Rare Mary… Heart o' the Hills (1919), Kennington Bioscope with Colin Sell

I remember [Pickford] telling me that she couldn't bear the way [D. W. Griffith] directed adolescent girls. She said, "Oh, he directed them so they ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. And I would not do that sort of thing..." She already saw that naturalism was terribly important, even more than Griffith did. 

Kevin Brownlow

 

For the first time since the Pandemic, it was time to play Six Degrees of Kevin Brownlow and, as usual, the answer was two; Kevin had met and interviewed Mary Pickford on a number of occasions. This direct relationship with the “source material”, one of the major players, one of the three of four, who really made the cinema of Hollywood in the 1910s, predating even Kennington’s own Charlie and her husband Doug, even outshining her director on so many occasions, David Wark, distancing herself in a way Lillian didn’t as she set up her own production company in 1918 and took charge of her intellectual property as well as her career.

 

Kevin’s introduction focused on fellow film collector Bert Langdon and his own meetings with Heart o' the Hills’ cinematographer, Londoner Charles Rosher, who shot all of Pickford’s films from 1918 to 1927, became the first cameraman to win an Oscar for Sunrise and grabbed a second for The Yearling (1946). Kevin’s friend was able to screen his original 35m nitrate original not just of this film but also My Best Girl (1927) neither of which Rosher had seen in years.

 

Heart o' the Hills impressed Kevin in terms of its technique but also Pickford’s range; “characters no sooner look at each other, than they exchange blows…” The hillbilly dance is “a classic sequence” featuring the ethnic authenticity director Sidney Franklin was looking for. Kevin also singled out art director Max Parker for his creation of the backwoods locations and living spaces; as he says, there was nothing “cutsie” or sentimental about this endeavour and the producer herself also has to take great credit for that… Kevin concluded by saying: If anyone needs to be converted to Pickford, this picture should do the trick!

 

Pickford's character shows her scars from maternal beatings...

I suspect Kevin was preaching to the already converted but this is indeed a wonderfully spirited film and one that treats its audience with respect, another key element of Pickford’s approach. After all, she was a working-class women just like most of her audience, her agenda was to deliver the kind of stories they understood and morality they would agree with in a tough environment they would recognise. We don’t talk enough about silent film stars and class, except to note that they “escaped”, but I don’t think Mary, or Charlie and many others, pulled the ladder up.

 

Here Mary is Mavis, who’s father was shot in the back when she was young and whose mother Martha (Claire McDowell) has been worn down over time, fighting to keep going in their ram shackled homestead. Her best pal is young Jason Honeycutt (Harold Goodwin) who takes her out on fishing trips – some worms were sadly harmed in the making of this film – and other larks.

 

Jason’s father Steve (Sam De Grasse) is the opposite of fun and, as we quickly learn, many other things including honesty, fairness and virtue. He’s hard on his boy and Mavis while targeting Martha, her hand and, her land which, as Mavis shows Jason, is rich in coal, surprising for such an elevated location but there you go.

Hootenanny show-down! John Gilbert on the left.

Money comes to town in the form of “forrigns” Colonel Pendleton (W.H. Bainbridge) and his entourage including son Gray (a surprise appearance by young John Gilbert, just 22 here and on the brink of stardom) and his intended Marjorie Lee (Betty Bouton). Also with them is the scheming Morton Sanders (Henry Hebert) who is plotting with Steve Honeycutt to grab Martha’s land and swindle as much of the community as possible.

 

There’s a great confrontation between the two at the local hop, where Gray, who has caught the eye of Mavis and vice-versa, joins the dance only for Jason to try and out-manoeuvre him in a kind of strictly-come-country dance-off. In the end Mavis joins in and a proper scrap is narrowly averted.

Soon though she has worse to come as Steve pushes Martha to marry him and orders her to leave home. She takes her issue to the locals, led by her wise Granpap Jason Hawn (Fred Huntley) and they decide that dressing up in white hoods and costumes to confront the land-grabbers is the way to resolve this. 

