Stage-coaching… The California Mail (1929), Kennington Bioscope with Cyrus Gabrysch

 

There were some outstanding shots – glorious panoramas of the rugged West, cameras placed beneath horses pounding hooves, above them from the vantage point of a stagecoach driver and even amongst them as a man fought to control their ferocity during a breath-taking race and chase. If this was the work of Abel Gance we would be in raptures but it was Albert S. Rogell and respect is due.

We were watching the world premier of a rediscovered lost film and Christopher Bird was projecting from the back row and risking his own copy – probably the only one left anywhere – albeit on his own projector through which it had already passed during testing. The film, projector and projectionist all passed the audition tonight and we saw something special as well as something unique.

The California Mail (1929) was projected from a 16mm archive print that had been made by transferring original filmic materials onto Gun Film which had been sold off cheaply by the RAF and yet was typically only twenty feet long meaning that the previous owner would have had to splice together something like 900-1000 times to make the complete 1800+ foot film – his labours have not been lost thanks to Mr Bird and the film is in the safest of hands.

The view from Chris's projector of The California Mail (pic Chris Bird)

Written by Marion Jackson and Leslie Mason the film tells the tale of attempts to find a safe route through to California for much-needed gold supplies during the dog days of the Civil War. The gang trying to stop the shipments is led by the very butch, “Butch” McGraw (C.E. Anderson) whose gang regularly ambush the Yankee shipments forcing the Union to run a contest to find the quickest stagecoach.

There’s a new member of Butch’s gang who has yet to prove himself name of Bob Scott (Ken Maynard) who after being despatched to capture the daughter of one of the town’s leaders, Molly Butler (Dorothy Dwan). He lifts her off her horse but then proceeds to take her back to safety. Butch sends “Rowdy” Ryan (Paul Hurst) to kill the duplicitous Bob but he’s more messy than rowdy and Bob spots him hiding in a barrel before convincing him it’s all part of his plan to get the stagecoach franchise so the gang can get tipped off.

First there has to be a three-way race-off to decide the best company to run the franchise and Bob takes the seat in the California Mail coach and after a genuinely thrilling and incredibly dangerous race – in which some horses might possibly have been injured – he prevails. This is where we see Maynard in between the horses pulling them back into position and definitely doing his own stunts. According to Chris he had been a trick rider with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Ringling Brothers’ circus, then later a champion rodeo rider with his horse Tarzan (the Wonder Horse!) – here acting under his own name and being the handsomest equine star this side of Trigger of Tonto.

Ken and Tarzan with a baby in Heir to Trouble (1935)

It's a very entertaining ride and I won’t spoil the final sequence which just has to be seen to be believed. Chris quoted Kevin Brownlow in saying that westerns are often not given the credit they deserve for the technique and skill involved in making them and this was one of those late silent films which not only showed the level of Hollywood filmmaking but, as David Thompson said, you could almost hear the voices ready for the coming of sound.

Once talkies had arrived Maynard added another string to his impressive bow by becoming the first Singing Cowboy. Cyrus Gabrysch – accompanying sight unseen – certainly made the Bioscope’s piano sing and galloped along in sync with man, woman and horse both on and off the screen as Mr Bird’s trusty projector provided a comforting whir behind us… only at The Bioscope amigos!

Sue Carol and Richard Walling

Walking Back (1928) was the first film of the evening and was another 16mm archive print from Chris Bird’s collection. It was directed by Rupert Julian for Cecil B. DeMille but there’s a strong likelihood that the latter was as involved in this as Lon Chaney was in Phantom of the Opera’s direction (as rumour has it and I like this rumour). There’s certainly some of Cecil’s trademark salacious male gaze (am I being unfair...? c.f. Sign of the Cross and many more…) but either way it’s a fast-paced fun ride with plenty of jazz energy!

Sue Carol, as flapper Patsy Schuyler certainly has It! and was understandably regarded as a potential Clara competitor for a while. She is exceptionally pretty but Clara had depth and range that drew a deeper engagement certainly based on this script which, in fairness, doesn’t give Sue much to do other than look good and support her man, one “Smoke” Thatcher – not a good nickname if he were to follow the family name and attach straw to cottage roofs… He’s played with considerable gumption by Richard Walling who is a rebel without much cause and also little clue.

That said, there are elements of a fifties/sixties generational drama with “reckless” kids doing battle with their misunderstanding parents. And I ask myself, just when did I start siding with the grown-ups?!

Sue Carol 

After an opening of drunken foolishness which sees one overloaded car crash off the road following a flat tyre caused by a smashed and very illicit whiskey bottle, the gaggle of flapper legs and male drunkenness leads the party to a café shortly followed by the police and a quick disposal of the hootch. Later on, there’s a party to which Smoke can take his “fire” Patsy but only if his father (Robert Edeson) will loan him his car. This doesn’t work and so Smoke borrows his neighbour’s car only to find that his rival Pet Masters (Arthur Rankin) has taken Patsy instead.

 

The two butt heads over Patsy and then, irresponsibly, smash their cars together in a demolition derby that is going to cost Smoke a lot in terms of money and paternal approbation. Still, it’s an energetic sequence and it’s better than watching Jeremy Clarkson do it. Finally with Patsy clinging on to his side Smoke upends his rival’s car and is declared the winner but at what a cost.

They take the ruined vehicle to a garage where the mechanic informs him that the borrowed car, now wrecked, has become a stolen car and his is the place the police will often look first. Smoke needs some money fast and as luck would have it there arrive three smartly dressed individuals who need someone to drive their Mercedes for a particular errand. Their true intent only gradually reveals itself to the rather dense Smoke as they park up outside his father’s bank intent on robbing it… OK, it’s not high art but it is great fun full of youthful jazz-age energy and great stunt driving. It’s a witty film with the tone set with one if the opening intertitles, 1928 – and how! – the shock of the old-new never fails to impress.

The boys try to win Patsy over...

