Elementary… Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace

If it’s Wednesday it must be London and the magnificent, arrested decay of the Alexandra Palace Theatre which as the BFI’s Jean Mitri awardee Bryony Dixon said in her introduction was not only contemporary with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series as published in The Strand magazine but also the films based on his work made by the Stoll Picture Company. The Theatre was originally opened in 1875 and was screening films as early as 1906 with the tin projector room installed in the early twenties still remaining. After 80 years of closure, the venue is being restored in much the same way as these three films we saw screened, with just 44 more to go…

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano. My mother was a huge appreciator of Ms MacGregor’s classical work and she would have loved this evening of exemplary musicality and performance.

 

The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. A vastly experienced stage actor, Norwood so impressed the author with his obsessive attempts to bring every detail of Holmes to light that he gushed about his “brooding eye” and his “rare quality, which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing.”

 

Screen presence - Eille Norwood  (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

That original materials survive for these films is remarkable but as Bryony pointed out, duplicate positives were made in the fifties and sixties and so the BFI was thinking ahead – not for nothing is it one of the leading archives in the world. For two of these films those duplicated formed the basis of photochemical and digital restoration whilst the third, the shattering The Final Problem (1923), was based on a tinted nitrate original and looked stunning.

 

That film left us literally on a cliff-hanger but the future of this series is ensured and I look forward to watching everyone… the French may have had Louis Feuillade but we had Maurice Elvey and then George Ridgwell, who directed the second and third series. The project is in collaboration with Iron Mountain Entertainment and will make this unique collection available on home media as well as on the big screen. Tonight, we had episodes from across the series all of which showed the flavour of the Eile Sherlock and the ways these wonderful stories were adapted for the big screen.

 

Sherlock and the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton)

A Scandal in Bohemia (1921), score Joseph Havlat

 

This was the seventh in the series and Norwood crams a lot of character into his screen time ably enabled by Elvey’s economy and focus. So many stock Sherlock moments are concentrated into this film that it underlines Doyle's desciption of “glamour”: one early example is the detective noticing that his companion Dr Watson (the ever-present Hubert Willis) has employed a new housemaid who has been over-rigorous in cleaning his shoes. I noticed that modern Sherlock writer, Stephen Moffat was on hand and probably making notes furiously!

 

Doyle was impressed with Norwood’s “quite unrivalled power of disguise…” and in Scandal we’re treated to a taxicab driver so convincing that The Strand reported he was nearly ejected from the studios as a trespasser! He also plays a non-conformist minister in his attempts to trick Irene Adler (Joan Beverley) into revealing the whereabouts of her incriminating pictures of her affair with the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton). Of course, Watson is fooled every time but Miss Adler proves to be altogether as smart as Sherlock… 

 

Miles Mander makes an appearance as Godfrey Norton, Irene’s true love interest and – surprisingly perhaps for those who have seen his later silent work, he’s not a bounder but a thoroughly decent chap!

 

Watson, Prof Coram (Cecil Morton York) and Sherlock

The Golden Prince-Nez (1922), score Neil Brand

The quirkiest of the three, this puzzler was the 14^th of the second series – directed by George Ridgwell who covered series two and three after Elvey moved on – and  involved the death of one Professor Coram’s secretary, who died clutching his killer’s eyeglasses in his hand. Sherlock quickly deduces that the murderer was a short-sighted woman with a broad nose and so it proves just not the one the police grab. There’s always a twist and a logical explanation and this one was a doozy.

 

Norwood has such presence and also a twinkle in his eye – his Sherlock enjoys the challenges and, just like our puppy Mungo, likes showing off how clever he is! Here the mystery is “readable” by the viewers and we can join in matching wits with the detective and the guilty parties.

 

Percy Standing and Eille grappling...

The Final Problem (1923), score Joanna MacGregor

 

To Cheddar Gorge and the culmination of Sherlock’s final battle with his criminal nemesis, Professor Moriarty… This was the last of the series and was directed by George Ridgwell. Here Holmes faces his evil equal, Moriarty (Percy Standing) with both men nearing the end of their tether after a series of bruising score draws in the streets of London. Sherlock makes a number of early signifying references to being willing to stop the man even at the cost of his own life.

 

He thwarts the evil schemer one more time and, leaving instructions with the police of Moriarty’s gang’s secret lair, heads of for some relaxation with Watson at Cheddar Gorge… it’s not quite the Reichenbach Falls but you may guess what’s coming. This featured stunning tints - restored from an original nitrate print – which really brought out the flavours of the locations and the epic battle of wits.

 

The orchestrations were powerful and evocative with each composer taking a slightly different route but delivering compositionally and as scores illustrating these timeless tales. Norwood plus time equals more or less Cumberbatch and I have the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on my side. MacGregor tackled her dual role with ease and the players brought out rich textures in each approach creating a seamless whole of pure invention, deduction and delightful problem-solving verve!

 

Neil Brand and Joseph Havlat take their bows (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

The Final Problem was written in 1893 and viewers of 1923 would have been fully aware that Sherlock would return as he did originally in 1903’s The Adventure of the Empty House… but, as then, the finale here seems final. But, gentle reader, do not worry about our favourite sleuth for he will return, along with Maurice Elvey, in the feature film The Sign of Four (1923).

 

And now we must await further developments and restorations for the rest of the series; this was a most exciting entrée to the programme and probably the biggest such undertaking since the Hitchcock Nine back in 2012. I can’t wait.

Joanna MacGregor (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Fourth row back, chap with the beard, looks quite concerned... that's me! (Photo Colby Todisco BFI)

Michael Powell: Early Works, BFI Blu-ray Set

 

‘What fascinated me was the attitude: the planned yet flexible operation, led by the director, to seize the moment … to turn the light of common day into something beautiful and entertaining. This was for me! I never had the slightest doubt that I was meant to direct films from that day to this. Ten years later, I made my first.’

