Liliom (1930)

                             Lee Tracy and Charles Farrell                         

Frank Borzage's Liliom is an uneasy mixture of fantasy and romantic melodrama from 1930. The source material for the film was Ferenc Molnár's play which also served as the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel. A word about Mr. Molnár aka Franz Molnar aka Ferenc Neumann. Even though his plays are rarely performed today in America, Molnar's work was widely popular and revered in the first half of the 20th century. Over a hundred films have been derived from his work which also includes such chestnuts as The Guardsman, The Swan, One Two Three, and The Good Fairy. Liliom was a flop when it first premiered in Molnár's native Budapest in 1909, but a Broadway production with Joseph Schildkraut and Eva La Gallienne in 1921 proved to be a runaway hit and established the play in America. Molnar's work is marked by fantasy and romantic wish-fulfillment, but there is a decided element of realism in his mix. Certainly, Liliom's striking his daughter in the concluding section of this film gives it a slap of reality especially compared to a modern marshmallow confection like Project Hail Mary.

Liliom proved to be a flop at the box office and I think I know why. Borzage and his art director, Harry Oliver (Seventh Heaven, Scarface), give the film a look that is both spare and expressionistic. The fairy tale nature of the tale is reinforced by this look, but it is also designed to heighten the grim determinism of the tale's moral. The lights of the carnival where Liliom (Charles Farrell) works as a barker are visible from the absurdly huge window in the denuded tenement where his lady love Julie (Rose Hobart) toils. The glittering artifice of the carnival cannot mask the base passions and treachery that motivate Molnár's characters. The slashing angles of the steps and bridge where a bungled robbery leads to a suicide emphasize that the characters in the film are caught in a trap of their own devising. Yet, I feel that audiences had had enough of this look, a vestige of the recently departed silent era and its masterpieces by Borzage and Murnau. Liliom is also paced deliberately like a silent film which helps gives an otherworldly feel that is appropriate for the film. However, by 1930, this too felt out of date and the modern rat-a tat-tat rhythms found in Scarface and James Cagney features would soon be ascendent.

The most obvious flaw of Liliom is the miscasting of Charles Farrell in the title role. Farrell had co-starred with Janet Gaynor in a recent spate of hits for Fox and Borzage. Farrell always seems a lover not a fighter. His character is a brash and macho narcissist who beats Julie and is easily led into criminality. Farrell is not nearly brutish enough for the role and his pinched voice doesn't help. Borzage wanted Farrell for the role, over Joel McCrea, and Farrell does have his moments when Liliom shows vulnerability. Ultimately though, he cannot exude the thoughtless brutality of the character. Rose Hobart fares better in her film debut. She was plucked, like a lot of actors in response to the coming of sound, from Broadway. Significantly she was a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. Some have ventured that Janet Gaynor would have brought a nice sweetness to the role of Julie, but I find Ms. Hobart's sullenness to be appropriate for the character, a much put upon serving girl. Like Farrell, Hobart would soon descend to B pictures. Farrell ended up being a longtime mayor of Palm Springs, whereas Hobart would fall afoul of the blacklist; allegedly fingered by Lee J. Cobb. Still, she achieved immortality thanks to the divine intervention and devotion of Joseph Cornell. 

The supporting cast of Liliom is largely a delight. Lee Tracy is perfect for the role of "The Buzzard", a  smooth-talking brigand who coaxes Liliom into criminality. Tracy would have a brief ascendancy before his misadventures in Mexico. Dan Duryea would eventually don Tracy's mantle as Hollywood's number one weasel. H. B. Warner's uprightness is perfect for once as the "Chief Magistrate". I also enjoyed the efforts of Estelle Taylor (dripping venom), Bert Roach, and Anne Shirley. The film, for both good and bad, is all Borzage. His naive Catholicism makes his romanticism seem corny and out of date to some modern viewers, but I find his films to be fervent and memorable in the brief glory he grants his lovers. Even when his lovers suffer, they do so beautifully. Liliom is currently streaming on Tubi in a good print comparable to the one on the Murnau Borzage Fox box.

As an aside, I have only seen one production of Carousel that captured the underlying grimness contained in Molnár's original. It was Nicholas Hytner's Royal National Theatre production. Hytner prefaced the musical with a rhythmic pantomime of Julie and her cohorts working in a mill. This established the dull and repetitive nature of Julie's life and undercut the cloying sweetness that undermines most productions of the piece.