Mordaunt Hall was even slightly moved, writing in The New York Times that the film was "… no worse than the general average of those dealing with wine, automobiles and the biological gropings of persons under the age of 24. As a matter of fact, it is a little better. Miss Carol, as Patsy, is pretty, and Mr. Walling, as Smoke, looks as though if he had the right opportunity to be intelligent, he might fool everyone."

 

Ashley Valentine proved that you could play the piano with jazz hands and thoroughly enjoyed accompanying this peppy entertainer. I especially like the hint of The Godfather theme when the gangsters arrive to make our heroes an offer they can’t refuse.

 

Another richly entertaining evening in Lambeth and I’m surprised that this kind of thing isn’t available on prescription by now. An absolute tonic!

Walking Back as viewed from the back (pic Chris Bird)

The dark side of Tom Conti… Eclipse (1977), BFI Flipside #51 Blu-ray, out now!

 

In his commentary, BFI Flipside supremo Vic Pratt recalls interviewing Tom Conti for another recent release, Heavenly Pursuits (1986) in which he mentioned that Eclipse was one of the few of his films he didn’t have a copy of. Vic dutifully sought it out to make Tom a screener and discovered this disturbing and atmospheric thriller was ideal for the quirky, strange charms of the Flipside range.

IMDB describes Simon Perry’s film as a “… story of the possession of one man - his mind, heart and soul - by his twin brother”, but it’s rather more than that and possibly less. For all those in search of a neat Columbo-style ending to this emotional mystery they’d better look elsewhere as Eclipse is as full of shadowy meaning as a Mark Rothko picture painted with all the lights off and wearing sunglasses. It’s based on a novel by Nicholas Wollaston and by all accounts with less specificity.

Tom Conti is the most unreliable of narrators playing twin brothers Tom (oh yeah?) and Graham who is found dead on the beach at the start of the film with a nasty gash on his head and a moustache to match on his fore lip. Having recently seen him as the soulless advertising executive trying to manipulate the band Slade in Flame, you’re reminded of his deceptive skill in portraying empty vessels and, even when he’s emotionally wrought you’re unsure in this film what is driving him.

Tom was the only other person on the boat with his twin and throughout the film’s numerous flashbacks to the incident you’re never sure whether this is his own faulted memory or a gradual unrolling of the truth. In stormy seas out to view a total eclipse, the brothers lose control of their vessel and Graham falls into the water either struck by the boom or by something else… the flashes we see may be Tom’s imaginings or his recovering memory.

At the inquest Tom is equally hard to read with Conti playing with just a hint of guilt even as he tells the most plausible of tales. It’s death by misadventure and of a man referred to as The Big G by Tom’s sister-in-law and her son. Graham’s widow Cleo is played by Gay Hamilton who Conti had recommended for the role and who is every inch his equal in portraying her own range of barely decipherable emotions. Cleo had her darker views of G and the painting Tom finds on visiting her for Christmas shows him slighter of stature and naked on a beach. Tom cannot stand the image and asks for it to be removed.

There are clearly strong undercurrents running between Cleo and Tom, not just their mixed feelings about G but for each other too; a path well-trodden and now with new possibilities. Tom is also welcomed as the most familiar of uncles by young Giles (Gavin Wallace) who treats him almost like a father. But, as they play trains on Christmas day, Giles runs them backwards upsetting Tom by not playing to his rules and echoing Big G’s more dominant position.

The Christmas is tense as the discourse between Cleo and Tom unwinds with the former having developed a taste for gin since the accident – maybe before – and the latter still unable to recall the events of the fateful journey. Both are grieving and yet both have reason to resent Big G’s dominance in their lives. Tom, twenty minutes younger, has been overshadowed by Graham and the two would conduct conversations by completing each other’s sentences. Graham wasn’t just dominant he was the driver of so much of his brother’s choices, driving him to extremes in order to stake a claim to his identity.

Is this reason enough to kill or just to be ambiguous about his brother, and for Cleo, is she too now liberated in terms of her feelings for Tom and her choices.

It’s a broody and unsettling tale and one that offers no easy answers or resolution, you are wrongfooted throughout and the skill of the actors keeps you guessing. Vic mentioned thematic similarities to Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men (2022) and there are similarities in a narrative that shows and certainly doesn’t always tell as well as the brutal psycho-geography of the coastal location. At one point Cleo jumps into the stormy sea as if communing with the unrelenting power that took her husband and then there’s almost a re-run of the fateful voyage when Tom takes Giles out on a small sailing boat.

It’s fascinating and well worth inclusion in the Flipside alternative canon of British and Irish oddities and should have beens!

 

The special features below clinch the deal… especially the three classic public information adverts that amused and frightened my generation of children. Be very careful near deep waters… stay in your depth.

 

• Newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition
• Audio commentary by Vic Pratt, co-founder of BFI Flipside
• Sun & Moon – Tom Conti Discusses Eclipse (2025, 10 mins): the actor on his experience of making the film
• Relative Strangers: two stylish short films, The Chalk Mark (1989, 24 mins) and Marooned (1994, 20 mins), that echo the disjointed relationships central to Eclipse
• Not Waving, Drowning: Joe and Petunia: Coastguard (1968, 2 mins); Charley Says: Falling in the Water (1973, 1 min); Lonely Water (1973, 2 mins): three haunting water-safety Public Information Films eerily adjacent to the psycho-geographic headspace of the main feature
• 2025 trailer
• Image gallery

 

The first pressing only includes an illustrated booklet with new writing on the film by Vic Pratt, an archival interview with director Simon Perry, an original review, an essay on the film’s locations by Douglas Weir and writing on The Chalk Mark and Marooned by the BFI’s William Fowler.

 

You can order direct from the BFI from their online shop. Another winner and a missing piece for Mr Conti’s shelves as well as those of us who appreciate under-appreciated British film!

