And the best is silence… 2014 in review

Clara strides towards the New Year!

This blog is an aide memoire for a good chunk of my cultural experience not just a means to rationalise it... at my age, given the speed of life, I might just forget stuff. So, what do I remember best about 2014? Without referring to my notes or re-reading, here’s what’s left in my head: my, inevitable, Top Ten in no particular order involving nine grand nights out and one good reason to stay in...

Neil Hamilton and Colleen Moore

Colleen Moore and Why be Good (1929), London Film Festival
This has been Colleen Moore’s year as she re-emerged on screen to blow us away with her intelligence, wit and sheer verve. Moore’s enduring impact was demonstrated no better than in the LFF screening of the recently re-discovered Why be Good – complete with the original Vitaphone soundtrack.

The Warner Archives DVD has also allowed my teenage daughter to find a new silent heroine!

Si vis pacem, para bellum?

The Battles of the Coronel and Falklands Islands (1927), London Film Festival
A special night at the Southbank's Queen Elizabeth Hall with the BFI’s restoration being accompanied by a magnificently-moving new score from Simon Dobson performed by the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines – a 24 piece ensemble in memory of the 24 bandsmen who perished on HMS Monmouth at Coronel.

Walter Summers’ painstaking reconstruction of these two key engagements from the Great War is all the more impressive as he used real sailors and ships – there were no model shots – a tribute to naval and creative discipline.

Harriet Bosse and Victor Sjöström

The Sons of Ingmar (1920), with John Sweeney, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse
The Sons of Ingmar is not digitised and can only be viewed when double-projected in cinema. This was a rare chance to view this important Victor Sjöström film and it proved to be deftly made and genuinely moving – worth the effort of finding a car parking space in Cambridge!

It was also good to finally see personal favourite dancer-actress Jenny Hasselqvist in Sjöström’s Vem Dömer (1922) – but why are so many of these films not on DVD?!

Mind your hats!

Comic Heroes of the Silent Screen at Wilton’s Music Hall, with the Lucky Dog Picturehouse
Wilton’s wins my new venue discovery of the year award – an Eighteenth Century music hall on the fringes of the City that has great atmosphere and a bar too! The Hall was taken over by the Lucky Dog Picture House for a programme of comedy capers accompanied by the magic house band.  We had Charlie in The Adventurer, Harold Lloyd in Never Weaken, Felix the Cat in Hollywood, George Méliès with four heads and Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jnr (1924).

Variety

A Night at the Cinema in 1914, BFI with Stephen Horne
Another hugely enjoyable anthology evening, this time aimed at recreating the experience of a night at the cinema in the year that war broke out. The films on view were mostly British and ranged from clips showing the troops in Egypt to the unreal sight of German troops on bicycles after their rapid invasion of Belgium. It captured the “over by Christmas” spirit but the Empire wasn’t as strong as we thought… The picture houses went on to help maintain morale through the ensuing years of unrelenting sacrifice.

Benita Hulme rouses the rabble

Not going out? Silent sci-fi on the BFI Player – High Treason (1929) and A Message from Mars (1913)
It was good to see the BFI Player hosting some interesting British silent science fiction, from Maurice Elvey’s late silent-period  High Treason to the very first domestic feature, A Message from Mars. I always like peering beyond the actors to the street settings and it was fascinating to see Trafalgar Square, the Mall and Edwardian fire engines tearing through pre-Great War London.

The Electric Cinema

The Wind (1928) with Lola Perrin at the Electric Cinema, Birds Eye View
I’d kicked myself for missing the original performance from Lola Perrin – winner of Silent London’s poll way back in 2011 – and wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity again. Ms Perrin’s accompaniment was as unrelenting as the wind and melded so well with Victor Sjöström’s tale of life and death at the extremes... 

The venue was also superb and if you’ve never experienced the plush, leather-seated living room comforts of the Electric Cinema I urge you to add it to your New Year’s resolutions – this is how all cinema should be!

The auditorium awaits...

The Sound of Chaplin, Barbican with Timothy Brock and BBC Symphony Orchestra
A grand evening with Timothy Brock conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra as they played along to the early works of Mr C Chaplin of Walworth.  Call me an inverted snob but the orchestrated set pieces at the Royal Festival Hall sometimes seem more for the “concert crowd” than the cineaste whereas the Barbican feels more focused on the film. There was barely a set of red braces in sight as the beards and cloche hat brigade laughed their heads off at The Immigrant, Kid Auto Races and Shoulder Arms.

Neil Brand’s sprint to the stage to take his un-expected bow for Easy Street’s new score epitomised the unaffected joy of the event.

The Music Lovers (2013)

Six Italian Films 1906-2013, Italian Institute of Culture with 1911 Lokomotif Orchestra
An unexpected delight at an unusual venue where I was probably the only non-Italian speaker and the only non-Armani wearing attendee…

We were treated to five short films from the golden age of Turin Cinema all accompanied by the music of Mauro and Roberto Agagliate. Matteo Bernardini hosted the evening which was topped off by a showing of his silent short The Music Lovers (2013).

Naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty Friedrichstrasse…

Berlin, Symphony of a City (1927), Barbican with Stephen Horne and Martin Pine
Director Walter Ruttmann’s rhythmic city symphony was brought to life by swinging syncopation from Stephen Horne on piano, accordion and flute along with Martin Pine on drums and vibraphone. This was “lean-forward” silent media with an urban-edge that peeled away the years: for 65 minutes we were all Berliners (at least the 1927 variety...).

More proof, if it were ever needed, that silent film is best viewed with live music. The media may be old but the improvised response from expert musicians helps transmit an edge of uncertainty to an audience experiencing something genuinely new.

