The music of chance... Strolling Players (1925), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

 

Sex and silent film, it’s full of objectification and attitudes that today we frown upon and yet… here we find four men sizing up young Lya de Putti, whose heads transform into pig’s as they imagine our heroine with no clothes on. OK, those clothes do seem to disappear but I think Karl Grune was making a point, wasn’t he? To put this even further in context, Felix Salten, the writer of the film later went on to write Bambi; so, make of that what you will.

The sexist pig-heads was one of a number of striking visual set pieces that illustrate Grune’s story of a star being born, a tale as old as time indeed, as young actress meets successful player, Axel Swinborne (Eugen Klopfet), and we all know the rest… or do we, for this film ends in a way that, whilst I obviously can’t reveal, does leave the audience surprised.

We were watching the BFI’s 35mm print of Strolling Players (Komödianten or Comedians, certainly more Max Wall than Jimmy Tarbuck!) and this is, possibly, the only celluloid copy left in the World, yet another reminder of the rarities on view at the Kennington Bioscope and the vital role played by our national film archive. Why travel a thousand miles when you can see these treats in Lambeth? Blessed are the hobbyists, the collectors, the projectors, the historians and the programmers!

The story spins on coincidence – we are all after all merely players on the stage and there’s more than one reference to Shakespeare – starting with the arrival of a group of strolling players at makeshift theatre/public house in the village of Gotten. They’re performing Faust and it’s fair to say that the locals aren’t giving the cast the respect they might possibly deserve despite the presence of a looming Fritz Rasp looking almost cherubic in blonde curls and a striking leading lady (Lya De Putti), listed just as “The Sentimental”.

The director of the troupe (Viktor Schwanneke) knows this rejection well and as he’s always done and no doubt always will do, rouses his weary gang for a morale-boosting meal.

Miles away in the big city, we see Swinborne’s latest triumph and his determination to take a holiday on the completion of this run. He duly heads off on a train only, and what does this say about the safety of German trains at this point, to catch the train door handle on his waistcoat and fall out at high speed. Rescued by railwaymen, he’s taken to the inn where the players are staying and Lya volunteers to tend to him after he’s unceremoniously dumped on an upstairs bed.

The next morning the great actor is remarkably unscathed – what a lucky break as he remarks… and going down stairs to find out where he is, catches the players in rehearsal, in the very play he has just starred in, right at the moment for his cue to rush in and find his faithless lover and then shoot her dead. Maybe it’s the new lease of life or just the look on Lya’s face, he offers to join them for the evening’s performance and, unlike the previous evening’s Geothe, tonight is a huge hit and he raises everyone’s game.

His faithful dresser (Hermann Picha) comes to collect him the next day and just as he thanks the director for his generosity, he tells Lya that she could be a successful actress if she lets him guide her career. She’s persuaded and heads of to, of course, guaranteed success.

Lya de Putti, a World-class slinker!

In the cut and thrust of theatricality there’s always complications and, just as Swinborne comes to love his protégé so do others, including a handsome young prince (Owen Gorin) and no wonder given the stunning fashions on display for the Austro-Hungarian aristocrat de Puti. She has to choose between her loyalty to Swinborne and her primal attraction to the younger man… it’s a tough call and this emotional maze confounds our expectations in a denouement that dodges and dives in every effort to avoid the predictable.

Lya’s magnetic presence does much to elevate the film, she may be posh but she’s got a look that connects in a very earthy way and as she was to show in Variety and many more, she knows how to play the camera and to pull the watcher in with earnest, raw expression. She’s part Pola, neo-Nazimova - that hair! - with a hint of a more virtuous Valeska Gert - a Euro-pudding of the most adult-deco proportions. 

Cyrus Gabrysch underpinned this emotional commitment with improvisations that captured the emotional storms and romantic sweep of this tug of love. This was a fiercely committed approach that was buoyed by clusters of muscular chords and lilting lines; I haven’t seen Cyrus play for sometime but he was lost in music and completely plugged in to the action on screen. Stirred and shaken.

 

Ralph Lewis and Norma Talmadge

Going Straight (1916) with Colin Sell

As if this BFI gem wasn’t rare enough, we were also treated to another early Norma Talmadge film, following on from last time’s stunning 16mm copy of A Helpful Sisterhood (1914). As with that film, I’d already seen Going Straight (1916) but never like this 35mm versions, which whilst showing its age, which I like, was full of gorgeous texture and tints showing Norma in fabulous close up as the 21 year-old showed the growing confidence in her craft.

