from a kind man. Rejected by his wife, who has had enough of his escapades,
Anatole goes out for another night of partying. He meets the beautiful and
famously wicked show-girl Satan Synne, who seduces him and asks for a huge sum
of money. She pretends to be a femme fatale but she's actually a devoted wife,
willing to prostitute herself to save the life of her husband, who needs an
expensive surgical operations. When Anatole learns the truth, and that the
husband will probably die anyway, he leaves her the money and returns home.
This time he does not find his wife, who comes home only in the morning with
their friend Max. Max protests that they are just friends, but now Anatole
is devoured by jealousy. He asks the Indian hypnotist to hypnotize his wife
so that she will answer truthfully. Max begs him not to humiliate his wife.
At the last minute Anatole decides to trust her and does not ask the question.
The Godless Girl (1928) is a melodrama that mocks atheism.
In the campus of a university Judy is a member in a society of atheists.
Bob, instead, is a very religious boy and also the president of the student body.
When the dean threatens to have the atheists arrested, Bob intervenes and
pledges that the students will wipe out the blasphemy themselves.
Bob leads his posse of religious fanatics to storm a meeting of Judy's atheist
society. The atheists heroically stand up to the violent aggressors.
In the brawl a friend of Judy falls down the stairs. As the police arrive
and upheld the leaders of the fight (Judy and Bob), the dying girl begs Judy
to tell her that there is an afterlife. Judy refuses to lie. One of the cops
tells the girl that God is waiting for her and she dies smiling.
Judy and Bob are sent to the reformatory.
Judy befriends a blonde who is religious and one day they get in trouble for
trying to help each other and are sent to punishment. Bob too gets in trouble
and is sent to the same place. There is an electrical fence between the men's
and the women's camp. Bob and Judy start talking, confessing they love
each other. They are touching the fence: a fascist guard sends the electricity
to burn their hands. Bob swears revenge and promises that he will free Judy.
He manages to escape from his high-security cell and, wearing a guard's uniform,
to smuggle Judy out of the camp. They flee through the idyllic countryside,
chased by the posse that the fascist guard has organized. They make love in
the woods but the dogs are closing in. Captured, Bob tries to save Judy, but
Judy does not want him to be tortured so she surrenders too. They are brought
back to the prison and each chained in a room. A fire erupts in the women's
prison. The blonde friend rushes to the guards asking for the keys to open
Judy's handcuffs. The guard gives her the keys but the other girls realize that
they can use those keys to escape and take them from the blonde. In the meantime
Bob has escaped from the male prison to help save Judy. Judy. desperate, is
praying the God she never believed in. As the fire envelops everything,
Bob climbs a window and gets into the
building, but the fascist guard doesn't want to let him save Judy.
The two men fight and the guard gets stuck in an electrical door.
Bob saves his life by turning off the switch. Then he grabs the keys and
saves Judy. They save the guard who would have otherwise burned alive.
Before dying the guard tells the director that they deserve to be released.
Il suo primo sonoro fu Dynamite (1929).
A parte si situa Madam Satan (1930), una fantasia di musica e melodramma senza
capo né coda.
Il passo successivo fu rappresentato dalle superproduzioni bibliche, sorta di
kolossal ambientato nell'antica Palestina non alieno da scene sanguinarie ed erotiche;
The Ten Commandments (1923, remade in 1956), il migliore dei colossal biblici,
sovrappone (a` la Griffith) scene della vita di Mosè e una storia moderna, in
cui un architetto viola i comandamenti e muore contagiato di lebbra da una cinese. Solleticato dalle
ricostruzioni storiche passò i primi anni trenta a riesumare figure ed episodi di mitici del passato,
da Cleopatra alle crociate.
De Mille rappresentava la nuova etica dell'ovest, allo stesso tempo permissiva e
puritana, nella quale il sesso aveva il ruolo più ambiguo. De Mille seppe cogliere gli istinti
repressi, pornografici e violenti, del californiano medio e accomunarli al senso americano dello
show lussuoso.
Altri colossal:
The King Of Kings (1927),
The Sign of the Cross (1932),
Cleopatra (1934),
The Crusades (1935).
Diresse anche gli umili
This Day and Age (1933) e
Four Frightened People (1934).
