MOVIE OF THE DAY: "I AM SUZANNE!" (1933)

The word "bizarre" is tossed around a lot regarding the movies on this blog, but this time I really mean it. For I am Suzanne! is the stuff that jaded movie fans thrive on: a love story -- make that rectangle -- involving a woman, two men, and marionettes. If there isn't already a porn movie with a similar theme, somebody should get on it. Literally.

To be sure, a story breakdown doesn't do I am Suzanne! justice. When the titular Suzanne's  dancing career is put on hold due to a broken leg, she joins a marionette troupe run by Tony Malatini. But after her injury heals, Suzanne's former manager, the Svengaliesque Adolphe Herring, emotionally blackmails her to return to the stage. 

Not much strange there, unless you think a beautiful, sexually desirable woman would work in a puppet theater without a gun pointed at her head. Of course, this is in Paris, where anything is possible. But if this is Paris, why does the chief puppeteer, Tony Malatini, have an Italian name and a New York accent that could cut through cement? Or the French-named Suzanne have a vaguely German accent? Or her manager, Adolphe Herring, have a German name while speaking with a crisp British accent? 

Blame it on the stars:  American-born Gene Raymond, German actress Lilian Harvey, and the British Leslie Banks. Thus, we have a veritable U.N. (United Nuttiness) trio running the show. And only Banks has the good sense not to take anything in I am Suzanne! seriously. 

And she has to do this twice on Wednesdays and
Saturdays.

But you know what I don't take seriously? The idea that Tony can't figure out why his crummy little puppet show draws five people a day while audiences are flocking to the live-action revue down the block, featuring music, a hundred dancers and singers, and, as a showstopper, Suzanne sliding backwards down a zipline. Oh sure, let's see the clown and donkey puppets go at it instead! 

But you have to give Tony a little credit, for at least realizing he needs to create puppets with real personality, using as example Greta Garbo, Charles Lindbergh... and Benito Mussolini. I guess Hitler wasn't famous enough then.

Tony's way of approaching a woman is equally head-scratching. When Adolphe denies him the chance to sketch Suzanne, Tony does what any guy would do: operate a marionette of himself through her skylight window without invitation before jumping into the bedroom from the roof. How cute! How dreamy! How stalking!

Had I been in the hospital watching this,
I'd have jumped off the roof.

Before going further, let me state clearly that I've always found marionettes terrifying, even before, at a young age, having a nightmare about Howdy Doody being horribly disfigured in a train wreck. I mean, do those clowns on the right do anything other than want to drive you from the room screaming?  Now picture them being used to entertain hospitalized children, as they are in I am Suzanne!, and you get an idea of what I'm talking about. And if you're still not convinced, you would be when the marionettes' heads fly off a moment later. This is not funny! 

Tony likes to watch.

Suzanne, however, doesn't share my pupaphobia, at least not right away. As her broken leg heals, and Tony teaches her the fine art of carving and manipulating grotesquely-carved dolls, she finds herself not only falling in love with him, but being jealous of her wooden "rivals" who will never age. When she finally realizes that she's going down Tony's rabbit hole of madness -- for his appears to be a classic case of agalmatophilia -- Suzanne grabs the closest revolver and shoots the marionette designed like her. 


Suzanne, you see, is tired of men pulling her strings. In fact, when either Adolphe or Tony are in the driver's seat in their relationships with her, both of them boast "I am Suzanne!" to anyone who wants to talk with her. Nobody ever said "I am Kevin!" other than me, and for good reason.

You think the kids in the hospital would laugh at this?

That puppetcide, by the way, leads to the movie's most celebrated (make that terrifying) sequence: Suzanne's nightmare of being put on trial by hundreds of marionettes for the murder of one of their own. No other 1930s movie outside of White Zombie and Island of Lost Souls packs so many frightening characters into one scene. 

It simply must be seen to be believed, and makes one yearn for Fox (or rather, Fox's new owner Disney) to release a restored print to replace the current "soft" gray-market copies circulating today (which, fortunately, retain the movie's original tints throughout).

The only other scene that rivals it is the intro to the literally hellish routine at the cabaret. A real actor, portraying a rather chubby Satan, boasts of killing children with smallpox before sending a series of sinners into the flames below. And what kind of people earned a ticket to Hell in 1933? A gangster, a mother-in-law, and a gay woman. But not Mussolini!

Adolphe pats Suzanne down
for any spare change.

Leslie Banks gives the most engaging performance in I am Suzanne!, simply because of his entertainingly oily manner. ("If you were my wife," he tells Suzanne's female choreographer, "I'd have the privilege of beating you!" Humor was much looser in 1933.) Even when he's double-dipping into Suzanne's pay envelope or "threatening" suicide if she doesn't return to him, Banks can't help play his part for laughs. Movie fans may recognize him from The Most Dangerous Game and Hitchcock's original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. But since those are classics, you can read my take on his obscure UK release, Transatlantic Tunnel here.

I'm not sure if this Lilian Harvey and Gene
Raymond or their marionettes.

Gene Raymond, on the other hand, is a kind of a proto-Van Johnson: an actor who got by on his good looks, non-threatening personality, and, if rumor is to be believed, an arranged marriage to Jeanette MacDonald. It's no wonder his most convincing moment is as a marionette in Suzanne's nightmare. 

And perhaps it's her character, but Lilian Harvey isn't much better, despite her long career -- although one has to wonder why she returned to Nazi Germany not long after filming I am Suzanne! Was filming the nightmare sequence here that upsetting?

No, the reason to watch I am Suzanne! isn't the human stars but the wooden ones. There's nothing else quite like it in 1930s moviedom -- a romantic musical drama that has become, for those who have seen it decades later, either an ethereal love story or the celluloid equivalent of a dose of mescaline. It should definitely be seen once -- but not by hospitalized children.

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Turn off the lights and watch I am Suzanne!'s nightmare scene: