Ruan Lingyu in The Goddess (1934) with Zou Ye & ECO, LFF, Queen Elizabeth Hall

It might seem curious that a “goddess” may be an ethereal protector of life as well as a sex worker… but in this case they are very much inter-twined: the lead character can only achieve one by being the other.

I know not even next to nothing about Chinese culture in the thirties and this film was like entering another cinematic universe with those dancing feet of 42^nd Street represent a charming, sugar-coated parallel world in which good things happen to those who wait. Not so here where you may wait a lifetime and never gain happiness: a culture with a conflicted desire to modernise and which was still firmly rooted in the nineteenth century.

Ruan Lingyu

In the desperate Shanghai of 1934 there were as many as 100,000 women scraping a living as a prostitute: around one on thirteen… In the year of the Long March Chinese society was in flux as warlords and politicians struggled for control whilst a newly urbanised peasantry lived in squalor. For a society still viewed as relatively guarded in western eyes, it is surprising to find a film of such unflinching honesty.

The Goddess (神女) was showing in the splendid Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’ Southbank as part of this year’s London Film Festival and also as a continuation of the BFI’s Electric Shadows series of Chinese film past and present.

Another hotel morning...

The film was famously Ruan Lingyu’s last film as she committed suicide within a year of its completion – she was only 24 and on this evidence a performer of the highest order with a range of controlled, natural emotion that cuts through in a very modern way.  If not the Chinese Garbo of legendary cliché but maybe a forerunner of the Isabelle’s Adjani and Huppert: someone who works their interior world very hard and yet gives only glimpses of the powerful turmoil just bubbling below.

Ruan Lingyu and Zhang Zhizhi

She’s almost matched by the baby-faced Zhang Zhizhi who plays her pimp, a compulsive gambler and a bully who can smile and smile and indeed be a villain. But he’s not the clichéd control freak and psychotic bully boy; he’s weak and irresponsible another highly believable character.

Then there is the woman’s young son, played by one Shuiping who gives a very good account of himself… dare I say the Chinese Jackie Coogan? No, he’s his own boy.

The film was written and directed by Wu Yonggang who’s screenplay had been partly inspired by his observing prostitutes ‘forced smiles as they greeted customers: what horrors lay behind those phoney faces? Wu had spent time in Hollywood and his experience is clear from any number of clever tracking shots, expert close ups and a wonderful overhead as the woman engages with another client and the two walk off together to heaven knows how much hotel room misery…

The film is unflinchingly frank throughout as the woman seeks to find a way to support her son using the only option open to her. She is almost run in by the police but takes shelter with her soon-to—be protector who starts to make her work more… profitably.

But she wants more than just subsistence; she doesn’t want her boy to suffer for her faults and starts to hide away money in order to enrol him in school.

Delight at the school play

For a while she succeeds until gossip becomes too much and the kindly principal investigates to see if the boy’s mother is indeed a woman of ill-repute. She reveals the truth but he is impressed with her determination and willingness to sacrifice all to give her son the best possibly chance in life.

But prejudice is rife and the other school governors are not so open-minded nor are the parents. Meanwhile the gambling-pimp finally finds the stash of money, is he about the throw away the only chance the boy will ever get?

The Headmaster calls

No spoilers:  Even if this was a Hays dodging pre-code Hollywood film, there would be retribution in store but here the twists and turns have the ring of truth and you’re never certain of the end game as the story plays its course. It remains a genuinely moving experience and a story the resonated strongly for every parent in the room.

Chinese composer Zou Ye’s newly commissioned score moved with subtle grace alongside the film in perfect step courtesy of the thirty-piece English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Chalmers. It was a perfectly judged accompaniment that interwove modern themes with more traditional sequences: a bridge connecting us to the time and the place…

There was long and loud applause at the end from the mixed audience of bearded silent cognoscenti and Jermyn Street bespoke-tailored concert buff-age: we really liked the music but, for most, I would think the vision of Ruan Lingyu will live in the min a while longer.

