It’s spring, there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow and the tariffs are as high as an elephant’s eye yet we forget all such things as those who seek to learn from history gather in the leafy comfort of the Cinema Museum for two days of hot media – even more silent cinema rediscovered, England’s very hip festival, le piccolo Pordenone… Le Giornate, Del Boy, Cinema Muto… Down Lambeth Way, Oi! And, not a moment too soon!
How easy it would be to take these as cinematic comforts,
rather than the expression of enlightening entertainment it really is. You know immediately from the buzz that this
has been the work of months for the KB’s crew of passionate film historians,
archivists, collectors, technicians, projectionists, pianists and caterers…
This is Silent Serious, it means more and more with each passing year and – with
a blast – it’s the eighth edition and history is making more history with
every year: we learn more, we see more. Over just two days, nine
features and many dozens of shorts, live music, live cinema, with so much
celluloid, really rare and unusual. Precious time spent with the Masters of
Cinema and Cinema Appreciation.
And yes, the coffee is great. I woke up, smelled it and
drank too much, as you can yell.
Ivy in a frock, Guy wearing the trousers.
Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch,
introduced by Lawrence Napper
No need for artificial stimulation with Ivy Duke and Guy
Newall on screen though… well more Ivy than Guy anyway. This was the first of two precious British
films from this most unfairly maligned period of domestic cinema and there’s no
greater defender than King’s College’s Dr Lawrence Napper who detailed the
background to the couple’s stellar career and the films that established them
as a top-drawer attraction in this country.
Lawrence recalls talking to his grand-mother about her memories of British film and she made the comment that “they always doped the horses…” and this was indeed true in the 40 or more equestrian dramas of this period including this one, featuring a thoroughbred dubbed A Pound a Leg 2 by Ivy’s character, Boy Woodburn, after she advised her father “Old” Matt (A. Bromley Davenport who affects the oddest stance...) that’s what his mother was worth when she was offered for sale by a friendly Romany Traveller (in modern parlance). The horse, subsequently named A Pound a Leg, was already pregnant at the time and died shortly after birth leaving Boy to raise the foal with the aid of one of her father’s jockeys and a goat.
Point of order: did you know that horses frozen with
fear by, say, A Fire, will often follow a goat out of danger? Just mentioning
it in the event it ever comes up.
Anyway, horse grows up fast and strong and very attached to
Boy. Local rivals and bookies – not professionals like but looking to cook the
odds – are keen to derail the challenge and all sorts of reprehensible things
happen in the name of “competition”. During the course of all this Boy becomes
enamoured with local landowner Jim Silver (Guy who also directs). Lawrence
quoted contemporary critical opinion, which was pretty much spot on, some great
scenery and cinematography but the story is a little off the pace. Still Ivy
does, as advertised, look fab in men’s jodhpurs and it’s a spirited affair which,
for me, did actually verge on the thrilling towards the end.
Today was the 177th Grand National day and so this was great programming whether intentionally or not, with its big set piece at the actual 74th Grand National in 1922. This was won, after two false starts, by Music Hall at odds of 100/9 and attended by various of my grandparents, just a short bus ride from Kirkdale but the others would have had to change at The Black Bull on route from Wavertree. Not to make this all about Liverpool, but you could see The Sefton Arms public house, now renamed The Red Rum Bar & Grill, as well as where my mate Mark lived off the main road into town… Anyway, the race in 1922 looked chaotic as ever with a number of fallers at Becher's Brook as you’d expect. A lot less safe for horse and rider in those days. For the fictional winner, you really have to watch the film!
 |
| Gene Gauntier: actress, writer, producer, director... |
Actresses from the Teens Presented by Dave Peabody,
with Meg Morley
This section was the result of a deep dive into the careers
of women who broke new ground and yet who are largely overlooked a century
later – certainly not any longer.
