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Candidates for the National Film Registry: The Florentine Dagger

Introduction by Brian Taves

Although technically made after more stringent censorship resumed, THE FLORENTINE DAGGER (1935) violates the expectations of both formula and the censorship of the time. The movie was the result of a hasty production that did not augur well for it. Director Robert Florey was designated to helm the project only a week before shooting began. Tom Reed's script was still being rewritten and substantially changed during photography, with the entire ending changed. Star Donald Woods was considered too inexperienced for the lead, and on the first day of shooting he became so nervous that he lost his voice. The movie was shot in a mere 20 days, on a $135,000 budget. Nonetheless, for Warner Bros., in 1935, this did not make THE FLORENTINE DAGGER, properly speaking, a "B," but instead it was intended as an unusual, high-quality item.

Writer Reed and director Florey had already collaborated in similar capacities on MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (Universal, 1932). THE FLORENTINE DAGGER added themes not present in the Ben Hecht novel but which deepened it considerably. Using a "pre-noir" style, the consistently strange, unnatural behavior of each of the performers is augmented by Florey's expressionistic treatment, with painterly camerawork by Arthur Todd, full of oblique angles, dark lighting, shadow effects, and composition in depth, heightening moments of drama and character revelation. Many objets d'art from director Florey's own collection enrich the set design and enhance the chilling mood it creates. In a move seldom allowed contract directors, Warner Bros. permitted Florey to oversee the editing, so that pace, choice of shots, and narrative all combine together to memorably explore the psyche of its characters.

Operating on multiple levels, THE FLORENTINE DAGGER delves past a surface mystery into a domain where the apparently dead past intrudes on the present, releasing ungovernable passions. Woods plays a modern descendant of the Borgias, Cesare, driven to the brink of suicide by his belief that he has a dual personality, with his subconscious half inheriting the murderous proclivities of his ancestors. A misogynist psychiatrist, Dr. Lytton (C. Aubrey Smith) suggests Cesare exorcise his internal demons by writing a play on the Borgias, but no sooner has he done so, and been supposedly cured of his obsession, than events shed doubt on the viability of such a cure. Cesare falls in love with leading lady Florence Ballau (Margaret Lindsay), but it appears she is becoming her role--Lucretia Borgia. Florence is accused of murdering her father, theatrical producer Victor Ballau, but in investigating on her behalf, Cesare uncovers a maelstrom of revenge and bitterness stretching back over two decades.

While Cesare's fear is the product of his own delusion, others are experiencing deep and far more real psychological turmoil. Victor, at first the apparent victim of a crime, turns out to be far more depraved than even Cesare could imagine. Victor was, in fact, Florence's stepfather, who tried to kill her mother, stage star Teresa (Florence Fair), by setting her dress afire. She survived, hiding her now hideously scarred visage behind a naturalistic mask and impersonating a servant to be with Florence. Not until Victor begins to nearly-incestuously force himself on stepdaughter Florence, having fallen perversely in love with her and jealously attempting to destroy her romance with Cesare, does Teresa finally take vengeance against the patriarchal power that has nearly destroyed the lives of two women. Overhearing Teresa's confession to Cesare, psychiatrist Lytton realizes his theories of patricide have been entirely wrong, and the police inspector in charge of the case allows Teresa, Florence, and Cesare, to escape together--without the compensatory suicide of Teresa called for by the original script and Hays Office policy.

Only by assuming that the Hays Office was paying little attention to a modestly-budgeted thriller, whose conclusion was changed in production, can we explain how a film so obviously in violation of the tenets of the code was allowed. Somehow, this film was released, without much recognition by critics of just how unusual it was. Today, The Florentine Dagger can be recognized as one of the truly subversive films of its era, and one whose content would not be accepted in films until at least forty years later, making it decades ahead of its time.

M/B/RS staff member Brian Taves (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is author of Robert Florey, The French Expressionist (Scarecrow Press, 1987).