Am I the only one who thinks it's kind of weird that none of the intertitles re-Anglicize the names of Anne and Mary, leaving them as Anna and Marie, in this German rendition of the story of Anne Boleyn? It's just kind of weird. Anyway, Ernst Lubitsch continued his silent, historical epics with this tale of Henry VIII's second wife, from her return from France to her execution, and it's the same kind of handsome but distant affair his other films of this vein like Madame DuBarry and Sumurun had been. It's also another tale of a less powerful woman getting caught up in the passions of a more powerful man which had happened not only in his other historical epics, but also his smaller, quirkier affairs like The Doll. So, it fits the overall thematic focus of this early part of Lubitsch's career, but the famous Lubitsch touch is still distant, underdeveloped, and pushed aside for melodramatics that don't quite connect.
Anna Boleyn (Henny Porten) returns to England from France and meets her beau, Sir Henry Norris (Paul Hartmann) at the docks, pleased to be home and returns to the house of her father, the Duke of Norfolk (Ludwig Hartau) (no, Boleyn's real father wasn't a Duke, much less the Duke of Norfolk, but whatever). All seems well prepared for Anna to lead a nice little life on the edges of the English court. However, of course, all is not well in the kingdom since Henry VIII (Emil Jannings) only has a daughter, Princess Marie (Hilde Muller) from his wife Queen Catherine (Hedwig Pauly-Winterstein), and no male heir. He's also something of a womanizer and is happy to play around with servant girls out in the open.
One of the most interesting little additions to this well-known story (an addition that disappears at about the halfway point, unfortunately) is the role of a jester (Paul Biensfeldt) who openly chastises Henry for his infidelities, receives a beating, but keeps on acting as Henry's conscience. I was really hoping to see the jester play a larger role, especially later in the film when Henry grows tired of Anna in favor of her lady in waiting, Jane Seymour (Aud Egede-Nissen), but by Henry's wedding with Anna, he's gone. He does have a very good early moment when Henry brings Anna into a large bush removed from the garden and tennis party for the court where Henry tries to seduce Anna, but the jester interrupts it. There's a moment of recognition that what Henry is doing is wrong, and it provided a nice subtext to what was happening. However, le sigh, it was not to last. The jester simply disappears from the story. If Henry had had the jester killed, that might have been interesting, though.
Anna is one of the main problems in the story. She's massively passive. When she gets home from France, she's happy to accept the affections of her beau, Sir Henry Norris. When the king gains her attention, she just accepts it without much in the way of fervor or enthusiasm, but she accepts it. I mean, if the King of England wants a girl, is the girl going to wildly object? I wouldn't expect that, but she never says anything to anyone. Instead, she stands around moping a lot, and the effort seems to be to make her into a completely innocent waif. This not only strikes me as wrong historically (again, this is a movie that makes Anne Boleyn's father the Duke of Norfolk), but it makes her a really uninteresting character to anchor a whole film around. In fact, she's so massively passive that she gets pushed aside in the later parts of the narrative because she has so little to do. It's not like she has a lot to do early either, though. She mostly stands around while Henry lusts after her.
Another issue with the film is that it's another tale of intricate plotting, politics, and a lot of named characters that the silent medium can't support all that well. I didn't like Sumurun very much, but I was kind of amazed at how few intertitles there were, helped in no small part, I'm sure, by how the film really didn't rely on real world political figures to drive small points of plot forward. It was all historical melodrama. This, however, returns to the form of Madame DuBarry where we have to see the historical details to get to the next story beat, and the film suffers for it. It's made the worse here because Anna is passive where the titular character in the early film actually was kind of interesting to watch as she climbed the French social ladder. Making Anna completely innocent robs her of any agency in her rise to power.
By the end, as Henry is trying to justify another separation from another wife, Anna gets a few moments to seem active, but they're really only moments. At the trial for her supposed infidelities, the singer Marc Smeaton (Ferdinand von Alten) gets brought forward to assert an illicit relationship, and Anna stands up and protests her innocence. It's a nice change of pace from her moping around while the King of England lusts after her, dotes on her, and then dumps her for a younger model.
There is an interesting idea that gets played up briefly late where Anna is confronted with the fact that she's the new Catherine and Jane Seymour is the new Anna, that she's caught in a repeating cycle. However, because Anna was so passive in the participation of that cycle, it's little more than a realization of irony than a moral lesson for her. It's sort of interesting, but it just doesn't carry much weight.
Having said all of that, there is some stuff to enjoy. Henny Porten's performance as Anna may be one note (I think I'd blame direction and the writing mostly for this), however Emil Jannings is quite a sight as Henry VIII. He's energetic, animated, and passionate. The rest of the cast is pretty good, holding their own while surrounded by some great sets and decked out in intricate costumes. There are some large scale sequences, mostly around the wedding, and they're good spectacle.
