Amok

It begins with Doctor Jean Yonnel, sitting and drinking, writing about how he came to be stuck in a small native village in the jungle. It was a woman, of course. For fourteen minutes, we watch him, drinking, the natives dancing, the order offered by the graceful camerawork fighting with the chaos of the editing, until a native goes mad and attacks people. He is shot down, and Yonnel tries to save him, but to no avail. In comes Marcelle Chantal, the first White woman he has seen in months. Yonnel excuses himself, shaves, dresses, and comes back, only to be devastated when she asks him to perform an illegal abortion. Her husband has been away for a year.

Director Fyodor Otsep beautiful silent film technique quickly gives way to a story of magical realism, in which so many men are captivated b the stony-faced Mlle Chantal, that I quickly grew tired of her staid excuses, and wondered why the men behaved like that. It's based on a novel by Stefan Zweig, and it certainly seems possible it's explained there, or perhaps it's one of the odd mysteries of human behavior that he so frequently peppered his works with. In any case, I thought that the compelling techniques of the first quarter hour gave way too quickly to the sordid details of another Somerset Maugham sort of story, the likes of which I had seen many times.

The writings of Stefan Zweig now seem to be almost totally forgotten, but this French adaptation of one of his stories is compelling, fascinating and hypnotic. Directed with great skill by the Russian emigre Fedor Ozep, (there is not a word of dialogue during the first eleven minutes of the film), it also has a stunning musical score by Karol Rathaus. L'amour fou was a subject that entranced the Surrealists, but Ozep mixes this compulsive condition with a somewhat harsh realism that makes one see how, beneath the surface of "respectable" society, an irrational madness can sometimes take hold. The closing scene of the film is one of the most dramatic and stunning I have ever witnessed. Naturally the British film censors rejected it!

Based on a Stefan Zweig short story,the movie looks like an extravaganza,a delirious melodrama with an ending as romantic as it can be ."There won't be any autopsy" the doctor said.

Marcelle Chantal was par excellence the heroine of the thirties melodramas (particularly Marcel L'Herbier) ,however her playing seems old-fashioned today ,at least to French eyes ;Jean Yonnel too lacks madness,passion and rage ("Amok" = tropical disease ,some kind of rabies ) The opening,in a studio jungle ,compares favorably with that of Wyler's "the letter" ;the fever in the natives' frenetic dance is masterfully directed ;but the scenes between the heroine and her lover ,or the doctor ,are not always convincing.In his follow-up ,"La Dame De Pique",Ozep had an actor ,Pierre Blanchar ,who ,in spite of what the French critics wrote,gave a truly feverish mad performance .

In a small part ,Jean Servais appears in the ball scene ;Inkjinoff plays the chauffeur ,an almost silent part :he 's best remembered in Duvivier's 'La Tete D'Un Homme" .

A remake -among many others- was made in 1993 by Joel Forges and ,in spite of Fanny Ardant as the unfaithful wife ,is looked by pretty much as a failure.

Stephan Zweig was a great writer and also the most popular of his time. He had to leave Austria when the Nazis took over. He is too good a writer to be forgotten, but when I visited Vienna and asked, no one knew about him. He translated and wrote the lyrics for Richard Strauss's last opera, "The Silent Woman". It is a play by Englishman Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare and worth being known in his own right. It was played one time in Nazi Germany before it was banned. Strauss knew the risks but insisted on Zweig as the writer. It has rarely been performed, unfortunately, but there are a couple of recordings after the war which you can find. One is from former East Germany and another from the Salzburger Festspiele 1959 in Austria.

I have been a fan of Fréhel for years and fortunately almost all she recorded has been edited on CD's.