Look sharp! My year in silents, 2024.

As Millicent Martin – Daphne’s mum in Frasier – almost sang, That Was the Year, That Was and I realise that’s a cultural reference to a satirical TV show popular in the UK 60 years ago but the films I’m about to list are from half a century earlier so… keep up! We’re increasingly in a world in which everything is happening at the same time, an all-at-once cultural smorgasbord from which every generation picks what they want and new controversies rise from old in cinemas, Talking Pictures TV, $treaming sites and our beloved retailers. This is the best I can do in the post festive drop down especially as I don’t really do New Year. It’s always best to look beyond and push straight on through to the other side, even if that’s 2025 and all that goes with it but we can take it, we’ve not only been there and seen it all before, we’ve experienced it ever-present in films, books and what used to be called “social” media. So, I remember the passing year and rage into the next, thinking of the very best in my opinion and in no particular order!

 

1.       Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley, BFI

She will make a fine wife, son. Imagine an innocent young girl… in an age when there aren’t any!

The BFI kicked off the year with a couple of fine seasons, one focused on the iconoclastic programming of the old Scala cinema and another on the almost unique filmography of director Dorothy Arzner who was able to smash the Hollywood glass ceiling with a mixture of brilliance and independence. She worked with Bow on her first talkie, The Wild Party (1929), also screened, and this rarely-screened gem which was shown on a precious 35mm recovery/restoration and even though it’s still missing a couple of reels, still impressed as Clara’s supernatural energies were allowed full expression

It was indeed, as the BFI blurb put it, “a triumphant celebration of female sexuality…” a modern day fairy-tale set in France and where Bow’s character wins over the heart of rich boy Charles “Buddy” Rogers in a lovely sequence set in a wax museum choreographed by Arzner’s partner Marion Morgan. Clara’s pluck blows away every obstacle and dusty preconception as l’ancien régime has to surrender to classless, young love.

 

2.       The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933), with Inge Thomson, Catriona Macdonald, HippFest at Home

This film sits amongst better-known works of the thirties showing island life on the extremes but actually predates Robert J. Flaherty’s docudrama Man of Aran (1934) – the Irish island, not Arran. Director Jenny Gilbertson (née Brown) had made a number of short documentaries and was encouraged to make this film by the great Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson, director of Drifters (1929) and the man who coined the term "documentary" in a review of Flaherty's Moana (1926).

The result is every inch as powerfully evocative as these other films with Jenny’s previous experience of the island, the documentary A Crofter’s Life in Shetland (1931), showing a year in the life of the rugged folk of Hjaltland… more Norse than Gallic and only 30 miles closer to Scotland than Norway. She was self-trained and this is even more remarkable when you consider that she not only wrote but filmed and edited her work. The Rugged Island is a drama and yet it still feels like a genuine intrusion on the lives being portrayed, the irony here being that Gilbertson’s was sometimes described as an “amateur” and yet clearly she was consummate in terms of technique and direction with only one professional actor - Enga Stout – with the rest being her friends and others she’d cast locally.

This is exactly why I shall be returning in person for the next Hippfest in March ’25!

3.       East Lynne (1913) Restoration Premiere with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

Oh, Willie, my child dead, dead, dead! and he never knew me, never called me mother!

As Christopher Bird said in his introduction, East Lynne is not a lost film as such but when quality is, as Kevin Brownlow says, the main thing archive cinema has to sell itself to modern audiences, this film has certainly been missing in terms of the vibrancy, contrast and tasty tints we glimpsed today. Chris obtained an almost complete nitrate copy from a private collector which, compared with the black and white copy held by the BFI is missing the first reel but comes with an extra three minutes and those higher quality tints. Together with fellow Bioscoper Bob Geoghegan and the BFI the restoration work is ongoing and the hope is to present the finished item at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.

Even Rachel Lowe admired this British film and it’s a visual feast as it is with good use of depth-of-field, form and texture by director Bert Haldane and his photographer Oscar Bovill. That said, there are some impressive performances from a very modern-looking cast led by Blanche Forsythe as Lady Isobel, handsome Fred Paul and the steadfast Archibald Carlyle and who-ever it was playing Barbara Hare, the sister of the man falsely accused of a murder committed by Isobel’s would be paramour, Captain Levison, as played with pantomime menace by Fred Morgan.