C’mon see the noise! Slade in Flame (1975), BFI restoration screenings and Blu-ray

 

The early seventies… they say if you can remember them you weren’t really there… oh, hang on, that’s the sixties. I may have been only ten but I was definitely there for the explosion of grimy glam rock that blew our junior-school minds after years of well-behaved formulaic bubble gum from The Osmonds, Dawn, The New Seekers and even my once beloved Middle of the Road. Glam was a turn in the road, a call to revolt and it touched our unruly instincts as we felt a connection to the sheer naughtiness and noise of Slade, Sweet and T-Rex starting in 1971 and for the next three years and beyond. We no longer cared where our mother had gone, we just wanted to get down and get with it… even if it was only in the Friday lunchtime school disco!

Slade were the greatest exponents of Glam but with a gritty edge that under-lined all of the best acts: these guys may have worn make up and glitter but they were in the main hard as nails: call Steve Priest an artiste and he’d probably give you a bunch of fives in the parlance of the time. Slade were, at one point, a “skinhead act” and, much like Oasis in the 90’s, they were working class lads who just loved The Beatles. Unlike the Gallaghers though, they brought their own songs filled with original melodies as well as fierce riffs.

They may not have known it but Slade had peaked by the time they filmed Slade in Flame and were in search of the new challenge it bought, or at least their manager Chas Chandler (ex-Animal and Jimi Hendrix’s manager) was. Several daft ideas were mooted – The Quite-a-mess Experiment being quickly dismissed not least because Dave Hill would have been despatched in scene two… In the end the band followed the Hard Day’s Night route but, rather than just mimic the actuality of the band’s existence the team devised a harder-edged drama that was loosely- based on their career and, crucially, their characters but one that was also drawn to the cynical end of the pop machine. This wasn’t Slade’s biography but it was an amalgam – amal-glam! – of theirs and many other bands experience in the dingy, cut throat, beer-stained, bingo halls and working-mens’ clubs of provincial Britain.

Noddy Holder in the Seventies

Released in 1974 - it is pure 1974 - the last time Slade would produce material of the quality of Far, Far Away and the sublime How Does it Feel. The result may have confused audiences and critics at the time (Barry Norman apart – he loved it) but now is amongst the best-regarded of its genre: the "Citizen Kane of rock musicals" as Mark Kermode calls it. As if The Monkees had been from Wolverhampton and decided to film Head not just in Sheffield but also using Alan Lake as technical advisor and not Jack Nicholson… it would have looked something like this.

Flame is raw-edged and not just because of the four main leads. The scripting from Andrew Birkin, matched their personalities to their on-screen personas to make it easy for Jim, Noddy, Dave and Don to perform as naturally as possible and was informed by the group taking both Birkin and director Richard Loncraine on tour with them to the US: the pair lasted a couple of weeks before retiring exhausted.

 

The story takes place in a netherworld of the North being filmed in Sheffield, Nottingham as well as London and Brighton. This may have been Loncraine’s first film but that doesn’t stop him opening the film with a single take shot from the bathroom down the stairs and into the garden at a wedding party that Robert Altman would have been proud of. At the end of the sequence, we find the disturbing sight of Jack Daniels (Alan Lake) and his Elvis Presley-stylings fronting a band with a bored bass player Paul (Jim Lea) and a cheeky guitarist Barry (Dave Hill) who sparks off a riot after lifting a girl’s skirt with his foot.

Alan Lake: none more rock or roll...

Alan Lake is superb throughout with a manic energy tempered by genuine acting skill, here in this opening scrap he doesn’t look out of place at all as you’d expect from a man who’d just finished a prison sentence for GBH. Lake has that authenticity from a period when the barriers between criminality and performance was blurred perhaps more than now. Unlike Mr Statham I doubt he needed inordinate amounts of takes to get through his lines too!

 

The band is eking out a living on the club scene and following the wedding fracas has to replace their drummer. Don Powell plays Charlie a metal worker – one of a number of Wolves let lose in South Yorkshire – and he easily gets the gig after rocking up with a full drum kit. The band is “managed” by local bingo-magnet Ron Harding (Johnny Shannon, a man with genuine “connections” who had played the hard man music agent before in Performance) who isn’t that convinced by Daniels’ band but has him on a lock-tight 10% all the same.

 

The band is in competition with another band, The Undertakers, who dress up in Halloween gear whilst their leather-lunged singer Stoker (Noddy Holder) performs from within a coffin. Barry slyly adds a padlock and Stoker gets trapped. Out for revenge the Undertakers chase after the boys and Barry’s girlfriend (Sara Clee – who does a splendid job as the long-suffering, gum-chewing, feather-cut Angie – absolutely the kind of girl I had a crush on in 1974!).

The band on manoeuvers

The band’s car crashes and after being pulled out by the Undertakers they’re all thrown in clink for the night. So it is that ace singer and lyricist Stoker pals up with ace tunesmith Paul and a new band is formed out of adversity… The new band has something more and after one gig are spotted by everyone – not least Ron, but also a detached businessman Tony Devlin (Kenneth Colley) who follows up his interest by posting a note through Paul’s gran’s letter box. Tony is employed by a wealthy advertising executive, Robert Seymour (the studiously laconic Tom Conti in only his second film although already well established on stage) who sees a market ripe for exploitation and believes that this is a band he can monetize.

The boys are made an offer they can’t refuse and gratefully swap Ron for the Home Counties’ comforts of Robert who has plans… A single is cut and the band begins the carefully orchestrated PR circuit beginning with Radio City a pirate radio station based on one of the abandoned sea fortresses in the Thames Estuary. This sequence is well filmed and the sight of the boys gingerly climbing the rusted metal steps of the fort is not entirely the results of acting – Dave Hill in particular was terrified of heights and had to be supported on his way up by Loncraine.

Once in the studio the boys are interviewed by one Ricky Storm (Tommy Vance) before gunfire is heard and the station is attacked by unknown assailants… Apparently this had happened during the pirate wars but, on this occasion at least, it looks like cynical PR from Robert. Naturally it works, and the band goes from strength to strength in spite of cracks already appearing between the moody perfectionist Paul and garrulous improviser Stocker… none of this too far from the truth.

