Tarass Boulba

I happened to be in Paris when the Tony Curtis TARAS BULBA opened and noticed a reference to this showing in what was then the Studio Cujas, owned by François Trufaut. I figured it for a mistake but the tacky old thirties lobby cards were out front and the cash box woman assured me it was Harry Baur. In I went, expecting to be faced by Yul Brynner leading the Cossacks but no - there was the luminous cast thirties version.

End of good luck story. This must be next to Baur's worst film both in it's original French and in the gummed together British version REBEL SON. I will admit SECRETS DE LA MER ROUGE is worse - but just. The characters stand about on papier maché battlements declaiming their dialogue, with a feeble love story played by an anachronistically got up Darrieux and Aumant. The Gogol plot is there with all the juice sucked out.

The one imposing scene has the hoard, which appears distant on the horizon, keep on coming till it engulfs the camera but even here they chicken and drop an obvious studio inset in to break it's impact.

J. Lee Thompson's 'Taras Bulba' of 1962, despite its six million dollar budget, glorious Eastmancolor and a thrilling Oscar-nominated score by Franz Waxman, cannot hold a candle to this modest and rather creaky black-and-white version of 1936 in terms of immediacy, emotional impact and characterisation. Russian born Alexis Granowsky had come to France via Germany and had previously directed Harry Baur in 'Moscow Nights' from the novel by Pierre Benoit. Here Benoit has adapted the epic novel of Nicolai Gogol with Baur in the title role. I never cease to wax lyrical about Monsieur Baur as I consider him to be touched by genius. His performance is stunning in its power and richness. Jean-Pierre Aumont and Danielle Darrieux would not seem, on paper anyway, to be ideal casting as a Cossack and a Pole but they have a definite chemistry and their scenes together are excellent. Great support from stalwarts Pierre Larquey and Fernand Ledoux. It is such a pity that Granowsky died shortly after this film was released as his small body of work shows a great sense of the visual, of composition and of pacing. Harry Baur was to reprise his role over here in 'The Rebel Son' in which he is not only dubbed but, horror of horrors, surrounded by an all English cast! One wonders why they bothered.

The screenplay is very close to that of the famous remake by Jack Lee Thompson (1962)starring Yul Brynner ,Tony Curtis and Christine Kaufmann whose parts are played here by Harry Baur ,Jean-Pierre Aumont and Danielle Darrieux .

The part was tailor made for Brynner in the color version ,but with make up,Harry Baur is a very credible cossack : probably the best actor of the French thirties, to many even more powerful than Jean Gabin ,he effortlessly dominates the cast :on the other hand, it takes a lot of imagination to believe that romantic male lead Aumont is his son !The same goes for Danielle Darrieux as a Polish girl;and fortunately Pauline Carton (the concierge of many films and par excellence the cheeky popular woman ) as her lady in waiting has only one scene!

Unlike the American film, the French effort passes over in silence the years in the boarding-school where cossacks send some of their offsprings to study:it begins with the "graduation " ,so to speak,and whereas André succeeds "magna cum laude" ,his brothers has remained a dunce and is proud of it ;and anyway ,one wonders why Tarass wants his sons to study ,for reading ,writing and arithmetic are a sissy's thing if we are to believe him ;the only thing a cossack kas to do is to make war ;to make the matter worse , graduate André has fallen in love with a gorgeous polish girl ,Marina,and his dad besieges her town.

The French in the thirties were very fond of Russian tales ,with laughable casts (see also "Volga En Flammes " ) ;this one is entertaining ,mainly in its first part ,more comic strip than Russian litterature ;best scene: the cossacks ,seen from a distance ,coming to lay siege to André's sweetheart's town.

In war against the Poles, the leader Cossack sees itself betrayed by one of his threads, been in love the girl of an enemy. An epic fresco in which is lacking the dimension and the breath of Gogol's masterpiece. The composition of Harry Baur - completed in Tarass Boulba's role - deserves nevertheless the bend.