Star-filled and velvet black - Film on Film 2025 (Part Two), BFI

When people ask me what’s the difference between watching a nitrate print and another… I commonly use the analogy of a photocopy of a picture compared to a stain glass window…

Bryony Dixon was describing the nature of nitrate on this day in which we would see four films which, literally showed us more on screen. There is more luminosity and translucence with nitrate film and greater depth and clarity; you can see details in the velvet-black it doesn’t have the block-blacks you can get with even the highest quality digital and celluloid.

Nothing in this fantastic festival of film on actual film comes easy and the love that dares to speak the name nitrate was in full effect as the programme director James Bell, BFI’s Senior Curator of Fiction, lined up on stage with colleagues to explain the process of selecting, testing and projecting those that have made the cut to be shown in the only UK cinema capable of screening nitrate – a projection box made out of Durasteel – asbestos sandwiched between two sheets of steel in 1953.

The BFI hold some 44,000 films on nitrate stock but as Sonia Genaitay, Curatorial Archivist pointed out, not all are in screen able condition. Age withers and curls nitrate and finding films that can be projected is a detailed progress involving testing and eyeballing with Dominic Simmons, Head of Technical, providing the ultimate projector-accepted testing of the films we were to watch. Some 50 titles were considered this year with just five making the cut.

James said that they hoped to screen more nitrate throughout the year and we can only be thankful for the efforts made to preserve and present these special shows. Talking of which, a tip of the hat to today’s projectionists: Mark Kennedy, Mick Fife and Lauren Feyderline without whom we’d be staring into space.

 

The BFI team explain the wonders of nitrate

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate

 

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis."

 

It was only just lunchtime when DJ Christopher Bird hit the decks in NFT 1 to replicate the original accompaniment to Dali and Bunel’s 1929 surrealist masterwork, An Andalusian Dog (Un Chien Andalou) a film they were determined would not mean anything although as Breton’s Exquisite Cadaver exercise had proven, everything has some meaning even and especially unintentionally. Luis Buñuel intended to “mash up” – as The Kids now say – Argentinian Tango music with Wagner and all but invented Classical Lounge Core without knowing it and Chris was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range.

Introducing, Bryony said that the first surrealist film was founded on two dreams that Dali and Bunel had had with the condition that no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted… and so it proves with Dali’s ideas and ants (finally sourced from Spanish mountains after a fruitless and ant-less search of Paris by taxi) masterfully expressed by Bunel. Pierre Batcheff, who I now recognise from other French silent films, and Simone Mareuil add their own levels of un-meaning amongst the “situations” and as per usual, I still don’t know how the eye-cutting scene was done, not that I can look at it.

This could have been the fragile prints final projection and the accompaniment from DJ Bird made for a fitting last hurrah!

 

Spanish ants on Pierre Batcheff's hand as Simone Mareuil looks on.

Partie de campagne (1936), 35mm nitrate

Backgrounds are as important as foregrounds. Flowers, faces and mountains are not just placed side by side. They constitute a collection of elements all rolled into one, amalgamated by a love stronger than their differences. Jean discussing his father Auguste Renoir.

 

Jean Renoir seems to have been fascinated by waterways and, in addition to The River (1951), he also directed his first feature, La Fille de l’eau (1925), just a few kilometres away in Marlotte from Partie’s location on the banks of the Loing and the Essonne rivers, left tributaries of the Seine some way out from Paris. The river is life, it is unpredictable and yet it can rush us to our destiny whilst the trees at the water’s edge can bind lovers together but they can also hide and confuse. As much as the river is ever present, it keeps on moving the narrative and characters’ choices can be lost in the swirling momentum.

Partie de campagne is based on a short story by French “realist” Guy de Maupassant (author of Bel-Ami (1885) and Pierre et Jean (1888)) published in 1881 (set in 1860 during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III) and offering a shock of bitter fate amongst the bucolic dreaminess.

 

Parisian hardware store owner, Dufour (André Gabriello) takes his wife (Jane Marken) and daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille) along with his dishevelled clerk, Anatole (Paul Temps) into the countryside where they stop at an inn run by a manager played by Jean Renoir. Two young men, Henri (Georges d’Arnoux) and Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius), are bewitched watching Henriette and her mother (Jane Marken) on the swings and resolve to try their luck. All innocent fun but things get rather more serious when the two couples head out on the water… just a simple day in the country, what could be less innocuous?

 

Sylvia Bataille and Georges d’Arnoux

Blanche Fury (1947), 35mm nitrate

English melodrama done with same sort of conviction that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford brings to their films…

Jympson Harmon, London Evening News 19^th Feb ‘48

 

Now it was time for British technicolour nitrate on and Valerie Hobson in all her auburn glory alongside the moodiest Stewart Granger for whom we needed all the depth and visual subtlety of nitrate to see the shadows within. He reminded me a Paul Newman in yesterday’s Hud, a man so obsessed by the perceived wrong done to him by careless parents, that he couldn’t see a way out. This was a Brit gothic romance almost without the romance but with vengeance at its heart, a very dark film for 1947 but then it had been a very dark time. Amongst the velvety shadows we were afforded glorious views of Miss Hobson’s costumery, designed by Sophie Harris from theatrical costumers Motley and as the story darkens so too do the textures change colour as the reds and darker hues of passion replace her earlier calculations and manners.

