Dry Ice Factory

Last night I watched Georges Méliès The Palace of Arabian Knights (Le palais des mille et une nuits, 1905), which I had seen a fragment of before. That bit, which I think was included in VCI's disk of the British Ali Baba musical, Chu Chin Chow (1934), transfixed me with its clever in-camera special effects. The full movie is around twenty minutes, and the version on the Flicker Alley Méliès collection is obviously pieced together from several different sources of widely varying quality. One of the sources, however, is a hand-tinted print that is startling and utterly gorgeous. While it is like modern colorization in that there's little variation in color tone, the variation in colors themselves is fantastic, lending the film the look of an old tinted postcard. The magical effects are just as lovely as I remembered, with dancing skeletons and a shimmering fire dragon. As usual, I was so distracted by the visuals the first time through that I couldn't really tell you what the story is, although the title gives you some context. An Orientalist Arabian fantasy. There is very much an Art Nouveau design sensibility at work, and that made me think of another film, which I watched next.

Maurice Tourneur was a French director who came to the US in 1914 with the French film company Éclair and worked in Fort Lee, New Jersey and then Hollywood until he got fed up with the producer-driven American studio system and returned to France in 1926. (His son, Jacques, was the director of such great Hollywood films as The Cat People (1942) and Out of the Past (1947).) In 1918, Tourneur filmed an adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist fairy tale play, The Blue Bird, which is about two children's journey in a magical realm in search of happiness. I've watched it a couple of times before, although I don't like it as much as a couple of the other Tourneur films I've seen, particularly The Wishing Ring (1914) and his adaptation of Conrad, Victory (1919). Despite the beautiful visuals, the heavy and obvious symbolism does not wear well on me and approaches the farcical at times. ("I am the Luxury-of-Being-Rich, and I come with my brothers to beg you to honor our endless repast. This is my son-in-law, the Luxury-of-Being-a-Landowner.")

But watching the Méliès, I was struck that this was the source for Tourneur's own fantastical approach, and sure enough there does seem to be a direct connection. Amongst other things, there is once again a heavily Art Nouveau design sense, but there's also a similarly static tableau approach to scene construction (although Tourneur does use some camera movement too), and an emphasis on in-camera special effects. Tourneur's lighting is much more sophisticated than his predecessor's, with heavy use of chiaroscuro at times. Checking the notes in my movie database, I discovered I'd pasted in this snippet from an IMDb comment: 'The visuals are splendid, and the effects gorgeous (reminiscent of Melies in some scenes and German expressionism in others). ... It will remind you of the 1939 "Wizard of Oz", especially in costume and sentiment, but pre-dates it by over 20 years.' Which reminds me that the other connection between the Méliès and the Tourneur (and the '39 Oz) was the use of people in animal costumes -- essentially people playing animal characters. There's also a "no place like home" ending for the children, returning from their visit to the Land of the Unborn Children in the Kingdom of the Future, where they meet their little brother-to-come. Because after all, home is where true happiness is found.

After that, sticking in the French vein, so to speak, I threw on Jean Rollin's Lips of Blood (Lèvres de sang, 1975) for the hell of it. This is an arty exploitation vampire flick, with lots of nudity and at least one scene that approaches the pornographic. I didn't make it all the way through this one before the Sandman came to call, and once again I'd have a hard time telling you what it was about. A young man sees a picture of a ruined castle and starts wandering around aimlessly, seemingly protected by half-naked vampires from people who are trying to mess with him for some reason. Here's what someone on IMDb (sheenafilm from Hamburg, German, as a matter of fact) has to say: 'The French cult director often was strong on the visual side and created a dense, dreamlike atmosphere, in this case especially in the dark, deserted city streets, but "Levres de sang" also has a good story to tell about a voyage into the subconscious, a quest for love and death. Briefly, a young man rediscovers traces of his forgotten childhood: the familiar ruin of a castle a photographer has taken pictures of, a mysterious woman in white he believes he met many years before... and vampires who protect him, or so it seems!' Right, forgot about the mysterious woman in white. Well, not much Méliès or Tourneur in all this, but it was, sure, dreamy enough (although definitely in a cheesy kind of way) that I'll probably watch it again from the beginning.

There has always been a strong connection between vampires and sex, hasn't there? Even old Dracula was a sly seducer of young women, and his wives wore out poor Mr. Harker.