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DVD Review: ALEXANDER KORDA'S PRIVATE LIVES
(The Private Life of Henry VIII / The Rise of Catherine the Great / The Private Life of Don Juan / R

Studio: The Criterion Collection
Year: 1933-1936
Cast: Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Elsa Lanchester, Douglas Fairbanks, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Elizabeth Bergner, Merle Oberon, Gertrude Lawrence
Director: Alexander Korda, Paul Czinner
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Rating: Not Rated for (mild thematic material)
Run Time: 05h:59m:23s
Genre(s): drama, historical

"You know these authors of Private Lives—No life is private to them." - Don Juan (Douglas Fairbanks)

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Four biopics from Alexander Korda, headed by the one that not only won Charles Laughton a Best Actor Oscar, but that indelibly set the picture of King Henry VIII forever munching on a leg of mutton.

Movie Grade: A-

DVD Grade: B

Some of the best-esteemed British films of the 1930s were produced and/or directed by Alexander Korda, who provided a wit and elegance to what were rather low-budget affairs. Helped along by some first-rate casts, this Eclipse collection of four of these remarkable movies provides some decent (if unrestored) transfers.

The first and most successful of these pictures is the Oscar-winning The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), with Charles Laughton in a star-making role as the lusty and gluttonous king. The story opens with the execution of Anne Boleyn (Wife #2) and carries His Royal Highness through his final wife, Katherine Parr. Far from being victims, however, the women tend to be quite strong, with Katherine Howard's determination to rise to the seat of power being at the center of the second half. Elsa Lanchester's appearance as Anne of Cleves is highly entertaining, with a broad sense of comedy and excellent timing, forcing the King to play straight man. Boldly, Korda doesn't have Henry appear until nearly nine minutes into the picture, creating audience interest in Laughton, and he doesn't disappoint with tour de force characterization. It still holds up superbly, despite the rather spartan settings. That doesn't mean that attention to detail is lacking; one of the masterstrokes is the humorous series of rapidly changing monograms on the pillows of the King's marital bed.

The followup that same year, The Rise of Catherine the Great was not so well received, perhaps because its story has a thematic connection that would not be out of place today but was a bit forward for the early 1930s. The story centers on the arranged marriage of Catherine, a German princess (Elizabeth Bergner, wife of director Paul Czinner) to the Empress' nephew, Grand Duke Peter (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) At first hesitant to consent, he is struck by her pluckiness. But as his megalomania increases, Catherine's new love for the Russian people forces her to take drastic steps. Bergner has a great out-of-place air, seemingly lost in the Imperial protocol and desperately trying not to make a fool of herself. But by the end, she has adapted fully to her role, with a strength of character befitting an empress, even though not raised in the purple. The strong role is an excellent one, and Bergner is memorable, as is young Fairbanks. The budget is much higher this time around, with far more elaborate sets befitting the palaces of this period, and the production values are excellent. The humor of the earlier film is lacking, but Czinner has a far more cinematic eye, intercutting long and close shots for good effect, and his technique would rub off to some extent on Korda.

The humor returns in The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), with the senior Fairbanks in the title role, in his last feature film. The aging lover, living in Seville, is annoyed by pretenders to his name and all of the unwanted attention his reputation is getting him, as well as the determination of his wife, Dona Dolores (Benita Hume) to bring him back by buying up his debts and threatening him with prison. When one of the false Don Juans is slain by a jealous husband (Gibson Gowland, best known as McTeague from the silent classic Greed), Don Juan seizes upon the opportunity and allows everyone to believe that Don Juan is indeed dead and skips town. However, his attempt to restart his life makes it clear that what women are in love with is not the man Don Juan, but the reputation of Don Juan; romanticism is bigger and far more effective than reality. Equally annoyed by this turn of events, he finds it even harder to declare himself to be alive than it was to declare himself deceased. Fairbanks is clearly having a great time in sending up his own image as well as that of the legendary lover, resisting the ravages of age as best he can but unable to do much better than the rest of us. Hume is enjoyably vindictive as Don Juan's spurned wife. The settings are a little cut-rate, especially after the splender of Catherine the Great, but there's still a lot to enjoy here.

Things come full circle as Charles Laughton returns to portray Rembrandt (1936), in the biopic of the great painter. Both tonally and to an extent visually, Korda offers an appropriately chiaroscuro portrait of the artist as a struggling and grieving man. Bleak in outlook for the most part, only occasionally punctuated with moments of happiness, it's a bit of a tough slog. Most interesting are his relationships with his protective housekeeper Geertje (Gertrude Lawrence), and his young kitchen maid, Hendrickje (Lanchester). Things immediately begin to crumble after he learns that his dead wife's will bars him from remarrying unless he pays a vast sum of money, and a jealous Geertje has Hendrickje brought up on morals charges. But at the heart of the story is a deeply-felt meditation on the course of the great artist, unable to comply with fashion or demands of the public. That's best exemplified in the episode relating to the creation of The Night Watch, while brings revulsion and derision down upon Rembrandt. Laughton offers a good deal more subtlety and class to this portrayal than to his Henry VIII, and although not quite as indelible in the public imagination, it's really a much finer and sensitive piece of acting than the role that won him the Academy Award.

As is usual for the Eclipse series, the four single-layer discs are presented without any extras other than reasonably generous chaptering. While the transfer is detailed and offers beautiful arrays of grayscale, there isn't any significant restoration present, and damage ranging from minor to fairly major is visible. Reel ends are unsurprisingly the roughest. The mono audio accurately reproduces the fairly wretched sound quality of British cinema of the 1930s.

Posted by: Mark Zimmer - May 31, 2009, 9:09 pm - DVD Review
Keywords: historical, drama, biopic, kings, queens, don juan, tudors, artists, england, russia, korda, laughton