 

Jo Botting, the BFI’s Curator of Fiction, introduced and gave a flavour of the impact of the still relatively rare Technicolor. Miss Hobson’s pale skin and auburn hair benefited from the process being especially striking in the daylight whilst the Daily Mirror reviewer probably watched a late showing after closing time… “the colour camera seems to be kinder to Valerie Hobson than most other actors, she always looks good in black and white film but in colour what a smasher!”

 

Won’t disagree with that and Mr Grainger looks well too as French director, Marc Allégret respects the material and creates and engaging psycho drama that, with standard generic tropes still persuades through the elegance of composition and force of performance. It makes Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948) look drab and tame in comparison.

Jo quoted the Mirror again: Emphatically a woman’s picture… for every man who scuttles off to the nearest bar at least five women will remain to revel in someone else’s unhappy and illicit love story! Not a single fellow left for the bar, well, not until the film was over to thunderous applause. We were lost in mid-Victorian reveries in the layered gloom.

 

Valerie Hobson abides...

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), 35mm nitrate

 

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) may have been the film that established the talkie Alfred Hitchcock but after a largely witty and energetic start it descended into an extended shoot out with its easy-going capers replaced by a rising body count of police and Germanic rebels with an unknown cause: almost The Film That Slew Too Much? Still, there was no Doris Day to sing Que Sera Sera as in the 1956 remake and absolutely a smaller budget along with some excellent performances especially from Leslie Banks and a deeply disturbing Peter Lorre, hooded eyes accentuated by a dyed streak in his hair and his tendency to laugh in the face of anything: jokes, murder, infanticide and certain death.

 

Hitchcock told François Truffaut that "… the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional." I’m not entirely buying that, especially as this was his 20^th feature film and clearly has some of the hallmarks of his most engaging work – an “invasion” of normal family life by lethal forces, witty dialogue from leading characters unaware of the threat at hand and an almost likeable villain… In the midst of life, we are in death or, in this case, the midst of a dinner dance as a man is shot and passes on a key message on which the rest of the film’s story will rest.

Peter Lorre, Leslie Banks and Nova Pilbeam

The Lawrences Bob (Leslie Banks) and Jill (Edna Best) are on a holiday in Switzerland with their daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam) and their dog (actor unknown). Jill loses a clay pigeon shooting contest thanks to her impatient Betty with the Germanic Ramon (Frank Vosper) gracious – and suspicious in victory. At the dance that evening their French friend Louis (Pierre Fresnay) – a skier with whom Edna flirts unrelentingly – is shot dead but manages to pass on a note to be passed onto the British Consulate… The couple read the details, it’s a warning of an international crime about to be committed but before they can do anything, Betty is kidnapped and they are under strict instructions not to say anything to anyone.

 

A classic Hitchcock set up with ordinary – wealthy middle class – heroes stuck between the good and bad guys, in this case led by the aforementioned grinning Abbott (Peter Lorre). Events move at some lick until the aforementioned final sequence involving the Royal Albert Hall, a hide-out at a sun-worshipping church (?!) and a mass shoot out. It’s Hitch 22 as the Lawrences must not let on what they know even as they must find out more to save their daughter.

 

So ended another breathless day on the Southbank and it was not just our imaginations that received these films in a deeper way than usual, we literally saw more, but by no means “too much”!

 

Thank you BFI and… till the next time!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Hot media... Film on Film 2025 (Part One), BFI

 

The hottest day of the year and we were all indoors staying cool with the nitrate as The Man Who Would Be Compo made like a cockney Cagney* in London’s criminal underworld. Downtown forties London, I swear the lights are much brighter there with sharp pin pricks of brilliance illuminating Sheila Sim’s earrings and the West End streetlights as various cops following sundry robbers and Richard Attenborough’s taxi was ahead of them all as he sped on to avenge the death of his friend.

 

Dancing With Crime (1947), 35mm Nitrate

 

Jo Botting, the BFI’s Curator of Fiction, BFI National Archive introduced this most vibrant of Brit noirs and quoted a press report which had a confused customer apparently asking the actor for a lift, clearly unaware of the film crew. It’s a nice touch which illustrates the film’s items at realism on a budget an authenticity it manages to convey through the excellence of the cinematography and the verve of the key performers. Directed by John Paddy Carstairs, scripted by Brock Williams from an original story by Peter Fraser, it’s a fast-paced tribute to the kind of drama Hollywood excelled in even on a budget.

The Brit Pack: R. Attenborough, Sheila Sim and Mr Bill Owen

If American post-war noir was dominated by mistrust and paranoia for the Brits in this film at least, it’s about choices and how to make a living in Civvy Street after serving their country and perhaps not getting the recognition they deserved. For the dutiful Ted (Richard Attenborough) it’s the long way as a cabbie, taking his time to establish himself and his sweetheart Joy (real-life wife Sheila Sim, who lived with Dickie in a house very much like the one she so loved in A Canterbury Tale). His best pal Dave has different ideas though and has a lust for life and an urgency to grab success by the throat. Dave is played by William John Owen Rowbotham, later to re-title as Bill Owen, not just an actor but a successful songwriter, with a later stint at Sadlers Wells Opera showing his versatility – no wonder he carries the bounce of the Yankee Doodle Cagney.