Michael Powell*

 

My family remember the BFI’s 2023 Powell and Pressburger season very well and with some fondness as my regular disappearances up to the Southbank were greeted with ironic jeers along the lines of “Mickey Powell a-gain, A Life in Movies eh?”, “Oh, so you’re not going to the tip then?” and “Is it a matter of life and death then?” The great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly might well have said that football wasn’t a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that… but latterly Jurgen Klopp added the balancing view that it was the most important of the least important things.

 

So it was that Michael Powell became, for a few golden months at least, “the most important of the least important things" and, from Cinema Ritrovato to the BFI, I tried to watch everything I could from the rare to the restored. The films on this set are mostly branded as “Quota Quickies”, a loaded term now and then referring to the need for US studios to invest in British B movies in order to not blow our domestic industry completely out of the domestic picture houses.

 

Stewart Rome in Rynox (1931)

Tight of budget and time they may have been though but for ambitious men like Powell they were a way into making films along the lines of the Rex Ingram features he had been involved in (Mare Nostrum and The Magician, in which he appeared as well) and Hitchcock’s Blackmail on which he was a photographer and, as quoted by the BFI’s James Bell in one of the extras, claimed to be responsible for the dramatic denouement. Once a bank worker, but always a film fanatic, celluloid ran in Mickey’s veins or at least the drive to create stories for the screen of a British flavour.

Here there are five of these short films – not all definitively quota quickies as King’s College London’s Dr Laurence Napper describes on one of the excellent commentaries – along with some fascinating silent shorts made by Powell as a travelogue for the South of France where his father ran a hotel. Together they form the most serious effort yet to document this most distinctive of British filmmakers and the forging of a genuinely British style during the post silent period.

 

In other words, it wasn’t all just Alfred.

 

Powell made some 23 films for various companies in the early to mid-1930s of which only 13 survive. Some are already on DVD, such as the lovable lighthouse mystery, The Phantom Light (1934), The Fire Raisers and Red Ensign (both 1933) also but this marks the first time the five “quota” films included have been on Blu-ray let alone the recently restored versions. All picture digitisation has been carried out at 4K resolution and 16-bit colour depth whilst nitrate sound negatives for the features were digitised at the BFI’s Conservation Centre. Regardless of the various sources, they all look wonderfully crisp whether you are viewing on home cinema or on the big screen

  

Michael Powell gives instruction during filming of Her Last Affaire

Take quota quickies, for example. You know what they are? Films made in a hurry, and much too cheaply, for an American distributing company to offer for sale, in order to comply with the law of the land. These are made by “independent” companies – so called, presumably, because they can’t afford to be independent.**

The films range from the first to the last of Powell’s so called quota quickies:

 

Rynox (1931)

 

… there never was an English film so well made. The director’s name is Michael Powell.

John Grierson, Everyman magazine

 

Powell was also clear that Rynox was not a quota-quickie production: It was a British feature, financed and distributed by Ideal Films, a respectable and respected English film-maker.***

 

The film stars Stewart Rome in twin roles, not to give the game away, and boss of a failing company who decides to finish himself off and go undercover to determine who his enemy is.  Then there’s Blackmail’s investigating officer, John Longden playing his son Tony Benedik. The film is one of the more suspenseful and rushes along at pace with some silent style in terms of cinematography. There are many soundless moments - as you'd expect at this point in British film making, and this makes for an odd experience for those of us used to fuller scores. Powell would later use silence for effect such as in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942).

In his commentary Marc David Jacobs draws the links from Rome's struggling company boss to Colonel Blimp, with the actor playing a man running out of options and yet who bravely faces the ultimate decisions for the sake of his family. As Jacobs says, it's very rewatchable with a lot packed into the running time and all very well played all round. The design is also very striking with art deco Rynox branding heightening the poignancy of the human drama.

 

Jerry Verno and guests at the Hotel Splendide!

Hotel Splendide (1932)

 

This is a likeable comedy that shows some visual flair from Powell on his tiny budget. As senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Kings College London, Lawrence Napper points out in his booklet essay notes, “Powell’s resourcefulness in the face of meagre resources is everywhere evident, perhaps nowhere more so than in the brief sequence that shows Verno travelling from London to Speymouth…. The entire journey is handled in less than two minutes with 18 shots edited across eight camera set-ups…”

 

I’ve now seen this film a number of times and I have a fondeness for Jerry Verno’s jumped up optimisem and Joyce Dacre’s plucky Vera Sherbourne. You’ll believe that a Speymouth hotel can indeed be Splendide!

 

 

Ernest Thesiger and Jane Millican

The Night of the Party (1935)

 

In her booklet essay, film writer Pamela Hutchinson summarises this one with trademark economy  as “… a witty parlour-game whodunnit, dismissed by its young director Michael Powell as ‘a piece of junk’ but which offers plenty of arch amusement within its brief running time, and an explosive courtroom finale.”

 

There’s good work from Malcolm Keen as Lord Studholme along with Leslie Banks as Sir John Holland and Ian Hunter as the reliable, solidly masculine character he came to specialise in. Then there’s Ernest Thesiger, who’s character couldn’t be anymore coded. As for time immemorial, cash-strapped British filmmakers had a ready supply of highly-trained theatrical talent who could turn up do the job and not require endless re-takes.

 

Francis L. Sullivan, Sophie Stewart and Hugh Williams

Her Last Affaire (1935)

 

This one has my favourite cast including Googie Withers in an early role, Powell stalwart John Laurie and two more legends Felix Aylmer as Lord Carnforth and Cecil Parker Sir Arthur Harding. Hugh Williams, once again, plays Hugh Williams… he was totally “method” on this one.

 

Film historian and Powell specialist, Ian Christie writes the booklet essay and expects that modern audiences will note Powell’s ingenuinty in resolving the plot and story line with “…the ingenious use of a BBC broadcast SOS message (the play had a message tapped out in morse code) that is striking. And even more, the montage sequences Powell and Dalrymple devised, first for Alan’s journey to the New Forest inn, and then for his return by plane from Paris.”