Gene Gauntier was a dynamo who wrote, acted and
directed working extensively with the Kalem company before establishing her own
`Gene Gauntier Feature Players in December 1912. She scripted the landmark
feature, From the Manger to the Cross (1912) and also starred as the
Virgin Mary one of 87 film roles and 42 scripts. She left the film industry aged
just 35 in 1920 later siting the “new ways” film was being produced by a more
corporate system, “…after being master of all I surveyed…” she told Photoplay
in 1924 (you can find the full interview on the Internet Archive here).
We saw her in The Lad from Old Ireland (1910)
directed by Sydney Olcott and filmed on location in Cork after the Kalem
company became the first American studio to set up a unit in Ireland. Olcott
plays the Lad who goes off to America to make his fortune leaving his
sweetheart Aileen (Gauntier) behind to an uncertain future. It’s probably the
first film shot on two continents and you can find it on the IFI Archive
Player. The locals dubbed the enterprising American show folk, the “O’Kalems” … but of course they did!
Ethel Grandin was another former stage actor and an
early star of Carl Laemmle’s IMP company who, with cinematographer (and her
future husband) Ray Smallwood, was taken to California by director Thomas H.
Ince before returning to New York to star in George Loane Tucker’s sensational Traffic
in Souls (1913). We watched her in a ten-minute extract from Francis Ford’s
The Invaders (1912) which featured a mix of genuine native Americans, actors
brown-face and the settlers under attack. In many ways a far more complex and
nuanced film than some modern thought might allow in the United States.
Laura Sawyer was a former Shakespearian actress who
joined Edison in 1908 under the direction of J. Searle Dawley before moving on,
five years later, to Famous Players. We saw her in A Romance of the Cliff
Dwellers (1910) which was filmed on location at the historic Manitou Cliff
Dwellings in Colorado which date back 800-1000 years.
Jane Wolfe, was another Kalem star and we saw her in The
Mexican Joan of Arc (1911), directed by George Melford and which sees her
impress as an action hero as well as horsewoman. Undoubtedly talented, she’s
also notable for being a follower Aleister Crowley’s religious order Thelema.
The Great Mage was so influential on many generations of drug-taking mystics,
seekers and rock stars – Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin bought his former house
Boleskine wherein various rituals were performed. Do what thou wilt shall be
the whole of the Law, was the central tenant of Thelema but Wolfe was to
return to education and supporting film culture.
Sadly, there was so much to tell and show that we weren’t able to discuss the 5th Muse, Anna Q. Nilsson a Swedish-born actress who Dave said afterwards had paved the way for the influx of Swedes. Hopefully we will return to the subject and get to watch her – and the beguiling Miriam Cooper – in The Confederate Ironclad (1912) one of many American films reflecting on the Civil War as it was still in living memory (c.f. too The Invaders…).
 |
| Gösta Ekman, Karina Bell,Fritz Kortner and Diomira Jacobini |
Revolutionshochzeit/The Last Night (Germany 1928)
(digital), with Stephen Horne, introduced by Dave Glass
First and foremost, we admire the courage of the
scriptwriter and the producer for making this film without hesitation. We say
this because the film does not have a happy ending…
Raul Quattrocchi, Kines (n.10, March 17th,
1929)
This was an intense and uncompromising film featuring beautiful
leads and Fritz Kortner who is simply fabulously revolting as the greasy-haired,
unkempt and uncouth revolutionary Montaloup, an administrative official of La
Revolution who must sign off on who comes and who goes, who lives and who dies…
There are no easy choices to be made by the players in this
film and ultimately, duty and love are the purest of motives and the hardest
choices imaginable. It’s a quietly devastating film with light and considerable
shade provided by the marvellous Karina Bell as Leontine, loyal servant to
Lady Alaine (Diomira Jacobini) who must escape from Paris to marry a royalist officer,
Ernest (Walter Rilla) who makes a daring return to France for their ceremony.
Dashing captain Marc-Anton (Gösta Ekman) meets the women as they swap roles
knowing that Leontine is the better “negotiator” and helps persuade Montaloup
to give them a pass out of Paris.
