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!