Adorée arrives... The Eternal Struggle (1923), Joe Harvat Restoration

Restoring reputation as well as materials, performance and craft! This film has a measly 5.9 on IMDB with 20% giving just 1.0 which makes you wonder how many have actually seen it or, in fairness, at least in its current form as restored by Joe Harvat, who used a Kickstarter to fund the project in 2025. The sole user review there says it is “dated” which is an unhistorical term with no utility… how can anything be created and immunised against the opinions and shifted tastes of the generations to come, especially over a century later. It is of its time, but then, aren’t we all. The film was considered lost until the Russian archive handed over a copy to the Library of Congress in 2010… but it is not only found but "reborn" for a new generation to properly evaluate.

 

And, what The Eternal Struggle is, is a fun ride with some superb performances, action scenes and with outstanding location work in what looks like somewhere near Nell Shipman’s God’s Country on the borders of the US and Canada. The Silent Film Stills Archive has a snippet in which the director, Reginald “Realism” Barker explains that almost all of the outdoor scenes were shot “in the glacial fields of Alberta”. Almost certainly, Nell was an influence on the film’s rugged approach but there was also a trend in films based on the Canadian Mounted Police as well as the location with the adaptation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild released only a couple of weeks before.

 

Reginald Barker directingPat O'Malley and Renée Adorée (SFSA)

This story was based on New Zealander Edith Joan Lyttleton’s 1913 novel The Law-Bringers, the film places the performers not just in the context of the time but also in the chilling rivers and frozen mountains close to the actual locations. The most spectacular backdrops were around Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta with the production crew travelling to the Canadian Rockies. Other scenes used the reliably more accessible and far warmer, Big Bear Lake, California.

 

At this point, Renée Adorée’s acting also owes much to Mary Pickford with high energy bounce and a fighting spirit. But, whilst this was one of her first leading roles in Hollywood, possibly her breakthrough, she already had her own skill-set honed in Europe* and when her eyes flow with tears and her face is set she can be both frighteningly febrile and sweetly sympathetic. Her most famous role was probably in The Big Parade (1925) as the French girl who steels John Gilbert’s American heart in war-torn France, the woman who like the war, never leaves him. With her huge brown eyes, slight overbite and liberated movement, she was atypical for a Hollywood leading lady of the time and in a less obvious way brought a European sexuality to the screen as with the Polish Pola. This is a significant film for presenting her breakthrough in a starring role.

 

Renée Adorée AKA Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves

“Renée Adorée, who was often given French-Canadian roles, was at her most ebullient in The Eternal Struggle, leaping up and down in the middle of the street and egging on two fellow French-Canadians to fight over her with knives…”

Hollywood's Canada : the Americanization of our national image by Berton, Pierre, 1975, McClelland and Stewart

 

As Berton goes on to say, this film was very much part of the genre of a “Mountie Film” which normally featured the North-Western Mounted Police in a “love versus duty” quandary, usually pursuit of a sister, a brother or a romantic interest (and has done the maths analysing some thirty films that fit the brief) who they have to decide to capture or let go… and the Mounties always get their man (or woman).  

 

The film starts with one such moment as Bucky O'Hara (Pat O'Malley) – possibly the sole Irish immigrant in North America who didn’t join the NYC Police Department – is on the trail of one Oily Kirby (Pat Harmon). He finds a cabin in the woods which is inhabited by the very fine looking Camille Lenoir (Barbara La Marr aka "The Girl Who is Too Beautiful" and Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler’s namesake when she came to Hollywood in 1938). Bucky takes a shine to Camille and decides to stick around – which doesn’t sound to me like the typical MO of the NWMP but whether be luck or design, he spots Oily hiding in a basket and proceeds to arrest him. Camille pulls a gun and Oily almost escapes following a short chase… Bucky got his man.

