The old magic remains... The Enchanted Cottage (1924), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter No. 26

"To anyone with a poetic soul, this picture will be a rare treat. But the too literal person will be sadly disappointed. A picture for folk who dare to dream. As such we cannot recommend it too highly."

Photoplay, June 1924 (see below)

 

This is a fascinating film on so many levels and I’m not surprised Edward Lorusso chose it as his 26^th Kickstarter Project and that he aimed for a specially written score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra for this Blu-ray presentation. It’s a tale of post-war angst and redemption that for all the accusations of melodrama does indeed address the very real issues for those of the audience who did not look like movie stars or who were disabled, injured during the Great War as were an estimated six million British and German soldiers alone.

 

It's also rare to see two leading stars, in this case, Richard Barthelmess and May McAvoy, and who aren’t called Lon Chaney, playing disfigured versions of themselves in romantic leading roles. Barthelmess plays former British officer Oliver Bashforth who was so badly injured his body is twisted out of shape whilst McAvoy has false teeth to play the “plain” Laura Pennington a challenge to the prevailing demand of Hollywood to portray the most beautiful people in the most beautiful of ways. Both give of their best and their performances elevate what is a slight story to levels of poignancy that still resonate.

 

Ed made a 4k scan of the Library of Congress’ 35mm print, perhaps the only surviving copy on this stock, which had oddly been copied onto stock containing the music track from another film. He cropped the music off and makes the most of what is a pretty decent print to which he added new opening credits which fit very well with the style of Gertrude Chase’s intertitles. The result also highlights Livingston Platt’s gorgeous designs of the titular cottage, enabling us to feel anew the romantic and possibly even supernatural properties of this space.

Richard Barthelmess

The film was based on the 1923 play by Arthur Wing Pinero who was also impressed by this design. His story echoed others of the time in its desire for damaged people to be made somehow whole again by romantic love or dreams coming true against all reason. You can understand why such stories were popular after the war and the flu pandemic and there are so many works of fiction reflecting this. Lorusso quotes Testament of Youth, the memoir of British nurse and activist Vera Brittain, whilst at the time there were comparisons with JM Barrie’s supernatural Mary Rose which had its premiere in 1920. Pinero was aiming more for the redemption through love of Barrie’s Sentimental Tommy, written in 1896 and made into a film, now lost, in 1921.

 

Directed by John S. Robertson with a scenario from Josephine Lovett the film hedges its bets on the supernatural elements of the “enchantment” and you can just as easily read it as a tale of two people who find themselves against all odds in terms of class, physicality and looks.

 

Soul and body awry, Oliver sought out the pain of his own reflection…

 

We find Oliver Bashforth wounded and miserable still trying to fit in with the rather shallow lives of his upper-class family and friends… The stiff upper lip is much in evidence from his father whilst his mother is caring if trapped in her circumstances whilst his sister Ethel – a spirited turn from Florence Short – just thinks he should shake himself out of it, a mindset very much still prevalent among the conservative British classes. In modern parlance, The Enchanted Cottage is something of a treatise on PTSD or “shell shock” as it used to be called at this time and as explored in Pat Barker’s exceptional Regeneration Trilogy. Whatever the changes to Oliver’s perceived reality during the film, he recognises his crisis which, for psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, who pioneered treatments of post-traumatic stress and is one of Barker’s subjects, is part of the road to wellness.

May McAvoy, yes, really...

At the start though Oliver forces himself to release his fiancée after she has quite clearly fallen for his able-bodied pal. Heartbroken, he goes to hide himself away at a remote country cottage, downsizing his status along with his outlook on life and possibility. His only companion is housekeeper Mrs. Minnett (Ethel Wright) who, an intertitle notes, is possessed of the uncanny intuition sometimes found in simple folk. That condescending sentence may well hit the nail on the head.

 

Into Oliver’s darkened misery floats the sounds of children playing and to his dismay he finds that his poisoned reverie has been introduced by the simple honesty of the plain and lonely governess Laura Pennington (McAvoy) along with her friend Major Hillgrove (Holmes Herbert) who is blind and can therefore only hear the truth around him with the aid of the classic cinematic trope insisting that losing one sense enhances those that remain… but why not?

 

The text is pretty brutal and hard to read but there’s no doubt that Laura may well be a wonderful human being but she is “hopelessly plain but… dependable…” and that reliability is of tremendous value with, “… plain women the bricks of the World.” McAvoy’s extra teeth and extended nose can’t hide her glowing eyes though and she’s clearly enjoying this role. She pretty quickly bursts Oliver’s misery bubble and explains that he’s living in Honeymoon Cottage, for three centuries a go-to destination for newly married good folk.

 

Father and Ethel (Florence Short)

With his sister Ethel offering to come to the cottage and look after him, Oliver gets desperate and hatches a plan to marry his new – plain – friend so that they can be left alone. McAvoy is great value here, portraying her character’s heart breaking a-new as this man whom she’d come to love sees her only as a device. But strange things begin to happen after they are wed and the ghosts of honeymooners past float through the rooms of the cottage, possibly visible to Laura and Oliver but certainly palpable in spirit.

 

All I see Laura, is your unselfishness – your tenderness – how blind I’ve been you are beautiful!

 

Sooner or later, the inevitable happens and the two realise that they are in love but is this a supernatural or even Christian moment or are they, and the audience, now seeing their idealised versions, a hale and hearty Barthelmess and a beautiful McAvoy. There’s only one way to find out, call in Oliver’s family to meet the new bride and put their closeted romance to the test…

 

The spirits of romance?

