Mother courage… Stella Dallas (1925)/Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, 2023 (Part 3)

Mssrs Horne and Brock take the applause in the Piazza Maggiore

Il Cinema Ritrovato is an experience that leaves you emotionally disrupted, it’s not just all that time spent in darkened cinemas, the relentless watching, pattern recognition, interpretation but also the human connections on screen and off… it leaves you open, and delightfully vulnerable to the enhanced flavours on screen and, in the case of silent film, the invention of the accompanists. Here we had two outstanding new scores that, coupled with the sense of occasion, location and performance produced moments of engagement modern studios would barely comprehend.

The best silent scores don’t pummel you into submission with dozens of drums, decibels and Dolby, they embrace the visuals in sympathy with the narrative and the actors, they duet with the directors and audience to connect our sympathy and imagination, interpret our response and subtly guide it too; a multi-verse of meaning, one that opens up a portal removing you from reality… irresistible forces, for un-resisting volunteers for a kind of magic.

This is no job for anything less than the most experienced of compositional pilots though and in the Piazza Maggiore and then the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, first Stephen Horne and then Timothy Brock, who conducted the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, provided scores that enhanced two of the very finest Hollywood performances and silent films. Consider them as restorers, replicating the high impact of these films’ first screenings, Time Lords able to whisk us back to the feelings our grandparents felt. We are all companions now.

Helen Morgan in Applause

There was also an emerging theme across the programme this year – Rouben Mamoulian’s early talkie Applause (1929) featuring another selfless matriarch with Helen Morgan’s Kitty Darling - and one that was at the heart-breaking centre of both these films; the sacrifice of mothers willing to lose everything so that their daughters might succeed. If you think that sounds corny, take a break from the 21^st Century and think back to the women who made a difference in your own family; Jenny, Jessie, Lil, Mabel… they all changed the course and there were entire generations watching just these films.

Stella Dallas (1925)

Directed by Henry King and adapted by Frances Marion from Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, Stella Dallas of course walks that fine line between melodrama and drama. It features characters bound by the constraints of their time and it perhaps a backwards view of social mores even for 1925 but, the story was driven by grief as much as anything else. Prouty wrote the novel soon after the death of her three-year old daughter in 1923 and I’m sure for Prouty this was a case of if only; a tribute to the one lost and the lengths she would have gone to if only she could have.

Any decent into pulpy drama is completely offset by the fiercest performance from Belle Bennett who’s own 16-year-old son had also died either just before she got the part or soon after: whatever the motivations her Stella rings very true and every time I see watch it becomes greater with Stephen’s score so sympathetic and emotionally intelligent.

Belle Bennett

Stella herself, is something of a misfit, a woman of ambition to escape her small-town working-class routes who becomes involved with a rich businessman’s son, Stephen Dallas (Ronald Colman) who has fled from his father’s suicide and disgrace only to start rising again after they marry. New York calls Stephen to business success but Stella doesn’t want to leave the town she knows so well and nor does she want to disrupt the upbringing of their daughter Laurel (Lois Moran, 16-years old and playing both girl and woman in one of the odder practices of the time).

The gap between mother and father grows and Stella spends time with an earthy good-time fella name of Ed Munn (Jean Hersholt who is so very good at playing bad) and needless to say this doesn’t sit well with Stephen who misses the companionship of more refined women such as his former sweetheart Helen Morrison (Alice Joyce) who is now widowed with three boys of her own.

You can see the direction of travel but the humiliations have only just begun as Laurel’s teacher spies Stella having fun with Ed and expels her from school leaving her devastated when the rest of the class fail to turn up for her 10th birthday party. The story moves on a few years and as Laurel comes of age, she forms an attachment with a young rich boy called Richard Grosvenor (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr 15 at the time!) but is ashamed of her mother with her crude ways, working class manners and dress sense.

