Never lands... Peter Pan (1924)/The Thief of Bagdad (1924), BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

 

Two blockbusters on a scale that influenced the next century of film right up to the mighty world of extended universes and modern franchises most specifically in the impact the former had on a certain Walter Disney but also in the incredible scale of the latter. Surely impressive appearances in both would help establish Anna May Wong as a rising star in Hollywood but in spite of her extraordinary ability to shine through and energise even the most confined role, it was not to be although she worked as hard as anyone could to maintain her own momentum and if it wasn’t going to be at home it would have to be away or even, far, far away. Still, she was noticed in Europe, especially in Britain and Germany, second star on the right, straight on till morning…

 

In the USA both films were amongst the most successful in 1924 with Thief bringing in $1.5million in 4^th place and the Christmas released Pan, eventually getting more than $600k. They were two of the six films Anna made in 1924 and the following year she made just two with four in 1926 and then a mixed bag of eight in 1927. Her last Hollywood film of 1928 was the Joan Crawford vehicle, Across to Singapore and she was uncredited but, for her first Anglo-German film she got star billing for Song (1928) and of course Piccadilly and Pavement Butterfly in 1929.

 

But these two films were spectacular and high impact proving her abilities in top-level company especially the phenomenon Fairbanks – so kinetic he makes Tom Cruise look like late period Ralph Richardson – and the mighty Betty Bronson who if ever there was a female equivalent to Doug, demonstrates it in Neverland. This was an afternoon of the highest quality with two major silent works that I had been saving up for the big screen with splendid accompaniment and a passionate informed audience. One of those special BFI days.

 

Mary Brian sews on Betty Bronson's shadow: this may hurt!

Peter Pan (1924,) with Costas Fotopoulos

 

Betty Bronson was a pocket rocket and was selected by JM Barrie over 100 others tested for the role¹ and we can absolutely see why. She made quite the impression on Fairbanks’ son Doug Jnr as he had later admitted she was his first crush on watching her in Peter Pan; she was 17 when she made the film and he was 15 when it was released and they were friends afterwards, the actor recalling in his autobiography that It was not fully requited. She only flirted with me…. No worries champ, you’ll be married to Joan Crawford within five years!

 

Betty is certainly full of Fairbanks’ zip in every single scene of this film, radiating health and laddish enthusiasm as the boy who never grows up. JM Barrie’s seminal Edwardian fantasy began as a play in 1904 before being novelised as Peter and Wendy in 1911. The first performance was at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 27 December 1904 with Nina Boucicault in the title role and so Peter was always played by a woman on stage which is noteworthy in itself in terms of the British drag tradition and the “trouser role”.

Anna May Wong brings the noise

 

The story and the film despite their fantastical nature are about parenthood and also loss with Peter possibly being inspired by the death of David the 14-year-old son of Barrie’s friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, a “Lost boy” who would never grow old and yet was happy to stay in Never Never Land. The character first appeared in the 1902 novel The Little White Bird, written for adults. The author ended up adopting Sylvia’s children after she and her husband died and this too is reflected in the story with Mrs Darling taking in the Lost Boys.

 

The film is a pure delight and a celebration of childhood with opening title cards explaining that viewers need to connect with their childish selves – no problem personally – in order to understand the photo play. It was lovely to see a number of children in the audience too, some very responsible parenting in evidence! The film has more of the intentions of the play along with a portion of the dialogue and is quite different to Disney’s 1953 cartoon which smooths out the sense of loss and the overt celebration of motherhood as well as the romantic frisson between Wendy and Peter. Disney, as ever, uncomfortable with reality.

 

Esther Ralston is key to setting the tone as Mrs. Darling, a woman of compassion and unconditional nurturing love. It is she who first encounters Peter in the children’s nursery and accidentally cuts off his shadow closing the window on him. She puts it in a draw and sees Peter again as he tries to retrieve what is perhaps a metaphor for his memory, soul and/or his loving existence on Earth… he recognises her but he can’t remember why, an extension of the same amnesia the younger Darlings experience after time in Never Land. Philippe De Lacy is boorish Dad Michael Darling who pranks his children and won’t keep his end of the bargain in taking his medicine instead feeding it to Nana the Dog, an extraordinary creation played by George Ali a puppeteer and animal impersonator who was incredibly flexible for a 58-year-old. He also plays lion and a crocodile… animal magic!

 

Mother Esther Ralston

Nana may only be a dog but is the children’s nursemaid making sure they get to bed on time and take their bath. Grumpy Dad chains her to the garden kennel meaning she is not on hand to protect the children when Peter and Tinkerbell arrive and, after Wendy (Mary Brian) sews Pan’s shadow back onto his feet, whisk them into the air and off to the island of Never Never Land. Wendy’s brothers John are played by Jack Murphy and Michael by Philippe De Lacy who went onto play the young prince in Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, before becoming a producer and director once he grew up!

 

They land in the Forest of Make-Believe and the fun really begins with mermaids, pirates and native Americans – not for nothing did this film come with a warning about the screening containing “racist attitudes, language and images, including red face”, it’s a document of its time. Here we find Anna May Wong as Tiger Lily, one of a group of “red Indians” who inhabit the forest, she’s not in many scenes but obviously brings the required pep to everyone although her band are unable to defeat the evil pirates led by the infamous Captain Hook! Ernest Torrence leaves no parts of the scenery unchewed and is spectacularly nasty as the pirate with the heart of lead… he’s the archetypical villain from Lex Luthor to Dr Doom up against a boy that can fly and knows no fear.

 

Peter and the Pirates... Ernest Torrence is terrfic.

We watched a 35mm copy from George Eastman House which ran at just over two hours with Costas Fotopoulos, seeing the film for the first time as well, filling his accompaniment with playful inventions suitable for an audience Barrie implored to go back to the nursery and once more believe in fairies as the play moved on.

