Lost and found… The White Heather (1919), SFFP with Stephen Horne

This is a rediscovered film and there is no more pleasant watch than seeing something that, until 2023, was considered gone for good and yet, here it is, looking wonderful with restored tints, a ghostly crispness and accompanied by Stephen Horne on top form accompanying himself. I’d previously seen it in Pordenone at Il Cinema del Cinema Muto in 2024 and now it is available for all to see streaming from the splendid National Film Preservation Fund website: a gift to the film community and one we must not only celebrate but support (donation details at the bottom).

Watching the film in luxury of this Englishman’s castle, with a single Bolonoodle dog standing in for the Duke of Shetland’s lurchers and more self-service than he’d have been used to from his various servants in his grand Scottish caisteal, I was struck by the excellence of Director Maurice Tourneur’s framing and the dynamics of shots in which his human components are moved with such interest and effect. As Dick goes in search Captain McClintock there’s the profile of an older woman against an arch and as our hero proceeds, figures walk towards him staggering…. At first I thought it was my mate Colin’s Dad getting arrested yet again on Liverpool’s Dock Road after closing time but, similar sailors, different port.

Frame that and put it on your wall.

Every scene is like a painting for Tourneur… albeit with moving parts and whilst the camera is mobile there are so many tableaux that catch the eye such as the hunting party sequences and the vivid, recreation of the Stock Market with sunlight casting beams over a frenzied floor of traders pushed to the limits, investments going up in smoke as the dealers chomp hard on the cigars of defeat.

Based on the play of the same name by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton which opened on Drury Lane in 1897, with multiple scenes and a running time of some four hours including a climactic underwater sequence in which two divers fight to the death. I would love to know more about the stage technology of the time but clearly putting on a spectacular show was key to success then as now and it ran for years on Broadway as well as in London. The reviewer in Punch 2^nd October 1897 was impressed, if sardonic (hi bro’!), remarking on the “capital dialogue (when not melodramatic)…” of the new drama at the Old Drury Theatre which combined with the “smiling villainy” of Mr Henry Neville and the musical accompaniment of Mr Glover in the orchestra, was encouraging packed houses: “nightly, a congested district”…

 

Mabel Ballin roamin' in the gloamin'...

Also praised was “… the admirable acting of Mrs John Wood, which is beyond all praise” and, hinting at the technical side of things suggesting that “Were all the iron-work machinery to collapse (as in fact it did one night and the theatre had to be closed), the drama could go on as its mainstay, its chief support is Wood…” The review mentions the White Heather was seen to ascend heavenwards “quite a wonder of the deep!” and the villain played by Neville ends up attired in a diver’s attire… his huge diver’s helmet and mute demise raising a few titters before the hero despatches him with further blows and a dramatic flourish. It must have been some spectacle but we have a film to consider and this is right up Maurice’s waterway!

 

Kate Rorke played the heroine in the Drury production – “self-effacing with not much to say…” and Mr Neville, played Lord Angus Cameron. In Tourneur’s film we have Holmes Herbert as Lord Angus Cameron and Mabel Ballin as Marion Hume and, as luck would have it, having not much to say is pretty much her advantage in this silent film, with the director focusing on her emoting as the extent of her betrayal is revealed.

Lord Angus promises financial ruin to Marian's father unless he keeps quiet...

The story is a mix of financial intrigue, the perils of marrying below oneself, the need for effective auditing and corporate governance as well as the dangers of marrying at sea, even if everything is above board and in accordance with Scottish Law. Against this is a good-hearted woman backed by an array of loyal friends and family although not all filial relationships in the film are unconditional, far from it. Ultimately it comes down to a battle beneath the waves as mentioned in the above play, this is a cinematic tour-de-force, with some realistic aqua-action and peril!

 

We start in England where the black sheep of the Shetland Clan, Lord Angus Cameron, has run his business into the ground. Initially you feel some sympathy for the man, especially when he goes to ask for help from his rich uncle, the Duke of Shetland who aware of his nephew’s wayward approach to fiscal irresponsibility advises that he really ought to marry a well to do lass of his own station before he could consider a loan. Luckily he has the exact person in mind and it’s Hermione de Vaux (a stunning but uncredited Gertrude Astor) who he offers to match-make.