Gloria is Stage Struck!

So, here’s a toast to more of this in 2015… Gloria Swanson, Maurice Elvey and Sherlock Holmes at the Barbican, Buster and Carl at the Southbank and the Lucky Dog Picturehouse illuminating early British comedy at the BFI… Another very silent year but far from quiet!

Buonasera culture club… Six Italian Films 1906-2013, IIC, London

 

And so to London’s Belgrave Square for a most unusual cinematic experience... We gathered at the Italian Institute of Culture for a – free – evening of early Italian short films, one contemporary silent and modern composition played live, oh and there was a glass of wine in the first floor reception hall afterwards… euro-embassy cool and films from the cradle of Italian cinema - the city of Turin.

The IIC’s mission is to spread Italian culture and language in England and Wales (sorry Scotland) and this evening was a charming example of that ongoing work, all introduced in Italian before and expectant audience of ex-pats, cineastes and the odd free-loader…

The event was compared by film-maker Matteo Bernardini with music composed and played by Roberto and Mauro Agagliate

  
Buonasera Signorina Bonelli (1906)

It was traditional for picture house screenings to begin with a short welcoming sketch, this one featured Lydia De Robertis writing Good Evening on a chalk board.

All the nice girls love a fool...

Troppo Bello! (1909)

This bizarre outing for Foolshead (aka Cretinetti played by André Deed) features the titular twit in the unlikely guise of a bambino magnet. Invited to the wedding of a friend’s daughter he is so irresistible in his finery that every woman instantly falls for him from grans, to mums and even the bride. Proceedings develop into a Benny Hill-like chase in which the hunted is eventually torn – literally – limb from limb by the pursuing female hoards… Then, head, hands, arms and body re-unite in stop motion surprise.

Apart from a few exceptions most of the “women” are men in drag: maybe they were short of feminine extras that day?

Poster Pierrot

La Maschera Pietosa (1914) (A Carnival Tragedy)

The longest film of the night and a rather poignant tale of two Pierrots, a life and a marriage in peril…

Marcel (Alfredo Bertone) is an artist who is neglecting his wife Julia (Anna Lazzarini) in favour of their younger neighbour Lucy (Erna Hornak) who lives with her elderly mother (Annetta Ripamonti).

The carnival is coming to Turin and Marcel asks Lucy to accompany him which she does dressed as a Pierrot. There are superb scenes of the carnival, a tradition which has sadly stopped according to Matteo Bernardini, which led you to reflect on the magnificent job of restoration and preservation the Museo Nazionale del Cinema has performed on all these artefacts: film history showing actual history…

Alfredo Bertone and Erna Hornak

Julia is distraught and all the more so when she sees the couple sneak out again for more fun. There’s a particularly effective shot of Marcel and Lucy high on a merry-go-round, the thronging masses of old Turin far below reminding you of how advanced pre-War Italian and Turinese cinema was.
But tragedy is about to strike as Julia hears Lucy’s mother fall ill. Realising that she is near death she dresses herself as a Pierrot so that she can be Lucy tending to her mother’s final moments – she need not die alone.

Alfredo Bertone, Anna Lazzarini and Erna Hornak

Lucy and Marcel return to find Julia at the bedside saying prayers having lit candles in tribute to the dead. In the midst of this selfless act Lucy returns Marcel to his wife and the couple leave in unity as the young woman cries for her loss…

It’s a restrained melodrama and the emotional kick was highlighted by an inventive mix of found sounds and varied modern and period composition from the Brothers Agagliate on keyboards and accordion… the latter such an under-rated instrument to modern ears.

Marcel Fabre aka Marcel Perez

Robinet Innamorato di una Chanteuse (1911) (Tweedledum in love with a singer)

Tweedledum (Robintet aka Marcel Fabre) was another recurring comedy persona short on smarts but big on determination. Here he becomes besotted with a stage singer (Gigetta Morano, whose career ran to the sixties) and sets about trying to deliver a bunch of flowers to the object of his desire. He gets mugged for his finery but carries on dressed in robbers clothes until he finally tracks down his love only to be rebuffed as she calls the cops… the course of true love never ran smooth.

Giorgia Goldini and former figure skater, Benjamin Delmas

The Music Lovers (2013)

This is a new film directed by Matteo Bernardini with music by Roberto and Mauro Agagliate all played by the mighty 1911 Lokomotif Orchestra who play a major part in the development of the narrative.

Two lovers, Giorgia Goldini and Benjamin Delmas, are enjoying a silent moment as a sympathetic pianist plays along, notes silently unravelling above their heads as he gifts her a handful of croon-worthy crochets… But then other music begins to interrupt the flow and the remainder of the action sees the couple endure aural assault by miss-styled music. But it’s not a comment on the inappropriateness of some contemporary silent accompaniments, more a metaphor for man’s inability to appreciate a multicultural society.

It works very well and I like the idea of the actors being aware of the music, a kind of silent film “pun”.

 
Buonasera, Fiori (1909)

As events began, so they finished this time with popular actress Mary Cleo Tarlarini watching stop-motion flowers say good evening and then forming themselves into the Moon. It’s the end of a night of Italian cinema and, that free glass of wine is waiting upstairs…

The evening followed a similar path to recent anthology screenings of British and American films and it’s good to see Italy, and Turin, given the chance to show the – continuing - excellence of their artistic output.

39 Belgrave Square... an intimate venue

Now… how do you watch more of this on DVD? There’s precious little about these films on the Anglo-interweb although there’s a good quality copy of Troppo Bello! on Vimeo along with other treasures from the Museo Nazionale.

Details of upcoming events at the Italian Institute of Culture are available on their website. I can recommend them for Italian hospitality and conviviality: grazie mille!