Going for a song... The Garden of Eden (1928), with Stephen Horne, BFI UK Restoration Premier

Film writer David Thomson has described late period silent film as a medium just bursting to express itself through talk and watching this sparkling romantic comedy you could also add the desire to laugh and sing. Lewis Milestone’s picture is bursting with virtual sound and has an irresistible rhythm that Stephen Horne accompanied quite superbly on piano, accordion, flute and sheets of paper… of which more later!

 

This was the UK restoration of the San Francisco Film Preserve 4k restoration which I had missed in last year’s Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. It’s a revelation not just in terms of wit and Lubitsch-style “coding” – thanks to scriptwriter Hans Kraly a frequent collaborator – but also in the way it allows for the showcasing of the beauty and talent of Corinne Griffith. In her introduction the BFI’s Bryony Dixon called for a show of hands for those who had heard of the actress before and a handful of us raised our hands. Many more will now have her imprinted in their minds for the next few days.

 

She has a spirit all of her own and shows plenty of emotional skills as well as comedic timing in a partnership with baby-faced Charles Ray – looking nothing like his 39 years and one bankruptcy – whose timing and grace had already served him well in a career dating back to 1911 and included Thomas Ince’s The Coward (1915) and The Busher (1919) in which he competes with one Jack (John) Gilbert for the hand of a young Colleen Moore.

 

Corinne Griffith in front of the cameras that loved her so...

Griffith was – also surprisingly – only four years younger and had been in the business since 1916 and starred in films like Black Oxen (1924) with a really young Clara Bow, as well as The Divine Lady (1929) for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. Her reputation has no doubt suffered as so many of her films are now lost, I make it 55 out of 72, but she was a major star and producer who was not only one of the most beautiful actors in Hollywood but also clearly among the most financially astute.

 

Bryony gave a fascinating insight into the actors’ relationship with men and money which culminated in her fourth divorce and an attempt to pass herself off as her own (fictional) sister to avoid paying alimony to her departing husband – points for effort but she could afford it and died a wealthy woman. A life well lived and in this context perhaps an unlikely pastry chef with operatic qualifications which is how her character Toni LeBrun begins the film.

 

It's a midnight flit as she leaves a note for her aunt and uncle and runs away from Vienna to join the “opera” having been encouraged by a letter from the Palais de Paris in Budapest… Sadly the venue is not so fine as its name suggests and is little more than a gentlemen’s dance hall with scantily clad women kicking up the dust for their leery clientele. She arrives with her opera diploma and finds the owner, a super smart Madame Bauer (Maude George – close cropped hair and plenty of "coding"…) more interested in her legs than her voice.

 

Maude George's Madame has a plan!

Toni takes things at face value though and is soon being kitted out by the wardrobe mistress Rosa (the exceptional Louise Dresser of The Goose Woman and more) in the most unoperatic of revealing costumes. She complains leaving Madame Bauer to offer her a seemingly more modest chiffon dress only for her to cue the stage lights during Toni’s performance which causes a mighty uproar amongst the sleazeballs in the stalls. Also watching is predatory nobleman Henri D'Avril (Lowell Sherman) whose boredom is swiftly transformed as Milestone’s camera pulls in to reveal the double image of the up-lit girl in his opera glasses.

 

Things get worse when the amorous aristocrat expects to have his post-theatrical meal in Toni’s company but she is too quick for him with the aid of Rosa, and, as tens to happen in an environment without employment rights and strong HR, both get fired. Rosa extends a helping hand though as she is due her annual leave and takes her new friend with her to Monte Carlo…

 

Now, if you have any remaining disbelief, I suggest you suspend it for it turns out that the humble dresser, Rosa, is, in fact a Baroness who gets just enough pension from her former husband, to live the life she used to in the expensive hotels of the Principality of Monaco and signs Toni in as her daughter, ennobling her and within a few days, adopting her as one later intertitle confirms.

Rosa reveals her nobility.