As Stanley Kwan said in the programme notes: “I was stunned by her performance, which was subtle and rich – an emotional tour de force. It was amazing to me that such a thing could be achieved in silent cinema…”

The Goddess is available in reasonable quality, free-to-view at the Internet Archive, not a patch on this crystal clear restoration though! Catch it if you can: the cinematic world was clearly always bigger than it seemed.

Unimaginable… Damn the War! (1914)/ Airship Over the Battlefields (1919) w Stephen Horne, LFF, BFI

The first silent offerings at this year’s London Film Festival and a double bill juxtaposing a film imagining what a modern war could be like with one documenting the devastation after four years in which the mechanics of modern destruction had taken their horrific toll. One was a sad, technically-impressive drama and the other was reality almost beyond belief:  the smashed ghost towns of northern France and a land pock-marked with craters and scarred by the still-open wounds of never ending trench-lines.

Albert Hendrickx, Fernand Crommelynck, Suzanne Berni, Nadia D'Angely and Baert

Released in May/June 1914, just a few short weeks before the real war began, Alfred Machin’s Damn the War! (Maudite soit la guerre) was a plea for peace as Europe began to look far too small to contain the ambition within. A Belgian film directed by a Frenchman, the ironies can hardly be stacked higher given the Schlieffen Plan.

Machin’s film involved a war between two fictitious countries and the impact it has on the Modzel family as their son’s best friend Adolphe Hardeff (Baert) fights on the opposing side to their son, Sigismond (Albert Hendrickx). To add further spice their daughter Liza (Suzanne Berni) is in love with Adolphe.

Adolphe says farewell to Liza

Adolphe comes to train with Sigismond’s air squadron returning the favour his country had extended to his new comrade. Sigismond takes Adolphe home to meet his parents, Mother (Nadia D'Angely), father (Fernand Crommelynck) as well as his swell sister. The training goes well and relations all round are good but, out of nowhere, war is declared and the two friends find themselves on opposing sides.

Adolphe doesn’t believe in the conflict and hands Liza his photograph with the words “damn the war!” written on it. But he’s a professional soldier and he will do his duty.

The film looks sumptuous and has been restored by the Belgium film institute not just the print quality but also the coloured sections produced using a painstaking approach involving the stencilling of colours onto every frame. Two stencilled prints were used and one black and white: the result is stunning – the Edwardian era in colour.

The colours work especially well in the battle sequences, highlighting the troop movements as hundreds of Belgian army extras move into mock charges. There’s also an explosive sequence as Adolphe leads an audacious attack on an airbase, destroying a range of balloons and turning the screen red.

Sigismond is sent up to intercept Adolphe’s plane and succeeds in knocking him out of the sky, the two friends move closer in their unknowing pursuit of each other as the forces gather around a cornered Adolphe…  the heroic qualities of both men come to the fore and no one is getting out of this alive.

Lieutenant Maxime romances Liza

One of Sigismond’s squadron, Lieutenant Maxime (Henri Goidsen), delivers the news back to the family. He takes an instant shone to Liza and as time passes they grow close but there’s to be one final twist of the tale as the full human cost of the conflict is finally revealed…

Just off the plane from Pordenone, Stephen Horne illustrated the story with his trademark lyricism, with flute, piano and accordion used to good effect: intricately stencilled sounds to highlight this colourfully-sad vision of a war that might come…

Jacques Trolley de Prévaux

After the war that did happen, Airship Over the Battlefields (En Dirigeable sur les Champs de Bataille) was filmed in the summer of 1919 using a navy airship piloted by Jacques Trolley de Prévaux. The main cameraman was Lucien Lesaint although others were involved.

Introducing, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, said this was part of a series of initiatives aimed at reminding people of the horrors of The War to End all Wars. The full film is 78 minutes long but we were shown about a third of that - enough to give full flavour of the scorched earth even nine months after the armistice.

Not even a spring and summer could return the leaves to so many of the trees, and the only real signs of renewal on this toxic ground were the new roads driven through flattened towns and blasted battlegrounds which even today still give up their annual harvest of unexploded ordinance.

Looking at the towns was like a flash forward to Dresden or Coventry, even Hiroshima, so expertly had the bombardments levelled almost every building. Town after town came into view and you kept one expecting to see something whole but there was nothing there but a few robust walls on roof-less buildings with empty windows all propped up by rubble.

