<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/664/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/556/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/600/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/664/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/700/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/4112/3068/800/0/75/0/86e672d_1693295992146-regeneration-raoul-walsh-1915-o-diaphana-distribution.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Anna Q. Nilsson and William Sheer in Raoul Walsh's " regeneration"="" (1915)."="" width="100%" height="auto">
Paris' Cinémathèque Française is showing Raoul Walsh in 80 films, in a varied palette ranging from exultation to fury, from charm to incongruity. Among the holy trinity of Hollywood classicism (alongside John Ford and Howard Hawks), the role of son suits him perfectly as a way of being in history, in the flesh, in passion. The struggle, in a word, on the terrain of sin.
Brilliant in a thousand genres (Western, thriller, film noir, musical comedy, melodrama, etc.) and burning with energy renewed as soon as it is consumed, Walsh's career spans 93 years and straddles two centuries (1887-1980), including 50 years of creation (1914-1964) with over 100 films made, between silent movies and talkies.
This makes it all the more difficult to define the shape of Walsh's work. The most reliable compass is the one that points to his taste for frenetic action, sometimes bordering on delirium: action is the filmmaker's only moral. The life that flows from the screen is impetuous and chaotic, wildly adventurous, sensual, impulsive, and "over-the-top" − and for this very reason, is often tragic.
It's no coincidence that one of his most memorable roles as a young actor was in David Griffith's Birth of a Nation as John Wilkes Booth, who gunned down President Lincoln in a theater. This is what moviegoers love about Walsh: his ferocious, vital confrontation with young America's savagery.
The same year, in 1915, Walsh directed Regeneration, the first gangster film in the history of cinema. Filmed in the Bowery district, the cruelty of New York's underworld is expressed through a blend of documentary realism, social chronicle and lyrical vision. In The Thief of Baghdad, a grandiose phantasmagoria, Douglas Fairbanks, a petty thief, falls in love with the Caliph's wife. What Price Glory, set against the backdrop of the carnage of World War I, explores the sexual rivalry of two soldiers in love with a French innkeeper's daughter. In Klondike Annie, Mae West, a former kept woman disguised as a Christian missionary coveted by a freighter captain, lets her guns do the talking. Gentleman Jim is an unrivaled boxing film in which Errol Flynn plays a hero who, through intelligence and elegance, achieves victory over the world.
<img class="lazy" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' viewBox='0 0 664 443'%3E%3C/svg%3E" data-srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/3704/2763/556/0/75/0/1b7a264_1693296238833-gentleman-jim-raoul-walsh-1942-o-warner-bros.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/3704/2763/600/0/75/0/1b7a264_1693296238833-gentleman-jim-raoul-walsh-1942-o-warner-bros.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/3704/2763/664/0/75/0/1b7a264_1693296238833-gentleman-jim-raoul-walsh-1942-o-warner-bros.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/3704/2763/700/0/75/0/1b7a264_1693296238833-gentleman-jim-raoul-walsh-1942-o-warner-bros.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/29/0/0/3704/2763/800/0/75/0/1b7a264_1693296238833-gentleman-jim-raoul-walsh-1942-o-warner-bros.jpg 800w" data-sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="Errol Flynn (left), in " gentleman="" jim"="" (1942),="" by="" raoul="" walsh."="" width="100%" height="auto">
High Sierra and Colorado Territory are two sides of the same poignant last-ditch tragedy: the first a whodunit with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino, the second a Western with the magnificent Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo. Who can say, even if the scales are tipped in favor of the Western, which is the more incredible of the two? If you need proof that Walsh can do more than just hold his own in the noir genre, you need only look at White Heat to be convinced: no one to date has matched James Cagney in the role of the psychopathic criminal.
You have 34.82% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.