Pen-Ultima Thule – The Edge of the World (1937 cut), Birkbeck College

“Edge of the World was entirely saved for me by the editor (Derek Twist) … I mean, Flaherty with no story – at least I had the semblance of a story – took about six months to cut Man of Aran, and then it wasn’t any good…”

Michael Powell, Powell, Pressburger and Others (1978) BFI

The last few decades have seen a bonanza of different mixes, demos and alternate cuts of the output of the most familiar musicians from The Beatles and The Stones to even JS Bach, Erik Satie and Taylor Swift (not together…). Each new variation fascinates and paints a picture of the artists on route to their eventual well-known statements, the elements of Strawberry Fields Forever are interesting because they sound so different to the magical mix created by George Martin and his “Boys” and they show how decisions were reached in search of the perfected final version.

So it is with film, with a boom in “Limited Editions” featuring different cuts of even the most esoteric of films. Getting to see a different version of a classic film some of us have seen dozens of times is pretty rare though and to see Michael Powell’s first major “personal” cinematic statement in a form not seen since its original release in 1937 is not only rare it’s almost certainly unique and it happened again on screen right here on 8^th July 2025 in Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image Cinema a lifetime after it was last seen in this form.

How there came to be a copy of this Mark I release of the film is a story of its own and owes everything to conversations between passionate cineastes one of whom, Bob Geoghegan, Director of the Archive Film Agency and a man of many parts, knew he had a copy of the film safely stored on 35mm nitrate but not the exact age. SO it was that investigation revealed it to be a print from the year of release and one that was different from that we know in significant ways. He duly created a digital transfer from these materials for projection at this event.

Inspired by the evacuation of the Island of St Kilda a few years before, The Edge of the World has been recently restored by the BFI and I’d last seen this at Bologna in 2023 but this was something else entirely as Christopher Bird explained in his introduction to a room full of the very people you’d usually find in Il Cinema Ritrovato, some who’d come a long way for this rarity. Chris had scrupulously prepared a shot-by-shot comparison video for four key moments from the films, showing us three before revealing the fourth a very important moment from the ending shot which I won’t spoil.

Technically, Michael Powell is a much better filmmaker than Robert J Flaherty...

The video ran the two versions side by side and it was easy to see the gaps in the restored version against the fuller shots on this 1937 version. For whatever reason – and this is where the historians come in and dig deeper than the primary evidence – Powell re-edited the film in the 1940s no doubt when he had more success and clout behind him so that the version we have been watching all of lives is what he wanted us to watch some eight (?) years after it was first released. As he said in the quote at the top, Derek Twist brought this production home with Powell struggling with a limited budget and, after St Kilda’s owner refused, a last-minute change of location to the island of Foula across the North Sea to Shetland.

In general, the newly-revealed film showed more of the reaction shots to discussions between the main characters filling out the narrative and engaging us with more of the wonderful locals who we would see again when Master of Ceremonies, Professor Ian Christie, screened Return to the Edge of the World a BBC-funded documentary returning Powell, John Laurie and Grant Sutherland back to the remains of the society they filmed amongst. It’s a wonderful film and Laurie is full of mischief with a mystical twinkle greeting every islander who’s name he feigns to have remembered. A special time for both.

I’ve written about this film a number of times before on here but every viewing only makes it more impressive – not least because of the three or so “new” minutes but also the achievement of Powell’s team in making of the film was an epic adventure in itself. "200,000 feet on Foula" was Powell's original title for his book on the making of the film and references the immense amount of footage shot… thanks be to Mr Twist again!

Powell and drama-documentarist Robert Flaherty did not get on and their methods were so different with the Englishman choosing to use actual actors for his depiction of disappearing cultures. In the end the skill of the story making as well as the players and crew win the day for Foula. EOTW is about as political as Powell gets as he highlights the failure of government to support the islanders as they drown their dogs and cut their losses in the saddest of circumstances. I wonder what happened to the folk of St Kilda, Rachel Johnson, the last of the native St Kildans, died in April 2016 at the age of 93, having been evacuated at the age of eight… what stories did she and other tell of their traumatic changes? Powell caught the dramatic truth better than his rival over on the Irish Aran.

Christie and co also presented us with some fabulous extras including Smith (1939) a public information film promoting a charity helping ex-servicemen, The Embankment Fellowship Centre, which was once lost not just to film archives but also film history. This was introduced by the remarkable Mark Fuller who’d actually found the only remaining copy by tracking down the charity - now called The Ex-Service Fellowship Centres - who revealed that they not only have materials about the project but also a copy of the film! They are now called Veterans Aid and the film is available to view on their website.

We also saw the poignant, An Airman's Letter to His Mother (1941) which is so revealing of the times in which Powell made films and the nature of lived experience during wartime.

My thanks to the following:

• Christopher Bird
• Ian Christie
• Mark Fuller
• Bob Geoghegan

And also the audience of some of the most cinematically curious people in the country and, indeed, in the town!

The next event at the BIMI is Voices from the Chorus presented by Ian and Robert Denning. Full details are available on the Birkbeck website.

Lazybones (1925), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Dave Glass’ introduction included a visual essay starting with William Fox (of whom more later at the KB) which then focused on an overview of the director of tonight’s main feature, Frank Borzage with a reminder of his chief elements of style, his longevity and quality. He made four features in 1925 starting with perhaps Norma Talmadge’s finest performance and finest film, The Lady and ending up with Lazybones (1922) – an outstanding year commercially as well as artistically.

 

The title may indicate a romantic comedy with some predictable turns of fate to enable the titular character, Steve Tuttle (Buck Jones) redemption as a hard-working, hero and yet the film is so much more than that and is an a-typical romance in which the main character’s laziness is a more existential challenge to his self-awareness. When the need arises, he is decisive and quick to action, but he is faulted by an unwillingness to challenge his heart even as he often does the right thing and has moral courage. Borzage – and Frances Marion’s script – enable our full sympathy but there’s something unsaid, un-done and unfulfilled which at the last is revealed as a very smart piece of filmmaking.