The Enchanted Cottage is a sweet film and it makes some brave decisions for the time allowing both those wonderful leads to express its emotive content to the full. I doubt there was a dry eye by the end in 1924 and a century later, this Cottage is still Enchanted. The magic is also manifested by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra who play pianist Rodney Sauer’s score to perfection with the cello of David Short and violin of Britt Swenson aided by the clarinet of Brian Collins and the trumpet of Dawn Kramer. The ensemble are always so good at comedy and here they present their more soulful side.

 

Thank you to them and especially Ed Lorusso for another project well realised; how else would we find this enchantment? Hopefully it will get a wider release after the Kickstarters as it’s a film many would find resonant.   

 

Photoplay recommends...

 

Silent Day… The Seventh Silent Film Weekender, The Kennington Bioscope

Seeing the bright lights tonight... KB MC Michelle Facey

A special Saturday in Kennington, an early start and an onslaught of mostly unseen-by-me silent film in the company of the most informed audience in London, some of the very best accompanists – familiar and new – programmers operating on a global level, along with driven collectors and the silent-addicted who just can’t say no to the possibility of unexpected glimpse of Oliver Hardy or a dolly-reverse shot from a film made in 1910.

 

Not for Sale (1924) with Neil Brand, BFI 35mm print

“You taught him nothing and now you’ve left him with nothing.”

 

Directed by W. P. Kellino and starring Mary Odette, Ian Hunter, Gladys Hamer and Mary Brough, this was Hunter’s screen debut. It is always fascinating to see homegrown silent films on screen and to watch a discrete re-write of history as more are revealed as not only competent but skilled and enjoyable – see East Lynne below! - and “charming” is not to damn this British comedy with faint praise but to accurately reflect its infectious good humour, energy and sense of fun.

Hunter plays Martin Dering wayward son of the Earl of Rathbury (Edward O'Neill) who is half-heartedly engaged to Virginia Strangeways (Phyllis Lytton) who is, along with her ne’er-do-well brother Bertie (Lionelle Howard), are the people he trusts most in the world as they are tied to him through loyalty to his money. Martin loans Bertie his £3,000 quarterly allowance for some madcap scheme and, of course, doesn’t get it back… Don’t worry, says Martin, there’s plenty more where that came from… only this time there isn’t as he’s cut off by Daddy and left with only a fiver a week on the condition that he finds a job.

He chances upon a guest house in Bloomsbury Square run by Annie Armstrong (Mary Odette) with the aid of a relative or two, including her cheeky brother John (a barnstorming performance from young Mickey Brantford). Their father has passed away leaving them his paintings as well as the house but they struggle to make ends meet. Martin quickly impresses John with his debut at the dinner table, rebuffing the attentions of the other guests – played by the kinds of character actors you can only find in these kind of films… and enlists him into his anti-lodger society. There’s a secret sign: pull on your nose, tug your earlobe and thumb to temple, waggle your fingers… it could catch on, slightly easier than The High Sign.

Will he succeed or will he fail? Refreshingly Annie may be the one to show the men how life should be lived… (remembering that she’s also just got the vote at this point).

Gladys Hamer tries to see the funny side.

James Searle Dawley, Forgotten Film Pioneer with John Sweeney 35mm and digital prints

“Unless one appreciates the beautiful things in life, he cannot be a successful director…”

This presentation by Dave Peabody, film-researcher by day, blues musician by night, looked at the career of James Searle Dawley, who has been called `The First Professional Motion Picture Director’ and more of a major figure than I’d ever assumed. Dawley was a contemporary of DW Griffith, born two years after him in 1877, who became the first person to be hired solely as a film director when Edward S. Porter recruited him for Edison. He’s probably most famous for the 1910 version of Frankenstein (screened later in the day) but, as Dave demonstrated, over his career of 56 features and 300 shorts, was a crafter of innovative and enjoyable films.

We saw the Edison film Rescued from an Eagles Nest (1908) featuring Griffith as a woodsman recuing his baby (Jinnie Frazer) from the nest of a rather impressive bald eagle then the extraordinary Cupid’s Pranks (1908) featuring in-camera split screen trickery with the eponymous demi-God flying over Manhattan spreading the love. Then there was Laughing Gas (1907) featuring Bertha Regustus extraordinarily energetic reaction to exposure to nitrous oxide; do not try this at home kids. There was that audacious reverse dolly shot in The Song that Reached His Heart (1910) and another time-jarring moment with Eubie Blake’s astonishing piano playing for Improvisation on Swanee River (1923), one of Lee DeForests pioneering optical sound on film productions directed by Dawley.

Apart from Eubie, we had John Sweeney accompanying the other films and doing a might fine job as usual, from Cupid’s flying, historical battles and Snow White to gaseous hilarity he’s always your man. Talking of which… it was time to get EPIC!

 

Bertha Regustus definitely gets the joke!

The Last Days of Pompeii (1913) with John Sweeney BFI 35mm print

“The production is without question the most sensational and spectacular artistic film ever conceived…”

Now then, this was one of two competing versions of the story made in Italy during 1913 and I had assumed that this was the other as produced by Ambrosio and directed by Eleuterio Rodolfi and Mario Caserini, but no, this was directed by Giovanni Enrico Vidali for Pasquali & Co. and was released just four days after with the accompanying breathless blurb!  As with the other film, it was based on British novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton published in 1834, which was itself inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov, handily displayed before the screening.

This was a 65-minute version compared with the 78-minute version of the Ambrosio film available on the Kino DVD and which has a slight lead on IMBD probably because it is more widely seen. It was a treat to view the competition and it’s perhaps a more immediate and kinetic film with a simpler story albeit one jumbled by a mix of lost materials and some intertitles that linger for just a few frames on screen. It also lacks the tints of the Ambrosio which features more extras but fewer lions and horses… probably!

