To Please Sir with love… Please Sir! (1971), Network Blu-ray out now!

 

 

One of the biggest box office hits in Britain of 1972, when, Lord knows, we could do with a laugh, Please Sir! is one of those very rare beasts, a film based on a TV series that works on its own terms but also as an extension of the spirit and sensibilities of the series. Removed from the context of its source medium and, further, the school setting that created the situation, Please Sir! finds a new comedic environment with which to extend its mix of class and generational conflict in the more cinematic location of the great outdoors, albeit it just down the road from Pinewood Studios.

 

As David Barry (Frankie Abbott in 5c) says in one of the extras, the TV series was hugely popular and was even pulling in more viewers than Coronation Street at one point. As with Dad’s Army you had the eternal comedic conflict between the establishment of school authorities and beyond and the working-class kids (mostly in their 20s) who are written off as a bad job by almost all around them. There's some genuine pathos here amongst the (barely) scholarly slapstick.

 

The one person willing to take their side and who still has hopes for them is their teacher Bernard “Privet” Hedges as played by charming and quick-witted John Alderton who, in addition to having a certain McCartney-esque look, is able to convey a mixture of naivety and principled resolve. Bernard’s one of the most well-constructed comedy characters of the era because of these contradictions, his hesitancy almost always followed through by response and perhaps the sound of his hand gently slapping the back of a boy’s head. It’s hard to imagine any other performer holding these opposing forces together with a much likeability, ease and charm as Alderton and it was, as much as Arthur Lowe’s Captain Mainwaring, one of the iconic roles of early seventies sit-com.

 

John Alderton, Patsy Rowlands and Liz Gebhardt

There’s also, as with Dad’s Army, a superb troup of other performers who all score goals. There’s the magnificent Deryck Guyler – Wallasey’s finest - as Norman Potter, an ex-soldier with feet of clay who hates the pupils just as much as he loves his “senior officers” and relishes every small expression of authority even though the gang invariably run rings around him. The object of Potter’s loyalty, Headmaster Maurice “Oliver” Cromwell (Noel Howlett), is liberal and literal-minded, possibly a future-state Bernard who has ascended to a state of euphoric denial.

 

Whilst Potter puffs him up, the fearsome Doris Ewell (the wonderful Joan Sanderson) grounds him with her cynicism and political nouse. Mr. Price (Richard Davies) is of the Welsh persuasion and whilst just as cynical as Miss Ewall, lacks the gumption to do anything other than hang on in there and grab a beer when he can. Then there’s lovely old Erik Chitty as Mr Smith, a Godfrey figure – he was in Dad’s Army a number of times himself - who is occasionally called upon to deliver clarity to the situation.

 

Last but not least amongst the staff is Patsy Rowlands as the lovelorn Angela Cutforth, who holds at least four candles for Mr Hedges, a specialist in these types of roles – remember her affection for Kenneth Williams in Carry on at Your Convenience – she is the perfect emblem of The School Crush.

 

Carol Hawkins, Sir and Peter Cleall

This is where the series and the film scores as, in the world after Just William and before Tucker Jenkins (young Todd Carty is uncredited with a bit part in assembly fact fans), this series was one of the first to plug into our shared experience and it was far more Bash Street Kids than Billy Bunter at Greyfriars. The Fenn Street gang were rough and real albeit to varying degrees… Peter Cleall’s Eric Duffy was the class alpha, always ready with a quip and a comeback, cocky with a heart of gold. He is going out with the equally assured Sharon Eversleigh, played in the series by Penny Spencer and here by the radiant Carol Hawkins who then continued the role in the follow up series, The Fenn Street Gang (1971-3). Karen Gough in my class had the same feather cut as Carol... and I was dead impressed.

 

Sharon’s pal Maureen Bullock (Liz Gebhardt) is an earnest young woman of faith who has as big a crush on Mr Hedges as Miss Cutforth. She’s another relatively nuanced character with a lot of good lines highlighting the gulf between secular reality and the faith upon which the daily routines of education are based. The film begins with assembly and All Things Bright and Beautiful which couldn’t be further from the actuality.

 

Even more divorced from this reality is Frankie Abbott who, lives in a world of childish fantasy drawn from comics and films with his mother (Barbara Mitchell) doting on her “baby”, the two holding each other back. More grotesque is the family of day-dreamer Dennis Dunstable (Peter Denyer), presumably with special educational needs in modern parlance, who has a Dickensian bully of a father (Peter Bayliss) who cares not for his son’s learning or wellbeing.

