Who knows where the time goes eh? The centenary of 1919
passed by with brutal speed leaving me reeling in its wake trying to grab hold
of something solid to make sense of it all. This was the year of going with the
flow; a mad dash from Italy to Korea to Leicester and back to Italy via a Weimar Germany that increasingly felt
uncomfortably familiar.
There’s no respite, strong rumours suggest that the Twenties
are about to be re-booted and we can only hope that means a return of style and
ambition across every walk of life. So, in no particular order, and with sincerest thanks to everyone
who programmed, introduced, projected and played along with the 120+ silent
films I saw in cinema… here we go: fourteen favourites but it could have been forty.
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| Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway... |
My third year at Le Giornate and to get through eight days
of cultural and social excess – those Aperols won’t Spritz themselves - and
still find myself watching this film with such alert glee, says so much about Hitchcock’s
visuals and Neil Brand’s score. In my first year I’d nodded off for Lubitsch’s Student
Prince of Old Heidelberg (sorry Ernst) but watching this most re-watchable
of silent films with Neil’s score sinking in even more, I felt fully connected
in this cinematic home from home.
There is just so much to process in Pordenone with up to 14
hours of film a day. It was a good year for William S Hart – with a
retrospective showing how his bad-to-good man, with the love of a good woman,
themes evolved – Estonian silents and a delightful Marion Davis film, Beverly
of Graustark (1926), which proved a cross-dressing delight! Read all
about it in my daily posts here.
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| You know who it is. |
There aren’t that many Louise Brooks’ films but I want to see them all on the big screen and this year I added two more and was not disappointed. Louise is fresh as a daisy alongside an occasionally tiresome WC Fields in Army Game, her gleeful reactions just beautiful to watch especially in a room full of people experiencing the same thing. Diary is at another level as a film and I’ve waited years to see it on screen eschewing my multiples DVDs and Blu-rays… with a smashing intro from Pabstspert Pamela Hutchison unseen Louise filled the screen almost as powerfully as for Pandora.
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| At the Crossroads |
2019 was the centenary of Korean Cinema with a season featuring what remains of the very earliest films made under Japanese occupation as well as an excellent 14th edition of the Korean Film Festival later in the year.
Crossroads is the only silent survivor of this turbulent
period and had been painstakingly reconstructed to establish narrative and
visual sense. This was a silent film screening unlike any other I’ve ever
witnessed, in addition to a Korean Byeonsa – a more active version of a
Japanese Benshi – performed with gleeful energy by Cho Hee Bong, we had two
actors, Hwang Minsu and Park Hee-von who
sang parts echoing the central love story with West-end panache. Accompaniment
was provided by composer Lee Jinwook on keyboards, Shin Jia on accordion, Oh
Seung Hee on double-bass and Sim Jeongeun on violin an ear-popping combination
of styles that seamlessly supported the narrative on and off screen.
4.
Screening the Victorians, with
Bryony Dixon and Stephen Horne, BFI
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| The Miller and the Sweep (1897) |
This was another marvellous trip through the oldest BFI
archives accompanied by curator Bryony Dixon and Stephen Horne and it featured
some of the most impressive footage from the Victorian cinema era, 1896 to
1901. We’d seen glimpses of Queen Victoria before but this screening of Queen
Victoria’s Last Visit to Ireland (1900) from a print held by MOMA, was the
clearest glimpse yet of the Empress as she greeted Dublin crowds smiling and wearing
sunglasses – yes, smiling!
5.
Happy Birthday, Mr Paul!, with Ian
Christie and John Sweeney, BFI
It was a good year all round for Victorian film with Ian
Christie giving two thoroughly entertaining show and tells at the BFI and the
Bioscope on RW Paul, the father of British cinema.
During his ten years of peak activity, Paul undoubtedly
advance the art of cinema as both a technical innovator and an artistic one: bringing
both together in forms of new expression. The World’s first two-scene film was
(probably) Paul’s Come Along, Do (1898) which has now had a fragment of
its long-lost second scene - inside the art gallery - restored from one of his
illustrated catalogues, another innovation in marketing terms – take that Mr
Edison or more specifically, William Dickson who did the work the Big E was
happy to patent!
It was good to fill out the backstory of this key figure and
Christie’s book, Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema (Chicago
University Press) will be on many a list this Christmas.
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| Valeska Gert in Joyless mood. |
The BFI spoiled us with some excellent strands this year, I
loved the Antonioni season and of course we have the ongoing musicals season
which covers a huge amount of ground from the Hollywood greats to fantastic
British and French films: First a Girl and Les Umbrellas de Cherbourg
being two standouts. For me though the Weimar Cinema season curated by Margaret
Deriaz was not only the best of the year but also for many years, from a silent
perspective at least.
Between 1919 and 1933, Germany produced over 3,500 films,
second only to Hollywood in scale and productivity and it was a delight to see
some of the cream of what remains: from the madness of Opium (1919) to
the hard-hitting politics of Kuhle Wampe (1932) and Mother Krause’s
Journey to Happiness (1931) via so many “key texts” such as Der Golem (1920),
Dr Mabuse (1922) and The Student of Prague (1926).
It's impossible to pick a favourite so I will opt for Pabst’s Joyless
Street illuminated by Queen Asta Neilsen and Princess Greta Garbo along
with King John Sweeney’s unstinting improvisation and utterly controlled
musical narrative.
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| Another joyless street |
It was hot, hot, hot in Bologna with the usual bewildering
range of choices and memorable outdoor screenings in the Piazza Maggiore of my
favourite Keaton with a restored The Cameraman (1928) followed by Charlie’s
turn with The Circus (1927), a film I’d not seen and yet which was one
of the funniest I’ve seen all year.