Lady Hermione and Lord Angus - the ruling British oligarchy self perpetuates, comrades!

We quickly learn that Angus has already been married and to a lowly kitchen maid, Marion Hume, with whom he had an affair some years earlier and married her either before or after their child was born. Is Angus going to put love before duty and business or… is he just a lily-livered cad who will stop at nothing to save his own skin no matter who gets cast aside. Things come to a head on a hunting party when Marion and Angus’ child, a young boy, accidentally gets hit by some shot and his mother reveals all. Angus quickly denies it and Marion heads back to her home in London to consult her estranged father James (Spottiswoode Aitken)

 

Marion, why didn’t you tell me it was Lord Angus that you married?

Now this is a very good question and the young lady’s response is far from satisfactory as she agreed to the secrecy to prevent Angus’ relationship with the Duke from being damaged. The result cost her the good will of her father and, meant she had to find other way of bringing up their child – who is charming but surely in need of his father’s company, or perhaps not as things unravel…   There’s a court case but – darn it! – the couple were married at sea aboard a ship called the White Heather and only one of the two witnesses is possibly still alive to confirm either way.

A glimpse of the John Gilbert we know so well, just 21 here and playing his part

Marion has real friends though, both of whom love her so much so that Dick Beach – played by a very youthful and skinny John Gilbert – volunteers not to rest until he has found the missing witness, a Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed and very unsettling here as always). He sets off on a lengthy search of every bar in every port determined to clear the name and rescue the reputation of his secret love.

 

If I understand you correctly, shortly after the ceremony aboard the White Heather, the yacht sank and the evidence, namely the marriage record, went down with the ship…

If ever an intertitle had hard work to do, this was it as the stage is set for the dynamic second half of the story. There will be drunken sailors, double crossers and violence and there will be an epic underwater fight that still has us on the edge of our seats wondering how it was all done as well as how it will all end!

Stephen’s accompaniment is a rare chance to hear him play all of his instruments but separately with his score featuring piano, flute, accordion, electronic keyboards and more mixed into one piece. It is full of emotionally engaging melodies and manages to enhance the mood, appearing to be right inside the film as usual. The shared humanity of creatives split by a century of changes in circumstance and fashion if not the basic instinct to connect in sympathy. This music is archeological, patiently uncovering the original feeling of the film for those who are prepared to put down their phones to just watch, listen and understand.

It's easy to assume that history is what happens to ther people multiplied by time and technology but the persistent “now” can be viewed with such clarity through this restoration and listening to this music.

 

You can connect right here, right now on the San Francisco Film Preserve site!

 

The link for donations to this most worthy cause is to be found here.

  

About the Restoration – from the NFPF site:

Long presumed lost, a tinted and toned nitrate print of The White Heather was discovered at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in 2023. Because no original titles are known to survive, new English language titles have been created. The new text is based on translation of the Dutch titles and by referencing the script for the 1897 play, The White Heather, upon which the film is based. The title text was also reviewed in comparison to contemporary trade press sources, the United States copyright registration, censor records, and the published musical cue sheet. Title graphics and typography are adapted from the style of other films produced by Maurice Tourneur Productions in the same year. The colour tinting and toning reproduces the colouring of the original nitrate print. This restoration is a collaboration between Eye Filmmuseum, the San Francisco Film Preserve, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It is made possible through the generous support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.

 

The Great Drury Lane Melodramatic Success... even in 1919 this was worth quoting!

Coming soon. The Cat and the Canary (1927), Eureka, Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

 

“…  not the first of its kind, but it is one of the few hybrids that succeeds in spoofing old-dark-house clichés – secret passageways gaping open, monstrous hands extending slowly towards unwitting victims – while remaining genuinely spooky.”

Imogen Sara Smith from her booklet essay, Laughter in the Shadows

The Cat and the Canary represents a peak of silent film technique and is as good as almost any silent film made in Twenties’ Hollywood, a defining, genre-defining classic. It is not so much a horror classic but a major step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles, showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.