Pat O'Malley and Barbara La Marr

Back in the town of Grey Wolf we meet the locals including the vibrant Andrée Grange (Renée Adorée) who is dancing for the locals, two of whom almost come to blows over her after offering her presents. She is the “idol” of every man in Grey Wolf although there are perhaps different words that could be used to describe their regard. Take the distinctly dodgy Barode Dukane (Wallace Beery) who has a name as well as a face that only a mother could love and yet who seems to think he can buy anything, even love, telling Andrée that he has presents for her.

 

Meanwhile Bucky arrives with Oily in tow and delivers him to Sgt. Neil Tempest (Earle Williams) at the Mounties’ headquarters. Bucky goes to the bar, run by Andrée’s father Pierre Grange (Josef Swickard), and in the drinking and dancing melee meets the young woman and gets a slap for being just too forward. Now, you know and I know that this is cinema code, even in 1923, for the start of true love but there’s a big fly in that ointment: Sgt Tempest has already proposed.

 

Pat O'Malley, Renée Adorée and Earle Williams make a crowd.

One thing leads to another thing and then another… the two men realise their mutual interest and both do the decent thing as Bucky pretends to only be “joking” about his affection for Andrée. Broken hearted she goes to see Barode Dukane who has been so generous with his presents and who we now know has some kind of criminal connection to Camille… One thing leads to another and a title card reveals that he sees his chance to “comfort” the distraught girl who we next see running into her father’s bas saying that she killed Ducane!

  

“She is not mine and she is not yours… She belongs to the Crown and she’s going back!”

 

Her father and her “loyal best friend” Wo Long (George Kuwa, Japanese and American actor) help her to escape and she heads to Herschel Island – in the Yukon and far, far North-West of the actual locations - to board a ship and away to the mercies of the sea but O’Hara follows and after an altercation with two sailors, Capt. Jack Scott (Anders Randolf) and his first mate (Fred Kohler who plays second mate in The Hell Ship (1927)), does his duty and arrests his sweetheart. With love overpowering his sense of duty, Sgt Tempest also follows and tries to help her free, initiating the film’s most thrilling sequence as the two canoe down a stretch referred to as the Devil’s Cauldron “a six-mile gash through solid granite” ending with a waterfall that would leave them dashed on the rocks below, unless… someone can get to them in time.

 

Renée and Wally

And still, the question remains – did Andrée kill Dukane and what actually happened on that dark and stormy night?

After Gosfilmofond gifted a digital copy of the film to the U. S. Library of Congress along with a number of other films, in 2010, Joe Harvat was able to secure a 2k scan and then spent seven-months, digitally cleaning the film. The opening and closing credits were missing and all of the title cards had to be translated/rewritten as English. Apart from some deterioration at the beginning the film looks so crisp and detailed – a pleasure to screengrab!

 

Joe also commissioned David Drazin to provide a fresh piano accompaniment for the film which enhances the viewing experience with an energy and style of the period.

What the papers said:

 

The New York Times reviewer, Mordaunt Hall, was a tough man to impress but he saw the film as a "vigorous and interesting" melodrama in his write up of 10^th September 1923. He considered it as a superior example of the "Mountie" genre, praising Del Marr for her presence and Adorée for her "extraordinary charm" and ability to convey the character's terror and innocence – exactly as I said above! He was also impressed by the film’s “ruggedness” and I should think so given the effort involved in filming in Alberta…

 

The Variety review of 23^rd September called the film "one of the best of the snow pictures" and expected it to be a “solid money-maker” as a superior Mountie film. They focused on the box office draw of Barbara La Marr but were also very impressed with Adorée’s "vivid personality" and "emotional depth” as she carried the weight of the film’s dramatic tensions. There was praise too for the location shoots which captured the beautiful isolation and with Barker's ability to make the cold feel "visceral" and "authentic" to the audience.

 

Rugged

Photoplay Magazine (November 1923) described the film as a "thrilling and picturesque" drama, with the "Northwest" setting feel like a character itself, thanks to the "magnificent snow photography". There was also praise for the chemistry between Renée Adorée and Pat O'Malley – and, for me, the latter looks much more convincing once he’s in the great white outdoors with stubble softening his made-up features!

