A monster tragedy? Earth Spirit (1923), Stephen Horne and Pamela Hutchinson, BFI Asta Nielsen Season

Frank Wedekind’s play has multiple connections in silent film not least of which is Louise Brooks’ genuinely iconic performance in GW Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929) but before the 22-year old American became synonymous with the character of Lulu a 41-year old Dane acted herself quite differently into the role. The play had initially been written in 1894 as a single piece in five acts and subtitled A Monster Tragedy but Wedekind subsequently divided it into two plays: Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box first performed in 1904. Before Pabst re-joined the two for his film, Leopold Jessner made his version of the first part with Asta Nielsen and it’s fascinating to see the differences in approach and style.

 

It’s hardly fair but modern silent film viewers cannot start off watching Die Asta’s Lulu without thinking of Brooks but that quickly vanishes as you see how forcefully Nielsen goes about the role. Even before Brooks, for me there was Joanne Whalley in Ian MacDiarmid’s production of the play at the Donmar Warehouse in 1991, no bob, that was left to Belinda Lang as Countess Geschwitz, a sign of trying to escape Brooks’ iconicism in order to get to the root of this complex and controversial character: is Wedekind proto-feminist or does Lulu represent the “sins” of free sexuality? Maybe, yes… but more and it’s also about Lola Montez… about whom the internet virtually teems with rumour and suggestion.

Carl Ebert and Asta

 

It's not only modern audiences… Brooks herself had, of course, an opinion about Earth Spirit according to season programmer Pamela Hutchinson, who quotes the actress from Lulu in Hollywood, complaining about the earlier film’s ducking the lesbian aspects of the play and Nielsen’s lack of dance skill. Brooks also said that there we two types of actors, one’s like her who essentially played themselves and others, like Nielsen, who played their parts. Even looking at the Asta of Afgrunden you wouldn’t see her as a natural “Earth spirit”, a Lulu or untamed passions and yet… there she is. Asta is, literally, different in every film I’ve seen in this season and here is no different.

 

Asta’s Lulu is outrageous, more knowing and yet just as ruinously impetuous as Brooks’ version, she’s faithless and fancy free, carnal and reckless but… no one ever says no do they “Men”? Just as there are so many ways to read the play, there are so many ways to read Asta playing Lulu. As is becoming thrillingly clear from this season, the Dane never seemed to have played the same part twice and here again is another unique creation as she inhabits a character of her own making no matter, I’m sure, of the expert prompting from director Leopold Jessner.

 

As season curator, Pamela Hutchinson said in her introduction, Jessner was a noted theatre director and one of a number of heavy hitters from the stage involved in this production, script writer Carl Meyer, producer Richard Oswald et al, both a reflection of the seriousness with which the play was regarded and also the prestige of the star performer, who’s years of theatrical under-achievement were long behind her now, not only the premier screen star in Europe but also arguably the finest actor despite new challengers from Sweden, Germany and France.

A love-hate relationship? Asta and Albert Bassermann

Lulu has been having a long time dalliance with Dr Schoen (classically trained actor and former chemist, Albert Bassermann) who has married her off to the older Dr Goll (Gustav Rickelt) knowing she’ll run rings around him and be available when required. However, he reckons without Lulu’s endlessly playful nature and Schwarz (Carl Ebert), the handsome painter employed to portray her in sexy Pierrot costume, is soon seduced the minute Schoen takes his friend off to a cabaret.

 

Lulu is wild, tearing down the carefully arranged fabrics designed to filter the light in the huge high-ceilinged studio and wrapping around herself and her lover, who needs dance training when you can destroy the scenery and arouse physical passion at the same time. Sadly, Goll has come back early, perhaps suspecting intrigue and, desperately smashing down the door he finds the couple in flagrante or at least, tangled in fabrics, and after taking a swipe at the painter falls dead to the floor. Lulu’s mild irritation at this distraction speaks volumes and soon she is married to the painter.

 

The painter’s house is an expressionistic extension of his high (ceilinged) art and in time Lulu lolls around bored by his aesthetic intensity and waiting for fun. Cue her father/first benefactor, the sinister Schigolch (Alexander Granach) whom she welcomes by throwing herself prone onto opulent cushions and waving her heels in the air before pouring him two large ones which he drinks and she pours onto the carpet… not so out of control after all?

