Betty Balfour Lost and Found, Kennington Bioscope

 

In the darkened hush of the former workhouse home of Charlie Chaplin we were watching Betty Balfour on film that so far as is known, does not exist anywhere else in the world. Think about that, in a digital landscape in which seemingly everything is available to stream (or not stream) at the whims of faceless copyright owners who seek to monetise and control IP. Things were not much different back in the Twenties but things got lost, events overtook the physical media and even the films of Britain’s Queen of Happiness were misplaced.

 

Chris Bird screened a fragment of an unidentified Betty Balfour film, 20 seconds or so, with a couple of other players who might have been familiar.  A tantalising glimpse and, maybe, there’s more out there somewhere. Then he introduced us to a film from his collection, a 9.5mm copy of her 1926 British film, Cinders which is no relation to Ella Cinders staring her American counter-part Colleen Moore. Originally in 20 reels and designed for, patient, home viewing, Chris had transferred the spools onto three larger reels – as much as he could without fear of too much stress on the celluloid from the projection process.

 

Betty's Cinders is along way from the Ball. (All images courtesy of Christopher Bird)

This 95-year-old film was projected from Chris’ 70-year-old projector* and, unsurprisingly there were one or two unexpected additional stops on the way as the past was revealed in vivid action accompanied by the fleet fingers of Colin Sell on the piano. Colin had not seen the film, few others have, but he was able to anticipate the rhythms of Balfour’s perfectly timed comedy whether she was getting trapped in revolving doors, falling down or simply turning her sparkling peepers towards the camera. She has perfect timing, a mix of Stan Laurel, the aforementioned Miss Moore and even Mary Pickford with whom she was often compared. The jewel in the crown of British silent stars and voted in the top two by readers of the Daily Mirror along with Ivor Novello.

 

As Chris pointed out, 9.5mm was only ever intended for home projection but, on the big screen here it looked fabulous – the use of a single central sprocket allows the gauge to pack more punch than it’s diameter might suggest and it was Film Club as only the Kennington Bioscope can provide with every break in the film filled by improvisational flourishes from Mr Sell and the story continuing in the determined hands of Camera-Chris! Just to add more jeopardy, Chris also provided a live translation of the French intertitles on this precious celluloid survivor.

 

The Ball is in full swing and Betty is having it...

The story centred on Betty from the get-go as the down-trodden – but unbowed! – chamber maid in a guest house who gets to assist a reasonably mad Professor Pottiefax (Fred Wright) as he looks after his beetles at the expense of all other cares. He rewards her fortitude after winning a fortune and a hotel in the south of France (always a favourite hang-out of the British film set. The professor has too a time on the dance floor and is photographed in compromising positions with some of the dancers who, for reasons best know to themselves, are wearing kilts.

 

Evil French hoteliers try to blackmail him out of his good fortune but they’ve reckoned without our Betty and also her ability to make handsome friends who will pitch in when the going gets industrial, in this case Richard Dalrey (André Roanne). It’s a slight film in some ways but this is primary evidence of the extraordinary appeal of Balfour and further explains the good humour she was so effortlessly capable of supplying on the screen!

  

The view from the projectionsist (Christopher Bird)

Daughter of the Regiment (1929) was an altogether bigger budgeted affair being a British/German co-production released in Germany as Die Regimentstochter and directed by Hans Behrendt: a Euro pudding as they used to be called. This was a 16mm print courtesy of Bob Geoghegan/Archive Film Agency and, once again, the only copy of the film left anywhere. Chris and Bob projected and Ashley Valentine accompanied this slightly more robust stock and again we were drawn in by the uniqueness of the experience and the privilege of seeing a film not in circulation, not digitised, and only in a private collection.

 

The plot was based on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 opera which explains some of the grand gestures and the joyful mood of a nimble if predictable story arc. Betty is Marie, a foundling who has become the “daughter” of a French Regiment stationed in the Pyrenees on the French Spanish border. They guard against incursions from Spanish smugglers and gangs, with Quippo the sergeant, acting as Marie’s adopted father.

 

One of the gangs breaks into their compound whilst the troop are away and Marie bravely – or as she thinks – frightens them away by firing a single shot that Quippo hears and brings his men back to then suffer his charge’s boasting about her soldierly prowess. She goes out riding in the hills and falls trying to collect wildflowers. She is rescued by a handsome young man Tonio (Alexander D’Arcy) who is reluctant to give her his name even though she clearly wants to know all about him… Maria and Tonio… this is a Southwest Side of France Story?