Now, as they enjoy the luxuries of the Eden Hotel – with its rather fine gardens… the story changes pace as Richard Dupont (Charles Ray), naughty but nice nephew of Colonel Dupont (Edward Martindel), a friend of Rosa’s, spies Toni and soon comes a courting. Griffith and Ray have a very smart interplay and this is a romantic screwball comedy in waiting as the two engage in a courtship based on misunderstandings, cheeky games and good old-fashioned coup de foudre with all of the hurdles to acceptance this usually implies.

 

There’s a lovely bit of business when Richard spots Toni playing the piano and singing, he peers across at this beauty who is naturally annoyed until – after she switches the light off to hide – he imitates and the two engage in something like l’amour de morse code, before the rooms on both sides of the hotel follow suit. Love, and lights, are in the air.

 

Richard is a songwriter when his duties as wealthy playboy permit, and he writes a song for Toni which as he plays to her, causes her to melt in his arms in a sure sign that their musicality is compatible. Later when his uncle decides to make his own proposal he also plays the song only for his phrasing to leave Toni cold. Yes indeed, the two youngsters seem destined to be together and the only tiny thing stopping the inevitable is the sleeping draught they both end up taking during a sequence that asks the question, how interesting is a proposal really?

Griffith and Ray make sweet music

Turns out it’s not quite the only thing though as soon, and what are the chances, Richard’s posh relatives arrive including his Uncle Henri, recently returned from Vienna… can you see where this is going?

 

The Garden of Eden is so smoothly directed by Milestone that it manages to serve the plot complications and keep the ball rolling without annoying even the modern audience. Griffith had fabulous timing and Ray is appealing in the gung-ho way of all noble, would-be songwriters who fall for women out of their class. Audiences now and then knew what to expect from this kind of film and Milestone delivers with emphatic efficiency and purpose aided by swoon-worthy design direction from William Cameron Menzies.

 

The jury of his peers, aunts and uncles...

Of course, whilst this 4k restoration looked gorgeous on screen it was greatly uplifted by Stephen Horne’s timing and invention. There’s one moment which I think may have surprised the audience when the Colonel sits down to play the song and the sheet music has been placed on the strings of the grand piano, Stephen had anticipated this and, diegetically, his playing also included paper on the piano strings. That’s experience! Sadly, the sheet music gave no clues as to what was being playing and so Stephen had to improvise the music that persuades Toni of her love just as he did the rest of the score… it’s a kind of magic. Another outstanding afternoon of live music, informed introduction and classic film at the BFI…

 

There’s more high-quality Corinne on the National Film Preservation Foundation site with a lovely restoration of her 1922 film A Virgin’s Sacrifice – you can screen it right here!

Details of the restoration of The Garden of Eden can be found on the San Francisco Film Preserve website - they also stream films from time-to-time and so it is well worth signing up for their newsletter! It is also to be hoped that they add this to the films they have released on Blu-ray through Flicker Alley such as the splendid new Louise Brooks early film collection... of which more later! But a Corinne Griffith box set would be most welcome too!

 

Wild oats... Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film

A simple story of plain people.

… within the heart of man, the truth must bloom that his greatest happiness lies in his purity and constancy.

In her introduction Pamela Hutchinson found just the right phrase as she always does, DW Griffith had paid some $165,000 for the rights to this piece of old Victorian melodrama and presented its points in new ways, not just cinematically but with an evolved narrative and the performative power of his star. More than anyone, perhaps, the director is seen as a Victorian moralist increasingly out of step with the changes in sentiment that were rapidly taking place amongst his audience and catalysed by external events as well as the messaging and style of the new media of which he was in some ways a master.

Griffith has taken a battering in recent decades for work that, even some contemporaries derided as racist and now, as we see new elements of those old feelings rise again, his role in popularising them, the sheet-wearing Klan and a-historical rumour mongering feels even more out of place. He’s not the first nor last US director to play fast and loose with history and, whilst he didn’t make the first feature film in history (that’d be Australia’s Ned Kelly (1906)) or innovate as much as claimed he made very good, very popular and very influential films of which Way Down East is possibly the best example.

I was an ignorant girl betrayed through a mock marriage…

Lillian Gish in full flow...