Authority in harmony: Noel Howlett and Joan Sanderson

Rounding out the main players are Malcolm McFee as Peter Craven, a smooth-talking jack the lad, Aziz Resham as Feisal, and former Double Decker, future reggae superstar in Aswad, Brinsley Forde as Wesley. Both the latter characters are used to address the race issue and in ways that, for the time, are reasonably subtle. Talking of which, the school bus is driven by Jack Smethurst, star of  Love Thy Neighbour which was as heavy-handed on this issue as it was possible to be. 

 

The plot? 5c, after special pleading from Hedges worthy of Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch, are allowed to go on the annual school trip to a summer camp, with his reputation on the line if they fail to live up to his expectations and do exactly what Miss Ewell and the rest expect. In the course of their journey from inner London to the shires, Wesley is lost and picked up by airline stewardess, Penny Wheeler (Jill Kerman), who he persuades that Mr Hedges is a racist bully, a joke that persists once she also turns up as the barmaid in the local pub.

 

Jill Kerman and Brinsley Forde

Amidst the rom-com and the inevitable chaos of the city kids in the country alongside posh grammar school students, there’s some touching loyalties displayed between 5c and Bernard. The series’ ultimate message being that education is about support, patience and tolerance... and you know that can’t be bad.

 

The digital transfer is excellent, revealing even a little of John Alderton’s foundation, but making everything as fresh as the comedy. There’s also a host of special features:

 

• New interviews with actor David Barry (Frankie Abbott), composer Mike Vickers, second assistant director Nicholas Granby, unit publicist Tony Tweedale and assistant editor Christopher Ackland

• 1970 TV Awards sketch

• John Alderton interview with Gloria Hunniford from 1987

• Theatrical trailer

• Image gallery

• There’s also a limited-edition booklet written by Jade Evans which is a thoroughly researched and eloquent as you would expect given her love for the subject.

 

Please Sir! Is available from 29^th August on both DVD and Blu-ray and you can order it direct from those nice folks at Network.

Note the graffiti... I think we can all agree that Liverpool Football Club are indeed great!

Before Gosta... Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) with Guenter A. Buchwald and Neil Brand, Bonn Silent Film Festival

As many may know I’m always up for a Saga directed by Mauritz Stiller and based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf and, even though this one is still missing about half an hour, it is a thoroughly entertaining romp through snow, love and madness which features the humanity you’d expect from Selma along with the mastery of locations and character you can rely on from Mauritz. It’s a story about reindeers and redemption (the latter, always a Selma theme) and, how fitting that a film featuring two violin players and the healing power of music, should be accompanied by the Silent Film Supergroup of Guenter A. Buchwald on violin and Neil Brand on piano… I really wish I’d been there to witness this gig in the flesh but the streaming screening will have to do for now and how.

 

Whereas Gosta Berling has its grand set piece of Lars Hanson and Greta Gustafson (Garbo) escaping across the frozen lake, this film has an extraordinary sequence in which Gunnar Hede (Einar Hansson) is dragged across snow and ice by an escaping reindeer, his grip and footing lost as, off-balanced, the rope he tied to deer and his waist is threatening to see him dragged to a painful doom. Hansson was originally down to play this role but he does very well in his first film role, bright eyed and passionate, his Gunnar inspired by his grandfather’s love of the violin as well as his epic journey bringing a herd of reindeers from the wilderness of the north for lucrative sale in the south.

 

Your grandfather was a simple peasant, Miss Stava should know better than to put fantasies in your head!

 

The matriarch, Mrs Hede (Pauline Brunius)

This action makes the family’s fortune and the gran house and estate of Munkhyttarian Gunnar sees the portrait of his Grandfather comes alive in his imagination, the same passion for music driving his daring imagination. But not all of the family celebrates this stunning success story with Gunnar’s mother Mrs. Hede (an excellent and very fearsome Pauline Brunius) being especially unimpressed. Her boy will have the best grounding in finance and mining management, so he may run the estate properly.

 

Best laid plans of domineering mothers are sometimes over-turned by happenstance and learning that his Father is extremely ill, Einer returns home as quickly as he can… This narrative runs on luck and chance encounters, as much as any Paul Auster novel and, like the American, and Lagerlöf is always more interested in the reaction than the action. In the period of mourning after his father’s death, it comes to pass that a small group of travelling acrobats comes to Munkhyttarian.

Stina Berg on tightrope, Adolf Olschansky spinning plates and Mary Johnson on violin 

This signals a comedic change of pace as we meet a horse that will only pull its cart when serenaded with the mouthorgan played by a scruffy tight-rope walker (Stina Berg) whilst her husband Blomgren (Adolf Olschansky) a man who has taken dishevelled into an artform – a Jasper Johns instillation dragged through a hedge backwards – holds the reins. With them is a poor waif, Ingrid (Mary Johnson) who they have adopted chiefly for her ability to play the violin as they perform. This couple are classic light-relief but they are quite extraordinary.

