Maurice Tourneur was a gifted and sensitive director, who also directed Lon Chaney in "Treasure Island". Tourneur's films had great visual appeal through his mastery of set design and lighting. It is very apparent in "Victory". Lon Chaney was on the brink of stardom in 1919. He had just given a break through performance as "the Frog" in "The Miracle Man" and in 1920 would shock everyone with his role as "Blizzard" in "The Penalty". In "Victory" he was surrounded by established players - Wallace Beery, Jack Holt, Bull Montana and Seena Owen, who had starred as Princess Beloved in "Intolerance" (1916), but he still managed to make his mark.Axel Heyst (Jack Holt) lives on a solitary island, surrounded by his father's books. He feels that only by being an observer of life rather than a participator, can he find true peace. While staying on another island to finalize some business, he comes to the aid of Alma (Seena Owen) who is a violinist in the local band. She is being pursued, not only by Schomberg (Wallace Beery) but the band leader as well and begs Axel to take her to his island so she can escape. Axel agrees.Schomberg goes on a thorough search of the island and as a last resort, hires 3 thugs who have been causing havoc at his hotel. He wants them to go to Axel's island to search for Alma and lures them there with tales of hidden treasure. Lon Chaney is almost unrecognizable as Ricardo, a knife carrying crazy, who tells how Pedro (Bull Montana) can "snap men's back's like rotten sticks". Bull Montana is scary as the cretinous Pedro, who throws a boat boy overboard and carries his luggage around between his teeth!!!When they reach the island, Ricardo attacks Alma but she fights back with such force that Ricardo is full of admiration and asks Alma if she wants to come in with them for a share of the treasure. Ever since she has been on the island she has felt lonely. Axel is not interested in getting to know her so she pretends to throw in her lot with the thugs hoping to save Axel.With the smoldering volcano as background violence is let loose. Ricardo is shot on the roof and falls into a pit - in real life Chaney, who did all his own stunts, missed the pit when he fell, knocked himself out but still insisted that he complete the scene when he came to!!! Pedro throws Mr Jones into the fire because "when you killed that man in South America - he my brother"!!! It ends conventionally enough with Axel realizing that Love is the most powerful emotion.Highly Recommended.

A bare outline of this film's plot suggests that it must be some kind of pulpy melodrama, a B-movie with a touch of the lurid. Our handsome hero is (initially) a passive, brooding figure who has withdrawn from the tumult of life, having retreated to a tropical island where he lives a secluded existence. He wants nothing to do with human affairs, especially where women are concerned, preferring to puff on his pipe and read philosophy. Before long, however, he becomes involved with a young lady who works at a hotel on a nearby island, a woman who is friendless and mistreated, and he gallantly provides her with shelter in his home -- on a platonic basis, of course. Soon, three sinister men arrive on the scene, sent by her former employer. To avenge himself on her, he has told the trio that our hero is hoarding a stash of loot on his island. When the woman is imperiled, our hero must rise above his passivity and fight. The violent climax of the story unfolds concurrently with the eruption of the island's volcano.The plot may sound a little absurd spelled out like that, but the film itself is surprisingly enjoyable, and its source material is more than respectable: Victory is an adaptation of a 1915 novel by no less than Joseph Conrad, and it generally follows the action of Conrad's story, aside from the Hollywood-style happy ending. This was no B-picture, it was a major release from Paramount with first-rate production values, an excellent cast, and sensitive direction from Maurice Tourneur, a top director at the peak of his career. French-born Tourneur began his career as an artist and scenic designer, and his films are marked by striking compositions that differ sharply from the prevailing flatness of so many routine movies of the time. The cinematography in Tourneur's films is always beautiful and often surprisingly sophisticated, highlighted by dynamic shots that utilize the background, foreground, and middle range of the image. For example, watch the early scene in Victory when leading man Axel Heyst (played by Jack Holt) returns to the hotel with Alma (Seena Owen) to retrieve her belongings and escape. Where other directors of the period might direct this scene as it would be done on stage, with the two characters simply entering from one side and crossing the lobby, Tourneur keeps the hotel's staircase in the left foreground as Axel & Alma enter from the right background and slowly move forward. It's night, the wind is blowing hard, and we can see tree branches rustling through the windows; Axel & Alma must creep down a corridor toward the camera, not laterally across a "stage." It's very cinematic, a composition that doesn't resemble other movies of 1919 so much as the work of Orson Welles at RKO in the early 1940s, and the many shadowy crime dramas which followed.Still, all the innovative camera angles in the world won't carry a film if the actors aren't up to the task, and happily Victory features a number of first-rate players. The primary reason this film is remembered today (and certainly the reason it's been made available on DVD) is the presence of Lon Chaney as Ricardo, one of the trio who arrive on Axel's island to menace our hero and heroine. Chaney may not be the first actor one might think of for the part of a knife-wielding Hispanic thug, but he brings his unique charisma to the task and makes the role his own, deftly stealing the show. Today Chaney is generally pigeonholed as a horror star, but it's worth noting that he spent most of his career in roles like this one, certainly villainous but in no way touched by any element of the supernatural. Chaney threw himself into his portrayal of Ricardo with his customary energy, at times moving like a dancer and always drawing our attention in any grouping of actors.Jack Holt is stolid and frankly not too interesting in the lead role of Axel Heyst, but in fairness the part is a thankless one, as the demands of the story force our protagonist to be little more than gentlemanly and laid-back until the climax. Seena Owen makes a stronger impression as Alma. Prior to seeing this movie I was aware of her primarily for her amazing performance as the Mad Queen in Erich Von Stroheim's notorious Queen Kelly, a role vastly different from the one she plays here. Owens' Alma is a more demure (to put it mildly!) and complex figure, and she's especially impressive in a sequence when Ricardo mauls her. Alma must fend him off while pretending to be flattered, even "turned on" by his brutish attentions, only allowing her genuine feelings to become clear after he has gone. Wallace Beery, who generally played slimy bad guys at this point in his career, sports an amusing beard and is as unpleasant as ever in the role of August Schomberg, the despicable hotel manager whose lust for Alma sets the plot in motion. Finally, I was very much taken with an unfamiliar actor named Ben Deeley, who played "Mr. Jones," the leader of the trio who invade the island. Jones is a fey, feline, and startlingly modern looking villain. For today's viewers his slicked-back white hair and dark shades suggest the star of a Euro-pop rock video of the 1980s. Deeley gives an understated performance that goes with his appearance. Over all, the acting here is remarkably low-key; the arm-waving histrionics often associated with silent drama is nowhere to be found.In sum, Maurice Tourneur's Victory is an unexpected treat for silent film buffs, a well-made, well-acted and entertaining melodrama featuring a number of unusual touches that lift it well above the realm of the ordinary. And hey, it boasts an action finale set against the backdrop of an erupting volcano! What's not to like?