Stella overhears some of the rich set mocking her and begins to think she can only be holding her daughter back. By this stage she and Stephen have run aground and knowing of his attachment to Helen, Stella asks her competitor directly for help… what follows shows her strength of character and amidst the tragedy she shows her class in sacrifice something only another mother truly understands during the film’s iconic closing sequence.

Faced with such intense emotional extremes, Stephen Horne’s score is perfectly composed and he knows just how to under-score Belle’s expressive restraint and combines with the actress to leave the audience smiling through tears of recognition. Ben Palmer helped to orchestrate and Timothy Brock superbly martialled the sixty-piece orchestra under the stars. There’ll be a Blu-ray release at some point and hopefully further performances of one of the great modern scores of this silent renaissance.

 

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1928)

Irene Rich and May Mcavoy

As the cricketing Ashes started back in the UK, rain unexpectedly stopped play in Bologna and the screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s take on Oscar Wilde’s play was shifted to the splendid Teatro Auditorium Manzoni; a purpose-built modern auditorium with splendid acoustics, all the better to experience the power of Timothy Brock’s new score as conducted by him and played by the mighty Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

Given the sophisticated wordplay of Oscar Wilde, he seems an unlikely candidate for silent film but here Ernst Lubitsch takes on Oscar using the wit and sophistication of his direction. Sure, there are some excellent performances but Ernst’s inch-perfect positioning, cross-cutting and way with purely visual messaging ensures that this take on a wordy, comedy of manners works bursts into sensational silence on screen.

The director hardly needs to use title cards as the mood is established, explained and maintained throughout in what is one of the neatest of film: so balanced and perfectly timed, shot and performed… That “touch” is fully in evidence now – the delicate use of key signifiers to lift the tale above predictability and to convey small explosions of meaning in unexpected ways. Take that fan, for example, it’s everywhere: a symbol of marital love, a potential assault weapon, distraction under duress and incriminating evidence. It’s just a fan but Lubitsch uses it to pivot the whole story. That fan is also the undeniably fine hands of Irene Rich and you have another symbol of motherly sacrifice, unbreakable choices that have to be made and confirmation that true love does indeed conquer all.

All begins with Lady Windermere (May McAvoy) facing the troublesome decisions of where to seat her dinner guests at her impending birthday party: where to put the dashing and entertaining Lord Darlington (Ronald Colman on the wrong side again…), right next to her ladyship… at the head of the table perhaps? The Lord arrives to bring handsome substance to her reverie and, whilst she presumes he’s come to see her husband he has her more in mind which, frankly, is caddish behaviour. Meanwhile Lord Windermere (Bert Lytell) is discovering something just as disturbing as a Mrs. Edith Erlynne (Irene Rich) has written to him claiming to be his wife’s mother who was lost to disgrace a long time ago with her daughter having grown up believing her dead and a great moral example. Hold onto your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Mrs. Erlynne’s elegant blackmail is expressed through sight of a cheque and the Lord having to add a one to the five hundred he’s started writing following one smiling glance… His wife must never know of her mother’s disgrace and so she begins to lead an “extravagant” life with Windermere’s support, “…not accepted by society but the subject of its gossip…”

There’s a terrific scene at the races when “society” spies in fascination at the intriguing interloper: spy glasses from both men and women including The Duchess of Berwick (Carrie Daumery) leader of the pack. We see multiple points of view until Mrs E. sits down just in front of a group including Lady Windermere her husband, admirer and the gossips. Examining the back of her head with her binoculars the Duchess is delighted to see that Mrs E is going slightly grey and then, seeing her jewels, ponders where her money comes from. All wonderfully bitchy in Oscar Wilde’s immortal way.

Lord Lorton in pursuit

Sat with them is one of London’s most eligible Lord Augustus Lorton (Edward Martindel) who spies this fine filly and is intrigued. As the lady leaves he follows with the director showing their pursuit in longshot, small figures against a backdrop of advertisement-plastered walls: the view on screen narrowing as Lord closes in on Lady… Lorton goes to visit and Lubitsch uses the manner of his entrances to illustrate the developing relationship: at first formal, waiting to be shown through by the maid and then advancing from front door to drawing room with barely a pause: his familiarity only halted by Edith’s last minute swerve: he’s keen.