Whilst it is a major work, the only real genius on display was at least a foot shorter than DW and with strawberry blonde ringlets. This would be Lillian Gish who threw herself into this roles in ways that genuinely makes you shudder and worry, as King Vidor did when she went full waif in La Boheme, that it might not just be her character that was doomed. She is spellbinding and creates so much more out of her character than even Antony Paul Kelly’s script intended. She is the American Asta Neilsen with acting that is completely unconscious of the camera as it radiates thought even sometimes with the casual aid of an inanimate object held for a pensive second and signifying so much.

As Pamela mentioned Gish was not the only one who doubted Griffith’s investment but it wasn’t just Parker and Grismer’s original play that was largely jettisoned but Kelly’s script too as the Director worked up his narrative with his performers* albeit with his usual final say as when Gish wanted to present her half-frozen face and arms after plunging them in the ice floe towards the end. We get a glimpse of the Lilly-Ice (sorry) but sure enough she’s soon got her hair back in order. A stunt person was used but still both Gish and co-star Richard Barthelmess spent time on cardboard ice blocks and in a freezing river. At one point the actress fainted and not surprisingly considering her preparation involved walking about the frozen location without a coat and preparing herself for the actual blizzard in which they filmed.

All of these moments make for one highly emotional conclusion to a film that at almost two and a half hours, is not for the faint-hearted. That this time flew by is down to the skill of the performers on and off screen, with Stephen Horne providing yet another one-man orchestral score off the hoof and covering this vast space and time with constantly evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments (plucking the piano strings definitely counts as extra).

Lowell Sherman plays such a scoundrel!

Sanderson belongs to a class which, if it cannot get what it wants in one way, it will go to any length to get it in another.

 

The story begins in rural, humble, in New England, where a young woman, Anna Moore (Gish) is asked by her mother to go to appeal to their rich relatives, the Tremonts, in Boston for money. She arrives all naïve just as her aunt Emma Tremont (Josephine Bernard) is hosting a party. Condescended to by her cousins she has some support from her stylish blue stocking sister (Florence Short) aka The Eccentric Aunt, who gets her up to speed with fashion with one Madame Lisette providing Miss Gish’s stunning array of gowns – was she ever this well dressed in any other film?

 

Trouble comes in the form of the dashing Lennox Sanderson (Lowell Sherman), who not only sponges off his rich daddy, but spends his time in pursuit of his speciality: “ladies”. He becomes fascinated by Anna and after gaining her trust arranges a phony marriage ceremony so he can have his evil way with her. If this seems a bit convoluted it’s worth remembering the source material and the need for the most elaborate humiliation possible for our lead character. Telling her that they need to keep their marriage a secret for fear of his father disinheriting him, he puts Anna up in an apartment and then, once she gets pregnant, abandons her to a boarding house

 

As all this progresses we have been gradually introduced to the family of Squire Bartlett (Burr McIntosh) the richest farmer around but a man by the kind of unyielding Christian principles you’d expect to find in a DW Griffith film, just not in this context. He comes complete with a kindly wife (Kate Bruce) and a handsome son David (Richard Barthelmess)… I’m sure you think you know where this is headed… There’s also a gaggle of comedy characters which serve to pad out the plot but also to create an uneven tone from time to time. There’s the gurning Constable Rube Whipple (George Neville), bumkins "Hi" Holler (Edgar Nelson) and Seth Holcomb (Porter Strong) who is kind of being romanced by the scene-stealing entity known as Martha Perkins (the most excellent Vivia Ogden!).

 

Richard Barthelmess

Incoming key sub-plot reveal… the Squire’s niece, Kate (Mary Hay) is a live wire who has attracted the attention of, erm, local academic The Professor (played by Creighton Hale in that Creighton Hale sort of way, actually very funny on this occasion!). But more on these two in a few lines…

 

Back in the boarding house, Anna’s baby gets ill and Gish goes into overdrive nursing the poor scrap and is genuinely heart-rending when her efforts come to nought. Pamela was correct, this is not a film you can watch without shedding a tear – hence it’s screening as part of the BFI’s Too Much: Melodrama on Film season – and the sadness here is almost unbearable. As the beat goes on, Anna’s landlady Mrs Poole (Emily Fitzroy) without a scintilla of pity condemns her guest for having a baby – albeit now a dead one – and for not being married, telling her to pack her bags.

