Boardman talks in colour… Mamba (1930)

Things you never expected to see… on several levels. This film was considered mostly lost for a long time until a nearly complete 35mm nitrate copy was located in Australia in 2009. This has subsequently been fully restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation in 2016, but what I watched was a rather fuzzy copy on YouTube… sometimes you must take what you can find. How could I resist seeing elegant Eleanor Boardman, silent star of The Crowd, Bardleys the Magnificent and Souls for Sale, in Technicolor and, talking too?

On the face of it, Boardman could be seen as one of those who’s career stalled after sound but she made seven talkies including the fascinating part-talkie She Goes to War (1929) enough of which survives to show how she was more than capable of sustaining her career, should she have really wanted to. Now in her early thirties, Boardman was married to and having children with King Vidor and, film fans, that’s an activity which doesn’t always sit well with the Hollywood sausage machine especially if you are, famously, “the most outspoken girl in Hollywood”! She liked Redemption (1929), the picture she made with John Gilbert, which didn’t enhance his (or her) prospects but gave her a gorgeous wardrobe, and then got loaned out by MGM to Tiffany Studios for Mamba.

Her last Hollywood film was de Mille’s remake of his own The Squaw Man (1931) and, as family duties and her increasingly unhappy marriage began to pre-occupy her, she refused to dance to the studio’s tune and return from an Hawaiian make-or-break with Vidor, to be loaned again this time to Paramount. By 1933 she had divorced King and taken her children off to Europe where she eventually met and married writer/director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast for whom she starred in her last film, The Three Cornered Hat (1935) made in Italy. She appeared in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series interviewed in 1977, still strikingly sharp and eloquent, comfortable with her life and perhaps slightly dismissive of most of her films, save The Crowd.

Jean Hersholt

Here she’s perfectly fine, good at the grander emotions, dressed like a clothes horse if a little under-powered in some scenes in which she’s outshone, as everyone else, by a perfectly nasty turn from Jean Hersholt. Jean’s upbringing in Denmark, enabled him to nail the German accent required for the part of the titular snake, August Bolte (Mambo), a German opportunist who doesn’t care who he exploits as long as there’s profit in it. Born Jean Pierre Carl Buron, he started acting in short films in 1906 but emigrated for New York in 1913 aged 27 and established himself quickly, making films, most notably in Greed (1924) into the 1950s. He also translated 160 of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales into English and ended up as Leslie Nielsen’s paternal half-uncle… fact fans!

The film is one of those exhibiting a considerable amount of silent style especially when it begins with an extraordinary single take – some 90 seconds long – during which director Albert S. Rogell’s camera moves down and through a number of street scenes on an African reservation, showing us the local colour, and the nature of the place we are about to experience: Neu Posen in German East Africa, sometime in 1913. Like many other “pre-code” films of the period it comes with heavy doses of language and actions reflecting “the attitudes of the time” … Your honour, may I refer you to the statement made by one English officer to a German one: “… too many blacks to run after and too few of us whites to ever be able to hold them in line…” a sentence that is followed by the artful suggestion that those civilised whites of Britain and Germany would never be caught fighting amongst themselves. The audience knew and of course we still know, what this means.

Bolte arrives and is immediately confronted by a local woman (Hazel Jones) who claims he is the father of her child; the other Europeans look on is disgust as he pushes her away. He goes for a drink in a bar full of singing German and British officers only to be given the coldest of shoulders and to be told to his face that he’s not invited to Colonel Cromwell’s party. Bolte sings alone and throws his beer away ordering a champagne…

Bolte reviews his options...

“With more land und money than anyone else in East Africa… I could buy und sell the whole army!

A begging letter from a nobleman in debt back in Germany, offers the hand of his daughter Helen (Eleanor Boardman) in marriage in exchange for Bolte paying his creditors off. After reviewing Helen’s photograph, Bolte decides that this is the way to gain proper respect from society; married to a Lady, his snobbish detractors will have no option but to pay her their respects. He goes back to Germany and brings back his already traumatised new wife back with him. As his cockney manservant (a lively Will Stanton) says: “Blimey sir! But she’s a real aristocrat… she’s got quality!”