Woman: Excuse me, are you dancing?

Detective Sgt: No, it’s just the way I walk…

Sadly, Dave’s doings land him in gangland trouble and he is shot leading Ted on a mission to avenge his fallen comrade with the aid of Joy who takes a job at the south London dancehall where the criminals are based. It’s got style as well as humour with some fab adlibs from Garry Marsh as Detective Sergeant Murray in particular. Barry Jones is all clipped malevolence as gang leader Mr. Gregory whilst there’s also an uncredited appearance from Diana Dors as one of the dancehalls hostesses.

It was a surprise and such an enjoyable thrilling ride which, enhanced by the nitrate sparkle, kicked off the weekend for me in some style.

 

Marion Grierson with movie camera

The Grierson Sisters: Today We Live 35mm

There was actuality to follow with four documentary films (on 35mm) from the Grierson sisters Pat and Marion which illustrated the familiar flair for producing compelling narratives about the way we live with breath-taking seaside scenery from the south coast featured in Marion’s Beside the Seaside (1935) including precious shots of the old Palace Pier in Brighton. Some of this material was used in Penny Woolcock’s film From the Land to the Sea Beyond (2011) and the cover star of Sea Power’s superb soundtrack CD duly cartwheeled her way not once but twice in front of the camera: people enjoying life and summer holiday freedoms, in the moment and captured for ever by the Grierson camera.

If any newcomer to the documentary field should require a handy compendium… relating to the craft, they will find all that they need in Beside the Seaside. Miss Grierson has incorporated practically every apposite screen-device…

Sight and Sound, Winter 1935-6 on 35mm

Here indeed is the art of the documentary with editing, context and narrative invention on such vibrant display. A shot at the end of Brighton’s now skeletal pier looks to have been taken from a 1930s drone but the reverse shot explains all as a ship sails by in close quarters. All human holiday is here, the sun, the ice creams and the over-heated children all captured with humour and clarity of purpose.

The same is true of Marion’s So This is London (1933), out of the trap with what Ros Cranston, the BFI’s Curator of Non-Fiction, identified as a poetic realism. Sister Ruby’s films, here Today We Live (1937) and They Also Serve (1940) were gifted with the same flair but perhaps more concerned with straightforward depictions of social reality. In the former she shows a women’s group converting a barn into a community centre and in the latter she showed the importance of British housewives to the war effort. No doubt the working-class women she interviewed found her more relatable than many a male director of the period, then again she was Scottish and no nonsense would be the order of the day.

 

Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon de Wilde

Hud (1963), in 35mm Panavision

 

Christina Newland and festival curator James Bell introduced a wide-screen Panavision spectacular in which Paul Newman plays against the type we always want him to be as a southern man with the darkest of hearts and a twinkle in his eye. The film’s a warning about such men and doesn’t provide any easy way out for the viewers expecting redemption: we have to take the lessons for ourselves and God only knows, never more so than now.

 

Directed by Martin Ritt, who also produced with Newman's recently founded company, Salem Productions, it was filmed on location on the Texas Panhandle, an aptly named flat and baren landscape which, thanks to cinematographer James Wong Howe is used to both foreground and isolate the tempestuous relationships on screen. Newman clearly wanted a character to stretch his technique and he’s wonderful as the titular rancher who disappoints himself and everyone else at turns when selfishness and inconsideration over power his decision making. Oscars were given to Melvyn Douglas as his father Homer and to Patricia Neal as their housekeeper Alma, loyal, good-hearted yet tough but another ultimately let down by Hud, in spite of himself.

Homer and Hud have a far more deep-rooted beef and not just because the latter had been driving when his brother had been killed in a car crash leaving Homer and Hud to bring up his son Lon played by Brandon de Wilde. The fact that de Wilde had been in Shane (1952) as the hero-worshipping lad Joey adds an extra dimension to the post-modern “revisionist” western and Hud is certainly no Shane… The story is about a potentially ruinous foot and mouth outbreak on the ranch but it’s obviously about the distances between nature and nurture, with the widest of screens giving us no peripheral escape from the cruelty of love.

  

Norma Shearer and Ramon Novarro

The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), with Carl Davis’ score, 35mm

 

This bittersweet treat was a heart-rending reminder of the intoxicating fragilities of love and the inconvenient truths of duty… I had previously seen the 2017 Pordenone screening with composer Carl Davis conducting an orchestral performance of his score drawn from late German romanticism with hints of the emotional turbulence of Mahler and Strauss reinforcing the drama on screen. Davis’ daughter Hannah was there to read from her father’s diary about his approach to composing his 7^th silent film score in 1984 and his co-conspirator Kevin Brownlow was also on hand to give his finest Ernst Lubitsch impersonation regarding his struggles to get Norma Shearer to be more Prussian barmaid. She called in fiancée Irving Thalberg to mediate and he played it just right by saying “Darling, I’m sure we can all learn a lot from Mr Lubitsch…” I suppose having dealt with Herr von Stroheim on Merry-go-Round (1923) another variation on Old Heidelberg; he appreciated a man with the discipline to work within his budget a little more!