From previous viewing of Kevin Brownlow’s Photoplay 35mm at the Kennington Bioscope, I knew that the film had long languished in poor quality until the 1960s when he found a good print and restored it from 35mm nitrate. Eureka’s new restoration is a 4k transfer from a recent digital restoration that looks as good as the day it was first edited together, especially in Blu-ray quality: never darker, sharper or more ominous…

The Cat and the Canary it parodies what had yet to be termed as “horror”, which hadn’t really started to dominate film, although it was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. Whilst it’s one of Universal’s big three foundational shockers, along with Hunchback and Phantom, it’s also a continuation of the German style, expressionist as well as existentially oppressive in the manner of Caligari, Student of Prague, Golem and Leni’s own Waxworks. It meets a lot of Lotte Eisner’s Expressionist criteria with unsettling frames and deep shadows alive with menace.

Do not mess with Laura La Plante's hair!!

Kevin Brownlow interviewed the camera man, Gilbert Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get those acute angles and he also explained that extra lights were also needed to create the right dynamics between dark and darker. Leni used a gong to drill his player’s movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the characters… and so it was to prove.

It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to, but the collaborator of Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European filmmakers, knows what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace. 

Here's Mammy! Martha Mattox 

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed, pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles looks like our leading man, but there's a nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation. 

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope - more Ernie Wise - but he’s funny alright.

Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch and Creighton Hale

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film not to mention costumes which is pretty much all she remembered when later interviewed by Kevin Brownlow. All the same, I’m sure she’s one of his favourites!

Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and therefore becomes another Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

The film looks fabulous on this 1080p HD presentation from a 4K digital restoration of the original negatives supplied by MoMA.|There's also a fascinating new score from Robert Israel -presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, it says here - which has been compiled, synchronised and edited by Gillian B. Anderson, based on the music cue sheets compiled and issued for the original 1927 release. 

Ultimately, it’s hard to disagree with Kevin Brownlow when he said, again at the Kennington Bioscope, that The Cat and the Canary is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the epic Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House, and way beyond, through Bob Hope’s version in 1939 and onto an entire backlot of scary mansions spoofed so well in Scooby Doo.

If it hadn’t been for those pesky German kids, Leni’d never have gotten away with it…

Extra frightening features:

Limited Edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Graham Humphreys [First print run of 2000 copies]

Two brand new audio commentaries: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman plus  Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby

Mysteries Mean Dark Corners – brand new video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson

Pamela Hutchinson interview – excellent new discussion with writer and film critic Pamela Hutchinson who, as you would expect, thoroughly contextualizes the film, the director and the cast.

Phuong Le interview – another newly commissioned interview with film critic Phuong Le who explains the differences between the film and the play and looks at Leni's aims in making a "non-European, American film

A Very Eccentric Man & Yeah, a Cat! – extracts from John Willard’s original play 

Lucky Strike – Paul Leni gives a full-throated endorsement to the product that got him through filming The Cat and the Canary

A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Richard Combs, Craig Ian Mann, and Imogen Sara Smith

Whilst Eureka were kind enough to send me a review copy I’ve already pre-ordered the fill set with all the above limited-edition trimmings. There’s still time for you to do the same, the Blu-ray is released on 22^nd April in the UK and you can order it direct from Eureka using this link.

Feline spooky… The Cat and the Canary (1927), Kennington Bioscope with Jeff Rapsis

This film is not so much a horror classic but a major step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles, showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.

This being the Bioscope, we were treated to a watch of Kevin Brownlow’s own 35mm, one that resulted from his own restoration for Photoplay. We also got an introduction full of the insider jokes and insights from the man who – nearly – met the all, capturing silent stars on tape from the fifties to the eighties and preserving the oral history of the birth of film.

Guest pianist Jeff Rapsis had flown over from Boston in the morning and was full of praise for the Bioscope – and it’s (thankfully) ongoing contribution to keeping alive the art of improvised accompaniment for which a live audience is just essential. “I have no sheet music, I have nothing prepared I just go with the film and the audience…”

Courageous Creighton Hale

The film had long languished in poor quality but in the 1960s KB found a good print and restored it from 35mm nitrate it parodies the horror film, which hadn’t really started to dominate, although it was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. KB interviewed the camera man, Gilbert Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get the right angles. Extra lights were also needed to create the right dynamics between dark and shard.

Leni used a gong to drill his play’s movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the characters… and so it was to prove. Kevin also got to talk with the film’s striking star, Laura la Plante, was too shy to be interviewed and by that time had forgotten every detail apart from the costumes. Ultimately, he feels that The C&C is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House.