 

Ultimately The Eternal Struggle makes the most of its story and provides a fine example of staple fair at this stage of silent cinema. It’s a very worthwhile project from Joe Harvat and I applaud his efforts to make the film available again – a Kickstarter page to follow with interest!.

 

* Adorée presented as French in Hollywood but was in fact born Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves on September 30, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany the daughter of a London-born circus performer, James Reeves, and a Belgian mother, Victorine Schreiber. The theory is that it was more interesting to be French at the time when there were many famous Brits in town but she actually adopted her new identity in Australia - see link below. In Europe, she had come up through the circus and then theatre but her first film was made in Australia: £500 Reward (1918).

 

She’s billed as Rene Adorée on a poster for the film and as a member of The Magleys, a duo she had formed with the American dancer Guy Magley. The Melbourne Punch described them as among most graceful dancers to ever visit Australia and this poise, along with her circus abilities – acrobat and horse riding – stood her in good stead with the action and dancing in The Eternal Struggle and many more!

There's a fascinating  post outlining the actor's early years by Nick Murphy on the Forgotten Australian Actors site from which the image of The Magleys is taken below - excellent research on a person still seen as French by many, the truth is far more interesting!

Cor blimey, n’est pas!!

Guy Magley and Renée Adoree performing in Samples in Australia in 1918.

Buster’s big break… Three Ages (1923), out now on Eureka Blu-ray

 

Buster Keaton’s first starring role in a feature film was in The Saphead (1920) but this was the first feature he directed – with the aid of Eddie Cline – and co-wrote with Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez and Joseph Mitchell. This brand-new Eureka Blu-ray release celebrates Three Ages’ centenary and proves that, from the get-go, he was a Master of Cinema.

In his illuminating commentary film historian and writer David Kalat talks about Keaton’s enduring influence and you only have to look at Tom Cruise’s jump in Mission Impossible Fallout which mirrors Buster’s missed jump from building to building in the final stages of this film. Both filmmakers kept the fails in and revised the story around them, Buster laid up for three weeks and Cruise nursing a broken ankle. These physical risks add extra appeal gaining our admiration and fascination; Buster’s dangerous leaps still have hearts in mouths.

But, as Kalat points out, so many of the gags in this film have been recycled by lesser comics and the man himself. This was the first time I’d seen the full film and I could spot the most influential gags, but it’s still laugh out loud funny, especially with the family watching.

The Talmadge Connection: Talking of families, it’s impossible to discuss Keaton at this stage without referencing his producer, Joseph M. Schenck’s wife and sister-in-law… Keaton married Schenck’s wife Norma Talmadge’s sister Natalie in 1921. In 1921 Keaton was still putting his career in place and so was not quite the match Mama Talmadge wanted for her middle daughter and famously she put him down as “…not an actor, just a comedian…” so, there’s a real sense of biography running through the film in terms of the main protagonists trying to impress the parents of the girls they want to marry.

Natalie and Norma’s younger sister Constance was famously in DW Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) – one of the best things in it for my money – and it’s hard to know if this played any part in Keaton selecting that epic to spoof. Intolerance is a multi-generational epic across four different time periods and so, for his first film, Keaton narrows that down to just the Three Ages, all reflecting the eternal themes of love… or in this case, the many slips on the rocky road to marriage.

Thus, we have three broadly similar stories in which our hero, Buster, tries to convince the parents of his love that he is the one who should marry her ahead of his brutish rival. For the lead Keaton inherited Margaret Leahy, a young Irish actress who had won a competition judged in London by Norma Talmadge and Schenck, to feature in their new film, Within the Law (1923). After a day on set, director Frank Lloyd decided she couldn’t act and they had to weasel out of the contract by paying her to watch that film being made before starring with Buster in his film. It was to prove to be her only film and her inabilities added weeks to the film’s production as the directors tried to film the right expressions on her face.

Margaret Leahy in Ancient Rome

Wallace Beery plays Buster’s eternal competition – towering over the five feet four-inch comic; with Lillian Lawrence as the mother and Joe Roberts a most fearsome father, even taller than Beery.