It's a middling film, right in line with these other historical, melodramatic epics that Lubitsch was directing late in her German career. They must have been successful financially, and it's reported that it was one of Mary Pickford's favorite films (probably the reason she decided to work with Lubitsch to begin with and bring him over to America to direct Rosita), but the central character being so uninteresting drags it down a lot while losing itself in historical detail and forgetting the emotional journey (how silents worked best) keeps it from rising any higher.
Anna Boleyn (Henny Porten) returns to England from France and meets her beau, Sir Henry Norris (Paul Hartmann) at the docks, pleased to be home and returns to the house of her father, the Duke of Norfolk (Ludwig Hartau) (no, Boleyn's real father wasn't a Duke, much less the Duke of Norfolk, but whatever). All seems well prepared for Anna to lead a nice little life on the edges of the English court. However, of course, all is not well in the kingdom since Henry VIII (Emil Jannings) only has a daughter, Princess Marie (Hilde Muller) from his wife Queen Catherine (Hedwig Pauly-Winterstein), and no male heir. He's also something of a womanizer and is happy to play around with servant girls out in the open.
One of the most interesting little additions to this well-known story (an addition that disappears at about the halfway point, unfortunately) is the role of a jester (Paul Biensfeldt) who openly chastises Henry for his infidelities, receives a beating, but keeps on acting as Henry's conscience. I was really hoping to see the jester play a larger role, especially later in the film when Henry grows tired of Anna in favor of her lady in waiting, Jane Seymour (Aud Egede-Nissen), but by Henry's wedding with Anna, he's gone. He does have a very good early moment when Henry brings Anna into a large bush removed from the garden and tennis party for the court where Henry tries to seduce Anna, but the jester interrupts it. There's a moment of recognition that what Henry is doing is wrong, and it provided a nice subtext to what was happening. However, le sigh, it was not to last. The jester simply disappears from the story. If Henry had had the jester killed, that might have been interesting, though.
Anna is one of the main problems in the story. She's massively passive. When she gets home from France, she's happy to accept the affections of her beau, Sir Henry Norris. When the king gains her attention, she just accepts it without much in the way of fervor or enthusiasm, but she accepts it. I mean, if the King of England wants a girl, is the girl going to wildly object? I wouldn't expect that, but she never says anything to anyone. Instead, she stands around moping a lot, and the effort seems to be to make her into a completely innocent waif. This not only strikes me as wrong historically (again, this is a movie that makes Anne Boleyn's father the Duke of Norfolk), but it makes her a really uninteresting character to anchor a whole film around. In fact, she's so massively passive that she gets pushed aside in the later parts of the narrative because she has so little to do. It's not like she has a lot to do early either, though. She mostly stands around while Henry lusts after her.
Another issue with the film is that it's another tale of intricate plotting, politics, and a lot of named characters that the silent medium can't support all that well. I didn't like Sumurun very much, but I was kind of amazed at how few intertitles there were, helped in no small part, I'm sure, by how the film really didn't rely on real world political figures to drive small points of plot forward. It was all historical melodrama. This, however, returns to the form of Madame DuBarry where we have to see the historical details to get to the next story beat, and the film suffers for it. It's made the worse here because Anna is passive where the titular character in the early film actually was kind of interesting to watch as she climbed the French social ladder. Making Anna completely innocent robs her of any agency in her rise to power.
By the end, as Henry is trying to justify another separation from another wife, Anna gets a few moments to seem active, but they're really only moments. At the trial for her supposed infidelities, the singer Marc Smeaton (Ferdinand von Alten) gets brought forward to assert an illicit relationship, and Anna stands up and protests her innocence. It's a nice change of pace from her moping around while the King of England lusts after her, dotes on her, and then dumps her for a younger model.
There is an interesting idea that gets played up briefly late where Anna is confronted with the fact that she's the new Catherine and Jane Seymour is the new Anna, that she's caught in a repeating cycle. However, because Anna was so passive in the participation of that cycle, it's little more than a realization of irony than a moral lesson for her. It's sort of interesting, but it just doesn't carry much weight.
Having said all of that, there is some stuff to enjoy. Henny Porten's performance as Anna may be one note (I think I'd blame direction and the writing mostly for this), however Emil Jannings is quite a sight as Henry VIII. He's energetic, animated, and passionate. The rest of the cast is pretty good, holding their own while surrounded by some great sets and decked out in intricate costumes. There are some large scale sequences, mostly around the wedding, and they're good spectacle.
It's a middling film, right in line with these other historical, melodramatic epics that Lubitsch was directing late in her German career. They must have been successful financially, and it's reported that it was one of Mary Pickford's favorite films (probably the reason she decided to work with Lubitsch to begin with and bring him over to America to direct Rosita), but the central character being so uninteresting drags it down a lot while losing itself in historical detail and forgetting the emotional journey (how silents worked best) keeps it from rising any higher.