Suzanne De Labroy is this film’s Nydia who is the faithful blind slave who helps the young couple of Glaucus (Luigi Mele) and Jone (Cristina Ruspoli) escape the evil schemes of the high priest Arbaces (Giovanni Enrico Vidali multi-tasking) who has his eye on advancing the cause of the Egyptian gods as well as stealing Jone for himself.

As with the other version, this film represents the high point of tableaux films with static cameras capturing intricately choreographed action capture on a large scale with those “100 lions and tigers, 300 people and 50 gladiators…” promised by the advertising. It is well played and most enjoyable especially with John Sweeney’s dynamism and classical lines; if there’s one person you can trust to “play Pompeii erupting” it’s John! He raised the roof too.

The fifty gladiators in action

Restored Laughter: Lubin Films, with Neil Brand and Sam Geoghegan scans of 35mm nitrate, digital & 16mm prints

Presented by Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass this programme examined the legacy of the Lubin company and featured recent restorations sourced from private and other collections and also from the Cinema Museum’s own archives. The two shared their wealth of knowledge on the all too few films that survive from the company set up and run by Siegmund Lubin, a German émigré who initially specialised in “interpretations” of other films such as Méliès A Trip to the Moon and Edison’s Great Train Robbery.

Lubin films became more original and here were featured early turns from an impossibly young Alan Hale as well as some fella named Oliver Hardy who was especially impressive in a pleasing romantic comedy, A Lucky Strike (1915) in which the cruel jokes are on him but he still gets the girl and a fortune. We also saw The New Valet (1915) which featured Billie Reeves, one of Chaplin and Laurel’s mentors at the Fred Karno’s company and a man who refused to be moulded into a Charlie-wannabe, no matter how much the company would have wanted it.

Piano accompaniment came from Mr Neil Brand who relished these rare comedy grooves, and from the ten-year old grandson of the Bioscope’s Bob Geoghegan, Sam Geoghegan who won rapturous applause for his first live accompaniment and rightly so, Sam was very fluent, calm under pressure and felt his way along the narrative on screen; a very good job indeed!

 

Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass

East Lynne (1913) Restoration Premiere with Colin Sell, 35mm nitrate scan

As Christopher Bird said in his introduction, East Lynne is not a lost film as such but when quality is, as Kevin Brownlow says, the main thing archive cinema has to sell itself to modern audiences, this film has certainly been missing in terms of the vibrancy, contrast and tasty tints we glimpsed today. Chris obtained an almost complete nitrate copy from a private collector which, compared with the black and white copy held by the BFI is missing the first reel but comes with an extra three minutes and those higher quality tints. Together with fellow Bioscoper Bob Geoghegan and the BFI the restoration work is ongoing and the hope is to present the finished item at this year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.

 

What we saw was a visual feast as it is with good use of depth-of-field, form, foliage (!) and texture by director Bert Haldane and his photographer Oscar Bovill. Fritzi Kramer has been involved in reconstructing some of the film’s title cards and, as she said to Chris, melodramas like this have to be watched in the spirit in which they were made and meant to be received – “loving the hokum, not taking it too seriously”. That said, there are some impressive performances from a very modern-looking cast led by Blanche Forsythe (who has the look of Annette Bening or is it just me?) as Lady Isobel, handsome Fred Paul and the steadfast Archibald Carlyle and who-ever it was playing Barbara Hare, the sister of the man falsely accused of a murder committed by Isobel would be paramour, Captain Levison as played with pantomime menace by Fred Morgan.

 

The film is well-made, even Rachel Lowe admired it as one of the better Brit-flicks of this period, and it stands up against most films of the year in what was a time of innovation as the industry stretched out well ahead of DW’s supposed game-changer in 1915. It’s interesting to compare the relatively naturalistic performances of these stage-trained British actors with those from the more operatically spectacular Pompeii… Whoever it is plays Mr Dill, continues acting and reacting even as he is relegated to the background in one scene whilst Mary Morton as the maid Joyce, is one of a number of strong supporting actors, the less said about the two blonde and robotic man-servants the better though.

 

I like the nods to period politics when Carlyle goes up against the scheming Levison to become the local MP, there are signs calling for the abolishment of the Window Tax and the Corn Tax (Corn Laws), as well as in support of Chartism which indicate that the evil one is a radical Whig whilst the goodie is a Tory. For the sake of history, I should point out that the repeal of the Corn Laws was only a good thing whilst the Chartists stood apart from both main parties and were calling for things like a vote for all men over 21, secret ballots and an end to property qualification for MPs, of their six main demands, all but one – annual elections – were achieved by 1919. I can write you an essay if you like! It is interesting that the baddie is on the side of these dangerous ideas though…

 

Blanche Forsythe and - booo! - Fred Morgan

Oh, Willie, my child dead, dead, dead! and he never knew me, never called me mother!

 

Ellen Wood wrote East Lynne in 1961 and it was followed by A Life’s Secret (serialised in 1862) which attacked what she saw as unscrupulous Trade Unionists and caused a riot and threats to the still anonymous author… She was the daughter of a glove manufacturer and later married another industrialist; her books were sensationalist and hugely popular. East Lynne was adapted into a play - East Lynne. A Domestic Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts by T. A. Palmer in 1874 and it was on stage where the story became a phenomena, almost guaranteeing success and the half-joking line “East Lynne’s playing next week”. It was also the source of much ridicule with Palmer’s line during Little Willie’s death scene, given birth to the term “dead and never called me mother…”

 

Colin Sell, who must have heard Barry Cryer use that line at least once or twice, played along in splendidly sensational fashion, in sympathy with and for the film and audience. A splendid job all round for this re-emerging British milestone.

