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I collect vinyl old and new, I have enough CDs to have established a secret breakaway archive in the garage and I stream and download via Bandcamp who give the creators their due. As with film - nitrate and celluloid, "a tough flammable thermoplastic composed essentially of cellulose nitrate and camphor*" available in 70mm, 8mm, 35, 16... - each musical medium has its strengths and weaknesses and each fits in with different moods or situations. The character of your listening experience is based on the qualities of the media as much as the content; clicking on a link and listening on your laptop speakers doesn't compete with the act of selecting carefully preserved vinyl, pulling it out of the cover and placing the needle on the groove. There's more consideration and physical involvement, it's a tactile, emotive connection... or maybe I'm just reconnecting with an old feeling, just ask Albert Camus**.
Sadly we don’t have the same sort of choices with film as we do with music with the majority of cinemas now showing
only digital and only one, the BFI, able to screen nitrate. This new festival
celebrates celluloid as only the Institute can, unleashing prints new and old
from their archive in a vibrant celebration not just of the film but the
projectionists, archivists and cineastes who gathered from all points to be in
the moment, together in the dark, on the sunniest of days on the Southbank. Just
like Bologna, inside and out… all imbued with the warmth of shared appreciation and a collective love of cinema and all of its ways.
Talking of nitrate… In A Fire, I’d save my hard drive and as
many first pressings as possible; then maybe I could make a mix-tape for
Samantha Morton if Lynne Ramsay and she ever make a follow-up to Morvern
Callar. Whilst the BFI had hoped to have their new 35mm print ready we
ended up watching one made on release in 2002 and never previously projected.
It looked perfect or as nearly perfect as celluloid needs to be, the odd
flicker and a slight wobble all counterbalanced by the warmth of the image the
vibrancy and depth of colours not approximated but created by light interacting
with chemicals during the original shoot and only found in the form we saw
after development and washing… a process described in detail in Mark Jenkin’s
wondrous new short, commissioned for the festival, A Dog Called Discord,
a quite brilliant narrative on the appeal of film and it’s unique qualities in
reflecting and preserving light and life.
In their introduction to the film, Morton, director Ramsay
and producer Robyn Slovo talked like the closest of friends, still excited by
what they achieved. Samantha observed that there are so many monitors now, film
makers do not focus on the live environment, directing performance, but instead
on how it looks on their digital viewer. Lynne on the other hand was down near
her star’s face, unconsciously mouthing her lines as she knew them so well and
just letting her run with a character that was all consuming and feeing off
their trust and skill.
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| Samantha Morton |
The result, having now seen it all the way through for the
first time, is a film that feels as fresh today as anything from 21 years ago
has any right to do. Morton’s Morvern exploring the possibilities of life after
her boyfriend kills himself and gifts her with a novel and a chance to break
free. It’s like one of Paul Auster’s moments of chance, and the film revels in
the excitement of risks and new purpose in the face of nothing to lose. Morton
is almost matched in fantasticness by Kathleen McDermott as her pal Lanna, not
quite the Louise to her Thelma, but someone who is more reckless but still held
back by caution.
A half century before, on Thursday’s opening night, we
witnessed another force of nature in the form of Joan Crawford’s mighty Mildred Pierce (1945). This is why films were invented, this was the
classiest of classic Hollywood and another first-time view for me – I know, I
know… you can’t take me anywhere. I’m far more familiar now with Joan’s silent
work but she appears to have adapted exceptionally well to the new talking
pictures on this evidence.
We watched the BFI’s new 35mm print and it looks gorgeous,
full of lightning soul and monochromatic drama with Joan’s huge eyes never
glistening more; an albedo so intense there are probably alien scientists
studying it 78 light years away. Crawford’s core is so fierce that it could
overwhelm her co-stars but she is also controlled and a team player (sorry
Bette…) who brings out the best in Zachary Scott as her disreputable second
husband Monte Beragon, Jack Carson as her, consistently disappointed, male best
friend and young Ann Blyth as her almost irredeemable elder daughter Veda: how
could someone like her come from Mildred and her dependable but dull first
husband Bert (Bruce Bennett)?
This is one of the film’s great drivers and Veda, like her
mother is always true to herself, perhaps taking the honesty of her endeavour
for granted; weakness created from graft. The film has great tone to accompany
these rich characters and if there’s anyone born that ever delivered a
one-liner better than Eve Arden, as Ida, Mildred’s dependable left-hand woman, I’ve
yet to see them!