On the ocean journey she meets a handsome German officer, Karl von Reiden (Ralph Forbes) who is certainly more along the lines of the kind of man she’d hoped to wed. They connect but are soon separated by Bolte who demonstrates a grotesque mix of jealousy and pride. Back in Neu Posen in Bolte’s grubby mansion, Helen is holding out as long as she can, her honour still at stake as her contractual-obliged partner invites his former enemies to a party in her honour to which everyone is invited and duty bound to attend for her sake. Before the party begins, the native woman pays Bolte another visit and, after an altercation, she falls over his balcony and to her death.

Initially his grand party goes well but when news of the death breaks out the mood turns sour and the faint-hearted merrymaking stops, leaving Helen at the mercy of her husband until, that is, she is rescued by von Reiden who takes her off to see the local natives’ “Moon Dance” - perhaps it will help you forget… He delivers her back to her predatory partner just as he receives news that way has been declared between Germany and Great Britain. Now things reach a peak as Bolte tries to avoid the draft and to hold onto his ill-gotten gains…

Eleanor Boardman and Ralph Forbes

Mambo is alleged to have cost over $500,000 to produce and appears to have been well received with the colour photography impressing. It’s more than just a novelty though with the colonial questions raised and the moral dangers presented by Bolte and then the War. Hersholt makes the picture though and seems able to raise sympathy for his misbegotten creation of Bolte who very rarely, if ever, does the right thing but still presents as a victim in comparison to the taller and more handsome officers, just about to fight the War to End all Wars.

This would look amazing on the big screen and I look forward to a 35mm screening at some point and somewhere…

The return of KB’s Shorts… Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney and Cyrus Gabrytsch

"It's easier to go straight with you..." says Billy. Don't count on it Leila honey...

My week of abbreviated wonders... It’s interesting that, after seeing a 132 minute cut of an approximately 600 minute film (Greed – see previous post), I find myself watching three Pathe 9.5 mm films that contain proportionately more of their source material. All came from the collection of Kevin Brownlow and from an age when this was almost all there was... no streaming in HD, Blu-ray of Betamaz.

Pathé invented this smaller stock for home consumption and as the Bioscope’s master of the magic lantern, Chief Projectionist Dave Locke, pointed out, the projection area is almost the same as 16mm and, with the right illumination it was perfectly possible to project them unaided onto the Cinema Museum’s screen. Mr Locke can make almost anything appear on that screen and these three examples included sumptuous close-ups, massed battle scenes and Billy Haines and his cheeky grin!

Billy and Leila in a publicity shot for Jimmy Valentine

The films were not always authorised hence Pathé’s issuing of a number of MGM titles, re-edited and cut to look like different films. Here was Jimmy le Mysteries (1928) that just happened to look a lot like Alias Jimmy Valentine directed by Jack Conway and staring the puck-ish Haines. Haines was one of the true silent greats, a natural on screen who could fool around whilst all the time being a flick-switch away from the drama.

He plays the eponymous Jimmy, an audacious safe cracker who, accompanied by his cartoonish side-kicks Karl Dane and Tully Marshall, sets about reducing the current accounts of banks across New York. He’s a dandy cracksman and it’s all a bit of fun until he meets Leila Hyams trying to stop her younger brother getting into a scrap.

Lional Berrymore tests Billy's alibi...

Jimmy likes this one so much that it doesn’t even matter that her dad runs the biggest bank in town, for this girl he’s willing to go straight, heck, for this gal, he’s willing to actually get a job and in her old man’s bank! Has Jimmy really turned over a new leaf and, even if he has, will the dogged Inspector (Lionel Barrymore) let him get away with it.

As with all three of tonight’s Pathé precis, this demi-Jimmy made perfect sense and was edited well enough to retain a sense of its original narrative and drama. John Sweeney accompanied in dynamic fashion, vamping along in cine-character as each of the four reels were replaced.

Next up, a tale the French company called, Money Does Not Bring Happiness (another link to Greed!) known better as The Younger Generation (1929) and directed by none other than Frank Capra. As with the first film this was intended to include sound but as Variety noted, this was not entirely successful: “… as bad as it can be!”

Luckily Pathé produced a silent and we had Cyrus Gabrysch’s excellent accompaniment instead adding effortless classical lines and under-pinning the emotions of this light-touch drama about a family rift.

