The Conquering Power (1921): It's good to see such an excellent print of this powerful and totally absorbing film, now available on a Grapevine Video DVD. A very stylish director, Rex Ingram, was tolerated at Metro because, although his films cost the studio a lot of money, that money was handsomely recouped at the box office. Here, in this totally absorbing 90-minutes adaptation of Balzac's story, he uses a superb cast of players, led by his wife, the lovely Alice Terry, and including Rudolph Valentino (both fresh from their triumph in Ingram's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"), Ralph Lewis (unforgettable as our hero's miserly uncle), and bearded Eric Mayne (later to become a standard figure in the roster of Hollywood extras, but here playing a short but featured role as the hero's well-bred but impecunious dad). The stylishly noir photography was the work of John F. Seitz (who also photographed "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"), while the moody art direction was handled by Amos Myers. Who will ever forget the splendid party scenes at the beginning of the movie or the bare, sparsely furnished, noirish catacombs of Pere Grandet's miserly, meandering "mansion"?
Review of The Conquering Power