 

He Who Gets Slapped (1924) was to follow but domestic responsibilities led me homeward. It’s a fabulous film which I have written about elsewhere on this sites near 1,000 posts. Many of those pieces have been about the Bioscope and hopefully many more will follow for, as today showed once again, it’s hard to compete with the range and passion of this gathering of like minds in Charlie’s old workhouse.

The Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, 10 April 1848, just a few minutes down the road from the old Lambeth Workhouse which opened in 1873 and which now houses the Cinema Museum and the Kennington Bioscope...

Boys don’t cry… Two Films by Yasujirố Ozu, BFI Blu-ray Out Now

The BFI release two newly restored films, presented on Blu-ray, I Was Born, But… (1932) and a longer, previously unreleased version of There Was a Father (1942). An Adult's Picture Book View — I Was Born, But... to give its full title was Ozu’s 25th film and he had 30 more years of filmmaking to go but, already, he was an absolute master of the form with so much gorgeous technique and a way with actors of all ages that brought out such warmth and humour.

 

I Was Born, But… (1932)

This film is a journey of discovery for two young brothers and yet they teach the adults as much as they learn. Tomio Aoki and Hideo Sugawara are two fine actors and are clearly well-directed in delivering relaxed and believable performances with Ozu’s camera and eye pulled down to their level, we well remember school days like these. Ozu was a master of the family dynamic and here, as in his later works, you see a fully rounded unit built on love, disappointment and stretched by social obligations. In some ways, it’s a slight story but told with almost novelistic attention to detail – it feels so rich.

Sugawara and Aoki play Ryoichi and Keiji (the youngest although he was actually slightly older), the two sons of a businessman, Kennosuke Yoshi (Tatsuo Saitō) and his wife, Haha (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) who have moved to the Tokyo suburbs – an area with improved education and where they will be closer to his boss Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto); such are the obligations of working life.

Hideo Sugawara and Tomio Aoki

Almost immediately the boys encounter difficulties with the local children who take against them in the way children do. The biggest boy pushes Keiji down and he runs to get Ryoichi to stand up for him. Sheer weight of numbers plays against them but, as the Yoshi’s escape, the boys promise to get their full revenge in school. One of the smaller members of the gang is played by Masao Hayama who is now 98 and hopefully still up to no good!

The next day their courage fails them as they sight of the gang at school leads the boys to play truant and forge their schoolwork. The plan almost works until their teacher tells their father who, on hearing their reasons for avoiding school tells them to ignore the bullies. But, as every child knows, this tactic rarely works and so it proves. But the boys are made of stern stuff and after fighting back and being helped by an older delivery boy called Kozou (Shoichi Kofujita) the biggest boy is despatched. Kozou won’t do anything about Taro (Seiichi Kato) the son of their father’s boss and also a very good customer of Kozou’s company.

Lads...

The playground hierarchies are, as we grow to learn, not that dissimilar to adult ones and the boys become alarmed to see their father – seemingly – playing the fool to win favour with his manager, Iwasaki when they go along with Taro to watch cinefilm at his house.

Disgusted they both confront their father and ask why he must be subservient – he’s my director and he pays me… says the father and the boys say he should refuse to accept the pay and pay his director… Not one I’ve tried I’ll admit but, as the two come to terms with the sacrifices their dad must make they realise that compromise and ambition aren’t necessarily incompatible. By the same token Kennosuke accepts he must keep his eye on his own goals…

Not a lot happens but a lot happens… it’s an Ozu classic!

 

 

There Was a Father (1942)

I told them it was dangerous, but if I’d been sterner and firmer, I could’ve stopped them…

As Adrian Martin explains in his detailed commentary, this film existed in two forms until its recent restoration: one made at the height of the Second World War with references to that conflict and a propagandist brief and another recut to remove these elements after the American occupation post-war. The film has now been restored to its original form and we can see for ourselves how skilfully Ozu dealt with issues of loss and responsibility even within the constraints of the Imperial regime.

Family being always such a strong concern for the director, even in these circumstances he was exploring the issue of honour and duty as well as when and how one should express emotion as Martin says; when you are able to surrender to sadness and cry. There is also the question of duty and whatever the circumstances, continuing to work and to continue to contribute to the state no matter the impacts on personal status and advancement.

Chishū Ryū

The film begins with the death of a student in a boating accident and the teacher in charge, Shuhei (Chishū Ryū, who famously appeared in 52 of Ozu’s 54 films) takes responsibility even though no one, not even the young boy’s parents blame him. He feels that he has no other honourable course than to resign and to find another way of contributing to society and looking after his son, Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda) making sure he gets the best education.

There are some beautiful settings as you’d expect from Ozu and none more so than when father and son are fishing, moving their lines in unison in a wide, low-running river. Shuhei is talking to his son about his exams and then discussing his move to the middle school where he will have to board. The realisation makes Ryohei pause and the last cast is made by his father alone, such a powerful way of showing the first beginnings of the inevitable separation of the two. “Rhyming between one of them and another…” as Martin describes it.

Shuhei goes to Tokyo to work in as a clerk in an office, leaving Ryohei behind to his schooling. The film jumps forward a few years to his meeting with old friend and former boss at his old headmaster, now retired, Makoto Hirata (Takeshi Sakamoto). The two socialise at Hirata’s house meeting his 21-year-old daughter Fumi (Mitsuko Mito) and her bratty younger brother. Ryohei is now 25 (and played by Shūji Sano), graduated from university and teaching at a technical school… one cycle is complete.

Father and son live apart and as elsewhere in Ozu, loneliness and obligation are an eternal tension within families. As in I Was Born But… trains also play a part, here reminding Ryohei’s students of their potential journeys home just as in the former film, trains come between characters as signifiers of a divided future.

Whatever or wherever, treat your job like it’s your calling… with no complaints. Everyone has a role to fulfil. Abide by it.