Director Maurice Tourneur was one of the great pioneering filmmakers of the 1910s, and he ended the decade with one of his best: "Victory". His films are noted for their pictorial beauty. With the death of John van den Broek, René Guissart takes over the cinematography duties here. Clarence Brown, who worked as editor and assistant director on many of Tourneur's films, isn't credited here--he was beginning his own successful career as a director at about this time. Ben Carré, one of the best of early set designers, did work on this film, though.There are some impressive chiaroscuro effects here, as well as good use of tinting, in addition to Tourneur's trademark silhouettes. The film moves quickly, and the careful timing of the editing is visible in one scene where the cuts are in unison with gunfire. The film contains pictorial beauty, but also ferocity, which corresponds well with the film's narrative and intriguingly drawn characters. It climaxes in the film's volcanic dénouement.There's also a flashback in one scene, which is rather breezy; it setups Lon Chaney's character Ricardo, who narrates it, at the center of the film. There are several characters in this picture, each at some time pulling the narrative: Wallace Berry's character, who owns the hotel and tries to own Alma; the mistreated and fickle Alma herself, whose questionable loyalties turn the film's suspense on her; and even the protagonist who doesn't want to influence anything. Berry's nosey busybody, with the beard and glasses, the bestial physicality of Pedro, and the dark sunglasses and white suit of Mr. Jones make them visually intriguing characters, too--causing viewers to focus on them without the story having to.Heading all of that, however, is Chaney, whose feats in movie makeup invented the trade. Without credits, I wouldn't have known he played Ricardo. Chaney was also at the forefront of introducing cinematic acting, subtler than the theatrical and, more importantly, a fully convincing embodiment of a character. In that way, his character becomes the center of the film, and the rest of the characters unravel with the climactic events on his cue.Tourneur often adapted his pictures from literary sources, but using a novel by Joseph Conrad surely helped to make this one of his best works, as does Chaney. One of the things I like most about "Victory" is that it's more cinematic than some of his other films, although he referenced theatre in interesting and self-aware ways in such films as "The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England" (1914) and "The Blue Bird" (1918). "Victory" has both a consistent visual and cinematic style, in addition to the rarity (in Tourneur's films and in movies in general of the time) of intriguing characters convincingly and cinematically portrayed.

Maurice Tourneur's VICTORY was made only four years after the publication of the source novel by Joseph Conrad, and features silent film sensation Lon Chaney in an early co-starring role.When pre WWI isolationist Jack Holt steals a girl away from predatory hotel permitee Wallace Beery, Beery sics a trio of island-hopping fortune hunters on him. Lon Chaney steals the film as the shiv-shoving Ricardo, but Seena Owen is his equal as the desperate but clever Alma. Jack Holt is the jut-jawed hero, Bull Montana (the "ape man" of 1926's THE LOST WORLD, which starred Beery) a simian heyboy and Ben Deeley is the languid, almost Ernest Thesiger-like villain of the piece.Jules Furthman's script simplifies Conrad's novel, and provides a much happier ending, but it's still surprisingly faithful and Conrad's witty butfatalistic voice rings loud and clear.