We begin in The Stone Age… somewhere near Bedrock perhaps, with beefy Beery’s attempts to woo Margaret interrupted by our hero arriving on the back of a brontosaurus. Keaton said that his dinosaur-riding introduction was inspired by Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) whilst the animation was put together by Out of the Inkwell’s Max Fleischer and these were the two people that sprang to mind when his plasticine version enters the screen riding on the head of a stone-age brontosaurus... History is history here in spite of what so called “experts” might say and Raquel Welch would later confirm that all the scientists were wrong in the ground-breaking documentary One Million Years BC (1966).

Our second period is Imperial Rome where Buster faces off against the higher-ranking Roman soldier and there’s a chariot race with some difference as wheels are replaced with skis and Buster uses dogs to charge to victory after an unlikely snowfall…

Finally, there’s a section filmed in modern times with an opening shot of the contemporary New York skyline even though, as with the rest of the film, the locations are shot in California, with John Bengtson’s essay showing that many still exist.

Buster trias to negotiate with Bid Daddy and Beery Rubble

There’s a gag-filled speakeasy routine in which Virginia Fox really highlights Leahy’s limitations in her expressiveness and skill in supporting the ever-improvisational Keaton. Despite her acting, Leahy wrote despatches to the Daily Sketch in the UK and she did wonders for the UK box office by describing Keaton’s abilities, his work ethic and his skill.

The three strands are inter-woven throughout and the narrative is smooth. Legend has it that film was planned as three shorts that could be released separately in the event that the feature failed. David Kalat disagrees saying it is clearly a planned, cohesive feature film with comedy that escalates through the feature, paced differently to a two-reeler. The much longer Intolerance was cut down into three digestible chunks… so does this legend just pick up this?

Whatever the truth, Three Ages remains eminently watchable and with a comedy that has stood the test into a fourth age of the internet, social media and clownish politicians. Buster is still cool and still surprising… old stoneface was, in fact, one of the most honest and humane of comedians. That never gets old.

This new set is the film’s UK debut on Blu-ray, from a restoration completed in 2022 by the Cohen Film Collection.

·         Limited Edition slipcase (First Print Run of 2000 copies only)

·         1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a new restoration by the Cohen Film Collection

·         Reconstructed original intertitles.

·         Brand new audio commentary by film historian and writer David Kalat

·         This Side of Impossible – brand new video essay by David Cairns

·         Under the Flat Hat – brand new video essay by Fiona Watson

·         The Six Ages of Comedy – brand new featurette based on an essay by Keaton

·         Brand new interview with Ian Lavender

·         Man’s Genesis (1912) short by D.W. Griffith that is parodied in Three Ages

·         Video essay on the film’s locations by John Bengtson

·         Archival recordings of Keaton

·         PLUS: A collectors booklet featuring new writing by Philip Kemp and Imogen Sara Smith

 

Fiona Watson’s video essay on Keaton ponders the possibility that he was on the Autistic spectrum with a form of ADHD. Fiona is neuro-atypical herself and makes an interesting case especially for those of us with this condition in the family. Ultimately, as she concludes, to be able to make so many wonderful films in the way that this self-taught and self-made man did, required an extraordinary mind.

It’s a wonderful film and an essential acquisition, you can order the limited-edition version direct from the Eureka site using this here link!

Train kept a rollin’… The Signal Tower (1924), Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne, San Francisco Silent Film Festival Streaming

“… so, remember… never think of anything but your duty, until the track’s clear and your train’s safe!”

I’d previously seen a screening of Kevin Brownlow’s own copy of this film with Cyrus Gabrysch accompanying ferociously at a breathless evening at the Kennington Bioscope and this was a chance to see the restored film Kevin had played a major role in constructing with the SFSFF. There were no 35mm copies and so Robert Byrne of the SFSFF, Patrick Stanbury and Mr Brownlow worked with surviving 16mm elements, scanning materials at 4k, digitally repairing and creating a new 35mm negative from which prints were struck that were then dye tinted by specialist chemists in Prague.

