Hitchcoc The great profile shows it off as the mesmerizing Svengali, who manages to enchant a young woman, realize her singing talents, and push her to excellence. Of course, there is the overriding theme of sexual manipulation. Trilby is beautiful (Great name, by the way. One of my neighbors had a canary with that name. Now I know where it came from). Naturally, this guy has to have an adversary, one who will spoil his plans by his very presence. That is Bobbee. The striking black and white cinematography with Barrymore at his absolute best is what makes this movie cook.

secondtake Svengali (1931)"Svengali" is a strange strange film, half nightmare, half plain old German Expressionism thrown into an inventive Warner Bros. set. It's amazing at its best, and the set design and photography both got Oscar nominations. The plot that gets built up of increasingly new elements, comic outsiders (Englishmen who believe in bathing every day) and a overtly beautiful blonde model and her apparent love match (they have just met), until the crux of it clarifies--the title character is a madman who can hypnotize people at will.John Barrymore in his archly long, dramatic is a creep, appropriately. When he hypnotizes, his eyes turn to these large glowing white orbs. He has fallen in love with a model and starts to control her, which her fiancé only gradually realizes. Other people just find Svengali a quirky artistic type, and see no harm in him at first.The setting is odd--clearly shot on a studio lot rather than a real Parisian artists colony, it nonetheless is meant to be some kind of rambling set of rooms that are more or less attached, or near each other. For the whole first half, the main characters never really leave the irregular, sometimes offkilter chambers, which look like there were adapted from "Caligari" itself. The light and the framing, and the interesting very shallow depth of field, combine to make a mysterious and really beautiful effect. The Barrymores, as a group, are amazing, but their theatricality, especially John's, doesn't always transfer well to modern movies. In a way, it's this leading man who cuts into the disarming surrealism and horror overall, simply because he's so campy. This might be just a matter of changing tastes, because his effect reminds me rather a lot of Bela Lugosi in "Dracula" which was released the same year (a few months earlier). The story of Dracula is more archetypal and wonderful for the ages, but in my view (I've seen both movies recently) this is much better filmed. The photography, lighting, and blocking (the way the actors move) are more fluid and involved. Archie Mayo, the director, has a handful of completely wonderful films to his up and down career (click on his name to see). As much as this one has some obvious and forced sections, and a plot that doesn't quite involve the viewer as you would hope, it's a really well made, well constructed movie. For 1931 it's sometimes a pure wonder.

Witchfinder General 666 A classic (not completely faithful) adaptation of George de Maurier's famous 1890s novel "Trilby", "Svengali" of 1931 is an interesting and fantastically shot film that should not be approached with the wrong expectations. An avid fan of Classic Horror cinema, I expected this film to be exactly that, but found it to be regrettably low on the Horror part. "Svengali" was directed by the famous Archie Mayo, who is certainly best known of his Slapstick Comedies, and while this film is a Drama with some Horror elements, the film is nonetheless full of sudden outbursts of Slapstick. The set-pieces are great and the cinematography is astonishing for the time, including one sequence with a camera movement that must have been revolutionary in 1931. John Barrymore was doubtlessly one of the most outstanding actors of the classic era of film, and his performance carries the film. Furthermore, the innocent beauty of the 18-year-old Marian Marsh is overwhelming.Svengali (Barrymore), an ingenious but ruthless musician and hypnotist hypnotizes the beautiful young model Tribly (Marsh) into becoming a singer, abandoning her fiancé and marrying Svengali. While his hypnotic powers control her singing voice, they can not force her to love him...The film's greatest aspects are the fantastic cinematography, Barrymore and Marsh. Personally, I found the plot to be needlessly stretched at times. The humorous outbursts may be enjoyed by fans of classic slapstick cinema, but in a sentimental sense rather than for the actual humor's sake. Two Scottish characters are obviously only there for providing gags. There are a few genuinely eerie moments, most of them focusing on Svengali when he uses his hypnotic powers. While Svengali is villainous (he causes a woman to commit suicide in the beginning), he doesn't really act villainous enough for most of the time to be scary. At some points in the film, he seems to be a comic figure, which effectively reduces his creepiness. Besides Barrymore and Marsh, the performances aren't that good. This is not to say that "Svengali" isn't a good movie. It is. Before seeing it, one should be aware however, that one is about to watch a partly slow-moving drama rather than a Horror film. Barrymore is still great, and the young Marian Marsh is unearthly beautiful.Overall "Svengali" is recommended to my fellow fans of the classic era of film, though not one of the essentials in my opinion. For total perfection in a Classic Horror film about mind-control, I highly recommend Victor Halperlin's masterpiece "White Zombie" of 1932 starring the great Bela Lugosi in his greatest and creepiest role.

JoeKarlosi Svengali (John Barrymore) is an eccentric mystical music teacher/pianist who makes his daily bread giving singing lessons to aspiring students in Paris. His long hair, forked beard, and piercing eyes make the unusual instructor a prime target of ridicule among the local townsfolk. One day a stunning and earthy young model named Trilby (Marian Marsh, perfectly cast and the living picture of the girl you heard about in the song "You're Sixteen") makes her way into the life of Billee (Bramwell Fletcher from the 1932 MUMMY), and wins his devotion. But like all the red-blooded men in this tale, the sly Svengali takes a liking to her himself, and hypnotizes the girl into following him. It's always exciting to discover an old classic from Hollywood's Golden Age that still captivates. SVENGALI is only borderline horror at best, yet it remains a true gem, an absorbing achievement in every way: from the powerful lead performance of Barrymore, to the delicious beauty of 16 year-old Marian Marsh, to the bizarre set designs of Anton Grot, to the wonderful direction by Archie Mayo. This is when movies were movies. *** out of ****