Ryohei comes to visit and the two enjoy a spa bath before a hearty meal, a few too many drinks and a cigarette… relishing each other’s company. They both want to live closer together but Shuhei says that work is your duty and must not be sacrificed, his son must not complain and must abide. Trials and tenacity bring true happiness. The two go fishing again and the same coordination is seen between the two, their understanding running deep.

The final third of the film concerns a school reunion as former pupils now based in Tokyo, arrange to meet with Shuhei and Hirata, and introduced wonderfully by a shot of dozens of hats, all discarded in the cloakroom for the event. Here will be a chance to look back but also resolve future directions.

Chishū Ryū and Shūji Sano

The film critic Noel Burch describes Ozu’s downplaying of melodrama as “de-dramatisation” (in his book To the Distant Observer: Towards a Theory of Japanese Film (1975)) and also describes There Was a Father as “a film of excruciating sublimation…” A great deal of what happens takes place off-screen, the death of the child, Ryohei’s time in university they are not the centre of the personal drama that must play out at its own pace.

There is a mournful beauty in Ozu’s method and whilst this is not at the same level as his finest work it still packs a punch and, along with the older film, makes this new set essential viewing for admirers of his work and cinema at its purest!

 

Special features

• Newly restored and presented in High Definition
• Newly recorded audio commentaries on both films by writer and film critic Adrian Martin
• First pressing only an essential Illustrated booklet with essays by Bryony Dixon and Tony Rayns, and by Ed Hughes who composed a new score for I Was Born, But…, credits

 

It Was Released, But…

This collection is, of course, a must for any fan of Ozu and silent film in general and that limited edition booklet provides every incentive for you to head straight to the BFI shop off* or online and grab your copy as soon as you can right here.

* It’s released on 22^nd April 2024.

Coming soon. The Cat and the Canary (1927), Eureka, Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

 

“…  not the first of its kind, but it is one of the few hybrids that succeeds in spoofing old-dark-house clichés – secret passageways gaping open, monstrous hands extending slowly towards unwitting victims – while remaining genuinely spooky.”

Imogen Sara Smith from her booklet essay, Laughter in the Shadows

The Cat and the Canary represents a peak of silent film technique and is as good as almost any silent film made in Twenties’ Hollywood, a defining, genre-defining classic. It is not so much a horror classic but a major step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles, showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.

From previous viewing of Kevin Brownlow’s Photoplay 35mm at the Kennington Bioscope, I knew that the film had long languished in poor quality until the 1960s when he found a good print and restored it from 35mm nitrate. Eureka’s new restoration is a 4k transfer from a recent digital restoration that looks as good as the day it was first edited together, especially in Blu-ray quality: never darker, sharper or more ominous…

The Cat and the Canary it parodies what had yet to be termed as “horror”, which hadn’t really started to dominate film, although it was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. Whilst it’s one of Universal’s big three foundational shockers, along with Hunchback and Phantom, it’s also a continuation of the German style, expressionist as well as existentially oppressive in the manner of Caligari, Student of Prague, Golem and Leni’s own Waxworks. It meets a lot of Lotte Eisner’s Expressionist criteria with unsettling frames and deep shadows alive with menace.

Do not mess with Laura La Plante's hair!!

Kevin Brownlow interviewed the camera man, Gilbert Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get those acute angles and he also explained that extra lights were also needed to create the right dynamics between dark and darker. Leni used a gong to drill his player’s movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the characters… and so it was to prove.

It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to, but the collaborator of Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European filmmakers, knows what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace. 

Here's Mammy! Martha Mattox 

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed, pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles looks like our leading man, but there's a nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation. 

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope - more Ernie Wise - but he’s funny alright.

Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch and Creighton Hale

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film not to mention costumes which is pretty much all she remembered when later interviewed by Kevin Brownlow. All the same, I’m sure she’s one of his favourites!

Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and therefore becomes another Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

The film looks fabulous on this 1080p HD presentation from a 4K digital restoration of the original negatives supplied by MoMA.|There's also a fascinating new score from Robert Israel -presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, it says here - which has been compiled, synchronised and edited by Gillian B. Anderson, based on the music cue sheets compiled and issued for the original 1927 release. 

Ultimately, it’s hard to disagree with Kevin Brownlow when he said, again at the Kennington Bioscope, that The Cat and the Canary is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the epic Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House, and way beyond, through Bob Hope’s version in 1939 and onto an entire backlot of scary mansions spoofed so well in Scooby Doo.

If it hadn’t been for those pesky German kids, Leni’d never have gotten away with it…

Extra frightening features:

Limited Edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Graham Humphreys [First print run of 2000 copies]

Two brand new audio commentaries: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman plus  Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby

Mysteries Mean Dark Corners – brand new video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson

Pamela Hutchinson interview – excellent new discussion with writer and film critic Pamela Hutchinson who, as you would expect, thoroughly contextualizes the film, the director and the cast.

Phuong Le interview – another newly commissioned interview with film critic Phuong Le who explains the differences between the film and the play and looks at Leni's aims in making a "non-European, American film

A Very Eccentric Man & Yeah, a Cat! – extracts from John Willard’s original play 

Lucky Strike – Paul Leni gives a full-throated endorsement to the product that got him through filming The Cat and the Canary

A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Richard Combs, Craig Ian Mann, and Imogen Sara Smith

Whilst Eureka were kind enough to send me a review copy I’ve already pre-ordered the fill set with all the above limited-edition trimmings. There’s still time for you to do the same, the Blu-ray is released on 22^nd April in the UK and you can order it direct from Eureka using this link.

