Books

The Sea Gull

REVIEWED BY CHARLES LONBERGER

This book, compiled by Linda Wada, is as close to a reconstruction of the legendary lost film A Woman of the Sea as we will ever get, and is a Godsend to the film historian, marred only by its emphasis on the film’s lead actress, not its director.

This is because the motivation for this reconstruction is to perpetrate the memory of Edna Purviance for whom Charles Chaplin mounted the production. The details of Purviance’s relationship with Chaplin shed light on Chaplin, as she moved from lover to Mother-figure confidante to him. It is revealing that, as Chaplin pursued pedophilic involvement with younger, ill-willed girls, with disastrous consequences for him, his commitment to Purviance endured, divorced as it became from sexuality, and he maintained her on his payroll until the day she died, despite her retirement.

This book’s real value lies in the light it sheds on director Josef von Sternberg’s genesis as a cineaste. That Sternberg got engaged at all probably resulted from Chaplin’s misreading of his first film, The Salvation Hunters (1925). How this could happen is certainly explainable as that film could be read as morally earnest and its production, set in poverty stricken environs, would surely resonate with Chaplin. The resultant suppression of Woman, however, most likely was not caused by the producer’s shock at its content as this reconstruction indicates von Sternberg’s concerns were implicit, not explicit, in it. As presented here, the material was ambiguous enough to satisfy different readings of it, although, with great insight, Wada observes that Chaplin and von Sternberg had similar personalities, but diametrically opposite styles with which to express it.

Although Chaplin’s initial hesitation was most plausibly due to the on screen effects of Purviance’s drinking (Wada splits hairs in trying to differentiate between the actress’ drinking habit and alcoholism, trying to minimize Sternberg’s explicit remembrances about it as bitterness), and his realization that the finished product would not represent the star in a manner that would resuscitate her career as he had hoped, Wada most likely hits the nail on the head when she speculates that the turmoil in both Chaplin and von Sternberg’s personal lives in the period following the film, resulted in a temporary disinterest, a disinterest that turned fatal with the advent of sound. The greatest tragedy for history was that Chaplin destroyed the negative in a fruitless attempt to satisfy the IRS.

The story bears the signature of von Sternberg, albeit in rudimentary form. Consequently, the script is a convoluted, but didactic, lesson in humility, which reflected the Sado-Masochism of von Sternberg’s view. This can be glimpsed in the scenes of a blindfolded Joan, and a kernel of the mature von Sternberg’s art can be glimpsed in the campy submissiveness of that character as the story progresses, a submissiveness which announces itself in the still where she reunited her husband, Peter, with her sister, Magdalen, as well as in Joan’s servility towards her sister’s husband, the man-of-the-world, Gayne. Further, the collapse of Peter, prone at his wife’s feet, could be read as the triumph of virtue over sin, as well as something more perverse, which is much more typical of von Sternberg.

The influence of Expressionism on von Sternberg’s style can be glimpsed in the angular posture Raymond Bloomer betrays as fisherman Peter. Furthermore, the lunge of Peter toward Magdalen, and her defensive cowering from it, is precognizant of Don Pasquale and Concha in von Sternberg’s later The Devil Is A Woman. In retrospect, it’s hard not to interpret the depiction of Gayne in this film as an early von Sternberg self-portrait, as his appearance almost exactly echoes later, acknowledged, self-portraits. In this regard, stills featuring a blindfolded Edna and Gayne speak volumes.

Despite such heart on the sleeve symbolism, the script also contains psychological astuteness, particularly as it relates to the friendship growing between Peter and Joan out of a loveless marriage. But at its heart, the story is very conventional, paralleling its Rural/Urban contrast with a Good Girl/ Bad Girl dialectic that strongly echoes De Sade’s Justine/Juliette.

It is difficult to judge the quality of acting contained in this lost film, but the interpretation of Eve Southern seems fascinating, with both arrogance and demureness alternately written on her face. It is impossible to gauge Purviance’s interpretation, save that the nuances of von Sternberg’s vision, which she embodied, almost certainly were not fully appreciated by her, though this did not lessen them.

There is irony in the fact that Southern’s fictitious Magdalen predated a real-life Magdalen through which the director was to most fully express himself, Marlene Magdalene Dietrich; Further, Wada fails to grasp the bitter facetiousness of von Sternberg’s later assessment of Chaplin, taking him at face value, which lessens the insightfulness of this beautifully presented, invaluable book.

It is distributed by Leading Ladies, available through ednapurviance.com., and is a must have for the connoisseur of cinema.

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