  

Behind the Mask (abridged reissue version of The Man Behind the Mask (1936)) (1944)

 

This last film was long considered lost until the discovery of this abridged version from the US which makes for a slightly unbalanced tale in terms of the master-mind behind the operation and the grandiose science fiction elements of his secret base… some 40% is still missing. That probably wouldn’t elevate this into a classic but it would have explained more about the grandiose plans of the chief villain, The Master aka Paul Melchior as played by Maurice Schwartz.

As with all the rest, it is charming and well made romp with good performances from Donald Calthrop especially as Dr H E Walpole and Jane Baxter as June Slade. Hugh Williams also gives another example of the Hugh Williams School of Acting. It's an enjoyable romp that takes in old school friendships and betrayal, masked balls, kidnap and chase, country pub stand-offs - with Esme Cannon as a waitress - and mystic hokum for the deranged conclusion. Another very entertaining ride!

 

Special features

 

The whole set feels like a celebration of British film preservation and specifically the BFI with both Inside the Archive extras showcasing the steps taken to restore and preserve the work with not just the head of departments but also specialists within shown at work in the painstaking process which is by turns stressful in terms of the unknown condition/completeness of original materials and most rewarding when a previously-lost film can re-emerge.

 

This box set is a bargain in terms of it’s breadth and depth of information and also in showing the passion involved. So, please look at these extras as extra-special!

Newly recorded feature commentaries by Marc David Jacobs (Rynox, Behind the Mask), Lawrence Napper and Dom Delargy (Hotel Splendide), Dr Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt (The Night of the Party), and Ian Christie (Her Last Affaire)

 

Riviera Revels – Travelaugh No.1 and No.10 (1927, 26 mins total): Powell himself appears in these rare short comedy curiosities from the silent era, with optional audio commentary by Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the BFI

 

Inside the Archive: Riviera Revels (2024, 12 mins): Bryony Dixon explores the origins of Riviera Revels and Michael Powell’s work on them

 

Inside the Archive: The Early Films of Michael Powell (2024, 42 mins): a new documentary on the BFI National Archive’s role in rediscovering and remastering the early films of Michael Powell

 

Visions, Dreams and Magic: The Unmade Films of Michael Powell (2023, 41 mins): a new documentary exploring some of Michael Powell’s unrealised films

 

Interview with Erwin Hillier (1988, 26 mins, audio): in these extracts from an interview recorded by the British Entertainment History Project, cinematographer Erwin Hillier recalls working with Michael Powell

 

The Archers in Argentina (1954, 21 mins): Michael Powell and an international film-star entourage are captured on camera at an Argentinian film festival in this home movie footage shot by Emeric Pressburger, with optional audio commentary by Marc David Jacobs

 

Image galleries

 

There’s a handsome illustrated booklet featuring contributions from James Bell, Marc David Jacobs, Lawrence Napper, Pamela Hutchinson, Ian Christie, Bryony Dixon, Dr Josephine Botting and Kieron Webb; notes on the special features and credits. It’s only available with the first pressing but is an essential companion!

 

So, go straight to the BFI’s shop in person or online and buy this set immediately!

 

 

*Powell writing in his autobiography, A Life in the Movies after seeing an article in Picturegoer magazine, aged 15 in 1920. Quoted by James Bell in the booklet for this set.

 

**On the British Sets – The Crime of quota quickies’, EG Cousins, Picturegoer, 9 September 1933, p28

 

***  A Life in the Movies

 

Civil Engineering, Module One… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Day Eight

And, just like that, it was over but not before a final day with some incredible highs and a desperate search for a restaurant that wasn’t fully booked prior to the evening’s special event. Amidst the cut and thrust of a silent film festival it’s possible to completely forget that tonight was Saturday night and the locals were out for a good time too even if it was strange for us to contemplate: no live accompaniment, just recorded, not always sitting down or, indeed, sitting quietly with outbursts of boisterousness that would certainly concern those she say “shush” in the Verdi balconies.

 

Each to his own as we say in the patriarchy and we had plenty of energy of our own for Neil Brand’s new score for The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) which was arranged by George Morton, and performed live by the mighty Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer. Giornate artistic director, Jay Weissberg, described before hand how Neil Brand had wanted to score a western and asked him for suggestions and the film he had in mind had been a formative silent screening for him and soon Neil was equally enamoured with this unusual story of civil engineering and the human heart.

 

At the Kennington Bioscope Kevin Brownlow once revealed that Samuel Goldwyn’s wife had been the Imelda Marcos of silent film preservation. The great mogul had stored all of his films in her closet and, in order to make room for her shoes, she cleared them out except for the ones featuring Ronald Coleman and Gary Cooper. So, we have Mrs Goldwyn and her fondness for these terribly ugly men, to thank for Barbara Worth still being extant!

Vilma Bánky

Despite their physical shortcomings, these two men are two big reasons to celebrate this remarkable film but it also features some of the most stunning cinematography of the era and if you think Abel Gance was impressive in capturing equine movement on frame than check out Henry King and his cinematographers George Barnes, Thomas Branigan and Gregg Toland. Overwhelmed by this biggest of projections we could almost be alongside Ronald and Gary as the sun-baked, sand-drenched, landscape swirls around you in a crystal clear golden-yellow.

 

And on top of all that you have Vilma Banky… born Vilma Koncsics in what is now Hungary and exported to distract the Yankees as much as she causes both Coop and Ron to lose their focus on business. The film starts like an outtake from Greed as a young woman (Vilma Banky) buries her husband in the sand and then battles to save her daughter from a sandstorm. It’s a brutal and photographed so clearly it could have been made tomorrow. The woman perishes but her daughter, Barbara, is found alive by a Mr Worth (Charles Willis Lane) and grows up to be played by Vilma.

 

The story then settles into Mr Worth and his business partner/rival, McDonald (Ed Brady) efforts to try to change the landscape by damming the Colorado River in order to irrigate the Californian plains. Coleman plays Willard Holmes who works with the rival whilst Cooper plays Abe Lee, the boy Barbara grew up with. Their romantic rivalry runs parallel to business as the mood gets mean as McDonald refuses to recognise the need for additional reinforcements on the dam… In a film like this that’s never a good sign. This all culminates in the inevitable flood and a terrifying sequence in which the townsfolk flee the deluge with not all making it. Henry King could also martial a cast of thousands and, looking back to 3 Bad Men, this is another classic silent human stampede.

