I was attracted to the film because of the lead, Charles Farrell. I enjoyed watching him as the wonderful father in the 1950s Gale Storm sit-come "My Little Margie." Watching him here was a total delight. I loved how he humanized and made us feel sorry for a character whom was meant to be a perfect bastard. He is vain, dumb, arrogant and egotistical, but we instantly understand why Julie (Rose Hobart) falls in love with him. He is a loser and a dreamer, but Farrell plays him as a lost kid. The sets are terrific and it was wonderful to see a good print from 1930. I saw it on Youtube, where most of the pre-code films are barely watchable because of the bad transfers. This still has the striking cinematography by Chester Lyons that rivals "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Sadly Lyons died only six years (nine films) after this film at the age of 51.
This movie is a fairy tale, but of the pre-Disney, "Match Girl" Brothers Grimm kind. It is not nice, but shows the awful side of life for the poor. There is a hands motif throughout the film. People express themselves with their hands. Julie's friend Marie tells her about passionate love. She explains that it is when your lover holds your hand and swings it back and forth. Notice how the seductive Buzzard (Lee Tracy) uses his hands in his scenes. Notice too how his hand is held in the climatic scene by the man he attacks. Finally, it is the hand of Liliom slapping the face of his daughter that ends his second chance.
There is also a neat train motif. Notice that Liliom dreams of taking a train to get to his dreamland of America. He yearns to be one of the fine gentlemen who rides on those trains. It is also on trains that he finds his destiny. Some feminist critics were upset that Liliom was an abusive lover and mentioned that the movie promoted domestic violence. That is nonsense. The movie makes clear that Liliom's violence occurs because Julie is smarter than him and he can't answer her. In other words, it explains his actions, but certainly doesn't justify or promote them. Even Julie's statement that you can love somebody so much that you don't feel the pain when somebody hits you, just means that love is more powerful than violence, a beautiful message, which does not at all excuse or promote domestic violence. It simply offers insight into it.
The movie is a religious fantasy promoting a neo/pseudo-Christian world-view, but it is done with style, so like Cecil B. Demille's "Ten Commandments," you hardly notice the theological lesson being promoted.
One of the funniest jokes in the movie is when the Chief Magistrate tells Lilliom that he is going to hell on a train called "the Red Express," He then adds parenthetically that no political message was intended. Of course, that the name of the train was the Red Express and it was going to hell would have been taken by most of the audience to be a political attack on the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union. It seems that a political message was intended.
The movie is fascinating and a beautiful work of art from the period that still moves us emotionally.
I'll have to watch more of the director Frank Borzage's work with this film in mind.