 

Cue poverty and Anna’s forlorn trudge to find some place to work and stay before she, just about, gets work with the Bartletts, Mother and David calling on the Squire to give her a chance after she almost walks away. Things are looking up as she proves herself a hard-working asset until, inevitably, Lennox turns up… a neighbour of the Bartletts and someone with bigger fish to fry socially than an old conquest, not to mention his lecherous plans for young Kate. It’s all set up for a doozy of a second half…

Lil lost in the details not unlike Asta...

Without a doubt it’s one of Griffith’s best and indeed Gish’s and whilst she may well have been watching the acting of Asta, other influences may also have impacted the narrative and style here, not least perhaps the more advanced moralising of Griffiths’ contemporary Lois Weber. It’s quite a shock to see Gish’s character turn the tables on her accuser and ask: This man – an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been? For Griffith the moral is about civilised mankind becoming monogamous and faithful under their god but this is a more basic call to a kind of neo-feminist equality of responsibility. When first confronting Lennox he asks her what would happen if her new friends found out about her past life and she immediately shoots back with “Suppose the find out about YOUR past life!”. He takes it in his stride, smiles and smarms “Oh, it’s different with a MAN! He’s supposed to sow his wild oats.”

This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the decent David, who is even better without the yellowface of the previous year’s Broken Blossoms…) and one can only imagine how Gish directed her sister Dorothy in Remodeling Her Husband (1920) – a lost film that represents her only feature as director made just before Way Down East. Lillian Gish was at the peak of her powers, a master of cinema.

Intricate shot from Billy Bitzer...

Another potential influence on this film was from northern Europe with the style of Victor Sjostrom in films like the unforgiving The Outlaw and His Wife (1918) as well as the cinematography of everyone’s go-too Swedish cameraman, Julius Jaenzon. Sjostrom used locations to reflect externalised emotions and Way Down East’s extraordinary climax partially filmed in an actual blizzard and with Lil on those ice floes, is a still forceful depiction of humanity pushed to the edge of endurance by the torment of others and societal cruelty: a cry for forgiveness and understanding lest we crush love and natural justice.

Boston born Johann Gottfried Wilhelm “Billy” Bitzer excels throughout the film capturing Gish’s emoting in frequent close up as well as the glorious countryside and the frozen expanse of Vermont. There are lovely scenes of Gish and Barthelmess against a background of a lake and forests whilst White River Junction and the ice floes of the Connecticut and White rivers, were used for the big finish. The film was more expensive than either of Griffith’s best known films and returned a huge profit being one of the four highest grossing silent films.   

This was my first viewing and I saw it in the right way - on 35mm, projected on the big screen with an informed and entertaining introdcution and with one of the finest accompanists in the silent show business! I thank you all!

  

*Martin Williams, DW Griffith: First Artist of the Movies (OUP, 1980)

Filming in the frozen water: ice and hardboard!

Miss Gish's costumes designed by Madame Lisette

Everywoman … Yes or No (1920), with José María Serralde Ruiz, Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day Two

 

Which is worse? A woman who has love and no marriage or a woman who has marriage and no love?

This year’s festival has a welcome strand on the great but otherwise slightly neglected, Norma Talmadge. Norma’s star does not burnish quite as bright in comparison with some of her peers, Mary, Lillian, Gloria and Mabel and they were all born between 1892 and 1894. Talmadge started at about the same time, with her first film in 1909, aged 15, and made hundreds of shorts before establishing her own production company with husband, producer Joseph M. Schenck in 1917 and going on to greater heights. A poll of picture exhibitors named Norma the number-one box office star in 1923 and the following year she starred in Frank Borzage’s Secrets, perhaps her best film alongside The Lady (1925) with the same director - and screening later this week! – Sidney Franklin’s Smiling Through (1922) and the comedy Kiki (1926) directed by Clarence Brown.

Perhaps she is too associated with Schenck in some minds and, for one reason or another, her career declined after their split in 1926, after she’d fallen for Gilbert Roland, even though Joe kept on supporting her commercially even as the ticket sales slowed and talkies loomed. New York Nights (1929) showed she could have cut it, there’s little of her Brooklyn accent, but when you’ve spent two thirds of your life acting, and you don’t ever need to work again, you can imagine why she would walk away.