 

The implications of all this for construction projects is clear in terms of risk management and the importance of senior stakeholder buy-in for completion to full safety and technical requirements. But I suppose the film was mostly about the spirit of enterprise that made the West and the loves of the lovely people who exemplify the best of humanity: civic minded and careful people who try to bring everyone with them in the joint enterprise of society. Sadly, current political systems lack many who are trained in Prince 2 project management and who care to put people ahead of profit.

 

The score was quite simply huge, with Mr Brand adopting a musical project management of his own in terms of establishing clear objectives for mood and narrative cohesion and meeting every single one in the most joyous and potent of ways. Tonal milestones – deserts, sandstorms, epic landscapes, love, hate and everything in between – were nailed with his schooling in seemingly the entirety of cinematic composition in evidence mixed with his flair for melody. There were rousing themes that pricked the hairs on the back of our necks and we fell in love with simply everyone of the cast but especially Vilma!

 

As with his other scores, Robin Hood, Blackmail, The Lodger et al, you feel that Neil builds out from the heart of each film, working his way outwards in building a musical structure that not only hangs off the narrative but supplements it. This is the very essence of meeting specification and, with Mr Palmer swinging the baton, the Orchestra Verdi lifted the roof and our spirits. We always hope for such a big finish and, yet again, we got one.

 

Forgotten Faces (1928) with Stephen Horne

 

I’ll tell you someone else who always delivers on promise and to spec, and that’s the mercurial Stephen Horne who here delivered one of the biggest musical surprises of the week by “playing” silence during the nail-biting sequence in which Clive Brook’s character leads his mortal enemy and ex-wife as played by Olga Backlanova, up darkened stairs in the moments before she realises who her mysterious guide is… it was unexpected, meta and perfectly timed.

 

In this well-crafted family thriller, directed by Victor Schertzinger, Olga plays a mixture of the shark in Jaws and Anthony Perkins’ character in Psycho, she is violently over the top and hysterical in every way – the Jack Nicholson of her day! Against this Russian fire-cracker is faced the utterly controlled Clive Brook as gentleman thief “Heliotrope” Harry who, along with his trusted right-hand man, Froggy (William Powell) is responsible for the most principled of crime sprees.

 

After one precisely-timed raid on a gambling house sees the police arrive almost in time to catch them, Harry returns home to find his wife Lilly in bed with another man as their baby daughter screams in the hallway. He despatches the other man and, realising his jig is up, leaves his baby with a well-to-do couple who he knows have recently lost a child before kindly handing himself in. Froggy keeps tabs on the daughter whilst Harry duly serves his time and she grows into Mary Brian, a fine young woman who he has given the best chance in life.

 

But, when Lilly tricks Froggy into revealing her daughter’s whereabouts and then taunts Harry in prison about taking her back, he knows he must find a way to stop her. Can he do so without breaking his strict moral and his promise to the prison governor not to harm his hellish ex?

 

OK, there are holes in this scenario but Brook is terrific, such a measured performer – a Rolls Royce if you will – whilst Olga is Olga. MY eyes may have moistened more than once, heart strings were tugged but on Brook could make for such a charming criminal who is father first and foremost.

 

Desdemona Mazza, Ivor Novello and Gabriel de Gravone

L’Appel du Sang (1919) with John Sweeney

 

After our musical Messi and Ronaldo, we also had the compositional equivalent of Mo Salah with the studied elegance of Mr John Sweeney accompanying Louis Mercanton’s tale of love, lies and longing set in Sicily. John’s elegant lines made the most of this film’s spectacular scenery from the island and also Rome, as well as the suitably classic love tangle passing in front of both.

 

This was Ivor Novello’s film debut and his Maurice Delarey is an odd creation, with even his wife, Hermione Lester (Phyllis Neilson-Terry) describing him as “like a kid”, he’s immature, full of enquiry and lust for life (his grandmother was from Sicily) unlike his bookish other half and they make the most unconvincing of partnerships. Hermione has disappointed her intellectual, much older, “best friend” Émile d'Arbois (Charles Le Bargy aged 62 here) in marrying a man of her age (both actors were 27) if not maturity.

 

She brings her new husband to the family pile in the hills of Sicily and he spends all his time having adventures with Gaspare (Gabriel de Gravone), one of the family retainers, including night fishing, yomping and swimming… it’s hard not to impose a modern “coded” view of their relationship. Interestingly both Novello and Neilson-Terry were cast to reflect the original author’s descriptions and so the physical mismatch was intentional. Novello looks so boyish and young and when he is in Sicily his Sicilian nature resurfaces, bringing recklessness and compulsive behaviour. All that midday sun for the Englishman – although, lets be honest, he was Welsh.

 

Hermione goes off to save d'Arbois who is dying in Africa leaving Maurice free to explore further and to fall in love with the fisherman Salvatore (Salvatore Lo Turco)’s daughter Maddalena (Desdemona Mazza) and there’s a beautiful shot of them finally embracing, silhouetted in the half darkness of a cave with the sea behind them. This can not be good though and to add complication, Salvatore is a mad man with easy access to weaponry…

 

Overall a dreamy film, especially with John’s playing, and worth it for the visuals and early Ivor!

 

The Red Dance (1928) with Masterclass student Andra Bacila

 

This film’s approach to history could be said to be exemplified by the appearance of an aircraft clearly not of 1917 vintage but this is the least of its crimes against Russian history. In terms of its treatment of Rasputin, the Boney M pop song, Rasputin, is more historically accurate and the general depiction of white and red Russians as inter-changeable baddies is mind wobbling given the century and more of poor treatment the Tsars had imposed on the populace. Criticise the Revolution and outcomes by all means but there were plenty of reasons for one to happen…

 

All this aside, Raoul Walsh’s mini-epic is, as you’d expect, full of grand scale and great characters. Dolores del Río as Tasia, a politicised activist determined that people should be able to read after the Tsarist regime bans schooling and arresting her father and shooting her mother on the spot in front of her blackboard and pupils. Ivan Linow plays Russian Bear Ivan Petroff, a likeably roguish army officer who is prone to sexual assault and steaking horses with which to exchange for marriage to Tasia.