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| Fernand Gravey and Heather Angel |
Just over a decade before the European co-production Early
to Bed (1933) was being produced in Germany during the final months of the Weimar
Republic and featuring stars from Britain, France and Germany all working the
same script in their own languages and on the same sets at UFA and around
Berlin and Potsdamer. This film was new to me and described by Festival
Director Robin Baker as a likeable oddity which it certainly was, a classic
farce that escalated exponentially to the expected conclusion but not without
running unexpected disaster mighty close.
Led by the aptly-named Heather Angel as Grete, a manicurist
at a local salon and Fernand Gravey as Carl, a waiter with ambition the film
features a very pleasing array of supporting actors including Donald Calthrop
as an officious tour guide, Athene Seyler as Grete’s boss, Frau Weiser and the irrepressible
Sonnie Hale as Helmut, projectionist at the local Kino and sausage-munching advisor
to Carl. We also have Lady Tree – aka Lady Beerbohm Tree, wife of Sir Herbert –
as Grete and Carl’s landlady, who is prone to wistful recollection of her many
Shakespearian roles, the joke being that she was one of the leading actors of
her generation with her rooms full o factual pictures from her many stage
productions. She’s a joy hamming it up and playing her part in this comedy of
errors.
Grete and Carl share a room but not at the same time, she
does the night shift leaving at 9AM, just as Carl arrives for the day shift… it’s
an odd arrangement but perhaps more common at the time. The tow never overlap
but imagine each other as squinting or bow-legged, engaging in tit-for-tat acts
of mischief, he scrunching her dresses, she throwing down his hats. By chance
Carl sees her in the street and, not knowing who she is, he begins to romance
her, especially when he believes that she is the daughter of the rich Herr
Kruger (Edmund Gwenn). One thing leads to dozens of others, it’s fast and
furious with that supporting cast working to keep everything aloft and in free
flow.
There’s a clever device of constantly referencing the films
shown in the Kino, featuring the German cast and replete with songs that feed
into the main action. Heather may look like an angel but she doesn’t sing like
one, but maybe that’s the point.
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| Miles and Maddie |
Eleven years ago, London was bowled over by the BFI’s
restoration of The First Born (1928) shown at the Royal Festival Hall in the
LFF and with a magnificent yearning score from Stephen Horne and here it was
again on a 35mm print the BFI made at the time. Miles Mander’s film is about
love and betrayal and Stephen’s themes still capture that spirit in uncanny
ways, perfectly describing Madeleine Carroll’s character, also Madeleine, yearning
for her dastardly husband Sir Hugo Boycott (Mander), a strange, selfish politician
who preaches one thing and does another… it’ll never catch on.
His wife he is willing to cast adrift as she cannot give him
the son he so desires until she finds a way… a betrayal with the best of
intentions. While Boycott is away Madeleine becomes close to the rather more
handsome Lord David Harbrough (John Loder) who not only outranks her husband
but is thoroughly decent as well… a girl could be forgiven for choosing an
affair but whilst her heart is lost Madeleine stays loyal at whatever cost. It’s
an intense, very well-made film, with a superb technical level placing it up
with the very best of late-silent British and indeed, European cinema.
The accompaniment included some delightful extemporisation
on Gershwin’s The Man I Love, Madeleine’s favourite song, her choice of 78 and
her glance at Harbrough revealing all. It says so much of Stephen’s music that it
feels all of a piece with his own melodies, one intoxicating line stuck in my
head even as I write! There are so many variables with film and silent film
especially; venue, audience, accompaniment and… materials. Film in excelsis.
The ultimate example of a film designed to replicate and
control its own experience is Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room (1968/1973) a single-shot
short that shows the trip up the steps and round to the old entrance of the BFI
that ends up in the NFT 2. The film is only allowed to be screened in NFT 2 and
this newly created 16mm print not only replicates our similar steps today but
ultimately reminds us of the things that have changed and are different even as
we connect with these moments of the seemingly everyday journey to the screen…
I shall follow this route as far as possible for the next
screenings in this most considered and vital new festival. It’s all going to
end with that shark on Sunday but there’s thousands of feet of film to unreel
first!
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| Lynne Ramsay, Samantha Morton and Robyn Slovo still passionate about Morven Callar |
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