Murders In The Rue Morgue (Florey, 1932)

[HerrSchreck]

Just rewatched Murders in the Rue Morgue. I had forgotten that it is essentially a remake of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; tho' while Rue Morgue shares that movie's grotesque and artificial visual manner, it is grounded in so many common genre tropes that its world feels more stable and familiar.

I don't know what to make of Rue Morgue's attempts to link real science and pseudo-science together. The movie seems conflicted about what it thinks of Mirakle's hypotheses: it sets him up as a lone voice of unpopular scientific truth against the ovine reactions of popular opinion and received knowledge, daring his audience to burn him for heresy while taunting them with the cry that truth can never be suppressed. But then it goes ahead and links his (factually true) evolutionary ideas, which the movie had seemed to admire, with the kind of pseudo-science that mad scientist films of the 30's and 40's always link with the unnatural, the perverse, and the insane, and which always functions as a negative and paranoid critique of science as an unhealthy, anti-social, essentially dangerous curiosity.

The movie has the odd effect of subverting its own subversion. I wonder if it wasn't that the filmmakers' actual sympathies made their way in alongside the elements demanded by convention.

I pretty much agree with everything Sausage said about Rue Morgue. Though I certainly appreciate the film and return to it now and again for the inevitable nostalgic ride of early Universals-- and of course seeing Freund unleashed on the camera with a bit more inventiveness than the tame work he did in Dracula-- the film has a rushed, disjointed feel to it, where the ingredients just don't seamlessly flow together. And for a Universal horror movie, that's downright unusual, because they were masters of composing these tight little narratives of horror garnished here and there with a touch of humor, romance, etc.

It's obviously a delight seeing Lugosi in the prime of his powers, before his addiction (and his age, let's face it he was no spring chicken by the time of DRacula) dampened the flame of that fiery male charisma which could easily overcome just about any cast.

But something is skewed in Murders, and it's visually tour de force nature can't repair it, at least for me. It may be a matter of character identification-- I find it very tough to root for Dupin, or even identify with him, and this isn't entirely due to Ames' poor performance (at least at times). The film creates such a fascination with Mirakle's character, and causes the viewer to grow so engaged by the peculiar goings on in his lab. . . and with this potentiated by his passionate proclamations as a self-proclaimed bearer of the Darwinian Truth, HE comes off as the central protagonist with which the viewer is to identify. And yet when it comes down to it, his experiments are so twisted and sadistic, he loses his badge as the venerable pioneer seeker of evolutionary truth and knowledge. And yet Dupin's character is an utter bore, and his love affair with with delectable Sidney Fox is yet a yawn, that he can never function as a narrative core and hook for me to hinge on. And the little diddling scenes w Bert Roach fall totally flat for me, especially if as comic releif (particularly w Roach nancing about the kitchen pouting that his food/cooking is not being appreciated).

It just lacks that seamless Universal narrative polish and easy flow. And yet visually it's right up there with Paul Leni's silents as one of the most visually inventive films in the whole Universal canon.

Certainly not a flop, but seems to lack a unity and cohesion between the various elements, which seem to have been formulated at different times and then artificially joined, and then photographed with a minimum of rehearsal for the actors.

I wanted to respond to some of Sausage's and Schreck's points about Murders in the Rue Morgue. So I feel like I need to outline a basic interpretation, but such a response probably won't convince anyone of how good the movie is. A film can't get by on subtext alone, and Rue Morgue certainly doesn't need to try. It's such a lovely little horror film that I never get tired of over the years, and it's an admirable template for what a horror film was and should be, using thea loose adaptation of the Poe to explore territory linked to works such as Caligari, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

First, it's understandable to say that it feels rushed and disjointed (though it doesn't feel too much that way to me, at least considering it's only an hour). However, this isn't really the fault of Florey's work, because in its original form it was 1/3 longer. I can only wonder how great the film could have been in that form. I'm not trying to convince anyone of its greatness on the basis of a full version that no one can see and assess, but it's important to take all the cuts into account when talking about why this film is the way it is. And I still think this version is outstanding.

Secondly, I completely agree that Dupin is difficult to root for or identify with, and that his romance is dull--but for me that's a key part of the point. If this were essentially a detective story, like the Poe original, I'd want Dupin to be far more original and compelling. But this is essentially horror, and Dupin is there to represent the staid, safe world, his world, which is threatened by the monster. As in so many great horror films, the "protagonists" are boring people, naive and willfully ignorant about the darker sides of life, whose own lives we'd not be interested to watch in normal circumstances. We're watching to see how they confront the threat, and what is revealed about the world as a result of the encroaching horror. Even for its day, I think Dupin's romantic blather to Camille was corny, and the content is revealing: she's so perfect and unspoiled and he doesn't want her exposed to anything unclean, doesn't even want her to know about all the sin and horror of the world. He's privileged to be part of this protected world, and he wants her as a feminine counterpart within it, but the monster complicates this blindly naive plan.

To me at least, Mirakle doesn't really represent modern science. He conducts experiments with no sound methods, and not as part of any community seeking knowledge for its own sake (science). On the contrary, his own deeply misguided experiments are means to enhance his own power, according to his twisted psychology. I think the evolutionary stuff at the beginning was not to cast him as some version of Darwin in the eyes of viewers (a pretty far cry) but to use the concept of evolution to invoke the inhuman, animalistic side to ourselves that still exists within us, as much as religion denies it (more on this below) and as much as we may try to repress it (Dupin and Camille again). It's also a clue to Mirakle's inextricable bond with Erik. If you lined up in a row Erik, Janos the Black One (Mirakle's half-human assistant), and Mirakle, the image might look like a twisted, simplified chart of human evolution, though I don't think malice or violence is biologically inherent in any of them. Neither Mirakle nor Dupin are exemplary humans -- and both are paralleled and connected to one another throughout the film. In a way Mirakle (and thus Erik) is the unknowable dark side within Dupin and I guess to some extent all of us. Some of Mirakle's ideas are correct: we're not made in the image of God; we're still primates, animals (especially complex ones psychologically, of course). I can accept this part of Mirakle's views, even though what he builds on this basis is monsrous.

I think the evolutionary stuff at the beginning was not to cast him as some version of Darwin in the eyes of viewers (a pretty far cry) but to use the concept of evolution to invoke the inhuman, animalistic side to ourselves that still exists within us, as much as religion denies it (more on this below) and as much as we may try to repress it (Dupin and Camille again).