The Great War is often characterised as a contest of military forces against each other – yet the huge “collateral” impact on non-combatants was there for all to see.

This was a difficult film to soundtrack and Stephen Horne used an electronic keyboard along with his piano to play moving accompaniment. His playing was sparse and restrained, subtly echoing the horrific implications of the destroyed landscapes on view and bringing out the humanity from the cathedral husks.

Both films will live long in the memory and for different reasons. Damn the War! may have been a fiction but if more people made films like Alfred Machin’s, perhaps we wouldn’t have to watch films recording the impact of conflict.

A version of Damn the War! is available on the European Film Gateway courtesy of the EYE Film Instituut Nederland. It's an unusual visual treat as the bonus screen shots below show...

A game of two Talmadges… The Heart of Wetona (1919) vs Secrets (1924)

Of all the major stars of the silent ere – and I mean major - Norma Talmadge seems to be one of the hardest for modern viewers to connect with. Jeanine Basinger* is particularly good value of this point suggesting that whilst sister Constance had a definite persona that rises above her films, Norma was a more protean presence dependent on the strength of her material and that material was very much attuned to the tastes of the time.

For me, there’s no doubt Norma was the better dramatic actress, had greater performing ambition and more range – no matter how much I love “Dutch” as well. Her controlled expression was certainly put to good effect in Going Straight, Smiling Through and The Devil’s Needle and even lighter fare such as The Social Secretary. She could hold the camera’s gaze as well as Mary and Lillian and she was more womanly-grown-up than either and maybe that’s part of the problem.

Norma was often cast, even by herself,  as a lower middle class woman in situations of moral compromise and the audiences lapped these films up even if now their story lines are too over-used to generate much dramatic impact , no matter her skills as an actress. Perhaps she and husband/producer Joseph Schenck targeted the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation too firmly at their winning formula: the popular middle ground?

And how tastes change.

These two films represent extremes of Norma’s career: one an almost risible western and the other a far classier affair well directed by Frank Borzage and allowing the actress to really show her ability. They show what she could do and what she clearly chose to do and the day job served her very well…

Wetona worries...

The Heart of Wetona (1919) features Norma as the daughter of a white mother and an Indian chief Quannah (Fred Huntley), she has been educated in the East but still speaks in broken English… This is a film about the nobility of the savage as well as their hot-headed-ness and adherence to strange old religions. Of its time… naturally.

It’s also a remarkably frank film in terms of young Wetona’s sex life. She creates a scene at the tribe’s tribute to their gods by revealing her inappropriate casting as their “vestal virgin”: she has been having relations with a white man and father, severely unimpressed, plans to exact messy retribution.

Gladden James looking shifty

The guilty man is irresponsible Anthony Wells (Gladden James – who always looks a wrong ‘un) a young man who avoids responsibility at every turn in spite of the patronage of Government agent, Hardin (the asdmirable Mr Thomas Meighan).

Hardin offers to take responsibility until such time as Hardin is “ready”… it sounds a bit vague but we get the drift. Wetona goes along, her faith in Tony remarkably unshaken… even though we’ve worked him out long ago.

Wetona about to fail the vestal medical...

No spoilers… you can probably work it out for yourself. Needless to say, James is suitably craven, Huntley is a very noble savage and Meighan is excellent as the stand-up, stand-by guy.

Norma has a lot of screen time and a fair amount of close-ups to allow her to show her skill but the story rings slightly false in spite of some genuine conflict and peril, most of it constructed on narrative sand…  That face simply isn’t given enough emotional to work with and the close-ups only serve to remind the viewer how much real drama is missing.

Thomas Meighan and Norma

The Variety reviewer was unimpressed…  “…it is hardly a star part for Miss Talmadge. To be sure she is the pivotal character about which the plot revolves, but the role is purely a receptive one, and she is called upon to do little but pose as the bearer of the heavy burdens.”

Then again, Edward Weitzel was more positive in Moving Picture World, January 4, 1919 “…none of her impersonations has revealed deeper feeling or a better understanding of the art of acting. There is never the slightest doubt in the mind of the spectator as to what Norma Talmadge is trying to convey. …she is picturesque and beautifully human…”

See… even then “… the bearer of heavy burdens…” but "...beautifully human..." all the same.