 

Today was the 55^th anniversary of NFT2 and what better celebration than an audience clapping along as Betty Bronson urged us to signal out belief in magic and save poor Tinkerbell. Wonderful!

 

Doug on a magic carpet over a cast of thousands, still not sure how this was done?

The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand

 

Follow that and the BFI did with the shock and awe of Douglas Fairbank’s and Raoul Walsh’s epic adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights which was based on a story written by the actor under the pseudonym of Elton Thomas according to Kevin Brownlow and David Gill whose Photoplay restoration we watched. It is perhaps the ultimate Doug surpassing even Robin Hood (1922) and we had fabulous accompaniment from Neil Brand whose orchestral score for the former film demonstrated such an uncanny connection with the star and screen. Here, Neil was The Orchestra and for 164 minutes, albeit with a very short intermission, bringing his singular style and understanding of motion picture composition to the fore as the picture and the action towered over the rapt audience sat in NFT1.

 

The film’s sets were bigger than Hood’s and even Intolerance and were the work of William Cameron Menzies and they were so spectacular that Fairbanks fitted the action around them: there’s no elaborate staircase Doug can’t ascend with bounding flamboyance, no wall he can’t climb or descend or window he can’t slide down. He is his own special effect and, with his 21^st Century physique on topless display he is the epitome of health and efficiency – no chocolate on top of his cappuccino or cheeky pastry before the screening in the RFH for him… he reminds me of the moving statue in My Grandmother (1929).

 

Doug plays Ahmed, the Thief of Bagdad who starts the film off as self-interested and faithless taking whatever he wants whenever he wants to and laughing in the faith of authority of any kind. All of this changes when he chances to see and fall in love with The Princess of Bagdad (Julanne Johnston) and, after his cheeky ways lead him into more trouble than he can bear, he resolves to win her heart through honest endeavour. It’s interesting to see quotes in the intertitles from the Quran and to see Ahmed making peace with the Imam (Charles Belcher) who tells him, naturally, to follow his heart… try making this film these days and screening it in our flag-infested high streets?

 

Julanne Johnston and Fairbanks Snr

Against this regal and religious Bagdad stands Cham Shang, Prince of the Mongols (Japanese actor Sōjin Kamiyama) who wants to invade and enslave the kingdom and to have the Princess for his own. He has a spy in her handmaidens in the form of Anna May Wong who as you’d expect makes the most of her role especially in the scene in which Ahmed first breaks into the royal quarters and pushes a very phallic knife against her back, at least in the interpretation of filmmaker Michelle Williams Gamaker in her introduction.²

 

Ahmed must compete with the Mongols and also the princes of the Indies and Persia to bring home the greatest wonders from the furthest reaches of the world a grand quest involving flying carpets, flying horses, crystal balls and a box of delights. It is perhaps the most spectacular silent film ever made and certainly one of the most thoroughly enjoyable especially with Mr Brand’s flying accompaniment.

 

Both films are glorious and I am glad I waited to see them first on the big screen in a live setting. Now I can’t wait to watch my Blu-rays and work out exactly how the magic is wrought.

Meanwhile, plenty more Anna May Wong to come over the next three weeks... details on the BFI site.

 

Anna May Wong a spy in the house of love?

1.       According to The New York Times, 16^th August 1924 who reported that Bronson had sent a thank you telegram to the author: "I feel like a new Cinderella, thanks to you. I realize the importance of your trust in me and my tremendous responsibility. I am the luckiest girl in the world. Betty Bronson."

 

2.       Michelle Williams Gamaker featured a clip from her film Thieves (2023) part of her Fictional Activism initiative which is concerned with “… the restoration of marginalised film stars of colour as central figures, who return in her works as brown protagonists to challenge the fictional injustices to which they have been historically consigned.” Details on her website here.

 

Main character energy… Java Head (1934)/Drifting (1923), BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

 

“That she is an exceptionally clever actress one cannot doubt. She may merely wander through a corner of the picture, but she’ll register a hit every time.”

H.C. “A Chinese Puzzle”, Pictures and Picturegoer, February, 1924¹

 

Two films made over a gap of eleven years which show how our hero did indeed reinvent herself to keep working. Season curator Xin Peng pointed out in her introduction for the second film that whilst featuring as a teen in films staring Colleen Moore, Priscilla Dean and Alla Nazimova, she enjoyed a longer career than any of them, transitioning into the talkies not just in English but German, French, Chinese and “The King’s English” required for her roles in British films especially when American became briefly unpopular. Priscilla’s last film was Klondike in 1932 at the grand old age of 36 and Colleen’s last was The Scarlet Letter (1934) when she was 35 and certainly in a position to do what ever she wanted, be it building a dolls house or investing her money wisely.

 

Wong did not have the luxury of being able to retire early and she was only just picking up steam in the early thirties when she found fame and some fortune outside of the USA, breaking barriers in the UK and Germany, learning stage craft and putting on shows in China and Australia. She was willing to learn, not just languages but also the dancing always expected of her and the diction required to conquer the microphone. And, what guts did it take to step on stage in 1929, alongside Laurence Olivier to perform The Circle of Chalk at the New Theatre in London?

Anna May Wong in Drifting

 

Drifting (1923) with John Sweeney

 

As Yiman Wang points out² Anna (AMW) was only ever a freelancer with no substantial contracts in the manner of these other stars and, of course, even at the time in Hollywood it was remarked upon by the industry observers how she was never given star roles, the most she could hope for was a secondary role she could and often did make her own. So it is with Drifting directed by her “mentor” and sometime partner³, Todd Browning, who was 43 to her 18… He had previously worked with her on Outside the Law (1921) when she was underage and he married yet infatuated by the “exotic” and – for him – “unusual” girl^4.