Don't mess with Mary...

Now I’m not sure why it is that certain Americans like wearing their sheets in this way but I’m also not convinced it’s a Ku Klux Klan moment – although it might well be. It ends badly though as someone shoots Sanders and, of course, given motive, opportunity and her outspokenness, Mavis is soon standing trial accused of his murder.

 

As Kevin Brownlow points out, this film doesn’t pull its punches and the stakes are high. Mavis’ character also stays true to herself and the resolution is worth the wait. It’s an entertaining film with that mix of humour and grit our great grand parents knew and loved to see on screen. Pickford is mighty as you’d expect and Rosher packs as many glorious head shots in as possible as we watch her unconscious naturalism lead the emotional charge!

 

We were watching a 35mm print made from an original copy at the Mary Pickford Foundation and it was full of rich textures and stunning depth of field. This is one of the real pleasures of the Bioscope, the connection between the audience, the celluloid and the general ambience of this unique venue. The atmospherics are also heavily informed by the subtlety of the accompanist and in this case it was Colin Sell who not only as Kevin predicted, showed his powers of controlled syncopation for the dancing sequence but also played along so sympathetically with Pickford and the rest of the players.

 

The British version of the sheet music

We were also treated to a wonderful performance of the song released to accompany the film from Colin and the Bioscope’s MC Michelle Facey. On BBC programmes you sometimes witness “experimental” archaeologists attempting to recreate certain processes to illustrate and find out more about the techniques and the “taste” of the period. The Bioscope is a working example of this experimentalism and Facey and Sell recreated another key element of the spirit of this film and the emotional reaction this song would have brought. Glenn Mitchell had a copy of both the US and UK version of the sheet music and naturally we went with the British copy. Loveliness ensued… and the film was set up!

 

Early Mary…

 

White Roses (1910) directed by Frank Powell was screened first on a 16mm from Chris Bird’s collection and, whilst its plot was a little outlandish, it was all good fun with Mary’s character Betty for some reason in love with a very shy man called Harry (Edward Dillon). Harry hasn’t the courage to ask her directly so her arranges to send three colours of flowers to her and a note saying that she should wear red for yes and white for no… Sounds simple but he gives the task to a young lad (Jack Pickfor, who’s other sister, Lottie is also involved), who promptly gets robbed of note and flowers.

 

A well meaning man steps into help and buys replacements but there’s no note and so Betty wears white forcing Harry to propose to his cook in retaliation… That’s not the end of things but you really have to watch this to believe it! John Sweeney accompanied and suspended all our disbelief in the process.

Mary and Elmer wait for the law...

The Narrow Road (1912) directed by D. W. Griffith on rare and possibly singular* 16mm print made from a nitrate original by legendary collector John Cunningham, now from Chris Bird’s collection, the film is only otherwise preserved in the Library of Congress paper-print collection as a paper copy of the celluloid made for copyright purposes. It was another of the unique Bioscope occasions, watching Mary married to ex-convict played by the great Elmer Booth, who is torn between going straight at a wood merchants and his loyalty to fellow con and recidivist forger, Charles Hill Mailes.

 

Ashley Valentine accompanied with lovely lines and in tune with this short but powerful tale. As Michelle said in her introduction, some say DW was at his best for these Biograph shorts and on the evidence of this and others, I’d have to agree but part of that is down to the contribution of players like Pickford who would eventually fall out with him and others, such as Booth who would die tragically early in a car, driven by an inebriated Tod Browning.

 

 

 *According to Movies Silently, the film is featured on the Image Entertainment, Origins of Film DVD set, now deleted. This may come from another source although it doesn't - as featured above - look like anything like as clear as what we saw.

