Nurturing nature… No Blood Relation (1932), Kennington Bioscope

Without noticing it I’ve now being attending the Kennington Bioscope for over 11 years and there is always something to learn every time I go: something that will delight and move me in unexpected ways as well as historical-cultural insights you don’t get in the same way or at least with the same frequency. The KB formula is flexible and based on a freer programming schedule than most other cinemas, and tonight was no exception with a first half celebrating the 130th anniversary of cinema in this country – RW Paul and the Lumiere brothers both projecting film programmes on the same day – February 20^th in London – and a main feature from Japanese director, Mikio Naruse, that just blew our collective socks off with its style and quality.

 

To start at the ending, No Blood Relation (生さぬ仲), is the oldest surviving feature-length film from a director who ended up making so many more over the next three decades and whose work is certainly less well known than his contemporaries like Yasujiro Ozu. They have different styles but Naruse is just as effective in dealing with the human condition and in foregrounding women in emotional narratives that address timeless questions about their role in contemporary Japan as it evolved into a more militaristic and industrialised country.

 

Naruse intimate film acknowledges the cultural clash as well as the changes in relationships as a successful film star, Tamae Kiyooka (Yoshiko Okada) returns home after six years away. Okada was the star of Ozu’s Woman of Tokyo (1933) and led a dramatic life herself and would defect to Soviet Russia after the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 with her lover, the acting coach and activist, Ryōkichi Sugimoto. She had already been the subject of industry scandal but would now remain in the USSR until her death in Moscow in 1992.

Yukiko Tsukuba, Toshiko Kojima and Jōji Oka

Back in Naruse’s film she is greeted by dozens of photographers and hundreds of admirers before finding her brother, Keiji (Ichirō Yūki) who helps her escape the hubbub and find a suitable hotel. He we have just seen working with a street thief, Gen the Pelican (Shozaburo Abe) in a slapstick strip scene in which a casing mob search the young man only for his pal to have taken the purse in question. This is played for laughs but their criminality will soon aid Tamae’s plan to be reunited with her daughter.

 

The scene shifts to that daughter Shigeko (a remarkably assured performance from young Toshiko Kojima) as she plays with her toys and with her adoptive mother Masako (Yukiko Tsukuba) who is married to Tamae’s former lover and is the child’s natural father, Shunsaku Atsumi (Shin'yō Nara). The two split after the baby was born as the actress was more interested in another man and her career and so Atsumi, his mother Kishiyo (Fumiko Katsuragi) and now his new wife have raised the child.

 

Shozaburo Abe and Ichirō Yūki

It's going to get worse, but Atsumi’s day is already going badly as he has been declared bankrupt; a fact that gets him little sympathy from his mother who has got used to the wealthy way of living. He receives an unexpected offer to rescue the business and is crestfallen when he meets the potential investor, Tamae, who had left him holding their baby as she moved on to another life with another man. Her offer is simple but unacceptable: let me have my daughter back and I will save your business and your honour.

 

Despite his clear lack of business acumen Atsumi stands strong and gets arrested as a result of his business mismanagement. As the investigation proceeds the tug of love begins in earnest as Tamae bribes his mother to help her kidnap Shigeko with the aid of her brother. But the child will not be swayed and nor will her adoptive mother who is far more connected than her biological mother.

 

Yoshiko Okada

She is helped by her husband’s handsome pal Masaya Kusakabe (Jōji Oka who is just so cool in Ozu’s Dragnet Girl!) who is a martial artist and heroically coded, giving the bad guys a beating but otherwise trying to negotiate between the two mothers. Ultimately it’s a tale of the desire for parenthood and the love that can only be nurtured. Timeless in its way and riveting till the end.

 

Accompaniment was provided by John Sweeney who improvised a sympathetic concerto that was entirely within the film, filling out the emotional lines with fluidity and steadfast commitment to some wonderful emoting on screen. Naruse expert, programmer Dr Kelly Robinson, introduced and gave us a summary of the director’s career and highlighted his use of camera movement and pull-ins to maximise the emotional impact of his characters, it’s a startling technique and sets him apart from Ozu and others of the time. He’s certainly someone I want to see more of and this year’s Hippfest (18^th to 22^nd March!) will feature another of his films, Apart from You (1933).