 

In addition to being “the most murdered actress in Hollywood”, Anna May Wong is arguably the greatest scene-stealer even when given stereotypical roles and predictable narratives. This film followed on from her first substantial role in The Toll of the Sea (1922) and was intended as a vehicle for Universal’s “queen of the lot”, Priscilla Dean who dominates the screen time but to limited effect in comparison with AMW, who, looking even younger than her age, shifts through her dramatic progressions with some force whilst Dean just looks angry most of the time which, given the confusions of the script, is not surprising.

 

Matt Moore and Priscilla Dean

The new white man is very guarded in his language – I don’t know, maybe he is not the mine chief he claims to be…

 

The story? Well… there’s something about a government agent Capt. Arthur Jarvis (Matt Moore) posing as an entrepreneur trying to re-open a mine which is somehow cover for his attempts to shut down the opium trade around Hang Chow, a village near the poppy fields run by the Jhanzi outlaws. In Shanghai, opium dealer Cassie Cook (Priscilla Dean) isn’t making much money out of the profession and as her best pal lies dope sick, she is forced to team up with the rascally Jules Repin (Wallace Beery wearing a devious beard) who persuades her they can get rich on the pickings in Hang Chow.

 

Here they team up with the scheming Dr Li (William V. Mong in horrific yellow face) who whilst being no relation to Dr Fu Manchu, is supposed to be the father of the fragrant Rose Li (Anna May Wong) no matter how unlikely this is based on appearance. Meanwhile Rose has fallen for the noble Captain Jarvis and spends hours watching him standing outside the mine talking to his reliably Irish assistant, Murphy (Yale graduate J. Farrell MacDonald who probably got his Gaelic nose busted playing college football…) about opening the mine and how the two of them will defeat the massed ranks of the Jhanzi.

 

As with Mary Pickford, Anna May Wong could cry on cue...

Cassie and Repin collude with Dr Li and the former goes undercover as a novelist aiming to find out more about Jarvis’ two-man army only to fall in love with him. This complicates things greatly as tensions mount and the Jhanzi attack bringing out the best and worst of everyone: will Cassie choose the money or the man and can Rose put love and life before her duty to her evil father?

 

Her performances appropriate and splinter the stereotypes, upending their objecthood with a critical and sardonic twist…⁵

 

It’s an enjoyably odd film not just because of Browning’s uneven style but also a story that is, as The New York Tribune observed, “incoherent” with a “disagreeable” lead character⁶ that made them root for AMW’s Rose and they’re not the only ones. Anna May and J. Farrell are the most sympathetic watch as well as the token lovable kid, Billy the son of civilising missionaries, played by child actor Bruce Guerin who, when he grew up, became a professional pianist accompanying Bob Hope and many others.

  

John Loder and Anna May Wong clinch...

Java Head (1934)

 

AMW was 28 when she made this film and she first worked with producer Basil Dean on the theatrical version of The Circle of Chalk (1929) after he had been impressed with her performance in Piccadilly. The play had mixed reviews with her appearance praised and her “Hollywood accent” roundly condemned by such as the Bystander: “… it comes as a shock… to listen to the harsh nasal twang emitted from a figure of ancient China…” and the Graphic quipping “With Anna May Wong talking so American that Anna May Twang might be an apter name” ⁷.

 

As she did tie and again, Anna treated this setback as a learning experience and by the time of Dean’s Java Head she had learned the King’s English with the same alacrity as she did German and other languages. The result if her near perfect diction and characterful pronunciation that was usually more associated with the Orient at this time. Directed by J. Walter Ruben, with uncredited assistance from Thorold Dickinson and young Carol Reed, Java Head tells a story that would not have been legally possible in the USA with Anna May not only headlining but seen to kiss her Caucasian co-star John Loder. This ground-breaking moment was acceptable in Great Britain as the characters were married but even this is not especially evidence that, as Cole Porter was to report in the same year, “anything goes…” as the film gives mixed messages on racial tolerance and cultural-romantic compatibility.

The family meet...

 

The film is based in Bristol and the fortunes of two merchant shipping families, the thrusting Ammidons and the failing Dunsacks led by two former friends who had fallen out over twenty years earlier following a tragedy at sea.  Lovable Edmund Gwenn plays Jeremy Ammidon who even nearing the age of retirement is still passionate about his business and sailing ships whilst his land-lubber son, William (the great Ralph Richards), feels they need to innovate with steam and the fast clipper ships as well as the types of cargo they carry. Youngest son, the dashing Captain Gerrit Ammidon (John Loder) is eager for adventure and has the familial sea legs.

Gerrit sparks the old feud by falling for the Nettie Vollar (Elizabeth Allan), the granddaughter of old man Barzil Dunsack (Herbert Lomas) who in addition to hating the Ammidons, loves God a lot and in addition has yet to forgive Nettie for being born out of wedlock, one of a number of sins unmentioned but implied in a story partly based on implied opium trading and addiction. Barzil’s faulty logic drives Gerrit to sea and he leaves to make his fortune trading around the World.

 

A year later he returns and he has brought his new wife with him, Taou Yuen (Anna May Wong) much to the distress of his family, and of course lonely Nettie. She may well be a princess but this cuts no rice with the locals for whom she is “a heathen Chinese! From China!” who causes outrage when she attends church among all but the priest who hopes to discuss the teachings of Confucius with her. She also gets a warm welcome from Barzil’s son and Nettie’s uncle, Edward Dunsack (George Curzon) who is seemingly as addicted to China as he is to opium although again this is implied with Gerrit having brought a mysterious chest from Shanghai for him.