Tom Conti muses...

There are wonderfully-observed moments of discomfort between the band and their social betters – not least Robert’s family and "friends". Then there’s a touching exchange between Charlie and his old boss Harold (Patrick Connor) by a canal in which the latter used to fish and swim but which is now a polluted mess. This sequence is all the more remarkable when you consider that Don Powell was still suffering short-term memory loss after a crash a year before. He had to learn his lines immediately before the scene yet plays a blinder.

He invites Harry to a party with his record company friends and yet Robert dismisses him with contempt… Another guest at the party gets taken a little more seriously, it’s Ron here to claim his winning ticket by informing Robert that he’s still the group’s agent. Then Robert meets Jack who is still in search of his opportunity calculating the odds very quickly Robert works out how he and Jack can quickly help each other…

Now things get messy as the band go from big to huge and a battle begins over the rights to their earnings, control of their creativity… it’s a familiar story and one not too far from the truth for many bands over the course of the rock and this roll, if perhaps not Slade. It also includes one of Holder and Lea’s very best songs in How Does it Feel which somehow manages to encapsulate a hopeful vulnerability with a defiant anthem pretty much as John and Paul did. Noel was taking notes.

Sarah Clee and Dave Hill... 

There may be occassions when the dialogue is muffled or when events rush along just a bit too quickly but Flame is still a triumph. All four members of the band perform well which not only shows the value of writing their parts so closely to their own characters but also their native ability to be authentic – the very foundation of Slade’s appeal. Unlike some they actually meant it, man… And from the young boy from the second year at Deyes High School, it takes me back to an era I only experienced as a child but I certainly felt the noise.

Slade in Flame is back in cinemas on 2 May 2025 and released on BFI Blu-ray/DVD on 19 May 2025. Details of tickets are on the BFI website and you can pre-order the home media on the BFI Shop.

 

There’s also a new trailer highlighting the lovely restoration on the BFI site too!

Parts of this review previously appeared on my other site: DustyVideoBox...

Hobart Bosworth sails on… The Blood Ship (1927)

 

Only my silent friend in the corner declined to take part in the merrymaking… The bludgeon-like wit of the house very carefully passed him by. For he was so plainly a desperate man.

 

The Blood Ship is based on the 1922 novel of the same name by Norman Springer and is very much tailor-made for a Hobart Bosworth blood bath. The star of the ferocious Behind the Door had earned his sea legs at a young age after apparently running away from home at 12 then working as a cabin boy on a sea clipper for three years before work on an artic whaler. The son of a Civil War naval captain, he clearly heard the call of the sea but he became involved in theatre aged 18 when invited to work as a stage manager helping to produce backdrops, work he hoped would enable him to study art. Quite the shift for a man who, in Norman Springer’s words, looked like the sort of “hard case” you would find working the toughest seas.

 

Bosworth began to act, funded by the odd stint in coal mining, and just as he was establishing himself in New York he was stricken with tuberculosis which not only weakened him but also affected his voice. Unable to project on stage he found new opportunities with silent film in the 1900s and also the ability to live in warmer climates. He credited the industry with saving his life and became one of the period’s most forceful performers who was also producer, script writer and director. A man of many talents.

 

The Blood Ship was one some two dozen nautical films he made and it gives him full rein to bring his weather worn features and remarkable sensitivity to the role of a man robbed of life and liberty who is seeking revenge for more than he knows… and he ramps up the righteous anger with emphatic force as the full extent of his betrayal is revealed. The film has recently been restored following the discovery in 2007 of its long-lost final reel and it looks almost freshly minted in the new Sony Blu-ray which comes with a new score from the redoubtable Donald Sosin.

 

Directed by George B. Seitz it concerns The Golden Bough, a trading ship run by the brutal Captain Angus “Black Yankee” Swope (Walter James) a man who in the late 1880s was “cursed from Liverpool to Singapore as the cruellest master that sailed the Seven Seas…”. We find him ordering the lashing of a would-be mutineer aided by his equally unforgiving First Mate, Fitz (Fred Kohler who would play so many henchmen – he had a face for cruelty). The other crew seethe silently and only the Captain’s daughter Mary (Jacqueline Logan) tries to help the poor man.

 

Walter James

“They cleaned me - a year’s pay - the Swede and his wimmin!”

 

Swope is a cynical abuser and he knows that treating his crew mean will keep them in line and that they’ll escape the first chance they get without his having to pay them and as the ship’s hull touches the dock they’re all off. Meanwhile at Knitting Swede’s Lodging and Beds, more services are being supplied than advertised as one sailor is ejected after getting caught up in the titular Swede’s web of gambling, sex work and booze.

 

James Bradbury Sr. plays the Swede who does actually sit at his bar and knit in a surprise development although the knitted hat he wears doesn’t speak to any great advancement in wool craft. He sist and smile eyeing his clientele up and assessing all with a smile including the Reverend Richard Deaken (Chappell Dossett) who steps over the threshold to remonstrate about the effect of his wicked ways. After his rebuttal, the Swede says to his bouncer (Syd Crossley) that perhaps the preacher could do with a sea voyage…

 

John Shreve’s my name – able seaman – and I don’t think I like you or your runner!

 

Richard Arlen and Hobart Bosworth

A young man smirks at the bar and introduces himself as John Shreve (Richard Arlen) to the Swede and his man, expressing his distaste for the racket they are unquestionably running and going off to sit next to a moody man fulling his pipe in the corner of the room. The Swede sends one of his girls to distract John who then gets in a fight with the bouncer and, having trounced him is saved by the moody man who turns out to be Jim Newman (Hobart Bosworth). Both men volunteer for Swope’s ship though, John because he wants to protect Mary and the latter for reasons all of his own.

 

Soon they’re taken on board with many who most definitely did not volunteer including the Reverend, who thinks this must be some kind of mistake and couldn’t they drop him back on shore, and the cockney bouncer now surplus to the Swede’s requirements having lost his barroom brawl and his reputation. Jim avoids Swope’s attentions whilst the rest of the men soon learn that his reputation is entirely founded in reality.

