Anna Boleyn (1920)

I’ve been watching lots of early Ernst Lubitsch silent movies. At this stage of his career the man was a crazed visionary genius. You just never knew what he’d come up with next but you know it would be weird and exciting. Which may be why I was disappointed by Anna Boleyn (1920). I wasn’t prepared for a very conventional historical melodrama.

It starts of course with Henry VIII (Emil Jannings) becoming obsessed with his queen’s new lady-in-waiting Anne Boleyn (Henny Porten). The king is also concerned that his queen, Catherine of Aragon, has only given him a daughter and is clearly not going to have any more children. Henry feels that he absolutely must have a male heir. From the point of view of the future stability of his kingdom he is quite justified in fearing that a female heir might not be strong enough to hold on to her crown. So Henry is motivated both by lust and by reasons of state and the movie succeeds in making that clear.

English church leaders are willing to grant Henry an annulment but this is blocked by the Pope, which leads Henry to declare himself head of the Church of England. Now he can free himself of Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne. The movie takes no interest in the details of these church and political dramas - the focus is on the human dramas.

Anne already has a young man with whom she is in love. That will lead to problems. Anne produces an heir but it’s a girl. Queen Anne is accused of adultery and we all know what happened to her next.

Of course such a familiar story can only be made interesting if we get a sense of the personal motivations of these people. This movie does make some attempt to do this, and to be a character-driven historical film.

Jane Seymour is definitely cast as the villainess in this movie. She’s a ruthless schemer. She is motivated by pure ambition and has no scruples.

We never really get a totally clear sense of the King’s motivations. Obviously he’s motivated partly by reasons of state. And partly by lust. As to whether he feels any genuine love for Anne, we have to be pretty sceptical. It’s not easy to make Henry VIII a sympathetic character and this movie makes no real attempt to do so.

Anne Boleyn is of course the primary focus and she has at least some complexity. She comes across as a woman swept along by events. She knows she should resist the King’s advances (she’s in love with another man) but lacks the strength of character to do so. While the movie suggests that she is not actually unfaithful to the King she is somewhat indiscreet, and a queen cannot afford to be indiscreet. A queen must be above suspicion. She really has no idea how vulnerable a queen is to malicious accusations, or how dangerous her position could become.

Of course no-one could really have predicted Anne’s fate. Henry was now head of the Church of England. He could have divorced her for adultery. In reality Anne was under suspicion of treason, which would certainly have given the King grounds to have her executed (assuming there was any validity to the charge). The movie makes no mention of this, which is interesting. This may have been deliberate. The movie seems to intend to portray Henry as a man so corrupted by power that he will have a woman executed purely out of personal spite.

It’s also clear that the movie is intent on portraying Anne as a tragic victim (which she may or may not have been in reality). Whether the Anne Boleyn of the movie actually loves the King remains uncertain, perhaps because her feelings really are conflicted. Initially she is both horrified and flattered (mostly horrified) by his attentions but she is quite attracted by the idea of becoming queen.

I’m not much of an Emil Jannings fan but he’s perfectly cast here. One major problem is Henny Porten’s lifeless performance as Anne. No matter how hard the movie tries to make her the sympathetic heroine it’s hard to care about such a dull character. She is totally overshadowed by Aud Egede-Nissen as Jane Seymour - Jane is a bad bad girl but she’s lively and much more fun to watch.

It’s by no means a bad movie and my disappointment with it is mainly due to my hopes that we would see more of the wild imagination and visual splendour of Lubitsch’s other movies of this period. Anna Boleyn doesn’t really feel to me like a Lubitsch film. There’s no trace of the famed Lubitsch Touch.

Overall I thought Anna Boleyn fell a bit flat. It’s a by-the-numbers historical tragic romance epic and it just lacks the necessary vital spark.

This is included in several Lubitsch in Berlin boxed sets (both DVD and Blu-Ray). They’re worth buying because the other early Lubitsch movies are so fabulous. If you’re buying the boxed set anyway give Anna Boleyn a look by all means but set your expectations fairly low.

I’ve reviewed some of Lubitch’s wild crazy early movies (all of which are better than this one) - The Doll (Die Puppe, 1919), The Wildcat (1921) and Sumurun (1920).