La Bohème (MGM, 1926)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

After Love Letters, TCM showed a much better movie: La Bohème, a 1926 silent movie based on Henri Murger’s 1851 novel, which in the film’s credits is called Life in the Latin Quarter but its original French title was Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (“Scenes of Bohemian Life”). Murger started writing the book in 1846 and it was published piecemeal in French newspapers, notably Le Corsaire, between 1846 and 1849 before Murger collected his stories as a novel and published them in 1851. The book is best known today as the basis for Giacomo Puccini’s 1896 opera La Bohème, but though TCM hosts Ben Mankiewicz and Jacqueline Stewart both claimed the film was based on Puccini’s opera (for which Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa wrote the libretto; in opera, librettists are to composers what screenwriters are to directors in movies), it really wasn’t. In 1897 Ruggiero Leoncavallo had written his own La Bohème opera, with Leoncavallo writing his own libretto (as he had for his one major hit, Pagliacci), but his was a flop while Puccini’s was a smash success. The credited screenwriter, Fred De Gresac, took his version from Murger rather than Illica and Giacosa, though I was surprised he didn’t include the most famous scene from Murger that isn’t in the Puccini opera: finally evicted by their landlord, Benôit (Karl Dane in the movie) on the eve of a major party, the Bohemians go through with their party anyway but hold it outdoors in their building’s courtyard, where Benôit has dumped all their stuff. (Leoncavallo included that in his Bohème opera; Illica and Giacosa wrote it for their libretto but Puccini decided not to use it.)

The story should be familiar to Puccini buffs, but in case you aren’t one, here goes: four starving, struggling Bohemian artists – journalist and playwright Rodolphe (John Gilbert), painter Marcel (Gino Corrado), musician Schaunard (George Hassell) and hanger-on Colline (Edward Everett Horton – who would have guessed that out of all the cast members he would have the most enduring career when sound came in?) – are sharing a flat in Paris’s Latin Quarter. They have a monumental struggle on the first of every month to come up with the rent, though so far they’ve done it by a series of stratagems, most recently Rodolphe doing a quick draft of an article on dogs and cats for his irascible editor (Agostino Borato) and lengthening the piece on the spot when the editor says it’s too short. Also living in the neighborhood, in a building across the courtyard, is Mimì (Lillian Gish), a seamstress who makes her living working at home. Mimì and Rodolphe meet by chance and are immediately smitten with each other even though Mimì has another, wealthier suitor, Vicomte Paul (Roy D’Arcy). Paul has placed a big order with Mimì for frilly lace garments he can wear at upper-class functions, and he’s made it clear that Mimì’s body is part of the deal. Mimì has no intention of yielding to Paul’s slimy advances but the two of them get physically close enough – even though all Mimì is doing is presenting Paul with the clothes she’s made for him – that Rodolphe, looking through Mimì’s window, sees them and gets entirely the wrong impression. Eventually they get back together and Rodolphe and Mimì go on a picnic (beautifully photographed by Henri Sartov in a way that evokes French pastoral painting of the 19th century just before the advent of Impressionism), but disaster strikes when Rodolphe’s editor, pissed off at him for missing his deadline by four weeks, fires him.

He doesn’t tell Rodolphe; he tells Mimì instead when she’s there to drop off the piece, and Mimì decides not to tell Rodolphe because he’s busy writing a play inspired by her and she doesn’t want to take his attention away from it. So she redoubles her efforts as a seamstress and works herself to the bone, keeping the lights on in her apartment so she can literally work day and night. (The film takes place in 1830 – we know that because in two different scenes we see wall calendars – and back then she would have still been working by candlelight.) Meanwhile Marcel’s girlfriend Musette (Renée Adorée) is dating rich men on the side and getting spectacular outfits from them which she shares with Mimì. Unfortunately, Mimì’s workload has aggravated her tuberculosis; she’s taken a job at a clothing factory but becomes too weak to handle the big bolts of cloth involved, and ultimately she’s let go from her job. She retreats to her little apartment, staggering home and barely making it, and in the end she dies quietly and alone while the rest of the Bohemians are celebrating the success of Rodolphe’s play – which got put on thanks to the promotion of Vicomte Paul and his “friends in high places.” La Bohème was Lillian Gish’s first MGM film after years of working for pioneering director D. W. Griffith and playing the delicate, winsome “good girls” in The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1921). Then she retreated to Europe and worked there for two years before returning to the U.S. Gish sought a contract at a major studio and finally signed with MGM after production chief Irving Thalberg gave her a deal that included everything she wanted. She could choose her own stories and had approval of her director and co-stars.

Having worked in Europe for two years and therefore not being familiar with the current Hollywood talent, she asked Thalberg for advice; Thalberg showed her two reels of MGM’s latest production, The Big Parade – a love story set against the backdrop of World War I (or “The Great War,” as it was usually called before there was a World War II) – and Gish immediately demanded that she make La Bohème with The Big Parade’s director, King Vidor, and stars John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Gish also laid down the law that she didn’t want her and Gilbert actually to be shown kissing on screen. She thought their love would be more powerfully shown if it were understated and didn’t involve visible physical affection. Unfortunately, preview audiences were audibly disappointed when the film didn’t contain any of the heavy-breathing kissing scenes for which John Gilbert was famous, and so the film was put back into production so scenes of Gilbert almost slobbering over Gish could be added. Frankly, I think Lillian Gish was right and MGM and the preview audiences were wrong – and I suspect the additional scenes were directed by someone other than King Vidor (as a fill-in director, George Hill, had shot scenes for The Big Parade depicting the actual war). In his scenes for both The Big Parade and La Bohème Vidor had got a remarkable degree of subtlety from Gilbert, whereas he’s almost totally unrestrained in the La Bohème retakes and one wants to put a leash on him.

Nonetheless, despite those rather tacky love scenes, La Bohème is a quite remarkable movie. Gish literally starved herself for three days before shooting her death scene, wanting to look as emaciated as possible on camera. The film is quite haunting and benefits from Vidor’s quiet direction and excellent Paris atmosphere – kudos to art directors Cedric Gibbons and A. Arnold Gillespie for remembering that a film set in France should have road signs and other public postings in French (though an imdb.com “Goofs” contributor noticed one mistake: the sign outside Mimì’s front door says “Melle.” instead of “Mlle.,” the correct French abbreviation for “Mademoiselle”) – as well as the finely honed acting of Gish and the supporting characters. (John Gilbert is a special case, for both good and ill.) Unfortunately, TCM chose to show it with an odd musical accompaniment, mostly featuring solo piano with an occasional violin part – and the bits with the violin were the most appropriate because they’re the only ones that drew on Puccini’s music for this story. The lowest point in the problematic accompaniment was a ragtime theme that was played under one of the sequences of Lillian Gish slinking home to die of TB – but La Bohème is a strong enough work of art it survived even the tacky playing of the unnamed pianist and the wrong-headed nature of much of the score.