When Connie met Johnnie… The Beloved Rogue (1927), John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Michelle Facey’s well-researched introductions are a major feature of this temple of film ephemera, and she also turns a good phrase which is why I just have to steal her quip about the two main stars of tonight’s main feature. It truly was the meeting of two different cinematic cultures and Michelle showed a shot of Mr Barrymore, in costume, greeting Herr Veidt with a collection of some of Hollywood’s finest including script writer of this film, Paul Bern (the future, tragically short-lived, Mr Jean Harlow), Ernst Lubitsch and others.

 

I’d watched the Kino DVD of The Beloved Rogue some time ago but tonight we were treated to a 16mm copy that, as all the talk of the BFI’s Film on Film Festival reinforced, was a completely different experience, especially with this venue, this crowd and the wonderful improvisations of John Sweeney’s accompaniment. The source for the 16mm was different to that of the Kino version, no tints and missing the final chapter – a DVD transfer or the same generation print was used to close out the film – and, it looked and felt different, with the Bioscope’s projector whirring away at the back of the auditorium, there were new or newly-imagined details. The only true photographic memory is, of course, celluloid, a physical interaction with what has happened, light’s traces changing chemical compounds in ways digital is deluded if it imagines its impersonations are anything other than a facsimile.

 

John Barrymore’s attempt to out-Fairbanks Douglas has met with mixed reviews over the years, not least from himself (he described himself as a “ham” after the premier) and whilst his fan Orson Welles who liked the film but felt his idol was “not at his best”. But, whilst Barrymore felt he missed the mark by over-playing the colourful lead, François Villon: poet, womaniser and drinker who somehow also embodies the spirit of France, it’s not the easiest of briefs.

Jane Winton looks admiringly at John Barrymore

Based on an actual 13th century poet, The Beloved Rogue includes many florid moments invented (or over-invented) to add zest to this camp fantasy. It’s an all-too-easy target and yet… there’s an extraordinary energy around the crowd scenes in particular and Alan Crosland directs with style and free-running energy. The superb Conrad Veidt all but steals the show as a greasily ambiguous Louis XI and Marceline Day uses her clear, open expression to swoon-inducing effect as his beautiful ward Charlotte de Vauxcelles.

If there’s something about Johnnie and definitely Connie, it has to be repeated that there’s something about Marceline too, she has a very modern face and physique, and her wide eyes express something familiar and grounded. One of the great silent straight women, for Buster, for Harry Langdon, for Clara (Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party) and here for the good, the bad and the downright ugly. But that’s no way to talk about Conrad Veidt but here this most protean of silent performers seems to be inhabited by Richard III, doubled over in unctuous concern, turning his 6 feet 2 ½ inches frame into something frail and uncertain, deliberately allowing the 5 feet 10-inch Barrymore the higher ground. Veidt is morally ambiguous in effortlessly European ways and maybe John felt the pressure, just a bit…

Barrymore certainly shows a different side to his style as he throws the kitchen sink at creating a character big enough to fill William Cameron Menzies’ immense sets, rightly highlighted by Michelle as a stunning contribution to the film’s enjoyment. John certainly prepared well for the role and for a 45-year-old he’s rather ripped in the slightly odd torture scenes after he is captured by the film’s real baddie, the Duke of Burgundy. John’s in his shorts and gets beaten, flogged, dipped into flames and then winched high, before being selected as brutal entertainment for the wedding of the day…

Conrad Veidt

Set after Joan of Arc’s execution in 1431 (she came back strong after that didn’t she?) the film starts in a most un-funny way with the burning of Villon’s father at the stake… He was a patriot and fought in the name of a united France against the English and their Burgundian allies. His wife (Lucy Beaumont) prays that their son will inherit his spirit but, fully grown sadly he seems more concerned with spirits… Is this a redemptive story of fool to hero or does Villon play the fool to bide time?

Francoise’s roguish tendencies are fully developed as he gleefully steals wine to get drunk with his friends and leads the All Fools Day street celebration as the King of Fools. This section is very well realised by Crosland who generates a visceral charge by moving his camera through the celebrating hordes as snow swirls across the city. Snow in April: Paris in the Snow-time? Just what we need after a week of high temperatures.

