The Battle (Léon Garganoff) tells the story of a Japanese naval commander's burning devotion to his country. Adapted from Claude Farrère's novel La Bataitte, the tale involves a "neutral" British observer who has the run of a Japanese flagship, the Japanese commander's unhesitating use of his dutiful wife to get naval secrets his country needs, his final expiation of this dishonor. Aside from the extravagances of the plot, the pictorial treatment of The Battle is nearly perfect.
Far more important than the commander's personal tragedy are the remarkable battle sequences in the last reel, an international patchwork of action shots enterprisingly assembled and cleverly welded. Russian-born Léon Garganoff and some of his fellow émigrés in Paris started an unpretentious photographic laboratory called Société Anonyme Lianofilm, made enough profit to try a picture. Garganoff sent Nicholas Farkas, his crack cameraman, to Japan. Farkas made a close study of aristocratic Japanese interiors, got shots of harbors cluttered with boats, of Japanese street crowds. He claimed that he made films of naval maneuvers which were confiscated by the Japanese authorities. Upon Farkas' return to Paris, Garganoff borrowed a French warship, made action sequences in her gun turrets, on her decks, on her bridge, with Japanese actors impersonating Japanese sailors. To piece out the action U. S. newsreel shots of battle maneuvers, gunfire and torpedo practice were purchased from Fox.
As a final touch the Italian film of the St. Stephan's sinking (also to be seen currently in The First World War) was obtained. On June 11, 1918, the St. Stephan, flagship of the Austrian Navy, was attacked in the Adriatic by Italian torpedo boats. A torpedo found its mark and the St. Stephan began to list and sink with terrible rapidity. Frantic Austrian sailors are to be seen clambering up her steep deck and over onto her almost horizontal side. At that point the ship quivers convulsively, shakes many of them off into the water. Others manage to stay on the St. Stephan's upside-down hull as she turns completely over. Finally she and they go down together in a great swirl of water.
Good shots in The Battle's battle: white uniforms on the bridge flapping against a grey sky in what seems to be a mingled whine of wind and speeding turbines; the commander getting the enemy's range again & again in his finder, announcing it in a flat singsong; one gun turret after another reporting "Ready"; a lone survivor in one gun turret groping to the telephone for instructions; sailors, protected by masks and helmets, staggering about in fume-filled turrets, loading the guns (see cut, p. 44). The battle is bitter and bloody. When it is over and victory has been won, the commander retires to his quarters, dons the ceremonial robes for harakiri, slices his belly open. Another officer administers the coup de gráce with a full two-handed sword stroke.
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