 

Mr Glass covered the arrival of Herr Murnau at Fox where he was sent to encourage and review other director’s to add more Germanic nuance to their work but seemingly he spent as much time watching Borzage at work as advising him, the results of this cross-continental pollination are there for all to see in the combinations of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor with a bit of George O’Brien and a bit more of the splendid Mary Duncan (City Girl and The River being two of the greatest films about love made by each director or any human).

 

Buster Jones... how's he gonna to get the day's work done?

Buster Jones is a handsome chap albeit no Charles Farrell I hear my wife – and a number of others –cry, but he’s got his charms and here is conveys “Lazy” in ways that belie his casting in so many westerns. He’s a careful ploy by Borzage, playing against type and in ways which the audience really can’t pin down. Bones is indeed lazy and he gets caught napping even by the local fish quick enough to leap off the line after waking the somnambulant fisherman, insists that his ragged roof doesn’t need fixing as it’s not raining and asks his Mom (Edythe Chapman) to remind him to fix their wonky gate: “that darn gate!” says everyone who passes through it today, tomorrow and for years to come.

 

Jones looks like one of life’s easy winners and yet here he presents as a man preparing himself for disappointment by prevarication: why look life square in the eye when you can just sleep it off. Borzage makes sure his audience isn’t lulled into the dream by wrong-footing us and heaping humiliations on Steve, and us, as time and again he’s caught napping. It’s enough to drive Erich von Stroheim out of the theatre in floods of tears.

 

We are waiting for something to happen, something to reveal the hero within as good defeats evil in a world in which bad men do not profit for being rotten bullies by being promoted. Turns out that it’s that American Dream we used to hear about.

 

Zasu Pitts and Jane Novak

It begins with Frank’s gentle routines being disturbed by the arrival of his sweetheart Agnes Fanning (Jane Novak) and her fearsome mother (Emily Fitzroy). The two ride in by tandem and Mrs Fanning’s stiff-backed posture lets you know to expect the worst… She cannot disguise her disgust at Steve and certainly doesn’t want his relationship with Agnes to develop. Steve manages to get his jalopy running and momentarily impresses before it blows up, he tells Agnes he has plans and whilst in a more typical film there would be a hidden secret to rescue his fortune here you cannot be so sure.

 

Mrs Fanning much prefers the local “Beau Brummel”, Elmer Ballister (William Bailey) who she has lined up for her elder daughter Ruth (Zasu Pitts); he’s a real go-getter and full of it. She writes to Ruth telling her to return from her teaching post and prepare herself for wedlock. But Ruth has been rather busy away from home having married a sailor and born his child only to be rapidly widowed following his death at sea. She returns home with her child convinced that no one will believe that she has ever been married and in a moment of desperation, throws herself into the fast-running waters on the edge of town. Now we see how fast Lazybones can move if he wants to as, hearing her cries he wakes from his slumber-fishing to dive in and save her.

 

Safely on the riverbank, Ruth tells all and Steve agrees an unlikely plan to save her reputation by looking after her baby daughter until she has the strength to confess all to her mother. He returns home with the baby spinning the tale of finding her abandoned and spurred on by Elmer’s callous disdain, announces that he will adopt. Ruth is safe for the moment but when she finally tells her mother the old harridan refuses to listen or believe taking a stick to her terrified daughter in a genuinely shocking moment. Mrs Fanning may well be the wicked witch of the mid-West but a shadow of shame hangs momentarily across Emily Fitzroy’s brow before she grits her teeth in cruel resolve.

 

Steve finds a baby

Ruth cannot take her baby back and Steve realises that he’s in for the long haul. Agnes cannot face this with the inevitable implications concerning the child’s true father, and she tells poor Steve that she will never speak to him again… her final card played to her lasting regret. Events move forward to 1915 with Kit now a young girl (played by Virginia Marshall) who is still regarded with suspicion by the locals. Agnes sees her trying to befriend a local child only for the mother to pull her away whilst Steve tells his adopted daughter that it’s all his fault for being lazy.

 

War comes and Steve listlessly enlists only to find himself an accidental hero after he sleeps through the order to advance and ends up capturing a German squadron from the rear. He returns to a hero’s welcome and to find Kit all grown up and looking mighty pretty (Madge Bellamy). Kit is in love with one Dick Ritchie (Leslie Fenton) who has even fixed that darn gate. Richie proposes but Steve also realises that he has feelings for his young ward…OK, that’s a bit from left field but it’s not the only surprise as events play out in a very European way…

Lazybones packs an accumulation of little punches that leave your thoughts provoked long after the film has stopped playing. It is an intelligent film from Mr Borzage and one that stands the test of time with a message that nothing should be taken for granted in a world of false formalities. Zasu Pitts is a vital counter to the easy-going, she’s a remarkable performer with a uniquely-unsettling way here wilting in front of our very eyes as the woman with her life ruined by the need to keep up her mother’s appearances. Emily Fitzroy is also good as her sister Ruth whose heartbreak is slower burning but none the less real.

 

Madge Bellamy and Buck Jones

Don’t be lazy, make real choices and don’t sleep on the job of life. Borzage’s woke agenda still speaks powerfully.

 

All of this was added extra force by the immaculate improvisations of John Sweeney on the piano as he matched the subtle turmoil on scream meeting every triumph and disaster with carefully conceived flourishes melding with the action in that uncanny way he does, holding us rapt in the space between the thoughts and expressions.