This screening was part of the Bioscope’s 7^th Silent Film Weekender and it’s hard to compete with the range and passion of this gathering of like minds in Charlie’s old workhouse.

 

4.       The Phantom Carriage (1921), with Stephen Horne, Kennington Bioscope

 

After a few years of this silent film business, you have seen most of the cannon and have your own list of The Greats but all such classifications are blown out of the window when you see a screening like tonight’s with the right venue, the right audience and a supernatural accompaniment from Mr Stephen Horne that not only sent chills but brought out the full flavour of Victor Sjöström’s film and, indeed his own performance.

Not only was Sjöström probably Sweden’s finest silent film maker, he ranks as one of the finest of any era. Here with his fourth adaptation of one of Selma Lagerlöf’s works, he shows again why he is such a good interpreter of her work. Selma’s work is passionate and poetic and deceptively complex in expression and narrative form but I think Sjöström got her depth of meaning more than his contemporaries Stiller and Molander. As his thoroughly-disturbing performance shows, he may well have had a personal connection with this story as Chris Bird suggested in his introduction, for the Swede’s father was abusive and alcoholic just as his character David Holm. A film that never ceases to smash through the door and grab you.

Gerda Lundquist

5.       Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), with Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

"Finally, the vicar was in the pulpit..."

It’s fair to say that my Christmas came early with this presentation of this latest version from the Swedish Film Institute which is not just a restoration of the Saga but a remix and extended cut being not only some 20 minutes longer than the 1975 restoration which most of us have only seen up till now via the Kino release. It’s also in a slightly different narrative order with the party sequences and their two dramatic exiles re-sequenced as well as variations elsewhere, with a more dynamic mix for the burning of Ekeby and Gösta’s rescue of Marianne, a longer intro and new intertitles that carry more of the original author’s poetic wonder.

Now, I’m not saying that Mauritz Stiller’s magnificent adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s epic novel is perfect in fact there’s a reason he was no higher than her second favourite film director of the Nobel Prize winning author*, but the ambition wins you over along with incredible lead performances. Lars Hanson oozes confusion guilt and self-loathing, Gerda Lundequist – Sweden’s Sarah Bernhardt, a legendary stage actor – brings her power and poise to the screen whilst Jenny Hasselqvist, who had a parallel career as prima ballerina with the Royal Swedish Ballet, is magnetic, micro-managing physicality with emotional expression. There’s also young Greta Gustafson who radiates an unknowing allure that would see her soon off to Hollywood with a name change, some dental work and flattering lighting.

The restoration is crisp and revelatory, never has the camera work of the great Julius Jaenzon here looked so fine from the gorgeous sweeps of the lakes and forests to the shots on set and the performer’s expressions. It’s an epic restored in an epic way and I can’t wait to see it again at the BFI on Sunday 19^th January where I promise to keep my introduction short and to the point!

Ticket details here!

 

6.       Judex (1915-16), accompanied by many hands, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

 

I can’t deny that there was a sense of triumph having watched the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed Louis Feuillade’s sense of drama, his eye for dynamic framing, his direction and team building and his ability to keep the narrative ball rolling even when you think he’s backed himself into a dramatic dead end. That’s 12 episodes and one big Prologue with not a second missed for lack of sleep, breakfast or headache… probably!

 

It's not quite up there with Les Vampires but it does have the essentiality of Musidora playing Diana Monti aka Marie Verdier, a scheming opportunist who becomes more and more dominant the longer the story unwinds. Judex himself as played by René Cresté, is a goodie version of Fantômas, part Sherlock Holmes, maybe part Eugène-François Vidocq – an actual French criminal turned criminalist. Feuillade had been criticised for glorifying his evil masterminds and so here was one of good intent even if he does kidnap and fake the death of the businessman responsible for his father’s death and many others, Favraux (Louis Leubas) before imprisoning him for life in a remote castle. And that’s just the start…

7.       Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (1926), BFI with Meg Morley

 

This blog has been driven by obsession and a subjective emotional “canon” from its earliest days (no, please don’t look!) and Louise Brooks has, of course been the main one, with a copy of Pandora’s Box on DVD bought from a second-hand shop in Park Street, Bristol in 2005 starting off the whole interest – yes, Bristol, it’s really your fault! This film is one of the few remaining unseen on-screen and viewing the BFI’s worn, warm and wonderful 16mm flickering on the NFT2 screen, with Meg Morley’s wonderful syncopations and sparkling improvisations following an introduction from Bryony Dixon has, to paraphrase the poet, helped make not only my day, my week, my month and even my year.