 

Ra, ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen is played by Demetrius Alexis, and various other actual characters appear as 2D cut-outs. Talking of which, likable Charles Farrell is the most unlikely Grand Duke Eugene, a Russian toff with a heart of gold who wins Tasia’s heart. It struck me that Farrell is a fine romantic actor so long as he’s with a talented other half and you can add Delores to the list with Mary Duncan and Janet Gaynor in this respect.

 

Long story short, the stakes are raised when the people revolt and the Cossacks are on the defensive. Now it’s the Trotsky look-alikes and the evil revolutionary leader with a Germanic monocle who are the enemies of the people. This disappoints Tasia who announces that “women’s only cause is love…” and it may be true that love is all you need but this messy lack of faith in governance via tradition of revolution echoes our present plight and, yes, there’s an agitator called Boris.

 

Excellent accompaniment was provided by Masterclass student Andra Bacila, one of many new and younger faces at this year’s festival. As the BFI’s Bryony Dixon said in her acceptance speech for the Jean Mitri award, the Giornate is a focus for world-wide efforts on film preservation and long may this continue.

 

And that, m’lords, ladies and gentlepeople, concludes the proceedings from this blog on Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43! Thank you too all of those who made it happen and who I spent time with – let’s twist again in 2025!!

 

Grazie mille!!

Punishment and reward… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Seven

 

In receiving her richly-deserved Jean Mitry Award, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon pointed out the importance of this festival in terms of enabling international collaborations but also as a peer group for the often embattled national archives. The Giornate had inspired Dixon along with others to elevate the reputation of British silent cinema and with the restorations not just of the Hitchcock back catalogue but also key films from Anthony Asquith especially, it has been mission accomplished with more to come. It’s a group of people who inspire each other and as an outsider in professional  media terms, I’ve always been impressed with the dedication of Bryony and others to the main goals of preservation and education. The value is in the content and to be able to achieve what she has in over three decades at the BFI is remarkable – hers are the giant shoulders on which other generations of archivists will stand.

 

At a time when the DFI are stopping filmic preservation and shifting entirely to digital, you realise the odds that are stacked against the archives – when even Germany won’t invest in the original media who else is going to stay in the game? That the other Mitry Award went to Mark-Paul Meyer from the EYE Cinema Museum in Amsterdam says it all. Long may you protect and survive.

 

Pavement Butterfly (1928) with Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Mirko Cisilino

 

This week we’ve witnessed the evolution of Anna May Wong’s performance and prestige from bit parts as racial cliches to the full flourishing of her talent in Song and this film, both made in Germany. In her home country, Anna May Wong had struggled since her first film in 1921 to gain substantial roles and also characters that weren’t stereotypes. Yet in Europe for this film and Song (1928), her first film with director Richard Eichberg, she is not only a desirable and acceptable romantic lead, she is the star.

 

Eichberg simply took her natural talents and ran with them and with this freedom of expressiveness there’s  critique of Western culture’s willingness to believe the worst of people of Asian origin: first the crowd at the circus where Wong’s character Mah works, turn on her very quickly assuming she has killed her magician partner and then later, when she is blackmailed by the man who committed that murder, her artist and romantic interest, all too readily thinks she has stolen the money.

 

For anyone who gets frustrated by such “misunderstandings” the film’s ending is richly satisfying reminding me of Hindle Wakes screened here last year, a blow for self-determination for women in general at a time when their choices were so much more limited. We don’t know what Mah will do but she’ll make her way, her way. It’s interesting to note the differences in the British and German versions of this ending too, as noted in the catalogue essay from Yiman Wang, in the latter Mah says “Ich gehöre nicht zu euch” (“I do not belong to you”) whereas for the former “I don’t belong to your world. I belong to the pavements.” - she has to know her place or the remains of Empire would crumble, clearly… (see below for more stirring Tales of Empire).

 

It’s The Eyes!!

 

There are so many close-ups of AMW in this film showing her stillness and presence from every angle and catching one of the most interesting technicians of the period who conveys so much with so little movement. Much of this stems from her extraordinary eyes but she knows how to use them and how to under-react for the camera to maximise the impact on the audience engrossed in the big screen.

 

Fred Louis Lerch plays the handsome but hopeless Fedja Kusmin an artist who lacks the purity of trusting the thing he loves and the wickedly convincing Alexander Granach as Coco the Coincidental Clown who pops up throughout the film to throw mischief in our heroine’s way. Elwood Fleet Bostwick is Mr. Working a rich business man who encourages the young artist and Tilla Garden has a fine turn as his daughter Ellis who is also interestingly enough a woman who knows her mind.

 

Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and with Mirko Cisilino on saxophone accompanied with the tightest of sets, bursting into life during the loft party sequence featuring the remarkable dancing of an un-named couple of hyperflexible and ultra-syncopated boys from the Cabaret, bringing out the full flavour of the gorgeous locations of Nice and underpinning the emotional narrative with the subtlety that Anna deserves. Another fabulous evening show in a week full of them!

 

Stronger than Death (1920) with Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius

 

I was standing outside the Teatro Verdi discussing the drumming of Frank Bockius with Catalonian accompanist, Florenci Salesas who pointed out from a musician’s point of view how tonally flexible and supportive of the narrative his percussion is. From the explosion of jazz technique in Saxophone Suzi to Frank’s use of subtle Indian flavours or the martial beats for the British troops in this film, he’s able to switch from rhythm section to lead player in ways that are exceptional. The hardest working drummer in Pordenone and probably anywhere!