 

The plan unravells in The House of Flickers

A seemingly more straightforward task was provided in his accompaniment of the evening’s first film, The House of Flickers (1925) a short directed by Benjamin Stoloff and starring James Parrott who, as I’m sure you all know, was the brother of the even more famous Charles Joseph Parrott also known as Charlie Chase. It’s a fast-moving comedy about a man trying to sell his picture house only for a cheeky chimp to mess up the nitrate in the projection booth. It features lots of guest players and none more famous that the primate, name of Josephine, who would later steal the limelight from Buster Keaton in The Cameraman. Also featured is The Wonder Dog Pal as Pete the Pup who gives a performance of nuanced dexterity as you would expect.

 

The Kennington Bioscope has never shied away from working with animals or, indeed, children should the need arise.

Star-filled and velvet black - Film on Film 2025 (Part Two), BFI

When people ask me what’s the difference between watching a nitrate print and another… I commonly use the analogy of a photocopy of a picture compared to a stain glass window…

Bryony Dixon was describing the nature of nitrate on this day in which we would see four films which, literally showed us more on screen. There is more luminosity and translucence with nitrate film and greater depth and clarity; you can see details in the velvet-black it doesn’t have the block-blacks you can get with even the highest quality digital and celluloid.

Nothing in this fantastic festival of film on actual film comes easy and the love that dares to speak the name nitrate was in full effect as the programme director James Bell, BFI’s Senior Curator of Fiction, lined up on stage with colleagues to explain the process of selecting, testing and projecting those that have made the cut to be shown in the only UK cinema capable of screening nitrate – a projection box made out of Durasteel – asbestos sandwiched between two sheets of steel in 1953.

The BFI hold some 44,000 films on nitrate stock but as Sonia Genaitay, Curatorial Archivist pointed out, not all are in screen able condition. Age withers and curls nitrate and finding films that can be projected is a detailed progress involving testing and eyeballing with Dominic Simmons, Head of Technical, providing the ultimate projector-accepted testing of the films we were to watch. Some 50 titles were considered this year with just five making the cut.

James said that they hoped to screen more nitrate throughout the year and we can only be thankful for the efforts made to preserve and present these special shows. Talking of which, a tip of the hat to today’s projectionists: Mark Kennedy, Mick Fife and Lauren Feyderline without whom we’d be staring into space.

 

The BFI team explain the wonders of nitrate

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate

 

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."

 

It was only just lunchtime when DJ Christopher Bird hit the decks in NFT 1 to replicate the original accompaniment to Dali and Bunel’s 1929 surrealist masterwork, An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) a film they were determined would not mean anything although as Breton’s Exquisite Cadaver exercise had proven, everything has some meaning even and especially unintentionally. Luis Buñuel intended to “mash up” – as The Kids now say – Argentinian Tango music with Wagner and all but invented Classical Lounge Core without knowing it and Chris was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range.

Introducing, Bryony said that the first surrealist film was founded on two dreams that Dali and Bunel had had with the condition that no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted… and so it proves with Dali’s ideas and ants (finally sourced from Spanish mountains after a fruitless and ant-less search of Paris by taxi) masterfully expressed by Bunel. Pierre Batcheff, who I now recognise from other French silent films, and Simone Mareuil add their own levels of un-meaning amongst the “situations” and as per usual, I still don’t know how the eye-cutting scene was done, not that I can look at it.

This could have been the fragile prints final projection and the accompaniment from DJ Bird made for a fitting last hurrah!

 

Spanish ants on Pierre Batcheff's hand as Simone Mareuil looks on.

Partie de campagne (1936), 35mm nitrate

Backgrounds are as important as foregrounds. Flowers, faces and mountains are not just placed side by side. They constitute a collection of elements all rolled into one, amalgamated by a love stronger than their differences. Jean discussing his father Auguste Renoir.

 

Jean Renoir seems to have been fascinated by waterways and, in addition to The River (1951), he also directed his first feature, La Fille de l’eau (1925), just a few kilometres away in Marlotte from Partie’s location on the banks of the Loing and the Essonne rivers, left tributaries of the Seine some way out from Paris. The river is life, it is unpredictable and yet it can rush us to our destiny whilst the trees at the water’s edge can bind lovers together but they can also hide and confuse. As much as the river is ever present, it keeps on moving the narrative and characters’ choices can be lost in the swirling momentum.

Partie de campagne is based on a short story by French “realist” Guy de Maupassant (author of Bel-Ami (1885) and Pierre et Jean (1888)) published in 1881 (set in 1860 during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III) and offering a shock of bitter fate amongst the bucolic dreaminess.

 

Parisian hardware store owner, Dufour (André Gabriello) takes his wife (Jane Marken) and daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) along with his dishevelled clerk, Anatole (Paul Temps) into the countryside where they stop at an inn run by a manager played by Jean Renoir. Two young men, Henri (Georges d’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius), are bewitched watching Henriette and her mother (Jane Marken) on the swings and resolve to try their luck. All innocent fun but things get rather more serious when the two couples head out on the water… just a simple day in the country, what could be less innocuous?

 

Sylvia Bataille and Georges d’Arnoux

Blanche Fury (1947), 35mm nitrate

English melodrama done with same sort of conviction that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford brings to their films…

Jympson Harmon, London Evening News 19^th Feb ‘48

 

Now it was time for British technicolour nitrate on and Valerie Hobson in all her auburn glory alongside the moodiest Stewart Granger for whom we needed all the depth and visual subtlety of nitrate to see the shadows within. He reminded me a Paul Newman in yesterday’s Hud, a man so obsessed by the perceived wrong done to him by careless parents, that he couldn’t see a way out. This was a Brit gothic romance almost without the romance but with vengeance at its heart, a very dark film for 1947 but then it had been a very dark time. Amongst the velvety shadows we were afforded glorious views of Miss Hobson’s costumery, designed by Sophie Harris from theatrical costumers Motley and as the story darkens so too do the textures change colour as the reds and darker hues of passion replace her earlier calculations and manners.