Except that is what it does. Between Lugosi's impassioned speech on behalf of the imperishability of truth in the face of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition, and the menacing shots of the crowd pushing in towards the camera with hate and fear in their eyes, Mirakle is constructed as a brave, heroic individual. That is how the moment is played. This is why it makes such a jarring contrast with the rest of Mirakle's behaviour, which as you've said doesn't represent science at all (it's closer to black magic). If anything, his motivation seems sado-sexual and quasi-zoophilic as he trawls the streets looking for prostitutes for his ape.

While on some level the Darwinian stuff was there to suggest human savagery, its inclusion is not played as sinister or foreboding, but as brave and heroic. The actual Darwinian idea is quickly forgotten and you become transfixed by Lugosi's defiance. Such a speech would not be out of place in the mouth of a hero from another movie.

The scene plays that way for you, but not for everyone (e.g. me). The speech itself may seem brave or heroic, but I don't think Lugosi could or would ever serve to portray a heroic role-model figure, even for one scene. He just wasn't the type at all, and his delivery, the lighting etc. show him to be a fanatic, even if some of what he is saying is true. It seems like one of any number of such scenes in mad scientist film in which a religious character pipes up to accuse the "scientist" of playing God, committing blasphemy, tampering with the natural order, etc. upon which the latter scoffs and sometimes accuses the critic of being cowardly and small-minded. I do think mad scientist pictures can have something to say about the most misguided and megalomaniacal human interventions in the natural and physical world -- but this hardly implicates science as a whole. Anyone who would make that leap is confused and probably already has some very odd biases, it seems to me.

Anyway, with my previous post I was hoping to broaden the discussion a bit beyond that one particular scene.

Speaking of Freund, my other favorite example of his work in this decade is probably All Quiet on the Western Front. The Good Earth is another one I've been meaning to see for quite a long time.

Since it's been a few days since Gregory and Sausage left off their discussion, which I want to jump back into, and since I think the vagueries of the film's text has enough potential for a protracted discussion, I figured I'd start a new thread outside of the 1930's list project in which we could further assess the implications of this uncontestable classic of pre-code horror.

I actually went back and watched the film again, spurred on in particular by some of the ideas that hatched in my head after reading Gregory's post-- some of these ideas, incidentally, I'm not 100% sure were being promulgated by him.

First of all Greg I can't accept this--to me, as I love the man so much-- awful (I mean that with a wink) statement about Lugosi:

I don't think Lugosi could or would ever serve to portray a heroic role-model figure, even for one scene. He just wasn't the type at all,

That's a terrible pidgeonholing of a monstrous (no pun meant) talent! The man was capable of playing anything, and the very disc which you must have been returning to time and again in your repeated viewings of Rue Morgue contains two bedrock proofs of this: his renderings of straight men in The Black Cat (okay, he skins Karloff alive at the end, but what's a little tannery between friends?), and most especially in The Invisible Ray. In the latter film he is most absolutely positively the quintessence of the well-meaning, heroic bastion of scientific sensibility, grounded in the well-founded and fully-proven, serving as the intellectual bulwark via his cautious skepticism, on behalf of the scientific community, against Karloff's wild scientific allegations viz the ray. Another fine example of his playing the good guy can be found in Chandu on Magic Island.

In his native Hungary Lugosi played all manner of character, from Jesus Christ to leading men to love interests to comic foils. The unfortunate fact of his linguistic limitations led, along with the explosive impression made viz the great success of DRacula, it is well known, to his being typecast as villainous characters. The dark power that the man was able to project was not a result of an inherent characteristic of darkness-- it was the characteristic of power, which could be employed to project all manner of characteristic. . . and those who worked with Bela (right down to Bronx Boy Sammy Petrillo who worked with him once, on the absurd Jack Broder production Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla) wept when recalling the sad disposition that the great man, bursting with unmet potential, was reduced to, via his age, additction and ethnicity.. and yet confronted with grace and self-effacing humor.

I think there's a bit of an error there in your pronouncement, when you mention the scene in the carny tent where Lugosi confronts the naysayers, and say

It seems like one of any number of such scenes in mad scientist film in which a religious character pipes up to accuse the "scientist" of playing God, committing blasphemy, tampering with the natural order, etc. upon which the latter scoffs and sometimes accuses the critic of being cowardly and small-minded.

It doesn't seem that way at all to me-- because first of all we have not yet seen Mirakle at work on his abominations. There is no "mad science" in the scene whatsoever. Mirakle is saying what scientists continue to say to this day-- that man evolved from primates. . . not from some garden with an apple tree and a snake. Men to this day are called heretics by religious folks for saying such a thing, because it goes against the bible. People are not responding with anger to a wild, mad-scientific claim, i e Jekyll's claim that the beast can be distilled out of us by means of a potion, or Frankenstein's mad obsession to create life "from the dust of the dead", or Praetorious' urge to grow minuature people "from seed," resulting in his being "booted out" of the Establishment.

Mirakle is claiming what sensible, pure scientists have claimed all along-- that man crawled up out of the slime, from single celled organisms, hoisted themselves to their feet, and began to walk in ever more advanced form of primate until we arrived at modern man. They claim it to this day. It's a dialoge that is replicated to this very day with the creation vs evolution camps, and it's simply not possible to avoid associating Lugosi not only with the sensible scientific thinkers of today who are driven to frustration by the religious right, but those poor souls who were burned at the stake in the past for their rational, laudible beliefs by religious lunatics in the church. His statement "Go ahead, light the fire," speech is coming from concrete historical fact, and conjures up the tribulation of rational thought versus silly superstition throughout the ages. Such an association is surely not accidental, and it conks with total contradiction up against the subsequent goings on in Mirakle's "lab".

What confuses me to this day about the film is this: we know what Jekyll's end game was (the separation), as we do Frankensteins, etc-- they had very clear cut goals. I could be missing something very basic, ie maybe Mirakle simply wants nothing more than for his ape to fuck Sydney Fox, but I'm not so sure that this is the primary goal (more on this in a moment). There's a lot of lab apparatus, and bloodwork going on. . . something to the effect that Mirakle is doing a lot of scraping at the ditch of his captives' arms and giving these girls intravenous jolts of Erik's blood. Why? What is the goal here? What is the blood supposed to do? Is this a test for some secondary move (i e to see if they can tolerate Erik's sperm or something)? Is this just pure, nameless insanity-- the machinations of a man gone completetely bananas with evolution?