Meanwhile Darlington can’t help himself and casts aspersions about Lord Windermere’s relationship with Edith. Lady W can scare believe it but sure enough she discovers chequebook evidence of multiple payments to this strange woman… Rumbled, Windermere refuses to reveal all and asks his wife to take his word. Things come to a head though as Windermere asks to re-introduce Edith to society at his wife’s birthday party but she threatens to use the lovely fan he has bought her to assault the interloper… Having invited Edith, Windermere’s un-invitation isn’t seen in time before she arrives to potential humiliation. Cue Lord Lorton who arrives to sweep her into the room – her daughter, the two men chasing her affections and so many idle tongues gathered all in one room…

Lady Windemere hedging her bets

The film is Lubitsch in the raw; it’s very pared down with the focus on character and movement. The sets are elegant and but, as with the racecourse, recede far behind the foregrounded players all of whom are sophisticated and in the cases of the main leads, sensitive. Wilde and Lubitsch is a marriage made in Hollywood though: two men of subtle wit and piercing insights into polite society constrained by manners and rules almost designed to prevent happiness. Any triumph of love is almost accidental and always against the odds: perhaps these folk aren’t much different from those who watch them in the dark?

Timothy Brock’s score, powerful in the auditorium, every section clear and characterful, matched the wit of director and source material and breezes along delightfully in tune with Irene Rich’s powerhouse performance. We overdosed on sheer style and verve, the applause long and repeated almost congratulating ourselves for being there as much as the dozens of players on stage. What a night and what a week!! Brava Bologna, Bellissima!!

Up in the gods waiting for the show to begin... and what a show!

 

 

Really big finish… The Hound of the Baskervilles (2022), Barbican with BBC Symphony conducted by Timothy Brock

I love radio plays, from the BBC or specialist imprints like Big Finish, particularly, as the performers always say, the format allows you to be the set designer, art director and cinematographer, creating your own visuals in response to the aural narrative, the music and the words. It is, as we media types say, engaging, “lean forward” or “hot media” in Marshall McLuhan theorised, something you need to concentrate on unlike most modern films who leap out of the screen with disjointed menace, multitracked drums beating you senseless to cover the sheer lack of real originality, purpose and coherence. No, what we really want for a dramatic night out is a group of actors being directed from the stalls by their scriptwriter whilst the full might of the BBC Symphony Orchestra plays out music composed by the same man all marshalled by one of the leading cinematic conductors on this planet.

 

Neil Brand is a multitalented man but he’s also a bravely ambitious one in producing this work under such circumstances and it was a pre-Christmas stunner.

 

The last time I saw The Hound at the Barbican it was the Stoll silent film version from 1921 directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Eille Norwood, the only Sherlock Holmes personally approved by the original author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and, the accompaniment was provided by one Neil Brand. Fast forward seven years and it’s another chance to be genuinely astounded by the energy and imagination with which Neil's constructs his orchestral scores. There’s an obvious connection between being able to work with sight and no sound and sound with no sight, but Lord knows how it's accomplished...

 

Doyle's favourite Sherlock

Neil is so well versed in the conventions of scoring it comes across in the language of his music, tonight cinematic on stage even as the small group of players read from scripts, as you do in a radio drama, even one with this much orchestral clout. But he’s not just a technician, Neil’s music has instinct and heart and he has great lines that uplift and threaten, create suspense and dread always helping the story along with almost imperceptible prompting. Perhaps his extensive grounding in silent film has reinforced his collaborative instinct and the need to let the narrative breathe whilst others, sometimes, smother what’s on screen with too much of their own ideas: it’s a duet not a cover version.