Martha Mattox feels the chills

It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to, but the director of Waxworks and collaborator with Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European film-makers, knew what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Gilbert Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace.

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed, pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

Laura La Plante

The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles has more regular features but nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation.

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope but he’s funny alright.

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film.

Gertrude Astor and Flora Finch are shocked!

Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and becomes the Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

Jeff Rapsis brought a confident narrative-driven dynamism to his accompaniment, different from UK players or just a man with his own style? The top players go world-wide and so this is music without boundaries and here he was perhaps more influenced by the film’s origins as much as he was last year when playing for Salt for Svanetia (1930).

He gave it his all and came good on his stated aim of recreating the tone and collective response to this wonderfully funny and slightly scary film!

Michelle Facey and Meg Morley - two cool cats!

There were further feline treats in the first half tonight with lots of Felix the Cat films celebrating the mad-cat adventurer’s centenary. We saw Felix in Hollywood – even Mr Brownlow couldn’t spot all the characters… and snatched of a documentary on the cat’s cool creator.

Meg Morley accompanied and then played accompaniment to the popular hit, Felix Keeps on Walking, for the Bioscope’s resident chanteuse, Michelle Facey, to sing. Michelle sells these songs so well and I think we have the beginnings of a regular spot here… Pamela Hutchinson famously described the Bioscope as London’s Silent Speakeasy and will molls like Michelle and Meg, we only need some feathers and more-illicit hooch and we’re there!! It brings the music to life, a human voice singing clearly in the new, old-fashioned way.

Brava!!

Felix learns the Black Bottom from Ann Pennington

Our guides through the life of Felix, Glenn Mitchell and Dave Wyatt

Poetry and motion – Terje Vigen (1917) John Sweeney and Lillian Henley, Kennington Bioscope

I’m not sure if Victor Sjöström and John Ford ever met but from their mutual love of spectacular nature and their belief in The Strong Man (or Woman), I’m sure they would have got on like a wooden cabin on fire.

These two films came early in both men’s careers and show how advanced performance and cinematography had become by 1917. Two wildly different subjects and locations but two master film-makers at work capturing wild drama against stunning backdrops…

Out West… Bucking Broadway (1917) with Cyrus Gabrysch

This film was only rediscovered a few years back and looks very fine from the restoration on view. It features many Ford trademarks that were no doubt anything but at this relatively stage: beautiful scenery, hard-working ranch hands, a massed brawl – unrehearsed a free-for-all just like JF like them – and a slight story, balanced by not taking itself too seriously. It’s a fun film and very good-looking.

Harry Carey stars as Cheyenne Harry, the pride of the ranch and the apple of his boss’s daughter Helen’s eye. Helen is played by Molly Malone who looks far too young for Harry (39) and yet was 29 so, you can relax South Yorkshire Police Force…

Harry and Helen

Harry carves Helen a heart which she promises to keep and the couple are delighted when her father (L. M. Wells) agrees to their union and future life in a little log cabin Harry has built.

But… into this Wyoming paradise enters a gentleman from New York City, name of Thornton (Vester Pegg) a man with a baddie’s moustache if ever you saw one! He drives his fast car and eastern allure straight into the heart of the young couple’s relationship and before Harry knows it, has started to tempt Helen away with his talk of the bright lights, the big city…

Harry Carey and Molly Malone

As Harry and Helen’s engagement is announced it’s already too late and his intended has been swept off her feet, into Thornton’s car and the express train to NYC. Harry and her Father are distraught.

In New York which, sadly, we don’t get to see; any exteriors clearly being in LA… Helen is introduced to Thornton’s “sister” Gladys (Gertrude Astor) who makes very strange eyes at the younger woman: what’s really going on – white slave trade or something even more transgressive?!

Gladys' mysterious gaze

Helen begins to wonder and sends her wooden heart back to Harry who, as all cowboys do in times of emotional stress, was about to head off on his lonesome. He quickly reverses his decision on receipt of her letter and – literally – catches the next express to New York chasing after it on horseback and clambering on at speed – ye-hah!!