Directed by Hans Behrendt the film shifts in scale from these locations shots of the parched Mediterranean hinterland to the crowded traffic of Paris as the visiting Countess Brascani (Olga Limburg) notices her lost brother’s family crest on the swaddling Maria had been found in and which is now frames on her wall. There can be no doubt that she is a Brascani and has to leave her regimental family for a noble lifestyle in the north. Naturally she must marry another noble and her response when the countess shows her “the man she is going to marry” is hilarious “what, that?!”.

 

But, what about Tonio I hear you ask? Well, after reacquainting themselves as Maria rides her pony through Paris and spots him in his car, she starts to suspect that he might be a smuggler. She loves him but how can she marry such a man and, is the unattractive wealthy man the least worst option?

 

We’ve all been there, to varying degrees, and I hope you get your chance to see this film sometime. Any Betty is good Betty and despite the mixed reviews Chris read out from the British press, the Germans seem to have been far keener. We have more in common that that which divides us in Europe, especially our sense of humour!

 

Ashley Valentine competed the picture with elegant flourishes and good anticipation for this unseen film and is fast becoming a vital part of the Bioscope operation. London’s Silent Film Speakeasy** is flourishing and we’ve never needed it more!

 

At the start of the evening Chris also showed an unidentified fragment of another Betty Balfour film which one keen-eyed Bioscoper identified as Raise the Roof a 1930 UK musical directed by Walter Summers and starring Betty, Maurice Evans, and Jack Raine. But even that’s still a mystery, as Chris’ fragment doesn’t have a soundtrack: is this an unknown silent version?

 

And, this being the Biosxcope, there was even more with another collector handing Mr Bird a reel containing all that survives (not much) of George Pearson’s Satan’s Sister (1925), featuring Betty, Guy Phillips and Philip Stevens. Hopefully, this will be screened at a later show.

 

Discovery and entertainment all delivered in real time in Kennington: it’s what they do and the way that they do it!

 

And not forgetting this glorious audience! Pic from Christopher Bird

Screen shots from Cinders... courtesy of Mr Bird - unseen in a long time!

*Designed by a Czech refugee, J Danek, in the 1930s - Chris' was made in the 1950s at their factory in Windsor.

**As PH from SL famously put it!

Don't be judgy… The Hangman (1928) with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

 

This was a Weimar surprise unearthed on 35mm from the BFI’s archives by the diligence of Tony Fletcher and given its first outing in many years in front of an audience who hadn’t seen it including fearless accompanist Colin Sell! We only had Tony’s word for it but as MC Michelle Facey pointed out in her introduction, there were plenty of quality elements in this tale of crime and punishment and a story that whilst it could be predicted was still so perfectly timed that it allowed a warm glow for the audience much in need of it given prevailing weather conditions in the capital.

 

The Hangman aka Der Henker or Der Staatsanwalt klagt an in German was directed by Theodor Sparkuhl and Adolf Trotz, being the former’s only directed film although he had an incredible career as a cameraman for everyone from Lubitsch in the teens through to Hollywood and some ground-breaking film noir. He has some good ideas here and perhaps the presence of Trotz indicated that he wasn’t entirely comfortable in the role but the results are certainly very interesting.

 

It is a tale of two women or rather four with two men of honesty and rigid morality caught up in a web of bad luck and passion all of whose fate is in the hands of chance as much a judgement. It is also a tale of two very different bars, one a dive joint offering “Varieté” on tatty posters in its grimy windows plus drinks and a good time down below, the other a kind of Weimar dream bar called Spiders with webbed interior design to match and a circular serving area at the centre to which men are inevitably drawn.

Andrée Lafayette

At the heart of this particular parlour, we find the warm smile of French actress Andrée Lafayette who plays the perfect host: a beauty who welcomes her male customers and yet maintains her distance only sipping the champagne they gulp near the centre of the web. She is asked if she is happy doing this work and smiles “not really” but she’s the consummate professional doing what she needs to get by.

