"The Red Lily" is an amazing film made in 1924. The print I viewed is in fine condition, beautifully tinted and there is a beautiful musical score by Scott Salinas.
The Red Lily is a powerful film which is both rewarding and emotionally draining to experience. It's most certainly not for the faint hearted. The young lovers played by Ramon Novarro {Jean} and Enid Bennett {Marise} turn in unforgettable performances as a series of terrible misfortunes separate them and each is forced to survive in a terribly unromantic and realistic Paris.
Marise, the nobler of the two, also undergoes the greater suffering which includes terrible and gratuitous victimisation by Jean, who, far from returning her love when they are reunited in Paris, hates her for not retaining the physically angelic beauty of her youth. He has coarsened and is unable to accept the deeper and more profound woman who has attained a spiritual nobility through the experience of her many dreadful trials. At one point he implies she makes easy money as a prostitute. She shows him her calloused hands and asks him if it looks as if she makes money easily. For me, Bennett's performance is even more electrifying than Novarro's, excellent and memorable though that is.
It's very hard to retain sympathy for Novarro's character. He becomes a degraded selfish thief fleeing the police through the sewers of Paris. It requires the sacrificial love of Marise--a love taken to the point of death--to redeem Jean and allow him to expiate his crimes and start a new life.
Wallace Beery is quite effective as the likable but morally ambiguous rogue, Bo-Bo. The rest of the Parisian cast present a vivid and sometimes frightening picture of the criminal underside of Paris which is likely to remain in the memory.
The film makes extensive use of coincidence. Some might feel that it does so excessively. I'll give my own personal feelings about this matter. Yes, there is a considerable amount of coincidence. But it exists in life too. Just think of how your own life may have been changed by apparent random events which just seemed to happen at a significant juncture in time. The time frame of the film takes place over a considerable period and some of the events could easily have happened. Further, the film is a work of art and it is within the provenance of Art to select and organise events so as to enable the plot to dramatise the great themes of Life and experience. This has always been the case. Thomas Hardy consciously created "Murphy's Law" plots within which the absolute worst possibility always occurred--even if this might not be the most logical way things should work out. But he did this because it was necessary to create his nihilistic vision of life. Dickens made even more spectacular use of coincidence than Hardy and was an even greater artist with a more profound vision.
While clearly each viewer must individually determine whether or not "The Red Lily"goes beyond the limits of believability in its use of coincidence, I feel that far from being a flaw, the ironic nature of the plot is one of the features that makes the film so emotionally charged and causes the conclusion to be so warm.
The Red Lily is a powerful film which is both rewarding and emotionally draining to experience. It's most certainly not for the faint hearted. The young lovers played by Ramon Novarro {Jean} and Enid Bennett {Marise} turn in unforgettable performances as a series of terrible misfortunes separate them and each is forced to survive in a terribly unromantic and realistic Paris.
Marise, the nobler of the two, also undergoes the greater suffering which includes terrible and gratuitous victimisation by Jean, who, far from returning her love when they are reunited in Paris, hates her for not retaining the physically angelic beauty of her youth. He has coarsened and is unable to accept the deeper and more profound woman who has attained a spiritual nobility through the experience of her many dreadful trials. At one point he implies she makes easy money as a prostitute. She shows him her calloused hands and asks him if it looks as if she makes money easily. For me, Bennett's performance is even more electrifying than Novarro's, excellent and memorable though that is.
It's very hard to retain sympathy for Novarro's character. He becomes a degraded selfish thief fleeing the police through the sewers of Paris. It requires the sacrificial love of Marise--a love taken to the point of death--to redeem Jean and allow him to expiate his crimes and start a new life.
Wallace Beery is quite effective as the likable but morally ambiguous rogue, Bo-Bo. The rest of the Parisian cast present a vivid and sometimes frightening picture of the criminal underside of Paris which is likely to remain in the memory.
The film makes extensive use of coincidence. Some might feel that it does so excessively. I'll give my own personal feelings about this matter. Yes, there is a considerable amount of coincidence. But it exists in life too. Just think of how your own life may have been changed by apparent random events which just seemed to happen at a significant juncture in time. The time frame of the film takes place over a considerable period and some of the events could easily have happened. Further, the film is a work of art and it is within the provenance of Art to select and organise events so as to enable the plot to dramatise the great themes of Life and experience. This has always been the case. Thomas Hardy consciously created "Murphy's Law" plots within which the absolute worst possibility always occurred--even if this might not be the most logical way things should work out. But he did this because it was necessary to create his nihilistic vision of life. Dickens made even more spectacular use of coincidence than Hardy and was an even greater artist with a more profound vision.
While clearly each viewer must individually determine whether or not "The Red Lily"goes beyond the limits of believability in its use of coincidence, I feel that far from being a flaw, the ironic nature of the plot is one of the features that makes the film so emotionally charged and causes the conclusion to be so warm.