The novelty of art has worn off... Asta and Carl Ebert

Dr. Schoen remains in close attendance as does his son Alwa (Rudolf Forster) who, naturally, is drawn to Lulu like a moth to a naked candle flame… then we have the friends of Schigolch, a circus strong man Rodrigo (Heinrich George) and a poet Eulenber (Erwin Biswanger) opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum yet equally fascinated beyond their understanding.

 

All of the men see their sexuality reflected in Lulu’s dazzling energy. As with all her roles Nielsen makes you believe and there’s some daring subtext if you only look for it… Pamela told us to pay particular attention to Asta’s moth and there is a long essay on her “lip-ography” in this film right up until the sudden and quite shocking end.

 

Wedekind said that “Lulu is not a real character but the personification of primitive sexuality who inspires evil unaware. She plays a purely passive role…” How interesting then that from two different directions two women made her into something more in both the films of the twenties.

 

Stephen Horne who, as those of us who have his debut album, Silent Sirens know, has a particular rapport with the strong silent actresses and accompanied with some primal tones of his own playing piano, flute and accordion. Of these perhaps the flute caught the essential mysteries best, there’s something knowing and unknowable in Asta’s Lulu a force as well as an accident of nature.

 

So, another winner for the Dane and one that I’m looking forward to watching again. Her reputation and my appreciation grows with every screening.

 

The Nielsen season runs until 15^th March and Earth Spirit is screened again on Wednesday 9^th with accompaniment from Meg Morley, not to be missed!

 

Taxi for Mr Curtis… Cab No. 13 (1926) with Stephen Horne, Kennington Bioscope

Lili Damita worked with Michael, married Errol, helped introduce the director and star of the greatest Robin Hood film ever made. But she had real star power – she positively glows, energised like Fairbanks and could probably kick your head without any back-lift having been trained at l’Opera de Paris.  She ended up starring with Cary, Maurice, Laurence, Jimmy and Gary but quit in her early thirties to be a mother.

Not many of her Hollywood films were great, and there was always something missing when she wasn’t able to express her physicality. In this film she dresses like Peter Pan and performs an impressive – heels as high as her head – kicking can-can and these are amongst her best moments. Her first film with Michael Curtis – then Michael Kertész – was Red Heels (aka Das Spielzeug von Paris) and that has a much higher tempo and some extended dance sequences that make more of her vibrancy.

Our Lil

Here again she is also a fashion plate with impressive eye-popping dresses that show off her neatness (male “code” alert) but for much of the film she’s a humble cab-driver’s step-daughter and the action is suitably Pickfordian knockabout.

Ah, but she can’t just be a cab-driver’s daughter, can she? No, as a baby she was abandoned by her dying mother who had run from her rich husband only to die in childbirth in a poor tenement. The landlady hides a note written to her husband in a book and places the baby in a horse-drawn cab – Number 13 - where it’s owner, Jacques Carotin (Paul Biensfeldt) decides to adopt this bundle of possibilities on the grounds that he’d always dreamed of having children.

Unlucky 13 for horse-drawn cabs as motors had taken over by the Twenties and Jacques struggles

Yes, the plot is a bit like that, but enjoyable all the same – there’s more exposition in the French-titles version doing the rounds and some of the English intertitles on the 35mm print we saw are a bit brusque in comparison. That said, the quality is superb - far, far better than these screenshots - and it’s great to see Lili on the big screen and to see more than an nth-copy digital bootleg allows.

They christen the child Lilian (thereby making it so easy to learn Damita’s name in the read-throughs) and naturally she grows up to be a dancing queen, young and sweet only 18 (in this instance). She graduates as the most talented and mischevous dancer at her ballet school and there are some winning scenes as she dances the Charleston Black Bottom for her classmates and teasers her teacher.

Bored in ballet...