 

Good Day… Sunrise (1927), with Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey, National Centre for Early Music, York, Yorkshire Silent Festival

I have waited so long to see this film screened and with live accompaniment. Normally the film is shown with its score from the early talkie period - Sunrise being one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical and sound effects soundtrack - but as it is one of the toppermost films of the silent canon, I just had to see it done proper… and I couldn’t have chosen a lovelier venue or a better accompanist.

Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey gets more sonic variation from her harp than you’d expect; not only does she use the frame for percussion (fingers tapping to create the skin-crawling sound of scampering rats for Nosferatu…), she hits groups of strings with her palm to generate atonal power chords, picks off the harmonic sweet spots with alacrity – hard enough on a six-string – and genuinely creates a singular cinematic language from bliss to bedlam. She can even vary the tension on the strings using the foot pedal to create a kind of metallic sound: I have seen the future of accompaniment and it could be 47 string grunge!!

Margaret Livingston

She was on super form with Sunrise, and as with most of us, Janet Gaynor’s toupee aside, feels it is deservedly in high regard. She mixed improvisations with some lovely pre-scoring – honestly, if you don’t feel the fear when big George looms over tiny Janet in the boot, or, darn it, cry a tear, when the two finally re-connect, then you’re probably in the phantom zone. But Baldry doesn’t over-play the positive emotion in the film and the surprise, if you haven’t seen harp accompaniment before, is just how dark it can go.

Murnau’s film is a fable and as such has various elements of traditional Teutonic fairy stories, Grimm though they be. Yes, George O’Brien’s Man falls all too readily under the spell of the Woman form the City (Margaret Livingstone) but she has put a spell on him; a female version of Nosferatu whose silken stockings and knock-out undergarments, make him incapable of reason.

He agrees to kill his sweet wife because he is under the control of this jazz-age succubus, his assignations are even in the swamps, hardly the kind of place to charm a regular flapper: there is demonic power at play and Janet Gaynor’s Wife knows just by the dark shadow cast by her huge husband that all sense of himself has left.

George O'Brien towers over Janet Gaynor

After he pulls back, he repeatedly says “don’t be frightened of me” … a mantra with little persuasion given his actions and it’s only when the couple are thrown together by the alien world of the city that they begin to discover each other again. They go to a hair salon where George gets a shave and Janet hold on to her wig for dear life. When glamourous Jane Winton (a small but key role) arrives to offer the strapping lad a manicure – way to “un-sex” him now – he looks down in horror and declines and it’s another sign that he’s coming to his senses.

The two head to a nightclub after George rescues and escaped piglet (long story) and the band plays a peasant tune allowing the tow to show the townies what real dancing is: it’s a romantic display between two lovers and the jaded jazzers step back in respect. Oddly, one man keeps on replacing the shoulder straps of a slinky lady next to him, almost as if the couple’s dance has raised the bar of morality…

The couple walk through Murnau’s carefully choreographed streets as traffic passes them by and they even end up in an imagined field of blossoms. They are making their own reality.

The City sleeps as they walk

 When they get their photographs taken, it is not in a formal pose but in a clinch the photographer is delighted to capture. He seen enough posturing and recognises unconditional expression when he sees it.

All the other drama is there to enable this sunrise of a new devotion and naturally Murnau creates a universe of unreal perspectives – part set/part camera angles – architecture from a Europe left behind and a city of dreams and impossible structure – models in the foreground and at the back to create impossible depths and the impression of an endless city in constant flow. Amongst this emerge two humans in song, once more in perfect accord despite his mad moments of doubt.

It's interesting to compare with Murnau’s later City Girl which also features a young couple under pressure only they are very much in the real world of economics and more everyday wrong-doings. Sunrise has maybe more in common with the same director’s Faust?

George passes the Jane Winton test...

Technically it is a, frequently astonishing, film with those forced perspectives – gauze was used in the windows of some city scenes in order to reveal the extraordinary elaboration beyond. The two cinematographers, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, maximise the anxious angularities and there are countless dolly shots as they cut through scenes placing the viewer deep within the heart of the interior stories of lives defined by locations: from the secret meeting with the seductress in the swamps to city streets melting away to reveal those blossoms.