 

Jo Botting, the BFI’s Curator of Fiction, introduced and gave a flavour of the impact of the still relatively rare Technicolor. Miss Hobson’s pale skin and auburn hair benefited from the process being especially striking in the daylight whilst the Daily Mirror reviewer probably watched a late showing after closing time… “the colour camera seems to be kinder to Valerie Hobson than most other actors, she always looks good in black and white film but in colour what a smasher!”

 

Won’t disagree with that and Mr Grainger looks well too as French director, Marc Allégret respects the material and creates and engaging psycho drama that, with standard generic tropes still persuades through the elegance of composition and force of performance. It makes Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948) look drab and tame in comparison.

Jo quoted the Mirror again: Emphatically a woman’s picture… for every man who scuttles off to the nearest bar at least five women will remain to revel in someone else’s unhappy and illicit love story! Not a single fellow left for the bar, well, not until the film was over to thunderous applause. We were lost in mid-Victorian reveries in the layered gloom.

 

Valerie Hobson abides...

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), 35mm nitrate

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) may have been the film that established the talkie Alfred Hitchcock but after a largely witty and energetic start it descended into an extended shoot out with its easy-going capers replaced by a rising body count of police and Germanic rebels with an unknown cause: almost The Film That Slew Too Much? Still, there was no Doris Day to sing Que Sera Sera as in the 1956 remake and absolutely a smaller budget along with some excellent performances especially from Leslie Banks and a deeply disturbing Peter Lorre, hooded eyes accentuated by a dyed streak in his hair and his tendency to laugh in the face of anything: jokes, murder, infanticide and certain death.

 

Hitchcock told François Truffaut that "… the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional." I’m not entirely buying that, especially as this was his 20^th feature film and clearly has some of the hallmarks of his most engaging work – an “invasion” of normal family life by lethal forces, witty dialogue from leading characters unaware of the threat at hand and an almost likeable villain… In the midst of life, we are in death or, in this case, the midst of a dinner dance as a man is shot and passes on a key message on which the rest of the film’s story will rest.

Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks and Nova Pilbeam

The Lawrences Bob (Leslie Banks) and Jill (Edna Best) are on a holiday in Switzerland with their daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam) and their dog (actor unknown). Jill loses a clay pigeon shooting contest thanks to her impatient Betty with the Germanic Ramon (Frank Vosper) gracious – and suspicious in victory. At the dance that evening their French friend Louis (Pierre Fresnay) – a skier with whom Edna flirts unrelentingly – is shot dead but manages to pass on a note to be passed onto the British Consulate… The couple read the details, it’s a warning of an international crime about to be committed but before they can do anything, Betty is kidnapped and they are under strict instructions not to say anything to anyone.

 

A classic Hitchcock set up with ordinary – wealthy middle class – heroes stuck between the good and bad guys, in this case led by the aforementioned grinning Abbott (Peter Lorre). Events move at some lick until the aforementioned final sequence involving the Royal Albert Hall, a hide-out at a sun-worshipping church (?!) and a mass shoot out. It’s Hitch 22 as the Lawrences must not let on what they know even as they must find out more to save their daughter.

 

So ended another breathless day on the Southbank and it was not just our imaginations that received these films in a deeper way than usual, we literally saw more, but by no means “too much”!

 

Thank you BFI and… till the next time!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Hot media... Film on Film 2025 (Part One), BFI

 

The hottest day of the year and we were all indoors staying cool with the nitrate as The Man Who Would Be Compo made like a cockney Cagney* in London’s criminal underworld. Downtown forties London, I swear the lights are much brighter there with sharp pin pricks of brilliance illuminating Sheila Sim’s earrings and the West End streetlights as various cops following sundry robbers and Richard Attenborough’s taxi was ahead of them all as he sped on to avenge the death of his friend.

 

Dancing With Crime (1947), 35mm Nitrate

 

Jo Botting, the BFI’s Curator of Fiction, BFI National Archive introduced this most vibrant of Brit noirs and quoted a press report which had a confused customer apparently asking the actor for a lift, clearly unaware of the film crew. It’s a nice touch which illustrates the film’s items at realism on a budget an authenticity it manages to convey through the excellence of the cinematography and the verve of the key performers. Directed by John Paddy Carstairs, scripted by Brock Williams from an original story by Peter Fraser, it’s a fast-paced tribute to the kind of drama Hollywood excelled in even on a budget.

The Brit Pack: R. Attenborough, Sheila Sim and Mr Bill Owen

If American post-war noir was dominated by mistrust and paranoia for the Brits in this film at least, it’s about choices and how to make a living in Civvy Street after serving their country and perhaps not getting the recognition they deserved. For the dutiful Ted (Richard Attenborough) it’s the long way as a cabbie, taking his time to establish himself and his sweetheart Joy (real-life wife Sheila Sim, who lived with Dickie in a house very much like the one she so loved in A Canterbury Tale). His best pal Dave has different ideas though and has a lust for life and an urgency to grab success by the throat. Dave is played by William John Owen Rowbotham, later to re-title as Bill Owen, not just an actor but a successful songwriter, with a later stint at Sadlers Wells Opera showing his versatility – no wonder he carries the bounce of the Yankee Doodle Cagney.

Woman: Excuse me, are you dancing?

Detective Sgt: No, it’s just the way I walk…

Sadly, Dave’s doings land him in gangland trouble and he is shot leading Ted on a mission to avenge his fallen comrade with the aid of Joy who takes a job at the south London dancehall where the criminals are based. It’s got style as well as humour with some fab adlibs from Garry Marsh as Detective Sergeant Murray in particular. Barry Jones is all clipped malevolence as gang leader Mr. Gregory whilst there’s also an uncredited appearance from Diana Dors as one of the dancehalls hostesses.

It was a surprise and such an enjoyable thrilling ride which, enhanced by the nitrate sparkle, kicked off the weekend for me in some style.