 

In fairness to Norma she does an lovely job of being in love with Roman Novarro’s child-like Prince, sent from his duties to study at the titular university and for all Miss Crawford’s apparent distaste for the five-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner, she’s able to combine vulnerability and strength, an experienced actress at 25 with her talkie glory years just ahead. Jean Hersholt is joint MVP though as the playful, and long-suffering Doctor Jüttner, mentoring the wayward Prince struggling to keep pace with the fulsome ale quaffing, cigar smoking and dancing of his charge at the grand old age if 43?! Roman Navarro has energy of his own of course and whilst he doesn’t have the flexibility and nuance of these others he is a more than capable leading man here, sulky and watchable!

 

This was also an opportunity to admire the comedy stylings of Aberdeen’s most famous son, George K Arthur who will also be appearing in Herr von Sternberg’s The Fortune Hunters in Bologna next week. Yes, it’s George K Arthur Month on IThankYou Arthur and I just don’t care!

 

Back to the film can in hand, this is a film to luxuriate in as is the score and the combination with a packed out NFT1 was quite something, my head partly back in 2017 and the 1902 of 1927… with the promise of 2025 successfully ignored for two blissful hours.

 

And there’s more tomorrow! This is analogue beauty with a tangibility of experience most cinemagoers are mostly denied so, let’s keep it physical so far as possible shall we? I have seen the future of film and it’s got sprocket holes and is really quite difficult to manage… the BFI do us proud!

*Courtesy of Mr Mark Fuller!

Marion Davies keeps moving... The Restless Sex (1920), Grapevine Blu-ray

This was Marion Davies’ ninth film and she was still only 23, with an established stage career begun in 1914 leading into films starting with the lost Runaway Romany in 1917 and a further 19 silent films until her move into the talkies. It’s the earliest I’ve seen her and already she’s a steady presence with dramatic certainties as well as on screen energies that hold your attention more than any of those around her. Believably, she is a “restless” woman who wants to experience everything in life and on her own terms.

 

The source material, Robert W. Chambers’ 1918 novel of the same name, was considered “feminist” in the way it addressed the life of Stephanie Quest whose drug-addicted parents set her on a life of precarious fortunes until she adopted by a wealthy widower, John Cleland. There’s no mention of her parents’ habits at the start of the film – not in Hollywood, not in 1920 – just that she is an orphan with a winning personality who is adopted by Cleland (Charles Lane) who is – perhaps – trying to rebuild his family. Frances Marion scripts and gives Stephanie, known to all as Steve, plenty of agency even though she will become trapped by circumstance and formality.

 

Steve is played by Etna Ross as Steve as a child and is delighted to meet her new brother Jim who is played by Stephen Carr a teenager with plenty of pep who not only featured in Davies’ Little Old New York (1923) but who went on to have a long career including the original Superman serial and Congo Bill. Jim is slightly awkward with his newly acquired sibling but she is nothing if not forthright and we sense a future romance, and, as the years pass, this looks more likely as Steve has grown into Marion Davies and Jim is now Ralph Kellard. Everyone is gathered for the end of term production of Jim's play - his crowning achievement - and Steve is even more excited when she spots his pal Oswald Grismer (Carlyle Blackwell) in the cast.

Marion Davies

The adopted siblings are deeply bonded though and talk excitedly of what they will do with their lives, Jim aiming to write and she with a broader scope involving the arts and adventure – “the restless sex” (it’s unclear as to whether this is an attribute of her sex of just nature?). All dreaming comes to a shuddering halt when they find their father dead in his office having quietly passed away. Cleland has planned for the eventuality and has left instructions for both: Jim to study in Paris and Steve to take nursing training (I’ve known quite a few “restless nurses” of both sexes though, and am married to one…). Cleland has also placed Steve’s financial affairs in the acre of his trusted friend Chilsmer Grismer (Robert Vivian) who is also father of Oswald.

  

This removes the two from each other’s immediate company and as the years pass they keep in touch only via letters as Steve, having qualified as a health professional, takes up painting in Greenwich Village bohemian society with Oswald chipping away at sculptures in the same block and Steve sharing an airy studio with Helen Davis (Corinne Barker). Steve spends a lot of time with Oswald and whilst they are out driving upstate, they narrowly avoid colliding with a steam train. Oswald’s car is a wreck though and 90 miles from NYC, they take refuge in a hotel – in separate rooms. This out of the way refuge proves unexpectedly problematic when the police raid to stop partying youth and find the two wrapped only in quilts in the same room…

Carlyle Blackwell and Marion

Soon after Steve and Oswald marry and we soon learn that this is not entirely to the couple’s satisfaction. Jim hightails it from Paris to investigate and meets Steve’s room-mate as well as a young model Marie (Vivienne Osborne) posing on a horse with very little on. Helen explains the strangeness around the newly-weds and that Oswald has fallen on harder times and had to move to run-down ol’ Bleeker Street to find a studio.

 

Things come to a head with the film’s startling set piece, a huge ball celebrating Greek culture with Steve as Pallas Athena ushered into the hall by a host of choreographed dancers. Joseph Urban designed a two-storey set for this sequence with costumes from Erté and all would not have looked out of place in a Cecil B DeMille epic. Among the extras are Norma Shearer but no one’s spotted her yet. Steve and Jim renew their relationship whilst Oswald looks on askance before order is restored and he whisks his wife off leaving Jim to dance the light fantastic with Marie.