If that's the case-- i e Mirakle is just a sinister lunatic who's led himself down the garden path after taking a wrong turn at Darwin Street-- then there is a character device that I think this film could have used to help filter the story through to the audience, because Dupin doesn't seem 100% sure what the fuck is going on either (in terms of evolution, he even looks up from his glass and says--about Mirakle's science-- to Bert Roach, "Did it ever occur to you that he might be right?") beyond the fact that Mirakle is behind the murders, wants to get his mitts on his woman, and the previous victims have Erik's blood in their corpses.

This character device which I believe the film could have used is that of the Edward van Sloan character-- he serves the function in other films of telling everybody what to think about all this wacky stuff. He is the voice of grounded authority who commands the directional draft of the narrative. He assures us that vampires are real, how they work, what they do, and therefore what this movie is about. He explains to us what Henry Frankenstein is up to, that he is a brilliant young man, that he has advanced too far, far beyond what he himself had to teach, and therefore sets up the profound tragedy of the film-- the tragedy of the lone genius travailing where no other has and dooming himself via his forbidden explorations and ultimately "mocking god". He tells us that yes, the ancient Egyptian gods still do indeed live in their ruined temples, that Imhotep is alive and a force to be reckoned with, gives us the concrete sense of who the mummy is and what he's after.

Despite the fact that he tells us what to think-- i e the cheap shortcut of narrating a documentary instead of allowing the goings on to speak for themselves and for you to form your own opinions-- when he's NOT around in these early Universal horror movies it kind of takes the fun out of the proceedings and distracts, by keeping our minds too much at work on comprehension and narrative sifting, from soaking in the magical atmosphere, which was always so one of a kind, and surely this movie is up there with the very best. There's a very snug, cozy feeling about the best Universal films, in that you know exactly what to expect and it's just utterly pleasing. They relax and they feed you in pre-identified courses. You never have to work too hard on narrative comprehension or uncertainty. You enjoy the characters, the great performances, the magnificent art direction, and feel like a grown up child during the scary parts. The confusion of this film distracts from the atmosphere of script blending with performance and art direction to take you to that dark cobwebbed far away gothic Somewhere.

In this film we're left to dope out one very vague set of experiments. On one hand it may be more satisfying to some to move away from the no-grey-area, tight-as-a-snare-drum structure of the classic era Universal Horror film, towards a more open-ended construct that allows room for interpretation. In other words a less formulaic good-guy/bad-guy narrative, where it's not so obvious how we're supposed to feel about our primary characters. . . and what they're up to. Thereby a film with a slightly more vague sense of unravelling, a somewhat different kind of film that the aformementioned types with van Sloan. But I think Leon Ames (Wayfcoff) and Fox's backstory is too dull and vague, and Lugosi's science lacks consistency and his aim lacks clarity, and that a van Sloan would have worked wonders for the narrative thrust and composition. At least in terms of removing a nagging sense of something not working quite right--neither in the standard Universal-Horror formulaic sense, or in the looser, more open-ended sense-- that niggles at me as I move through the film.

There are just some moments that bug the hell out of me. The awful comedy with the police up in Fox's apartment where the German, Italian and Danish argue with each other. The fact that the police help Dupin break into the apartment after the just-occured murder, with the door so well locked from the inside that they have to break it down WITH Dupin, and yet they at first arrest him as a suspect in the murder. How oculd they possibly think him responsible?? The impossibility of buying Ames and Roach (and their respective gals) as college students.

But I watched the film Greg after reading your post about Dupin and Camille et al occupying "priveleged" positions within society. This statement:

He's privileged to be part of this protected world, and he wants her as a feminine counterpart within it, but the monster complicates this blindly naive plan.

almost, for me, injected an element of class and race into the narrative. I doubt that's what you intended by your statement... but this sense of Erik, and Janos (the "Black One") and Mirakle all being, as you mentioned them, so closely allied and on the same 'nonprivileged' side, and commiserating with a sense of vengeance versus the "staid and safe world"-- I watched the film again with this accidental subext of Dupin and Camille representing the lily white world of the bourgoise, and Mirakle seeking, almost a la the unfulfilled race rape in Birth of a Nation, a lily white virginal bride for his dark comrade. There's almost a sense running through his dumping away the failed female prospects, as he rages about the blackness of their sins and their spoiled blood, that they're not white enough and virginal enough. And that in Camille he has found this perfectly pure, lily white bride for his comrade Erik, his alter ego?, to ravage, to be his bride. To be equal to that which is not on the outside, but which is inside, in his blood, in his substance, which the rest of the world cannot see.

It kind of works in some unmentionably sinister, racially sick way, only because it's just kooky enough to fill in some of the blanks by the crackpot shit Mirakle is wreaking in his lab. Why do these other women NOT accept Erik's blood? Why does Camille's accept it? Is she black inside? Is Erik white inside? Why does Erik, the dark primordial alter-face of humankind peering at us through the mist of time, require the most lily-white of blood? Or is it the other way around. And what in god's name does all this hint at????

Is (the racial claptrap angle aside) this just pure insanity of Mirakle's mind? Or does the film have some science-fictional explanation for this? Maybe it's in there and I'm just not remembering? Here is certainly where a van Sloan would have been enormously useful. We need him to say out load what Mirakle has no reason to articulate to nobody in the dark damp quiet air of his foul lab.

Although the above racial/class-revenge angle gives an intriguing undertone to a viewing of the film, I don't know that it really works either. It just made for a bizarre, racially-toned viewing of the film which never occurred to me before. I just don't see Dupin as occupying a privileged position in society-- nor to I think the common viewer would see him that way either. Remember, Camille lives in a cruddy tenement style apartment with her mother, not, say, the sprawling tony mansion of a Helen Morgan in Dracula or Elizabeth in Frankenstein, and Dupin is so broke that he's reduced to eating macaroni for dinner; and when Camille receives Mirakle's bonnet-gift, Dupin is immediately discounted as the giver because nobody could believe he could pay for such a thing.