They may have been chalk and cheese but Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks make for a good team in this light-hearted drama in which the former plays the sensible big sister who has to rescue her less sensible sibling from all kinds of trouble. It’s a gas and we do get to see Brooksie dance which is always a bonus!

 

Conchita Montenegro

8.       The Woman and the Puppet (1929), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2024 streaming

Every so often a silent film not only surprises you but pulls you to the edge of your armchair and has you blinking at the screen in delight. So, it is with the story and the actress in La femme et le pantin (1929) in which Conchita Montenegro’s dancer not only beguiles and bewilders her puppet, Don Mateo, she completely un-mans him in the most feminist of ways reaching right out from 1929 with dazzling power and beauty. If anyone has a thousand ships that need launching… here’s your woman!

 

Based on Pierre Louÿs’ 1898 novel of the same name, the story was adapted as an opera in 1911 by composer Riccardo Zandonai, and it was also filmed as That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Buñuel. The first film version was an American film made in 1920 and directed by Reginald Barker, starring Geraldine Farrar, which is a little surprising given Louÿs’ background of erotic prose and poetry. Indeed, he was the man to whom Oscar Wilde dedicated the original French publication of Salome. Director de Baroncelli’s film is presumably far bolder than any Hollywood film could have been as, indeed, is his star performer and, it’s difficult to see anything like a literal adaptation being made anywhere else but France at this time. It is an eye-popping and an expectation-confounding work!

 

9.       The Blue Bird (1918) with Neil Brand and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

Maurice Tourneur's film featured regular collaborators such as art director Ben Carré, cinematographer John van den Broke and editor Clarence Brown. This was silent psychedelia in full bloom at a time when the World needed to believe in eternal truths and the truth of eternity. When in the heart of their fantastic journey to find the Blue Bird, the two youngsters meet not only their dead grandparents but their dead brothers and sisters, there are at least ten of them... this was a time when infant mortality was high and life came with the flimsiest of "guarantees".

The film is a sumptuous collection of such moments and visual set pieces, a hyper-creative comfort blanket that smuggles through the simple message that there's not only no place like home but that kindness must spread out from there into the heart-broken World beyond. Tourneur draws pure and naturalistic performances from his cast of children, 12-year old Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl who react and act with genuine thrill to every new wonder. It's a child's film with many adult concerns.

The accompaniment from Neil Brand on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic out across the auditorium and melted our stubborn hearts.

 

10.   Saxaphon-Susi (1928) with Neil Brand, Frank Bockius and Francesco Bearzatti, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

Miss Saxophone was the most legal of highs, a mood-altering event with fabulous cast and sincerely joyous accompaniment from a powerhouse ensemble that left the Teatro Verdi at severe risk of an outbreak of dancing! Up on screen we had Anny Ondra showing us how fine she could look and how well she could dance and also make comedy – not for nothing should she have been called the Czech Republic’s Queen of Happiness or maybe most of Europe’s. She plays Anni von Aspen, a poor little rich girl daughter of the lecherous Baron von Aspen (the marvellous Gaston Jacquet) who wants to trade places with her working gal pal Susi Hille (Mary Parker), a cabaret dancer who gets the chance to become a Tiller Girl in London. They swap assignments with Susi heading off to posh school and Anni having to learn her dancing ropes fast.

On the boat over they meet some fine English gentlemen including Lord Herbert Southcliffe (Malcolm Tod) who takes a bet that he can get in to meet the Tiller Girls backstage and then another bet that he will marry this special one called Susi (Anni)… It’s not much of a plot but it’s enough to make this amongst the most enjoyable and warmest of comedies with this fabulously charming cast.

Any programmers reading… I think I’d like to see this one again please! 