Time and motion... My Grandmother (1929), with Stephen Horne, Klassiki online

 

"Even for viewers with no interest in the history and politics of the film, My Grandmother is a wonderful example of eccentrism and a catalog of the avant-garde’s film techniques during Soviet cinema’s golden age.” Denise J. Youngblood, The Moving Image*

 

This is the second time I’ve watched this film and tried to write about it because the first time I couldn’t quite believe it. Make no mistake, My Grandmother is nothing to do with the business of sucking eggs and everything to do with the Kafkaesque reality of bourgeois spoilers trying to cripple The Revolution through dragging the new freedoms into the ground by excessive bureaucracy. They don’t know or want to know any differently and even the gilded statues of the post-revolution rise up to chastise those who drop litter: is this the point of Art to make the ordinary citizen feel small and, in this case, less than perfectly formed.

 

This was director Kote Mikaberidze’s first film and I wish I knew more about his brief and that of his co-writers, Siko Dolidze, and Giorgi Mdivani. The film was made during the time of Stalin's Cultural Revolution (1928-1932) and creeping bureaucracy was seen as anti-revolutionary and the enemy of progress but the route the film takes to make this point is pure experimentalism conducted in a spirit of wilful entertainment. It is so sharply sardonic, one could almost suspect the filmmakers of trying to smuggle anarchic meaning past the censors – the ultimate bureaucrats after all, organising thoughts and filing away the divergent messaging. And, so it proved with this film which was shelved for decades after the censors had their final say only to be restored and screened in 1976 by the Georgian film studio partly as, "even today, it will be able to combat certain shameful practices still present in our society."

The Accounts Department hard at sleep

 

My Grandmother is easier to look at as an explosion of experimental energy, channelled through every available camera trick and editing technique, than as a coherent film.

Julia Zelman, East European Film Bulletin, Volume 51, March 2015

 

We begin at the offices of the "TORK" trust, a round table of laziness and distracted bureaucrats in the accounts department who pass their time playing with toy cars, staring into space or making paper planes. These planes are made by a sad man who uses them to declare his love for a woman in the typing pool who rebuffs his advances and smiles cruelly as he shoots himself. One man down, the Doorman (Evgeniy Ovanov) is called to drag the body away as the others fight over his place and promotion, Soon a very smart young man with a briefcase (Mikhail Abesadze) takes his place and gathers up the hundreds of overdue letters that have been left to lie around.

 

The office is visited by a workers’ representative (Akaki Khorava) who looks on in disgust as they snooze and ignore their work, he towers over the round table and is furious at the waste of revolutionary opportunity. He demands fifty roubles to aid production and for once the team responds but the new business manager, the Bureaucrat (Aleksandre Takaishvili) is sacked for many obvious reasons.

 

Aleksandre Takaishvili under pressure

The Bureaucrat returns home and we see his state of consciousness represented by a surreal sequence as his daughter’s toys look on in animated shock as he seemingly hangs himself. Mikaberidze uses a fair amount stop-motion in the film and will later show an animation of a cruel cartoon from the local paper about the Bureaucrat. His troubles are only just beginning though as his wife (Bella Chernova) returns home and finding him alive but very much to blame, kicks him around their apartment before throwing him out of the window – another cartoonish device. He rises from the pavement like Road-runner and she pursues him in a fury.

 

1. Find Grandmother 2. Be insistent 3. Be impudent And you will find a new job.

 

The Bureaucrat bumps into the young man with a briefcase and, as his wife looks on, gets the advice he hopes for; if he’s bold and finds the right sponsor, i.e. Grandmother, he can work his way back onto the team. But, like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the mountain, our Bureaucrat is heading into a maze of frustration as he tries to follow the three strands of advice only to be rebuffed time after time…

 

Bella Chernova is not impressed

He goes to see the Superintendent only to be hauled down the stairs by a statue that takes offence at dropped cigarette butt, just inches from a bin. The spray-painted almost nude, is uncredited but is very impressive in a none speaking role and this is an issue that still plagues us today. Here, it’s possibly a reference to the small-mindedness of civic art or maybe just the need to keep the streets tidy. Our hero finally makes it past the endless queue and another door man and brow-beats the Superintendent into writing him a letter to secure his job back. He drives the older man to distraction but he will discover the road to cushy re-employment is paved with bad intent and that you simply can’t put a price on reality…

 

As an example of what would have been said if it could have been said at the time though, My Grandma is hard to beat but as Denise Youngblood has also said*, it was ultimately lacking in sympathetic characters and the exhibition of so much technique meant it was too “formalist” for the powers that were to accept. It’s more anarchic than avant-garde and by the time it’s finished just yells its message at the audience after tying us in knots for the whole run-time: DEATH TO RED TAPE, TO SLOPPINESS AND TO BUREAUCRATS!

 

Mikaberidze aimed a liberating film from the influence of theatre and literature and his use of mixed media underpins this even if the technique does indeed over-ride the message sometimes; it’s still a wild adventurous ride. His set designer Irakli Gamrekeli also contributes some wonderful spaces to the film, from the round table to the door-keepers chair positioned up a flight of steps next to a set of numbered lights responding to the corresponding seat of the slow-working bureaucrats within.

 

Stephen Horne brings musical order to this chaos with his trademark wit and invention; there’s no red tape or sloppiness just a deep musical understanding of film and it’s emotional-political context. The accompaniment is exactly what the film requires to come alive on screen and connect with modern audiences in a world in which the only rational response to events is to seek meaning in the manner of the comedy twice-repeated history is becoming.

 

You can view My Grandmother with Stephen’s accompaniment on the Klassiki site here and, if you’re not already a subscriber, you will find so much bang for your buck or, indeed, reward for your Rouble with a huge range of films old and new from the East!

