Ariane 1931, Paul Czinner

by Allan Fish

(Germany 1931 78m) not on DVD

The Berlin itinerary

p  Paul Czinner  d  Paul Czinner  w  Carl Mayer, Paul Czinner  novel  Claude Anet  ph  Adolf Schlasy

Elisabeth Bergner (Ariane Kousnetsova), Rudolf Forster (Konstantin Michael), Hertha Guthmar (Olga), Annemarie Steinsieck (Tante Warwara), Theodor Loos (Dr Hans Adalmeit), Alfred Gerasch (the doctor), Nicolas Wassiljeff (the student),

It’s that age old question again, when the wounded male ego feels it has the right to ask of its beloved “how many?”  In this case, the response is “eight.”  She goes on; “with the first I was 16.  I wanted to know what it was like that they had been raving so much about.  With the second I thought I was in love, but I wasn’t.  The third had been a student.  The fourth had been a student, and the fifth was a student.  The sixth was an officer.  The seventh was in love with my aunt.  And then you came along, the eighth.  Your reign was the longest…”  He then reminds her she forgot one.  “Yes, I was forgetting”, she nods.  “Nine.” 

Now then, let us assume you have not looked at the title and credits above and let us suppose you are asked to name the least likely actress to have said those words in a film in the early thirties.  Anyone who tossed the name of Janet Gaynor into the ring may have reason to feel quietly confident, until you realise that even in pre-Code Hollywood they didn’t talk so openly about what “they had been raving about”, to use the euphemism of choice.  A silence descends until someone in the corner of the room exclaims almost apologetically the name of Elisabeth Bergner.  Silence descends again, for truly no-one was less likely than she.

Needless to say it was Bergner and while it may seem a shock at first hand, a look into Bergner’s screen persona showcases that it may not have been as unlikely as it first seems.  The quote is, in actual fact, a fallacy, designed to make her seem more mature and sophisticated to her older lover.  In and as Korda’s Catherine the Great, she’d used a similar deceit (no wonder the film flopped, Von Sternberg and Dietrich made no bones about why they called their film The Scarlet Empress).  In As You Like It she pretends to be a boy as Rosalind when many would have accused her of previously pretending to be a woman.  Hers was a persona of pretence within pretence and while the silent Fraulein Else was a startling new discovery, Ariane is still her best showcase.

Ariane centres round the eponymous Russian girl living with distant relatives in Berlin who her parents back home and her hosts try to marry off to a doctor and friend of the family who, it turns out, has lascivious intentions.  Running away from his suit she enrols at university and makes a life for herself, but on a visit to the opera to see ‘Don Giovanni’ she meets cultured traveller and womaniser Michael who she proceeds to fall in love with.  He’s her first lover and she goes with him to Italy, but he has to keep on the move and their romance is constantly interrupted by extended trips abroad.  Meeting her at the Plaza Hotel for a few days before going on to Rome, she makes him believe she’s been a floozy so as to impress him.  He’s appalled and makes reservations to go on the first train.  She follows him to the station.

That it finally ends happily is no surprise, but there is much to enjoy in Czinner’s romance, not least the continental freedom to call a spade a spade.  In an early scene Bergner is lying down on her bed in a thigh length robe and slippers with the intention of having a nap.  She’s interrupted by her potential suitor who wastes no time in eyeing up a flash of leg and placing his hand thereon.  If she’s still sweetly indignant, with that voice that must have been borrowed by Elsa Lanchester as Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII a couple of years later, she has never been more attractive, so that when old Mack the Knife Forster comes along, it’s no surprise he takes a shine to her.

Sadly, Ariane is hard to see these days, especially with subtitles, and the prints in circulation badly need restoration, but it’s a charming relic of early thirties sophistication and yet another forgotten classic from WeimarGermany.