Monday, June 2, 2014

DVR Diary: THE COSSACKS (1928)

Ernest Torrence was silent cinema's father from hell. It's curious that an actor who first established himself as a heavy came to be seen as the embodiment of impossible standards for sons to live up to, but I suppose it tells us something about the 1920s concept of a he-man. Torrence's patriarchal aspect is played for laughs in Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr., but it's in deadly earnest in M-G-M's adaptation of an early Tolstoy novel. Torrence is the ataman of the local Cossack band in the romantic days when they fought the Turks rather than internal dissidents. John Gilbert is his disappointing son Lukashka, whose disinterest in warfare makes him a misfit Cossack and an embarrassment to the ataman. When Lukashka's peers finally tie him to a post and pelt him with grapes, the ataman has had enough. So, it turns out, has Lukashka, but not until his father takes a whip to him. Lukashka takes it from him and gives him an epic thrashing. As he stomps away, the old man studies his wounds in the mirror and smiles: his boy has fighting spirit after all. Lukashka proves this when he takes his rage out on some escaping Turkish prisoners; the village, you suspect, is fortunate to have had them around.

Now Lukashka is hell-bent for war, and his new passion alienates him from his girl Maryana (Renee Adoree), who sort of liked him the way he was despite finally cracking and joining in the grape pelting. It's time to fight the Turks again, so Lukashka joins his dad and the other warriors riding off on horseback. The Cossacks was a reunion of the romantic leads of The Big Parade, and just as Adoree allowed herself in the prior picture to be dragged by an automobile in her determination to cling to Gilbert, so here she hangs on to Gilbert's horse until he kicks her to the ground. Such is love in Cossack-land, but now comes a serpent to tempt our Eve: an emissary from Moscow (Nils "General Yen" Asther) with a message from the Little Father instructing the Cossacks not to fight the Turks, with whom Little Father has signed a treaty. Cossacks apparently don't know what to do with themselves in peacetime -- their oft-repeated rule is, "Men fight, women work, and above all is God" -- so the ataman sets about dictating a provocative letter to the Sultan while the emissary seduces Maryana, who's willing to listen to alternatives after seeing Lukashka dance passionately with a gypsy woman. War does resume despite the emissary's best efforts; the Turks reward him with a sword in the back. Lukashka, his father and Maryana are captured and without further ado it's time for the Torture. Cossacks laugh at flogging -- they do worse to each other from the evidence we've seen -- but it's tougher to maintain a brave front when your shins are being crushed by slowly tightening cords. Our father and son are still a little too funny for Turkish tastes, so each gets a hot coal in an open palm before the ataman is blinded with a slash of a sword. Just before Luksashka gets the same the cavalry arrives, despite an attempt to drop the side of a mountain on them. That's actually an impressive special effect for the time, but the best shot in the picture --directed either by George Hill or an uncredited Clarence Brown in relief -- is a tracking shot of Adoree crawling through a crowd while the men are at prayer before going into battle. It illustrates her obsessive devotion better than the Bolshoi Parade bit with the horse a little later.

The film as a whole is a pulp romp with plenty of action, and the dance with Gilbert and the gypsy, shot from a low angle, has some erotic energy that helps explain the doomed actor's great appeal before his voice and his addiction betrayed him. Speaking of doomed, Gilbert at least outlived his principal co-stars, both of whom died in 1933, Torrence of gallstones and Adoree of TB. Less than a decade after The Cossacks was released they were all gone. If silent films seemed so distant so soon, it was partly because so many of their stars were as obsolete as their medium: dead, defeated or disappeared. Seeing them in their glory while knowing their fates is often more tragic than the stories they tell. When Gilbert weeps over Torrence's corpse at the end you can't help but think, "You'll be joining him soon." Audiences spared the burden of that foreknowledge may miss some unintended pathos, but those that can stand the lack of spoken words might still have fun with this picture as its makers intended.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice report, but who did the music? Was this TCMs newest? Young Composers winner? Talking about silents and not music too IMHO is like talking about ballet but not the music also. Please ...

Samuel Wilson said...

Not a young composer by any stretch of the imagination. TCM replaced the original score with a new one by Robert Israel that's heavy with familiar Russian themes, plus a George Enescu Romanian rhapsody for the gypsy scene.

Robert Israel said...

Your enthusiastic response to the film, THE COSSACKS, is most appreciated. I wish to clarify a few items, please. Understanding that there is a distinct difference between Ukrainian culture and Russian culture, I spent more than two months of work (seven days a week, full time as a minimum) researching, composing, adapting, orchestrating, and scoring this feature. There are a handful of works by Tschaikovsky and Rubinstein, but most of the musical sources are Ukrainian and not Russian. I feel flattered by your mention of the Romanian Rhapsody by Georges Enescu, but the gypsy dance music is one of my compositions. Enescu drew upon a Romanian folk tune entitled “The Lark.” I garnered my inspiration from this song as well as traditional Romanian harmonies and scale lines. The several cues where choir and soloists are used in the score provide a subtext in the Ukrainian language which directly relates to the story and the action on the screen; most notably, when Lukashka is being humiliated by the village, bound by ropes and dressed as a woman, the folk song “О ти галю” (Oh, you Galya) is used for when the crowd begins to sing. This folk song is about a young girl who is violated and bound to a tree by Khazar soldiers. Thank you for your review of this film and I trust that my input is of some interest. Most sincerely, Robert Israel

Samuel Wilson said...

Robert, I'm flattered by your attention to this humble blog and grateful for your clarifications on your musical sources. I remain curious about what the original score sounded like.

Anonymous said...

I watched the film and found the musical score wonderfully enthralling. The Ukrainian themes & songs were very moving and well adapted to the various scenes

Walter S