 

Also doing the same but in a more precarious environment is Kiki (Irm Cherry) who works as a hostess in the less salubrious venue where she must fend off the attentions of drunken middle-aged men such as the captain played by Georg John who is harmless enough especially when compared with the villain played by Fritz Kampers. She has set her sights higher though and is in love with the tall and prosperous-looking brother of Andrée’s character played by Spanish actor and former FC Barcelona player* (oh yes!) Félix de Pomés. Sorry, there are so few character names, this film is barely out there online and I’m trusting on memory: such is the thrill of the Bioscope and films that only exist on celluloid. Welcome to the future-past of physical media.

 

Now… all of these connections will be vitally important when I outline the plot and this will then revolve around the imposing presence of public prosecutor Leander played by the sharp-featured Bernhard Goetzke a man who looks like he’s walked straight off the Mount Rushmore of chiselled Weimar actors leaving Emil, Conrad and Fritz stuck to the cliff face. Leander is a stickler for the word of the law if not the spirit of justice and as the film begins we see him sending yet another guilty party to their end with the Weimar Republic having retained the death sentence after much debate; the guillotine was the favoured method.

 

The many faces of Félix de Pomés, from the Nou Camp to Hollywood!

He's not a man who can’t let his hair down though and meets Andrée’s character when dragged down to the bar by a colleague. Pretty soon he’s regularly called to the bar to find out more about this fascinating woman who retains such dignity in the face of the inebriated and weak of character.

 

Elsewhere her brother is less restrained as he finds Kitty in the arms of a customer and following the drunken man outside, there’s a scuffle and the older rival falls unconscious to the ground. Sadly, for him, he awakes to find himself being robbed by the aforementioned villain who hits him harder causing him a fatal blow on the back of the head. After the thief makes his escape the body is found and, being the decent man he is, Félix’s character believes he is responsible and confesses.

 

The circumstantial evidence is strong and this confession surely marks this as an open and shut case but, driven not only by her concern for her sibling but also her growing affection for Leander, Andrée’s character determines to try and persuade the prosecutor of the need for understanding in what seems to be a crime of passion as well as an accidental death. As things progress there is some nice interplay between the two leads and even some lighter moments courtesy of Leander’s housekeeper (Anna von Palen) who sees her role being usurped by her employer's new romantic interest. There’s also excellent support from the siblings’ mother, played by Antonie Jaeckel, who has previously been estranged for a long time from her daughter.

 

Irm Cherry wearing a hat in 1928.

The narrative flows with Sparkuhl and Trotz mixing the growing injustice, the family and romantic ties in with solid control and building up the tension as the legal rock meets the moral hard place… It’s heart-felt and heart-breaking when you look forward to the tens of thousands who were to be sentenced to death under the next regime in Germany.

 

The film features lots of pleasing late silent camera movements with clever reverse shots of the characters in the bar and tracking shots as Leander walks with his love. There is also some expressionist overlays as Leander walks dazed through the city streets contemplating what he has become in a literal tumult of conflicted emotions, the pavements and houses revolving around his intense confliction.

 

Colin Sell accompanied sight unseen and provided marvellous flourishes to adorn the twisty tale as the honesty and dogged morality of both men threatens to doom one and kill the other. We shuffled nervously in our seats as the climax approached and well… let’s hope someone else screens this film before too long! It was a hit Tony, a palpable hit!

 

Tony Fletcher also presented the first part of the evening with a look at films made at Fort Lee near New Jersey in the period before Hollywood with excerpts from the fabulous double Milestone/Kino Blu-ray Made in New Jersey: Films from Fort Lee which he had procured in Pordenone.

 

New Jersey, not Hollywood, was the real birthplace of the modern film industry. Fort Lee — just across the Hudson from the Bronx — became a key site for early film production. During the 1910s, motion pictures were a major part of suburban New Jersey community which looks much more like the old country than the dusty modernist landscapes of California. It’s a bit more built up these days and we saw a poignant documentary film showing the decaying lot in excerpts from Theodore Buff's Ghost Town (1935).

 

"Forget your land I have a nice hat..."

