When night sets on the big city
And lights and make-up and laughter mingle
Then, from streams and deceptive pomp emerge
The shadows of the metropolis, the shadows of the night…
Have to say that the “F” in FOMO reached a peak this year
for the Bonn Silent Film Festival as I not only “MO” on a two-part screening of
the magnificent SFI restoration of Gösta Berling Saga (1924) but also a
rare screening of L’Inferno (1911) as well as many goodies including
this stylish Weimar thriller with accompaniment from the many hands of Stephen
Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry… if only I’d been there. I say it every year
and there will be no stopping me in 2027!
A man dies in the agony of a heart attack, grabbing the
dark-stylish hair of a would-be younger conquest, falling down with frozen grip
as her silent scream is given startling verbal reality by our harpist (probably
not pianist…). It is but one moment in a two-hour tour-de-force accompaniment
from Elizabeth and Stephen which sees them intertwining phrases and melding
tonality of strings plucked or hammered with hand or keys. I can’t imagine how
it feels standing on the precipice of even a practiced and prepared for
cinematic trio: piano, flute and accordion interplaying with harp, percussion
and voice, all relating to the action on screen.
But Stephen and Elizabeth Jane are pitch-perfect musical
adventurers, sure of each other’s contribution just as they are of their
ability to match the momentary moods and themes of the film unfolding in front
of them. A fourth element is always the audience and, whilst I played my part
in our living room, it’s the immediate ambience that provides a call and
response as compelling as the narrative. In the live stream from the festival,
you can feel this almost tangible atmosphere. You are, very quickly caught up
in the mix and the focus on film which is the ultimate magic of live cinema…
contrapuntally rubbing circles on our stomachs and patting ourselves on the
head, two things are true at the same time even moving in different time, space
and direction.
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| Ellen Richter |
It's all about the hair though. Ellen Richter was a
one-woman industry by this time in Germany with her own production company, Ellen
Richter-Filmgesellschaft, managed with her husband Willi Wolff, who directs her
in this film as most of her others. Ellen was once described as a forgotten
star but is now resurgent with recent screenings at key festivals including Moral
(1928) and others at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 40th Edition. She’s
a German diva with sharp features, eye-drawing presence and jet-black hair that
is often pulled back to allow the focus on eyes as deep as the Danube of her
native Vienna and which beguile as they inform. And clothes, she wears these
with the grace of a Borelli or Bertini exuding a Germanic athleticism which saw
her feature in many action adventures.
Her physicality is on display here as she goes in search
of her husband’s killer into the dark underbelly of Paris but first she must
play her part in the demimonde of the wealthy as Olly, the wife of a
just-promoted prefect, Henry Bernard (Alfred Gerasch). The film’s opening
already gives us a hint of the degradations to come as a well-dressed man is
propositioned in the street after the theatre and a young woman, presumably
poisoned by the skin game throws herself in the Seine in the establishing shots
bookended by portentous poetry.
No wonder! Making a career with a wife like that…
Horrid Henry: Alfred Gerasch
We then join the couple at the lavish party they’re
giving to celebrate Henry’s elevation and it soon becomes apparent that a price
is being paid for his career and by Olly. The inference is clear, she has been
abused for her sex as much as the desperate women of the streets and, as leering
men of influence pass inappropriate comments we see her being approached by her
husband’s benefactor, the government minister (Philipp Manning). One man, a
journalist Felix Granier (Walter Janssen) complains about the language and
assumption that an attractive wife is a professional asset… and we soon learn
that he is Olly’s lover, her refuge from her brutal husband and the deals he
makes using her body as collateral.
But enough is enough and when the minister makes his way
to Olly’s boudoir to collect his reward she cannot go through with it and, as
the shadows of the musicians and the dancers at the party play against the
curtained windows the old man has a heart attack and promptly dies. Henry tries
to cover up the location of the death and sends the dead man away in a cab pretending
he’s dead drunk… It’s not a particularly clever ploy and the police soon come
knocking only to find the new prefect dead with a pair of scissors deep in his
back. Olly enters the room and seems shocked but these guys know a good actress
when they see one.
The story moves on in swiftly in detailed ways and the
trial of Olly follows in a magnificent studio set - designed by the art
directors Otto Erdmann and Hans Sohnle – which emphasises the pomp and process
with Olly isolated on the stand, distant from her judges and jury with a circle
of lights illuminating the search for the truth among the murky testimonies
below. By this stage Olly is almost defeated and reluctant to tell a story that
no one will believe over and again but gradually her situation is revealed and
she shows the scars of her husband’s beatings. She is acquitted due to lack of
anything other than circumstantial evidence but this is not enough to stop the
media portraying her as a murderer who got away with it.
The most hurtful of this group is Felix who hasn’t the
stomach to see through the whole trial and still won’t see her as she begs his
mother (Frida Richard) to understand that she is innocent. In the face of this
intransigence and the police’s indifference, she resolves to find the murder
herself. She gets her first clues on returning home to find that a rough
looking gentleman of the streets, Emil, aka Egghead (Robert Garrison) had wanted
to see her urgently. We encounter Emil at her court case where he was so worked
up by Olly’s evidence that he shouted out support and a caricature is printed
in the paper below the acquitted.
Emil knows something but has been forcefully removed by a
man who we later discover is Boxer Karl, but Olly’s maid gives her enough
detail for her to head off to spend long weeks searching for the man who can
save her reputation and identify the true killer of her tormenter.
The third act involves her perilous journey through
darkened streets at risk from criminal and cop alike until she finally finds
out Emil’s name and likely location at the Black Stork. This is the deepest
dive-bar you can imagine; two women waltz with a cat as a violin and accordion
play on and Boxer Karl’s gang look on… there’s Egghead, Elegant Hugo and
Cocaine Max (who later went into advertising I believe). And it has to be said
that Harald Paulsen performs a mini masterpiece as the relentlessly cruel
boxer, never giving an inch and driving the narrative uncertainty with
convincing menace, flashing fists and a sharp blade.
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| Olly in the Underworld |
Will Olly manage to outwit both the forces of the legal
and criminal enterprise… it’s another job for Richter the adventurer and allows
Richter the clothes horse, plenty of scope as she pulls the audience with her
to the end.
If crime dramas primarily pursue the purpose of
keeping the viewer in exciting suspense and astounding him with a witty and
unexpected ending, the film corresponds to this intention throughout.
The Grazer Tagblatt
The film was another successful one for Richter and Woolf
with the latter showing plenty of Weimar style and featuring some expressionist
scenes (even though there’s nary a mention in Lotte Eisner’s Haunted Screen)
with oppressive staircases, guilty apparitions in court and her bedroom
curtains and a demimonde of the darkest hue. I like the use of eggagerated
flashback to show how the prosecution frame the murder and the different takes
– a technique we’d take for granted now, especially after Columbo and Murder
She Wrote!
Richter’s success continued into sound but being Jewish,
she was banned from acting after the election of the Nazi government in 1933.
She and Woolf moved to Vienna and then ended up in New York after the
annexation of Austria in March 1938. They returned to Germany after the war and
although she started another production company although her husband died in
1947 (according to Wikipedia) there’s no evidence I can find that she resumed
her career either side of the camera, living mostly in Dusseldorf until her
death in 1969, aged 78. Still, we have this film and other precious examples of
her glittering career and can understand how and why she was so successful
during the good times.
Which is where I came in and Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane,
helping to reanimate her star power in front of our very eyes.
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| Harald Paulsen is Boxer Karl |
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| No animals were harmed in the making of this film |
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| Cocaine Max |
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| Hair death grip |
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| Feathers! |
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