Svengali

In Paris the music teacher Svengali is broke, coarse and manipulative. He meets a young model named Trilby. Her voice is beautiful but she has no ear; she cannot sing. Svengali hypnotises her, and in that state Trilby becomes an extraordinary performer. They tour Europe, she becomes famous, and Svengali is both her husband and her owner. But Trilby can never sing of her own will. Archie Mayo's film adapts George du Maurier's novel Trilby. The narrative presents Svengali as a monster, but the film's interest is less in fear than in dependence: hypnosis here is the direct image of total control. John Barrymore plays Svengali, in one of the known examples of this style of performance. The sets and the camera moves are ambitious for the period. Who it's for: Viewers who like early sound horror, John Barrymore, and adaptations of classic novels. Who it's not for: The woman in the narrative is entirely passive and the film does not question it. The way Svengali is drawn also carries the antisemitic shapes of its period.