She has a flirty relationship with another tenant, a musician who no doubt will be very successful at some stage, called Lucien Rebout (Walter Rilla) and the pass the time playing, singing, dancing… all the free-to-do stuff. He’s a bit of a Stephen Horne, playing violin and sax… what am I saying, he only does two instruments… but, most of all he - natch – plays on Lili’s heart strings and the two make a lovely couple.

Just when things look to have hit a long stretch of speed-restricted narrative carriageway, a coincidence happens… In an antiquarian bookshop run by a con-man (Max Gülstorff) and his master forger François Tapin (Jack Trevor), the latter discovers the letter from Lilian’s father - wealthy "King of the Cafes" Henri Landon (Carl Ebert) - hidden in the book which obviously has a fair re-sale value. As for the letter, it promises much more and, touching his boss for a 20,000 Franc loan he sets off to present himself as a rich playboy in order to woo the inheritor of her rich father’s millions…

Lovely composition as Tapin forges away like some alchemist turning paper and ink into money...

Bold plan I hear you say and so it seems but Tapin exerts a strange charm on lovely Lilian and soon turns her head by showing her the finer things leaving poor Lucien all glum at her dancing school’s passing out ball. This is one of several good-looking sequences, not just the dancing but also the design from Paul Leni – yes, him – which includes a carousel covered in streamers which is mesmerising. Then there is the second-hand bookshop from which the forgers operate, it’s a cavern of ill-gotten mysteries so well-lit and shot by Gustav Ucicky and Eduard von Borsody. Top-notch mis en scene with some state of the montage thrown in for good measure.

Good-looking film and great-looking stars even if perhaps too much time is spent on Lambeth’s own Jack Trevor – who would go on to feature in a number of GW Pabst’s films including two with Brigitte Helm Abwege and The Love of Jeanne Ney. In truth his François Tapin is more likeable rogue than anything else and, well… you’ll have to see the film, suffice to say that it’s also known as The Road to Happiness.

The eyes have it...

Curtis-to-be's direction is inventive and economical and there's one scene - a confrontation - that's decided on the strength of a "look" - the eyes of one character revealeing to the other that the matter is closed, or it will be if there's any further debate... clever stuff: pure cinema!

Herr Horne accompanied with his usual panache and instrumental juggling. Sometimes you think your mind is playing tricks when the accordion strikes as you follow the action down a Parisian street only to find Stephen – who is playing piano with the other hand – also has the other instrument on his lap. He uses the accordion to create sound effects and generate atmosphere and, of course, it is also perfect for the demi-monde of 1910 cafes under the streets of Paris.

Some of that montage business...

As is traditional with the Bioscope there was also an entrée of three short films that matched the mood and subject of the main film.

Tonight, we started with Fashionable Paris (1907) showing a glimpse of life in the trendy Bois du Bologne and then had La Tour (1928) Rene Clair’s angled explorations of the tower commissioned for the fortieth anniversary of its construction. Meg Morley accompanied and showed again her ability to mix in flavours of the period – a drop of Debussy and a soupçon of Satie – with flowing lines of her own. She made for an hypnotic combination with Monsieur Clair.

Lastly, we had a real treat with Adolf Philipp’s The Midnight Girl (1919) which not only featured Meg’s piano but also Michelle Facey’s pitch-perfect vocal debut on the title song at the beginning and end of the film. A woman of many talents – programming, researching and introducing tonight’s line up as well!

Another absolute cracker in Kennington. Merci beaucoup mes amis!!

Now for some more Cab. 13...

A trade in meaning… The Merchant of Venice (1923), Barbican with Stephen Horne

There was a debate on the BBC this morning asking Is there more truth in Shakespeare than the Bible? during which it was agreed that it was vital to keep his art “alive” for “modern” audiences with fresh perspectives such as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet.

Now the same can be said for silent film – a seemingly far more “fixed” text but one that can reveal more of itself when accompanied live by a specialist accompanist such as Stephen Horne. Today Stephen was musically re-contextualizing a German film interpreting a Shakespeare play set in Venice and filmed actually in Venice.

The view from the Rialto Bridge...