Secrets (1924) is an altogether more satisfying film not just because of a superior story but obviously through Borzage’s inventive direction which provides a much richer dramatic scope. Based on a stage play – itself adapted from an opera – the film starts in the present and works forward from the past in a clever script from Frances Marion.

It’s 1924 and Norma is seventy-something Mary Carlton anxiously waiting for an improvement in the failing health of her husband John (Eugene O’Brien). She barely looks like Norma (30 at the time) and, even through the poor quality haze of the Silents are Golden DVD, she is clearly relishing the range of this role. She begins to look through her old diary and drifts off remembering her earlier life…

Norma goes from 1924 back to 1865...

We’re whisked back to 1865 when a 16-years old Mary is being prepared for a ball by her mother (Emily Fitzroy) and aunt. This is the lightest-hearted part of the film and there’s much fun to be had with the application of various large constructs that form parts of the tent-like evening wear… The joviality stops when Mary’s father, William (George Nichols) reveals that he has discovered her nascent affair with one of his clerks (O’Brien).

George O'Brien and Norma Talmadge

Mary is locked in her room but decides to elope – on a penny farthing no less – with young John and to head off for America…

Five years later and the couple have established a home stead and have a small baby. A doctor calls to tend to the sick infant and reveals that a gang led by local ruffian Jack are intent on gaining revenge on him for his part in capturing one of their own.

The gang duly arrive and John defends house supported by Mary who refuses to let him sacrifice himself. The tense battle is lent further poignancy when Mary discovers her baby has perished and confirms the death by using a mirror to try and detect any signs of breathing… the saddest of silent mimes. Realising her husband must fight on, Mary cuddles the dead baby pretending that he is asleep…and  you’d have to be made of granite not to be moved. Talmadge handles these moments with incredible grace.

Holding a mirror up to life

Moving forward to Mary’s 39th birthday in 1888 we hit one of the missing sections of this copy4 – by now Mary has three more children Blanche (Alice Day), Audrey (Mae Giraci) and John Jnr (Donald Keith – Merton of the Movies himself!). She has also been reconciled with her family.

But another crisis takes place as her husband’s affair with one Mrs. Estelle Manwaring (Gertrude Astor) is revealed by her parents. Matters come to a head when Estelle arrives and brazenly asks for Mary to let John go, claiming that she has ruined his life and cannot make him happy… it’s a point of view but we wonder what the steadfast Mrs Carlton could possibly have done…

Gertrude Astor, Donald Keith and Norma Talmadge

Mary being Mary she offers to let John go if he truly loves Estelle who senses victory only to have her hopes dashed as John returns and decides no contest… Norma’s performance of quiet resolution and dignity is persuasive and genuinely moving…

The scene shifts forward to the present day: will there be one last act for Mr and Mrs Carlton?

“It is a work of art, deftly handled with a divine touch that makes it stand out as one of the greatest screen characterizations in years…” raved Variety, before continuing...“The direction of Frank Borzage must be credited with a great part in the success that the picture is certain to have. He has taken Miss Talmadge and handled her in a manner that makes her reveal artistry such as she never displayed heretofore…”

Silent scream

Photoplay agreed saying that “The photography, particularly in the first part of the picture, is touched with real loveliness. And the scenario, by Frances Marion, is always searchingly human. But it is the personality, and the ability of Norma Talmadge that makes this a thing worth seeing.”

This final point takes us back to Jeanine Basinger’s comment: but here it was not just Norma’s talent that was engaged – there was a very personal investment in the performance that gave it such integrity. An actor must draw on personal experience to convince but there’s always control. Maybe with the right combination of director, script and circumstance, Norma Talmadge really put on a show?

We should see more… unfortunately only Wetona is currently available on DVD and it is to be hoped that Secrets and Norma's other film with Frank Borzage, The Lady (1925) will someday get the release and restoration they deserve.

*In her book Silent Stars - essential reading!
** Press comments lifted from Greta de Groat's superlative Talmadge site. Go straight there now!