There was no escaping Germany though and Frank Bockius and
Stephen Horne’s accompaniment for Lupe Pick’s grim Sylvester (1923) under
the stars with the Piazzetta Pasolini’s carbon-arc projector revealed an horrific
family struggle taking place in the backroom of a bar on a street filled with
New Year’s revelry. The two accompanists took turns in carrying the line and it
was fascinating to hear a percussion-led musical narrative.
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| Our Betty Balfour |
Unseen since 1923, recovered by a cinema owner in Holland
and restored by a multi-national team, this was one of those screenings when
you walk out onto the Southbank with a spring in your step, cracking a wonky
smile with a shard of bliss warming your core courtesy of Britain’s Queen of
Happiness and Australia’s Princess of the Pianoforte. Music and movie combining
in a genuinely soulful way to utterly change my mood on a rotten Brexit
Thursday… forget all that, let’s have a laugh; let’s live a little… is precisely
what Betty Balfour urged.
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| Ita means it. |
This film was one of the hits of this year’s San Francisco
Silent Film Festival and understandably drew a substantial audience of the capital’s
silent cineastes to the Finchley Phoenix. We’d come to see the serene Slovenian
Ita Rina who’s delicate beauty underpinned her quite staggering performance in
this film. Add in Stephen Horne’s alchemical accompaniment (he also played for
it in San Francisco) and we were lost in that mystical meld of sound, vision
and venue which leaves you at the mercy of your own emotional response.
10.
The Cat and the Canary (1927), with
Jeff Rapsis, Kennington Bioscope
One of so many excellent screenings from the National Treasure
that is the Cinema Museum. Here we were treated to a watch of Kevin Brownlow’s
own 35mm – I know! - one that resulted from his own restoration for Photoplay.
We also got an introduction full of the insider jokes and insights from the man
who – nearly – met them all, capturing silent stars on tape from the fifties to
the eighties and preserving the oral history of the birth of film.
Guest pianist Jeff Rapsis had flown over from Boston in the
morning and was full of praise for the Bioscope – and it’s (thankfully) ongoing
contribution to keeping alive the art of improvised accompaniment for which a
live audience is just essential. “I have no sheet music, I have nothing
prepared I just go with the film and the audience…” and, in front of our
very eyes, he performed the magic.
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| Lady Eleanor |
I have a well-publicized soft spot for Eleanor Boardman and also
love films about films of which Souls is one of the very first. The
glimpses behind the scenes are precious, with Erich von Stroheim seen directing
Greed, giving Jean Hersholt instructions, and Charlie Chaplin playing
along by over-actively directing Mem/Eleanor in a “scene” from Woman of
Paris. Elsewhere you can glimpse Hobart Bosworth, Barbara Bedford, Chester
Conklin, Raymond Griffith, June Mathis, Marshall Neilan, Claire Windsor &
many more! William Haines is also in there, his first credited appearance, as
Pinky the assistant director to Richard Dix’s square-jawed Frank Claymore.
Kevin Brownlow introduced on his birthday and explained that
the film was partly a PR exercise to show that after numerous scandals,
Hollywood wasn’t a bad place, full of upstanding professionals. Meg Morley accompanied in fine style matching the epic with
the intimate with trace elements of Liszt amongst the jazzed assurance!
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| Asta catches a tram and a man. |
Two films that showed how women’s stories were front and
centre of the new medium in Weimar Germany and Denmark. Claire is
convoluted fun and John Sweeney enlightened the narrative with romantic
flourishes and dramatic interventions that ensured we were firmly focused on
the extraordinary expressiveness of Lya de Puti. Michell Facey introduced and
told of the Hungarian actress’ success in Germany – including Variety
and her off-screen/in-trailer relationship with Emil Jannings – before she
tried her (bad) luck in Hollywood…
No misgivings about the quality and significance of the
first of the films, Afgrunden (1910) staring the uncannily naturalistic Asta
Nielsen who is undeniably one of the inventors of screen acting and her ability
to express cinematically – nuanced and naturalistic – is something to behold. As
Angela Dalle Vacche has said, seemed to anticipate the close-up's subliminal
impact.
The alternate title for this film is The Woman Always
Pays and even as early as 1910, Asta was questioning why this should be
with a character who is dependent on male patronage and who cannot be free of
the “male passions” that plague Lya too. Colin Sell accompanied with remarkably
steady hands despite the mounting on-screen excitement of Asta’s raunchy dance
round a ranch hand in the most figure-hugging dress in the World.
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| Ghost of a chance |
This was the UK premier of Lobster films restoration of René
Clair’s first feature and, as with his earlier short film, Paris qui dort,
it is a science fantasy film in which the human drama is magnified rather than
obscured as is so often the case. The dynamic duo of Baldry and Horne provided yet
another sublime combination taking it in turns to wring unexpected sounds and sumptuous
lines as we floated through this strange adventure.
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| "Life's a walking shadow, nah-nah-na-nah-nah!" |
To see this film projected from a 35mm print is a special treat and all praise to the Barbican team for sourcing this copy from a private collection in France. He Who Gets Slapped has not been digitally restored, which is a crime given its qualities, and probably has not been screened like this for many a year in the UK.
Not all sonic experiments from the Barbican work but I
enjoyed the mesmeric and wistful score from Taz Modi who plays a kind of hybrid-jazz,
accompanied by expressive cello from Fraser Bowles. Taz’s piano figures weaved
patterns over the narrative rather than matching specific events; a tonal
rather than a harmonised duet and which, in the context of such a powerfully
visual and humane film, worked very well. More please Barbican!
So, just to be clear:
1.
The Christmas we get we deserve.
2.
I (therefore do not) wish it could be
Christmas every day.
3.
All I want for Christmas is a screening of Gosta Berling...
See you in The New Twenties!
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Those pictures are haunting.
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