Two Carl Theodor Dreyer silent films

MICHAEL (aka CHAINED--1924) is about an older artist (Benjamin Christensen) and his apparently platonic crush on Michael, his young model (Walter Slezak), whom he treats like a son. The boy languishes about the house, more or less happy to be the center of attention in the household until he falls for a down-on-her-luck countess who is having the artist paint her portrait. Slezak begins stealing things from the artist, including valuable artwork, to give the countess some money. It also turns out that Slezak has a bit of artistic talent himself, as only he is able to complete the countess' picture by painting her eyes, which supposedly suggests something about real love. In the end, the boy deserts Christensen and the artist pines for him for a while. On his deathbed, Christensen claims that he has known a "great love." If he means the boy, then he is as foolish as the dying Aschenbach in Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice." However, he might mean the boy's love for the countess, in which case I still think he's foolish, for I see little evidence that Slezak is capable of "great love" for anyone. But I'll admit I found the movie difficult to follow in places, mostly the long stretches in the middle where nothing much seemed to be happening, and I might have missed something. Slezak, familiar later in his Hollywood sound days for playing chubby villains or comic relief parts, is sleek and handsome as Michael. Christensen, mostly known for directing and appearing as the Devil in the silent movie HAXAN, is good as the artist. [TCM]

LEAVES FROM SATAN'S BOOK (1921) was directly inspired by Griffith's INTOLERANCE and tells four stories about the Devil's involvement in human affairs. The prologue states that Satan's punishment is to be forced to tempt humans to evil. For every person Satan is able to claim, God adds 100 years to Satan's exile, but for every person who resists, God commutes 1000 years. That's a twist on the Lucifer story that I'd never heard. The first story has Satan present during the events that lead to Christ's crucifixion; in human form, he is one of the high priests who argues for Christ's capture and he also tempts Judas into betrayal. In the next story, set during the Spanish Inquisition, a monk falls in love with a female student and Satan, as the Chief Inquisitor, tempts the monk into betraying the girl's father (who does horoscopes) and raping the daughter. The French Revolution is the setting for the third episode in which the devil takes the form of a Jacobin who tempts a servant to betray his royal family. The last, and the hardest one for me to follow, is set in 1918 during a war in Finland and also involves personal and political betrayal, with the devil as a monk urging a woman to betray her partisans; here, the human finally resists Satan's lure. Dreyer uses lots of iris-ins and iris-outs, and some tableau-type staging, but too much of the action of the narratives takes place off-screen or is told to us in the title cards, so this falls well short of the Griffith film. The print I saw on Turner Classic was tinted blue for night scenes, and during the third story, a shot of the guillotine is effectively tinted red. Helge Nissen is very good as all four Satanic incarnations. [TCM]