La Boheme: Movies about Writing

Hey, you know that Broadway show Rent that you were super into as a theater kid in high school, then just sort of forgot about when you got older. It was based on an opera, which was based on a book of sketches in lives of starving French artist in the early 1830s. What I watched is film version made in 1926 staring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert. Just to repeat - I’m writing a blog about a silent film based on an opera based on a book all of which inspired Rent. Spoilers ahead.

“Would you light my candle?
What are you staring at?”

- From not this version

Rodolphe is a playwright disgusted that he has to sacrifice his art by writing puff pieces for a local paper in order to help pay the rent of his shabby flat. He shares the flat with Marcel, an artist, Schaunard, a musician, and Colline, a philosopher (played by an Edward Everett Horton that was so young I didn’t even recognize him). The fifth member of their group is Musette, Marcel’s girlfriend who usually has some money because of her job . . . a job left unsaid in the silent film. Get it? Unsaid? Silent film? Oh fine. Yes. Musette is a sex worker. They invite into their circle Mimi, a seamstress who lives in the same building and struggles to survive. While the others make light of their meager earnings and eked out existence, Mimi is determined to survive to the point where she works long hours in her freezing garret apartment without a coat. Why no coat? She had to pawn it of course.

The circle of “Bohemians” are clever, boisterous, and usually drunk. They declare the hardships of their life simply they way it must be for them to be geniuses of the thinking world. I think in the opera there are more side plots featuring Marcel, Musette, and the others but these have been left out to keep the run time at 90 minutes. You don’t really get as much of the comradery as you would expect in a movie about an artists community. When do they dance on a table in a restaurant in a show of solidarity to their non-conformist lifestyle?

Anyway, when Mimi declares her love to him, Rodolphe becomes a play writing fool, which is great for his art, but not for the bills. As he’s neglecting his job selling stories to the local paper and Mimi’s work has slowed, she works herself to the bone trying to keep them both fed. In the opera she leaves to be mistress to a wealthy viscount. In 1830, either a woman has integrity or a full belly, not both. In the film, the viscount only promises to show Rodolphe’s plays to a theater manager he knows in exchange for Mimi’s company. Rodolphe drives her away in a fit of jealousy like a punk. Seriously, he’s a whiny brat who blames his outbursts on artistic integrity. Then, too late, he figures out everything Mimi has done for him, after batting her around some. Swell fellow.

Anyway, feeling guilty and realizing how sick Mimi is, Rodolphe make the grand gesture that he will give up his craft to earn money through a day job. Martyr Mimi won’t allow him to do such a thing. She runs away to the streets of Paris where he can’t find her. Meanwhile, Rodolphe writes a masterpiece that make him a great success in the theater world. By the time Mimi comes back to him, she’s dying of consumption. The whole group gathers around her as she declares her love one last time and states that she is happy. The end.

Therefore, remember folks - suffer for your art and you too can be a genius who loses your girlfriend to tuberculous.

Devotion: Movies About Writing

First of all, understand that 1946 was NOT concerned with historical accuracy. This melodrama spent more time on building “woe is me” moments than it did researching the Bronte family. My boyfriend gave it the alternate title “Devotion or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tuberculosis”.

Second, I’m not really sure what induced me to watch this movie for the first time in years. I didn’t like it as a kid and I didn’t find much to recommend it now.

The story focuses on the idea of the 4 Bronte siblings in an artistic rivalry and, more heavily, on a made-up love triangle between Emily, Charlotte, and (spoiler alert) the man who in reality became Charlotte’s husband. One historically inaccurate piece is the Bronte Sisters being told by their aunt that with all of their worry about novels and poetry, they’ll never get husbands. At the time this story takes place, they would have been in their mid to late 20s Pssh! That’s old maid status in that time!

Devotion stars some of the greats at the time trying to earn some Oscars - Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland, and Sydney Greenstreet. I’d mention Paul Henreid, but he gets so over-the-top sometimes that this was NOT his best work. Just saying.