 

Norma featured in hundreds of short films for the Vitagraph Company from 1910 to 1915. Then, having joined Triangle Pictures, she made longer form films of which Going Straight, was one of the first. Directed by Chester M. Franklin and Sidney Franklin the picture clearly shows the guiding influence of DW Griffith who oversaw a lot of the production at Triangle. There are expert intercuts and parallel scenes, close ups reminiscent of Pig Alley and the action is tightly marshalled throughout.

Talmadge is superb, acting naturalistically and given ample close ups to demonstrate her restrained playing which has more in common with Gish and Pickford than some of the more dramatic queens of the era. She plays Grace the wife of successful businessman, John Remington, played by Ralph Lewis. The two live in wedded bliss with their young family in one of those sizable wooden properties we brick-bound Brits envy. However, despite this apparent normality, both Grace and John were once part of a group of professional criminals known as the Higgins gang. Grace finds a clipping about their trial and a flashback explains their violent past.

Eugene menaces

Higgins/Remington’s second in command was Jimmy Briggs, played by the excellent Eugene Pallette, full of violent menace, who, after doing his time spots John, who offers to help him on the straight and narrow. Unwilling to change his greasy spots, Briggs threatens to reveal Grace’s criminal past and John has little option but to join him on one last robbery. He goes to commit the crime with Briggs whilst Grace stays over at a well-healed friend’s house after a card party. As it turns out – in a coincidence not too uncommon at the time – Briggs and John are burgling the same house.

What could possibly go wrong?

It is undeniably melodramatic but Talmadge is believable and understated even in the most fraught moments. She has a number of close ups that allow her to illustrate the emotional shifts in the story and her facial transitions are quite the special effect and as viewed on this wonderful 35mm copy, stunning. She’s another whose looks appear to be almost “out of time” and could have made her successful in any period of screen acting. It’s a face you enjoy reading on many levels and has a fascination and a depth that would grow to place her in the upper echelons by the early Twenties.

Colin Sell’s fingers danced along creating a sprightly symphony to accompany the players’ hard work and as with all good accompaniment the sound and vision blurred into a deliciously satisfying whole – sorry, the new range of home-made catering at the Bioscope naturally encourages such comparisons!

Another special occasion in Kennington, introduced majestically and expertly by Michelle Facey as we have come to expect!

 

 

 

Fever dreams… The Indian Tomb (1921), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

I want this tomb to be built by a man from whose hands the stones receive a soul.

 

Fritz Lang later described Thea von Harbou’s novel on which this two-part epic was based as a fever dream and those were exactly my thoughts after spending the last few days emersed in Joe May’s visuals and the hypnotic new score from Irena and Vojtěch Havel. It’s 243 minutes of high-quality atmospherics, drenched in bass desire and the magic ethereality of the imagined sub-continent, all recreated on a grand scale in Woltersdorf, a lake land and forested area not far from Berlin.

On the centenary of its opening Eureka are releasing a 2k digital transfer on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series and it fully warrants the treatment. Lang co-scripted with von Harbou and expected to direct only for May to tell him, truthfully or not, that he couldn’t get the financial backing for a directorial novice. Lang would later return to the story for two films in the late fifties showing this was an itch he had to scratch near the end of his career. Budget-busting exotica may have been in vogue, when funding was available, but it’s very interesting to hear comments from film preservation student Sreya Chatterjee who, whilst noting that the film draws from a variety of Indian cultures, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist, sees it as an objective and non-judgemental creation with “respect and fascination” for its subject.

Mr Veidt

Indeed, the depth of characterisation of the “Indians”, including Conrad Veidt’s tour de force portrayal of the conflicted Ayan III, the Maharajah of Bengal, offsets charges of “orientalism”, especially as the whole story is based on love, loss and betrayal not one-dimensional autocracy. It’s also a commentary on British colonialism, certainly a feature of von Harbou’s writing in general, and here the cause of the broken hearts that drive the narrative. It’s even suggested in the excellent video essay from David Cairns and Fiona Watson, that part of the reasons the British kept the writer interned for three months after the second world war, was because of her critique of the Empire. That’s a Nazi party member calling the kettle pot black but these things are complicated… just ask Mr Lang.