 

*Denise Youngblood, “My Grandmother (Chemi Bebia) (1929)” In: The Moving Image, Vol. 10 Issue 1. The University of Minnesota Press, 2010

Jenny Gilbertson's slice of life... The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933), with Inge Thomson, Catriona Macdonald, HippFest at Home

"Jenny seems to have lifted the soul of that time in the islands and left it hanging up on the screen for future generations to see and feel part of."

Douglas Mackinnon

This film sits amongst better-known works of the thirties showing island life on the extremes but actually predates both Robert J. Flaherty’s docudrama Man of Aran (1934) – the Irish island, not Arran – and Michael Powell’s drama The Edge of the World (1937). Director Jenny Gilbertson (née Brown) had made a number of short documentaries and was encouraged to make this film by the great Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson, director of Drifters (1929) and the man who coined the term "documentary" in a review of Flaherty's Moana (1926).

The result is every inch as powerfully evocative as these other films with Jenny’s previous experience of the island, the documentary A Crofter’s Life in Shetland (1931), showing a year in the life of the rugged folk of Hjaltland… more Norse than Gallic and only 30 miles closer to Scotland than Norway. She was self-trained and this is even more remarkable when you consider that she not only wrote but filmed and edited her work.

There’s a discussion of Gilbertson’s work on the HippFest at Home/Falkirk Leisure and Culture You Tube channel from academics Dr Shona Main and Dr Sarah Neely, introduced by Alison Strauss, and it’s fascinating to see her journey from middle-class Glasgow beginnings to university, teaching and on to such inventive independent filmmaking. She had a passion for capturing ways of life far removed from the contemporary comforts of her upbringing and she was able to engage the locals in such a way that, as John Grierson said, had “…already broken through the curse of artificiality and is on her way to becoming a real filmmaker, an illuminator of life and movement”.

There was also an introduction from Janet McBain founding Curator, Scottish Screen Archive, who knew Jenny and remembered her as a "pocket dynamo" later in life. She took us through Jenny's career and her documentary shorts made for the GPO including In Sheep's Clothing (1932) screened before the main film with accompaniment from Stephen Horne. She didn't fully appreciate at the time how pioneering Jenny had been until the work of academic like Shona and Sarah. This is not surprising when you consider as Janet says, the films were found rotting in a henhouse but were subsequently restored by the SSA in 1997 and reprinted. Blessed are the Archivists... and the Festival Directors.

John Gilbertson and Enga Stout

The Rugged Island is so intimate it feels like a genuine intrusion on the lives being portrayed, the irony here being that Gilbertson’s was sometimes described as an “amateur” and yet clearly she was consummate in terms of technique and direction with only one professional actor - Enga Stout – with the rest being her friends and others she’d cast locally. Her editing is also so precise here in terms of capturing the detail of the performers including her substantial animal cast – Flora the dog and Caddie the lamb - to create such a warm narrative whole.

The story involves Enga and her beloved Johnny (John Gilberston who Jenny went on to marry) who face the choice of emigrating to Australia or staying to fulfil their duties in looking after their aging parents – something Jenny’s own mother expected of her. The economy of these islands was changing and trawling was replacing line fishing and industrialising what had been the mainstay of Shetlands’ way of life. This is reflected in a detailed way as we see Johnny and the men catching fish on the line – they have to, as there’s not much else to eat – then later trawling pulling in hundreds of fish.

The narrative works in so much of the day-to-day lives as the seasons change and events complicate their choices. Jenny’s camera is right inside the cramped crofters’ cottages – interiors built by the multi-tasking John Gilbertson whose parents and sister also provide suitable cast members. His best pal Andrew, from Stucca, played Andrew who woos John/Johnny’s sister Maggie and, as Dr Main points out in her HippFest programme notes, only someone with Jenny’s connection to the locale and the people could make a film that is so convincing and thoroughly authentic.

The film is a gorgeously evocative postcard from the past with the location perfectly served by Jenny’s camerawork; seagulls swooping across Shetland skies, as the young couple walk the cliffs and shore staring out to the endless sea of possibilities as they do at the beginning and end. After watch Johnny and the lads fish we see the interiors of the folk at their poached fish supper with bread and tea… a flashback to a childhood memory of my great grandmother McIntyre’s parlour in Liverpool, no electric in her kitchen at all. Her husband was a Glaswegian, and his mother came from a crofter’s cottage on the Isle of Arran.

Then we see the men tilling the land and the discovery of an orphaned sheep quickly adopted by Enga who feeds her from a bottle; no life can be wasted on the isle. There’s potato planting and the whole community working together to same intensive rhythms of necessity; there’s a time to farm and to dig up peat to burn in the winter. The women work together on converting wool into those famous sweaters, making a few shillings to pay for new fishing boots for Johnny from Peter Mouat’s General Merchants, a dealer in Shetland Hosiery.

This is not quite subsistence living but it leaves very little time for idle pondering – I’d be sunk – but Gilbertson interweaves the documentary purpose well with the drama of Inga and Johnny’s dilemma as it places them under pressure as the fishing season does not go well. It’s hard not to compare with Man of Aran and this does feel a more realistic and – this word again – authentic representations. It’s just lovely to look at and cinematically satisfying especially with the new accompaniment.

Everyone knits on Shetland...

This was provided by Inge Thomson and Catriona Macdonald who provided an intoxicating air of emotion and location, even for those of us of Scottish descent watching from home. Catriona is a Shetland fiddle player, Royal College of Music alumni and academic who combines that rich folk tradition together with collaborative and compositional expertise. Inge Thomson is from Fair Isle, Shetlands too, and is a composer, producer, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist and performer.

Together they infused their music with a vibrancy and authenticity to match the filmmakers own. I hope they get a chance to tour the film and music as Alison Strauss suggests.