 

Here he and Donald Sosin provided an improvised score for another of the great faces of silent film, Anna Nazimova who plays a renowned dancer, Sigrid Fersen who has a heart condition that will kill her if she has just one more dance (I know…). She has come to India to find a rich husband which seems slightly at odds with her otherwise cool bohemian aesthetic and gets one she didn’t bargain for in a love and hate triangle featuring a racist British Colonel Boucicault (Charles K. French), his caring son Doctor/ Major Tristam Boucicault (Chris Bryant) and a wealthy man of mix-race heritage James Barclay (Herbert Prior).

 

Barclay is reviled by the ex-pat Brits as he is of mixed race – terms “of the period” are used to describe this unfortunate situation not of his own making – and he hopes to gain respect by marrying Sigrid. He’s backed by the local priests though who in a surprising development are looking for revenge on the British for something or other. Lots happens but the worst of it is when the Colonel shoots Tristram’s dog Wickey. As if I could hate him more…

 

It's a load of old hooey BUT it has Naz and she is brilliant as usual. Bryant’s also good in spite of his parenting, perhaps there’s hope for the World.

 

 

Raskolnikow (1923) with Richard Siedhoff

 

We all had the same thought after this stunner ended – Lotte Eisner was wrong, there are more than three expressionist films with this adaptation of Crime and Punishment being as emotionally titled as Caligari and with crazy-angled set design to match plus the same typography. Maybe she didn’t have access to the full cut of the film and certainly this restoration was a feast for the eyes…

 

Directed by Robert Wiene it adapts Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in ways that carry the force if not the substance – how could it? Gregori Chmara is just fabulous as Rodion Raskolnikow who finds meaning in his life after wasting so much of his own and killing two women in a bungled robbery. So many heist movies follow similar lines but none examine the nature of guilt in so detailed a way. String cast, a-mazing set design which might jar initially but soon melts behind the human stories presented in unrelenting close-ups.

 

Too much to say, so little time, more films to see!

 

We were also treated to avant garde shorts from the studio of Joris Ivens which contained some interesting ideas and some irritating… as a migraine sufferer I couldn’t watch the five minutes of flashing lights from Willem Bon’s Is Er etc… covering my closed eyes with the programme and I’m speaking as a regular gig-goer. This was something like the brain-washing scene from Funeral in Berlin. The audience might well be under Dutch control for all I know, which is no bad thing in itself from experience! Gerard Saan’s Botsingen (1934) with its clever comparison of billiard balls with human activities provided an entertaining counter point, the eight-ball dropping pleasingly in the corner pocket after a repeat showing complete with sound.

King Harold… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Six

In spite of the relatively advanced stage of my silent film condition, I had never seen Harold Lloyd’s Girl Shy even though I must have seen Speedy, for instance, at least ten times. Tonight it was an absolute revelation and with Daan van den Hurk’s sparkling jazzy score, played by the serially impressive Zerorchestra - conducted by the man himself - the roof on the Teatro Verdi was lifted so high we could see clearly that this week’s rain had stopped. Jazz is energy.

 

As with Saxophone Suzi the accompaniment illustrated the potency of jazz for Jazz-Age films and whereas Neil Brand’s cue had been more of the period – Benny Goodman or Paul Whiteman big bands “hot jazz”, van den Hurk’s score was more post-Bebop/Birth of the Cool and sometime in the modish fifties with beautiful blends of brass and reed instruments mixed with scintillating vibraphone runs and a rhythm section that kept the beat note for note with Lloyd’s tight script.

 

The era of the music was forgotten as we synchronised in sympathy with the themes, a repeated passage that caught perfectly Harold’s longing for respect, a cure for his stammer and love of Jobyna Ralston. This was the second of seven films in which the two appeared and their famous chemistry coupled with the fact that her timing and range are crucial to his story working. I’ve seen plenty of romantic comedies of this period – Lubitsch’s Three Women just this morning (see below) – but few have the feeling that the stakes are as real as this.

 

That’s crucial to the film’s laugh-ratio as we acre about the two connecting and are inflected with their awkwardness and little triumphs or setbacks on a personal level. You can’t look at those faces for so long without falling in love with their love just a little bit and, this wonderful, rousing score made sure you still felt it as happiness filled the square outside the Verdi as everyone, and I mean, everyone, was beaming!

 

Three Women (1924) with Philip Carli

 

Ernst Lubitsch’s touch is strong with this one especially in the breakneck opening third from Pauline Frederick’s character Mabel inching the weights on her scales to disappointment to Lew Cody’s weaselly Edmund eying up her jewels one by one at the ball when they meet. Then there’s lovelorn Fred Armstrong (Pierre Gendron) trying to find the right moment to give his sweetheart, Mabel’s daughter Jeanne (May McAvoy) the $50 bracelet he’s had to pawn his watch for, his progress is thwarted by split-second misfortunes as Lubitsch plays out a dance of frustration with said present repeatedly being pulled from and returned to Fred’s pocket… his last chance is lost when she opens her mother’s late-arriving gift of a diamond bracelet.

 

I still feel that the film loses its way after this point and whilst its still has good moments it takes the all too limited appearance of Marie Prevost as Edmund’s good-time girlfriend to lift the closing segment. There are missing pieces to the narrative which might explain what comes across as Two and a Half Women, but Lew ain’t no Adolphe Menjou and the likelihood of both women falling for him seems remote. The narrative moves along too quickly off screen with Jeanne’s marriage and Fred’s qualification as a doctor all of a rush.

 

So, OK, it’s not The Marriage Circle but it is still a very amusing film with much to appreciate especially with Philip Carli’s knowing accompaniment which delighted the audience packed in to see The Lubitsch! This was the third of the director’s three films from 1924, after the MC and before Forbidden Paradise with Pola Negri! I wonder if Ernst saw something of his Polish collaborator in the marvels of Giornate poster girl Marie P? As Michelle Facey said, the following year’s Kiss Me Again with Clara and Marie has to be top of the list of lost films that need finding!

Historia de un Gaucho Viejo (1924) with Mauro Colombis

 

Who is the gaucho, amigo?

Why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho

And your elevator shoes?