Back in 1920, Germany had just lost a ruinous conflict with the British and the film was more escapism for a cash-strapped population who wanted to travel virtually away from their troubles. May’s India was a mix of huge sets of which DeMille would have been proud and the mountains of southern Germany which may or may not have seen the first cinematic use of the wooden rope bridges so beloved of adventure serials from Indiana Jones to Jumanji.

There are still a few properties in Woltersdorf adorned with the remnants off these giant sets

May’s direction is big on grandeur if less on camera mobility but he makes the most of his luminous stars with my hard drive now heavy with screen grabs of close-up Connie emoting. Having seen so much recently of Asta Nielsen’s perfection of the art of screen acting intensity, here we have the next stage of that evolution with a quite incredible range of explosive expression, blood pumping through engorged veins as his heart bursts with anger and utter despair, he’s a stressful watch. Conrad runs the range from unknowingly imperious to devastated wreck always hinting at that vulnerability even when at his most commanding.

The first part is the Mission of the Yogi and here we learn of the maharajah’s plan to recruit a leading German architect, Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) using the mysterious powers of Ramigani 'Rami', the Yogi (Bernhard Goetzke) a fanciful mix of Indian spirituality and a “genie” straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights. Rami can astrally project, control peoples’ minds and cure the seemingly incurable. Goetzke’s is another remarkable performance with his impassive granite-featured majesty somehow making you convinced of his mystical capabilities.

If you want to obey the command of my lord… you must do so within the hour. But no one must know of your departure, including your bride.

Olaf Fønss and Bernhard Goetzke

The Maharajah wants Rowland to build a huge temple to house his beloved, Princess Savitri (Erna Morena) in a manner echoing the Taj Mahal, built in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Rowland is shown earlier in the film marvelling at a drawing of the Taj, telling his fiancé, Irene ((Joe May’s wife, Mia, a theatre actor and singer, turned film star under his guidance), how he would love to build something so beautiful. Initially reluctant, the architect agrees to travel out to India with the Yogi under a cloak of secrecy.

 

Irene, however, is a woman to be reckoned with – as are all the female leads – and, despite the Yogi having telekinetically removed Rowland’s illicit note to her, she decides that something is amiss in Rowland’s departure and follows the trial to the coast and from there way out east.

 

Up here, nearer to heaven than earth, I shall raise up the mighty building.

 

Conrad Veidt and Mia May

Arrived in Bengal, Rowland finally meets his new employer who shows him round hid opulent palace, introducing him to his pet tigers and then taking him to the Valley of Sorrow, high up in eth mountains. It is here that he reveals that the person whom the tomb will commemorate, is very much alive… collapsing in grief to the rocks the Maharajah tells Rowland that, you shall not build a tomb for the dead or the living… but for the great love I have squandered, like a god or a fool.

 

It is very much as if destiny has already set these tragic events in stone… a frequent concern of Lang’s work. He even made a film about it with Bernhard Goetzke again uncanny.

 

The players are revealed as the story of Princess Savitri’s love affair with British officer, Mac Allan (Paul Richter) is revealed to Rowland by her faithful maid servant Mirrjha (Lya De Putti) who appeals to him and Irene separately, to save the Englishman from a trap set by the Maharajah. It’s hard not to see the disruption caused by Mac Allan as a reflection of colonial ambition and it’s a classic betrayal that drives the all-powerful Maharajah to punish those who have betrayed him. He’s not going to gain any satisfaction and as the Yogi, the epitome of Indian spirituality, warns, his plans are unconscionable.

 

Paul Richter and Erna Morena

Meanwhile, as Irene walks through the palace’s beautiful gardens and Rowland learns the full story, Mac Allan is ambushed on a tiger hunt by the Maharajah’s henchmen. The officer is an all-action superhero, fighting off dozens with gun and fists before escaping on his horse… all the ingenuity and ferocity that built our Empire and forced the German surrender in 1918. Is he a good guy in the film? He’s as nuanced as the Maharajah in that respect, not everyone in Europe would be rooting for the Brit…

 

Part two, The Tiger of Eschnapur, deals with the coming together of all the players as the action hots up and the full extent of von Harbou and Lang’s vision becomes clear. You don’t want any more of my summary, you need to buy this disc and relax into this moral adventure on a stormy weekend afternoon with a full pot of Darjeeling followed by liberal amounts of schnaps… the later to aid recovery after the tumultuous final segments.