The last word from Shona: “People can’t quite believe that (these films) exist. … she’s still not known enough, I don’t think she’s appreciated enough…” and, as she says, this is where HippFest comes in. This is peak HippFest, aiding the rediscovery of significant Scottish artists, especially one as ground-breaking as Gilbertson, is part of their core mission and achievements. Again, as the commentators say, the more you see of Jenny G, the more you want to see, the interest only grows the more you want to learn.

I just wish I’d been in the room to fully appreciate the film, music and audience… next year HippFest it’s in the diary!

The video discussion of Gilbertson’s with Dr Shona Main and Dr Sarah Neely is available via this link.

 

There’s also an excellent summation of Gilbertson’s career on the Women’s’ Film Pioneer Project here.

 

 

Not missing out on Mary... Stella Maris (1918) with Meg Morley, Hippfest at Home ‘24

FOMOH… defined in Bo-ness as yon Fear of Missin’ Oot (On) Hippfest is high as I sit in South Cambridge 390 miles away from this year’s event but only inches away thanks to the streaming element of the festival, Hippfest at Home providing a sample pf the atmosphere and the cinematic treats being screened with accompanying piano-cam showing the players at work accompanying the silents and stirring the watcher’s hearts and minds.

Time flies and festivals fly even faster and there was, Alison Strauss the head of Clan Hippfest queuing up a vivacious introductory video from Pamela Hutchinson before introducing one of our finest accompanists, Meg Morley, who proceeded to enhance the extraordinary Stella Maris, one of Mary Pickford’s very best films and in which she gives Lon Chaney a run for his money playing two characters that look almost nothing alike.

She plastered her hair with Vaseline, smudged make up round her eyes to make them appear smaller, darkened her nostrils to make them wider and contorted her body to leave one shoulder higher and her back twisted... Pickford’s conviction and commitment to the roles is astonishing and , if you didn’t know she was both malnourished orphan Unity Blake and the titular bed-ridden privileged princess you’d struggle to recognise the most famous woman of the time…

The Mary we expect.

As Pam said, the dual roles gave Pickford a chance to draw on her impoverished, and abusive, past in deeper ways and with her great collaborator and a featured artist of this festival, Frances Marion scriptwriting, the two were able to create two unforgettable characters and to hint at real darkness. This is no Poor Little Rich Girl… Pickford was choosing her projects and her teams by this stage and this was a story she wanted to really challenge herself as well as the audience.

 

Based on the 1913 novel by William J. Locke, Stella Maris was directed by Marshall Neilan who Pickford compared the director favourably with DW Griffith, she always was a challenge, and felt that their shared Irish heritage helped him get the best out of her. As a result, this was the highest grossing film of 1918, on a level with say Barbie in tickets sold if not pink tinting and confused messaging. Stella Maris knows exactly what it wants to say about poverty and even the way wealthy women are treated by their so-called carers. By this stage Mary must have found much to identify with both her characters and that makes her choice of story all the more powerful and revealing.

 

Pickford is first seen as Miss Stella Maris a tragic young woman born into a wealthy family and yet in poor health: she cannot walk and is kept bedridden, well-protected from the horrors of outdoor life. She lives with her Aunt Julia Lady Eleanor Blount (Ida Waterman) and Uncle Sir Oliver Blount (Herbert Standing). Her favourite visitor is family friend, journalist John Risca (Conway Tearle) with whom she enjoys a fantasy existence of castles and kings. Interesting that she relies on a journalist to not tell her the truth…

The Mary we get.

But John has a darker home life with an alcoholic and abusive wife Louise (an excellent Marcia Manon, clearly having a whale of a time) whose numerous addictions are laid out for all to see: the wicked witch of this story. Listless Louise only ever gets passionate about punishment but is switched on enough to scour the local orphanage for home help in the form of the energetic but under-fed Unity Blake. Face and body posture twisted out of all proportion; Pickford must have suffered for this role in ways that only Chaney would appreciate.

 

Unity fails to meet her new mistresses exacting demands and is savagely beaten only being saved after neighbours here her screams. The police arrive and Louise is imprisoned for her assault. Wracked by guilt, John resolves to look after Unity and brings her into his house where she is looked after by his Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell). This upper-class generosity only extends so far though and they all resolve to keep Unity’s existence a secret from the enforced innocence of Stella. Here it is interesting that Stella’s innocence is prescribed by her relatives whilst Unity’s is seemingly just her natural state… in spite of all that she has been through.

Doctors gather to see Stella and decide that her legs can be restored through a new operation. The months pass and gradually she returns to full health. Inevitably she encounters Unity in a stunningly well realised double exposure: this is the tricky part - acting with yourself. By this stage it’s not Unity’s tale that threatens Stella’s fairy-tale world view but the world itself as she sees squads of soldiers marching past her huge garden and the questions keep on coming…

The film doesn't hold back from showing the desperation and brutality

Meanwhile, Louise is released for good behaviour and sets back to her recidivist ways aiming to ruin her estranged husband’s budding romance with the beautiful and unsullied Stella. Yet Unity has also developed feelings for her saviour… There’s a startling moment when she caresses John’s coat on a clothing stand, wrapping its sleeves around her and relishing the imagined intimacy, made almost real by the texture and the smell…

I won’t give away the ending but this is one you should see if you’re looking for Mary Pickford’s best films and if you haven’t already watched her tour de force. It's clearly one of her more political statements as well given the disparity between the two main characters and the disappointments of the rich woman discovering the nature of a world she has been deliberately isolated from. It's almost a fable of Pickford's own journey... she wants to be allowed to be both the woman she was and the successful star; with due respect to all on this spectrum of luck and life.

Meg Morley accompanied with a heart-breaking emotional narrative of her own which hit so many sweet and sour touch points in its intimate entanglement with the two Pickfords. Wonderful skill and sensitivity, I only wish I’d been there to hear it live. Next year no FOMOH!!