One of the striking things about Shakespeare is how his very English works have spread beyond their linguistic home to Europe and beyond: it takes a playwright of immense ability to succeed beyond translation – Chekov, Ibsen, Molière all play across Europe but our Will is still in a league of his own. His plays originally drew from European history and culture and so it’s perhaps not too surprising that, for example, a Dane, Asta Nielsen, was so keen on playing Hamlet – history aside, the universality of themes and the sheer precision of Shakespearean narrative made for perfect connection in any language.

What appealed to director/producer/writer Peter Paul Felner about The Merchant of Venice? It’s a play about more than just Jewish money-lending and in the wrecked economics of Weimar Germany, the power of the “bond” to destroy lives would have been an all-too pertinent theme. There are also themes of love thwarted by class divide as well – one character lends money to impress his love who later claims that her love cannot be bought… only earned.

Henny Porten

Then there are religious divides, ones which never go away, a Jewish girl is promised to another of her religion under an arrangement made by their fathers, but she loves a Christian and has to find a way to breach her cultural containment.

It all sounds very modern and Stephen played with passion and impeccable timing to bring out the full flavour of this still potent cocktail of money, love and hate.

The film was re-christened The Jew of Mestri for its release in the US and this was the copy we watched, apparently two reels short of the full German version. The opening titles gave credit for the story to John of Florence (Giovanni Fiorentino) who wrote a similar tale two centuries before Shakespeare. The story doesn’t quite go as the William of Warwickshire later told it but that was undoubtedly the original source material for the film even though, as the introductory text has it, alterations were added to suit modern standards of “good taste”.

Werner Krauss as a Shylock shorn of sanity

Werner Krauss makes for an excellent Shylock/ Jew of Mestri, with a brand of extreme physicality that reminded me of Emil Jannings: almost exhausting to watch but a man worn down to his limits by grief, loss and a need to exact his pound of flesh. In this context, Shylock is clearly beyond his wit’s end and having lost wife and daughter to death and Christianity respectively, has nowhere to go but despair.

The film starts with his daughter Rebecca but really Jessica played by the striking Lia Eibenschütz falling in love with the Christian Lorenzo – one of the local high-powered likely lads but with a heart of gold. Shylock promises her hand to the son his friend Tubal (Albert Steinrück) but, amidst the celebrations no one notices Jessica’s desolation.

Harry Liedtke as Bassanio

Lorenzo is a friend of Bassanio (Harry Liedtke) a playboy of good humour and plenty of bad debt who relies heavily on his wealthy pal, Antonio (Carl Ebert), the merchant of Venice.

Bassanio encounters heiress Portia (Weimar superstar Henny Porten) and is quickly robbed of his wanderlust and a desire to settle down. Antonio offers to help him look wealthy so that he can match Portia’s social station and all is going well until Antonio’s ships start sinking…

Before that, there’s an tragic confrontation between the boys and Shylock’s mother (one of those “new” characters) who has a fatal heart attack after berating Antonio for his interest-free loans (that was Shylock’s concern in the play – he had to lower his rates…)

Carl Ebert is the Merchant!

There’s very bad blood between the men and so when Antonio needs to borrow money until his remaining vessels make it to port to recover his losses, Shylock takes full advantage with an interest-free loan that has one main condition in the event of a default: he must have a pound of flesh…

Only unlikely misfortune can endanger the deal and so it comes to pass as the remainder of Antonio’s fleet goes missing and all is set for the classic court room climax – Antonio will be noble, Shylock will be deranged and, of course, girls will be boys with years of legal training behind them…

No doubt the film would benefit from the exposition of those extra reels but it still works… with good performances all round and even Max Schreck as “Der Doge von Venedig” – you’d hardly know it was the Count at all.

Al fresco sewing

The cinematography of Axel Graatkjaer and Rudolph Maté is high standard and makes the most of the outstanding location: it’s hard to go wrong in Venice and it’s fun location-spotting from the market on the Rialto Bridge (still there if a little to the left) to the Bridge of Sighs, Piazza San Marco and the Doge’s Palace.

I haven’t seen the play since Dustin Hoffman came across to London in 1989 – itself a mix of film star and classic theatre - so I’m not too clear on the pure version but the film showed again how malleable the Merchant is helped enormously by next context of the music.