 

Soon Jim confronts Swope and we learn the shocking secret of their relationship whilst a young cabin boy is almost kicked to death by Swope and the tensions mount… This being a Hobart Bosworth production you just know there will be a hate-filled battle at the end of the film and few actors could match his convincing ferocity and righteous indignation. There is good support from Arlen and all including Blue Washington who is gifted with a dramatic role that doesn’t entirely rely on the usual racial stereotypes of this era – there were always creators who looked to progress and not perpetuate. Call them “woke” perhaps…?

 

Jacqueline Logan

It's a tense and  visceral ride and as the novelist, mage and former comic-book author Alan Moore once remarked, superheroes are essentially revenge fantasies for the impotent, and you can say the same for film stars in stories like this.

 

Talking of which, there is now a new Blu-ray combining Irvin Willat’s Bosworth adventures, Behind the Door (1919) and Below the Surface (1920) from Flicker Alley, both restored by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and with new scores from Stephen Horne. Personally, I can never get enough Hobart and Horne and have already snapped this one up, you can order direct from Flicker Alley for the further adventures of Bosworth on Boats!

 

The Blood Ship Blu-ray can be ordered from eBay and the usual US retailers, but watch out for the sales tax!

 

8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend, Day Two: The Restoration of Happiness

 

Day two and back for another day of rare film, excellent music and the best coffee south of Soho. It’s 10.00am and time for the return of our Queen of Happiness…

 

The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper

 

Proceedings began with not just a smile but the radiance that only certain stars can bring and not only was there Betty there was also Lawrence thoroughly delighting the audience with the expert enthusiasm and critical judgement that are his trademarks. This ability to speak as you find is essential for this period of British film, so long poorly-viewed but now in the middle of a gentle re-evaluation with the evidence of our own eyes challenging the silent shibboleths of Low et al.

A case in point, is this film’s director, Graham Cutts, who has been unfairly maligned with Hitchcock’s opinion impacting the reputation of one of the period’s most successful film-makers. As with many a British film of this period there are some issues with pacing perhaps – a shaggy dog tale of a joke towards the end which acts against the satisfaction of the main plot points – but there was also some wonderful technique on display and, of course, Britain’s Queen of Happiness, never fails to bring her audience cheer, not in 1926 and not now. Had Lawrence remembered the recipe for the Betty Balfour Cocktail we might have been even merrier…

Betty Balfour urges you all to have a cigar...

Produced at Gainsborough Studios by Michael Balcon and also known as The Cabaret Kid, The Sea Urchin in question is Betty Balfour’s Fay Wynchbeck who as the film starts is a disruptive student in a Parisian girls’ boarding school. Her singing and dancing leads the other girls slightly astray and there’s a fabulous shot of their after-hours partying through the keyhole which Alfred H would have been lauded for. She’s rescued from isolation by Sullivan (Clifford Heatherley, also with Betty in Champagne!) an old pal of her fathers who uses the old man’s request for him to return her to the family seat in England as a means of getting her to work in his nightclub. He pretends to be her father who she obviously hasn’t seen in a very long time…

 

Back in Blighty at that family seat, there’s an ongoing feud between Fay’s family – represented by her aunts Minnie (Haidee Wright) and Mary (Marie Wright) – and their neighbours, the Trebarrows, led by Sir Trevor (Cecil Morton York) and represented by the aerial incompetence of his son Jack (George Hackathorne) who crashes his plane into their garden. Jack’s an affable chap though and plans to race his machine to Paris… and you can guess who he’s going to bump into. Sure enough he encounters Fay in the nightclub and after an amusing food fight is soon helping her escape the clutches of Sullivan and his crony Rivoli (W. Cronin Wilson) who doggedly pursue them back across the channel.

 

No one’s quite sure of all the connections until the end and it’s an amusing, warm-hearted ramble with good chemistry between Balfour and baby-faced Hackathorne – how could you fail with the original BB? Colin Sell saw that chemistry and upped it to 11… charm was the word. A shout out to the many uncredited performers who gave a flavour of contemporary night-life in London if not Paris, there was much skill on show including some fierce Apache dancing unlike anything we’ll see on Strictly…

Restorations and Discoveries: Little Mickey Grogan (US 1927), with Meg Morley, presented by Dave Glass

There’s a moment in Little Mickey Grogan (US 1927) when the kids are dancing on the corner of the street and young Frankie Darro busts some actual breakdancing moves which for me finally proved the existence of time travel. Now that issue’s sorted, we can congratulate the young man for his acting in a charming film that was restored in 2015 following an appeal from his co-star, Lassie Lou Ahern – 8-years old in the film – for help in recovering her final silent film. Eric Grayson led the restoration and explained in a video introduction that a French-language 35mm nitrate print formed the basis of the work with the aid of Lassie Lou’s original script proving the benefits of hording (Mrs Joyce take note…). More on restoration was to follow, see the American Bioscope section below.

You know the old line about how the talkies killed off silent film stars well, meet Frankie Darro whose best years were certainly ahead of him once he grew up and into the model gangster tough enough and short enough to play alongside Cagney et al. He was in Public Enemy, he was the voice of Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet and he was even in the Batman TV show, alongside fellow silent alumnus Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon). Frankie was just nine when he made this charming feature – there goes that word again but never more appropriate.

Mickey Grogan is a quick-thinking street kid who gets by on his own despite the frequent attentions of the truant officer. He can’t help but impress some people though and is soon in temporary accommodation on the couch of office worker Winnie (Jobyna Ralston so often Harold Lloyd’s foil) who has endless reserves of good will. She needs this as workplace bully Al Nevers (Billy Scott) keeps on trying to impose himself on her in yet another example of silent toxicity of the man un-kind-kind.