AMW generates MCE at the church

As the family gradually accepts Taou Yuen she forms a bond with Laurel, the youngest Ammidon child (an uncredited but spirited performer) who dresses up in Chinese clothes and make-up entering the room just as Edward is harassing her aunt and in his opium-addled state capable of anything. This narrative is also capable of anything and pulls a 360 or two over the closing sequences as Gerrit falls back in love with Nettie and starts to question his marriage. So too does Taou Yuen in ways that I can’t really explain here… themes very much of their time.

 

In the after-screening Q&A, season curator Xin Peng pointed out that AMW was very keen to make the film and so the mixed outcome is a surprise but perhaps balanced by the more positive aspects of the film and the actor’s skill in presenting more than the script demands in terms of authentic character and feeling. Once again she rises above and subverts the surface narrative in ways we see more clearly now than most would in 1934.

 

The film was made in between AMW’s theatrical tours of Britain which demonstrate her relentless ability to conquer new territories and theatrical routes as she carved out an unique path across countries and cultural boundaries. A truly remarkable woman.

 

There is so much more to see and learn from this season and full details of Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention can be found on theBFI website. Do not miss out!

  

1.       As quoted by Yiman Wang in “To Be an Actress: Labour and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World”, University of California Press 2024

2.       Also, in “To Be an Actress…”

3.       According to David J. Skal and Elias Savada in The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywood’s Master of the Macabre, Doubleday, 1995 as quoted in the BFI’s screening notes.

4.       Katie Gee Salisbury in Anna May Wong: Not Your China Doll, Faber 2024. When Browning’s wife discovered the liaison she left him.

5.       In “To Be an Actress…”

6.       David J. Skal and Elias Savada again.

7.       Katie Gee Salisbury in Anna May Wong

 

 

Edge of the World… Finis Terrae (1929), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

Bannec. On an island where winter storms wipe out all forms of life, four men come in two teams to spend the summer collecting seaweed in total isolation…

 

I was going to headline with Ultima Thule but that’s just daft so I thought I’d link back or rather forward to Michael Powell’s brilliant depiction of life on a remote Scottish island as seen and described a few weeks back. Islands, it seems, you just cannot get enough especially if they face the roaring uncertainty of the Atlantic and concern the relationship between the families and the fisherman, the island and the mainland. I don’t know if Powell saw this film or, indeed, Michael Flaherty before his trip to the Irish Arran, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

Presented on Blu-ray for the very first time in the UK and North America, and sourced from an astounding 4K restoration Jean Epstein’s film is one of the silent elite, an almost documentarian approach that still manages to bring plenty of human interest from the mix of locals and professional actors. Does that sound familiar? It may do but we should never take for granted the achievements of shooting in these unforgiving places and in conditions that threatened more than just the shooting schedule.

Epstein was a writer on film and a film theorist as well as a director and with his third film, Coeur fidèle (1923), he experimented with a deceptively simple story of love and violence "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy".¹ His most famous film, La Chute de la maison Usher (1928) was more typical of the French Impressionist school of film, with Henri Langlois calling it “the cinematic equivalent of Debussy's works…”. By 1929 the director wanted to present reality in its most cinematic form, mixing documentary discipline with impressionist technique to stunning effect.

In her excellent video essay on this disc, film writer Pamela Hutchinson explains Epstein’s use of the concept of “Photogénie” which is essentially the use of cinematic technique to make the everyday extraordinary on screen: the creation of what we’d perhaps call “pure cinema”. There’s a lot of theoretical detail around this term and the director did not coin the term but it certainly featured in his work and in this film especially.

 

Finis Terrae is the first of the director’s Breton trilogy, and was shot entirely on location off the Finistère coast in the part of France we Angles and Celts often forget projects far into the Atlantic Ocean… No channel or Irish or North Sea to ease the traveller into the thrashing ocean… this is the highway to halibut and four men very much alone with their cod. Epstein places his characters very much in their surroundings and they’re dominated by the landscapes, often viewed from behind rocks or from overhead. They are dramatically reduced in human significance against the terrible beauty of the earth and sea.

There goes the wine

Epstein chose to cast local seaweed harvesters rather than professional actors, giving the performances a raw, authentic quality and an ethnographic sense of documentary realism with the aid of sophisticated cutting. Epstein is concerned with time and there are frequent examples of his mixing up real-time action with slow-motion cut-aways sometimes involving symbolic moments. One such instance is when one of the four men on the island of Bannec, Ambroise Rouzic - the characters do not have names - drops their last bottle of wine and we see the anguished reaction of his mate, Jean-Marie Laot, and then cut repeatedly to the broken bottle spilling the precious fluid onto the sand. As it slowly drains into the ground tempers flare as a knife goes missing and the split that drives the rest of the narrative begins.

Ambroise has cut his finger and this very quickly becomes infected which, in a time before anti-biotics is bad enough but they are miles from the nearest doctor. He gradually loses his strength but having fallen out of favour with the others they leave him be as he falls sick and they carry on harvesting the seaweed, pushing into pits and burning it to create kelp which was used for its iodine.

 

Gradually Jean-Marie’s character realises that his pal is in trouble, after seeing him trying to get off the island on his own – an impossibility given there’s no wind and he’d need two hands to paddle his way, He falls unconscious on the sand and, finally they see how sick he is. Meanwhile those on the mainland have noticed the absence of smoke from the island and they make their way to the doctor to get him to go and help.

Jean-Marie Laot and Ambroise Rouzic

With fierce currents around the coast and no wind, can the mainlanders and/or the men find each other in the treacherous middle. It’s a simple story but a powerful one and the outcome is far from certain creating a tense finale in which Epstein also manages to pick up the nuances of his untrained cast on land and sea.

