October 13, 2015

In his first novel, Ultramarine, Malcolm Lowry tells the wanderings of a young Englishman of good family who leaves relatives and fiancée to engage as a novice on a cargo ship. A book like Under the Volcano is largely autobiographical.
Lowry said during a stopover in Tsjang Tsjiang (Dairen) in Manchuria, Dana Hilliott, his hero, goes ashore for the first time. He gets a poster of the Free Press : MURDER OF BROTHER-IN-LAW'S CONCUBINE. Bar. Boston Bar Café Baikine. Bar-Cabaret. Trocadero. Satsuma wares– Richard Barthelmess in The Amateur Gentleman. Miki Bar. Dancing. Norddeutscher Lloyd steamships company. (p 95)
Later in the novel (p 108): Norddeutscher Lloyd steamships. Miki Bar-Dancing. Richard Barthelmess in The Amateur Gentleman. Dana, accompanied with a German sailor at the entrance of a snowy theatre :
-  (…) Olga Tschechowa in Love's Crucifixion, Richard Barthelmess in “The Amateur Gentleman”. A smashing drama of the good old days of Merrie England ! Next week !

Lowry will not say any more. It is not known if he saw The Amateur Gentleman, the film directed by Olcott. In a blog dedicated to Malcolm Lowry Colin Dilnot advances some explanations : Lowry read the Jeffery Farnol at school ; Richard Barthelmess is one of the favorite actors of Lowry from Broken Blossoms, David W. Griffith film.
The Amateur Gentleman is released at the Strand in Singapore in mid- June 1927, when Lowry stopped there. Has he seen it ? Dilnot knows nothing about.

Olcott's film is screened at the Trocadero Olcott in New Brighton in October 1927 while Lowry returned to its home port . The movie succeeds to Mare Nostrum Rex Ingram, mentioned by Lowry .
Post Scriptum that has nothing to do. Lowry located the action of Under the Volcano in Cuernavaca , Mexico where he stayed . Gene Gauntier settled in the city of eternal Spring in 1942. She died there in 1966. I will check if they have crossed one day.

Film critic, famous French poet Robert Desnos critizes a film directed by Sidney Olcott : The Green Goddess, released in France under the title La déesse rouge.

This is what he wrote in Le Journal littéraire January 3, 1925 : "Less surprising that Le Regard infernal, La Déesse rouge is a film of pathetic adventures, which relaxes us moral and temperance scenarios. A heroic British officer It shows strong drunkard die in time to allow his wife to marry his best friend. This enjoyable film is honored with a Hindu prince strong "humoreux".

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