Lya De Outtie and Erna Morena

The release comes with a fulsome collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Philip Kemp along with that superb video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson. It is presented in 1080p HD, from 2K restorations undertaken by the Murnau foundation and does this major film due services.

It’s released on Monday 21^st February and you can order direct from Eureka who very kindly send me review copies. No silent home should be without it!

 

Connie improvises with a curious elephant. Master!

#TheyAlso… Claire (1924), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

Lya De Putti

Good programming from the Bioscope tonight with two films variously entitled Passions of Men and The Woman Always Pays… even in the early years there were important social questions being raised especially in Europe, in this case Germany and Denmark.

What a year it’s been for Weimar Cinema and out of the blue comes a rarity to Kennington extracted by Bioscope stalwart Tony Fletcher from the BFI archives – not lost but certainly a film that hasn’t been seen for some time.

Directed by Robert Dinesen, Claire (aka Passions of Men), stars the incredibly watchable Lya de Putti, the sharpest profile in Berlin with pencil-thin eyebrows capping sublime arches over eyes flickering the deepest darkest black… There’s something about Lya and that’s exactly what this film is about as the plot is essentially a story of her efforts to evade unwanted male attention; that might be a proto-feminist theme and it’s certainly not the only film of this period dealing in man’s inhumanity to woman.

Frida Richard playing another mum in The Path of Grete Lessen (1919)

Claire lives with a rich older man (Eduard von Winterstein, Claudius in Asta’s Hamlet) who has taken her in along with her mother (Frida Richard, who played the manically possessive mother in Lupu Pick’s New Year’s Eve aka Sylvester (1924)) with the aim of marrying her – he’s over fifty and she’s just twenty which means she was about sixteen when he made an offer that couldn’t be refused. The film repeatedly has Claire “facing the World” – a woman with little power and reliant on the kindness of male strangers.

Claire is, however, made of stern stuff and refuses the old man’s take it or leave it offer, leading the old buzzard to turf both her and her mother out immediately. He soon relents and chases after them on horseback in terrific shots along a snowy lane lined as far as the eye can see by winter trees. He loses the women and falls off his horse, losing the use of his legs in the process.

Eduard von Winterstein - a face made for drama

Claire gets a job as a poorly paid administrator whilst her mother grows increasingly frail in their one-room apartment. They can’t afford to eat properly and the old woman collapses and is almost gassed for want of a decent meal. A kindly Doctor (Theodor Loos) helps and even waves his fee after Claire tells him they can’t afford him again. Claire attendance at work is affected by her mother’s plight and she is dismissed by her boss unless that is, she would like to make up for her tardiness in kind.

On her way home she catches the eye of a con artist (Erich Kaiser-Titz) who spies the chance to romance only to have his plans interrupted by the police. He makes a break for it and hides thousands of Marks worth of forged notes in Claire’s bag. Claire gets arrested trying to buy her mother a chicken for supper… but has a lucky break when the police commander believes her story even when she opens her purse to reveal the rotten notes.

By the time she gets home her mother has passed away and, alone in the world as the Doctor says, accepts his kind offer of work as his assistant. The two go close and she frets over the visits of a woman who turns out o be his sister. The film could end with their embrace and the Doctor’s highly prominent hair fetish – he just can’t stroke it enough – where it not for the surprisingly early release of the forger.

Theodor Loos in kindly Doctor mode

This is where the plot gets a little convoluted when he works out where Claire lives and – successfully - tries to drive a wedge between her and the Doctor. Claire’s options begin to narrow but, as she has done all along, she refuses to sacrifice her independence and morality and, after a chance encounter, meets her former master’s son (Eberhard Leithoff) who pleads with her to return and look after him as his mental and physical health declines.

Trouble is, the old fellow is still infatuated with Claire and he has the gun in his pocket to prove it! Will Claire’s luck finally run out – I know it doesn’t sound like she’s had much – or is there one more twist to prevent the woman from paying?