Winnie’s little home is soon filled with a partially-sighted former architect, down on his luck Jeffrey Shore (Carroll Nye) who Mickey is keen to help and Mickey’s pal Susan (Lassie Lou) whose adoptive parents lose their home and have to abandon her. Even before the Great Depression the American Dream was founded as much on rags as riches. But, of course, the latter are always potentially available if only unlikely good people and good fortune are on hand… if only Winnie is able to convince Jeff that he can still draw plans for an innovative new factory required by her boss, the kindly industrialist Mr Cabal (Crauford Kent) and if only he sees the potential reward of investing in Jeff’s one in a thousand shot eye op…

Who am I kidding? I love this stuff! So did Meg Morley who accompanied with jazz-inflected sympathies of her own to create the feelgood movie of the weekend.

Mickey was followed by the latest 35mm nitrate finds by Joshua Cattermole and new restorations from the Tony Saffrey collection, including: Circumnavigation of Graf Zeppelin (Germany 1930); Wait and See (UK 1910), a Gaumont comedy directed by Alf Collins; and a previously missing film by early pioneer R. W. Paul, The Soldier’s Vision (UK 1900).

 

Eugen Klöpfer and Aud Egede-Nissen

Die Straße/The Street (Germany 1923) (digital) with Costas Fotopoulos, introduced by Dave Glass.

Dave Glass was absolutely correct when he said that the more you watch Die Straße – or Dee Strasser in Scouse – the more you see and this sparkling restoration kept putting me in mind of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, as the main protagonist’s nightmare just grows and grows, people he meets, chances he takes all lead him the wrong way no matter which way he goes on the street.

Eugen Klöpfer plays the bored and sexually-frustrated middle-aged man who definitely doesn’t work in the publishing industry and who sets out for a walk on the wild side of his street, twirling his umbrella and feigning interest in shop windows as he approaches the local sex workers. One woman he sees turns into a cadaver in his fevered imagination but he drives himself onwards until encountering a woman credited as simply a harlot (Aud Egede-Nissen). She proceeds to lead this nervy punter along through the dark of the park, it’s a dance she’s played many times before and not without humour as an elderly couple sit between them as the edge towards each other on the bench. As we later find out, she shares a house with a small child and a blind man played by the protean Max Schreck; two vulnerable people who exist in the criminal uncertainties of this low life.

Her partner, The Pimp (Anton Edthofer) leaves the house to go to work nd is lying in wait once our man with a movie umbrella finally bucks up the courage to follow the woman into a night club where his seduction and exploitation can be controlled. It’s a tense voyage into the underworld, with a dreamlike quality that doesn’t make the realities being dramatized any less pitiful. Klöpfer’s performance is a feverish and compelling one and matched by Egede-Nissen’s archness – she knows what evil lurks in the hearts of ordinary men and how to meet the demand.

Karl Grume’s film is regarded as the first Weimar “street” film and as with much of German cinema of this period was filmed on a giant set from art director Karl Görge. It adds to the nightmarish quality of this unreal yet all too believable world. The piano accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos added minor chords and jarring lines as were, momentarily, lost in an imagined Berlin with no way home…

 

Focus on Biograph (film and digital), Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass with Ashley Valentine

Time for the return of today’s MVP, Mr David Glass together again with Glenn Mitchell for another of their popular Focus On… show and tells this time focused on the other Biograph, the film company, based in the USA, you know, that place sandwiched between Canada and Mexico. There were stunning restorations from the Film Preservation Society by kind courtesy of Tracey Goessel and a short video explaining how they are using digital technology to perfect even the oldest and well-worn of original materials. The results were stunning and these early films look like they were recorded yesterday.

We saw a lot of Mack Sennett and I especially liked his rather disturbing turn in DW Griffith’s Father Gets in the Game (1908) in which he has what would now be called a “make-over” and proceeds to join his son and daughter in their social lives… Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose à la mode de mange tout eh Rodney? There was also Mary Pickford, as the co-writer with DW of The French Duel (1909) and starring in his Getting Even (1909) when she was just 17.

We also had Mabel Normand directed in two films by Sennett – The Tourists (1912) and Through the Clouds (1912). Mabel was just 20 and would change film comedy for ever as would so many of this maverick crew. You only have to gaze at the improvised madness of Monday Morning in a Coney Island Police Court (1908) written by Mack and directed by DW who for all the discussion probably doesn’t get credit for giving these mad men their head.

Piano accompaniment was from Ashley Valentine who matched the crazy energies on screen and kept things as calm as possible. More of this kind of thing please!

 

If I Were Single (US 1927) (35mm), with Costas Fotopoulos, introduced by Michelle Facey

This was a chance to observe the pre-talkie Myrna Loy and boy Paramount didn’t stint of fabric, make-up or lighting in presenting her in this extensive supporting role. Roy Del Ruth’s rom-com is a proto screwball comedy with outlandish behaviour from the main players, with exceptional timing and wit so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it foxy. This I would expect from Conrad Nagel and Loy – on her later world-class form – but this is also among the best I’ve seen May McAvoy since Lubitsch’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), she’s made for this kind of quick-fire farce being somehow both sweet and, very, sour if required.

And, who could fail to be more than a little bitter if you were married to the likeable but complacent lump portrayed by Nagel. Sure, Ted loves his wife May, but when he sees a stylish women called Joan (Loy) at the gas station he suddenly decides that he’s temporarily not married in order to flirt. Sadly, his sins soon find him out as Joan is revealed to be an old friend of May’s and, having taken the lighter she gave to Ted for his birthday treat, soon there is more to explain than May can cope with.

Her piano teacher Claude, the excellent George Beranger, is on hand in the hope that he may pick up the pieces, or at least May and there are some excellent – heavily coded – looks of mock everything from the Australian throughout. Based on the story Two-Time Marriage by Jack Townley, If I Were Single was originally released with synchronised music and sound effects, but as the discs are seemingly lost, we had sparkling accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos to illustrate this sharp and effective comedy… Still not convinced by your Ted though May!

I'm watching my WB Archive DVD and imagining Kevin's intro...