The Curtain Pole (1909), a short comedy directed by D.W. Griffith with an uncredited Mack Sennett as a man who search for the titular pole leads to chaos also including Florence Lawrence. The Indian Land Grab (1910), a young Indian chief goes to Washington to stop a land grab and is almost knocked off course by the daughter of the land grabber in question who is instructed to use her womanly wiles to distract him. A shock of the old certainly but the audiences were apparently more upset about the genuine romance that develops between the two than the film’s call for fairness to native Americans. Go figure

 

Talking of shocks, we also had an extract from the legendary The Vampire (1913) which featured an outrageously sexualised dance with Bert French and Alice Eis which captures the essence of Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 poem describing the dangers of women of a certain sort. The dance is watched by Harold Brentwell (Harry F. Millarde) making him consider his relationship with Sybil the Vampire (Alice Hollister) and I can’t wait to find out what happens… The poem and the story were used as the basis of Theda Bara’s A Fool There Was (1915). Women were to blame for so many things back in the day.

Bert French and Alice Eis were once arrested for performing this dance on stage...

 

John Sweeney accompanied and I had to check that his keyboard was not aflame for the above dance sequence, he plays so well anticipating the rhythms and the emotional movements in ways that really help us to connect with these archaic sensibilities, the media meets an audience who are moved to the 1910s as much as the history comes to us now. Here, actions and piano speak more eloquently than words ever could.

 

Yet another special event at the Cinema Museum and thanks to the cast and crew who enabled us to see this long-hidden film. No archive is too deep or too dusty to prevent the determined search of the Bioscope’s researchers!

 

You can order the set from Amazon.com at reasonable rates as well as from Kino in the USA. It’s worth it for The Vampire dance alone but Fort Lee remains a major part of cinematic history!

 

Andrée Lafayette also appeared in the 1923 Hollywood adaptation of Trilby the second of many Svengali features... EYE have a copy!

* Señor de Pomés played for FC Barcelona and RCD Espanyol (Barca’s reserves) in the 1910s, during the sport's amateur era and he also played for Catalonia, the national team who strangely, unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t get to compete at World Cups. He was also a skilled swordsman who featured for Spain in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics. The Hangman was one of his first feature films and he made over 70 more into the late sixties, including King of Kings (1961) and Lost Command (1966).

28 appearances and one goal for Barça!

 

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.

 

Live Cinema lives… It (1927) with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope 10th Anniversary

This was the Kennington Bioscope’s 10^th Anniversary edition and the package was so sweetly wrapped it even had a Bow on it. Cyrus Gabrysch is, he said, often accused of starting the whole thing but what he and then John Sweeney thought would be a connoisseurs-only cinema club was transformed by a brave dog fighting his way up the stairs of a lighthouse to relight the beacon. Kevin Brownlow’s copy of a Rin Tin Tin film provided the moment when the audience erupted with applause for the heroic hound and Cyrus realised something special was happening.

Michelle Facey quoted Pamela Hutchinson’s famous description of the KB as a silent speakeasy and, Cyrus felt it was also like the Left Bank cinema groups that inspired Truffaut, Godard, and Rohmer; maybe the Cinema Museum screenings will also assume an historic position as the place where silent film – film always on film – was resurgent through the Teens and the new Twenties that began not with a bang but with a fever as all cinemas we closed and the Bioscope moved fearlessly online with MC Facey becoming the face and voice of the silent resistance on KB TV.

The Bioscope has always dealt with the material issue of cinema and tonight was no different with a first half dedicated to 28mm films introduced by Chris Bird, projecting 101-111 year old celluloid on 107-year-old equipment: film as history, history as film… moving history, it moves and it flickers even the hand-cranked 28mm projector Chris demonstrated on stage to audience applause. We should all be so functional after so long in the dark.

The Pathé-Frères 28mm KOK Cine Projector and Camera

We began with a couple of Pathé films, demonstrating French ingenuity in animation, Émile Cohl, one of the fathers of animation and then Méliès style trickery with Wonderful Armour?, as a devil and two women knights defied all logic and the evidence of our own eyes, as they detached body parts with a smile. Colin Sell did well to keep his head but, with the elegant Samantha looking on in silent support, he followed the action with all the concentrated control of a man who worked with Barry Cryer for decades.

Then to the USA for Lest We Forget a Mr and Mrs Sidney Drew film, in which the flowers of romance get very tangled and, as Chris stressed, the only copy, in the World, of Episode 30 (of 119) of the Hazards of Helen a very tightly wrought drama in which Helen Holmes appeared to swing off bridges, jump on to moving trains and dive into turbulent waters to retrieve stolen goods. We wondered if she used a stunt double, and John Sweeney too, who accompanied with fast-flowing lines and cliff-hanging drama all with no visible safety net.