Bodacious cowboys

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker

 

As the week progresses and between film, talking, eating, drinking and um, blogging, things get a bit light-headed so forgive me for another impenetrable cultural reference if you are under middle age XL… But there was at least a film about Gauchos and a fascinating trip to Argentina it proved especially as the Spanish intertitles had to be translated in real time – good job that man! – competing with Mauro Columbus’ spirited accompaniment – your efforts are much appreciated amigos!

 

The film was Historia de un Gaucho Viejo (1924) which presents as something like a western but with altogether more political overtones explained by Andrés Levinson in his catalogue notes. The main character Anastasio Ríos (José J. Romeu) is not just a leader of men but a fighter for democracy in a story set before the introduction of the secret ballot in 1912. He kills Contreras, the chief of police (Ramón Podestá), in self defence and whilst you’d expect this to lead to a life of crime, he’s more of a freedom fighter trying to right the injustice inherent in rural society at this time.

 

After a successful raid to liberate some cattle wrongfully taken by the authorities, he offers one of the men, Don Luna (actor unknown) leadership and, as the two fight honourably with knives they end up hugging in recognition of the other’s bravery and honour. This is no Duke Wayne bar brawl but something that feels altogether more rough and real.

 

There are some uncompromising characters such as “El Zorro” (Ernesto Etchepare) who is at one point bravely leading the police away from his fellow and then another trying to sexually assault Mercedes (Mycha Flores), Ríos’ daughter who is already involved with another man. He serenades her with a guitar so some “western” tropes are universal.

 

Shot around the small town of San Rafael, located at the foot of the Andes in the south of the province of Mendoza, the backdrops are stunning especially with the residual colourisation. It’s another fascinating education from Le Giornate and I am loving this South American road trip!

 

 

For the Soul of Rafael (1920) with José María Serralde Ruiz, Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius, Gabriel Rigo (masterclass student)

 

Someway north of the Argentina, round Mexico way there was another remarkable score being played out by the above four piece, which featured pianist José María Serralde Ruiz expertly inter-weaving Mexican music of the period into the largely improvised score. Masterclass student, Gabriel Rigo provided flamenco flourishes on guitar with Günter Buchwald on violin and Frank Bockius hitting anything that didn’t move. It’s always a pleasure the see the musical combinations the Giornate throws up and this one was especially fit for purpose.

 

The film provided another rare opportunity to see one of the surviving Clara Kimball Young features, an actress who was on a level with almost anyone in the 1910s yet who has faded from memory after her career stalled in the mid-1920s. She’s a highly watchable actor, similar perhaps to Norma Talmadge but without the archive, or Lillian Gish without the lengthy career.

 

Here she’s Marta a young woman raised in a convent who has been pledged to marry Rafael (Bertram Grassby) the unruly son of matriarch Dona Luisa (Eugenie Besserer) who hopes she will civilise her boy and keep him on the straight and narrow. Before she leaves, Marta rescues and American Keith Bryton – such a British name Keith! – from being killed by native Americans by putting her ring on his finger. Naturally she falls in love with The Man with the Ring and doesn’t realise that, according to native practice, she has married him.

 

That’s not the only “crickey!” in the plot and the reviewer from Moving Picture World, May 15, 1920 nails it: The story moves on from this point to a happy ending, but with much action of tense and strenuous nature in between. Still, it’s entertaining and fascinating to see the actress and the kind of film that made her such a success with audiences of the time.

 

Still, the accompaniment was excellent and it was good to hear the injection of contemporary themes from the ensemble.

 

 

Dog walking brilliance!! Animals on Film…

 

When Winter Comes (US? 1921?)

 

Just as I’m missing my dog Mungo, here popped up a splendid short documentary of a family holiday told from the point of view of their dog. There are lovely shots of canine joy in the snow with colorised sections too. It’s one of the unidentified films so, hopefully someone will identify the filmmakers. Meanwhile, I can’t wait for my little four-legged fluffball to meet snow come this winter!

 

With Sled and Reindeer... (1926) with Donald Sosin

 

Erik Bergström’s documentary was screening as part of Swedish Nature and Ethnographic Films strand and featured a young woman and her family’s struggle to make a life farming deer in the far north of the country. There were breath-taking backdrops accentuated by an opening tracking shot – from a train? - of pure white snowy forests on endless mountains.

 

It is a recent restoration from the SFI and in addition to looking gorgeous, captures a way of life that one presumes has disappeared. The fascination then as now was man living in balance with nature. Life and death were seen in this film as part of that process. A terrible beauty.

 

 

All my colours… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Five

 

The effort put into making this film far exceeds anything attempted thus far in France. No bluffing, no pompous blarney, or gibberish preface. No political or social theory, no boring or muddled intertitles… Beauty, truth, art – there’s the secret of the success of La Sultane de l’amour.

La Cinématographie française (18^th October 1919)

Myriad lights, they said I'd be impressed

Arabian nights, at your primitive best...

Siouxsie and the Banshees, Arabian Nights

Some films are almost too impractically beautiful to exist, too unlikely to have been made given the exchange between huge effort and end results, no matter how charming, that make you sad the moment the action stops and they fade from view. Two films today met this criteria, The Blue Bird (1918) and La Sultane de l’amour (1919) – the first I’d seen but not “live” and the second I’d never heard of making it whack me even harder when the first image of the colourised Gaston Modot smiles on screen. Surely they’re not going to keep this up for the whole film? Yes indeed they do and it’s quite any colourised film I’ve seen before with gorgeous deep richness the result of an impeccable digital restoration in 2021 were carried out by the CNC laboratory using three tinted and stencil-coloured nitrate copies from the Cinémathèque française.