Amongst the revellers is the striking Jane Winton as The Abbess, Mack Swain, striking in a different way, and Slim Summerville as Villon’s buddies Nicholas and Jehan as well as Angelo Rossitto (later to star in Tod Browning’s Freaks) as Beppo the Dwarf. As the party gets started Francoise is in pursuit of one of his favourite things as he evades the constabulary and comes down the rooftops to cheat an innkeeper of some wine. He heads of linking arms and skipping with Nicholas and Jehan – there’s a lot of skipping. Jigging and general dancing for joy: how else to convey energetic adventurism to scale?

William Cameron Menzies' sets are stunning

Having been crowned King of Fools, Francoise regales his rapt audience with a poem and them mounts a statue of the King just as the Duke of Burgundy arrives for an audience with his cousin. Francoise makes merry at Burgundy’s expense, knowing him as a man of ambition who wants the crown for himself. But King Louis, a “slave to the stars” has his judgement clouded by the advice of his astrologer and is loath to confront his rival. He comes out of the palace and has no option to support Burgundy against the crowd and ends up banishing Villon from Paris – “his life”.

Riding with him is his ward Charlotte who is appalled to finally see the reality of the poet she idolises: is the most inspiring wordsmith in France really an uncouth drunken fool? But things are about to get worse as she is promised in marriage to Burgundy’s lieutenant, Thibault d'Aussigny (Henry Victor), part of Burgundy’s plot to gain quick access to Paris.

In exile, Villon turns into a gallic Robin Hood as he hijacks the King’s gifts to Burgundy and climbs the walls to use the King’s catapult to fire the food and drink at the city in order to feed the poor. He ends up catapulting himself to avoid capture and crash lands, of course, into the rooms of Charlotte de Vauxcelles, what are the odds eh? This sequence features a stuntman diving against foreground scenery with the camera at a right angle; the result turned vertical into horizontal and adds further momentum to the film’s relentless pace.

Every day's a Marceline Day

The young noblewoman soon learns that this surprise invader is the Francoise Villon, a man whose words have touched her like no other but, again not pausing for breath, they are rudely interrupted by Thibault and his troops, there follows an altercation involving bears in barrels, recently deceased poultry and a heavyweight chandelier. Francoise escapes and takes Charlotte with him over the rooftops he knows so well to the safety of his mother’s house. Queue emotional reunion and the sadness of a mother deceived by her own hope: will her son ever amount to the man she wants him to be?

The route forward accelerates as the King finds it expedient to order Francoise death but the poet saves his skin by convincing Louis that their lives and death are inter-dependent: with this swift turn of phrase, he guarantees his life as courtier. Now able to influence events in the way his mother always wished, he is still a commoner which means he can never marry Charlotte, but all are soon overtaken by events as Burgundy kidnaps her and is intent on completing her marriage to his cause.

Villon and his friends, plus an army from the goodly poor of the Cour des miracles, the slum districts of Paris, as also featured in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, borrowed here in strictly un-historical manner natch. But there must be swash and there will be buckle and it’s a rip-roaring finale with the cast of thousands are moved so well among the towering sets.

The film was believed lost until Mary Pickford revealed she had one in her archive and I wonder again how would we feel about The Beloved Rogue if it were still a lost film? As ever we need to count our blessings and thank the collectors, the restorers and the historians for preserving film in all its forms.

The rug stays cut when Josephine cuts it

Talking of which, the first half of the show combined a series of contemporary trailers for silent films including Ben Hur (1925) – which I’ve still to see on the big screen – a Marie Prevost film (it does exist but only on celluloid and with Serbo-Croat intertitles, one day maybe…) and others including King Cowboy (1928) starring Tom Mix and a-lot of Josephine Baker in Siren of the Tropics (1927)… oh my, there was steam coming off the screen! The art of the trailer is a valuable sub-genre all its own, cinematic striptease perhaps, revealing just enough, not too much and it provided quite the challenge for the accompanying Colin Sell who, of course, dealt with the flurry of action, emotion and revelation, with customary flair and sang froid! Grace under pressure these pianists!

It's been a great first half year for the Bioscope and my thanks and admiration goes as usual to all those involved in making these celluloid adventures possible. See you in September for more quiche, conversations and classic, rare, film!

  

The Cinema Museum where resides the Kennington Bioscope

A 35mm film projector, yesterday at the Museum.