 

Marion Grierson with movie camera

The Grierson Sisters: Today We Live 35mm

There was actuality to follow with four documentary films (on 35mm) from the Grierson sisters Pat and Marion which illustrated the familiar flair for producing compelling narratives about the way we live with breath-taking seaside scenery from the south coast featured in Marion’s Beside the Seaside (1935) including precious shots of the old Palace Pier in Brighton. Some of this material was used in Penny Woolcock’s film From the Land to the Sea Beyond (2011) and the cover star of Sea Power’s superb soundtrack CD duly cartwheeled her way not once but twice in front of the camera: people enjoying life and summer holiday freedoms, in the moment and captured for ever by the Grierson camera.

If any newcomer to the documentary field should require a handy compendium… relating to the craft, they will find all that they need in Beside the Seaside. Miss Grierson has incorporated practically every apposite screen-device…

Sight and Sound, Winter 1935-6 on 35mm

Here indeed is the art of the documentary with editing, context and narrative invention on such vibrant display. A shot at the end of Brighton’s now skeletal pier looks to have been taken from a 1930s drone but the reverse shot explains all as a ship sails by in close quarters. All human holiday is here, the sun, the ice creams and the over-heated children all captured with humour and clarity of purpose.

The same is true of Marion’s So This is London (1933), out of the trap with what Ros Cranston, the BFI’s Curator of Non-Fiction, identified as a poetic realism. Sister Ruby’s films, here Today We Live (1937) and They Also Serve (1940) were gifted with the same flair but perhaps more concerned with straightforward depictions of social reality. In the former she shows a women’s group converting a barn into a community centre and in the latter she showed the importance of British housewives to the war effort. No doubt the working-class women she interviewed found her more relatable than many a male director of the period, then again she was Scottish and no nonsense would be the order of the day.

 

Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon de Wilde

Hud (1963), in 35mm Panavision

 

Christina Newland and festival curator James Bell introduced a wide-screen Panavision spectacular in which Paul Newman plays against the type we always want him to be as a southern man with the darkest of hearts and a twinkle in his eye. The film’s a warning about such men and doesn’t provide any easy way out for the viewers expecting redemption: we have to take the lessons for ourselves and God only knows, never more so than now.

 

Directed by Martin Ritt, who also produced with Newman's recently founded company, Salem Productions, it was filmed on location on the Texas Panhandle, an aptly named flat and baren landscape which, thanks to cinematographer James Wong Howe is used to both foreground and isolate the tempestuous relationships on screen. Newman clearly wanted a character to stretch his technique and he’s wonderful as the titular rancher who disappoints himself and everyone else at turns when selfishness and inconsideration over power his decision making. Oscars were given to Melvyn Douglas as his father Homer and to Patricia Neal as their housekeeper Alma, loyal, good-hearted yet tough but another ultimately let down by Hud, in spite of himself.

Homer and Hud have a far more deep-rooted beef and not just because the latter had been driving when his brother had been killed in a car crash leaving Homer and Hud to bring up his son Lon played by Brandon de Wilde. The fact that de Wilde had been in Shane (1952) as the hero-worshipping lad Joey adds an extra dimension to the post-modern “revisionist” western and Hud is certainly no Shane… The story is about a potentially ruinous foot and mouth outbreak on the ranch but it’s obviously about the distances between nature and nurture, with the widest of screens giving us no peripheral escape from the cruelty of love.

  

Norma Shearer and Ramon Novarro

The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), with Carl Davis’ score, 35mm

 

This bittersweet treat was a heart-rending reminder of the intoxicating fragilities of love and the inconvenient truths of duty… I had previously seen the 2017 Pordenone screening with composer Carl Davis conducting an orchestral performance of his score drawn from late German romanticism with hints of the emotional turbulence of Mahler and Strauss reinforcing the drama on screen. Davis’ daughter Hannah was there to read from her father’s diary about his approach to composing his 7^th silent film score in 1984 and his co-conspirator Kevin Brownlow was also on hand to give his finest Ernst Lubitsch impersonation regarding his struggles to get Norma Shearer to be more Prussian barmaid. She called in fiancée Irving Thalberg to mediate and he played it just right by saying “Darling, I’m sure we can all learn a lot from Mr Lubitsch…” I suppose having dealt with Herr von Stroheim on Merry-go-Round (1923) another variation on Old Heidelberg; he appreciated a man with the discipline to work within his budget a little more!

 

In fairness to Norma she does an lovely job of being in love with Roman Novarro’s child-like Prince, sent from his duties to study at the titular university and for all Miss Crawford’s apparent distaste for the five-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner, she’s able to combine vulnerability and strength, an experienced actress at 25 with her talkie glory years just ahead. Jean Hersholt is joint MVP though as the playful, and long-suffering Doctor Jüttner, mentoring the wayward Prince struggling to keep pace with the fulsome ale quaffing, cigar smoking and dancing of his charge at the grand old age if 43?! Roman Navarro has energy of his own of course and whilst he doesn’t have the flexibility and nuance of these others he is a more than capable leading man here, sulky and watchable!

 

This was also an opportunity to admire the comedy stylings of Aberdeen’s most famous son, George K Arthur who will also be appearing in Herr von Sternberg’s The Fortune Hunters in Bologna next week. Yes, it’s George K Arthur Month on IThankYou Arthur and I just don’t care!

 

Back to the film can in hand, this is a film to luxuriate in as is the score and the combination with a packed out NFT1 was quite something, my head partly back in 2017 and the 1902 of 1927… with the promise of 2025 successfully ignored for two blissful hours.

 

And there’s more tomorrow! This is analogue beauty with a tangibility of experience most cinemagoers are mostly denied so, let’s keep it physical so far as possible shall we? I have seen the future of film and it’s got sprocket holes and is really quite difficult to manage… the BFI do us proud!

*Courtesy of Mr Mark Fuller!