The results were screened at the 2019 SFSFF and are astonishingly good, crystal clear with the beauty of the Californian forests fully enhanced and the locomotives as impressively highlighted as the actors. What is it about boys and steam trains? The accompaniment from Stephen Horne, aided by Martin Pyne/Frank on percussion, brought out the full majesty of the setting and the mechanics as well as one of the most febrile of conclusions in silent film.

Virginia Valli wrote a letter to Picture Play magazine from location in Mendocino County “I’m… just about as deep into the wilds of Northern California as any picture player has ever ventured. It’s beautiful; great redwoods, the bluest sky I have ever seen and brown and yellow maple leaves lending a dash of colour to the deep green of the firs. It’s so beautiful it’s actually awe-inspiring.”

This restoration certainly confirms that former and emphasises the “awe” in terms of Clarence Brown’s setting – the entire movie was shot in situ with sets built near the railway tracks – but also his treatment of the locos. In his introduction the Bioscope event and his essay for the SFSFF festival, Brownlow emphasised Brown’s fascination with trains. Brown was an engineer by training and clearly relished filming these steam-powered giants, getting up at the crack of dawn with his cameraman, Ben F. Reynolds, to record the trains powering through the pines with steam billowing above them and into the narrow sunlight.

The company hade rented a stretch of track which had only one service a day and so were able to take their time in presenting the life of this remote outpost and, with plenty of time to stage the most explosive of life-sized stunts: no scale models were damaged in the making of this film.

You can understand Brownlow’s passion for this is a film to make the rail enthusiast’s pulse race that bit faster as this is a film to increase everyone’s BPM as Brown winds the tension to almost unbearable levels: a runaway train speeding down towards a defenceless passenger train, a signal man fighting the elements and time to dislodge the tracks and faced with the horrific dilemma of having to save the many whilst his wife is under imminent threat from a boozed-up Wallace Beery with only one thing on his mind; a very vulnerable Virginia Valli.

Rockliffe Fellows watches an actual train steam by in a signal towerpurpose built on location

Those misty Mendocino Mountains contain a signal box vital to the effective running of the railroads and manned by just two men each working twelve hour shifts. The always upstanding Rockliffe Fellowes plays one of these “Tower Men”, Dave Taylor, whose wife Sally (Virginia Valli of Wild Oranges and The Pleasure Garden fame) and young lad Sonny (Frankie Darro) live in an idyllic wooden house near the tower – three miles from the nearest town.

Dave’s partner Old Bill (James O. Barrows) is indeed old and one-handed and so is replaced by Joe Standish (Wallace Beery) a man who’s flash suit and polished shoes mark him out as self-obsessed from the start and who is referred to as a “railroad Sheik” by one of the company’s engineers.

Dave lets Joe take over old Bill’s old room and he soon sets his sights on Sally even though her cousin Gertie (Dot Farley) initially acts as a kind of shield for his unabashed “sheik-ness”. Sally sends Gertie away to pay more attention to her fiancé unwittingly removing her own last line of defence… Joe soon makes his move and Dave kicks him out.

Wallace Beery and Virginia Valli

A storm is brewing though and as events take a serious turn on the mountain, Joe arrives late and, drunk in the heart of a crisis, forces Dave to take over and, once again kick him out. But that’s not the end of Joe’s nuisance as Dave sees him heading towards his home through the wind and rain… As disaster looms he must choose between Sally’s safety and his responsibilities to protect the passengers.

Beery does his usual top-notch job – his intensity belying his lighter, more likeable edge whilst Valli was the perfect complement, with a vulnerability running alongside her desperate resolution to resist the demon in her house; the film would not work as well without her imbuing Sally with so much depth and without Beery’s ability to kid us that he’s just not going to be as bad this time. Rockliffe Fellowes meanwhile, is the perfect heroic straight man to the descending chaos, a natural straight-backed affability informing his character.

Full marks to young Darro as well, aided and abetted by Jitney the Dog.