In truth there's so much to discuss about the film, even weighed down by the expectations of its enduring reputation, this is a film with very high levels of content from all parties. I even watched it again just to grab these few images... result hundreds of screen shots that are all mini-marvels in their own right.

The peasant dance is completely free of city formalities - just pure passion

The storm at the end is pathetic fallacy in excelsis completing the lover’s journey with the final test of fate and faith. Elizabeth-Jane’s harp flowed alongside the conflagration and in contrapuntal opposition to thunder-cracks and flash. In her hands the harp is so flexible, fragile and fierce; the perfect instrument for Murnau’s timeless fantasy.

While George and Janet perform so well we shouldn’t overlook the playing of Margaret Livingston who gets her clutches into the country boy but is surely driven by something more than malice; Murnau always had a soft spot for his vampires.

The National Centre for Early Music is situated adjacent to the 11th century St Margaret's Church,  which today was illuminated by the almost unnatural sunlight of a York spring day; sun streaming through the churchyard trees across hundreds of bluebells still in full bloom. A splendid place and one serving York Minster Ale… the scene was well set.

Sunrise is available on Blu-ray and DVD combo from Eureka, but I’d gladly swap all of that for this experience of FWM and E-JB in the EMC at YSFF18.

Full details of the excellent programme for this year is available on the Festival's website. 

No, er, not the hair... it's erm, a very special cut...

When Buddy met Mary … My Best Girl (1927)

This was Mary Pickford’s last silent film and was produced at the technical high point of the form with Sam Taylor directing and Charles Rosher’s camera generating those smooth “european trick shots” Hollywood had come to love. Like all films of the late period, they feel more modern than they should do given our exposure to the dulled ice age of early talkies which left events stuck in studio, actors huddled around immobile microphones… But here, the camera swoops, travels on speeding motorcars and, most importantly, shows us two people falling in love.

Whether or not the two stars began their relationship with this film is open to debate and it would be a full ten years before they tied the knot to begin their 42-year marriage, but it feels like it.

The future Mrs and Mr Pickford...

Now, for the sums… Mary Pickford was 35 – just a little older than Zooey Dechannel and a little younger than Amy Adams – and still able to carry off the shop girl ingénue. Charles “Buddy” Rogers was just 22… considerably younger than Mary’s hubby Douglas Fairbanks who was 44 at the time.

Regardless of the events off-set, the film stands as one of Pickford’s best and most enduring: a thousand rom-coms have followed in its footsteps including those still featuring Zooey and Amy.

Pots and pans

Pickford produced and it’s hard not to imagine that she also co-directed parts of the film. Our first glimpse of her is of her feet as she attempts to carry too numerous a collection of pots and pans in the department store in which she works. As one pan is picked up another falls to the floor until she has to resort to sticking her feet in them to lift them along – it’s inventively daft and shows us all we need to know about the brave and gutsy shop girl, Maggie Johnson.

Maggie works in Merril’s Department Store – I have a penchant for films set in 1920s department stores: think of Clara Bow in It! or Brent and Brooks in Love ‘em and Leave ‘em… places where society mixes almost on a level and where there’s always the possibility of unexpected dalliances across the class divide.

Are you being served?

A young man sidles up to Maggie’s counter and starts to ask her flirty questions about the various items for sale… turns out he’s the new guy 'Joe' Grant (Rogers) who eventually gets assigned to Maggie for ad hoc induction to the world of the store.

The two get on well and soon share their lunchtimes sitting cosy in a packing crate in the staff room. It is here where we see Mary’s first prolonged screen kiss: a side-on affair that conveys much delicate passion.