We kicked off with Ian Christie and those magnificent men and their projection machines. First up on 20^th February 1896 was a performance at the Marlborough Hall in Regent Street – now remodelled as the Regent Street Cinema - arranged by the Lumiere’s, or rather their enterprising father Charles-Antoine, which was presented by multi-skilled theatrical Félicien Trewey, a frequent collaborator of the boys who specialised in making funny hats and, indeed, we saw a film demonstrating this. There had been earlier screenings in France and their most famous film, Train Entering Station, was almost certainly not part of the programme until later in the year.

 

The films we about 50ft long and lasted some 50 seconds but still a step forward in the recording of life and entertainment. The films included Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon (1895) as well as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) which had been shown in the French screenings but no one really knows the programme for Marlborough Hall, although these early films were more likely than not. Surprisingly the brothers were not really interested in moving pictures and it was their father who thought they could improve on the equipment of the time and they had moved away from motion pictures in 1905. Their company issued about 2,500 films and, astonishingly all have been preserved and now restored. They are however, closely guarded by the Association frères Lumière and rarely screened… which is maddening, n’est pas?

 

Finsbury Technical College

Far – far – fewer of RW Paul’s films are extant and yet we can see him advancing the art of direction and narrative in ways that his technocratic colleagues from Paris did not. His programme took place in Finsbury Technical College, Britain’s first technical college opened almost exactly three years before on 19^th February and eventually to become part of Imperial College. Paul was an electrical engineer who developed his camera with the legendary Bert Acres – the pair had no option given Edison’s approach to IP… hoarding patents as well as necessity, is truly the mother of invention!

 

Paul produced 800 films and all that we have are just 83… he was an innovator and famously created the first two-shot film which Ian has restored to show a man waiting outside a museum and then looking at exhibits inside it. One small step for the cameraman but a huge one for film-kind… and there’s an HG Wells sidebar here in that the two talked about using Paul’s camera to create the effects described in HG’s The Time Machine. It sounds like Virtual Reality way too soon… neither man had the time to complete the project at the time.

When is a car not a car? The ? Motorist (1906)

 

Ian chose a variety of Paul’s films as, again, the exact programme is not known. What we could see was more narratively rich, humorous and – dare I say it – more genuinely “cinematic” than the Lumiere’s work. But it was all stunning, 130-year old life flashing in front of us and all illustrated musically by John Sweeney’s wonderful accompaniment.

 

Another one of those special Bioscope evenings. The place is haunted by the ghosts of cinema past as well as the nerds of cinema present and future. The elements intermingle and the results are always inspiring!

 

Félicien Trewey in a hat!

Spending time with HG Wells and Georges Méliès...

Going for a song... The Garden of Eden (1928), with Stephen Horne, BFI UK Restoration Premier

Film writer David Thomson has described late period silent film as a medium just bursting to express itself through talk and watching this sparkling romantic comedy you could also add the desire to laugh and sing. Lewis Milestone’s picture is bursting with virtual sound and has an irresistible rhythm that Stephen Horne accompanied quite superbly on piano, accordion, flute and sheets of paper… of which more later!

 

This was the UK restoration of the San Francisco Film Preserve 4k restoration which I had missed in last year’s Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. It’s a revelation not just in terms of wit and Lubitsch-style “coding” – thanks to scriptwriter Hans Kraly a frequent collaborator – but also in the way it allows for the showcasing of the beauty and talent of Corinne Griffith. In her introduction the BFI’s Bryony Dixon called for a show of hands for those who had heard of the actress before and a handful of us raised our hands. Many more will now have her imprinted in their minds for the next few days.

 

She has a spirit all of her own and shows plenty of emotional skills as well as comedic timing in a partnership with baby-faced Charles Ray – looking nothing like his 39 years and one bankruptcy – whose timing and grace had already served him well in a career dating back to 1911 and included Thomas Ince’s The Coward (1915) and The Busher (1919) in which he competes with one Jack (John) Gilbert for the hand of a young Colleen Moore.