Follow that Clara Bow. And, of course, she did.

Clara in a business meeting with Antonio Moreno

This was a 35mm print from Photoplay – company by-line “Live Cinema” - which had the natural warmth of a pre-digital restoration and looked stunning on the big screen. I say stunning and I mean Clara Bow who, despite a cameraman buddy complaining how difficult her kineticism made her to catch on film, featured in close-up after close-up that left the watched hanging on her every smile. The discussion pre-screening with my neighbour was who would be a modern-day equivalent of Clara and we struggled to come up with anyone as naturally powerful and so exuberantly un-mannered on screen.

If ever an actress has transcended the sum of her parts and if ever a star has been completely under-estimated then that must be Clara Bow. In her career from a 17-year-old in Down to the Sea in Ships in 1922 to a wise-cracking, talkie comedienne in Hoop-la in 1932… Clara made only a few classic films, although relatively few were preserved as Michelle pointed out. She never had something like The Crowd, Pandora’s Box or The Wind, to show what she could do dramatically but, in every one of the films she did make, there is ample evidence that she was an actor of considerable ability. And this is true for It made in a period in which she made some 16 films in about a year, Paramount making as much as they could from their asset. 

 

There was indeed something about Clara, more than just acting; something genuine and heartfelt that, coupled with her looks, earned her the respect of a large part of the cinema-going audience through these years. Watching It years later, her eldest son Rex Bell Jnr, remarked that he could see all the expressions and feeling he had seen from “mom” on a daily basis: she wasn’t just acting she was giving part of herself to the watcher. When called on to cry she would call on a childhood memory of one of her friends dying in her arms after being consumed in a house fire: those huge shining eyes would well up with genuine tears of sorrow.

If It is one of the great films it is because it perfectly captures the essence of Clara. Clarence Badger directs well enough and makes the most of his star and story, you can’t take your eyes off her and this is not just the compulsion of trying to find new angles on that prettiness but because she’s radiating so much joy. She is It and she’s supposed to be. It’s a tough role when you think about it, no one ever had to live up to a billing founded on such an uncompromising premise: there’s no “it or miss” you just have to be on target with the casting. Tag, you’re it!!

Based on Elinor Glyn’s story, they paid the English writer some $50,000 to appear in one scene in order to clarify exactly what “it” meant and, needless to say, this was considerably more than the vastly underpaid main star had accumulated from her previous half dozen features.

Events are based in the large family-run Waltham’s department store where the heir to the business, Cyrus Waltham (Antonio Moreno), is about to take over following his father’s departure to spend more time with his gun. Junior’s best friend, Monty (William Austin), is reading an excerpt from “It” in Cosmopolitan and trying to interest his friend in this new conception of humanity although in his case he’s more “what?!” than “It!”. Talking of which there’s a young Gary Cooper flashing by as a journalist… Clara noticed him too.

Sweet Santa…

My second trip to Coney Island this week after The Crowd at the BFI...

Whilst Cyrus focuses on his new responsibilities, his pal scans the store looking for an assistant with “it”. His eyes alight on Clara’s character, Betty Lou, and he knows he’s found his woman but, try as he might, he cannot get Cyrus’ attention even though Betty already has him in her sights. She’s not about to let him out of her grasp though and this begins a game of It! and mouse as confusion and comedy mix with the odd dash of pathos and anything that gives Clara the chance to run through her extraordinary emotional gears.

It’s an absolute blast and Clara is well-supported by William Austin, nostrils flared like a Jazz-Age Kenneth Williams and Antonio Moreno who just about convinces as her love interest even though there’s no way he had the same amount of “it”! But who has?

Cyrus Gabrysch’s anniversary accompaniment was suitably celebratory, running wild with Clara and holding us aloft with the film’s dazzle and comic drama; that rare Wednesday evening atmosphere we’ve all come to treasure. Ten years after Cyrus and John started playing and Rin-Tin-Tin single-doggedly saved that lighthouse, so many others continue to create these magical evenings, I than you all and raise a glass to the next ten years of history being watched and being made!

Chris Bird demonstrates the kit

Cyrus Gabrysch explains the Rin Tin Tin connection

Michelle Facey introduces It.

Clara in colour, a precious glimpse of Red Hair one of many Paramount carelessly did not preserve.

