Conrad Veidt, androgyny, glamour and gender in cinema

[snowgrouse]

I'm still trying to pinpoint what it is that makes Conrad Veidt so attractive. I keep thinking of the various individual parts of what make up his charisma--those magnetic eyes, those elegant hands, his imposing tall and slim stature, the smoothness of his voice once he'd become fluent in English--and yet, even saying "it's all of these things in

Comments

[jhall1]

That is a beautiful piece of writing.

...the spell he cast with that feline grace, that magnetic gaze, that elegance of his.

At its best, that could describe your prose.

[snowgrouse]

I don't know whether to be flattered or irked that that bit of praise was somewhat qualified;) Although, yes, it would make sense that one would write Romantic prose when one's tastes lean towards the sort. What fascinates me about Veidt and a lot of pre-WWII cinema is that they represented the last breaths of true Romanticism. As overblown and as sentimental and as melodramatic as it was as a movement, I think it's something people will keep coming back to again and again, as long as they keep on feeling intense emotions.

And now I must go and hone my current story some more. Even if the prose can never be good enough...

[snowgrouse]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! (Also hnnng at your icon.) What you say about Torsten is exactly right. Because when he comes in and demands Anna to murder for him, he does not expect to be denied. And he shouldn't be. Because he's Torsten Barring. And they couldn't have chosen an actor more perfect for the part, because that's at the core of Connie's sexual charm. It's fucking unstoppable, and that's why he is actually frightening at times. He seems to have been like that in real life, such a larger-than-life personality. Some of that comes through in Powell's reminiscences, here. What really comes across from Connie, to me, is the sheer amount of *power* and energy that man had. At the risk of repeating myself, I find it really interesting how in the silents, he was tortured by it and shaking with it; and in the sounds, he had finally started to channel that power and used it to ensnare others. And that seems, to me, to explain why he was such an amazing presence on screen, so exuberant, so strong in real life, and it would also go a long

[snowgrouse]

Yeah, it's kind of sad that Allen really didn't seem to realise how offensive he was being, too. What if Connie had come up to him, towering over him in a sparkly evening dress and puffing on a fag, saying "yes, I had sex with men and women, so what?" And really, seriously, if you know anything about Berlin in those days, it would've been way more shocking if he had refrained from the indulgences. You can't take it out of context, even all the awful stuff about the child prostitution that was rife at the time and everything. Just like you can't take the Satyricon or Abu Nuwas's poems out of context even if both involve similar stuff (where gender and age and even consent are non-issues