-1MICHAEL (1924, aka MIKAEL, HEART’S DESIRE, CHAINED: THE

STORY OF THE THIRD SEX)

John A Walker (copyright 2009)

The character Eugène Michael after whom this celebrated black-and-white silent

film is named is a handsome young man who once had artistic ambitions but is now

the model and protégé of an older bachelor artist called Claude Zoret, played with

gloomy intensity by the Danish film director Benjamin Christensen.(1)

The latter treats Michael, played by the Austrian-born actor Walter Slezak, as his
son, gives him paintings and promises he will inherit his estate when he dies.

Although there is nothing sexually explicit about their relationship apart from a few

affectionate touches, many viewers have assumed it is a homosexual one.

Essentially, the plot concerns the vicissitudes of their relationship as the younger

man seeks to free himself from his obligations to the older man and to find romance

with a female, an impoverished Russian Princess or Countess called Lucia de

Zamikow, played by Nora Gregor.

The Princess insists that Zoret paints her portrait and he agrees despite normally

refusing to paint society portraits to order. Zoret finds it difficult to complete the

portrait, especially Lucia’s eyes, because he is not passionately committed to the

subject. Michael offers to help and manages to paint in the eyes effortlessly. (Seeing,

eyes and glances are repeatedly foregrounded and vision is equated with artistic
achievement.) Zoret remarks ‘only youth has the knack’. It appears he is losing his

talent as well the affection of his ‘son’. The painter and sitter share a meal together

and flirt, which makes Michael jealous. Michael then courts the Princess and assists

her financially by borrowing money in Zoret’s name, by selling one of his paintings

and by stealing some sketches made in Algeria that Zoret particularly prized as

‘beautiful memories’ of their time together. Michael spends more and more time

away from Zoret and then lies to him about where he has been.

As Zoret becomes increasingly infirm and lonely, he embarks on a last huge canvas -

a kind of self-portrait that distils his feelings - depicting a despairing old man lying

semi-naked on the ground beneath a stormy sky. Entitled The Vanquished, it recalls

Leonardo’s unfinished painting St Jerome praying in the Wilderness (c.1482, Rome

Musei Vaticani). After showing the painting to Michael, Zoret presents it to the

public at a ceremony held at his house but this time the canvas is the centrepiece of a
triptych. Flanking The Vanquished are paintings of a nude man and a nude woman

(Michael and the Princess?). A state official honours the artist and dubs him ‘The

painter of suffering’. Zoret remains loyal to his unfaithful and ungrateful protégé

even on his deathbed - which Michael fails to attend - and declares he can die

content because he has seen ‘a true love’. In effect, he dies of a broken heart.

There is a subplot concerning a woman called Alice Adelsskjold, played by Grete

Mosheim, and her husband and her lover, a Duke, which ends in a duel in which the

Duke is killed. This subplot may appear unnecessary but is a parallel story of

infidelity and betrayal, this time heterosexual, that ends tragically.

Zoret, who is generally referred to as ‘The Master’, lives in a spacious mansion

luxuriously but oppressively furnished with plants, indoor fountains, ornaments,

large sculptures and paintings, and is waited on by servants wearing knee breeches;

hence, it is clear he is a commercially successful artist. It seems the props were

expensive items borrowed from antique dealers. The paintings Zoret specialises in

are large-scale, academic-style, historical and mythological canvases plus some

portraits. One canvas entitled The Victor depicts a standing youth armed with a bow

who is naked except for a branch masking his genitals. (This figure somewhat

resembles the Apollo Belvedere.) Michael is embarrassed when the Princess

recognises him as the model. Another painting they examine shows a naked couple -

male and female - passionately embracing and kissing. (It resembles Adolphe-

William Bouguereau’s 1889 painting Amor and Psyche.) This image prefigures their

love affair. Later, Zoret plans a picture with a Roman subject: Caesar betrayed and

murdered by his adopted son Brutus (or Zoret betrayed by Michael?).

 Zoret is no modernist; his art, home and lifestyle resembles that of a late

nineteenth century academician even though there is a reference to Charlie Chaplin

at one point. (In England, three real artists equivalent to Zoret were Sir Lawrence

Alma-Tadema, Frederic Lord Leighton and G.F. Watts.) The film is quite

claustrophobic because most of it takes place inside Zoret’s opulent mansion. The

noted German architect Hugo Häring (1882-1958) was the costume and set designer

even though he was a modernist and advocate of the organic tradition of

architecture. Many scenes look as if they are taking place on a stage in a theatre

because the actors move about while a static camera records them. In fact, the

original Danish programme for the film described it as ‘a stage play in six acts’ and

a number of German reviewers characterised it as a Kammerspiel, that is, a chamber

drama involving a few characters.

Sometimes there are glimpses of the world outside Zoret’s lair: a visiting art dealer

tells him the market for his work is ‘lukewarm’; a more regular visitor is a

journalist called Charles Switt, played by Robert Garrison, who is a devoted friend

of the artist. Switt brings exhibition reviews one of which criticises Zoret’s portrait

of the Princess and says only the eyes are well rendered and look as if they were

painted by another hand! The film tells us nothing about Zoret’s training or his

aesthetic philosophy or about any of his rivals or colleagues.