The family under threat

Biographer Gwenda Young describes The Signal Tower as one of Brown’s most personal films and he even made an appearance as a switchman trying to stop the runaway train as well as being “Conductor Brown” the addressee of a telegram. The “home invasion” represented by Beery’s character cuts to the heart of every relationship and powerfully contrasts with the accelerating disaster without. For the many or for the crucial few?

It’s a dramatic scenario and one that required a great deal of precision musical engineering from accompanists Stephen Horne and percussionist Martin Pyne with the latter providing the locomotive power to the former’s heat and steam. Brown’s film is full of controlled rhythms and contrasts from the towering bucolic surrounds to the dynamic force of the locomotion and the wayward intensity of the human drama and the score successfully navigated this triple track escalation to the film’s pulsating closure.

For the musician, every note’s a dead man’s handle – for the train driver, everything stops if you release your grip but the music is dependent on the continuation of a thousand stabs of precise pressure: all the right notes and all in the right order with Beery’s leery menace as much a threat as the speed of those locomotives. Stephen’s themes were as strong as you’d expect and the rhythmic requirements brought out the forces pushing the ultimate dramas of family, lives and morality under threat.

So, now is exactly the right time to join the SFSFF and to experience this film which is online until the 4^th April. There’s also a collection of some previous restorations and the promise of more to come. Full details are on their website here.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert… The Virgin of Stamboul (1920), Kennington Bioscope with Cyrus Gabrysch

“The moving finger writes and having writ, caresses a camel…”

This was one of Universal’s most expensive productions and starred the irrepressible Priscilla Dean as Sari, part-time street thief, occasional dancer and full-time force of nature. Kevin Brownlow introduced and held us spellbound recounting his meeting with Ms Dean who, even in her old age was larger than life being a volunteer driver of her local fire truck and as down-to-earth as any former Hollywood idol had any right to be.

Kevin saw this film half a century ago and doubted that it had been projected since and this is the pure essence of Kennington Bioscope; yes, we’re quite spoiled in London with screenings at the BFI, Barbican and elsewhere but at the Cinema Museum we get to see the rare and unusual. It matters not whether every one is a classic; there’s always something to appreciate and this audience is packed full of connoisseurs.

Now, there may have been a little cork in this vintage adventure but with Mr Gabrysch conjuring up a musical meltemi and Pruce – as co-star Wally Beery called her – whipping up a storm, this one flew by without presenting too many surprises: we even get the inevitable Omar Khayyam quote.

Zoonoses are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.

In the streets of Stanboul, the striking Sari steals bread to feed puppies, kisses pigeons as she shares her food and even snogs the odd camel… that’s how committed ‘Cilla was and some evidence of director Tod Browning's gift for strange charm. Naturally she attracts the attention of Capt. Carlisle Pemberton (Wheeler Oakman aka Mr Dean) who is in town to cement an alliance with the Black Horse cavalry of Capt. Kassari (Nigel De Brulier, later John the Baptist, out of the desert in Nazimova’s Salome).

There’s also less welcome attention in the form of Sheik Ahmed Hamid (Bad-boy Beery) who collects wives like some men collect 16mm film and has trust and anger-management issues that spell trouble. Finding out that his favourite wife, Resha (Ethel Ritchie), has been carrying on with a westerner, Hector Baron (Edmund Burns), he kills the man in the mosque. Now, as luck would have it, Sari has snuck into the mosque, even though women, “not having souls” (a false understanding of Islam still persistent in Western views at the time), are not allowed to be there.

Wheeler Oakman was married to Cilla Dean from 1920 to 1926

Sari went there to try and teach herself to pray after overhearing Capt. Carlisle discussing her, and, clearly impressed, wondering out loud if he should teach her… You have the feeling that the Captain’s God may be required to help at some point, especially after Sari attracts the attention of the sour Sheik.