It’s only a matter of time before Thornton is showing his true colours – drinking, messing his hair up and pushing Helen around in front of his weird friends… and then it’s a question of how long it will take Harry to come to the rescue…

It’s a fun film aided by Cyrus’ G’s splendid accompaniment: a man equally at home with cattle wrangling in Wyoming dust as with Park Avenue sophistication and the chaos that ensues when both worlds collide.

Up North… Terje Vigen (There Was a Man) (1917) with John Sweeney and Lillian Henley

I’d previously watched the Kino DVD of this film but this was an altogether more immersive experience: the BFI’s 35mm film was screened and, in the absence of English translations, Lillian Henley read out a translation with actorly precision and powerful, controlled tones. The film is based on the poem by Henrik Ibsen and Lilian’s voice worked perfectly with the rise and fall of the verse: perfectly pitched!

John Sweeney accompanied with some of his most dramatic lines all the while allowing Lillian the space to vocalise before re-joining the action out at sea. The result was simply one of the best silent events I’ve witnessed at the Bioscope or elsewhere: it should be bottled and prescribed for all those in need of some silent spirit!

Victor Sjöström

The film marks a step change in Sjostrom’s direction and the beginning of his glory years aided and abetted by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon. Here Jaenzon captures the rugged coastline not far from Stockholm, which passes for the unforgiving Grimstad coast where the poem was originally set, whilst there are shots on board pilot’s boats, frigates and schooners that put the audience right in the middle of the relentless North Sea.

Camera angles may help a lot but so often we see Sjöström himself, climbing up rigging to splice the sails, rowing against the tides and diving under the murk to evade capture. He was a brave performer as well as innovative director and pushes his own performance to the limits here where his ability to switch from strength to vulnerability is remarkable. There is a man and one who loses all but still finds his soul in spite of a rage vast enough to match the sea storms.

Young Terje

Sjöström’s Terje is a creature of epic desolation – hair and beard robbed of all colour by the loss of his family in the English blockade of Norway between 1809-1815 – but before we know the cause we understand the effect as he rages full-on against the sea.

In flashback we see his previous noble standing and the joy upon his return from long moths at sea of discovering his new born daughter. Happiness lasts until his girl is a few years older and crumbles when war is declared. The British prevent all supplies and Terje, their strongest and bravest, sets off to smuggle food back.

Happy return

He evades the patrols but on his return with three precious sacks of supplies, he gets chased down over agonising and desperate minutes by an English privateer who cares not for his tearful pleading and simply laughs in his face. He’s locked up for long years and unaware of his family’s fate and when his hell is ended by peace, he returns home to the worst possible news.

Thus has he been made and yet he exists as a pilot helping ships in danger to navigate the cruel rocks he knows so well. But he is bitter and sick – a hollow man. When chance offers him the chance to even the score with the very man who condemned him to this fate… can he possibly resist?

 
You’ll need to watch it to find out.

Terje Vigen is available on a Kino DVD with the earlier Ingeborg Holm (1913) and you can buy it from Amazon and all the usual places but... it’s nothing like the real, live, thing!

Encore Bioscope! Encore!!

Devon can wait… Lorna Doone (1922)

Richard Doddridge Blackmore’s novel Lorna Doone has fascinated me since I saw a lurid hardback cover for it in our local library as a child - something about the moors, surging waterfalls and high passion.  Yet, I never got round to reading it – too many dinosaur and sci-fi books to get through first - but I’m told it’s a hearty romance among the best of mid-Victorian romantic “historical” fiction.

Director Maurice Tourneur’s 1922 film version is reputed by those who may know to be perhaps the best of the many film adaptations of the book and I can see why. You not only get the usual Tourneur visual flair, soft-edged pastoral accompanied by his totally-controlled sets – and he even appears to craft the land itself at times – but also quick-moving narrative and action which covers a lot of ground with economy and energy.

Action and scale

Adapting Blackmore’s sprawl into a tight 87 minutes was no easy task but the stripped down story  in the film still has balance… although the florid opening titles are not encouraging, raving about a story that “outlives modern literature… never old, never new… a literary heritage of Civilization.”

Set in the late seventeenth century it tells the tale of various families in the Exmoor across the borders of Devon and Somerset and Tourneur sets his locations better than most in Hollywood at this time although we do have the odd incongruous mountain. It begins in the White Horse Inn – famous among the taverns of old England - I’m sure you probably know it.