 

I have seen this with Neil’s scores for Robin Hood and Blackmail at Saffron Hall as well as The Lodger in Pordenone’s Teatro Verdi, which ended the magnificent festival of 2019 on such a high note. Tonight’s entertainment was styled as a concert drama for actors and orchestra and in this context, it was part radio play, part theatre and part concert, all held together by stage director David Hunter as well as his partner in the stalls and Timothy Brock with the 50-piece orchestra set out in forceful formation on the Barbican stage.

 

The actors were positioned in a thin strip along the front of the stage and the drama switched from voice to orchestra throughout, occasionally threatening to overwhelm the script but only ever heightening the drama. Baskervilles is one of those stories we all think we know and, whilst I was mentally reaching back to the Elvey film for imagery, the story showed added dimensions, not least because it allows Watson to shine whilst The Great Detective is seemingly otherwise engaged.

 

Centre stage: Mark Gatiss and Sanjeev Bhaskar

That detective was played by the protean Mark Gatiss who tonight became only the second actor, after Christopher Lee, to play both Holmes brothers, Mycroft and Sherlock. He was cleverly commanding of course and is always so good at seeming one step ahead. His Watson was Sanjeev Bhaskar who stepped up wonderfully as the redoubtable Doctor faced with confronting the horrors of the hound without his mentor. Watson is always a man of action though and Sanjeev ran with it.

 

They were joined by another fourteen characters played by just five actors, Ewan Bailey (Barrymore/Mycroft/narrator), Clare Corbett (Mrs Barrymore/Beryl Stapleton/Billy/narrator), Sam Dale (Dr Mortimer/Frankland/narrator), Ryan Early (Henry Baskerville/narrator) and (Carl Prekopp Stapleton/Selden/narrator). They are all experienced voice artistes and you didn’t have to close your eyes to hear them as someone completely different, yes, even Clare as Sherlock’s chirpy Cockney gofer, Billy.

 

In their hands we moved from 222b Baker Street to misty moors and gigantic halls, from the sanity of Capital rationality to the wuthering madness of impossible creatures, old legends, escaped murderers and irresistible improbabilities racing toward immovable intellect. “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…" sometimes Neil seems impossible but then he proves his actuality time and again.

 

Timothy Brock conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra

It was a grand experience of dramatic musical theatre and I do hope the BBC caught the loud whooping from the right-hand side of the stalls – that was Michelle Facey! You can find out for yourself when the production is screened on BBC 4 in 2023. Before that it will feature in audio-only on BBC Radio 3 and it will be fascinating again to imagine it all again. But I won’t forget the experience of seeing it all come together, dozens of people working together to create a wondrous entertainment and to fill our minds with Devonshire moors, hellish hounds and the battle of the most noble intellect against the evil of men.

 

If this was on my theatre blog it would have ***** stars. Happy Christmas every one!

 

Neil Brand takes a bow having done Sherlock proud.

 

Back home… Foolish Wives (1922), Timothy Brock, Il Cinema Ritrovato 36th Edition (Part One)

OK, remind me how this goes again, we leave the country that has held us prisoner since 2016, sorry 2020, and land in a place where almost everyone wears face masks and where films of all eras are screened every day from 9.00 till passed midnight. Some how we’re supposed to sleep, eat and socialise and to take care of the other routines as the Celsius hits high 30s… and, somehow, some of us are supposed to write stuff about it? The pleasure and the pain of this festival is precisely down to their being too much to do… so, turn off you mind, turn on your out of office, relax and float downstream on the Reno.

 

Herewith begins my highlights of the first few whirlwind days… let’s start with a biggie.

 

“Sooner or later those romantically inclined American wives who believe the superficial polish of Old Worldling and his fascinating ways are the essential qualifications of a husband will be disillusioned. They are sure to come to the realization that the man for the American Woman – is the American Man.”