 

But… what is the secret of the marriage and will what we all expect to happen, happen? You’ll just have to seek this film out and find the answers for yourself.

The wild party

Directed very effectively by Leon D'Usseau and Robert Z. Leonard, this shows the burgeoning status of Marion Davies and in a film which is dramatic with some light-heartedness. Edward Lorusso quotes a positive review from Motion Picture World, which says “In the charm of life’s romantic comedy Marion Davies seems to have been born for the part she plays…” and also praised her naturalism “… instead of strutting, eye-rolling and attempting to tear passion to tatters.”

 

That we can see the film on home media is entirely down to the efforts of Mr Lorusso who Kickstarted this in 2015 getting a decent digital copy from elements housed by the Library of Congress. This is now available from Grapevine Videos complete with a smashing score from Donald Sosin who uses piano and keyboard improvisations to greatly enliven proceedings including that grand set-piece ball.

 

Throughout Marion is every inch a star in waiting, Allen G. Siegler camera loves her and so do the audience as she draws the eye from the rather one-paced Kellard and even the more effective Mr Blackwell who would head to Europe after this film and never make another Hollywood film. That’s a story for another day.

Ralph Kellard

You can buy the Blu-ray from the Grapevine website and check Ed Lorusso’s Kickstarter page for his ongoing project to make as many of Marion’s films available as possible. Latest project involves The Cardboard Lover (1928) which I and over 630 others backed: can not wait to see it.

 

*Also recommended is Ed’s book, The Silent Films of Marion Davies – no silent home should be without one!

Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1928), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

“We never tried to get very far from what was real… (the Derby hats) … gave what we felt these characters’ needed: phoney dignity! There’s nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb!”

 

Eureka’s first Stan and Ollie set showed how in 1927 they emerged as a double act with appearances in films gradually evolving their interplay and characterisation as the iconic duo who has made the world split its sides for very nearly a century. Now with this second set we get a chance to see their first golden year as a duo in ten short films available in restored transfers on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK. What more do you need to know, the link to order is at the bottom and as we’re alone can I ask you just why you haven’t already got your copy?

There’s a fascinating video essay among the fulsome extras from David Cairns and Fiona Wilson which really gets to the heart of the enduring hilarity created by Laurel and Hardy and from which I drew the above quote from Stan in one of his rare expressions on their style and purpose. Cairns and Wilson act as our companions to these timeless lords of comedy and the instinctive love and laughter becomes clearer as it is shared and explained in personal ways that are shared by so many. We are all Sons and Daughters of the Desert, we all stand on our dignity, pick ourselves up and keep on trying against the odds, constructing our own folly in real time up until the moment when things are so broken, it’s the end of the film.

It's a Video Essay of the Year award contender and it’s only Spring. The quote from Spike Milligan they include sums up so much: “The first time I saw them on screen, I knew they were my friends…” and this has been passed down from the moment my grandad James told me how good they were; any friends of Jim’s were going to be mine as well.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam and, as with 1927, it’s so instructive and hilarious to watch them develop and consolidate the greatest comedy duo in cinematic history.

 

February 1928

 

The Finishing Touch, with Neil Brand score

 

Filmed in December 1927 in a relatively long shoot of just over two weeks, possibly related to the extensive mechanical gags as Patrick Vasey of the L&H Podcast suggests, this film is one of my personal favourites. The lads play two construction labourers who are employed to finish off a wooden house build by noon, next Monday for $500… Their confidence to complete the task is, of course in sharp contrast to their ability and over the two reels there are so many classic moments of painful slapstick as their inability is demonstrated time and again.

 

Edgar Kennedy is on hand as an exasperated cop whilst Dorothy Coburn is the nurse who tells them to keep the noise down for her patients… Now fighting both the forces of law as well as physics their failure is magnificently funny!

January 1928

 

Leave ’em Laughing, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

Be careful, you might make him nervous!

 

Famously, in our family, my Grandad Jim, a joiner and part-time boxer, used to remove his own rotten teeth sitting by the fire in Wavertree Liverpool. As Jim first exposed me to Laurel and Hardy it’s a joy to see an episode involving tooth ache and the Boys’ attempts at home-made treatment for Stan’s toothache … this is the World just passed (we hope). David Kalat in his commentary askes just how is it that these films stay fresh? For me it’s that childhood fascination with Grandad’s extraordinary dental handy work… especially given mine and Stan’s fear of the dentist’s office.

This we see as the Boys unable to do what Our Jim did, head to the dentists and before you know it laughing gas filled the place and our stoned heroes are off to try and drive whilst laughing their heads off. Cars crash and – of course – Edgar Kennedy’s traffic cop gets to boil over and steam!

 

Anita Garvin and the frustrating fruit

March 1928

From Soup to Nuts, with Neil Brand score

 

One thing about Stan—with apologies to a lot of directors—they thought they were directing him. And they thought they were directing the picture. But Stan was the one...He was very clever about it.

Anita Garvin interview, "She Took Her Lumps and Liked Them", Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1978

 

Here we start with the newly enriched Culpeppers played by Tiny Sandford and Anita Garvin who made over 350 films and who worked on eleven Laurel and Hardy films. The couple are hosting a party to impress their new peers and end up hiring itinerant hospitality workers, Stan and Ollie as waiters – the best available on short notice. We know things are not going to work out and they don’t work out splendidly aided by Garvin’s classic battle with a cherry as she tries to work out the polite way to eat a fruit salad, echoing Stan’s previous routine in The Second Hundred Years. As David Kalat says in his commentary, Stan trusted Anita with his material and she makes a meal out of it!

Also featured is another semi-regular, Edna Marion as Agnes the Maid although she would not enjoy the same career as Garvin who, as Kalat says, was offered opportunities to form a female comedy team – find out more by buying this set!

And if the band you're in sgtarts playing different tunes...

 

April 1928

You’re Darn Tootin’ with score from Neil Brand

 

Edgar Kennedy gets to stand in the safety behind the camera directing this one which features Stan and Ollie as a dysfunctional paid of musicians with the former’s clarinet and the latter’s French horn simply not following the instructions from conductor (Otto Lederer). Neil Brand provides expert accompaniment and commentary and, obviously, this is very much the film for him especially this opening silent orchestral slapstick. There is so much comedy content this is so re-watchable which, also of course, was not the way they were originally intended: Stan and Ollie expected their work to be experienced in the moment and not repeated and at the viewers’ leisure… we are lucky.

After being sacked for uselessness the two players end up on the streets and busking… what could possibly go wrong… on the streets… all those workers and pedestrians to connect with, all those shins to kick and stomachs to thump! Comedy chaos and more of that mutually assured de-bagging!

 

May, 1928

 

Their Purple Moment, organ accompaniment Andreas Benz

A fine day for mischief!!

 

Was the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo and foreshadowing their later films, has them married and desperate to find time together and away. Here Stan’s wife, as played by Fay Holderness, already looks like trouble as she keeps a tight rein on his paycheque even as he tries to smuggle away enough money for “hobbies”. Ollie is similarly micro-managed in similar style by Lyle Tayo “I’ll teach you to hold out two dollars on me!” – these are marriages based on antagonism as Neil Brans says in his commentary.

The boys make good their escape and offer to help two young women, Slapstick Kay Deslys and the Glamourous Anita Garvin who have been abandoned by two suitors unwilling to pay their tab at a restaurant. Stan and Ollie believe they are flush but Stan’s wife has found and taken his hidden stash meaning that they too have no way to pay the bill… As Kay slips over going back into the restaurant, the local gossip Patsy O'Byrne spies them and reports back. We know exactly what is going to happen but what a joy when it does!

As Neil Brand observes, by this stage director Leo McCarey – and the duo – had worked out that they were so reliable as comedy foils for each other, that the narrative could be slowed down and allowed to play out with their expressiveness and intimate silent discourse guaranteed to reach the boiling point of hilarity.

 

Collateral... Dorothy Coburn 

September 1928

 

Should Married Men Go Home? piano accompaniment Neil Brand

You’re going in, you started it!

 

Spotting Stanley on his way with his golf club, Mr and Mrs Hardy (the excellent Kay Deslys) pretending to be out all to no avail as the check jacketed and four-plus wearing bore finds them out. After breaking a chair and generally behaving like a misbehaving child in front of his exasperated parents – as Glenn Mitchell observes in his well-informed commentary (well, he did write the Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia!) Ollie is allowed out to play, conveniently wearing his golfing outfit underneath his dressing gown.

Here their escape leads to them making up a four on the golf course with two very pretty young women – a blonde (Edna Marion) and a brunette (the vivacious Viola Richard – who had also featured with the Boys in a number of their 1927 films as well as Charly Chase’s brilliant Limousine Love (1928)). There’s some business involving a drug store and a too expensive round of soda followed by some golfing antics with Edgar Kennedy and his hairpiece! Events are topped off by a mass mud-fight as an exasperated Edgar splashes Dorothy Coburn who retaliates, misses and the rest is an enormous dry-cleaning bill.

The Fountianhead

October 1928

 

Early to Bed, piano accompaniment by Neil Brand

Whilst this was the year in which the boys consolidated their personas but there are still examples of them playing variations on the themes we mostly know. Here Ollie inherits a fortune and employs Stan as his butler but soon gets bored and starts to disrupt his own party. This is an interesting watch given the times and the unusual set up and the two do not disappoint when it comes to delivering the keys to life and happiness: clue, it’s not money, money can’t buy you laughter.

Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness provide commentary and both are quite concerned about the amount of bullying in this class tale – money has not treated Oliver well – and whilst we know there will be a come-uppance it’s perhaps not as even-handed as their usually balanced universe. I like the fountain gag which Leo McCarey had used to greater effect in the Mabel Normand and Creighton Hale film, Should Men Walk Home? which also featured Hardy as a waiter! Here Ollie doesn’t quite his just deserts and we can make of that what we will…

 

 

November 1928

Two Tars

As Glenn Mitchell explains in his commentary, this is one of the duo’s greatest films as well as, not uncoincidentally, one of their most anarchic and destructive with motor vehicular abuse that wouldn’t be out of place in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend which also features an endless traffic jam and society pushed to the limits of civilised behaviours. That might be a bit rich but why not?

Our heroes play two “dreadnaughts” from the USS Oregon a late-Victorian era battleship by now a decommissioned relic, who driving a rickety Ford model-t, come across two young women, a blonde (Ruby Blaine) and a brunette (Thelma Hill) who are struggling to extract their purchase from a bubble gum machine. Cue an outbreak of tie-twiddling and winsome shyness from the boys before they step out to save the day. Things do not go to plan and, after a short battle with shopkeeper (Brummie Charlie Hall who Mitchell explains was the most frequent guest in the Boys’ films), they make good their escape.

A pleasant afternoon’s drive with the girls is spoiled by a traffic jam and “reciprocal destruction” on a scale rarely seen – a Kwik Fix version of Battle of the Century with more and more drivers and their cars caught up in a mad whirl of push and shove with the players and cars described in detail by Glenn Mitchell in sixth gear! Excellent work all round!

 

December 1928

 

Habeas Corpus with original synchronised score

 

This is all together a more sedate affair which doesn’t reach the intensity of Tars but which features one of Stan’s more outlandish scenarios in which he and Ollie are engaged by a mad Professor (Richard Carle) to exhume a dead body for his experiments. This is the first film they made with a synchronised sound score combining music and sound effects which here is featured in restored form. There are some interesting choices of music – Danse Macabre - to modern ears it is occasionally too on the nose but you do have to imagine the audience hearing this for the first time.

The Prof’s butler, Ledoux – our Charlie Hall again - is also an undercover cop and follows the lads as they make their way to do the deed in the local cemetery, in the dead of night… There follows much self-scaring as confusion and the pursuing Ledoux, covered in a sheet (of course…) unsettle the big pay night.

 

December 1928

 

We Faw Down with original synchronised score

 

This film as David Kalat and Patrick Vasey discuss in their commentary, is an attempt by director Leo McCarey to focus more on the personalities and the character of not just Stan and Ollie but also their better halves as played by Bess Flowers (Mrs Laurel) and Vivien Oakland (Mrs. Hardy). The two men want to go to a poker game and make up a story about going to the Orpheum Theatre only to end up “making whoopee” with two women they meet on the street - Kay Deslys and Vera White. There’s some very bad table manners with various face pokes and slapstick accompanied by woman’s laughter and the synchronised score before Kay’s man returns – boxer "First Round" Kelly (the fearsome George Kotsonaros) but this is as nothing to the reckoning that awaits back home…

 

This film has polarised opinion a bit but both Kalat and Vasey point out the importance of watching it with an audience with the former explaining how well one screening went. So please, watch these discs with your family, your friends, your pets or anyone you can grab passing by. The more, the merrier! Live Cinema laughs harder!

 

There is a limited edition of just 2000 copies which comes with a slipcase and a collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall.

 

There are a welter of special features:

• 1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restoration
• Brand new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Wilson
• Brand new interview with Neil Brand - essential analysis of 1928!
• Scores by a variety of silent film composers - see above! A sonic feast!
• Brand new audio commentaries by film historian and writer David Kalat, Patrick Vasey, (editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast), film writer Chris Seguin, Kyp Harness (The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films), Glenn Mitchell (The Laurel & Hardy Encyclopaedia) and silent film accompanist Neil Brand
• Alternate Robert Youngson score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne
• Super 8 presentations of Dizzy Heights, Let ’em Rip, Out of Step and The Car Wreckers
• On Location with Laurel and Hardy – 1928 home movie footage of Laurel and Hardy
• Stills Galleries for each short

 

It is absolutely essential and you can order direct from the Eureka Store right here…

  

 

Stage-coaching… The California Mail (1929), Kennington Bioscope with Cyrus Gabrysch

 

There were some outstanding shots – glorious panoramas of the rugged West, cameras placed beneath horses pounding hooves, above them from the vantage point of a stagecoach driver and even amongst them as a man fought to control their ferocity during a breath-taking race and chase. If this was the work of Abel Gance we would be in raptures but it was Albert S. Rogell and respect is due.

We were watching the world premier of a rediscovered lost film and Christopher Bird was projecting from the back row and risking his own copy – probably the only one left anywhere – albeit on his own projector through which it had already passed during testing. The film, projector and projectionist all passed the audition tonight and we saw something special as well as something unique.

The California Mail (1929) was projected from a 16mm archive print that had been made by transferring original filmic materials onto Gun Film which had been sold off cheaply by the RAF and yet was typically only twenty feet long meaning that the previous owner would have had to splice together something like 900-1000 times to make the complete 1800+ foot film – his labours have not been lost thanks to Mr Bird and the film is in the safest of hands.

The view from Chris's projector of The California Mail (pic Chris Bird)

Written by Marion Jackson and Leslie Mason the film tells the tale of attempts to find a safe route through to California for much-needed gold supplies during the dog days of the Civil War. The gang trying to stop the shipments is led by the very butch, “Butch” McGraw (C.E. Anderson) whose gang regularly ambush the Yankee shipments forcing the Union to run a contest to find the quickest stagecoach.

