A charming sociopath, Karl wastes no time in blackmailing Eloise over her extramarital affairs, seducing Sophie the middle-aged cook (strictly to get his hands on her lifesavings), and eventually making love to Anna the maid while her husband Albert the butler is away.
Before long, the crafty chauffeur has turned husband against wife, chef against chef, butler against butler, and Baron and Baroness against everybody else. And Karl? He's ready to move on to the next family to disrupt, rob, and destroy. And, as usual, with a positive reference in hand, just to keep his mouth shut. This guy is really good at his job,
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| There goes the bride. |
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| If Sophie the cook believes this guy loves her, she deserves what's coming to her. |
And you wind up feeling contemptuous of these saps for falling for his bullshit to begin with. He even manipulates the audience! So get off your high horse and admit you wish you had half this guy's nerve.
As good as the supporting cast is, all credit for Downstairs' success goes to John Gilbert, who plays Karl as if he knew the guy personally. (He wrote the scenario, too, so maybe he didn't have to look beyond the mirror.) Gilbert is remembered now, if at all, by the false legend that his movie career was ruined by talkies because of his squeaky voice.
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| Laugh it up while you can, Albert. Your bride's going to find out what a real man is capable of. |
Karl knows how to get what he wants from everybody. He regales women with (false) tales of his childhood in order to bring out their maternal aide and shares jolly jokes over steins of beer with Albert the butler so the poor guy doesn't realize he's being cuckolded.
And as for messing with the Baroness, well, there's nothing wrong with Karl lifting her jewelry, and gifting it to the maid -- as long as he doesn't tell the Baron about her dalliances. Anyone who thinks that the concept of the "anti-hero" was invented in the 1950s needs to give Downstairs a spin.
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| "The Gilbert of Old" and "amazing comeback" were code for "You'll like him this time, honest!" |
The first five minutes of Downstairs disabuse you of such nonsense. Possessing an engaging charisma, his is one of the best, most natural performances of any pre-code picture. Unfortunately, a tense relationship with studio head Louis B. Mayer, coupled with audiences' changing tastes and his severe alcoholism -- Gilbert is only 35 in Downstairs, but you'd never know it -- doomed him.
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| And he's not even supposed to be drunk in this scene. |
His most arresting performances, in fact, happen in movies when he's supposed to be drunk. Unlike other actors, Gilbert underplays those scenes to such perfection -- the slight swaying, trying to focus his eyes, the way he tries not to sound inebriated -- that make you unsure if he's acting or really is drunk. Gilbert died at 37, so it's pretty easy to figure out.
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| In addition to booze, maybe he should have laid off the smokes, too. |
It's ironic, then, that some of Gilbert's silent movies, when he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, might be considered old-
fashioned now, while his less successful talkies show an actor with an utterly contemporary style whose career should have flourished for decades. Downstairs could be remade today but it's doubtful any current 35 year-old actor could best John Gilbert's performance.
A couple of words about the other Downstairs actors. If you close your eyes, you'd swear Albert the butler was played by Bela Lugosi instead of Paul Lukas. And then when you open your eyes, there are times when Virginia Bruce (Anna the maid) looks just like Lisa Kudrow of Friends. But John Gilbert is definitely the real thing.
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