Sometimes I just don't know that the film knows what it's talking about. Which is fine-- horror films don't always have to be founded in 'feasible' mad science. The narrative just has to have a thru line and tell a tale that is told in a way that Tells A Particular Tale. And I'm not totally sure what that tale is here beyond the obvious. Even Eric's 'talking'... is he supposed to be just an ordinary ape making typical ape grunts and squeals, or does he have a genuine set of linguistics? Is he more than just an ape, or is Mirakle just batty and hearing things that are not there, and is therefore precisely the kind of "sideshow charlatan" or whatever he says he's not at the beginning of his act.

Interesting also, that, as the audience files into the world of Mirakle and Erik-- which is the narrative of our springing from the loins of Erik in our primordial past, and of the finding of a bride for Erik for his future-- they walk right in between his legs.

And Freund only shot the butterfly ending of ALL QUIET, btw. The film was shot for the most part by the magnificent Arthur Edeson.

[knives]

Why do we not have a clapping smiley? Either way though bravo for that amazing post Herr. In that middle section you articulated what I've been poorly trying to say so well. It's really interesting how unlike other universal mad scientists his particular obsession is in a real science rather than one made up by the writers (duh this is why we're talking about it), but I think it's more interesting why they chose a real science than why the character did. This obsession causes only his actions to be the lunacy and maybe that's why the van Sloan character isn't needed. You don't need to explain evolution or why a scientific mind would want to prove whatever concerning it. That leaves why Lugosi would care about evolution and that would be explaining the psychology of a man who's so far in his lunacy that the world around him begins to mutate into a caricature of the real thing.

So again we're left with the why of the real science and I think it's to actually emphasize the rotten brain of Mirakle. It's not like he's shooting for the stars because he can reach the stars, rather he's shooting other people to reach the stars. Frankenstein was successful as was Karloff in The Invisible Ray and so much more. Here though even the most uneducated person will realize that evolution doesn't work that way so Mirakle's babelings wind up being as much an excuse as Son of Sam's dog. This makes him all the more tragic, for me at least, as his lunacy is at least manifesting in a way that makes him think he's helping people even as he's doing the most horrible deeds possible. This again isn't like Frankenstein who turns good deeds into absolute villainy through ignorance and abuse (locking and isolating the monster was not a good idea to understate things).

I'd also like to give an other hurrah to Lugosi's acting abilities. While I do think Karloff is better (though I suspect an enormous amount of that is the language barrier) Lugosi always gave it his all and was an amazing comic actor. In fact many of his humourous performances work better for me than his dramatic ones (with the clear exception of The Black Cat which I find to be his best film performance). His sense of timing is just amazing.

Believe it or not before we ran off with this conversation I wouldn't have rated this as one of the best of the decade, but damn it now I might have to put three from the boxset on my list.

[matrixschmatrix]

Mirakle is claiming what sensible, pure scientists have claimed all along-- that man crawled up out of the slime, from single celled organisms, hoisted themselves to their feet, and began to walk in ever more advanced form of primate until we arrived at modern man. They claim it to this day. It's a dialog that is replicated to this very day with the creation vs evolution camps, and it's simply not possible to avoid associating Lugosi not only with the sensible scientific thinkers of today who are driven to frustration by the religious right, but those poor souls who were burned at the stake in the past for their rational, laudible beliefs by religious lunatics in the church. His statement "Go ahead, light the fire," speech is coming from concrete historical fact, and conjures up the tribulation of rational thought versus silly superstition throughout the ages. Such an association is surely not accidental, and it conks with total contradiction up against the subsequent goings on in Mirakle's "lab".

I think there's a subtle but important distinction between Mirakle's description and the way evolution actually functions, at least in interpretation: the implication in his speech is that evolution is deterministic, that is has some particular goal in mind and that there are 'higher' and 'lower' forms thrown up by evolution- that we are more advanced than other primates, for instance.

Evolution is entirely blind, and a more evolved species is simply one that is better suited to its environment; Mirakle's view, which implies that humans are the apex of evolution, is incorrect in this regard. Humans are no more evolved than cockroaches, because evolution is not a process that necessarily makes you stronger, smarter, faster, or what have you- it's just a process that reinforces things that help. Thus, it can easily throw up birds that lose the ability of flight as it can create the power of flight in the first place.

I think this is significant, because Mirakle's whole concept here is essentially the same error as Dr. Moreau's: both see evolution as a calling, a purification, or a religion, rather than simply a randomized natural process, and both assign it a moral dimension. As such, Mirakle's end game makes more sense, though it's still not entirely clear- he, like Moreau, wants a graft between high and low, angel and beast, but it seems as though Mirakle wants to degrade the angel rather than raising the beast. It's as though both had a Madonna/whore complex, and simply chose different sides to favor.

[Mr Sausage]

but this sense of Erik, and Janos (the "Black One") and Mirakle all being, as you mentioned them, so closely allied and on the same 'nonprivileged' side, and commiserating with a sense of vengeance versus the "staid and safe world"-- I watched the film again with this accidental subext of Dupin and Camille representing the lily white world of the bourgoise, and Mirakle seeking, almost a la the unfulfilled race rape in Birth of a Nation, a lily white virginal bride for his dark comrade.

At the same time, the movie seems mostly to be milking the exoticism of Lugosi and co. (set up by the earlier dancing natives, and the fact that they work in a side-show and not a laboratory), which would make perfect sense if this were a movie about old-world 'gypsy' mysticism of the Maria Ouspenskaya variety, but it jars against the subsequent proselytizing for scientific progress on behalf of well established ideas (the famous Huxley/Wilberforce debate on evolution had taken place 73 years prior to the movie's release). As a result, the foreignness of the villains is detached from the actual narrative. You're no longer sure why they bothered to mobilize it. Also, why is he called Mirakle? He doesn't accomplish anything fantastic in the movie, and as a scientist he wouldn't believe in miracles.

Similarly, the movie doesn't seem to know how it wants to class Dupin and co. On the one hand, Dupin and his friend are poor medical students living in an attic and eating macaroni cooked on the furnace, but a few scenes later they're horse riding in the country and playing on this lavish, flower-entwined swing-set. It's a bourgeois Sunday outing down to the lighting, clothes, and props.

The only reason I don't subscribe to Gregory's class/race theory is because the movie doesn't seem to know what area its characters actually inhabit: are they exotic mystics or progressive scientists? Are they lower-class maids/cooks/cleaning ladies and medical prospects, or members of the petite bourgeois? Who knows. They're both and neither.

