The Lois Weber revival continues and this year’s Cambridge
Film Festival featured four films from a director increasingly rated alongside anyone in the second full decade of
film. Dumb Girl is her blockbuster
and is quite different from her social dramas like The Blot and Shoes even
though it includes some intricate characterisations. But here we get the chance
to see Weber with a big budget, Cabirian
camera movement, close-ups, a full-scale revolution with a cast of thousands and
a moving coda so cinematically-perfect it had me in bits.
Weber’s cinematic instincts are so different from, oh,
let’s say Mr David Wark Griffith, and she creates narrative tension equally
well with multiple tracks, gruesome horror (heads impaled on sticks?!) and a
lighter melodramatic touch. Yes, there are problems with this film which
sometimes sags but all is rescued by a dynamic closing half-hour.
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| Anna Pavlova |
Part of this was due to John Sweeney’s masterful
accompaniment. John has written the splendid score for the Milestone DVD set –
which I’ve relished watching after this screening - but playing solo is a
different proposition especially given the complexity of aligning music with
movement. Mr Sweeney has much experience of ballet accompaniment but with a film
the editing and cutting means that you the dance is not always on beat – with
the exception of one set piece from the original opera/ballet, John improvised
and does what he does, not just tracking the narrative but weaving around it,
adding flexibility of his own that lifted the action scenes and otherwise
intensified the drama of a rather long film: a master at work and the essence
of top notch live silent film!
It’s Ballet Month here with a trip to see the Jasmin
Vardimon Company’s Medusa at Sadler's
Wells last week and an evening with my favourite company, Ballet Cymru, coming
up this weekend as well as silent-Swedish prima Jenny Hasselqvist’s stunning
show in the Pordenone screening of Mauritz Stiller’s Ballet Primadonna (1916).
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| Anna Pavlova and Douglas Gerrard |
Queue Anna Pavlova and a film of the same vintage I’ve
been waiting to see on screen for some time – one of the most famous ballerinas
in history, one of silent film’s greatest directors, Lois Webber and of course maestro
John Sweeney, no stranger to ballet let alone silent film.
Now, I barely know my brisé
from my Birdy Dance but it is
fascinating trying to understand this world of disciplined motion. Whereas
Hasselqvist is all power, Pavlova is smaller and relies more on her famous
grace. She was not the ideal physical type for late Nineteenth Century Ballet
and evolved a style of her own using her physicality to the upmost as an asset.
Biographer Therese Heckenkamp wrote in A Princess
of Ballet, that the Russian prima "
made the most of her slender frame and danced the way she was made to dance,
moving gracefully, expressing emotion with her flexible body.”
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| On the beach |
Pavlova was also the first dancer of her standard to tour
the world and no doubt helped to raise the profile of the art alongside
establishing herself as something like a global superstar. By 1915 she was
living in Britain and then found herself marooned in the USA by the War, where
she toured extensively. She was offered $50,000 to star in a film version of
the Opera she had been touring D.F. E. Auber’s 1829 La Muette de Portici and
the funds were much appreciated given the struggles of that tour.
The story is set in the seventeenth century when Spain
ruled most of Italy and an actual incident in 1647 when the local population,
under the leadership of a humble fisherman named Masaniello, revolted against
their overlords. Now Masaniello (here played by Rupert Julian) was described as “...a young man of
twenty-seven, beautiful and graceful in appearance, his face was brown and
somewhat burned by the sun: black eyes, blond hair, with locks that ran down
his neck.” But the history books don’t mention whether he had a sister called
Fenella or indeed whether she played a part in the revolt.
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| A well-read fisherman: Rupert Julian years before he directed The Phantom of the Opera |
Here she does, a mute who expresses herself through the
physicality of graceful dance, innocent energy and a smile to stir hearts and
sink ships. Naturally this part was made for Pavlova and it’s hard to see
anyone else in the role, certainly in this way… you need a lot of skill to
reign in the physical signifiers… and some of the other cast members fail to follow
suit and so sometimes the acting can be, shall we say, overly specific. The narrative
can also be over-literal with brother Masaniello described as keen to improve himself
and then seen deeply engrossed in a book on his return from fishing: surely
reckless boats-manship on a par with texting at the wheel of a car?
Fenella dances for joy, and with see-weed, when her
brother comes home and we see their small community in a set built right on the
beach. Their simple lives, in which Fenella helps the suffering with her
effervescence, contrasts with the ruling Spanish nobility who are imperious and
indifferent. There’s a superb close-up shot from a camera mounted on their coach,
as the Viceroy, Duke of Arcos (Wadsworth Harris) and his wife Isabella (Betty
Schade) arrive and look on with distanced disdain at the locals; discontent is
brewing…
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| Close up on the Viceroy and Mrs Viceroy as they respond to the locals' displeasure all around them |
A young Spanish noble Alfonso (Douglas Gerrard) cares
enough to find out why and goes off in disguise to learn more about the people;
he finds Fenella and soon they are galivanting in woodland areas and staying up
all night lost on love. The only trouble is that Alfonso is lined up to marry Elvira
(Edna Maison) plus, he’s a Spanish nobleman and a spy…
Startlingly, we see more characterisation for Elvira –
and several other women characters – than you might expect and, it does seem
that Weber was more interested in adding depth to her women than many a male
director, before or since. In the end too, Elvira and Fenella work together to prevent
complete disaster (for some).
Meanwhile, the men wear huge black wigs and moustaches
and they make war! Weber’s action scenes feature some outstanding camera
mobility with a great tracking shot across dozens of men as they try to repel revolutionaries
– I’ve tried to show the breadth of that take but it’s much better than the cut
and paste shows.
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The moving camera records and having recorded, moves on... and on.
|
Critic and film historian Daniel Eagan also points out
that Weber’s lens is freed to follow Pavlova as she gracefully weaves her way
through the film. The dancer’s schedule was such that over a lengthy shoot she
was only available some days for an hour and so Weber had to catch as much of
her as she could. It worked and whilst she does her best with an undercooked
script there are some excellent set pieces at the beginning and the ending of
the film.
The film was once eleven reels long but, even now at
around two hours it’s uneven but all the same a magnificent record of two major
artists work. Not as eye-popping as Intolerance
nor as narratively-dynamic (or racist) as Birth, this is still
an epic romp.
The Milestone DVD is a double set is available directfrom their site and includes a welter of extras: The Immortal Swan (1935) – “a record of her art and life”, Anna Pavlova Dancing, 1925, produced by
Douglas Fairbanks along with Anna Pavlova in Newsreels and some fascinating Home
Movies from the twenties. For anyone interested in dance as well as silent film
it’s essential.
Pavlova died aged 49 in 1931, after an illness for which
a possible cure could have prevented her continuing the dance: she declined as
life was not worth it without her precious movement.
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| Nigel De Brulier plays a priest, later he was John the Baptist in Nazimova's Salome |
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