Family miss-fortunes

The Goldfish family – a possible reference to big Sam Goldwyn’s original name – live in a tight-knit Jewish neighbourhood in a tenement block. Their eldest son Morris is a bit full of himself and beats up little sister Suzanne for giving his cake to her pal Eddie. A fight breaks out and Morris knocks an oil lamp over and, whilst his sis escapes across to Eddie's, he collects all of the valuables first. His mother (Rosa Rosanova) is impressed, he will be a big businessman one day, whilst his father (Jean Hersholt… yet another Greed connection…) is less sure, knowing that, basically, money can’t buy you love…

The years pass and Morris has become rich (and Ricardo Cortez), sis has turned into lovely Lina Basquette and she’s still seeing Eddie (Rex Lease) a piano player who big brother still considers far from suitable. The whole family live together on Morris’ immense pad with Capra frequently having his butler pulling down blinds that create the shadowy impressions of prison bars…

Ricardo Cortez faces off against Lina Basquette (TCM colorized...)

Talking of which, Eddie makes a mistake by agreeing a gig distracting the crowds singing on a float whilst some mobsters rob a jewellers. It doesn’t go well but Suzanne persuades her lover to do the time even though he was scarcely aware of the scheme. He gets sent down but the harshest punishment comes from Morris who exiles Suzanne as well saying that even her parents disown her.

Tragically this is not true… Time passes, more money is made and Father never smiles… is there any chance of love finding a way?

Simone Genevois takes to horse in la Merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d'Arc (1929)

Lastly an epic two reeler and believe me when I say you would scarce credit how many thousands of men and horses can be transposed onto 9.5mm! This was La merveilleuse vie de Jeanne d’Arc (1929) directed by Marco de Gastyne more in the style of Gance than his Joan competitor Carl Dreyer (whose film he declared extraordinary).

Kevin Brownlow said that the studio had wanted the Dreyer film to have been an epic and it was... just not in the way they expected. The French film on the other hand was huge in scope taking seven months to film all across France with its director in search of authentic locations from Rouen to Orleans, Rheims Cathedral to the cellars of Mont St Michel. There was also a cast of thousands including at one point military extras who, having achieved their director’s objective, pushed on for greater glory only to be met with the fists of their opposition!

Simone Genevois

Simone Genevois makes for an heroic Jeanne and was exactly the right age to play the Saint being 16-17 during the shoot (she played Ivan Muzzhukhin’s young daughter in House of Mystery (1924) too!). We see her naming of the Dauphin in the cathedral and pivotal role in the defeats of the English.

Once caught, the comparisons with Dreyers trial are interesting, especially the faces of her accused. She found the filming exhausting, not just because she had to wear actual 22 kilo armour but also the emotional impact of the ending which she found hard to watch after completion.

Mr Brownlow said this 9.5 copy had helped spark the restoration of this film, and it would be one I’l like to see all the way through. Cyrus again accompanied and followed every sword thrust and parry, every heroic charge and the sadness of this remarkable young person’s final days.

Another evening of the unexpected for a packed, end of season, Bioscope. The next begins in September and it may well begin with The Goose Woman featuring one of the very best performances of the era from Louise Dresser.

And yet another good season for the Kennington Bioscope! Thanks to all those who organise, project and otherwise enable this precious cinematic resource. The Cinema Museum is also to be congratulated and deserves whatever support every genuine cinephile can give it. One of the best venues in London and surely one of the very best silent film clubs anywhere!

Can’t buy you love… Greed (1924), BFI with Stephen Horne

Back in 2011 I’d watched the ARTE four-hour “restored” version of Erich von Stroheim's Greed but seeing a mere 132-minute version projected with live music really brought the core of the story emphatically to life.I'm not saying I agree with MGM's decision to strip down vonStroheim's vision but what's left is still so good it's better than most films.

Stephen Horne accompanied in style matching the film tonally and synchronising mood but also style as he played along on accordion as Mac squeezed out hymns to Trina on the unglamourous Oakland beach. Stephen’s played to Greed before but not that frequently which made these perfectly sequenced multi-instrumental moments all the more impressive.

Decades of practice makes for perfect and had the film been nearer its original length of 9-10 hours; I’m sure he would have kept pace (possibly with a break or four...). As it was, the accordion, flute, piano – whether played straight, deliberately-distorted with paper placed on the strings, or with those same strings plucked – and other effects matched and enhanced one of the most distinctive and brutally believable of all silent films.

Zasu Pitts

I deliberately wait to watch the “cannon” projected and with live music (and maybe one day someone will screen Sunrise without a pre-recorded score and I’ll see that too!) and the connection and experience of the work is always better. An informed and sympathetic audience helps too and those of us sheltering from 30-degree London knew full well that we were swapping rare metropolitan summertime for even rarer classic film.