There’s a new member of Butch’s gang who has yet to prove himself name of Bob Scott (Ken Maynard) who after being despatched to capture the daughter of one of the town’s leaders, Molly Butler (Dorothy Dwan). He lifts her off her horse but then proceeds to take her back to safety. Butch sends “Rowdy” Ryan (Paul Hurst) to kill the duplicitous Bob but he’s more messy than rowdy and Bob spots him hiding in a barrel before convincing him it’s all part of his plan to get the stagecoach franchise so the gang can get tipped off.

First there has to be a three-way race-off to decide the best company to run the franchise and Bob takes the seat in the California Mail coach and after a genuinely thrilling and incredibly dangerous race – in which some horses might possibly have been injured – he prevails. This is where we see Maynard in between the horses pulling them back into position and definitely doing his own stunts. According to Chris he had been a trick rider with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Ringling Brothers’ circus, then later a champion rodeo rider with his horse Tarzan (the Wonder Horse!) – here acting under his own name and being the handsomest equine star this side of Trigger of Tonto.

Ken and Tarzan with a baby in Heir to Trouble (1935)

It's a very entertaining ride and I won’t spoil the final sequence which just has to be seen to be believed. Chris quoted Kevin Brownlow in saying that westerns are often not given the credit they deserve for the technique and skill involved in making them and this was one of those late silent films which not only showed the level of Hollywood filmmaking but, as David Thompson said, you could almost hear the voices ready for the coming of sound.

Once talkies had arrived Maynard added another string to his impressive bow by becoming the first Singing Cowboy. Cyrus Gabrysch – accompanying sight unseen – certainly made the Bioscope’s piano sing and galloped along in sync with man, woman and horse both on and off the screen as Mr Bird’s trusty projector provided a comforting whir behind us… only at The Bioscope amigos!

Sue Carol and Richard Walling

Walking Back (1928) was the first film of the evening and was another 16mm archive print from Chris Bird’s collection. It was directed by Rupert Julian for Cecil B. DeMille but there’s a strong likelihood that the latter was as involved in this as Lon Chaney was in Phantom of the Opera’s direction (as rumour has it and I like this rumour). There’s certainly some of Cecil’s trademark salacious male gaze (am I being unfair...? c.f. Sign of the Cross and many more…) but either way it’s a fast-paced fun ride with plenty of jazz energy!

Sue Carol, as flapper Patsy Schuyler certainly has It! and was understandably regarded as a potential Clara competitor for a while. She is exceptionally pretty but Clara had depth and range that drew a deeper engagement certainly based on this script which, in fairness, doesn’t give Sue much to do other than look good and support her man, one “Smoke” Thatcher – not a good nickname if he were to follow the family name and attach straw to cottage roofs… He’s played with considerable gumption by Richard Walling who is a rebel without much cause and also little clue.

That said, there are elements of a fifties/sixties generational drama with “reckless” kids doing battle with their misunderstanding parents. And I ask myself, just when did I start siding with the grown-ups?!

Sue Carol 

After an opening of drunken foolishness which sees one overloaded car crash off the road following a flat tyre caused by a smashed and very illicit whiskey bottle, the gaggle of flapper legs and male drunkenness leads the party to a café shortly followed by the police and a quick disposal of the hootch. Later on, there’s a party to which Smoke can take his “fire” Patsy but only if his father (Robert Edeson) will loan him his car. This doesn’t work and so Smoke borrows his neighbour’s car only to find that his rival Pet Masters (Arthur Rankin) has taken Patsy instead.

 

The two butt heads over Patsy and then, irresponsibly, smash their cars together in a demolition derby that is going to cost Smoke a lot in terms of money and paternal approbation. Still, it’s an energetic sequence and it’s better than watching Jeremy Clarkson do it. Finally with Patsy clinging on to his side Smoke upends his rival’s car and is declared the winner but at what a cost.

They take the ruined vehicle to a garage where the mechanic informs him that the borrowed car, now wrecked, has become a stolen car and his is the place the police will often look first. Smoke needs some money fast and as luck would have it there arrive three smartly dressed individuals who need someone to drive their Mercedes for a particular errand. Their true intent only gradually reveals itself to the rather dense Smoke as they park up outside his father’s bank intent on robbing it… OK, it’s not high art but it is great fun full of youthful jazz-age energy and great stunt driving. It’s a witty film with the tone set with one if the opening intertitles, 1928 – and how! – the shock of the old-new never fails to impress.

The boys try to win Patsy over...

Mordaunt Hall was even slightly moved, writing in The New York Times that the film was "… no worse than the general average of those dealing with wine, automobiles and the biological gropings of persons under the age of 24. As a matter of fact, it is a little better. Miss Carol, as Patsy, is pretty, and Mr. Walling, as Smoke, looks as though if he had the right opportunity to be intelligent, he might fool everyone."

 

Ashley Valentine proved that you could play the piano with jazz hands and thoroughly enjoyed accompanying this peppy entertainer. I especially like the hint of The Godfather theme when the gangsters arrive to make our heroes an offer they can’t refuse.

 

Another richly entertaining evening in Lambeth and I’m surprised that this kind of thing isn’t available on prescription by now. An absolute tonic!

Walking Back as viewed from the back (pic Chris Bird)