That’s not to say the film doesn’t show some merits of the Bronte’s as artists. The movie opens with a title card staying how 2 of 4 Bronte kids were geniuses - which I find as a big ole F*$@ YOU to Anne Bronte. Okay, I confess I’ve only read a little of her poetry, but I have been to her grave in Scarborough. I feel like they wouldn’t have given her a nice tombstone and an icon on the tourism map if she’d been a lousy writer. I also know that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is considered one of the first great feminist novels - which I know because my friend had to write a paper on it during university and she told me all about it during lunch over several days.

The movie also addresses some of the struggles for writers at that time, starting with the lack and expense of paper. Emily and Charlotte fight over wrapping paper at the start of the film because they both want to use it for writing something long that would use it all up. They also discuss the patronage needed in an artistic field if you want to eat on a regular basis or the need for thankless jobs like being a governess. However, the need for male pen names because of society’s problems with women writers at the time is glossed over.

Devotion wastes no time in reminding its audience that the only brother, Branwell Bronte was an alcoholic painter, depicting him as a bully to Anne, in need of Charlotte’s guardianship, and constantly under Emily’s criticism yet dependent on her. Luckily the movie leaves out some patriarchal theories that was actually the author of all of his sisters’ works (I’m looking at you fictional character played by Stephen Fry in Cold Comfort Farm!).

Cold Comfort Farm: Here’s Fry’s character Mybug asking Kate Beckinsale’s character Flora Post if she believes “women have souls”. Image property of BBC Films - don’t sue me. I’m an avid Doctor Who and PBS Masterpiece fan. You need me as much as I need you, BBC!

Devotion does cover where inspiration comes from for a writer, but it does this poorly and obvioulsy. Anne and Charlotte are both so disgusted by their employers as in their governess work, it is supposed to be the backdrop of Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey (which I own and might finally read after all of this). And a derelict house left abandoned on the moors gave Emily the idea for Wuthering Heights. All three of these ideas are credited by historians, by the way, but the movie makes it very obvious without any detail. I don’t feel like inspiration is always obvious, but sometimes worms it’s way in and we realize later where the idea came from.

Some things I do like in the film from a writing point-of-view includes the praise and fears of the siblings, but again this is handled in an over-the-top way. All 4 have a certain amount of jealously towards each other’s talents, which can happen even at the same time as loving someone else’s work and desperately wanting to succeed. But that want for mutual success is lost in the movie to the constant head turns and near swoons of despair.

The same goes for the need for critical analysis and praise of their work. Emily especially is shown as more secretive and protective of her writing. Anne is willing to just keep trying with a sort of blind optimism. Charlotte is the one who seeks the help of professionals that could get her published and defends her own work with logic. She’s the one overjoyed when famed novelist William Makepeace Thackeray gives them praise.

I don’t know if these are the actual personalities of the women, but this does cover three of the major personalities of many writers I know. I’m a little disappointed that my personality matches more of Emily Bronte’s reactions in the film. Wuthering Heights is not my favorite Bronte book. Jane Eyre is. Duh. But the thing is - the movie claims that this supposed love triangle was where the emotion within Wuthering Heights came from, proving that the screenwriters never read it. The point of Wuthering Heights is how toxic people can be and call it love not how 2 sisters should fall for the same boring dude.

Still, the part of this movie that bugs the crap out of me is the idea that the Bronte sisters could have never written of love and loss the way the did without experience that include a ridiculous unrequited love, a single man to be the object of 2 sisters’ affections, and the poorly filmed dream sequences of betrayal. In the end, Devotion reduces their lives to stereotypes and tragedy.

Poor Bronte’s.

Devotion: Arthur Kennedy as Branwell, Ida Lupino as Emily, Olivia de Havilland as Charlotte, and Nancy Coleman as Anne as the Bronte siblings playing on the Yorkshire Moors. Image property of Warner Bros. Don’t sue me please! All you’ll get is a collection of Funko pops and empty notebooks too pretty to write in.