John meets Lorna

Two youngsters meet, John Ridd (Charles Hatton), son of a farmer and Lorna (Mae Giraci), daughter of the Countess of Lorne… it’s love at first sight and the young lad, on hearing his new friend is to travel through the dangerous lands of the Doone bandits, gives her his pen knife. In spite of warnings from others, the Countesses troop head off and duly get ambushed by the rogues on the coast – rather brutally, the head of the clan, disgraced former nobleman (wrongly so in the book) Sir Ensor Doone (Frank Keenan) decides to steal the child and – seemingly – kill her mother.

Death on the beach

This scene is very atmospheric and the camera pulls away showing the travelers wrecked coach half submerged in the surf – almost surreal and reminiscent of gothic postcards of the period.

John has followed and watches on helpless vowing to revenge himself on every one of the Doones.

Madge Bellamy and Frank Keenan

Flip forward and we find Lorna all grown up as Madge Bellamy and living an uncertain existence amongst the Doones. She has caught the eye of Carver Doone (Donald McDonald) the most unhinged of the clan but can rely on the fatherly support of the suddenly decent Ensor: maybe she has allowed the man to remember the best of himself? It’s an uneasy existence though as Sir Ensor bats down Carver’s marriage request…pronouncing that Lorna can chose who she marries, so long as he lives.

Meanwhile John has grown up into John Bowers – the strongest man in Devon! He is out juggling logs in a stream when he is swept down river into the waters of the Doone Valley. He wakes to find a beautiful brunette leaning over him and they quickly realise who each other is: Lorna pulling out John’s long-cherished penknife. They have not forgotten.

Lorna and John get re-acquainted

But, it is not safe in the valley and Lorna helps John escape back to his world: there can be no reconciliation for fear of Doone reprisals apparently.

John returns to his farm, his heart a perfect L, for Lorna, for love… His cousin Ruth (Norris Johnson) looks on, lost in her own longing… an incomplete triangle that will break before the film is done.

Carver is inappropriate

Sir Ensor lives longer and weaker and soon crackpot Carver is counting down the days to when he can take charge of both the clan and Lorna. He seizes his moment when the old man looks to have expired and, as he hastily gathers a priest for a wedding, Lorna’s maid summons John.

John rips his way through the roof and scatters the wedding party against impossible odds and then all is saved by the resuscitated Ensor appears at the door buying the lovers enough time to escape before he falls dead at the feat of his unhinged successor.

John and Lorna are in pink-tinted idyll back at the farm and all might end there were it not for the appearance of the Countess of Brandir (one Gertrude Astor) who, summoned by a letter from Ensor revealing Lorna’s true past and inheritance, arrives just in time to put off Carver’s crew from a revenge attack.

Lorna and John agree that it’s important she goes off to London to resume being posh and it seems our lovers are to be split for the noblest of reasons… But don’t right off John who journeys to the capital in time to prevent the assassination of the King’s baby. But even in the euphoria of his deed he shows himself out of step with the sophisticates of court: the couple are stuck between their worlds and someone has to step over the line of demarcation.

Fortune favours at the Abbey

Even if that line is crossed, there are plenty of inconveniences back in Devon; remember Ruth, her steadfast heart now twisted by jealousy and then there’s the mad dog Carver, he’s never going to lie down until he’s put down…

OK, the plot’s of its age and genre but it is so well handled by Tourneur and Lorna Doone flies by at an irresistibly-entertaining pace. The cinematography from Henry Sharp is also superbly advanced and delivers the richness and range you’d expect from his director.

Some may knock Madge B’s acting but I think she does very well and even verges on the understated when compared to Frank Keenan’s Ensor and Donald McDonald’s Dangerous Carver Doone! John Bowers may well be the strongest man in Devon but he still looks like David Walliams.

I watched the Kino DVD which is the 2001 restoration complete with a score from Mari Iijima that under-pins the action with several emphatically-catchy themes. It occasionally threatens to over—power the film but mostly serves it very well – light-hearted, adventurous and lovely (beach slaughter apart).

John battles the mad dog

The DVD is available direct from Kino Lorber or from the long and tax-avoiding river people. The book is still someway down my list as but daughter says I’ve got to read Bronte's Charlotte and Anne first along with a shelf or two of more worthy literature... bet they won't all be as much fun though.