Nel 1936 ritornò al western, genere a cui diede un suo maturo contributo
con:
The Plainsman (1936), che racconta i
bisticci d'amore fra due leggende della frontiera, Bill Hickok e
Calamity Jane, sullo sfondo delle guerre indiane (Calamity rivela agli indiani i piani della cavalleria per
evitare le torture all'amato, che le perdona il tradimento e il massacro conseguente soltanto in punto di
morte);
Union Pacific (1939) sulla classica gara fra due compagnie ferroviarie;
North West Mounted police (1940), con Cooper nei panni di una "giubba rossa" che combatte il famigerato Grande Orso;
e
Unconquered (1947), un colossal western in cui
una giovane di buona famiglia (assassina per difendere il fratello)
è corteggiata da due ufficiali, e il migliore dei due di guadagna il suo amore con coraggiose
imprese contro i pellirosse,
L'epica di De Mille
trattò il western come una ricostruzione storica nazionale, sicché questi film sono in
realtà la logica continuazione dei kolossal biblici. E alla fine della sua carriera ritrovò la
vena drammatica del capolavoro giovanile,
The Buccaneer (1938),
Reap the Wild Wind (1942), film marinaro con naufragio e rivalità fra un capitano e un avvocato,
e The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) sulla vita del circo, dove ancora toccò temi scottanti riuscendo
sempre ad impressionare il pubblico.
The Story of Dr Wassell (1944) e` un film bellico.
Samson and Delilah (1949) is a very loose adaptation of a Biblical
story turned into a typical Hollywood melodrama around a stereotypical
film-noir archetype
(the weak man torn between the femme fatale and the good virgin).
In 1000 BC the Israelites are enslaved by the Philistines.
Samson lives in a village that dreams of freedom.
He is in love with a Philistine girl, Semadar. The rest of the village is
opposed to the marriage, that they view as treason.
There is also another obstacle: the Philistine warrior Ahtur, who wants to
marry Semadar himself. The spirited Delilah, Semadar's younger sister,
watches amused: she has a crush
on the strong Samson. Delilah is on Samson's chariot when they are attacked
by a lion and he kills him with his hands. The king just then arrives, and
with him Semadar and Ahtur. The king challenges Samson's strength by having
him fight against his strongest man. Samson easily wins. As his reward, Samson
asks for a Philistine bride. Delilah is delighted and thinks she's the one,
but Samson picks her sister. At the wedding he is faced with the hostility of
the Philistine men. He challenges them to solve a riddle and promises rich
prizes to those who will.
The clever Delilah devised a way to disrupt the wedding.
She tells Ahtur that Semadar can certainly extort the solution to the riddle
from her groom. Semadar does. When the Philistine men answer the riddle,
Samson understands that she has betrayed him, calls off the wedding and
walks out. He robs Philistines to gather the prizes he has promised to the
Philistine men. Then he comes back to the wedding party.
Semadar's father offers him Delilah, who truly loves him, but Samson feels
insulted to be offered a "wild cat" instead of the princess.
He catches his bride in the arms of Ahtur. A fight erupts between Samson and
the Philistine men. They accidentally kill Semadar. Samson kills scores of
them and sets the palace on fire. Delilah survives but now she hates him
and vows revenge.
The Philistines search for Samson, who is now wreaking havoc all over the
kingdom, but his people prefer to die than to betray him. To stop the
harassing, Samson surrenders to the Philistines and is dragged by Ahtur in
chains.
Delilah has become the mistress of the king, covered in jewels, and
welcomes the news of Samson's arrest. But Samson frees himself and kills Ahtur's
entire army with his bare hands. Ahtur, wounded, tells the king that Samson's
supernatural strength must due to a secret power. Delilah offers to seduce
Samson and extort the secret, the way her sister extorted the solution to
the riddle. Delilah finds him and seduces him. They live together in blissful
oblivion for a while. Samson naively tells her that his secret is his hair.
Then Miriam, the sweet girl of his village who grew up with him,
and has secretely loved him all the time, brings him the news that his people
are being slaughtered by the Philistines and Samson decides to leave. Delilah,
after confronting the girl, tries again to seduce him. She gives him a potion
that puts him asleep and then cuts his hair. When the Philistine soldiers called
by her arrive, he is powerless. They burn his eyes and turn him into a slave.
When she finds out, she realizes how much she really loves him.
She visits him and shows him that he has regained his strength. They plot
to destroy the palace. During the king's festival, Samson is humiliated in
front of a cheering audience. Miriam begs the king for Samson's life.
Delilah pretends to be merely jealous and tells the king to deny her wish.
Then she walks into the arena, grabs a whip and pretends to exact her revenge,
but in reality she takes him to the pillars that support the colossal idol
of the Philistines. Samson detroys the idol and the entire place, while
the king toasts to them. They all die. Only Miriam survives and returns
to her village.