The KB is a little bit like this... 

Gratuitous extra Clara...

Are you being served?

When Connie met Johnnie… The Beloved Rogue (1927), John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Michelle Facey’s well-researched introductions are a major feature of this temple of film ephemera, and she also turns a good phrase which is why I just have to steal her quip about the two main stars of tonight’s main feature. It truly was the meeting of two different cinematic cultures and Michelle showed a shot of Mr Barrymore, in costume, greeting Herr Veidt with a collection of some of Hollywood’s finest including script writer of this film, Paul Bern (the future, tragically short-lived, Mr Jean Harlow), Ernst Lubitsch and others.

 

I’d watched the Kino DVD of The Beloved Rogue some time ago but tonight we were treated to a 16mm copy that, as all the talk of the BFI’s Film on Film Festival reinforced, was a completely different experience, especially with this venue, this crowd and the wonderful improvisations of John Sweeney’s accompaniment. The source for the 16mm was different to that of the Kino version, no tints and missing the final chapter – a DVD transfer or the same generation print was used to close out the film – and, it looked and felt different, with the Bioscope’s projector whirring away at the back of the auditorium, there were new or newly-imagined details. The only true photographic memory is, of course, celluloid, a physical interaction with what has happened, light’s traces changing chemical compounds in ways digital is deluded if it imagines its impersonations are anything other than a facsimile.

 

John Barrymore’s attempt to out-Fairbanks Douglas has met with mixed reviews over the years, not least from himself (he described himself as a “ham” after the premier) and whilst his fan Orson Welles who liked the film but felt his idol was “not at his best”. But, whilst Barrymore felt he missed the mark by over-playing the colourful lead, François Villon: poet, womaniser and drinker who somehow also embodies the spirit of France, it’s not the easiest of briefs.

Jane Winton looks admiringly at John Barrymore

Based on an actual 13th century poet, The Beloved Rogue includes many florid moments invented (or over-invented) to add zest to this camp fantasy. It’s an all-too-easy target and yet… there’s an extraordinary energy around the crowd scenes in particular and Alan Crosland directs with style and free-running energy. The superb Conrad Veidt all but steals the show as a greasily ambiguous Louis XI and Marceline Day uses her clear, open expression to swoon-inducing effect as his beautiful ward Charlotte de Vauxcelles.

If there’s something about Johnnie and definitely Connie, it has to be repeated that there’s something about Marceline too, she has a very modern face and physique, and her wide eyes express something familiar and grounded. One of the great silent straight women, for Buster, for Harry Langdon, for Clara (Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party) and here for the good, the bad and the downright ugly. But that’s no way to talk about Conrad Veidt but here this most protean of silent performers seems to be inhabited by Richard III, doubled over in unctuous concern, turning his 6 feet 2 ½ inches frame into something frail and uncertain, deliberately allowing the 5 feet 10-inch Barrymore the higher ground. Veidt is morally ambiguous in effortlessly European ways and maybe John felt the pressure, just a bit…

Barrymore certainly shows a different side to his style as he throws the kitchen sink at creating a character big enough to fill William Cameron Menzies’ immense sets, rightly highlighted by Michelle as a stunning contribution to the film’s enjoyment. John certainly prepared well for the role and for a 45-year-old he’s rather ripped in the slightly odd torture scenes after he is captured by the film’s real baddie, the Duke of Burgundy. John’s in his shorts and gets beaten, flogged, dipped into flames and then winched high, before being selected as brutal entertainment for the wedding of the day…

Conrad Veidt

Set after Joan of Arc’s execution in 1431 (she came back strong after that didn’t she?) the film starts in a most un-funny way with the burning of Villon’s father at the stake… He was a patriot and fought in the name of a united France against the English and their Burgundian allies. His wife (Lucy Beaumont) prays that their son will inherit his spirit but, fully grown sadly he seems more concerned with spirits… Is this a redemptive story of fool to hero or does Villon play the fool to bide time?

Francoise’s roguish tendencies are fully developed as he gleefully steals wine to get drunk with his friends and leads the All Fools Day street celebration as the King of Fools. This section is very well realised by Crosland who generates a visceral charge by moving his camera through the celebrating hordes as snow swirls across the city. Snow in April: Paris in the Snow-time? Just what we need after a week of high temperatures.