Just to show how incoherent this movie is, compare it to Fox's later horror film, Dr. Renault's Secret, in which George Zucco attempts to prove our kinship with the apes by using science to evolve an ape into a human. From there, the movie follows Rue Morgue's plot pretty closely: the ape-man falls in love with the lead girl, succmbs to his animal nature, and after killing Zucco, absconds with the unconscious girl as the lead-male pursues them. Mirakle and Renault are much the same character, but the latter's motivations and ideas are always clearly explained. Dr. Renault's Secret takes the same plot and ideas but produces a more comprehensible narrative from them.

Here though even the most uneducated person will realize that evolution doesn't work that way so Mirakle's babelings wind up being as much an excuse as Son of Sam's dog.

This is, unfortunately, not true. You'll find that even educated people still flounder under the misconception that humans were evolved from modern day monkeys and apes instead of sharing with them a common ancestor neither human nor ape. And that is one of the less nonsensical misconceptions floating around.

[knives]

Even as I was writing that I realized I was probably being too optimistic. Maybe it's more appropriate to say that it's clear that his version of evolution is highly influenced by his insanity.

[Mr Sausage]

Mirakle is claiming what sensible, pure scientists have claimed all along-- that man crawled up out of the slime, from single celled organisms, hoisted themselves to their feet, and began to walk in ever more advanced form of primate until we arrived at modern man. They claim it to this day. It's a dialog that is replicated to this very day with the creation vs evolution camps, and it's simply not possible to avoid associating Lugosi not only with the sensible scientific thinkers of today who are driven to frustration by the religious right, but those poor souls who were burned at the stake in the past for their rational, laudible beliefs by religious lunatics in the church. His statement "Go ahead, light the fire," speech is coming from concrete historical fact, and conjures up the tribulation of rational thought versus silly superstition throughout the ages. Such an association is surely not accidental, and it conks with total contradiction up against the subsequent goings on in Mirakle's "lab".

I think there's a subtle but important distinction between Mirakle's description and the way evolution actually functions, at least in interpretation: the implication in his speech is that evolution is deterministic, that is has some particular goal in mind and that there are 'higher' and 'lower' forms thrown up by evolution- that we are more advanced than other primates, for instance.

Evolution is entirely blind, and a more evolved species is simply one that is better suited to its environment; Mirakle's view, which implies that humans are the apex of evolution, is incorrect in this regard. Humans are no more evolved than cockroaches, because evolution is not a process that necessarily makes you stronger, smarter, faster, or what have you- it's just a process that reinforces things that help. Thus, it can easily throw up birds that lose the ability of flight as it can create the power of flight in the first place.

I think this is significant, because Mirakle's whole concept here is essentially the same error as Dr. Moreau's: both see evolution as a calling, a purification, or a religion, rather than simply a randomized natural process, and both assign it a moral dimension. As such, Mirakle's end game makes more sense, though it's still not entirely clear- he, like Moreau, wants a graft between high and low, angel and beast, but it seems as though Mirakle wants to degrade the angel rather than raising the beast. It's as though both had a Madonna/whore complex, and simply chose different sides to favor.

This is actually the 19th century concept of evolutionism (as opposed to evolution), where organisms naturally tend to develop towards greater complexity.

[Gregory]

First, I wanted to acknowledge that matrixschmatrix's post really hits nails on their heads, even though I don't have much to add to it in a quote-and-reply way.
And oops re: Freund and All Quiet on the Western Front. I knew Freund took the reins from Edeson at some point but wasn't sure how close it was to the end. Anyway, Freund's final shot is one of the thing that seals it as a great film for me -- it's a masterstroke.

Now, as for Lugosi, I didn't mean to sell his abilities short, and if I seemed to, it's because I wasn't quite clear enough. When I wrote that he wasn't the type who would or could serve to play a heroic role-model figure even for one scene (the carnival show), I was hoping to sidestep the matter of his typecasting vs. what he was actually capable of as an actor. I started to comment on Invisible Ray here, but it's probably beside the point, and I didn't say he couldn't play straight men and non-evil scientists.
More to the point, I don't think he could really be a heroic scientist in Rue Morgue partly because of typecasting and American audiences' prejudices about his Hungarian accent (the way any of his performances came across when he was doing silent films back in Hungary is separate from what I was trying to observe, which was about his Hollywood career). However, the main reason he couldn't play that time of character here even in the carnival scene was because he was playing a villain, and I find that his performance consistently embodies that character. The lighting highlights his glowering face as he delivers megalomaniacal, obsessed statements built up from the basis of evolutionary theory. He seeks to instill fear and awe in his audience with most unscientific statements about the shadow of Erik hanging over us all, the darkness before the dawn of man. He is both twisted and semi-rational, and even though what he says is essentially correct, scientifically, I fail to see how that makes the film incoherent (I'll address the questions about Mirakle's ultimate purpose below).

And it's interesting to note that In Florey's original version, the scenes unfolded in a different sequence, and it was pretty clear by the time of the carny scene that Lugosi was a mad "scientist." The film was supposed to start with the whole bit with Lugosi picking up the prostitute and then using her in his laboratory.
But to respond to this,

It seems like one of any number of such scenes in mad scientist film in which a religious character pipes up to accuse the "scientist" of playing God, committing blasphemy, tampering with the natural order, etc. upon which the latter scoffs and sometimes accuses the critic of being cowardly and small-minded.

It doesn't seem that way at all to me-- because first of all we have not yet seen Mirakle at work on his abominations. There is no "mad science" in the scene whatsoever.

I would argue that even in the released version, the audience didn't even need to have already seen that Mirakle was a "mad scientist" to know that he was a villain. As we find out within this very scene, he's one who entices people to get closer and closer to Erik, and then blames them when Erik lashes out at them, akin to the rapist who blames the victim for provoking him. So, even though Mirakle's ideas are essentially correct, the way he came upon them (again, very different from Darwin's research!), and what he does with this knowledge is bound up with his pathological obsessions.
Given the cuts and rearranging the studio did, I'd probably never be able to convincingly argue for the released film as an outright masterpiece, but it's still outstanding in its compromised form, and everything still makes as much sense as any horror film needs to.

What confuses me to this day about the film is ... What is the goal here? What is the blood supposed to do?