Their arrival at Munkhyttarian uplifts the mood and Gunnar watches from his window entranced by the music before moving down to find the player just as fascinating. Spirits are lifted and Irene stays as Gunnar starts to play again before a chance encounter on a train with two fellows who have the same plan as his grandfather’s to move enough Reindeer from North to South to make a new fortune.

 

Einar Hansson and Mary Johnson

Gunnar heads up north to Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), to enlist the aid of Sámi (formerly known as Laplanders; exteriors were largely shot in the surrounding area, Nacka, and Kallsjön in Jämtland) to wrangle a giant herd of deer and drive South. There are some spectacular shots of scenery and the movement of the reindeer especially as they try to cross a wide river. Stiller’s cameraman was Swedish legend, Julius Jaenzon who worked so memorably with Victor Sjostrom as well, who is so audacious with his shots into the sun, managing stunning contrasts between the low light and the players: dramatically infusing the film’s tone with so many exterior shots.

 

The cattle drive is dynamic and with constant threat as the men must make sure that the lead deer is kept under their control so the rest will follow. The going gets tough though and in checking the safety of a frozen lake one of the men falls through the ice leaving Gunnar desperately trying to hold onto the beast which breaks away dragging him with it for hundreds of metres over the snow and ice. The other man is saved but by the time they find Gunnar half the heard as been lost along with his grip on reality. Face bloodied, he sees every animal as a threat and has lost his reason.

 

No deer were harmed in the making of this film, perhaps.

The night of Gunnar’s Reindeer ride, Ingrid experiences the strangest of dreams in which an old woman on a sledge appears in her bedroom: “I am Lady Sorrow on my way to Munkhyttarian…” she says, revealing a bewildered Gunnar in her carriage… what can it all mean? Dreams represent passions and fears but also reveal our deepest thoughts... and Ingrid's connection to Gunnar runs very deep indeed.

 

Gunnar returns home but is traumatised, childlike, and even though Ingrid does what she can, he busies himself with waking dreams collecting stones from across the estate pretending they are the coins required to save his childhood home. Meanwhile, facing ruin, his mother puts Munkhyttarian up for sale… what and who can save them now?

In the US the film was titled The Blizzard!

 

Lagerlöf was not happy with the liberties Stiller had taken with her story, The Tale of a Manor, she seemed to just about prefer Sjostrom’s approaches but was demanding all the same. That said, what remains of Stiller’s film is an engaging story of individual intensities and the grandeur of the rugged reindeer drive… Thousands of reindeer in a mad stampede – the greatest thrill ever screened! announced William Fox’ US publicity, and they weren’t far off.

 

All is thrillingly accompanied by Neil and Guenter who’s collective experience encompasses not just decades worth of silent film accompaniment but also regular collaborations with other players. What those in Bonn saw and we online heard was a deceptively effortless improvised score, sharing leading lines across instruments with a mutual understanding of the drama on screen. In fantasy Football you can select players from each side to form the best team independent of allegiance, here we had Ronaldo and Messi in fine form and it was a massive win for Fußball-Club Stummfilmtage Bonn!

Asta addicted… Laster der Menschheit (The Vice of Humanity) (1927), with Filmsirup, Bonn Silent Film Festival

Weimar films never cease to amaze and there was clearly a different tolerance for subject matter in Germany at this time. This film deals overtly with drug addiction and features graphic scenes of both cocaine use and its euphoric impact as well as the longer-term devastation. All this is done in a dramatically convincing way and without the moralising outrage of, say, Reefer Madness and more puerile efforts of American films to get audiences to just say no.

 

No, here we have one of the finest actors of her generation, Asta Nielsen, acting out the message as part of her character’s general tragedy; her failure to face down the weakness that led to her requiring the “prop” to support her acting career as well as her decision to abandon family for theatrical success. It’s an old, old story but in the hands of Die Asta we believe it all over again.

 

Part of the success is in the extended sequence showing her performing Salome on stage as, unbeknownst to her (and us) her daughter sits watching, astonished at her stage craft, as are we all. Asta could be a great stage actor as we see but, as the story progresses, we watch her character, Tamara, break down with the kind of visceral psycho-physical implosion, very few could match then or now. Those who saw the BFI’s wonderful season earlier this year will recognise the style of this closing sequence and also the fact that whilst it’s different every time, it’s also never less than moving. In dramatic terms, Asta was her own special affect.

 

Die Asta abides...

The film has been unseen for many years and this new digital restoration by Cinematek, Belgian Film Archive, is the most complete version since the censors first set eyes on the debauchery, based on their 1993 restoration, this has new title cards and is as crisp as human-digitally possible, with live accompaniment from Bonn-based Filmsirup, who mix electronics with a range of instruments to cinematic effect, this digital stream of the live screening the day before engaged this watcher, 415 miles away.