Claire is convoluted fun and John Sweeney enlightened the narrative with romantic flourishes and dramatic interventions that ensured we were firmly focused on the extraordinary expressiveness of Lya. Michell Facey introduced and told of the Hungarian actress’ success in Germany – including Variety and her off-screen/in-trailer relationship with Emil Jannings – before she tried her luck in Hollywood. She couldn’t sustain success there and died tragically young after surgery to remove a chicken bone led to infection. By coincidence tonight was the anniversary of her death in 1931.

Asta on the tram

Claire was a rather calming experience after the Bioscope audience was left shaken and rather stirred by young Asta Nielsen’s outrageously sexual dancing in Afgrunden (1910). Colin Sell ventured that the actress might have had control of her costume design because the fabric used could hardly have been more revealing as she writhed her way around circus cowboy (Poul Reumert) in a deliberate, distended demonstration of dominance over her bound “captive”. Syncopated BDSM with a beat and a swing... as it were.

The alternate title for this film is The Woman Always Pays and even as early as 1910, Asta was questioning why this should be with a character who is dependent on male patronage and who cannot be free of the “male passions” that plague Lya too. They were making sophisticated films for women as well as men and you can only wonder what Die Asta – the first true European film star along with Max Linder – did for her sisters over this time?

She is famously one of the inventors of screen acting and her ability to express cinematically – nuanced and naturalistic – is something to behold. On the big screen she’s stunning, using fine-motor physical control that, as Angela Dalle Vacche has said, seemed to anticipate the close-up's subliminal impact.

Colin Sell accompanied with remarkably steady hands despite the on-screen excitement and combined so well with this remarkably advanced film which, blemishes aside, stands as one of the pinnacles of early European cinema.

"And she can dance..."

The Irish questions… The Informer (1929) on Blu-ray/DVD

Last year’s London Film Festival archive gala restoration is now available on sparkling BFI Blu-ray, all the better to show the dark heart of this republican mood piece filmed almost entirely on-set in Elstree. The Informer is set in the context of the fight for Irish independence but it’s mostly about loyalty, love and betrayal: country, friends and lovers, all can be let down in the heat of the moment.

It’s remarkable that an English film of this time – based on Liam O'Flaherty’s 1925 novel - would tell a sympathetic story of republicans so soon after the fact of the uprising and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the politics may be side-lined but there’s no doubt who these people are and why loyalty matters so much. In her introduction, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon quotes O'Flaherty later writing that he based his story on the style of the cinema and that he wanted to treat his readers “…as a mob orator treats his audience and toy with their emotions…” – there’s a proto-noir feel to a film that is infused with uncertainty and a sense of dread.

Lars Hanson

It’s easy enough to identify with selfless comradeship and the loyalty of lovers but it’s harder to recognise the spiteful urges that drive us all towards betrayal. After that, all that is left is understanding and forgiveness and that is so rare.

As with a number of the best British silent films, The Informer featured European talent, including its German director (Arthur Robison, of Warning Shadows fame) and his cinematographers Werner Brandes and Theodor Sparkuhl, who combine to create such a superbly oppressive world of on-set shadows – as if the darkness was pushing down on the fragile hearts of the cast. There’s plenty of image mobility, especially impressive when the camera moves from where Francis hides as Gypo turns from his mate’s house and walks down an alley across a perfectly-synchronized crowded street to the police station to do the dreaded dirty on his pal…

Lya De Putti and Carl Harbord

Hungarian Lya De Putti (last seen swinging with Emil Jannings in Varieté) is Katie, the woman stirring such strong emotions between best pals Gypo Nolan, played by Sweden’s finest, Lars Hanson and Francis McPhilip played by Carl Harbord of Salcombe, Devon.

The cast is a very strong one bulked out by some great character actors like Warwick Ward as Dan Gallagher commander of the group, Dennis Wyndham as his right-hand man and the mobile mug of Craighall Sherry as his left, Mulholland. Ward was interesting casting, looking so much like the British heroic ideal – hawk-like features and resolute moustache: a man of decision.

Dan Gallagher, Warwick Ward, Craighall Sherry, Lya De Putti, Carl Harbord and Lars Hanson

Daisy Campbell is also very fine as Mrs McPhillip, the woman who loses a son and yet has the faith and heart to bring redemption whilst Johnny Butt is nasty enough as the pimping Publican aiming to make Janice Adair lost-lass Bessie earn her keep no matter what. There’s even a sharpshooter played by young Ray Milland who looks like he might be one to watch in the future.

But it’s all about the magnificent leads… Katie loving Francis then Gypo, Gypo loving Francis but mainly Katie and Gallagher loving his cause above all also.

The film begins with a fire fight as two groups of unknown allegiance battle each other in the streets of Dublin before the Police move in… One of the group, Francis, accidentally shoots the chief of police and must go on the run. He can’t stick it though and returns in secret to the house of Katie Fox his ex-sweetheart only to find that she has moved onto the slightly more dashing Gypo and yet still tries to hide Francis’ presence. It doesn’t work though as Gypo sees more than he ought to and jumps to all the wrong conclusions…

Lars and Lya

It doesn’t take much to tip Gypo over the edge – remember what Lya did to Herr Jannings in Varieté?! – but here she makes double sure forcing him to make the rash decision to gain his revenge by telling the police where his former friend is hiding.  The scene is well constructed as the camera follows Hanson as he marches through Dublin streets towards a cinema just disgorging its audience, to the police station where he is rewarded with twenty pound notes (not pieces of silver…).

No good can come of this but it will not be the last telling betrayal in the film…

Garth Knox - compositional coffee

I’d enjoyed Garth Knox’s new score live and there’s an extra on the disc in which he details the creation of his score aimed at “shaping the silence”. It’s interesting that he tries to put back some of the rougher edges of the characters taken out for the film but very much present in O’Flaherty’s book. He used uilleann pipes and accordion to re-patriate the story in Irish tones and purposely used a small ensemble to recreate the close-quarters dramatics on screen. He goes on to say in the notes that “the idea was to rub the organic grain of the folk sound into the more polished perfection of the… more classical instruments (flute, viola) …” this also contrasts Gypo’s hot blood with Gallagher’s coldness.

Knox takes a strong lead from the actors and I liked his attention to detail when, for instance, Gypo loses sense of his surroundings under stress and the score follows him into detached reverie. It is an emotionally-intelligent and stirring score which largely works in tune albeit occasionally foreshadowing the tumult of the performances and the narrative flow.

Warwick Ward and Lya De Putti before and after restoration

The BFI team having done a superb job on a mix of source materials for this restoration and amongst the extras there’s a comparison showing before and after… well, there is no comparison really. The sound version is also included and was restored ten years ago but just seems lumpen when compared to the fleeting, shadowy nuance of the silent. Again the extras show a comparison; silents were just so much more dramatic at this stage.

There are also a number of Topical Budget newsreels from the period which show the events outside the picture houses... they are terse reminders of tensions that persist to this day.

The Informer is released on DVD/Blu-ray on 24^th April and you can order it direct from the BFI shop online. 

De Valera - I Want Peace (1921)

De Valera's message - I Want Peace (1921)

Protesters outside the Unionist Conference in Liverpool 1921

Trust and honour... The Informer (1929), BFI, London Film Festival Archive Gala with Garth Knox Ensemble

This was a World premiere of a stunning new restoration that once again proved the power of late British silent film… The Informer was directed by a German and starred a Swede, was made in Elstree and was all about Ireland. We have always been so European and long may that continue!

Like Blackmail, A Cottage on Dartmoor and others, The Informer was made as both a silent and a talkie and was shot separately for both formats. Bryony Dixon, introducing, showed a clip from both that illustrated perfectly the backwards step talking pictures were – like some sort of cinematic Brexit. A change in one aspect led to a long list of negative consequences as those who brought the noise, focused on the one thing at the expense of all the others: camera fluidity, performance, shot-making and overall cinematic elegance.

In the talking sequence a group of Irish republicans interrogate a young woman, there’s shouting, flat lighting and clod-hoping pace whilst in the other the atmospherics come first and the narrative actually moves ahead more effectively through quickness of expression and thought - clearly it was early days and the silent way was the skills-preference of a crew including noted German cinematographers Werner Brandes and Theodor Sparkuhl but… how many decades did it take to truly get all of the magic back?

Lya De Putti and Carl Harbord

This is a powerful film that pulls no punches, taking the hard road with a cast able to carry its opening lightness of tone forward into the dramatic depths of betrayal: of love and of country. It proves, if proof were needed, that Lars Hanson was one of the supreme actors of his age as he provides as perfect an example of naturalistic pantomime as you’ll see in the film’s emotionally exhausting closing sequence.

