This just gets harder; how can any sane person possibly reduce such a splendid silent year into a top twelve?! This year I've seen more live cinema than
ever before along with a travelling band of fascinated and fascinating
individuals who are on a mission to understand more of the immense silvery
spaces that make up the lost worlds of cinema without sounds but with music and soul.
1. The Freshman (1925), Guenter A Buchwald,
Bristol Ensemble, Slapstick Festival Gala, Colston Hall, Bristol
It's now an annual family tradition with my daughter at
Bristol University and the Gala never disappoints especially with so many
locals turning out in a packed Colston Hall.
All this and Roy Hudd channelling Max Miller! Now, there was
a funny thing!
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| Catherine Hessling - La Fille de l’eau (1925) |
2. La Fille de l’eau (1925) with John
Sweeney, Institut Français
Jean Renoir's first feature film was being shown as part of
the annual All About Piano! festival of the keyboard at the Institut français
and was part of its ciné-concert stream. It's always good to experience
different venues and the Institute provided a superb context for both the film
and John Sweeney with a finely-tuned grand piano enabling him to fully tap into
his boundless reservoir of musical themes.
What better way of celebrating the versatility of le piano
than hearing him accompany for this ciné-concert?
3. Revolutionary
Centenary: The New Babylon (1929),
Sasha Grynyuk, LSO St Luke’s
This was a reconstruction of an original score by a precocious
young man name of Dmitri Shostakovich. Sasha Grynyuk played the complex work to
perfection and this one stood out in a year of celebrations… From an historical
point of view the centenary is an important one and it was depressing to see so
many post-factual judgements based on all that was to come. The film was propagandist,
but we know all about such things in 2017.
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| Les Misérables |
4. Play for a day… Les Misérables (1925-6), Neil Brand, The
Barbican
One huge film serial, one fair-sized piano and a man with a seemingly
endless musical imagination kept us entertained for over five hours at the
Barbican. By co-incidence the London Marathon was on the same day buy, carrying
the film and his audience with him all the way, Neil Brand emerged the real
winner.
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| The Abbeydale Picture House in Sheffield, South Yorshire |
5. Yorkshire Silent Film Festival, The Lodger (1927), Neil Brand, Covent Garden Sinfonia, Ben Palmer, Abbeydale Picture House
Part of the joy of silent cinema is introducing new people
to the experience. My sister lives in Sheffield and neither she nor her husband
had ever seen a silent film on screen, so it gave me great pleasure to see
their reaction to Buster Keaton’s Cameraman,
The Girl with the Hatbox and The
Lodger featuring the Covent Garden Symphonia playing Neil Brand’s super new
score.
The Abbeydale is a great venue, a stunning relic of mass
entertainment past and I hope it and the Yorkshire Silent Film festival go from
strength to strength. I’ll be back next year.
6. New silent films!
This was the year of Alex Barratt’s mesmerising ode to his home town with The London
Symphony (2017) which I saw with Ben Palmer conducting the Covent Garden Sinfonia playing James McWilliam's score at the Barbican.
We also the simply remarkable Dawson City: Frozen Time
(2016), in which Bill Morrison unearthed not only the story of hundreds of lost
silent films but also of the perma-frosted town in which they were held in ice
for 90 years. The film creates a
compelling narrative by weaving past, present, fact and fiction together with
mind-boggling cohesion.
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| Maurice Elevy's master-stroke! |
7. British Silent Film Festival Another smashing long weekend in Leicester during which Balfour mania reached new heights as Betty charmed us in film after film including Cocktails (1928) and A Sister of Six (1927). I also particularly enjoyed Maurice Elvey’s Balaclava (1928) with his extraordinary re-enactment of the battle as soulful as it was accurate especially when accompanied by John Sweeney’s thunderous accompaniment. Kevin Brownlow described it as the most impressive large-scale action scene in British silent cinema and it’s hard to think of many sound films that come close.