The Trail of ’98 (US 1928) (digital) with Cyrus Gabrysch and presented by Kevin Brownlow.

KB’s KB was back to tell his first-hand tales of Clarence Brown but, unfortunately, I had to leave just as he arrived and so missed this special treat. I don’t know if Mr Brownlow met Dolores del Río, Ralph Forbes, Karl Dane or Harry Carey but he certainly spent time with this remarkable film’s director. The Cinema Museum and the Bioscope bring us two degrees from Kevin Brownlow to classic Hollywood and, in terms of the films, the archivists, historians and projectionists, we re-connect every three weeks.

 

Another stunning weekend and it was pretty perfect thanks to the thousands of hours of preparation. Thanks to you all and see you on 23^rd April for more film on film and a recently discovered “lost” feature film on 16mm!! BOOK NOW!

 

Seriously silent... 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend, Day One: The Grand National

It’s spring, there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow and the tariffs are as high as an elephant’s eye yet we forget all such things as those who seek to learn from history gather in the leafy comfort of the Cinema Museum for two days of hot media – even more silent cinema rediscovered, England’s very hip festival, le piccolo Pordenone… Le Giornate, Del Boy, Cinema Muto… Down Lambeth Way, Oi! And, not a moment too soon!

How easy it would be to take these as cinematic comforts, rather than the expression of enlightening entertainment it really is.  You know immediately from the buzz that this has been the work of months for the KB’s crew of passionate film historians, archivists, collectors, technicians, projectionists, pianists and caterers… This is Silent Serious, it means more and more with each passing year and – with a blast – it’s the eighth edition and history is making more history with every year: we learn more, we see more. Over just two days, nine features and many dozens of shorts, live music, live cinema, with so much celluloid, really rare and unusual. Precious time spent with the Masters of Cinema and Cinema Appreciation.

And yes, the coffee is great. I woke up, smelled it and drank too much, as you can yell.

Ivy in a frock, Guy wearing the trousers.

Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lawrence Napper

No need for artificial stimulation with Ivy Duke and Guy Newall on screen though… well more Ivy than Guy anyway.  This was the first of two precious British films from this most unfairly maligned period of domestic cinema and there’s no greater defender than King’s College’s Dr Lawrence Napper who detailed the background to the couple’s stellar career and the films that established them as a top-drawer attraction in this country.

Lawrence recalls talking to his grand-mother about her memories of British film and she made the comment that “they always doped the horses…” and this was indeed true in the 40 or more equestrian dramas of this period including this one, featuring a thoroughbred dubbed A Pound a Leg 2 by Ivy’s character, Boy Woodburn, after she advised her father “Old” Matt (A. Bromley Davenport who affects the oddest stance...) that’s what his mother was worth when she was offered for sale by a friendly Romany Traveller (in modern parlance). The horse, subsequently named A Pound a Leg, was already pregnant at the time and died shortly after birth leaving Boy to raise the foal with the aid of one of her father’s jockeys and a goat.

Point of order: did you know that horses frozen with fear by, say, A Fire, will often follow a goat out of danger? Just mentioning it in the event it ever comes up.

Anyway, horse grows up fast and strong and very attached to Boy. Local rivals and bookies – not professionals like but looking to cook the odds – are keen to derail the challenge and all sorts of reprehensible things happen in the name of “competition”. During the course of all this Boy becomes enamoured with local landowner Jim Silver (Guy who also directs). Lawrence quoted contemporary critical opinion, which was pretty much spot on, some great scenery and cinematography but the story is a little off the pace. Still Ivy does, as advertised, look fab in men’s jodhpurs and it’s a spirited affair which, for me, did actually verge on the thrilling towards the end.

 

Today was the 177^th Grand National day and so this was great programming whether intentionally or not, with its big set piece at the actual 74^th Grand National in 1922. This was won, after two false starts, by Music Hall at odds of 100/9 and attended by various of my grandparents, just a short bus ride from Kirkdale but the others would have had to change at The Black Bull on route from Wavertree.  Not to make this all about Liverpool, but you could see The Sefton Arms public house, now renamed The Red Rum Bar & Grill, as well as where my mate Mark lived off the main road into town… Anyway, the race in 1922 looked chaotic as ever with a number of fallers at Becher's Brook as you’d expect. A lot less safe for horse and rider in those days. For the fictional winner, you really have to watch the film!

Gene Gauntier: actress, writer, producer, director...

Actresses from the Teens Presented by Dave Peabody, with Meg Morley

This section was the result of a deep dive into the careers of women who broke new ground and yet who are largely overlooked a century later – certainly not any longer.

Gene Gauntier was a dynamo who wrote, acted and directed working extensively with the Kalem company before establishing her own `Gene Gauntier Feature Players in December 1912. She scripted the landmark feature, From the Manger to the Cross (1912) and also starred as the Virgin Mary one of 87 film roles and 42 scripts. She left the film industry aged just 35 in 1920 later siting the “new ways” film was being produced by a more corporate system, “…after being master of all I surveyed…” she told Photoplay in 1924 (you can find the full interview on the Internet Archive here).

We saw her in The Lad from Old Ireland (1910) directed by Sydney Olcott and filmed on location in Cork after the Kalem company became the first American studio to set up a unit in Ireland. Olcott plays the Lad who goes off to America to make his fortune leaving his sweetheart Aileen (Gauntier) behind to an uncertain future. It’s probably the first film shot on two continents and you can find it on the IFI Archive Player. The locals dubbed the enterprising American show folk,  the “O’Kalems” … but of course they did!

Ethel Grandin was another former stage actor and an early star of Carl Laemmle’s IMP company who, with cinematographer (and her future husband) Ray Smallwood, was taken to California by director Thomas H. Ince before returning to New York to star in George Loane Tucker’s sensational Traffic in Souls (1913). We watched her in a ten-minute extract from Francis Ford’s The Invaders (1912) which featured a mix of genuine native Americans, actors brown-face and the settlers under attack. In many ways a far more complex and nuanced film than some modern thought might allow in the United States.

