Trade Publication Article

The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama

Lennon, Elaine

2020

Overview

According to Gene Tierney, Stahl was “for bringing out the best in an actress”. In Her Code of Honor (1919), we see tropes that would become familiar from a study of Stahl’s output – characteristic staging, mother-daughter doubling, a wife and mistress meeting, secrets, revelations and questions of identity and parentage (46), with co-editor Charles Barr identifying what would become a standard element of Stahl’s films, “the power of the encompassing image” (47), an idea that cuts through the historicising to create the crux of the director’s signature. In the second version of the film (Husband and Wives # 2), Barr describes in his essay (with the helpful inclusion of stills) what are by now standardised images in Stahl’s body of work and his formal visual strategy, a type which would later be attributed to William Wyler’s preference for deep staging with cinematographer Gregg Toland: The camera never once moves, the combination of deep/wide composition with judicious editing makes the footage that follows into a small masterclass of expressive staging (101) . The skilled integration of these two levels of cross-cutting makes this final section – almost devoid of intertitles – a fine demonstration of Stahl’s methods, and altogether a classic illustration of the power of the mature silent medium (104).

• Publisher: Donald Totaro
• Subject: Careers / Essays / German literature / Mayer, Louis B / Motion picture directors & producers / Rhetorical figures / Screenwriters / Wives / Women / Zweig, Stefan (1881-1942)