There’s a poignant new score from Roch Havert which, using a small ensemble comprising brass, woodwind and strings, provides a sympathetic score which matches the visuals with understated jazz and modern composition which allows the full flavours of the original material to play out. Havert is an experienced composer and musician who has written a number of scores, this one greatly enhances the film and brings a humble sincerity to the enterprise as befits its ethnographic vitality.

 

A masterful score for a Master of Cinema. Buy it now and if you need any more persuasion, here are the especially salty extra features:

·         Finis Terrae presented in 1080p HD from a 4K restoration by Gaumont Film Company

·         Optional English subtitles

·         Impressions on Jean Epstein – new interview with film historian and critic Pamela Hutchinson on the life and work of the director

·         Stranded – a new video essay on Finis Terrae

·         The Bottom of the Wave – an archival appreciation of Finis Terrae by Joel Daire

·         Limited Edition of 2,000 copies

·         Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by John Dunn

·         Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring a new essay on Finis Terrae by Jean Epstein expert Christophe Wall-Romana and archival writing by the director

 

The Limited Edition is out now so I’d be quick and order as soon as you can from the Eureka website here!

 1.       Jean Epstein. Présentation de "Cœur fidèle", in Écrits sur le cinéma, 1, 124 (jan. 1924)

 

Season Introduction & Shanghai Express (1932), Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention, BFI

 

Anna Wong, the actor’s niece, never met her aunt but she learned a lot from her father who assured her that his sister had felt fulfilled as she entered her final years after over 80 films and a legacy she must have been aware of by her death in 1961. Few stars have had to work as hard as Anna May Wong to keep working at a high level and, as the series title indicates, this involved a lot of reinvention and hard graft: learning how to dance when dancing was what was expected of you, learning to drop her American accent when in Britain on stage or on screen and learning to spot opportunities and making the sacrifices necessary to grab them. She was tough as well as everything else.

 

Anna was speaking as part of a panel of four providing an introduction for the season ahead with each bringing their own expertise and particular connection with the first Chinese American film star. Season curator Dr Xin Peng, Assistant Professor in Film and Screen Studies at Cambridge University was on hand along with Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll, the essential new biography on AMW which is out now in paperback and in the BFI shop ready for signature. The group were completed by Pamela Hutchinson film writer and historian with a particular interest in the silent era and in the women whose stories are less appreciated than they deserve to be silent film is a crusade all of its own but with Anna May, there are so many wrongs to right for us all.

 

The women took turns in introducing their favourite clips from the actress, starting with Piccadilly selected by Pamela, who chose the clip were the actress is working in the kitchen cleaning dishes but is caught dancing and promptly sacked by the club manager. He later, of course, realises his mistake and she becomes the club’s, and his, main attraction and, in some ways, this story mirrors Anna’s own journey from the sink to the stage and screen. Anna selected Pavement Butterfly for it allowing her aunt to show her range as well as her ability as a clothes horse and dancer – a natural even before training.

Pamela Hutchinson, Anna Wong, Katie Gee Salisbury and Dr Xin Peng

Katie picked another German film, Song, which again allowed Wong to show her “chops” as an actor in the scene in which she pretends to be her knife-throwing partner’s lover allowing the temporarily blinded man to believe she has come to see him – it’s so moving and we see in close-up Anna’s ability to cry on cue… who knows what sadness enabled her to summon tears so readily? By contrast, Xin chose a clip from the all-star review Elstree Calling, this being a parody of Taming of the Shrew, showing Anna’s finesse at pie-throwing whilst dressed in her Piccadilly costume.

 

After success in Europe Anna returned to a two-film contract with Paramount starting with Daughter of Shanghai (1931) as Fu Man Chu’s daughter and then, tonight’s main event, Shanghai Express (1932) in which, as we shall see, she makes the absolute most of her part even having to compete for screen attention alongside Dietrich. Sadly, her obvious strengths continued to be ignored by a Hollywood and US society in transition for want of a better word. She returned to Europe, not for the first or last time, as she continued to fight for her identity and her career.

 

As the panel showed with her later talkies, Wong may not always have had a leading role but she seems always to have made her roles leading and was a dynamic presence in each of the clips we saw no matter how much submerged in the constraints of cliché. She was a formidable woman; she was relentless and she made herself count. We shall learn a lot more over the next month or so.

 

Anna & Marlene...*

Shanghai Express (1932)

 

In her introduction, Katie Gee Salisbury asked for a show of hands for those who had seen our main feature and I was among the large minority who had not and it did not disappoint on the big screen. Marlene I know, von Sternberg too but this is one of those films for which the term “classic” was invented with the Austrian directing his light and shadow with swaggering invention and bringing out the best from his cast in one of the great train mysteries. Dietrich takes the breath away with her sorrowful wit and no one ever captured her fine features the way Josef did and his DOC, Lee Games who won the Academy Award. There’s a moment when she’s leaning against the wall of her compartment, allowing the rising smoke of her cigarette to twist and turn over her brightly lit face which gives us so little of what she’s thinking that we’re lost in the examination… all she asks is to be believed and we all have the faith by the end.

 

Alongside her are the chiselled and slightly stiff features of our own Clive Brook, his equally stilted sonorous voice redeemed by his character’s febrile confusion around Marlene’s Shanghai Lil. His upper lip couldn’t be any stiffer but underneath his professional cool, Captain Donald “Doc” Harvey is about as mad about the girl as he can be it’s been five years and four weeks when the two meet again on the Shanghai Express but he’s never stopped and neither has she… they just need to believe in each other.

 

How could anyone steal a scene in such circumstances, let alone provide some of the key moments of this film? Well, if you’re not familiar, it’s possible with the look, the physicality and purposeful delivery of Anna May Wong. As Pam said in the previous session, Anna knows how to handle the moments between dialogue, and she can make even solitaire look like a deadly game. Von Sternberg realised this and places her so often in the corner of his scenes, drawing our eye to her keen observation and intensity through the frame of carriage windows as characters move back and forth, shifting in importance and meaning.