I think his life's goal was to blur the sacred and erroneous boundaries that separated humanity from supposedly lower life forms, by means of communicating with them through a common language and by interbreeding. The latter point couldn't be discussed openly in a film of this era, of course, so it was suggested behind a suggestive veil of blood injections and tied-up women. Only young women are chosen as victims, so the sexual nature of it all is pretty clear. When the viewer finds out Erik is sexually attracted to the heroine (cf King Kong) it becomes even more so.

...there is a character device that I think this film could have used to help filter the story through to the audience, because Dupin doesn't seem 100% sure what the fuck is going on either...

Agreed about Dupin, he doesn't really get what's going on, which is further evidence that he represents a blissfully ignorant world of gentility and normality.
But I don't think the film needs more expository scenes. Most of the old horror and sci-fi films fell into the formula of having scenes of horror and excitement broken up by expository scenes involving men standing around talking in serious tones about what's going on and what might happen next. The best of these films blended this stuff in seamlessly enough to preserve a good rhythm, and left enough subtlety for the film to have an air of mystery and helpless uncertainty, not just fear or suspense based on what is known and understood.

...when he's NOT around in these early Universal horror movies it kind of takes the fun out of the proceedings and distracts, by keeping our minds too much at work on comprehension and narrative sifting, from soaking in the magical atmosphere, which was always so one of a kind, and surely this movie is up there with the very best. There's a very snug, cozy feeling about the best Universal films, in that you know exactly what to expect and it's just utterly pleasing. They relax and they feed you in pre-identified courses.

For me the comprehension and working out twists and turns (and, yes, things that don't entirely make sense) in the plot is for the first viewing, and then the film becomes familiar and magical on repeated viewings. I like that this film falls outside of the well-established horror mythos while still striking chords that are closely related to Frankenstein, Caligari, and Jekyll/Hyde. It leaves a lot unexplained, particularly about Mirakle, and I like that.

There are just some moments that bug the hell out of me. The awful comedy with the police up in Fox's apartment where the German, Italian and Danish argue with each other. The fact that the police help Dupin break into the apartment after the just-occured murder, with the door so well locked from the inside that they have to break it down WITH Dupin, and yet they at first arrest him as a suspect in the murder. How oculd they possibly think him responsible?

The police are far more clueless even than Dupin, and they want to hold Dupin for questioning. All of what you say bugs you adds to the suspense by stalling the rescue. And the bit about people thinking they heard a "foreigner" of some sort was from the Poe story, and though it may not be funny it is interesting. Mirakle is somewhat sinister to viewers by virtue of his foreign accent, but what's far more foreign is something not human that in some ways acts human and commits terrifying acts of violence at Mirakle's bidding. And yet, at the end of the film, Erik shows signs of what we generally take to be human qualities and acts as an individual.

This statement: "He's privileged to be part of this protected world, and he wants her as a feminine counterpart within it, but the monster complicates this blindly naive plan." almost, for me, injected an element of class and race into the narrative. I doubt that's what you intended by your statement... but this sense of Erik, and Janos (the "Black One") and Mirakle all being, as you mentioned them, so closely allied and on the same 'nonprivileged' side, and commiserating with a sense of vengeance versus the "staid and safe world"-- I watched the film again with this accidental subext of Dupin and Camille representing the lily white world of the bourgeoise, and Mirakle seeking, almost a la the unfulfilled race rape in Birth of a Nation, a lily white virginal bride for his dark comrade. There's almost a sense running through his dumping away the failed female prospects, as he rages about the blackness of their sins and their spoiled blood, that they're not white enough and virginal enough. And that in Camille he has found this perfectly pure, lily white bride for his comrade Erik, his alter ego?, to ravage, to be his bride. To be equal to that which is not on the outside, but which is inside, in his blood, in his substance, which the rest of the world cannot see.

I think that's square in line with my reading of the film, but to me it's far less about race than about class, but also a certain view of romantic love: the gentleman meets a woman who embodies chaste, feminine beauty, he protects her from the world, she loves him and becomes his helpmate, and they start a family according to God's plan. Of course something monstrous intrudes on a plan that's so pure, simple, and idealistic! Because we're human, we have something animalistic in us that will out. That's what this is about, for me.
Any vagaries about the nature of the purported "science" and other unanswered questions somehow don't present much of a problem to me.

I just don't see Dupin as occupying a privileged position in society-- nor to I think the common viewer would see him that way either. Remember, Camille lives in a cruddy tenement style apartment with her mother, not, say, the sprawling tony mansion of a Helen Morgan in Dracula or Elizabeth in Frankenstein...

Well, I meant that he's bourgeois, certainly not part of any wealthy upper class. He may not even be solidly bourgeois yet, but his aspirations most certainly are, and he certainly is privileged compared to the squalor and misery in poorer parts of Paris and the rest of the world that he hopes to lift himself and his lover out of. And these are admirable impulses. When I criticize Dupin it's not to scorn him or place myself above him. I guess we can all identify to some degree with the impulse of romantic love and the urge to find protection for ourselves and our loved ones. But Dupin and Camille are extremely unworldly and probably too convinced of each other's purity, I think.

Similarly, the movie doesn't seem to know how it wants to class Dupin and co. On the one hand, Dupin and his friend are poor medical students living in an attic and eating macaroni cooked on the furnace, but a few scenes later they're horse riding in the country and playing on this lavish, flower-entwined swing-set. It's a bourgeois Sunday outing down to the lighting, clothes, and props.

I can see how the film could have been just a little clearer on that point (and again, what is in the missing 20 minutes that could clear up some of these questions? I wish we knew). But I'm reminded of modern-day college students who come from "good families," go through a phase of squalid living and subsistence on ramen before going on to a comfortable life in pursuit of standard bourgeois goals.

[Mr Sausage]

I think that's square in line with my reading of the film, but to me it's far less about race than about class,

But where does the movie demonstrate class conflict? As has been hammered home, the public opposition to Mirakle is one of science vs religion, innovation vs orthodoxy, and what-have-you. The crowd that menaces him is itself working class, whereas he, tho' a sideshow conductor, holds an elevated position as a scientist. His manners also demonstrate old-world charm and bourgeois gentility (the whole bonnet replacement plot point, for starters). You wrote earlier of Lugosi being typecast based on the exoticism of his accent, but you've overlooked that Lugosi was also typecast for his old-world aristocratic bearing. Certainly after Dracula, Lugosi did not play working class characters (except under heavy-makeup, such as Ygor in Son and Ghost of Fankenstein). If Mirakle is an outsider, he is so because of his (academic and progressive) ideas, not because of class or status. Indeed, Dupin never considers Mirakle a threat until he connects the strange deaths with Mirakle's science lecture.