 

Corinne Griffith in front of the cameras that loved her so...

Griffith was – also surprisingly – only four years younger and had been in the business since 1916 and starred in films like Black Oxen (1924) with a really young Clara Bow, as well as The Divine Lady (1929) for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. Her reputation has no doubt suffered as so many of her films are now lost, I make it 55 out of 72, but she was a major star and producer who was not only one of the most beautiful actors in Hollywood but also clearly among the most financially astute.

 

Bryony gave a fascinating insight into the actors’ relationship with men and money which culminated in her fourth divorce and an attempt to pass herself off as her own (fictional) sister to avoid paying alimony to her departing husband – points for effort but she could afford it and died a wealthy woman. A life well lived and in this context perhaps an unlikely pastry chef with operatic qualifications which is how her character Toni LeBrun begins the film.

 

It's a midnight flit as she leaves a note for her aunt and uncle and runs away from Vienna to join the “opera” having been encouraged by a letter from the Palais de Paris in Budapest… Sadly the venue is not so fine as its name suggests and is little more than a gentlemen’s dance hall with scantily clad women kicking up the dust for their leery clientele. She arrives with her opera diploma and finds the owner, a super smart Madame Bauer (Maude George – close cropped hair and plenty of "coding"…) more interested in her legs than her voice.

 

Maude George's Madame has a plan!

Toni takes things at face value though and is soon being kitted out by the wardrobe mistress Rosa (the exceptional Louise Dresser of The Goose Woman and more) in the most unoperatic of revealing costumes. She complains leaving Madame Bauer to offer her a seemingly more modest chiffon dress only for her to cue the stage lights during Toni’s performance which causes a mighty uproar amongst the sleazeballs in the stalls. Also watching is predatory nobleman Henri D'Avril (Lowell Sherman) whose boredom is swiftly transformed as Milestone’s camera pulls in to reveal the double image of the up-lit girl in his opera glasses.

 

Things get worse when the amorous aristocrat expects to have his post-theatrical meal in Toni’s company but she is too quick for him with the aid of Rosa, and, as tens to happen in an environment without employment rights and strong HR, both get fired. Rosa extends a helping hand though as she is due her annual leave and takes her new friend with her to Monte Carlo…

 

Now, if you have any remaining disbelief, I suggest you suspend it for it turns out that the humble dresser, Rosa, is, in fact a Baroness who gets just enough pension from her former husband, to live the life she used to in the expensive hotels of the Principality of Monaco and signs Toni in as her daughter, ennobling her and within a few days, adopting her as one later intertitle confirms.

Rosa reveals her nobility.

Now, as they enjoy the luxuries of the Eden Hotel – with its rather fine gardens… the story changes pace as Richard Dupont (Charles Ray), naughty but nice nephew of Colonel Dupont (Edward Martindel), a friend of Rosa’s, spies Toni and soon comes a courting. Griffith and Ray have a very smart interplay and this is a romantic screwball comedy in waiting as the two engage in a courtship based on misunderstandings, cheeky games and good old-fashioned coup de foudre with all of the hurdles to acceptance this usually implies.

 

There’s a lovely bit of business when Richard spots Toni playing the piano and singing, he peers across at this beauty who is naturally annoyed until – after she switches the light off to hide – he imitates and the two engage in something like l’amour de morse code, before the rooms on both sides of the hotel follow suit. Love, and lights, are in the air.

 

Richard is a songwriter when his duties as wealthy playboy permit, and he writes a song for Toni which as he plays to her, causes her to melt in his arms in a sure sign that their musicality is compatible. Later when his uncle decides to make his own proposal he also plays the song only for his phrasing to leave Toni cold. Yes indeed, the two youngsters seem destined to be together and the only tiny thing stopping the inevitable is the sleeping draught they both end up taking during a sequence that asks the question, how interesting is a proposal really?

Griffith and Ray make sweet music

Turns out it’s not quite the only thing though as soon, and what are the chances, Richard’s posh relatives arrive including his Uncle Henri, recently returned from Vienna… can you see where this is going?