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| My official James Murray Pordenone mug... |
8. Pordenone
Bellissimo! The Crowd (1928), Carl
Davis, Pordenone Orchestra
This was my personal highlight as an event: my first trip to
La Giornate del Cinema Muto and eight days of films long and short from
breakfast to well past supper time, thank goodness the bars don’t close early
in Italy. To be honest, it felt like the step up from Premier League to
Champions League and I struggled to get out of the qualifying stages only to
rally against the sheer class of the proposition. It’s a silent marathon and
not a sprint and I can’t wait for next year.
Picking favourites is impossible but the opening round
featuring Eleanor Boardman and James Murray in King Vidor’s The Crowd is the
most memorable… A supernaturally-charged Carl Davis conducted the Pordenone
Orchestra playing his own spectacular score for one of my favourite silent
films and even up in the Gods at the Teatro Verdi my socks were detached and
flying high over Friuli-Venezia Giulia skies.
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| Jenny Hasselqvist |
9. Jenny on the block… Vem Dömer? (1922) with Neil Brand and Frank Bockius, Pordenone
There was a very
strong Scandinavian strand at Pordenone of which Victor Sjostrom’s lover’s
ordeal stood out as it had to, being a rare screening featuring Jenny
Hasselqvist who is, for me, one of the greatest silent actors; a master of
physical and emotional control who never overplays even in the most extreme
circumstances. And she certainly had those at the end of this powerful film.
9. It was Louise
Brooks’ year (again). In Italy I saw the recently rediscovered Now We're in the Air (1927) featuring
Brooksie shining brightly despite a gurning Wallace Beery and a storyline
flying like a bird… I also saw Pandora’s
Box (1929) with Stephen Horne accompanying at the beginning and end of the
year, the second introduced by Pamela Hutchinson, whose excellent book on the
film made the re-watch essential and even more enjoyable.
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| Shiraz |
10. Hurray for Bollywood! Shiraz (1928), with Anoushka Shankar, Barbican, London Film Festival Archive Gala. This one went through the roof and was by some distance my most read post of the year and not surprisingly given the sense of occasion and the way that Anoushka Shankar got to the heart of the film with her intelligent and fluent score. This was one of the most uplifting screenings of the year, a real celebration.
11. Uncanny Tales…
Häxan (1922), with Reece Shearsmith
and Stephen Horne, Phoenix.
This was a Halloween treat organised by the East Finchley Contingent
and which featured a local gentleman giving eloquent voice to Benjamin Christensen’s
dramatized documentary on the history of witchcraft. Stephen Horne accompanied
with uncanny virtuosity and the shock ending revealed mankind to be the real
demonic power.
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| Häxan (1922) |
12. The Cinema
Museum/Kennington Bioscope
This list isn’t in any order, but I have saved the most important until last. This year
was another vintage one for the Kennington Bioscope and their partners at the
Cinema Museum. In addition to the regular screenings every three weeks we have
also enjoyed the 3rd Silent Film Weekend and the 2nd Silent Laughter Saturday –
dozens of fantastic films accompanied by excellent musicians: John Sweeney, Meg
Morley, Cyrus Gabrysch, Lillian Henley, Stephen Horne and others.
Highlights have included the naughtiest Gish, Dorothy, in Nell Gwyn (1926) with Meg Morley, one of
the great Italian Diva’s Pina Menichelli in Il
Fuoco (1916), with John Sweeney playing and honeyed spoken translation from
Lillian Henley (they are the Bioscope’s Dream Team) and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) one of the best-looking films
of the year, with Cyrus Gabrysch’s piano filling the huge spaces with Death
Valley cool as humanity fights for life and love against overwhelming heat and
the onrushing Colorado River. Then two weeks ago we had Anna May Wong in Pavement Butterfly accompanied by Stephen
Horne and Elsa Lanchester in the British silent treat, Blue Bottles with Meg Morley: great programming and so much talent.
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| Pina Menichelli in Il Fuoco |
But the Museum itself is also a pure joy, filled with
memorabilia and artefacts that connect us to the cultural past. The people who
run the museum and make the Bioscope possible are also the real spirit of the
enterprise and to all the players, programmers such as Amran Vance and Michelle
Facey and the volunteers, I thank you and hope that the Museum continues in its
current venue – where once Charlie Chaplin’s family lived.
The fight for the Museum continues and if you have not already signed the petition here is the link.
If there’s one present we all really want from Santa, this
is it.
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