As Carlisle heads off to the desert – which seems remarkably close to Stanboul – Ahmed makes moves to marry Sari by making her mother an offer she can’t refuse… Can Christian fortitude triumph over misguided local custom and will Leery Beery emerge triumphant with his hareem enhanced?

It’s fast paced with a thoroughly predictable yet thrilling ending and Priscilla Dean is impressive throughout although perhaps not the most convincing casting given the film’s title. The film was based on a story by one Herbert Harwell Van Loan… who turned to writing after his vehicle hire business folded (that’s a lie).

Before this we same a vary rare print of a British film, Maria Marten (1928), which was based on a sensational murder in 1827. The film was introduced by Michael Pointon who explained the extraordinary circumstances of the murder where one William Corder shot dead his lover as they met at the Red Barn in Polstead, Suffolk. Corder buried Maria at the barn but pretended she was alive and living with him in Ipswich. He was eventually found out and hanged in public and the murder was so infamous that bits of the rope and indeed his body have been preserved to satisfy public curiosity.

The film moves things back half a century and turns Corder into a nobleman with additional characters to produce something that turns into something like a silent Gypsy Columbo.

There’s some interesting camerawork that showed director Walter West had been watching German films with a great pull-back at a dining table as the nobles celebrate and a sumptuous shot of figures silhouetted through trees on a hill as a man mourns in the foreground. The murder itself, though missing the deed itself, does have real atmosphere and, as the killer emerges from the Red Barn, the shadow of a noose falling grimly on his neck: we know he’s going to get his.

Australian actress Trilby Clark plays the unfortunate Maria and you have to take your hat off (ahem) as she does a good job as does wicked Warwick Ward as her murderer. He’s thoroughly nasty (a bit like a more charming, better looking and much tougher version of Jacob Rees Mogg) and makes the mistake of murdering a gypsy whose daughter he has put in the family way. The man’s son witnesses the event and, after his sister also kills herself, he resolves to join the constabulary and right these wrongs through legal means.

Trilby Clark

It’s sensational stuff but, combined with John Sweeney’s sparkling accompaniment, entertaining as well as historically interesting; it’s always good to see British films of this period and whilst it’s no masterpiece it’s better to exist than not.

And so ends another special year at the Cinema Museum and only 42 days until the next screening on 9^th January!

Warwick Ward and Pola Negri in The Way of Lost Souls (1929)

Beery looms...

Beware of false advertising...

Her name was Pola … The Spanish Dancer (1923), with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope

Pola dancing, Meg Morley playing… it’s enough to make you forget the Lambeth Walk and  flamenco down the Kennington Road.

In his introduction, Amran Vance quoted Jeanine Basinger on Negri’s ability to present emotion throughout form and here her every extension was balletically convincing in a story which sometimes almost put the pain in Spain. You can’t take your eyes of Pola as she ignites the screen with a power and cultured restraint sadly lacking from Wallace Beery’s boorish performance as King Philip IV.

It’s an odd mix of humour and drama that never threatens to take itself too seriously, although if you think the way to a woman’s heart is to shoot her husband and then seductively surprise her on her wedding night; then be my guest. There was the odd snicker at rather than with, but this tone was not unusual in a time of Fairbanks thrills and Barrymore blockbusters: see, how they laugh in the face of death!

Stitch that Pickford!

Any gripes are dispelled by the ambitious direction of Herbert Brenon and the majesty of Negri in a role that lets her dance, fight and love as only she can. Even in the spaces of a vast royal garden party you can see her movement as she leads an energetic group of gypsies in dancing for the Queen. Pola’s gypsy Maritana is distraught as she reads handsome Don Cesar de Bazan (Antonio Moreno) his fortune and faces him with a passion Moreno struggles to match. The story was originally written for Rudolph Valentino and was re-tooled for the female lead, but you can’t imagine even he matching the swash in Pola’s buckle. She’s fierce – Lubitsch fierce – and there’s even a scene nicked from Die Bergkatze (1921) in which she douses herself in cologne.