 

Foolish Wives (1922) 

 

The first million-dollar movie acclaimed the publicity… and, spectacularly, Erich von Stroheim delivered on the ROI and Universal had another hit on its hands from the most complex man in most parts of Hollywood whose productions had the skill of DeMille, the scale of Griffith and a dark heart the latter could never think or feel. The son of a hatmaker, the Austrian was all too aware that clothes maketh the man and, for that matter, how far you need to go to get a hat to get ahead, his incredible drive seeing his not only create himself anew in the USA but also emerge from the field of European theatricals to be trusted with audacious projects such as this one, the controversial Blind Husbands (1919) – screening later this week here – and his masterwork, Greed (1924) of which I had the pleasure of seeing the four hour reconstruction screened at the BFI a few years back.

 

He arrived in 1909 and how he built his reputation in less than a decade is a story for another time but what you can see in this film is the extent of his control, basing it on a “novel” he didn’t write, and using huge reconstructions of Monte Carlo and a cast of thousands, he effectively played a version of his invented self. Instead of a bourgeois Viennese faking German aristocratic airs, he’s a phoney Russian military officer, Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin, accompanied by his two cousins, minor white Russian royals who have fled the unfortunate events in their home country.

The three live in a grand villa and frequent the Casino and all the best places so they can work their various whiles on unsuspecting rich tourists, the more American the better. This is a slick crime caper movie from before the days when slick crime capers set in this period were all the rage. But Erich is making sure we see the seedier side as well, he and his two “cousins” may smile and be villains too, charming con artists, but he has a debauched sexuality which is revealed early on when Cesare Ventucci, a local tradesman/counterfeiter visits with his young daughter Marietta (18-year old Malvina Polo) who is distastefully described as “half-witted”, clutching her dolly. Marietta attracts reptilian glances from the Count, who even licks his lips (not for the last time) and if we were under any misapprehensions about the true depths of this man’s character von Stroheim makes is crystal clear right from the off.

 

It might even be described as “Hitchcockian” in another country, another decade… but the director is making us complicit in his character’s agendas from the get-go, and, as we want redemption for all our lovable rogues, he’s giving us a tricky moral maze to navigate. Also, about that redemption… this film was made in Hollywood but this is not a “Hollywood director”. The Count is charming us all if we let him, suspending our own disbelief despite all of the evidence of all that is put before us, call him Boris by any other name, or Don. This is just fantasy or is it real life?

 

Von Stroheim puts so much detail in the films of his I’ve seen and this was to have been over six hours long and split in two screenings if he’d had his way. The length was as grandiose as the location, designed by Richard Day, his debut as art director, and who later won seven Oscars and worked on Greed, and this presented the studio with all the dull problems you’d expect and with his presented cut of 31 reels, soon reduced to 14 for its New York premiere and then another four, including the spectacular extended opening. This restoration produced by MoMA and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, contains no previously unseen footage, but does attempt to recreate the balance and sense of that first theatrical release as well as the sparkling clarity, via digital processing. Scenes have been returned to their original order, the 1928 re-release – the basis of most version to date - intertitles have been replaced with the original texts, adding tinting and recreating the spectacular colour effects of the climactic fire sequence.

 

Erich and Miss DuPont

The other characters are almost as nuanced as the Count, with Maude George as Her Highness Olga Petchnikoff and Mae Busch as Princess Vera Petchnikoff, ugly sisters on the inside but not without good humour and some compassion; professionals without the Count’s unhealthy singlemindedness and tastes. They distract rich American Andrew J. Hughes (Rudolph Christians who was replaced by Robert Edeson’s back view after dying during production) whilst the Count attempts to seduce his much younger wife, Helen (Miss DuPont aka Patricia Hannon from Kentucky) in front of his very eyes. They first meet on a sunlit hotel veranda and the start of the seduction is so very well signified with not a moment out of place as by almost imperceptible gesture, stolen glances, over newspaper and book, yes Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim (100% meta) the two begin to connect and to collude. She is, after all, a bored young wife who is reading about romantic fantasy and quickly interested in the attractions of foreign nobility.

