Florence Arliss – Movie Musings

Old-fashioned historical melodrama with a well-meaning, earnest political message

Director: Alfred L Werker

Cast: George Arliss (Nathan Rothschild/Mayer Rothschild), Boris Karloff (Count Ledrantz), Loretta Young (Julie Rothschild), Robert Young (Captain Fitztoy), C. Aubrey Smith (Duke of Wellington), Arthur Byron (Baring), Helen Westley (Gudula Rothschild), Reginald Owen (JC Herries), Florence Arliss (Hannah Rothschild), Alan Mowbray (Prince Metternich), Holmes Herbert (Roweth)

It’s 1814 and things are looking tight for the international banking house of Rothschild. With the Napoleonic Wars over, partly thanks to Rothshild financial support of Wellington’s armies, Nathan Rothschild (George Arliss) is pitching to underwrite the loans to help restore France. Problem is, now the merde is out of the European fan, many of the Powers-That-Be don’t want to continue working with a Jewish bank. Led by scowling antisemitic Prussian Count Ledrantz (Boris Karloff), the Rothschilds bid is unjustly rejected. Rothschild outmanoeuvres his enemies to win the contract back, but it leads to a series of revenge pogroms in Prussia. Things change though, when Napoleon escapes from Elba. As all roads lead to Waterloo, will Rothschild back the Allied powers or throw in his lot with Napoleon?

The House of Rothschild is a very well-meaning, old-fashioned historical melodrama, that takes a strong stance against antisemitism. It clearly has more than half-an-eye on events in Germany in the 1930s. As the film’s Prussia of 1814 sinks into mobs hurling stones through windows, smashing up shops and chanting for the expulsion of Jewish people, while families flee across the body leaving their possessions behind (all while the self-satisfied, archly cold Ledrantz pushes his agents to provoke the people to yet more outbursts), surely many people would have seen parallels with Hitler’s Germany.

Throughout the film, the accusations of antisemites are pointedly broken down and strongly rebutted or placed into context. Why do the Rothschilds work in money? Because they are literally banned from any other profession. And money is the only tool they have to defend themselves against 2000 years of persecution; persecution that has made the Rothschilds feel a true affinity for their fellow Jewish people. Indeed, Nathan Rothschild feels a duty to stand firm and do anything he can to help his people: and if that means a bit of financial chicanery or applying heavy pressure to the European powers, then so be it. There is a greater good here when lives are at stake.

The scourge of racism is strongly displayed throughout the film. It opens with a prologue as Nathan’s father Mayer (George Arliss pulling double duty, under a pile of make-up and a wig) struggles to hide his justly-earned fortune from being stolen by corrupt tax collectors who call him ‘Jew’ and smugly tell him the amount he owes to the government is whatever they say it is. It’s a ferocious piece of open antisemitism, but it has genteel echoes when Nathan is later snubbed for an invite to a ball to celebrate Wellington’s victory (a victory he largely paid for) since Jewish people aren’t welcome at such events.

The House of Rothschild places its laudable anti-persecution aim into a very traditional, old-fashioned, costume drama that wouldn’t look out of place on the Victorian stage. It was a passion project of George Arliss’ (who cared deeply about its message), but also fit wonderfully well inside his wheelhouse. You can see its deep similarities to Arliss’ Oscar-winning vehicle Disraeli. Just as there, he plays a twinkly elder statesman, with a touch of the rogue but overflowing with decency and honour. Despite being seen as a suspicious outsider, he out-plays his rivals in an international conspiracy while casting an avuncular eye over a love affair in the family: in this case between his daughter (Loretta Young) and gentile British cavalry officer Captain Fitzroy (a fairly wooden Robert Young). Both films end with our hero celebrated by royalty at a grand ball, while cementing a loving marriage with his wife (played again by Arliss’ wife Florence).

Arliss is, of course, very good in a role tailor made for his mix of playful charm and speechifying. Much of the film is essentially dominated by Arliss, who delivers with his customary skill (even if his performance as Mayer is more than a little ripe) and if his performance feels more than a little like Disraeli #2, his comfort in front of the camera and the naturalness he brings to the role help enormously. Under the playful exterior, Arliss also finds a strength and determination, powered by a real moral fury at the injustices, slights and (eventual) violence perpetuated upon his people.

Few other actors get much to play with here. House of Rothschild is heavily fictionalised, from its invented nemesis in Count Ledrantz (Karloff is good value as the scowling racist) to the build-up to the Waterloo campaign. However, for history buffs like me, there is a fair bit of delight in seeing a parade of great European statesmen pop up in cameos. From Tallyrand to Metternich to Lord Liverpool, these powerhouses of politics fill out the margins, even if they barely come to life as characters. If there is an exception, it’s the customary gruff no-nonsense military bearing C. Aubrey Smith gives Wellington (here a man firmly on the side of decency and honour).

The romantic sub-plot is very disposable, despite the best efforts of all involved. It briefly overlaps with the film’s main themes – Rothschild is less than happy with his daughter marrying a gentile, while he suffers a parade of humiliations from Fitzroy’s compatriots – but otherwise provides little real drama. The various conspiracies are largely resolved through some ingenious Rothschild speeches. The film’s main success is always the creeping dread of antisemitic violence, a candle it keeps alive throughout its old-school, costume-drama melodrama, with just small drops of directorial and cinematic invention. It’s the main reason for remembering a film that’s entertaining enough, in a gentle, classic Hollywood biopic way. It never reinvents the wheel, but it’s passionate about the people who find themselves ground beneath it.

Note: Considering all that, it’s particularly sickening to note that footage from The House of Rothschild of Arliss in full Mayer Rothschild make-up was pinched and repurposed for Joseph Goebbels’ vile antisemitic epic, The Eternal Jew.

