Beyond the Rocks

It's great to have this film back after 84 years! It's only a pity it couldn't have been rediscovered while Gloria Swanson was still alive (in her autobiography she named it as one of the three films of hers the "loss" of which she regretted most, along with "Madame Sans-Gêne" and the last reel of "Sadie Thompson"). Elinor Glyn's story is horribly contrived — I can't think of another movie until the Beatles' "Help!" that moved its characters so extensively around the world to so little effect — and the love scenes are a bit disappointing (Swanson recalled that the Fatty Arbuckle and William Desmond Taylor scandals both broke just before this film started shooting, with the result that the script was given a last-minute rewrite to tone down the adulterous passions of her and Valentino's characters) — but what makes this movie truly great is the marvelously understated acting. This is the film to show someone who thinks all silent-film actors swooned, waved their arms like windmills and reacted to traumas like the Statue of Liberty collapsing in an earthquake: the people in "Beyond the Rocks" use simple, economical gestures and facial expressions to get their emotions across. I credit director Sam Wood — who made the transition to sound quite successfully and had a long career in the talkies — with getting these marvelously realistic performances from his cast. Henny Vrienten's musical score for the restored print is somber and effective, though I could have done without the sound effects and crowd noises and it seems odd to watch a silent film with music whose primary instruments are a flute and a Miles Davis-style trumpet.