Marion Davies keeps moving... The Restless Sex (1920), Grapevine Blu-ray

This was Marion Davies’ ninth film and she was still only 23, with an established stage career begun in 1914 leading into films starting with the lost Runaway Romany in 1917 and a further 19 silent films until her move into the talkies. It’s the earliest I’ve seen her and already she’s a steady presence with dramatic certainties as well as on screen energies that hold your attention more than any of those around her. Believably, she is a “restless” woman who wants to experience everything in life and on her own terms.

 

The source material, Robert W. Chambers’ 1918 novel of the same name, was considered “feminist” in the way it addressed the life of Stephanie Quest whose drug-addicted parents set her on a life of precarious fortunes until she adopted by a wealthy widower, John Cleland. There’s no mention of her parents’ habits at the start of the film – not in Hollywood, not in 1920 – just that she is an orphan with a winning personality who is adopted by Cleland (Charles Lane) who is – perhaps – trying to rebuild his family. Frances Marion scripts and gives Stephanie, known to all as Steve, plenty of agency even though she will become trapped by circumstance and formality.

 

Steve is played by Etna Ross as Steve as a child and is delighted to meet her new brother Jim who is played by Stephen Carr a teenager with plenty of pep who not only featured in Davies’ Little Old New York (1923) but who went on to have a long career including the original Superman serial and Congo Bill. Jim is slightly awkward with his newly acquired sibling but she is nothing if not forthright and we sense a future romance, and, as the years pass, this looks more likely as Steve has grown into Marion Davies and Jim is now Ralph Kellard. Everyone is gathered for the end of term production of Jim's play - his crowning achievement - and Steve is even more excited when she spots his pal Oswald Grismer (Carlyle Blackwell) in the cast.

Marion Davies

The adopted siblings are deeply bonded though and talk excitedly of what they will do with their lives, Jim aiming to write and she with a broader scope involving the arts and adventure – “the restless sex” (it’s unclear as to whether this is an attribute of her sex of just nature?). All dreaming comes to a shuddering halt when they find their father dead in his office having quietly passed away. Cleland has planned for the eventuality and has left instructions for both: Jim to study in Paris and Steve to take nursing training (I’ve known quite a few “restless nurses” of both sexes though, and am married to one…). Cleland has also placed Steve’s financial affairs in the acre of his trusted friend Chilsmer Grismer (Robert Vivian) who is also father of Oswald.

  

This removes the two from each other’s immediate company and as the years pass they keep in touch only via letters as Steve, having qualified as a health professional, takes up painting in Greenwich Village bohemian society with Oswald chipping away at sculptures in the same block and Steve sharing an airy studio with Helen Davis (Corinne Barker). Steve spends a lot of time with Oswald and whilst they are out driving upstate, they narrowly avoid colliding with a steam train. Oswald’s car is a wreck though and 90 miles from NYC, they take refuge in a hotel – in separate rooms. This out of the way refuge proves unexpectedly problematic when the police raid to stop partying youth and find the two wrapped only in quilts in the same room…

Carlyle Blackwell and Marion

Soon after Steve and Oswald marry and we soon learn that this is not entirely to the couple’s satisfaction. Jim hightails it from Paris to investigate and meets Steve’s room-mate as well as a young model Marie (Vivienne Osborne) posing on a horse with very little on. Helen explains the strangeness around the newly-weds and that Oswald has fallen on harder times and had to move to run-down ol’ Bleeker Street to find a studio.

 

Things come to a head with the film’s startling set piece, a huge ball celebrating Greek culture with Steve as Pallas Athena ushered into the hall by a host of choreographed dancers. Joseph Urban designed a two-storey set for this sequence with costumes from Erté and all would not have looked out of place in a Cecil B DeMille epic. Among the extras are Norma Shearer but no one’s spotted her yet. Steve and Jim renew their relationship whilst Oswald looks on askance before order is restored and he whisks his wife off leaving Jim to dance the light fantastic with Marie.

 

But… what is the secret of the marriage and will what we all expect to happen, happen? You’ll just have to seek this film out and find the answers for yourself.

The wild party

Directed very effectively by Leon D'Usseau and Robert Z. Leonard, this shows the burgeoning status of Marion Davies and in a film which is dramatic with some light-heartedness. Edward Lorusso quotes a positive review from Motion Picture World, which says “In the charm of life’s romantic comedy Marion Davies seems to have been born for the part she plays…” and also praised her naturalism “… instead of strutting, eye-rolling and attempting to tear passion to tatters.”

 

That we can see the film on home media is entirely down to the efforts of Mr Lorusso who Kickstarted this in 2015 getting a decent digital copy from elements housed by the Library of Congress. This is now available from Grapevine Videos complete with a smashing score from Donald Sosin who uses piano and keyboard improvisations to greatly enliven proceedings including that grand set-piece ball.

 

Throughout Marion is every inch a star in waiting, Allen G. Siegler camera loves her and so do the audience as she draws the eye from the rather one-paced Kellard and even the more effective Mr Blackwell who would head to Europe after this film and never make another Hollywood film. That’s a story for another day.

Ralph Kellard

You can buy the Blu-ray from the Grapevine website and check Ed Lorusso’s Kickstarter page for his ongoing project to make as many of Marion’s films available as possible. Latest project involves The Cardboard Lover (1928) which I and over 630 others backed: can not wait to see it.

 

*Also recommended is Ed’s book, The Silent Films of Marion Davies – no silent home should be without one!

Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1928), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

“We never tried to get very far from what was real… (the Derby hats) … gave what we felt these characters’ needed: phoney dignity! There’s nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb!”

 

Eureka’s first Stan and Ollie set showed how in 1927 they emerged as a double act with appearances in films gradually evolving their interplay and characterisation as the iconic duo who has made the world split its sides for very nearly a century. Now with this second set we get a chance to see their first golden year as a duo in ten short films available in restored transfers on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. What more do you need to know, the link to order is at the bottom and as we’re alone can I ask you just why you haven’t already got your copy?