Early talkie gives a melodramatic insight into a Victorian stateman, with an Oscar-winning star turn

Director: Alfred E. Green

Cast: George Arliss (Benjamin Disraeli), Doris Lloyd (Mrs Travers), David Torrance (Lord Probert), Joan Bennett (Lady Clarissa Pevensey), Florence Arliss (Lady Beaconsfield), Anthony Bushell (Lord Charles Deeford), Michael Simeon Viscoff (Count Borsinov)

Based on an Edwardian melodrama, Disraeli was the sound debut of George Arliss, a highly acclaimed British actor with a successful silent career. Unlike other silent actors, Arliss’ theatre training made him ready made to have his voice be heard around the world and his Oscar for Best Actor saw him ride the crest of the sound wave. Today, the film looks inevitably quite primitive, so careful to get the sound recorded that its camera barely moves from its fixed position in the ceiling-free sets. But Disraeli, for all this, is rather entertaining if you settle down to it despite its stodgy set-up still deeply rooted in its Edwardian melodrama roots.

It’s odd to read some reviewers describing Disraeli as a dry history lesson: there is almost nothing historical about the plot of Disraeli. While Disraeli did arrange the purchase of a controlling share in the Suez Canal, I can assure you he did not do it while dodging Russian spies in his own home, balancing a series of daring financial moves, laying cunning traps for scheming Russian agents or playing match-maker for his young protégé. Far from a history lesson, Disraeli is really a sort of Sherlock Holmesish thriller, with Disraeli recast as a twinkly wise-cracker constantly several steps ahead of everyone else. It’s a playfully silly set-up rather disconnected from history – and certainly far more fun than the actual dry history of financial and diplomatic negotiations.

Disraeli is a surprisingly well-scripted (as far as these things go) play, which mixes some decent jokes and creative set-ups with a liberal use of phrases from the eminently quotable Disraeli himself. You can’t argue with the wit of Disraeli (the man famously had dozens of entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) and the film bounces several bon mots around (‘That’s good. Perhaps I’ll use it with Gladstone’ Disraeli even comments on one of his own lines). There is wit in other moments, not least Lord Charles’s (Anthony Bushell) proposal to Lady Clarissa (Joan Bennett) which dwells so much on his charitable good works rather than any affections that Lady Clarissa is moved to comment she expected a proposal “not an essay on political economy”.

You can see its melodramatic roots all the way through. Secret talks about the canal are held in Disraeli’s house, in open earshot of a Russian spy Lady Travers (Doris Llloyd), who we later discover Disraeli is carefully leading on. Like a cunning Edwardian detective, Disraeli role-plays illness at one point to delay Lady Travers and resolves a last minute disastrous collapse in his payment scheme for the Suez shares with a swaggering bluff that he delightedly tells his amazed allies about the moment the duped Governor of the Bank of England (forced against his will to back the scheme) leaves the room. All this in a largely single-room setting: this is pure Edwardian theatrical melodrama bought to screen, not history.

It’s similar in its picture of history, here re-worked to position Disraeli as the sort of maverick hero we can immediately recognise from films. Disraeli is established as an outsider who no one in the establishment trusts (never mind he was the leader of the firmly establishment Conservative party, or that his rival Gladstone was seen by the crusty banker types in this film not as their saviour but as a dangerous radical). Despite being referred to as Lord Beaconsfield several times, he sits in the commons to face down Gladstone (an uninspired cameo by an unbilled actor). He is displayed as the sort of negotiating and diplomatic genius whose insights can only be responded to in wonder by Lord Charles, his dim Watson.

Like Sherlock Holmes, he lavishes Charles with backhanded compliments (specifically that his rigid honesty makes him the perfect agency for a secret mission because no one could believe he was up to lying). Like many Edwardian theatrical leads, he’s also an intense romantic. Not only deeply in love with his wife (played by Arliss’ wife Florence) but also at least as interested in making sure Charles and Clarissa end up happily married. Arguably none of that relates to the real Disraeli, a largely scruple and principle free opportunist with more than a few similarities to Boris Johnson (but with a sense of personal honesty and decency, Boris can only dream of).

The main point of interest today is George Arliss’ performance. For all its clearly a version of his stage performance, it’s still very engaging and charismatic. Arliss may deliver some of his lines like they are theatrical asides, and his mugging to a non-existent audience in Disraeli’s fake fitness is (while funny) clearly something that worked much better on stage. But he is twinkly, captures the shrewd intelligence of Disraeli and utterly convinces as a man who could run circles around everyone else. Arliss invests both the speeches and the dialogue with a genuine playful wit and a heartfelt honesty which works very well.

It’s entertaining and he looks very comfortable in front of the camera and he’s head and shoulders above the rest of the cast in terms of the light-and-shade he gives the dialogue. While the rest of the cast deliver their lines with the sort of forced formality that focuses on making sure the mic picks up every word, Arliss performs his lines. He’s got a sharp sense of comic timing, wheedles and boasts with real energy and isn’t afraid to chuck the odd line away. It’s a sound performance probably years ahead of its time.

The rest of the film is very much of its era. Green’s direction is incredibly uninspired. The camera set ups are very basic. The problems of sound can be seen throughout: from the awkward positions and formality of the camerawork to the occasional line flub that creeps into the soundtrack. Disraeli can look a lot like a filmed play, largely because it’s been set-up with such little focus on visuals. It’s reliance on title cards between scenes shows how fixed it still is on the clumsier parts of silent film-making. You could say, without Arliss, there would be very little to actually recommend it, for all there is the odd good line. But with him, it manages to be a little bit more than just a historical curiosity.