Maggie invites Joe home, where he gets to meet the family: Pa Johnson (Lucien Littlefield) a man disorientated by the curious position in which life has left him, not least of which is his easily-shocked and narcoleptic wife (Sunshine Hart) whom he frequently has to rouse with smelling salts.

Then there’s sister Liz (Carmelita Geraghty) a jazz baby hanging around with decidedly-dodgy men and, as a result, in constant conflict with her parents.

Sunshine Hart, Carmelita Geraghty, Mary, Pat Harmon and Lucien Littlefield

Maggie is ashamed of their bad humour and pretends that they are rehearsing for a play, leaving Joe waiting on their porch for their first date.

But she’s not the only one hiding something… “Joe” is actually Joseph, the son and heir to the Merrill fortune who has been assigned to the shop by his father Robert (Hobart Bosworth) in order to learn the business without his name giving him advantage.

His mother Esther (Evelyn Hall) also has ambitions and wants to see him married off to the winsome and wealthy Millicent Rogers (Avonne Taylor). Joe doesn’t appear to have any strong feelings about this social arrangement, at least not yet at any rate.

Buddy Rogers

Joe does well at the store and is soon being promoted but he’s also getting closer and closer to Maggie. To two spend a blissful journey in the back of a truck after walking through traffic as if it wasn’t there: totally absorbed in each other’s presence. This section reminded me strongly of the closing sequence of Sunrise (made some months earlier…) with the couple walking through the staged street traffic…

Joe and Maggie go on a rain-sodden date as he ignores his parent’s request to dine with them – they are planning to announce his engagement. He persuades Maggie to venture to the Merrill’s house to see if the family’s oft-pronounced equal treatment would extend to their being offered dinner.

Winking his way past the doorman and butlers he gets them to lay on a meal whilst Maggie looks around in nervous amazement: even more delighted by her dazzling young man than before. But, they are rudely interrupted by Joe’s parents as they arrive back home with the decorative Millicent in tow… the game’s up!

Meanwhile, Liz’ fella has really dropped her in it and they are being processed before the night court. Unable to contact the brains of the family, the Johnson’s are helpless to prevent their younger daughter from being locked up.

As luck would have it, Maggie, having tearfully made her excuses and left, encounters Ma and Pa downtown as they enter the court: she goes into battle for her sister in front of a Judge played by Mack Swain.

But Joe isn’t done yet and goes out in search of his “best girl” – he’s not going to be swayed. A helpful hobo spots events and directs him to the court where he is in time to see Maggie’s eloquent defence and to end up in clink after thumping Liz’s no good boyfriend.

Maggie brings order to the court

It makes the papers and there’s a big stink but, will class barriers be broken and will true love run smooth… We been here before my friends and I have no intention of revealing what happens.
 
My Best Girl is a lovely film and one to file under heart-warming. Rogers is good in the same way he was in Wings: wholehearted and sincere… my teenage daughter recognised those regular features instantly!

But he’s not the one you watch. It’s Mary’s show and she demonstrates an undimmed intensity with a face and a voice that can almost be heard… so close is she to the talkies. She performs particularly well in the ending section I’m not mentioning and there was hardly a dry eye in our living room: how can she do that when we can almost see it coming!? Amazing skill: a wizard and a true star!

The look of love...

I watched the Milestone DVD which comes with some precious home movie footage showing Mary and Buddy’s wedding and their honeymoon – a nice touch. Whatever the ups and downs of the decades to follow this was one of those Hollywood marriages built to last. It may have started here in front of our very eyes.

My Best Girl is available direct for institutional use from Milestone or from Amazon’s second hand sellers – seems it’s out of print and becoming collectable. Hopefully the good folks at Milestone have a Blu-ray in the works, this is indeed amongst the very best of Pickford.

Trivia: Carole Lombard has an uncredited appearance as a Flirty Salesgirl whilst Charles Rosher deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography. He shot so many of Pickford’s films not to mention his other projects with Herr Murnau.

Carole Lombard and Buddy