 

Ra Messerer

11.   The Second Wife (1927) with Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

To Uzbekistan and this extraordinary film from Mikhail Devonov based on a story by Lolakhon Saifullina, a polish woman who married an Uzbek man and converted to Islam. It’s a reflection of the enormity of the old USSR and the challenges Moscow faced in co-ordinating so many diverse cultures into one modernising state. Saifullina worked for the Sharq Yulduzi studio writing scripts sensitive to the issues of Uzbeki women her along with former legal consultant Valentina Sobberey. The result is a tale in which women and children are exploited by old male custom and dominance even as the modern day watcher is aware of the wider context of Stalin’s impending first Five Year Plan and the eventual costs of converting an agrarian economy into an industrialised one.

Director Devonov does not lapse into bucolic orientalism and focuses on the story and the depiction of prevalent practices of early marriage and polygamy. Here a merchant’s first wife Khadycha cannot have children and so he has a second wife, Adoliat (Ra Messerer) who can.  A child duly arrives and Khadycha tries to destroy her competitor. She is far from alone in malevolence as his brother Sadiqbai (Mikhail Doronin), steals money whilst his older brother is away and also preys on young boys, as things escalate elsewhere. It’s propagandist but still shows the harshness of unresolved “tradition” and male power.

 

Eille looks down at Alexandra Palace, photo credit Yves Salmon 

12.   Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace Theatre with Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor with Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured the first fruits of the BFI’s restoration of Stoll Films Sherlock Holmes films. The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. The three films featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano.

 

The programme is ongoing and I can’t wait for the further adventures of both the BFI Restoration Team as well as The Great Detective in 2025.

 

My 1924 Danish promotional booklet... Book Now for 19th!!

 

*Lagerlöf berated Mauritz Stiller for his adaptation of The Gösta Berling Saga calling it “cheap and sensational”.

Queenie Marie… The Sideshow (1928), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

There was magic in the air tonight in Kennington, together with passion and the Christmas joy of sharing a present, unwrapped in front of the entire room – a film no-one had seen before, a surprise to everyone, not a sideshow but very much the main event. The Bioscope’s MC, Michelle Facey, has been in pursuit of this film for over two years as part of her ongoing mission to restore Marie Prevost to cinematic consciousness and to help rehabilitate an actor so wronged by the puerile taletelling of Mr K Anger as well as a studio system that discarded her in such a callous way in the thirties.

 

Anyone whose seen Prevost in Lubitsch’s Marriage Circle or even her brief but vital role in Three Women, knows what a powerful performer she was and how she holds the eye like few others from the period with relaxed expressiveness, flashes of wit across her huge eyes and a smile that knows far more than it seems to be letting on. She’s got range and moved from being one of Mack Sennett’s bathing beauties to sophisticated comedies as well as dramas like this one, adding charm and depth to her already compelling screen magnetism.

 

Michelle had been searching out more of Marie’s films and tonight’s 35mm print was from a 2003 restoration held in the vaults of UCLA which took much dogged negotiation including providing proof of the Bioscope and Cinema Museum’s capabilities as well as a reference from the BFI. Nothing phases Facey when it comes to film history and tonight was yet another special evening with this screening of a film that has only been shown three times this century and not in the UK since – probably – its year of release.

 

The Sideshow is not a major film but it is a very unusual film and one with much to recommend in terms of entertainment and historical context. It’s a Prevost vehicle which represents her at near the height of her popularity and noteworthy for that reason alone in showing us her star power but it’s also a film that features a little person as a major character and not just a circus amusement. 'Little Billy' Rhodes plays P.W. Melrose, a cigar-chomping owner of his own circus, having risen through the ranks after starting out as a side show performer himself.

 

He's an astute and determined businessman who looks after his people and, mostly, has good grace and sound judgement. A couple of drunken men show him disrespect as his right-hand man Gentleman Ted Rogers (Ralph Graves) hails the acts in the circus side show – even after Ted tells them he owns the circus – but Melrose has heard it all before a thousand times and walks off chewing on his ever-present cigar.

 

It's a really good performance from Rhodes who was abandoned by his father once his condition was identified and, after experiencing what he described as dreadful poverty, was taken in by a showman who acted as his manager as he progressed from Vaudeville to Broadway and then onto films. He later appeared in The Wizard of Oz but here is not only the smartest man in the room, he’s also romantically interested in a new arrival at the circus.