 

The Garden of Eden is so smoothly directed by Milestone that it manages to serve the plot complications and keep the ball rolling without annoying even the modern audience. Griffith had fabulous timing and Ray is appealing in the gung-ho way of all noble, would-be songwriters who fall for women out of their class. Audiences now and then knew what to expect from this kind of film and Milestone delivers with emphatic efficiency and purpose aided by swoon-worthy design direction from William Cameron Menzies.

 

The jury of his peers, aunts and uncles...

Of course, whilst this 4k restoration looked gorgeous on screen it was greatly uplifted by Stephen Horne’s timing and invention. There’s one moment which I think may have surprised the audience when the Colonel sits down to play the song and the sheet music has been placed on the strings of the grand piano, Stephen had anticipated this and, diegetically, his playing also included paper on the piano strings. That’s experience! Sadly, the sheet music gave no clues as to what was being playing and so Stephen had to improvise the music that persuades Toni of her love just as he did the rest of the score… it’s a kind of magic. Another outstanding afternoon of live music, informed introduction and classic film at the BFI…

 

There’s more high-quality Corinne on the National Film Preservation Foundation site with a lovely restoration of her 1922 film A Virgin’s Sacrifice – you can screen it right here!

Details of the restoration of The Garden of Eden can be found on the San Francisco Film Preserve website - they also stream films from time-to-time and so it is well worth signing up for their newsletter! It is also to be hoped that they add this to the films they have released on Blu-ray through Flicker Alley such as the splendid new Louise Brooks early film collection... of which more later! But a Corinne Griffith box set would be most welcome too!

 

Crime and punishment? Strongroom (1962), BFI Restoration Re-release and Blu-ray

Watching this restored British B-movie classic on the big screen you were reminded that there are far darker places to be than the NFT2 on a Tuesday evening. The film is full of dread not least the ticking clock for the people locked in the titular space but also the men who put them there and who realise their own lives are on the line. Strongroom has always punched above its weight with contemporary reviews comparing it favourably with the main feature it was supporting, the comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962) starring George Chakiris and Janette Scott and costing £116,401, almost seven times as much as the little film that died harder.

 

Both efforts were a product of Bryanston Films established by Maxwell Setton and Michael Balcon in 1959 in an attempt to create “new collaborative enterprises to provide greater integration between production and distribution…”* It was a new “route to market” for independent film makers who could no longer get support from the likes of the Rank Organisation and the Associated British Picture Corporation who had shifted to film distribution and not filmmaking. Bryanston were the first and most successful of what was sadly a short-lived period but amongst their twenty features were the likes of the Peter Sellars comedy, The Battle of the Sexes (Charles Crichton,1960), The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) and classics of the British ‘new wave’ directed by Tony Richardson for Woodfall including A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1962).

 

Strongroom, with a budget of £17,000 was one of the company’s B-movies and was directed by Vernon Sewell who had also made The Wind of Change the previous year for the company. Based on an idea from Richard Harris (no, not that one, the writer!) it’s the kind of tight procedural crime thriller that was very much in vogue at the time. It’s nuanced and cares for pretty much all of its characters leaving you rooting for both the robbers and the robbed by the end.

 

This is partly down to the narrative hanging off a couple of dramatic double acts with Derren Nesbitt as Griff, a small-time crook after just one big pay day, and his partner in crime Len Warren (Keith Faulkner), less experienced but perhaps more ruthless as initial success sinks in. They are assisted by Len’s brother Alec (W. Morgan Sheppard) as they wait patiently outside a bank, Eastern Counties Bank at the corner of St. Margaret's Road and The Barons in St. Margaret's, (right next to Twickenham Studios, thanks Reelstreets.com!) which Griff has been casing for many months. He knows their routines perfectly and, on this Bank Holiday Saturday knows they will finish early and be empty until Tuesday… it’s going to be the perfect crime.

 

Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn

Inside the bank the rather stuffy Mr Spencer (World War II veteran and man of many parts Colin Gordon looking, if anything, younger than his 51 years) keeps on working and has asked his secretary Rose (Ann Lynn, then married to Anthony Newley, Sammy Lee himself, and star of so many kitchen sink neo-classics including the excellent Four in the Morning (1965)) to work late. This confuses the watching gang as they know two remain inside and time is against them. The plan must proceed and they break in and take Mr Spencer and Rose captive, taking them downstairs to the bank’s strongroom and forcing them to open it.