Marc-Anton knows that his troop will soon be following the
women to the country and sadly they arrive at the same Chateau just in time to
catch the bride all in white and the groom making his escape. Montaloup signs
Ernest’s death warrant but allows Marc-Anton’s plea that he should at least be
allowed his wedding night before facing death at 06.00. But Ernest cannot live
in the few moments he has left and Marc-Anton helps him escape only to be
sentenced to the same fate… what follows next is a meditation on the nature of
love and duty as the Captain and the Lady love for what is left of life.
Adapted from the 1909 novel by Danish writer Sophus Michaëlis and directed A. W. Sandberg I’m surprised this film is not screened more often – a rare treat with Stephen Horne on fine form joining the dots between our thoughts and the actors’ expressions.
World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking
Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle
Facey
It was one exclusive after another with the World Premiere
of a raucous new programme from the Physical TV Company, who gave us Cinema’s
First Nasty Women. Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy (or Nasty
Women II – Even Nastier as literally no one is calling it) includes ten short comedies from 1903 to 1913 that show just how forthright and
iconoclastic women were in early cinema, a period in which they were allowed a
creative freedom rarely seen since by the still-forming new media. This was
proceeded by an innovative 25-minute documentary which showed modern women
connecting with their forebears via something like a time-telephone, cutting
away to shots of Texas Guinan or Leontine in silent connection with their
revolutionary spirit. It is a conversation between past and present and a call to keep free running all over the stale
males still in the way of progress… some of whom are indeed nastier than ever.
Colin Sell accompanied and even had to stifle a laugh or two
such was the chaos: smash the patriarchy not the piano players!
 |
| Billie and Clive |
The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley
Valentine, introduction by Liz Cleary
Liz Cleary gave a thoroughly researched and entertaining
introduction concerning her finer feelings towards the chisel featured Clive
Brook. At Pordenone and then Hippfest, audiences have been impressed with his smooth
intensity as Heliotrope Harry Harlow in Forgotten Faces (1928) and here
was a chance to watch this Rolls-Royce purr again as the rather more distasteful
Archduke Alexander, a playboy prince for whom even the elegant Jane Winton’s Mademoiselle
Julie isn’t enough.
The duke is arch alright and instructs his head of household
Kinkelin (Gustav von Seyffertitz here more sympathetic than his usual unsettling…)
to keep poor Jane away as she is boring him. As his party of noblemen proceeds,
Julie sings in one last effort to woo him back only to be rebuffed and to –
apparently – drink poison. Unimpressed Alexander cruelly dismisses her even as
some of his party rush her to the local doctor (Nicholas Soussanin), he
pursues, sure of her deception as women, apparently, will not die for love… In
this case he is proved correct but he’s immediately distracted by the Doctor’s
sister Judith as played by Billie Dove.
Apart from forever confusing Billie with Bessie, Dove with
Love… I’ve not seen her in much and she’s very good here as a spirited moral
counter to the fresh prince who is abusive, controlling and toxic. This could
have been a much cornier tale of royalty brought down to earth by a good woman
but both leads are highly engaging and, as directed by our own Hungarian,
Alexander Korda, the film is quite elegant even if Billie looks more likely to
be found in jazz age Manhattan than “Buda”.
Ashley Valentine accompanied with variations on a cue sheet including snatches of Rachmaninov and Chopin – some of my piano-playing mother’s favourites - spirited and evocative and very much on theme for this “Ruritanian” romantic comedy. There was also a snatch of the theme song, as Billie Dove dances with our flawed but elegant hero in the royal palace.
 |
| Lillian Hall-Davis and Carl Brisson, |
The Ring (UK 1927) (digital restoration) with Neil
Brand, presented by Neil Alcock, author of Hitchology
Sadly, I had to miss the evening’s highlight, one of Hitchcock’s
silent best accompanied by Neil Brand but this is a good chance to remind you
all that you can hear this combination and others on the new Blu-ray box set – Alfred
Hitchcock: The Beginning! Available at all good retailers and Amazon.
The same can be said of Neil Alcock’s recent book, HITCHOLOGY:
A film-by-film guide to the style and themes of Alfred Hitchcock which is,
of course, essential reading.