Von Stroheim wanted to film the whole of Frank Norris' 1899 novel McTeague but everyone, except him, knew it was impossible. But what remains is unsettlingly life-like... rich in the details of everday desparation and human failure.

Gibson Gowland

The cast were chosen for their looks and not in a John Gilbert or Norma Talmadge way… Gibson Gowland is rough-around-the-edges McTeague a man who cares for small birds but with suitable provocation might throw you down a ravine if you crossed him. His best buddy Marcus is played by a Jean Hersholt realistically out of condition and in ill-fitting clothes and slicked down hair whilst the woman who comes between them, Trina, is played by Zasu Pitts like a cross between a drugged-up Lillian Gish and Stan Laurel. Pitts is the standout performer here and her transition from scared little mouse to deranged miser is played out through her manic saucer eyes and protean contortions the equal of Lon Chaney’s.

Her Trina is terrified of McTeague, none more so than on their wedding night but sublimates all in the pursuit of more money; a psychosis derived from either winning $5000 on the lottery, marrying her brutal dentist or both.

Jean Hersholt and Gibson Gowland

If there’s one sequence that gives away the film’s tone and the director’s signalling it’s this marriage which takes place in McTeague’s dental practice. As the vows are being read the camera looks down on the priest and couple then, with stunning deep-focus, reveals a crowd outside watching a funeral procession: in the midst of life (and this film) we can expect death. Stephen made light work of this unexpected duality and the moment had me in mind of Mahler’s First Symphony when the composer interweaved a funeral march with a folk dance; a mix he remembered having experienced as a child.

The funeral procession passes by outside during the vows...

If Trina’s character is mercurial McTeague’s an open book: a “slow-witted “man with anger issues. It’s interesting that von Stroheim dedicated the film to his mother as of the two mothers featured in Greed, one, McTeague’s, spends her life worrying about what might become of her son whilst the other, Trina’s, is a good old German mutter - about which Erich would know plenty - prone to cartoonish exploits with her husband and their three smaller children.

Mother McTeague pleads with her wastrel husband in a restored sequence (still only)

I re-watched the reconstruction and the story is a much fuller one – there’s an opening sub-plot dealing with McTeague’s father, a drunkard who spends all his time and money on booze and other vices, ignoring his poor wife’s entreaties to give her money… as well as much more details on those living in the block where McTeague’s dental practice is located, especially Maria the Mexican who sells the unwanted junk she is given to a man called Zerkow. Zerkow becomes obsessed himself with the idea of hidden treasure denied to him by Maria but this sub plot is missing entirely from the studio cut. 

Zerkow dreams of golden avarice are restored in still form for the ARTE restoration.

The reduced version still works though as it focuses on the main three characters… it’s less novelistic but still compelling in detail and the patient way von Stroheim dismantles good humour, civilised behaviour and all hope.

It does remind me of Zola and other late nineteenth century "realists" and the characters are largely doomed mostly by their own decisions. Their world is horrible and not unlike our own: how would we act in Greed?

The closing section is remarkable, prefiguring dozens of desert pursuits in later westerns, it shows the options fatally running out for men, horses and even birds. The story is wound up by a classic device which rams home the central point that the consequences of selfishness are terminal and damning in this world not just the next.

Death Valley '24

Greed was shot by von Stroheim entirely on location including weeks in Death Valley for this sequence. That’s a measure of his insane commitment to make something “real” and possibly lasting. Despite his torment at the studio’s butchery, posterity holds his film up not only as one of the greats but also as a missed opportunity for Hollywood to advance the art of movie making. Of course, they were never going to take the chance…  We mourn what was lost and savour what remains of this unique production.

The tinted birds in the restoration may indicate the connection between gold and freedom?

Bizarrely only a Spanish DVD is available of the film – industry indifference having passed down through generations of marketing and product development staff... When there are so many inferior films on Blu-ray you wonder how a such things come to pass. This is a major film, surely the film studies market alone is enough to justify a release of the ARTE restoration? That’s me as a publishing professional speaking and not as a silent movie fan… if you don’t monetise the great legacy of silent film you have to fight harder to preserve it and this is a golden (yes, on purpose) opportunity to do just that.

But. All this aside, huge props to the BFI for screening the film twice and for getting not only Stephen but the excellent John Sweeney to play along the previous week. I cannot complain at all about the quality and content!!