 

The director choreographs both actresses very well but it’s Anna’s movements that are the most potent, she’s a woman of agency and, unlike so many other characters she played, she is not here to provide oriental adornment or be the tragic loss that foreshadows the central lovers. The chemistry between her and Dietrich also makes this a female buddy movie, they’re “coasters” making their living in the rich resorts along the south China coast but they also look after each other, see the same moves and instinctively act in tandem. Not so much Thelma and Louise as Butch and Sundance… with a 78-rpm portable turntable playing some high-energy jazz that buzzes them down as it imposes their presence on the other travellers.

 

The real chemistry is between the two women whatever Lil does with Doc, there’s something enabled by von Sternberg but created entirely by Marlene and Anna that you very rarely see in this era and it speaks to the strength and intelligence of both performers. They present more than can be possibly interpreted in one viewing, purposefully enigmatic and completely controlled and the only truly serious characters in a film featuring a clutch of lovely supporting caricatures. That’s not to say that these walking sub-plots are not all expertly worked from Eugene Pallet’s wonderfully raspy gambling man to Gustav von Seyffertitz’ grumbly German hypochondriac and Lawrence Grant’s perpetually outraged Reverend Carmichael. Then there’s Émile Chautard as the French Major with a sad secret, Louise Closser Hale as the English lady smuggling her nervous pooch and the familiar “yellow face” of Warner Oland, here a revolutionary and later the “Chinese detective” Charlie Chan.

Oland stands out in a film that aims for authenticity and there’s none more so than Anna May Wong who shows exactly how to make the most of every second of screen time. It’s a shame that Hollywood wouldn’t give her the chance to develop as a leading actor, especially in a decade in which white actors continued to play oriental roles in make-up**. America’s loss was Europe’s gain as we shall see as this celebration of her talent, determination and reinvention unfolds.

 

Full details of the season are here on the BFI website: do not miss this!!

  

Katie Gee Salisbury introduces in NFT1

*Nope... They worked well together but they were not together according to Katie Gee Salisbury and others. Ms Dietrich's liaisons were generally freely admitted and publicly documented.

**The Good Earth (1937) featured Paul Muni and Luise Rainer in Oscar-winning yellowface… Wong was considered for her role but Hays Code anti-miscegenation rules meant that Muni’s wife had to be played by another white person. Anna was offered another role but she refused saying: “You’re asking me – with Chinese blood – to do the only unsympathetic role in a picture featuring ab all-American cast portraying Chinese characters?” This quote is as per Kenneth Quan in his profile on the star on Asia Pacific Arts.

 

When Erich met Irving... Merry-Go-Round (1923), Flicker Alley Blu-ray

  

“…inexcusable and repeated acts of insubordination… extravagant ideas which you have been unwilling to sacrifice… and your apparent idea that you are greater and more powerful than the organization that employs you.”

Irving Thalberg’s letter of termination to Erich von Stroheim

I’d seen the new restoration of this film at last year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone but sometimes in the rush of a festival you don’t always pick up everything about a film, especially one with such a complicated backstory as this. According to von Stroheim biographer Richard Koszarski in his book-length audio commentary, Erich spent something like 33 days directing the film, 20-25% of the total according to the accounts of Universal’s new Head of Production, Irving Thalberg, who fired him and Rupert Julian who replaced him and yet this film could hardly be more “Von”.

 

Koszarski quotes from the meticulous diaries of James Winnard Hum who was sent to man-mark the Austrian spendthrift by Thalberg, a 24-year-old “Boy Wonder” who was busily turning Universal into a business with a command-and-control structure that was not going to co-exist with the old ways of director-led films. Thalberg had more to offer than just a belief in budgets and schedules but having already had to intervene on the director’s over-spent Foolish Wives (1922), when von Stroheim wanted to keep on shooting, was not going to allow him to risk Universal’s financial well-being not matter how “inspired” the ideas. Foolish Wives had been a smash but maybe studios will one day learn that Thalberg’s creative due diligence was a necessary counterbalance to unfettered and expensive creativity.

 

So, enter Mr Julian, a director badly in need of a hit and who would later claim more of the film’s ideas as his own than were his due. Koszarski reads out von Stroheim’s script outline during his commentary and it’s quite clear that not just the story but the shooting instructions were followed pretty faithfully with the result that the film, with most of the original cast and crew intact, carries the hallmarks of its author and original director.

 

This means a film that is marked by the harshness of certain characters and the cruel fate of others all against a backdrop of a fantasy Viennese noble demimonde that von Stroheim convinced everyone was his too. The extremes of the characters’ backgrounds makes the cruelty all the more painful as fairground organ grinder Agnes Urban (Mary Philbin) is forced to keep on playing just as her mother is breathing her last by her monstrous boss, Huber (George Siegmann). This is further contrasted with her soft-focus flirting with handsome Count Franz Maxmilian von Hohenegg (Norman Kerry) who has the luxury of visiting her incognito feigning to be a necktie salesman.

 

The Count’s life is unreal as a matter of course though, marked by duty and ritual that obscures feelings and curtails freedom. He is due to be married to the daughter of the Minister of War (Spottiswoode Aitken), the Countess Gisella von Steinbruck (Dorothy Wallace) in a decision Emperor Francis Joseph (Anton Vaverka) has decided is in everyone’s best interests. All of this is far from the carefree Count’s mind as he slums it in Vienna’s playground, the Prater amusement park, and seeks out its main attraction, the Merry-Go-Round.