More to the point, Dupin's girlfriend is herself working class (lacks money, raised by a single parent in a small apartment). Mirakle's pursuit of her cannot be the attempt of the lower classes to disrupt the normative relationships of the bourgeoisie as there is no comparable status difference between him and her in your reading. If anything, his aristocratic bearing, flaunting of personal wealth, and readiness to shower her with presents she cannot afford herself, implies that he is of superior status.

but also a certain view of romantic love: the gentleman meets a woman who embodies chaste, feminine beauty, he protects her from the world, she loves him and becomes his helpmate, and they start a family according to God's plan. Of course something monstrous intrudes on a plan that's so pure, simple, and idealistic! Because we're human, we have something animalistic in us that will out. That's what this is about, for me.

Sorry, but who, exactly, has something animalistic in them? Mirakle? You claimed he is coded as a villain from the beginning, so he cannot be the focus of a Jekyll/Hyde kind of moralizing. None of the other characters manifest a divided self. As for Erik, well, does he demonstrate the beast in the man or the man in the beast? The evidence is equivocal since Erik is given no personality anyway. In monster movies like this one, the dark bits of the human psyche become external threats that can be vanquished. Such externalizing precludes any internal struggle. It's really Jekyll/Hyde type monster movies that accomplish the latter.

The only opposition I see is a simple knee-jerk one between good and evil representations of romance: tidy conventional love (Dupin and co.), and perverse and degraded love (prostitutes, VD, zoophilia, S&M). This opposition is more mechanical than meaningful; literature had so conventionalized it that its inclusion has become unthinking. Horror movies like this are built on the fall-and-rise structure of genesis through revelation, where prelapsarian order is invaded by evil, falls toward corruption, and is restored when the hero vanquishes evil. This is what Rue Morgue (and so many other horror films) is unconsciously reworking.

Here's where the movie becomes somewhat incoherent: the world it presents to us is disordered from the start. The bizarre angles, the failure of its architecture and compositions to balance, implies normal relationships are inherently compromised, that order is illusory. Yet the movie places within that world a narrative where good defeats evil, where pure love is saved from perverse love, and where order prevails over disorder when Dupin uncovers the true meaning behind a series of seemingly random deaths. The style is at odds with the structure, a fault you can trace to the fact that the style fits a movie like Caligari better than it does a Universal mad scientist picture.

[Gregory]

But where does the movie demonstrate class conflict? As has been hammered home, the public opposition to Mirakle is one of science vs religion, innovation vs orthodoxy, and what-have-you. The crowd that menaces him is itself working class, whereas he, tho' a sideshow conductor, holds an elevated position as a scientist.

I never said it demonstrates class conflict; it doesn't. I also never suggested that Mirakle is working-class or a class outsider. And I'm not all that concerned with the public opposition to Mirakle.

Sorry, but who, exactly, has something animalistic in them?

Everyone has, to some extent, as I've explicitly said, and that's what I take to the be film's point.

You claimed he is coded as a villain from the beginning, so he cannot be the focus of a Jekyll/Hyde kind of moralizing. None of the other characters manifest a divided self.

I never claimed this was an exact parallel to Jekyll and Hyde, though it is analagous in some key respects. And none of the other characters need to manifest a divided self because not all the implications of an interpretation need to be explicit within the film itself. And relating the monster to characteristics of all of us is hardly a new approach to horror. So again it seems we're too much at odds to find any common ground. And you've so misunderstood my analysis (it's not about the opposition between the working class and the bourgeoisie) and interpreted certain details from the film so differently (e.g. you seem to see Mirakle as some kind of legitimate scientist rather than, as I do, merely someone with some general evolutionary ideas that are correct but who's become a deluded carnival shill with a "scientific" obsession and some lab equipment) that I'm not sure there's much point my responding further. And you seem so dead set against the film that I see no hope of convincing you of any of its merits.
But I don't necessarily mean to end my part of the discussion If anyone else has anything to add.

[Mr Sausage]

And you seem so dead set against the film that I see no hope of convincing you of any of its merits.

I think it's quite a good film, actually. That doesn't stop it from being a muddle, obviously, and it's kind of fun to discuss the ways the pieces don't quite fit. But it's fantastic to look at, Lugosi is at his mad, commanding best, and the air of perversity and degradation in Mirakle's work is kind of thrilling.

and interpreted certain details from the film so differently (e.g. you seem to see Mirakle as some kind of legitimate scientist rather than, as I do, merely someone with some general evolutionary ideas that are correct but who's become a deluded carnival shill with a "scientific" obsession and some lab equipment)

Well, no, I agree with Schreck that at one point in the movie he's a real scientist with genuine dignity, grandeur, and heroism. For the rest, he's none of those things. It's incongruous to me, and I don't believe the movie is saying 'well, he sometimes makes a good point.' It could've had him make that point in a much more sinister and less dignified manner.

'm not sure there's much point my responding further.

That's up to you. But I wouldn't mind clarification on the points of yours I've misunderstood:

I never said it demonstrates class conflict; it doesn't. I also never suggested that Mirakle is working-class or a class outsider. And I'm not all that concerned with the public opposition to Mirakle.

Then what do you mean when you say it's "about class"? Since the movie is about the conflict between two sets (pure love and perverse love) I assumed that, if it's about class, class must be present in that same conflict. Surely if you're going to link the first kind of love with a certain class, you must also do it with the other.

I never claimed this was an exact parallel to Jekyll and Hyde, though it is analagous in some key respects. And none of the other characters need to manifest a divided self because not all the implications of an interpretation need to be explicit within the film itself. And relating the monster to characteristics of all of us is hardly a new approach to horror

So is it your point that the movie externalizes/allegorizes the conflict between the human and the animal parts of the human mind? That the evolution speech raises the idea that humans are much closer to animals than has been assumed, and from there on Erik represents dark animal urges such as lust, ect.?