There’s a fascinating video essay among the fulsome extras from David Cairns and Fiona Wilson which really gets to the heart of the enduring hilarity created by Laurel and Hardy and from which I drew the above quote from Stan in one of his rare expressions on their style and purpose. Cairns and Wilson act as our companions to these timeless lords of comedy and the instinctive love and laughter becomes clearer as it is shared and explained in personal ways that are shared by so many. We are all Sons and Daughters of the Desert, we all stand on our dignity, pick ourselves up and keep on trying against the odds, constructing our own folly in real time up until the moment when things are so broken, it’s the end of the film.

It's a Video Essay of the Year award contender and it’s only Spring. The quote from Spike Milligan they include sums up so much: “The first time I saw them on screen, I knew they were my friends…” and this has been passed down from the moment my grandad James told me how good they were; any friends of Jim’s were going to be mine as well.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam and, as with 1927, it’s so instructive and hilarious to watch them develop and consolidate the greatest comedy duo in cinematic history.

 

February 1928

 

The Finishing Touch, with Neil Brand score

 

Filmed in December 1927 in a relatively long shoot of just over two weeks, possibly related to the extensive mechanical gags as Patrick Vasey of the L&H Podcast suggests, this film is one of my personal favourites. The lads play two construction labourers who are employed to finish off a wooden house build by noon, next Monday for $500… Their confidence to complete the task is, of course in sharp contrast to their ability and over the two reels there are so many classic moments of painful slapstick as their inability is demonstrated time and again.

 

Edgar Kennedy is on hand as an exasperated cop whilst Dorothy Coburn is the nurse who tells them to keep the noise down for her patients… Now fighting both the forces of law as well as physics their failure is magnificently funny!

January 1928

 

Leave ’em Laughing, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

Be careful, you might make him nervous!

 

Famously, in our family, my Grandad Jim, a joiner and part-time boxer, used to remove his own rotten teeth sitting by the fire in Wavertree Liverpool. As Jim first exposed me to Laurel and Hardy it’s a joy to see an episode involving tooth ache and the Boys’ attempts at home-made treatment for Stan’s toothache … this is the World just passed (we hope). David Kalat in his commentary askes just how is it that these films stay fresh? For me it’s that childhood fascination with Grandad’s extraordinary dental handy work… especially given mine and Stan’s fear of the dentist’s office.

This we see as the Boys unable to do what Our Jim did, head to the dentists and before you know it laughing gas filled the place and our stoned heroes are off to try and drive whilst laughing their heads off. Cars crash and – of course – Edgar Kennedy’s traffic cop gets to boil over and steam!

 

Anita Garvin and the frustrating fruit

March 1928

From Soup to Nuts, with Neil Brand score

 

One thing about Stan—with apologies to a lot of directors—they thought they were directing him. And they thought they were directing the picture. But Stan was the one...He was very clever about it.

Anita Garvin interview, "She Took Her Lumps and Liked Them", Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1978

 

Here we start with the newly enriched Culpeppers played by Tiny Sandford and Anita Garvin who made over 350 films and who worked on eleven Laurel and Hardy films. The couple are hosting a party to impress their new peers and end up hiring itinerant hospitality workers, Stan and Ollie as waiters – the best available on short notice. We know things are not going to work out and they don’t work out splendidly aided by Garvin’s classic battle with a cherry as she tries to work out the polite way to eat a fruit salad, echoing Stan’s previous routine in The Second Hundred Years. As David Kalat says in his commentary, Stan trusted Anita with his material and she makes a meal out of it!

Also featured is another semi-regular, Edna Marion as Agnes the Maid although she would not enjoy the same career as Garvin who, as Kalat says, was offered opportunities to form a female comedy team – find out more by buying this set!

And if the band you're in sgtarts playing different tunes...

 

April 1928

You’re Darn Tootin’ with score from Neil Brand

 

Edgar Kennedy gets to stand in the safety behind the camera directing this one which features Stan and Ollie as a dysfunctional paid of musicians with the former’s clarinet and the latter’s French horn simply not following the instructions from conductor (Otto Lederer). Neil Brand provides expert accompaniment and commentary and, obviously, this is very much the film for him especially this opening silent orchestral slapstick. There is so much comedy content this is so re-watchable which, also of course, was not the way they were originally intended: Stan and Ollie expected their work to be experienced in the moment and not repeated and at the viewers’ leisure… we are lucky.

After being sacked for uselessness the two players end up on the streets and busking… what could possibly go wrong… on the streets… all those workers and pedestrians to connect with, all those shins to kick and stomachs to thump! Comedy chaos and more of that mutually assured de-bagging!

 

May, 1928

 

Their Purple Moment, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

A fine day for mischief!!

 

Was the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo and foreshadowing their later films, has them married and desperate to find time together and away. Here Stan’s wife, as played by Fay Holderness, already looks like trouble as she keeps a tight rein on his paycheque even as he tries to smuggle away enough money for “hobbies”. Ollie is similarly micro-managed in similar style by Lyle Tayo “I’ll teach you to hold out two dollars on me!” – these are marriages based on antagonism as Neil Brans says in his commentary.

The boys make good their escape and offer to help two young women, Slapstick Kay Deslys and the Glamourous Anita Garvin who have been abandoned by two suitors unwilling to pay their tab at a restaurant. Stan and Ollie believe they are flush but Stan’s wife has found and taken his hidden stash meaning that they too have no way to pay the bill… As Kay slips over going back into the restaurant, the local gossip Patsy O'Byrne spies them and reports back. We know exactly what is going to happen but what a joy when it does!

As Neil Brand observes, by this stage director Leo McCarey – and the duo – had worked out that they were so reliable as comedy foils for each other, that the narrative could be slowed down and allowed to play out with their expressiveness and intimate silent discourse guaranteed to reach the boiling point of hilarity.