 

It's introduced as a missing story from the Arabian Nights... or it might as well be, with nasty Sultan Malik (Paul Vermoyal) bored, bored, bored and looking for some romance or at least aggressive male sexual behaviour. He despatches three knights to find him an appropriate female and yet when Kadjar (Monsieur Modot) discovers Princess Daoulah, the “Sultaness of Love” (France Dhélia – see above!) she informs him that she has other plans…

 

Problematic leader Sultan Malik (Paul Vermoyal) 

Not that it’s any of Kadjar or indeed the Sultan’s business, but Princess D’s plans are centred on the handsome man who recently rescued her from drowning, unknown to her but revealed to us as the hand-tinted rosy-cheeked Prince Mourad (Sylvio de Pedrelli) who, as it happens, is definitely thinking along the same lines. Sadly, Daoulah’s perfectly reasonable request to be left the heck alone, is ignored by the sexually malfunctioning Sultan who decides to kidnap her and use the tried and always successful techniques of abuse and torture to make her fall for his extremely well-hidden charms.

He's the poorest of leaders though alienating Nazir (Marcel Lévesque) his court jester/advisor by abusing him and making fun of his physical disabilities – see, there’s a pattern here – whilst his general administration is building up resistance from the population and other royals including Princess Zilah (Yvonne Sergyl) and Mourad. As tension mounts there’s plenty of dancing, vestals and cross-dressed eunuchs… this is not a film that holds back in presenting the excesses of Arabian socio-political structures. My main concern is that, lacking any kind of industrialised workforce, they’re going to have to wait a long time for the Sultan to be overthrown. Unless true love can win out…

 

Accompaniment was provided by Mauro Colombis on piano, Frank Bockius percussion and  Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp. The combination added mystery and flavour to this magical reality and we not only did the time warp again, reality folded around us in ways that will inform our dreams for weeks to come.

 

An absolute cracker!!!

The audience leaving the Teatro Verdi last night...

The Blue Bird (1918) with Neil Brand and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry 

M. Maeterlinck's poem has been transferred from a book to the screen, and it is a safe assertion to say that seldom, if ever, has the atmosphere and spirit of a written work been more faithfully reproduced in motion pictures.

New York Times, 1918

Maurice Tourneur's The Blue Bird was released just over a year after the director's collaboration with Mary Pickford in The Poor Little Rich Girl and featured such regular collaborators as art director Ben Carré, cinematographer John van den Broke and Editor Clarence Brown. If that film was Revolver this was the full Sgt. Pepper - a flight of fantasy from start to finish: silent psychedelia in full bloom at a time when the World needed to believe in eternal truths and the truth of eternity.

 

When in the heart of their fantastic journey to find the Blue Bird, the two youngsters meet not only their dead grandparents but their dead brothers and sisters, there are at least ten of them... this was a time when infant mortality was high and life came with the flimsiest of "guarantees".

 

The film is a sumptuous collection of such moments and visual set pieces, a hyper-creative comfort blanket that smuggles through the simple message that there's not only no place like home but that kindness must spread out from there into the heart-broken World beyond. There are tightly-defined fantasy constructs - humanised versions of fire, water and light, dogs, cats and wonderful "moods" such as vibrant dancers embodying The Joys of Pure Thoughts and the slightly less impressive Sleeping-More-Than-Necessary (not going to happen here at Le Giornate…).

Tourneur draws pure and naturalistic performances from his cast of children, 12-year old Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl who react and act with genuine thrill to every new wonder. It's a child's film with many adult concerns.

The accompaniment from Neil Brand on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic out across the auditorium and melted our stubborn hearts.

Song (1928) with Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius

 

I attended the talk and Q&A with Yiman Wang the author of To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World and one of the questions for this actress who struggled to sustain her successes, was when she really showed her qualities as an actor. Yiman pointed to Shanghai Express (1932) directed by Josef von Sternberg and co-staring Marlene Dietrich who, she contends, came of second best to Anna May. I would argue that Piccadilly and Song also allow her considerable expression, especially in comparison to her Hollywood work.

 

In this newly and magnificently restored version, Wong shows full command of her abilities moving effortlessly from drama to comedy and playing with the audience with her controlled expression. She was, as she said, never really a dancer but she could act dancing which is what she does here and in the British film. She ended up paying 200 guineas to learn in Britain in the thirties as people expected her to sing and dance given her oriental background.

 

Anna May Wong excels here because it’s a rare part that allowed her to just be and not just an exotic token or worse still, something sinister. She responds to the camera’s frequently intense gaze with naturalistic gestures and a positive focus on her character and rides out some of the more extraordinary plot elements and costumery with ease and good humour. She’s equally at home fighting off attackers, coming to the rescue during a train robbery and selflessly supporting a selfish man who can’t see further than his own infatuation.

 

The story is set in Istanbul and there are some lovely establishing shots of what would become the scene of Liverpool FC’s Champions League triumph almost 80 years later. Anna May plays Song, a poor woman eking out a living by catching lobsters on the beach. She is spotted by two men who proceed to assault her only to be fought off by a passer-by, Jack Houben (Heinrich George). It’s a pretty grim fight that’s only won when Song gets stuck into help her rescuer.

 

Jack takes Song back for shelter at his humble home and frightens her to death as he demonstrates his profession – a knife thrower. Jack decides she could be an asset to his act and before long she’s dancing in front of the regulars at the homely music hall where he works. Song and Jack’s life seems to have settled but the arrival of a famous ballet dancer is about to upset the precarious balance of their apple cart. There are posters for Gloria Lee (Mary Kid) all over town and Song decides to use one to make an improvised table in Jack’s house, without realising she’s an old flame and that flame is about to be rekindled…

 

Song is a melodrama with some sharp plot turns but Richard Eichberg directs it well enough helped by some excellent cinematography from Heinrich Gärtner and the designs of Willi Herrmann. Whilst Mary Kid makes for an unconvincing ballerina, Heinrich George makes for a believable thrower of knives and, of course, Anna May Wong's smile and ready tears steal the show.

 

Stephen Horne has previously said that, as a young accompanist, he had played along to Song sight unseen (the days before preview discs) and the film’s frequent narrative lurches had made for an engaging challenge. Today he and percussionist Frank Bockius, knew exactly what is coming and their improvisations enriched the film in ways that helped elevate it in the canon of Anglo-German silents and, indeed, in the career of the talented and beautifully-determined Anna May Wong!