The archive gala is usually the silent film highlight of the Festival and this was no exception with the BFI team having done a superb job on a mix of source materials. The sound version was restored ten years ago but, after seeing this I can’t think of a single reason to watch it.

As is usual, the restoration was accompanied by a new score this time from Garth Knox with a crack six-piece ensemble featuring Garth on viola/viola d'amore, Eliza Marshall flute/alto flute/whistles, Frode Haltli on accordion, Joby Burgess percussion, Robert White uilleann pipes and Mary Scully on double bass. Top players from across the spectrum of classical, folk and the West End.

The result was emotionally-intellgent and stirring, working in perfect tune with the tumult of the performances and the narrative flow. Amongst many highlights there is one especially clever scene where Katie Fox (Lya De Putti) puts on a 78 to cover the sound of smuggling the fugitive Francis McPhilip (Carl Harbord) out of her flat and the group created a perfect simulation of a poorly-wound record player – violin bow scratches and skips and a slowing down of tempo as the tension mounts and the record slows down to reveal the sounds of getaway.

Lars Hanson and Lya De Putti

This attention to detail was matched by some thrilling Celtic lines, the insertion of Danny Boy (natch!) and a punchy performance that flavoured but didn’t overwhelm the moving images above.

Based on Liam O’Flaherty’s 1925 novel, the story focuses on a group of revolutionary working class Irish republicans. The Informer is overwhelmingly more about the group's human frailties than their politics which, given the film’s Elstree routes, you might expect but still, these are principled people and not monsters: imagine a contemporary film about terrorists…

One of the group, Francis, accidentally shoots the chief of police and has to go on the run. He can’t stick it though and returns in secret to the house of Katie Fox his ex-sweetheart. Katie has moved onto the slightly more dashing Gypo (Lars, returned to Europe and fresh from Lillian Gish in The Wind and Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman) and yet still tries to hide Francis’ presence. It doesn’t work though as Gypo sees more than he ought to and jumps to all of the wrong conclusions… He confronts Katie who out of spite tells him everything he doesn’t really want to hear.

Lars Hanson outside the studio Cinema (production still from the Townley Cook Collection)

It doesn’t take much to tip Gypo over the edge – remember what Lya did to Emil Jannings in Varieté?! – but here she makes double sure forcing him to make the rash decision to gain his revenge by telling the police where his former friend is hiding.  The scene is well constructed as the camera follows Hanson as he marches through Dublin streets towards a cinema just disgorging its audience, to the police station where he is rewarded with twenty pound notes (not pieces of silver…).

No good can come of this but it will not be the last telling betrayal in the film…

On the run. Photo from BFI

The police surround Francis’ mother’s house and he falls to his from the roof after a desperate struggle. Too late, Katie tells Gypo that she made it all up to hurt him… but the die is cast. The finger of suspicion is pointing firmly at Gypo now and it’s his own side he needs to worry about as the moral course of events becomes the focus of the film’s intense conclusion.

The Informer’s intimacies serve its broader narrative well and you are left trying to grasp the complexities of wider conflict when these fragile, passionate lives are lived so much based on truth and trust. Irish nationalism was more than just the context for this story and for understandable - 1929 English - reasons the film strips out the more overt references to the Free State and republicanism from Liam O'Flaherty’s novel.

In Britain then as now you need to smuggle out the meanings any way you can.

Arthur Robison was an American brought up in Germany and who directed the expressive (if not strictly expressionistic according to Lotte Eisner’s definition) Warning Shadows. Here he brings dark Germanic moods to the set-streets of Dublin aided by his camera men.

Lya De Putti and Carl Harbord (BFI)

The multi-national cast excel and there are noteworthy turns from the Brits too - chiefly Warwick Ward as Dan Gallagher as the rebels’ leader, Janice Adair as Bessie – a small but crucial part – as well as Johnny Butt as a disreputable publican. Daisy Campbell is also heart-breaking as Mrs McPhillip mourning a son killed by misunderstanding and jealous betrayal.

We all need to listen to each other and now as then to truly comprehend ourselves. Don’t just believe what you feel…

The Informer will be released on DVD/Blu-ray in February 2017. Details are on the BFIwebsite along with notes on the restoration of what Bryony Dixon has described as “one of the finest films produced in a British studio in the 1920s”. It is.

The band pre-performance