 

The Count is sexually voracious – a predator in every way – and we soon learn that he has not only wooed their maid Maruschka (Dale Fuller, excellent here as in Erich’s Greed and The Wedding March, proper skilled actor) but made her pregnant. He keeps making her promises we know he won’t keep and maybe, at the time he means it, maybe… but people pleasing won’t save him for ever and she will have her revenge at some point.

 

It’s all but pointless to describe the narrative in too much detail as its detail on screen is so full of nuance that only by viewing can you fully appreciate (yes, that is a cop out) but to see it on the giant screen in the Piazza Maggiore, was special. Which brings me to Timothy Brock’s extraordinary score and the performance of L’Orcestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna which he conducted. His score was technically brilliant in terms of the Russia themes he borrowed and interwove to support the grandiosity on screen and also the delicious lines of his own written to map every strange and unusual nuance from von Stroheim’s screen. It felt complete with the film and completed that magical connection between the place, the audience and the film that makes live silent screenings so compelling and which makes this place, almost uniquely, a truly silent city.

 

Brava Mr Brock, Bologna and Erich’s cast and crew. Glad to have you all back where you belong*.

 

*Get Back screens at the Piazza on Thursday, natch.

 

 

Brock and Bologna: Paradiso… 7th Heaven (1927), with Timothy Brock, Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival 2018

If Mary and Ernst lifted had us on our feet in the Piazza then Janet, Charles and Frank took us off the ground in the stunning setting of the eighteenth-century Teatro Comunale. Rain had stopped playing on the Wednesday and the whole shebang shifted to the orchestra’s home to sensational effect.

You couldn’t find a grander venue for a film, the acoustics were perfect for Timothy Brock’s outstanding score – soaring, heartfelt, powerful and emotionally-aligned; this was a mighty song for the two humans on screen, locked in their story of perfect love… The picture itself was a new digital restoration funded by 20th Cebtury Fox, based on a nitrate print from the 1927 negative made in 1930... this was its European premier.

Lights down and the focus is immediately on Janet Gaynor’s amazing febrility, her delicate face anguished and alive with the interminable terror of Diane’s life crushed by the ferocious disdain of her alcoholic sister Nana (Gladys Brockwell). The New York Herald Tribune noted at the time that Gaynor could “…combine ingénue sweetness with a certain suggestion of wideawake vivacity; to mix facial lyricism with a credible trace of earthiness.” There is no doubt in her presentation nor in Brockwell’s for that matter; Nana is in Hell and even her sister - especially her sister – must join her. She beats her senseless with a whip and forces her to forage for every drop of absinth.

There are further depths but only literally, as we find the ludicrously dashing Charles Farrell as Chico the cleaner: he is by his own mantra, a “remarkable man” and one, who whilst he works in the sewer is always looking up and dreaming of the gutter… and beyond.

Things getting out of hand...

A visit from their well-off Aunt Valentine (Jessie Haslett) and Uncle George (Brandon Hurst) offers the women some hope but Diane has just enough strength to resist her sister’s attempts to make her lie about their virtuosity. She is violently cast down for this and is in the process of being throttled in the gutter when Chico’s hand reaches out of the drains to lift Nana high above a manhole – there’s a superb overhead shot of her struggling against his might.

Chico has to lift Diane up – there is almost no fight left in her. When her sister is arrested and tries to drag Diane with her, he intervenes again telling the police that Diane is his wife. This lie needs to be substantiated and so Chico takes Diane up the stairway to the seventh floor – the arrangement is meant to be temporary, only until the Police are satisfied that their relationship is real. There’s a lovely light touch in this film and Diane’s panic at seeing the single bed in Chico’s room is played out with comedic concern until she sees her gallant room-mate set out to sleep on the floor.