If so, I see what you mean, but my caveat would be that it's only present because the movie's a bit of a mishmash. You can pick and choose with it. There is also some the the beauty-and-the-beast in there: humanity triumphing over animality through love, which is present when Erik kills the evil Mirakle, presumably because he does not want his lovely girl tied-up and killed like the others. It also implies the conflict between good science (Dupin's medicine) and bad science (Mirakle's overeaching charge into the unknown), which reinforces the old notion of scientific hubris. The movie implies a bunch of things but never follows through on them, and that's why I don't share your conviction that the movie is about any one thing. There's all sorts of things going on, none of them exclusive, and not all of them congruent.

[Gregory]

This will have to be very quick, as I'm about to dash out the door.
To clarify what I meant about class: I think the film is not about class conflict for class relations but rather about class privilege, and the hubris and naivete that it tends to enable, and more generally the underpinnings of bourgeois life, which in one form another for many of us is "normality" To me, the best horror problematizes this and poses an implicit challenge to it.

Sorry if I misunderstood about your being dead set against it. It just seemed that you have so many fundamental flaws in the film and little positive to redeem it for you. But our positions about it are partially compatible, I guess. I do relate to your points about it being a mishmash. It raises many things and resolves few of them, but for my own purposes, I find this to be a strength. Its story makes as much sense as a twisted, short horror feature should, and it leaves enough ambiguity for it to remain troubling and interesting. Its happy ending was necessary to offset the Grand Guignol stuff that precedes it, but it doesn't tie everything up in a bundle. I prefer a somewhat messy horror film to ones in which the nature of the threat is clearly understood, and that end with: the monster is dead now, and we can all go back to our perfect lives.
I also acknowledge that, as has been said, the film doesn't "know what it's talking about" -- but my own experience of it can salvage more than enough coherence.

So is it your point that the movie externalizes/allegorizes the conflict between the human and the animal parts of the human mind? That the evolution speech raises the idea that humans are much closer to animals than has been assumed, and from there on Erik represents dark animal urges such as lust, ect.?

Yes, thats completely right as far as it goes.

[HerrSchreck]

It's late and I'm groggy... and many of the questions I would have raised have already been asked by Mr. Sausage-- but there are a couple of key points that you raised Greg, and even though Mr. S may have tried to get you to elaborate on them, I'm not 100% sure of your standpoint.

First, of course, I think it's clear that you recognize that there are unusual points about this film in terms of its narrative assembly, if in no other way than at least vs some of the other classics of the genre from this period. Where we separate is re how we respond to these vagueries and whether or not they present narrative contradictions that knock us out of the proceedings. I love the film's atmosphere, it's sense of grimy filth and sickness, but I have to just sort of float through it and enjoy the world it conjures up in general... plus of course Lugosi in the peak of his powers, unibrow makeup and all. I find if I really start registering the narrative points as dispensed by the film, and following them through, I from time to time get dropped off at the side of the road as if by a driver that didn't know where he was going after confidently offering me a ride. And it's just not the kind of film that encourages me to take the wheel myself and fill in the blanks--somehow my mind doesn't take up the cue to do so (say as it would in an Epstien silent from a couple yrs before, or via Vampyr from the same year, etc). It seems to lack the open air that my mind takes a cue from to start writing it's own script, as it would in these other more poetical style films from the era. It just feels like a troubled assembly. . . for me it lacks a clear cut through-line beyond Lugosi's pursuit of women - Fox - for Erik. And that there are some accompanying blood experiments. Not much more is articulated beyond that Mirakle is looking for some kind of match. Surely you must agree that there's a lot of speculation in

I think his life's goal was to blur the sacred and erroneous boundaries that separated humanity from supposedly lower life forms, by means of communicating with them through a common language and by interbreeding. The latter point couldn't be discussed openly in a film of this era, of course, so it was suggested behind a suggestive veil of blood injections and tied-up women. Only young women are chosen as victims, so the sexual nature of it all is pretty clear. When the viewer finds out Erik is sexually attracted to the heroine (cf King Kong) it becomes even more so.

I don't know that there would be a barrier to openly discussing such a thing at the time-- all you need to do is flick on a film which came out within a matter of mere months thereafter, The Island of Lost Souls, to see the bestiality angle discussed pretty openly. Here you have a scientist very openly blurring the boundaries between humanity and "supposedly lower life forms," and there's not a single question about it-- not a whit of a barrier of comprehension via the production code or it's own narrative distribution. We have a whole island covered with anthropomorphised animals, and when a couple of human hotties make land on the island, their sexual urges are openly portrayed and discussed.

You said that you took to be the film's point the fact that Dupin learned, viz his perfect marriage plan, that everybody has something animalistic in them, i e that the beast Will Out. Could you elaborate further on that? It's intriguing, but I'm wondering what you mean specifically in terms of the film itself, i e in terms of Ames/Waycoff and Fox and their marriage.

I found on the class/race thing, to get a good viewing from that angle, you can't really think all that much about it. . . something along the lines that, via Mirakle's purposeful alignment with Janos The Black One, and Erik, we may have, somewhere in there, a narrative of a deranged genius who is full of rage versus the privileged classes of the world, and therefore created a nasty little political program versus the bourgoisie via his sex assault regimen with his ape, and, one might think, maybe even Janos too. The ultimate revenge fantasy for the dispossessed at the time: creating a perfect little hell where lily white ladies of Victorian society are fucked in dank dungeons by black men and foul apes who sleep in straw. But this too, requires an extensive use of the inner blind eye turned against narrative contradictions and a bunch of other stuff which makes no sense.

Still and all, I have a lot of affection for the film-- in terms of mood it's wonderful, and filled with lots of excellent effects. It really takes a lot to throw me off of a vintage Universal thriller (and there are a few... Secret of the Blue Room anyone?).

[Mr Sausage]

Schreck, as a side-note, do you find that the compositions during the the carnival, with the crowd and tents pressing in around the sides of the frame, and the swing moving in and out of the foreground in a diagonal sweep, remind you of Murnau and Hoffman's compositions for the carnival scene in Faust? I got the sense that Rue Morgue was repeating Faust's visual designs for that scene.

[HerrSchreck]

Reminds me of that, and the overall atmosphere reminds me of Paul Leni's carnival sequence in The Man Who Laughs. One can't help but be reminded of a whole host of German carny sequences, from Caligari of course, to the framing and final sequence in Waxworks, to Faust, to Variete. The Germans love a good carnival-- endless opportunities to use the kaleidescope of motion from the rides, w the crowds, and the grotesquerie of the exhibits for tour de force moments.