The screenplay was based on a novel entitled Mikaël by the Danish journalist,

theatre director and novelist Herman Bang (1857-1912) first published in 1904.

Bang’s writing was noted for its naturalistic or impressionistic style influenced by

French writers such as Zola. He lived many years abroad because in Denmark he
was judged immoral, decadent and homosexual. After his death, a factual essay on

homosexuality - ‘Thoughts on the Problem of Sexuality’ (1922) - he had written

with his German doctor Max Wasbutzki was published. Bang’s writings were

appreciated in Germany and he lived there for a time. He also lived and worked in

France and some scholars believe that Bang’s model for Zoret was Claude Monet

and/or Auguste Rodin even though the artist in the film does not resemble them.

However, the publicity material for the film suggested that Zoret was a French

master and its director had in mind Rodin’s fame and home if not his sculpture.

Ufa, the German government’s film company, commissioned the film and Erich

Pommer produced it. Although the film was shot in Berlin, its director - Carl

Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968) - was Danish. Dreyer knew Bang because he had visited

him in Germany shortly before the writer died. Dreyer’s films are noted for their

exploration of human psychology and emotions such as love and suffering. He

sought to convey character and feelings by close-ups of facial expressions (he also

employed iris effects to concentrate attention) and by the interplay of looks between

actors, and by means of settings and possessions. When he directed Michael, Dreyer

had been involved in film production for a number of years and in a 1965 interview,

he acknowledged that painters such as James Abbott McNeil Whistler (1834-1903)

and Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) had inspired the composition of his early

films. Hammershøi was Danish and noted for austere tonal interiors with female

figures seen from the back, influenced by Vermeer.

Dreyer is now regarded as a distinguished and even visionary film director and

this evaluation has been recognised by the art world as well as the film world. For
example, at least three art institutions have paid homage to him: in 1967, the

Louisiana Museum for Moderne Kunst, Humlebaek in Denmark gave him an

exhibition and, in 1988, the Museum of Modern Art in New York did likewise; and

in 1999, the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre mounted an exhibition entitled

Close-Ups: Contemporary Art and Carl Th. Dreyer. The latter examined the way in

which a number of twentieth century artists working with video, film, installation

and photography portray human emotion in a manner comparable to Dreyer via his

use of the cinematic close-up.

In the 1920s, Michael was well received in Germany but not in the United States. It

is now generally considered a masterpiece of silent cinema and is worth viewing for

its fine acting, lighting, camerawork and direction even though it is rather slow and

melancholy. From the point of view of its representation of art and artists, and the

artist-model relationship, its main relevance is way paintings are presented as

embodiments of emotions and memories, and the subtle and not so subtle way in

which props such as nude paintings and nude marble statuettes mediate erotic

relationships between the characters. Zoret’s kitsch canvases will not convince

contemporary viewers, however, that he was a master worthy of the fame, honours

and money bestowed on him.

Actually, Dreyer’s film was not the first to be inspired by Bang’s novel because in

1916 the Finnish-born director Mauritz Stiller (1883-1928) made, in Sweden, a silent

melodrama entitled Vingarne (The Wings), which was then lost for many years. It is

now considered the first feature film to explore a homoerotic theme. In this instance,

Egil Eide played Zoret (as a sculptor) and Lars Hanson played Michael.
According to Colin de la Motte-Sherman, a work of art plays ‘a highly symbolic role

in both novel and film. In the novel, it was Victory, which may be a reference to a

well-known sculpture The Victory at Marathon [or The Messenger from Marathon,

1884, by the German sculptor Max Kruse, 1854-1942, which depicts a naked male

runner reporting a victory], countless copies of which were to be found not least in

'gay' homes. It may however, be a reference to Michelangelo’s sculpture [The

Genius of Victory, marble, 1532-34, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence], which depicts the

victory of a younger man over an older one. In the film, however, the work of art is

Carl Milles’ The Wings, which now stands near the entrance to the National

Museum of Art in Stockholm.’ (2)

Milles (1875-1955) was a Swedish sculptor who trained with Rodin and who

moved to the United States in the 1930s. The Wings (1908) depicts in bronze a naked

male youth kneeling on a rock with a huge eagle above him.

(Photo tekkbabe flickr.com)

The subject derives from a Greek myth: the God Zeus falls in love with the

handsome human boy Ganymede and becomes an eagle in order to carry Ganymede

off to Mount Olympus. In the first scene of the film, Zoret stands on a hill imitating

an eagle while gazing down at Michael. However, before that was a prologue

showing the director and cinematographer in a garden where they encounter a

sensuous sculpture of Icarus. It has been suggested that the Icarus motif was

intended to deceive the censors as to the actual theme of the movie. Clearly, in both
films, works of art play a vital role.

(1) In 2004, a DVD double disc of Michael plus a 20-page booklet of commentaries

was issued by eurekavideo.co.uk in their ‘Masters of Cinema’ series. The discs

contain the European and the American versions of the film, an audio commentary

by the Dreyer scholar Casper Tyberg, and an audio interview with Dreyer.

(2) Colin de la Motte-Sherman, ‘Whose Wings?’

<http://lycos.de/eratonet/en/vingarne.htm?>

#####################################################################