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), already weakened by the flimsiest
of plots, is ruined by too many
documentary-style scenes of circus performances.
Brad (Charlton Heston) surveys the animals of his giant circus. In the meantime
the investors in suit and tie is discussing whether it still makes sense to
play the small towns. Brad convinces them by telling them that they just hired
a famous star, the "great" Sebastian, a trapeze artist who has a bad reputation
as a womanizer and troublemaker.
The one who is sorely disappointed is Holly, Brad's girl, who was hoping to be
the star of the trapeze with the act she had been refining with three years of
hard work. Brad tells her that the show comes first. Later she is alone with
the good clown (James Stewart), who is Brad's best friend (and never takes
his make-up off, so nobody really knows how he looks like).
Sebastian likes Holly right away and likes her ambition, while Brad is concerned
about her safety. She starts competing in the air against the more famous
and experienced Sebastian, and resents that Brad is consistently opposed to
her bolder and bolder acts. She almost kills herself rather than admit that
Sebastian is better. One day Brad saves her life by lowering a rope that is
about the break, but Holly thinks he just wanted to humiliate her in front
of everybody, and Sebastian is ready to console her.
Only Holly's friend Angel sees the rope that was about to get her killed.
Sebastian is about to kiss Holly after promising her the usual moon when
Angel comes to kidnap her with an elephant and talk some sense into her.
Meanwhile, Brad kicks out of the circus a man who was cheating a customer.
His protector comes to threaten Brad of trouble.
Sebastian, trying to impress Holly, falls from the trapeze and is wounded and
left a cripple.
Now Holly can have the center act she dreamed of, but she feels guilty that
she forced him to do more and more dangerous acts in order to compete with her.
Holly chooses Sebastian, while Angel confesses her love for Brad, but another
circus artist loves Angel, Klaus.
One day a police officer shows up asking for a doctor. The doctor that he
is looking for is the clown (James Stewart), who apparently used to be
a doctor and killed his wife because he loved her.
That's why the clown never shows his face. Brad understands. The clown in fact
tells him that Sebastian might recover some day, a fact that only a doctor
could have assessed. Brad proves to Sebastian that he can still use his hand:
Sebastian would have never married Holly as a cripple, but now he just might,
and it was Brad himself who helped him, because for Brad the circus (a good
trapeze artist) comes before love (a good wife).
That night robbers attack the train to steal all its cash. One of them is
Klaus. When he realizes that the circus' train is headed for a collision
with another train, he turns the robber's car and drives on the railway to
warn the train. His car gets caught in the middle of the colossal collision.
Brad is badly wounded, bleeding to death. Holly, who has understood who the
clown is from a newspaper article, begs him to help. The clown admits his
identity and rushes to save Brad. Even if mortally wounded, Brad is still
the same: worried about the performance of the circus, and cynical about
Holly. Sebastian happens to have the same blood type as Brad and
donates blood to save Brad, despite Brad's protestations that he'd rather die.
Angel pledges to Brad that she'll get the circus going, no matter how big
the catastrophe is. They do march into town, and they do set up the tent.
The clown, having revealed his identity, is arrested by the cop. But the whole
episode has transformed Brad, who now would like to tell Holly that he loves
her. Except that Holly has transformed into him: her priority is the
performance.
The ending, full of action, surprises and lively dialogues, redeems the
slow pace and dull story of the previous two hours.
Dotato di un grande senso dello spettacolo, De Mille riuscì a far colpo
sul pubblico in tutti i generi spettacolari (escluso cioè il comico); nei suoi film tutto è in
realtà funzione dello spettacolo, per cui le ricostruzioni storiche sono sovente fasulle e le allusioni
al sesso servono soltanto a stuzzicare il pubblico, ma sono prive di qualsiasi intento polemico o satirico.
De Mille fu un cineasta popolare, dedito unicamente a produrre uno svago facile per il suo pubblico. Fu
lui a portare alla perfezione la tecnica narrativa del cinema. Nei suoi film non vengono affrontate
problematiche morali (egli non giudica mai i suoi personaggi, li accetta così come sono) e non si
sviluppa mai la psicologia dei personaggi (semplici maschere insomma). L'epica è sufficiente ad
attrarre lo spettatore. De Mille fu il primo a concepire il cinema come spettacolo e lo spettacolo come
falsità. Schiacciato da Griffith nella ricostruzione storica e nel melodramma, e da Ince nel
western, De Mille fu comunque una figura determinante nell'evoluzione della commedia.
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If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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