But things don’t end there, and Diane grows on Chico in spite of her wayward hairdressing skills. Farrell towers over Gaynor but there’s a real gentility and respect in their physical relationship. What was a marriage for convenience soon becomes something more – Chico and Diane are Heaven together. There’s faith in the film but it isn’t necessarily derived from organised religion. Diane and Chico’s love is based on their faith in each other and they remain true to themselves. Even their marriage is a home-made affair: no need for a priest when they are sure of love.

War is declared… and the real tests are to come as Chico heads off to the front. He gives Diane one of two religious medals handed to him by a priest but, again, these symbols will prove to be more about their own devotion. They promise to hold the necklaces every day at 11 and to “be” with the other – to connect no matter what the distance and to find their personal heaven.

This is something of a repeated theme for Borzage and you find it even with his early films such as Pride of Palomar. I don’t know if he believed in the “Beau Dieu” but he was sure of love alright. As are we all, at the end of the day, it is all you need. Even after death… the war will be long and with so many tragedies around them can Diane and Chico’s state of grace possibly be maintained? Please see this film and find out.

Mr Brock’s score simply shone, radiating with emotional force out from the orchestra pit filling the Teatro Comunale’s baroque walls and stalls with a magical mix of cinematic fantasias: a timeless mix of cinematic symphonies perfectly moulded around this most emotionally-engaging film.

Rich brass lifted our hearts as strings combined with the wind section in depicting the everyday drudgery and threat of Diane’s struggles. This was classical film composition of the highest order with far more subtle give and take than most modern thunderation… Brock knows what he’s dealing with and is as carefully delicate with his Gaynor as he is playful with Farrell: he underscores their love story and pricks our tear ducts as they are united and re-united. An enigma variation of unresolved, beautiful lines, that converge more than once in joyous crescendo. The violence from Nana and then the War is conveyed equally well – with stark atonal clashes, hope-less clarinet and weary strings… we share in musically-living every moment. And, after Ares finally comes Diana and a simply lovely recurring theme for our couple that all but breaks my cynical old heart…

A few days earlier we’d walked past the Teatro Comunale and dearly wished we could see a concert there; well, we did and it was indeed something to write home about!

Bravo Timothy Brock, Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra and Borzage and his players. 7^th Heaven is one of the greatest love stories in silent film and tonight we were all indeed high in the air, past Cloud 9 and in Heaven no. 7 with Chico, Diane and a full house of silent dreamers. Grazzie Mille!

 

Epic in Essex… Robin Hood (1922), Saffron Hall, BBC Symphony Orchestra

"Robin Hood should be made lavishly or not at all…” Douglas Fairbanks

Robin is in the heart of Prince John’s castle, he’s up against dozens of soldiers in a huge fortress with impenetrable walls, chased up stairways and surrounded on all sides by the solid steel: the cold-stone certainty of death. The situation looks hopeless and yet he’s laughing, bouncing towards danger and improvising joyful escape… this, I should imagine, is pretty much how Neil Brand felt when composing his new score.

You are almost floating on a cloud of sound in the intense confines of Saffron Hall, as purpose-built acoustics allow the full-force of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to blast forth. I’ve seen many loud rock gigs but this is the most elegant noise: precision volume… you are aware of all the players with Timothy Brock pulling forth the different sections like Thor controlling the weather. Blasts from the brass and agitation from the strings, lightened by the woodwind and relieved by percussion. Waves of sonic satisfaction with music that fills the huge spaces of Fairbanks and Allan Dwan’s film whilst moving in perfect sympathy with Robin and Marion’s romance, Prince John’s evil schemes, King Richard’s noble course, the merry men… and, don’t worry Sir Guy of Gisbourne, Mr Brand has your back…

Douglas Fairbanks or is it Neil Brand?

Robin Hood is a mighty film, from the unsurpassed dynamism of its producer, writer and lead to sets designed to induce shock and awe. Mr Brand’s lionhearted score matches the action and emotion step for pirouetting step. It is a powerful work and full of joy – a celebration, not just of this film but of the art of scoring itself; a sequel of sorts to Neil’s series on the subject.