 

Cue Marie Prevost as acrobat Queenie who has come in search of work after her family trapeze act disbands. She has an instant rapport with Ted but Melrose fall for her too. Meanwhile strange accidents keep on happening at the circus, an explosion in the payroll caravan and the death of a trapeze artist which looks like his equipment was sabotaged. Queenie comforts his daughter and Melrose tells her mother that he’ll keep on paying her late husband’s wages as long as he’s running the circus. Queenie tells him he’s a good man but his gruff exterior hides his broken heart.

 

It's pretty clear that someone is working on behalf of a competitor who has already tried to buy Melrose’s circus and now wants to lower the price… well, they should definitely pick on someone their own size.

 

Billy, Marie and Ralph Graves on a very collectable lobby card!

The film shows a lot of circus life both in the big tent with genuine acrobats, magicians and clowns along with the sideshow staples, the Tall Man (R.E. 'Tex' Madsen), “Fat Lady” (Martha McGruger), Thin Man (Chester Morton), Fire Eater (Jacques Ray), knife-thrower (Steve Clemente) and his long-suffering assistant (Janet Ford), Tattooed Man (Bert Price) and, putting Lon Chaney to shame, an Armless Man (Paul Desmuke) who can open his own bottles and light his own cigarettes! As with Little Billy in real life, the options for these outsiders were limited in the America of the time and “show” business in a human zoo was better than most.

 

Erle C. Kenton directs this tale very effectively and there’s some excellent scenes aboard a train as double crossers try to dispose of Ted by getting him to stick his neck out and look for the next signal, an old trick which involves pushing the distracted passenger off to their doom. Elsewhere, the sheer number of sharp objects dangerous practices on site easily enables the creation of a sense of jeopardy as Melrose’s crew finally realise that there’s a traitor in their midst leading to a breathless finale.

 

The review in Variety February 1929 damned with faint praise, “It’s not badly done and the old circus stuff somehow holds together for a story…” before being so grossly offensive it made Kenton’s point for him by saying that it was “impossible” to make a hero out of a “freak”. You wonder at the mentality which cruelly pervaded this America that some want to make great again as if all compassion and understanding was holding it back somehow.

 

Against this is the marvel of Marie who is exactly the kind of advanced caring soul the planet always needs and who’s acting always contains such humanity and heart as much in comedy as drama. This may have been a mid-budget Columbia “quickie” but she gives it her all as she always does, grounds the story and raises the emotional stakes in the manner of a true star.

 

Cyrus Gabrysch, the Bioscope’s founder, accompanied in dramatic fashion losing the audience in this rarity as yet again Kennington hosted the rare and almost impossible to see and appreciate. Had Michelle not fought so hard to bring Marie to Charlie’s house we would have had to rely on secondary sources such as Variety which we can all now attest was wrong-headed on this film and which utterly underestimated the persuasive Prevost!

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Marie in a basket... what could possibly go wrong?

On tonight’s undercard we also saw some delightful shorts:

 

Bill and the Greasy Pole (1911) in which “Bill” must carry a twenty-foot pole through Paris to a fir and… it’s very difficult to hold onto.

 

Rope Making by Hand in Kent (1912) was truly fascinating showing the entire process from raw materials to groups twisting long sections together using wooden tools and elbow grease. I could watch this film for hours.

 

A Christmas Carol (1910) was the Edison version and summed up Dickens’ classic in around a dozen minutes. Directed by J. Searle Dawley it featured both Viola Dana and her sister Shirley Mason (their family name was Flugrath) as Bob Cratchit’s children. Scrooge’s nephew was played by Harold M. Shaw who later married their elder sister Edna Marie Flugrath who was also an actor.

 

A marvellous Christmas treat especially with maestro John Sweeney accompanying!

So, the Bioscope goes from strength to strength and thank you to all the collectors, programmers, projectionists, and helpers who make everything work so well. A particular cheer for the dynamic Michelle Facey for her Prevost perseverance and excellent introduction which showed such diligence and commitment to her subject. We sometimes forget that the KB runs on passion alone and what a spectacular engine that is!

 

Here's to 2025!

Spot the Flugraths!