The Conquering Power

Conquering Power, The (1921)

*** (out of 4)

The impressive silent film starts off with one of the strangest titles cards I've ever read. The film, obviously meant to be played at least a hundred years before 1921, has a title card that tells us current movie goers don't care for costume dramas so they've updated the story to 1921 times. In the film, Rudolph Valentino plays a playboy who has everything he wants in life but his father comes home, obviously upset, and asks him to go stay with his uncle (Ralph Lewis) for a little while. When the playboy reaches his uncle's home he learns that his father has killed himself but his cousin (Alice Terry) is there to comfort him and soon the two fall in love. The problems are just starting because her father is an evil man that only cares about money and will stop at nothing to keep them apart even if one must die. This film is probably best remembered for having a big influence on Greed and that isn't the only reason people should seek this film out. Ingram does a great job in the direction even though the material isn't the strongest that it could have been. I think a little stronger screenplay would have helped the film but there's no doubt that this film contains one of the most memorable scenes in silent history. I wasn't overly thrilled with Terry who I feel somewhat weights the film down with her mediocre performance but Valentino comes off quite strong. The scene stealer is certainly Lewis who turns in a great performance as the wicked father. The evilness of his character certainly jumps off the screen and Lewis does a great job at playing it. The highlight of the film comes towards the end when Lewis is trapped in a room where ghosts of the people his greed as destroyed or killed come to haunt him. The way this scene is shot, with light coming in through a hole in the roof, is extremely well done but it also has a very creepy and eerie tone throughout. This certainly isn't a horror film but this sequence is among the greatest I've seen in any of the silent horrors I've watched.

Even though Rudolph Valentino is billed as the lead (in the version I saw, anyway) he is not on screen all that much and is more of a supporting character. It is really the story of Pere Grandet (well played by Ralph Lewis) and how his life has been, figuratively and literally, crushed by gold (the final scenes in which he is trapped in his cellar with the ghosts of people his greed has destroyed and is taunted by a snake-armed, leering golden demon are very disturbing). Still, even though his role was comparatively small, Valentino makes a strong impression as Charles Grandet, the spoilt son of a rich man whose essential decency, like that of Julio Desnoyer, is brought out by adversity and the love of a good woman . At the beginning of the movie he is hosting a wild birthday party for himself, but twenty minutes into the picture his father has committed suicide and Charles has become dependent on his wealthy but miserly uncle, Pere Grandet . At his uncle's home he meets and falls in love with his beautiful country mouse of a cousin, Eugenie, played by Alice Terry whose ethereal blondeness contrasts well with Valentino's dark good looks and who with the possible exception of Vilma Banky was his most memorable leading lady.

Objections have been sometimes raised to the liberties the screenwriter, June Mathis, took with Balzac's novel. A title card at the beginning of the picture tells the audience that "commercialization" has told the producers that it dislike costume pictures; evidently commercialism also told them that audiences don't like unhappy endings or unlikable leads, hence the sentimentalizing of the original story in which Charles Grandet and Eugenie are happily reunited at the end of the film. In the novel, Charles wastes Eugenie's gold and quickly forgets about her (making her gift seem more rash than romantic), and the conquering power does indeed turn out to be greed, not love as the movie would have it. If one is able to accept the movie on its own term (which of course can be difficult if you're familiar with the original source), Mathis's changes work well enough, however. Other complaints about the movie have involved the disorienting change of setting from Paris to the countryside--in the Paris scenes the people are dressed in modern (1920's) fashions, but the clothing and lifestyles of the country people has a very nineteenth century look to them. It is conceivable, however, that in the days before modern media had permeated everywhere fashions in isolated villages would change more slowly.

On the whole, this is one Valentino's stronger movies—it was a shame that irreconcilable professional and personal differences between Rex Ingram and Valentino led to the latter's departure from Metro shortly afterwards as there he was being offered the sort of quality scripts he would spent the rest of his short career trying to find.

I've just watched the Alice Terry, Valentino movie The Conquering Power. While I enjoyed the movie, it didn't have the power and emotional scale of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The story is about the power of love over seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

The focus here is on the director's wife, Alice Terry, and she's up for the challenge, her lovely face registering a myriad of emotions, but it seemed unrealistic that she fell in love with her own cousin played by Valentino so quickly, that she was willing to wait for him as years passed without word as she was subjected to so much abuse from her father.

The morality angle about the obsession of greed and the way it's depicted as a monster that eventually crushes the person obsessed, really reminded me very much of the movie Greed, but in a much smaller, more intimate little film.

You can tell that there must have been some falling out between the director Rex Ingram and Valentino, as his part is very small and secondary, as compared to the earlier film Horsemen. They never made another picture together, which was a shame. Valentino never got another director who was willing to take the same kinds of risks with him.

As the immediate follow-up to his anti-war saga FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, Rex Ingram presented this rendition of Balzac's EUGENIE GRANDET. The story is nominally updated to the flapper era, but most of it takes place in a provincial town where everyone wears 19th century costumes anyway. As in the earlier film, Rudolph Valentino is a playboy [ with a poodle] who must prove himself, but he appears to somewhat less advantage here. Once again, Alice Terry sensitively plays his designated love object, but in a more traditional ingenue role. Ingram does not always stage scenes effectively, but his films are distinguished by appealingly natural acting: even the obsession of old miser Grandet is never overplayed. In fact, the most striking scene shows the old man hallucinating personifications of his beloved gold, a sequence which may have influenced Ingram's friend and colleague Erich von Stroheim when he filmed GREED. Ingram's celebrated visual talent and John Seitz's cinematography are hard to judge in the dim, unrestored print available. This film lacks the spectacle of FOUR HORSEMEN, but still manages to suggest Balzac's sweep in portraying the complexity of human relations. The "conquering power," according to an introductory title, is Love.

Playboy Charles Grandet (Rudolph Valentino) is sent to live with his uncle Pere Grandet (Ralph Lewis) when his father becomes ill. His father dies leaving Charles penniless. Charles falls in love with his niece, Eugenie (Alice Terry). Pere refuses to let them fall in love and get married and will do anything to stop it...

Very good silent movie that is virtually unknown--I couldn't find it in any movie books! Valentino and Terry are just both just gorgeous looking and make a very appealing couple. Lewis is also very good as the cruel uncle. Rex Ingram was one of the best directors of the silent era and this shows why. It's beautifully done--the movie flows smoothly and (for a silent film) moves rather quickly. The sequence in which Pere starts going mad at the end is extremely well done (and actually quite scary). A very good film--well worth seeing.

Sadly the only print available (shown on TCM) is in poor shape. The print is VERY grainy with scratches making some scenes hard to watch. Still, if you can overlook this (I was) you can enjoy the film. But it needs a major restoration job. How about it TCM?