I’d previously seen Robin Hood at London’s Cadogan Hall with John Scott conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing his own score. That was a special evening but I have to say that the epic played better in Essex, lifting the spirits with all the agility of Fairbanks himself.

Big cast and even bigger set

It’s hard to believe that Dwan had to work hard on his star to make the film; he just didn’t see Robin as cinematic enough but, after interesting Doug in archery, the idea of incorporating Richard’s crusades hooked him in. “The robust, heroic figure of Richard… stirred me at once. The period contained every dramatic element: a strong religious impulse, a kingdom undermined by treachery… fair maidens won by valour… all the colour of the adventurous Middle Ages…” purred Fairbanks (according to Robert E. Sherwood in The Best Moving Pictures of 1922-23). It’s not my period, but this is, of course, the Twelfth Century as viewed through Hollywood’s rose-tinted time-telescope.

The film’s centrepiece was Richard’s massive castle, the largest physical set of the silent era even bigger than Intolerance’s Babylon. Fairbank’s biographer Tracey Goessel reports that one million feet of lumber were used along with thirty tons of nails and twenty thousand yards of “heavy velvets”.

Our baddies: Guy and John

The story goes, as told by Dwan to Brownlow in The Parade…, that Fairbanks, doubting even he could fill these gigantic spaces, considered cancelling the project upon seeing the almost completed set. This seems unlikely given Fairbanks’ intentions for the film and his reported reaction to first the set from French director Robert Florey: Doug had already worked out the new stunts he was going to perform against this backdrop he knew it would make his movement all the more dramatic.

As The Film Daily critic wrote, “Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood out-spectacles all that we have seen before on the screen...” and it is precisely his juxtaposition of relentless kinetics against overwhelming scale that makes this proto-blockbuster complete. Well, that and the thousands of extras – in knitted hemp “chainmail” – on horseback or in Lincoln Green.

And the part of Wallace Beery is played by Richard I...

There is also the monumental presence of Wallace Beery as King Richard who plays a far greater part in this tale than later versions. Beery’s energy magnifies Fairbank’s own and the two dominate from the opening pageantry onwards.

The film features a good hour of set-up before the first arrow is set loose from Robin’s bow. At this point, the future outlaw is the noble Earl of Huntingdon, right-hand man to the King and therefore the man in the way for the wicked King John (Sam De Grasse on top form, with evil beard and unforgiving fringe) and his henchman Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Paul Dickey).

Robin and Marian

Huntington’s a fighter not a lover but soon changes his mind when he encounters Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Enid Bennett) who is also attracting the attention of the dark Prince and his loathsome pal, Guy. It feels like the film is deliberately marking time before the fireworks start but the score brings out the most form this sequence with some splendid romantic lines as Robin and Marian fall in love.

Richard and Huntington head off for the Holy Land leaving a Squire (Alan Hale) to look after Marian but the country at large is completely at the mercy of Prince John and the bodies are soon hanging from the battlements, maidens are being whipped and peasants tortured as The High Sheriff of Nottingham (William Lowery) enforces his master’s presidential orders…

It’s only a matter of time before Robin makes his return and the real story can begin but first he must overcome the connivances of Gisbourne…

The Merry Men

A year passes and the fun begins with Friar Tuck (Willard Louis), Will Scarlet (Bud Geary), Alan-a-Dale (Lloyd Talman) and Little John (Mr Hale) all in place: the men make merry and conduct a resistance in King Richard’s name, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor…

In many ways, Robin Hood is a superhero film; an individual changing the course of events through physical prowess and mental strength. Its appeal is universal and enduring not because of historical truth but because we all need to believe that good will eventually triumph in the end.

Tonight its glorious monochrome was amplified by a super-powered score to renew our faith in heroes once again.

Robin Hood is available on DVD from Kino but this score deserves a release on its own. Here’s hoping…