 

The film begins on All Souls Day as Baron Beythen (Charles Willy Kayser) and his family gather in gloom to remember his late wife. His daughter Marleine (Elizza La Porta) asks to hear one of her recordings and mournfully places the 78 on the record player, imagining again the woman she never met and yet who had such a special talent. But all is not as it seems as the Baron’s sister (Sybille Lerchenfeld) reveals her discomfort at the fact that the Baron’s wife is not dead at all, just erased form existence at his will, to “protect” his daughter.

 

“… to let her say prayers for the dead for a living person is a sin!”

 

Elizza La Porta's Marleine listens to her mother's voice

Their friends arrive in the form of Mrs. von Führing (Trude Hesterberg) and her children, Hannah (Carla Meissner) and Victor (Ekkehard Arendt) who want to take Marleine to the theatre to see the sensational opera star, Tamara (Asta Nielsen) in that stunning performance of Salome… can you see where this is going? The whole sequence is an interesting one with director Rudolf Meinert making the most of the chance to direct the opera and also the audience with Marleine and Hannah watching the action with binoculars that just as easily could be pointed at the audience. It’s a brief meditation on the relationship between the film’s main purpose and any baser interpretation – you, watch this, we mean it…

 

Sure enough, in a break between scenes Tamara, wearying, begs the newly-arrived Mangol (Alfred Abel) for a pick me-up before the finale. He duly hands her a sachet of white power, she sniffs it and the opera swings to it’s conclusion. Meanwhile Marleine, not used to being let free, drinks the whole story in, especially when Salome kisses the detached head of John the Baptist; she’s mesmerised by the power of the performance and can’t wait to get the star’s autograph.

 

Alfred Abel is having a ball

We move on to an after-show party at Mangol and Tamara’s mansion where a number of revellers receive the former’s discrete packages in exchange for money and potentially a lot more. It’s not just the young but also an elderly man in tuxedo, no doubt a pillar of society – perhaps a conservative politician? - who needs some extra energy. Irises are fully dilated and Mangol passes through his society with a knowing smirk, master of most he surveys, controlling supply, creating demand. All this passes the youngsters by but Mangol stops dead when he sees Marleine, here’s someone new to pull into his orbit.

 

Tamara meanwhile is exhausted and strung out as Mangol’s maid Li (Maria Forescu in yellow face, the film being introduced with a trigger warning covering this and other "attitudes of the time") struggles to prepare her for her audience downstairs. She duly arrives like a pro and signs autographs including one for Marleine who, pestered by Mangol – Alfred Abel absolutely killing it as the embodiment of capitalist evil, he even twists his hair to give a demonic impression – is already vulnerable to his powers of persuasion.

 

But, almost immediately, there is a bond between Tamara and the young woman, especially after she sings… then, as Mangol makes his mischievous moves, a recording of Tamara sounds just like her late mother’s voice…

 

Mangol helps Marleine sniff his new oportunity...

I won’t spoil any further, but the action is well paced and Asta provides that operatic emotionality which lifts the story and the message over the closing parts of the film. Also present is Werner Krauss as a “cocainist” customer of Mangol’s who brings a strange physicality to the role of a man clearly hollowed out through addiction as he arrives in search of more drugs from the man who clearly has no further use for him.

 

Ludwig Lippert’s cinematography greatly adds to the mostly studio-based atmosphere and there are late period camera tricks aplenty including a lovely montage of night life and plenty of perfectly lit interiors that almost, but not quite, present as “expressionist” (Lotte Eisner would probably disagree).

 

I enjoyed Filmsirup’s score and it ranged occasionally towards post-rock whilst also including some Barrett/Gilmour type psychedelic slide guitar from Michael Hendricks. When the composition and players are this attentive, left-field accompaniments can work and the whole group contributed to a range of orchestration that properly matched the subject matter and the message. Hendricks also plays piano and provides tape loops whilst there’s Christian Carazo-Ziegler (xylophone, electro beats), Matthias André (bass, synth) and Matthias Kaufmann (cello, bass). I look froward to hearing more of their work!

Werner Krauss is haunted

 

Another quality presentation from Bonn in a week that has already seen the mighty Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry accompanying deMille’s Male and Female (1919) and Ellen Richter in Moral (1928) – recently screened at Pordenone - as well as solo Stephen on Francesca Bertini’s restored classic Assunta Spina (1915).

 

We’ve also seen Blind Husbands (1919) – an excellent restoration shown in Bologna as well as Fritz Lang’s Die Vier um die Frau/Four Around the Woman (1921) on which, more later.

 

You can still stream some of the performances and films up until the 24^th but you be quick as the films are only available for two days after screenings.

 

Full details are here on the festival site.

Screenings are broadcast via wireless waves that cross the entire globe!!