 

Collateral... Dorothy Coburn 

September 1928

 

Should Married Men Go Home? piano accompaniment Neil Brand

You’re going in, you started it!

 

Spotting Stanley on his way with his golf club, Mr and Mrs Hardy (the excellent Kay Deslys) pretending to be out all to no avail as the check jacketed and four-plus wearing bore finds them out. After breaking a chair and generally behaving like a misbehaving child in front of his exasperated parents – as Glenn Mitchell observes in his well-informed commentary (well, he did write the Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia!) Ollie is allowed out to play, conveniently wearing his golfing outfit underneath his dressing gown.

Here their escape leads to them making up a four on the golf course with two very pretty young women – a blonde (Edna Marion) and a brunette (the vivacious Viola Richard – who had also featured with the Boys in a number of their 1927 films as well as Charly Chase’s brilliant Limousine Love (1928)). There’s some business involving a drug store and a too expensive round of soda followed by some golfing antics with Edgar Kennedy and his hairpiece! Events are topped off by a mass mud-fight as an exasperated Edgar splashes Dorothy Coburn who retaliates, misses and the rest is an enormous dry-cleaning bill.

The Fountianhead

October 1928

 

Early to Bed, piano accompaniment by Neil Brand

Whilst this was the year in which the boys consolidated their personas but there are still examples of them playing variations on the themes we mostly know. Here Ollie inherits a fortune and employs Stan as his butler but soon gets bored and starts to disrupt his own party. This is an interesting watch given the times and the unusual set up and the two do not disappoint when it comes to delivering the keys to life and happiness: clue, it’s not money, money can’t buy you laughter.

Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness provide commentary and both are quite concerned about the amount of bullying in this class tale – money has not treated Oliver well – and whilst we know there will be a come-uppance it’s perhaps not as even-handed as their usually balanced universe. I like the fountain gag which Leo McCarey had used to greater effect in the Mabel Normand and Creighton Hale film, Should Men Walk Home? which also featured Hardy as a waiter! Here Ollie doesn’t quite his just deserts and we can make of that what we will…

 

 

November 1928

Two Tars

As Glenn Mitchell explains in his commentary, this is one of the duo’s greatest films as well as, not uncoincidentally, one of their most anarchic and destructive with motor vehicular abuse that wouldn’t be out of place in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend which also features an endless traffic jam and society pushed to the limits of civilised behaviours. That might be a bit rich but why not?

Our heroes play two “dreadnaughts” from the USS Oregon a late-Victorian era battleship by now a decommissioned relic, who driving a rickety Ford model-t, come across two young women, a blonde (Ruby Blaine) and a brunette (Thelma Hill) who are struggling to extract their purchase from a bubble gum machine. Cue an outbreak of tie-twiddling and winsome shyness from the boys before they step out to save the day. Things do not go to plan and, after a short battle with shopkeeper (Brummie Charlie Hall who Mitchell explains was the most frequent guest in the Boys’ films), they make good their escape.

A pleasant afternoon’s drive with the girls is spoiled by a traffic jam and “reciprocal destruction” on a scale rarely seen – a Kwik Fix version of Battle of the Century with more and more drivers and their cars caught up in a mad whirl of push and shove with the players and cars described in detail by Glenn Mitchell in sixth gear! Excellent work all round!

 

December 1928

 

Habeas Corpus with original synchronised score

 

This is all together a more sedate affair which doesn’t reach the intensity of Tars but which features one of Stan’s more outlandish scenarios in which he and Ollie are engaged by a mad Professor (Richard Carle) to exhume a dead body for his experiments. This is the first film they made with a synchronised sound score combining music and sound effects which here is featured in restored form. There are some interesting choices of music – Danse Macabre - to modern ears it is occasionally too on the nose but you do have to imagine the audience hearing this for the first time.

The Prof’s butler, Ledoux – our Charlie Hall again - is also an undercover cop and follows the lads as they make their way to do the deed in the local cemetery, in the dead of night… There follows much self-scaring as confusion and the pursuing Ledoux, covered in a sheet (of course…) unsettle the big pay night.

 

December 1928

 

We Faw Down with original synchronised score

 

This film as David Kalat and Patrick Vasey discuss in their commentary, is an attempt by director Leo McCarey to focus more on the personalities and the character of not just Stan and Ollie but also their better halves as played by Bess Flowers (Mrs Laurel) and Vivien Oakland (Mrs. Hardy). The two men want to go to a poker game and make up a story about going to the Orpheum Theatre only to end up “making whoopee” with two women they meet on the street - Kay Deslys and Vera White. There’s some very bad table manners with various face pokes and slapstick accompanied by woman’s laughter and the synchronised score before Kay’s man returns – boxer "First Round" Kelly (the fearsome George Kotsonaros) but this is as nothing to the reckoning that awaits back home…

 

This film has polarised opinion a bit but both Kalat and Vasey point out the importance of watching it with an audience with the former explaining how well one screening went. So please, watch these discs with your family, your friends, your pets or anyone you can grab passing by. The more, the merrier! Live Cinema laughs harder!

 

There is a limited edition of just 2000 copies which comes with a slipcase and a collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall.

 

There are a welter of special features:

• 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restoration
• Brand new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Wilson
• Brand new interview with Neil Brand - essential analysis of 1928!
• Scores by a variety of silent film composers - see above! A sonic feast!
• Brand new audio commentaries by film historian and writer David Kalat, Patrick Vasey, (editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast), film writer Chris Seguin, Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films), Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia) and silent film accompanist Neil Brand
• Alternate Robert Youngson score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne
• Super 8 presentations of Dizzy Heights, Let ’em Rip, Out of Step and The Car Wreckers
• On Location with Laurel and Hardy – 1928 home movie footage of Laurel and Hardy
• Stills Galleries for each short

 

It is absolutely essential and you can order direct from the Eureka Store right here…