 

The film opens with a mix of stock shots of Vienna showing the gothic history, the night life and the sordid underbelly as a young mother says goodbye to her son and throws herself off a bridge into the Danube. Then we join the Count as he shakes off a luxury hangover care of his manservants’ attentions including a risqué glimpse of the Kerry derriere which caused issues with the censors – more so, according to Koszarski, than the sexual violence later in the story. You can always count on the moral arbiters to miss the real point can’t you?

 

Life is so different for the workers at the Prater fairgrounds with Huber treating everyone, including his wife Marianka (the great Dale Fuller!), who he pointedly gives a tiny portion of his meal to, not to mention Agnes and her father Sylvester (Cesare Gravina who will later play alongside her in The Man Who Laughs) as they try to care for Ursula, his wife, her mother, who is in the last stages of serious illness.

 

The visit of the handsome stranger lifts Agnes spirits and, given the poverty of her life, the comparison with his true status is almost comical still wheel of fortune wheel of fire… the Merry-go-Round if life and just in case we’re not sure about the cyclical nature of fate and despair, every so often a silver0skinned devil appears laughing over a carousel spinning helplessly below.

 

The pathos is broad-brush but the finesse of the cruelty is such that this is merely another tragicomic aspect of the hopeless duality of love, life and grinding duty. I really don’t know exactly how socialist von Stroheim was but this critique of naked greed and careless class couldn’t be more on point for the times. He may be mourning a “lost Vienna” but not if it was this unfair.

 

And still comes the misery, Nicki (Charles King) is Agnes’ friend, and he loves her even though his deformity and humped back preclude her romantic interest – in his mind at least. He has an orangutang which is his livelihood, but also a friend who looks at Huber with savage eyes (no less than the rest of us). He watches in anguish as she falls for the handsome Franz as there is nothing he could or would do to stop it.

 

The greatest indignity of all awaits Agnes when, inevitably, the truth will out and she endures a humiliation in front of her “betters” and her father that is difficult to watch. This is as intended by von Stroheim but the director of 75-80% of the film deserves a lot of credit for largely taking script, cast and crew and making the film in the uncompromising fashion we identify with his predecessor.

 

There are also some very fine performances on screen and is this the best Mary Philbin role? She’s full on committed and never really crosses over the line towards purely melodramatic being believable sad and humiliated and in love all at the same time. Cesare Gravina is so intense and has just the face for this kind of gothic tale in which the cavernous depths of man’s everyday cruelty to man are ultimately compared with the First World War. Norman Kerry is, of course, a big lunk, but that’s what the role demands and many a better actor would struggle to complete his story arc… you have to see it!

 

The restoration features a newly commissioned orchestral score composed and conducted by Robert Israel, which contributes greatly to the emotional vibrancy of the cast and story and it’s a very rewarding watch and re-watch.

  

The restoration is fabulous and there’s an extra looking at it in more detail and much more:

 

·         Audio Commentary by Richard Koszarski - Go behind the scenes of the troubled production and explore Merry-Go-Round’s incredible filmic legacy with an in-depth commentary track from cinematic historian Richard Koszarski

·         Vienna Actualities - Explore Vienna in the years before World War I with 17 minutes of historical footage, courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria

·         Old Heidelberg (1915) - A new restoration of a feature from director John Emerson and producer D.W. Griffith, which served as an influence on Merry-Go-Round and also boasts Erich von Stroheim’s very first acting role

·         Restoring Merry-Go-Round - Go behind the scenes of the brand-new restoration with film restorer Serge Bromberg

·         Photo Galleries - Production stills, publicity, and other rare documentation

·         Souvenir Booklet - Featuring a new essay on the production by Richard Koszarski and notes on the restoration by Serge Bromberg and Lucie Fourmont

·         English SDH Subtitles

·         Reversible Cover Artwork – always a bonus!

 

Full details are available on the Flicker Alley website and those that re-sell US Blu-rays to the UK. It’s a fascinating part of the changing face of Hollywood as well as being one of Erich’s best concepts brought to life with a little help from his “friends” Rupert and Irving!

The Rabmadár Redemption? Slave Bird (1929), with Elaine Brennan, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2025

It happened in the women’s prison on the evening of 26^th May…

  

Slave Bird aka Rabmadár aka Prisoner No. 7 is frank in ways that might surprise modern viewers as much as contemporary ones and was, as a result originally banned by the Hungarian authorities until its success overseas led to a re-release. It’s depiction of human and criminal relationships, together with some audacious nudity and inferences of non-conforming sexuality, would never have made the screen pre- or post-code in the United States.

 

A co-German and Hungarian production filmed in Budapest and directed by Pál Sugár and Lajos Lázár, it begins with two dynamic sequences that set the scene in imaginative and purely cinematic fashion. The action starts in a court room in uproar with a lone figure working his way through a crown of people and running to a telephone booth calling his newspaper: I’ve got it… the first report on the lawsuit against the doctor! There follows the flow of news as his report is transcribed, edited and then typeset and proofed before being printed on huge Linotype off-set printers and emerging as newspapers – hot metal headlines!

 

According to Dr Janka Barkóczi, as quoted in the programme notes*, the editorial office of Az Est newspaper were used for these scenes with the - domestically well-known - journalist and poet Lőrinc Szabó is seen working on the story, subbing and proofing, adding an element of reality to the film’s mix of documentary and melodramatic technique.

 

Waves of cyclists distribute the papers across the city as we catch a glimpse of the Az Est front page – in both Hungarian and then German (forgive my translation) - Prisoner No. 7 Not crime but humanity.

 

The Doctor talks. Violent sobs frame her revelations. A great brave woman's heart triumphs over the rigid letter of the law.  … public opinion unanimously demands (leniency).