 

Once again luck is against them as two cleaners make an unscheduled visit to the bank – some great chit-chat between Hilda Fenemore and Diana Chesney – as they sweep away oblivious. Downstairs there’s consternation though and in their panic the lads decide to lock up Spencer and Rose in the strongroom, tied up for good measure. They sneak out avoiding the cleaners and begin their getaway… the mood shifting from relief and elation at what would seem to be a successful heist but then Griff begins to fret.

 

Derren Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner

It is here that the quality of Richard Harris and co-writer Max Marquis’ script comes through as Griff, Len and Alec quickly work out the implications of what has just happened. Alec, the elder brother can see more clearly what Griff is driving at when he realises that the two in the strongroom won’t be found until Tuesday and, having run out of oxygen in the airtight vault, will leave the boys as murderers destined for the gallows (the last hangings were in 1964). They agree that Alec will drive far away from the scene, leave the keys to the vault in a phone box and tell the police where it is, leaving Griff and Len enough time to go to ground with the loot.

 

That should be that but Alec doesn’t make it and the boys are shocked when two policemen arrive to inform Len that he has been killed and they need him to identify the body at the mortuary. Griff styles it out but Len is not only heartbroken but starting to panic and blame the bank workers for his loss. The story is now all about the push and pull between these two characters as they weigh up their options whilst Rose and Spencer try to figure out a way out for themselves having calculated that they only have a finite amount of air left…

 

It's a tense watch and well played by the four with twists and turns still to come: will their conscience outweigh their greed and will they make up their minds in time? It’s a near perfect ride with enough discomfort and delay to keep you on the edge of your seat.

 

Strongroom is screening at the BFI this month and also elsewhere and I strongly recommend you see it in cinema if you can. There are screening details on the BFI website here.

If not, it is also coming on BFI Blu-ray on 23^rd February and you can buy it in the BFI’s Southbank shop or from the usual online suspects. This too is recommended – obviously – as it comes with the top of the range extras you’d expect but especially another tense Vernon Sewell Brit B-movie, this time for Anglo-Amalgamated, The Man in the Back Seat (1961) which not only has a similar Crime and Punishment guilt-trip but also features the same actors as partners in crime: Derren Nesbitt (Tony) and Keith Faulkner (Frank). They rob a dog track manager of his takings but, as he’s attached by handcuff to the locked bag, they have to knock him out and take him with them.

 

Things are further complicated by Frank’s wife Jean, played by the 18-years old Battersea Bardot, Carol White, who wants her man to walk the straight and narrow and is deeply distrustful of his mate Tony. As with Strongroom, a lot of the action is in the form of ongoing debate between the men in the car as they drive around trying to think of the safest way to off-load their seriously injured passenger: if he dies their crime will have been much worse and might possibly get them killed.

 

Nesbitt and Faulkner are excellent and the former especially has something of Oliver Reed’s unusual and unsettling screen presence. It’s worth the price of admission alone but there are many other reason to buy this set:

 

Strongroom (1962) newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition

Newly recorded audio commentaries by film historians Dr Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt

The Man in the Back Seat (1961, 57 mins): featuring many of Strongroom’s cast and crew – see above!

John Trumper BEHP interview (1992, 158 mins, audio): the Strongroom editor discusses his career

Footpads (1896, 1 min): one of the earliest British crime films

A Test for Love (Vernon Sewell, 1937, 27 mins): a public information film on the perils of STDs

The Awakening Hour (Donovan Winter, 1957, 21 mins): a robbery goes wrong as morning breaks in London

After Dark (Mike Dodds, 1979, 14 mins): a road safety film edited by John Trumper

 

The First pressing only includes a fully illustrated booklet with new essays by James Bell, Barry Forshaw and Tony Dykes, along with notes on the special features and credits.

 

*Duncan Petrie (2017): Bryanston Films: An Experiment in Cooperative Independent Film Production and Distribution, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 

DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2017.1285150