Amongst the revellers is the striking Jane Winton as The Abbess, Mack Swain, striking in a different way, and Slim Summerville as Villon’s buddies Nicholas and Jehan as well as Angelo Rossitto (later to star in Tod Browning’s Freaks) as Beppo the Dwarf. As the party gets started Francoise is in pursuit of one of his favourite things as he evades the constabulary and comes down the rooftops to cheat an innkeeper of some wine. He heads of linking arms and skipping with Nicholas and Jehan – there’s a lot of skipping. Jigging and general dancing for joy: how else to convey energetic adventurism to scale?

William Cameron Menzies' sets are stunning

Having been crowned King of Fools, Francoise regales his rapt audience with a poem and them mounts a statue of the King just as the Duke of Burgundy arrives for an audience with his cousin. Francoise makes merry at Burgundy’s expense, knowing him as a man of ambition who wants the crown for himself. But King Louis, a “slave to the stars” has his judgement clouded by the advice of his astrologer and is loath to confront his rival. He comes out of the palace and has no option to support Burgundy against the crowd and ends up banishing Villon from Paris – “his life”.

Riding with him is his ward Charlotte who is appalled to finally see the reality of the poet she idolises: is the most inspiring wordsmith in France really an uncouth drunken fool? But things are about to get worse as she is promised in marriage to Burgundy’s lieutenant, Thibault d'Aussigny (Henry Victor), part of Burgundy’s plot to gain quick access to Paris.

In exile, Villon turns into a gallic Robin Hood as he hijacks the King’s gifts to Burgundy and climbs the walls to use the King’s catapult to fire the food and drink at the city in order to feed the poor. He ends up catapulting himself to avoid capture and crash lands, of course, into the rooms of Charlotte de Vauxcelles, what are the odds eh? This sequence features a stuntman diving against foreground scenery with the camera at a right angle; the result turned vertical into horizontal and adds further momentum to the film’s relentless pace.

Every day's a Marceline Day

The young noblewoman soon learns that this surprise invader is the Francoise Villon, a man whose words have touched her like no other but, again not pausing for breath, they are rudely interrupted by Thibault and his troops, there follows an altercation involving bears in barrels, recently deceased poultry and a heavyweight chandelier. Francoise escapes and takes Charlotte with him over the rooftops he knows so well to the safety of his mother’s house. Queue emotional reunion and the sadness of a mother deceived by her own hope: will her son ever amount to the man she wants him to be?

The route forward accelerates as the King finds it expedient to order Francoise death but the poet saves his skin by convincing Louis that their lives and death are inter-dependent: with this swift turn of phrase, he guarantees his life as courtier. Now able to influence events in the way his mother always wished, he is still a commoner which means he can never marry Charlotte, but all are soon overtaken by events as Burgundy kidnaps her and is intent on completing her marriage to his cause.

Villon and his friends, plus an army from the goodly poor of the Cour des miracles, the slum districts of Paris, as also featured in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, borrowed here in strictly un-historical manner natch. But there must be swash and there will be buckle and it’s a rip-roaring finale with the cast of thousands are moved so well among the towering sets.

The film was believed lost until Mary Pickford revealed she had one in her archive and I wonder again how would we feel about The Beloved Rogue if it were still a lost film? As ever we need to count our blessings and thank the collectors, the restorers and the historians for preserving film in all its forms.

The rug stays cut when Josephine cuts it

Talking of which, the first half of the show combined a series of contemporary trailers for silent films including Ben Hur (1925) – which I’ve still to see on the big screen – a Marie Prevost film (it does exist but only on celluloid and with Serbo-Croat intertitles, one day maybe…) and others including King Cowboy (1928) starring Tom Mix and a-lot of Josephine Baker in Siren of the Tropics (1927)… oh my, there was steam coming off the screen! The art of the trailer is a valuable sub-genre all its own, cinematic striptease perhaps, revealing just enough, not too much and it provided quite the challenge for the accompanying Colin Sell who, of course, dealt with the flurry of action, emotion and revelation, with customary flair and sang froid! Grace under pressure these pianists!

It's been a great first half year for the Bioscope and my thanks and admiration goes as usual to all those involved in making these celluloid adventures possible. See you in September for more quiche, conversations and classic, rare, film!

  

The Cinema Museum where resides the Kennington Bioscope

A 35mm film projector, yesterday at the Museum.