Herbert Brenon had clearly done his homework and, after two so-so films in Hollywood, the former Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec scored her first major hit, one compared favourably with her old pal Ernst Lubitsch’s work with Mary Pickford in the similar tale of Rosita. Brenon gives Pola every opportunity to show her physicality, dancing and fighting as well as riding a horse and it suits the grand scale of his film in ways few leading actresses could match.

Antonio and Pola...

 Brenon has a cast of thousands and in addition to grand garden parties, shoots a mass carnival scene which is given extra atmosphere by tonnes of confetti and expert depth of field from cinematographer James Wong Howe. There’s excellent tracking work which gives a real feeling of atmosphere as the screen is filled with movement.

Against this are the acute emotions of court intimacy as Adolphe Menjou’s Don Salluste tries to manoeuvre King Phil into betraying his French wife, Queen Isabel of Bourbon (an excellent Kathlyn Williams) who really does deserve better. I liked the way the royal characters are introduced as poor old Velasquez tries to paint Phil and his favourite midgets only to be repeatedly interrupted by every significant new arrival.

Then the gypsies run out at the castle of Don Cesar de Bazan (Antonio Moreno) who is about to fall instantly in love, be declared bankrupt and have to go on the run: a rough night on balance. Luckily his fortune-teller reciprocates and even seeks him out the following day to return a purse one of the gypsies had stolen; the only money he has left it turns out.

I can't watch Adolphe without imagining his Irish brogue and I can't watch Wallace without thinking, "poor Gloria..."

The same young gypsy boy who had stolen the purse, Juan (Robert Agnew who was 23 at the time) turns up next as an ill-treated apprentice to a bullying nobleman. Ironically, Don Cesar defends him from his tormentor and ends up breaking the royal decree: no swordplay on carnival day. Things get really complicated as King Phil decides only the gypsy dancer will do for him and all manner of callous enabling is provided by Don Salluste as events spin seriously out of control…

Making sense of all this was Meg Morley whose exuberant and assured accompaniment was filled with so much content all providing subtle tone and colour to the spectacle. Her understated Latin lines and energy kept pace with every sweep, stomp and throw of the hair, not only from Pola but from Señor Moreno too.

Gimme a break 2017, it's a comedy-drama!!

Another superlative spectacle from Lambeth and London’s finest and, as if all of the above were not enough we were treated to three rare and, in one case, possibly unique, 16mmm films from director and collector, Chris Bird.

The first of these was a Georges Méliès film, Paris to Monte Carlo in Two Hours (1905) – imagine having something like that in your collection!? Prince Leopold can’t be bothered with a 17-hour train journey down south, so a mad motorist gives him a lift at what Phil calculated to be 214 mph. It’s magic Méliès with only one confirmed casualty, a man flattened by the car who is blown up so much he pops.

The great race begins

Next up was a Cecil Hepworth film, Miss Deceit (1915) of which this may have been the only copy remaining – anywhere! It features Johnny Butt as Podgmore, a financial manager who competes with his clerk Whatley (Arthur Staples) for the love of Miss Elysia de Seete (Chrissie White - British film’s first leading lady?). Podgmore keeps Whatley working overtime but the roles are reversed when the latter signs up and becomes a Sergeant. All the girls love a man in uniform, don’t they? Maybe…

Lastly, we faced the real horror of director-to-be James Cruze acting in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912) alongside the delectable Florence La Badie. There’s a lot of potion drinking and gurning as the white-haired Dr J turns painfully into his black-haired and dentally-wayward alter-ego. I also liked the way that not only must the hair change but so must the hat, Hyde purposefully beating it into a jaunty signifier of his up-to-no-goodness. It’s fun and a prime example of the many films Cruze and La Badie were making at the time.

All three were meat and drink to John Sweeney, who took us on a rigorous journey river deep mountain high, via bizarre British love triangles and onto the good, the ugly and La Badie!

Florence and James

Ken Bioscope, you do spoil us rotten sometimes!!

Hyde's bad hat-titude in evidence!

Flo-La-Bad was a stunner

So was Pola

Look at Antonio's hair.

...she was a dancer (classically trained)