Norma as the wealthy socialite

On her day I would contend that she was technically as good as anyone in terms of controlled screen emoting, beautiful and believable and just very, very competent without the intensity of Gish, the universality of Pickford or the quirks and comedy of Swanson or Normand. She was a kind of everywoman who excelled in melodramas, a big hit performer but one more of her time (oh, how I hate that phrase) in terms of style and fashion. As a screen phenomenon she’s up there though and worthy of study and respect; historically important, a wizard and a true star!

So, what we have is what we have and it’s great to see the two films streamed today, one a punchy short from early in her career, Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins (1912) and the other a typical hit from her imperial period, Yes or No (1920). Based on an interesting stage experiment written by Arthur Goodrich, which featured a split stage showing a rich and poor wife as they reach a crisis in their marriage, it allows Talmadge to play two characters, in the manner of say Mary Pickford in Stella Maris (1918) and, indeed, herself in The Forbidden City (1918) and Smilin’ Through, whilst she doesn’t match Pickford’s physicality, she does convince in both roles.

“Miss Talmadge wears a wig and some fine clothes in the one character, and her own tresses and calico in the other role, with equal grace.” J.S. Dickerson in Motion Picture News (17.07.1920)

Natalie Talmadge giving screen brother some stick.

Directed by R. William Neill, this Yes or No, splits the action between the two worlds with the emphasis more on the less predictable and more dramatically rewarding “poor story”. It’s a century old morality play and you really have to take that for what it’s worth.

We start in the spacious boudoir of the rich Margaret Vane who is fretting over a party she wants to have knowing that her businessman husband, Donald (Frederick Burton) is unlikely to be free to attend. Donald has health issues but he works his failing heart out for his wife to keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed to. It’s a miscommunication of almost Antonionian proportions and the harder he tries for her the more she feels ignored.

Margaret’s maid is Emma Martin played by Natalie, Talmadge Sister No. 3, as a feisty character who gives far better than she gets with the mostly useless men, whist also providing steadfast service for Margaret Vane. It’s good to see this most neglected of Talmadges in a dramatic role, she’s not got Constance’s pep nor Norma’s beautiful range but she’s no slouch as I’m pretty certain Mr Keaton discovered… Peg Talmadge didn’t raise any pushovers.

Gladden James up to no good...

Emma, appropriately enough, is sister to Minnie Berry (Norma again) who is the hardest-working mother in the bowery, feeding her two kids, husband, Jack (the always upstanding Rockcliffe Fellowes), and their lodger, Ted Leach (Gladden James who, lets be honest, is always trouble). Jack works all the hours God sends and studies in the evenings, desperate to make a better future for his family but this leaves Minnie at home and just a little bored. This Ted notices and he has plans to split the marriage just as, uptown, the sleazy Paul Derreck (Lowell Sherman), aims to woo Margaret away from her all work and no play hubbie.

Remembering the film’s called Yes or No, the women may have different answers to these propositions and to find out… you’ll have to seek this film out. Certainly, this is an impressive example of Peak Norma and you can fully understand how her millions of female fans would have responded to this fundamental answer to eternal questioning. Maybe because we’ve moved on so much as a society, we can be too complacent about the moral implications but not always and not all the time. No means no, means no.

Norma's character is very unsure of Paul...

Almost a decade before, a teenage Norma was playing her part in Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins (1912) a light comedy about a feuding family with father Noah (Van Dyke Brooke) who prefers the rough charms of bullying pugilist (Bill Brown) to his daughter Liza’s favourite ‘Enry (Maurice Costello). It’s knockabout fun and Norma stands out for having more about her than anyone else amongst the chaos. This was how to make your way in pictures; keep on top of the brief and get noticed.

José María Serralde Ruiz played along with suitable gusto and in that way the best players do, minded the viewer of 1920 emotionally as well as musically.

Talking of which, we also had maestro Stephen Horne streaming on Day Two… more on that later.

Larks in Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins