Nitrate Sunday… BFI Film on Film Festival, Part Two

 

Nitrate Sunday, began with a slight anxiety on the technical front and ended with leg-biting fury, the cinema of risk and reward… Typically, just as the BFI fixed the safety issues with the nitrate projectors, the temperature outside nudged 30 degrees and rising. As if it was already not hot enough, we then had Rita bloomin’ Hayworth and Tyrone Power lifting the gauge to near boiling point as our drinks evaporated before our gaping mouths could consume them and the audience in NFT1 was simmered relentlessly into sunny submission.

 

As Jo Botting, BFI curator in the fiction team, said in her introduction, there’s no quota quickly quite like an Alexander Korda quota quickie and whilst the production schedule might have been rushed his Service for Ladies (1932) was a masterclass in direction, witty pacing and performance management. This truly is the cinema of delight, from Leslie Howard’s pitch perfect timing, Benita Hume’s sass and Elizabeth Allan’s pep. There was also a wealth of dazzling technique such as the crosscut from a spinning 78 to a train wheel, followed on by the sound of the train’s chugging echoed by the verbalised dreams of three main characters, Howard’s and Allan’s thoughts of each other and her father’s subconscious fretting about his pills, pills, pills…

Of course, the main excitement was the material being projected, a 91-year-old nitrate 35mm which, who knows, may have been that seen by my grandparents; I know our Bill was keen on Madelaine Carroll but I should imagine he’d be equally impressed with Benita and Elizabeth. As Robin Baker said in his introduction, this is time travel, not just in the content but also the light and patterns being formed by the exact same chemicals used to illuminate the screen in 1932. The difference between celluloid and nitrate may be partly psychological but this print glistened and had a rich texture and a depth of field that genuinely felt like we were faced with a portal to the past.

Mr Howard and Miss Allan look across the divide...

 

For my generation it’s a bit like the US series Time Tunnel and, for me, as a teen sci-fi geek, it’s reminiscent of Bob Shaw’s concept of Slow Glass, a window through which light travels at irregular speed enabling a view of past events played out in real time. Of course, Korda has to get his reality in shape and this he does with alacrity, as Howard’s head waiter Max, pursues the socially impossible dream of Allan’s Sylvia Robertson, the daughter of a self-made rich man (Morton Selten).

 

The script is punchy and very knowing from disgraced Liberal MP, Eliot Crawshay-Williams and Lajos Bíró – who brought his own pen – and adapted from a story by Ernest Vajda, one of Korda’s countrymen. The art of waiting, the finer points of the class system, snobbery and love are all dealt with in ways that balance the quota of comedy with social commentary, still leaving more than enough room for us to lose our hearts to the central couple. I’m not surprised this was voted the second-best British film of 1932 and, unusually for a QQ, it was not only screened in the US but gained a place in the New York Times’ top ten films of the year. The multiple of box office to budget is not known but it set Korda off on an unstoppable trajectory…

 

Rita and Tyrone, yes, it is hot in here.

Talking of which, the irresistible charms of Rita Hayworth were about to meet the movable loyalties of Tyrone Power in the sweltering heat of the Southbank, sorry Seville in Blood and Sand (1941). Power plays Juan, a matador with bull’s blood in his veins and all over his cloak who works his way up from humble beginnings alongside his rival Manolo de Palma (a high-energy Anthony Quinn), to become the hero of Spain. He marries his childhood sweetheart, Carmen (no, not that one) who just happens to be Linda Darnell yet, he still falls for the allure of Hayworth’s Doña Sol (who dazzles like the, erm, Sun).

 

There’s a terrific turn from Nazimova as Juan’s mother, and it’s great to see the silent star and co-star of Rudolph Valentino, although not in his 1922 version of Blood and Sand, acting so well… ad to the extensive and huge list of “stars who survived the talkies”.

 

Shot in Technicolor, this print showed how deeply the colours are retained by nitrate process with director Rouben Mamoulian apparently painting some props and scenery to accentuate the colours and shadows. This work was not wasted as the heat and the detail were extraordinary in part… I became fascinated with a light blue shawl worn by Carmen… you could almost grasp the fabric but that would have distracted from the moment.

 

It was time to cool down and what better way than a visit to the Thames, London dockside and the Essex coast in two comedies based on the writing of W.W. Jacobs; away with the heat and the glamour, lets see some familiar domestic dramas of the kind that our Bill probably read, he being from seafaring and canal boating stock… Bill’s uncle died in an explosion on a ship on the Thames in the 1890s, they had been returning from America.

Messing about on the river

Jacob’s stories take on a lighter vein and yet carry the authenticity of their author’s experience in the Thames and coastal trading routes. There’s a camaraderie among the men, no doubt engendered by the risks of their profession, life could be a lot shorter than now and harsher too for the poor. Young Billy Jones (the exceptionally able Bobbie Rudd) has been orphaned by his father’s untimely death and he tries to follow his pet dog’s example in attaching himself to a sailor Sam Brown, claiming him as his “farver” much to the amusement of Brown’s fellow crew members.

 

Sam’s signed the pledge, wearing his blue ribbon with pride, and reads the Salvation Army’s War & Cry whilst leading a pious life. The idea that he has a secret love child is a recognisably British bawdiness, just as his fear of exposing his wife to this unsaintly scandal. There’s much amusement but also a fabulous view of the vessels and, especially the docksides high up the Thames and the pastoral beauty of the Essex coastline. This was a 35mm print made direct from the BFI’s contemporary materials and it looked stunning… sometimes, film just endures, but only with a lot of help.

 

The film was directed by Manning Haynes and scripted by Lydia Hayward and the performed the same duties on The Boatswain’s Mate (1924) which featured the excellent American Florence Turner as landlady Mrs. Walters. Johnny Butt is again featured as a man who wants to woo her by hiring an unemployed soldier, Ned, played with roughhouse charm by perhaps the toughest of the McLaglen Boys, Victor. Needless to say, things don’t quite go to plan.

 

A fab introduction from Bryony Dixon and excellent accompaniment from Neil Brand completed the wonder with playing that not only respects the material but also thoroughly understands the essence of the age… music is also part of the time-travel, contextualising whilst also bringing narrative immediacy along with the occasional diegetic song of the times.

 

Finally, I crossed over with my own timeline, something the Doctor from Gallifrey always warns against but which, in the safety of the BFI is recommended. In 1975, a group of 14-year-old boys from Deyes High School Maghull, lied about their age in order to see the cinematic hit of the time, Jaws (1975) from a young director called Steven Spielberg. We also hid behind the seats so we could watch it twice and this was the only time I had seen the film on 35mm… 48 years later I had no problem qualifying as over-age in order to reconnect on a 35mm print that was an original dye-transfer from 1975, originally in the possession of the BBC, which is far closer to the original look and feel of the film I saw. It was also in mono… and I love mono, it took me back but it also took me in new directions.

Which brings me back to Albert Camus… you can never truly recreate the exact feeling of the cultural moments that first moved you but can create something all together new based on the same materials. Media may stay and some may go but the experience of consumption and connection always changes built on the multiple variables of today.

 

Today’s Jaws I take less for granted as a statement on authority whilst the instinctive connection to Brody, Quint and Hooper’s bonding as they fight to survive feels even more heroic. As we did in 1975, there was cheering when the perfect killing machine was finally despatched… yet more in relief than certitude. I also had to pretend that the sequels never happened, but I’ve been doing that for decades.

 

It has truly been a remarkable few days, the warmest of endeavours with great company and commitment in clear demonstration of the human qualities most needed to ensure the continued successful presentation and preservation of film in all its forms, every gerne every gauge… all held together by a thread of joy, fascination and pure grit! Thankyou BFI, you’ve never been more important and I look forward to doing this all again in 2024… and as often as possible in between!