 

The subtitles of the Bonn streaming version didn’t include all of the text and only flashes of the newspaper’s coverage but I wanted to see what the Hungarian and German audiences saw… who is this mysterious Doctor and what has she done to invite legal process and such overwhelming sympathy. It’s an unusual start to a film that embellishes its relatively simple story with a good deal of sophistication and meaningful under-currents.

 

A flashback then to the women’s prison on 26^th May and as we travel across the city the camera fixes on the outside of the jail and then, through iron bars to a circle of women prisoners taking exercise under the watchful eye of a guard before walking back to their confinement, silhouetted against the fading light as they and us are incarcerated within the brooding misery inside. The Doctor is played by the elegant German actress Charlotte Susa who also sang opera (another Silent Multi-tasker) and enjoyed a long career in her home country although having gained an MGM contract she failed to develop a career in Hollywood. She mostly playing femme fatales and here she is cast in a romantic role – with full meaning - as the Doctor who cares perhaps too much for the prison inmates.

 

She is especially concerned with Anna, prisoner number 7, played by Lissy Arna another German actor and one who did work in America providing voice-overs for German films. She is exceptionally good here as the subject of wrongful imprisonment, taking the rap for her lover’s crimes and in frequent close-up demonstrating the misery of her choice and the anguish of lost love. She wants to put things right and make sure her man is following the straight and narrow – her sacrifice must not be in vain. But, as Anna’s plaintive eyes look tearily out of the bars on her cell her vision of her love Jenő becomes reality for the watching audience and in ways that make us pity her even more. The film’s pacing is impeccable.

Charlotte Susa

 

The second we see Hans Adalbert Schlettow (here as Hans Adelbert von Schlettow) as Jenő we know that Anna’s in trouble… is there anyone else who could play such a dastardly and apparently likeable rogues as Herr Schlettow? Nein, ich sage dir, tausendmal nein! The actor was often on the wrong side of the cast as seen most recently in Bonn’s streaming of Song (1929) with Anna May Wong**and he’s also familiar from Die Nibelungen (1924) and Anthony Asquith's A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929). Here he is superbly full of himself, preening at the mirror and then effortlessly charming the women around him… all with a twinkle of devilment in his eye.

 

He has already cast a spell on the innocent “Birdie” (Ida Turay) who believes it’s true love but is quick to work on the new maid (Olga Kerékgyártó) who he spies on in her underwear, and he also keeps a close watch on the Manageress (Mariska H. Balla) casting avaricious eyes at her safe.

 

 Hans Adalbert Schlettow and Olga Kerékgyártó

I don’t know why you are so interested in prisoner number seven… she’s one of hundreds of thieves.

 

Back in prison, the Doctor is in her rooms watching her pet bird in its gilded cage and no doubt drawing the same allusions we do before she is called to Anna’s aid in the night. But Anna is only feigning sickness, she wants the Doctor to let her out for just one night, and, as she asks “… isn’t there someone you can’t live without?” But, as one of the guards (Szidi Rákosi) has already said about the Doctor, she not only has her favourite but “modern concepts of incarceration”. Whatever the reasons, she agrees to swap places with Anna and the young woman escapes dressed as the medic and makes her way to the hotel where her Jenő works.

 

But in the hotel, things are about to take a dramatic turn as a striking new guest arrives, a beautiful “artiste” from Paris played by El Dura who is described as a “native Creole” on IMDB and as an actress and revue dancer. The term was used to cover those of mixed race and originally of European (mostly French or Spanish) or African descent born in the West Indies or parts of French or Spanish America. Whatever, it is good to see her given such a meaty role and, once again, not an opportunity afforded in Hollywood. She is playful and quickly gets the measure of Jenő who is clearly out of his criminal depth.

 

El Dura getting the measure of her man...

He runs her a bath and hopes his charm will win her over but he’s left imagining her getting undressed with a split screen showing us his febrile inventions in graphic detail. I’m not sure if this brief nudity was left in the original re-released version or inserted back during the restoration but it certainly shows Jenő’s mind-set and contrasts painfully with the realities of prison and Birdie’s cosy fantasies.

 

As she keeps Jenő at arm’s length, the two hatch a plot to rob the hotel, with the head waiter distracting the manageress as the dancer grabs the contents of the safe… and, it would have worked as well if not for the appearance of Anna… but there are more surprises in store as the film’s main narrative streams meet in a powerful swirl of unexpected emotions.

 

In addition to the outstanding cast, the film is enlivened by state-of-the art cinematography from Hungarian József Bécsi - worked on many of the early films of director Michael Curtiz - and the experienced German Adolf Otto Weitzenberg. Anna is filmed from overhead during crucial moments in her cell whilst their cameras frequently follow the movement of the players just as effectively as the close-ups that reveal the emotional nuance of the main players.

The spirited improvisations from Irish pianist Elaine Brennan, recorded live during the screening at Bonn, also ran so smoothly with the narrative and the emotions on screen. I think this is the first time I’ve heard her work and look forward to hearing more – accompanying a two-hour film on the fly, especially one as unusual as this, is no mean feat: you need a wealth of melody and compositional agility to tell the tale of steadfast Anna, faithless Jenő and the Doctor whose compassion may redeem everyone.

 

The film was long considered lost until an incomplete copy was passed from a Dutch collector to the National Film Archives of Austria who, with The National Film Institute Hungary in Budapest, were able to complete a fuller restoration in 2023 after the missing parts emerged. The film is now some 2171 metres long, almost complete. The news broke in Hungary in 2023, online as well as in print… we’ve come a long way from hot metal but hot news remains the same!

 

I hope to see this film on British – or Italian – screens soon!

 

Lissy Arna

 

*Dr Janka Barkóczi, nfi.hu, 11 December 2023

** Song is due in London at the BFI in September with Stephen Horne accompanying!!

She knows why the caged bird sings...