Laura Sawyer was a former Shakespearian actress who joined Edison in 1908 under the direction of J. Searle Dawley before moving on, five years later, to Famous Players. We saw her in A Romance of the Cliff Dwellers (1910) which was filmed on location at the historic Manitou Cliff Dwellings in Colorado which date back 800-1000 years.

Jane Wolfe, was another Kalem star and we saw her in The Mexican Joan of Arc (1911), directed by George Melford and which sees her impress as an action hero as well as horsewoman. Undoubtedly talented, she’s also notable for being a follower Aleister Crowley’s religious order Thelema. The Great Mage was so influential on many generations of drug-taking mystics, seekers and rock stars – Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin bought his former house Boleskine wherein various rituals were performed. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, was the central tenant of Thelema but Wolfe was to return to education and supporting film culture.

Sadly, there was so much to tell and show that we weren’t able to discuss the 5^th Muse, Anna Q. Nilsson a Swedish-born actress who Dave said afterwards had paved the way for the influx of Swedes. Hopefully we will return to the subject and get to watch her – and the beguiling Miriam Cooper – in The Confederate Ironclad (1912) one of many American films reflecting on the Civil War as it was still in living memory (c.f. too The Invaders…).

Gösta Ekman, Karina Bell,Fritz Kortner and Diomira Jacobini

Revolutionshochzeit/The Last Night (Germany 1928) (digital), with Stephen Horne, introduced by Dave Glass

First and foremost, we admire the courage of the scriptwriter and the producer for making this film without hesitation. We say this because the film does not have a happy ending…

Raul Quattrocchi, Kines (n.10, March 17th, 1929)

This was an intense and uncompromising film featuring beautiful leads and Fritz Kortner who is simply fabulously revolting as the greasy-haired, unkempt and uncouth revolutionary Montaloup, an administrative official of La Revolution who must sign off on who comes and who goes, who lives and who dies…

There are no easy choices to be made by the players in this film and ultimately, duty and love are the purest of motives and the hardest choices imaginable. It’s a quietly devastating film with light and considerable shade provided by the marvellous Karina Bell as Leontine, loyal servant to Lady Alaine (Diomira Jacobini) who must escape from Paris to marry a royalist officer, Ernest (Walter Rilla) who makes a daring return to France for their ceremony. Dashing captain Marc-Anton (Gösta Ekman) meets the women as they swap roles knowing that Leontine is the better “negotiator” and helps persuade Montaloup to give them a pass out of Paris.

Marc-Anton knows that his troop will soon be following the women to the country and sadly they arrive at the same Chateau just in time to catch the bride all in white and the groom making his escape. Montaloup signs Ernest’s death warrant but allows Marc-Anton’s plea that he should at least be allowed his wedding night before facing death at 06.00. But Ernest cannot live in the few moments he has left and Marc-Anton helps him escape only to be sentenced to the same fate… what follows next is a meditation on the nature of love and duty as the Captain and the Lady love for what is left of life.

Adapted from the 1909 novel by Danish writer Sophus Michaëlis and directed A. W. Sandberg I’m surprised this film is not screened more often – a rare treat with Stephen Horne on fine form joining the dots between our thoughts and the actors’ expressions.

 

World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle Facey

It was one exclusive after another with the World Premiere of a raucous new programme from the Physical TV Company, who gave us Cinema’s First Nasty Women. Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy (or Nasty Women II – Even Nastier as literally no one is calling it) includes ten short comedies from 1903 to 1913 that show just how forthright and iconoclastic women were in early cinema, a period in which they were allowed a creative freedom rarely seen since by the still-forming new media. This was proceeded by an innovative 25-minute documentary which showed modern women connecting with their forebears via something like a time-telephone, cutting away to shots of Texas Guinan or Leontine in silent connection with their revolutionary spirit. It is a conversation between past and present and a call to keep free running all over the stale males still in the way of progress… some of whom are indeed nastier than ever.

Colin Sell accompanied and even had to stifle a laugh or two such was the chaos: smash the patriarchy not the piano players!

 

Billie and Clive

The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine, introduction by Liz Cleary

Liz Cleary gave a thoroughly researched and entertaining introduction concerning her finer feelings towards the chisel featured Clive Brook. At Pordenone and then Hippfest, audiences have been impressed with his smooth intensity as Heliotrope Harry Harlow in Forgotten Faces (1928) and here was a chance to watch this Rolls-Royce purr again as the rather more distasteful Archduke Alexander, a playboy prince for whom even the elegant Jane Winton’s Mademoiselle Julie isn’t enough.

The duke is arch alright and instructs his head of household Kinkelin (Gustav von Seyffertitz here more sympathetic than his usual unsettling…) to keep poor Jane away as she is boring him. As his party of noblemen proceeds, Julie sings in one last effort to woo him back only to be rebuffed and to – apparently – drink poison. Unimpressed Alexander cruelly dismisses her even as some of his party rush her to the local doctor (Nicholas Soussanin), he pursues, sure of her deception as women, apparently, will not die for love… In this case he is proved correct but he’s immediately distracted by the Doctor’s sister Judith as played by Billie Dove.

Apart from forever confusing Billie with Bessie, Dove with Love… I’ve not seen her in much and she’s very good here as a spirited moral counter to the fresh prince who is abusive, controlling and toxic. This could have been a much cornier tale of royalty brought down to earth by a good woman but both leads are highly engaging and, as directed by our own Hungarian, Alexander Korda, the film is quite elegant even if Billie looks more likely to be found in jazz age Manhattan than “Buda”.

Ashley Valentine accompanied with variations on a cue sheet including snatches of Rachmaninov and Chopin – some of my piano-playing mother’s favourites - spirited and evocative and very much on theme for this “Ruritanian” romantic comedy. There was also a snatch of the theme song, as Billie Dove dances with our flawed but elegant hero in the royal palace.

Lillian Hall-Davis and Carl Brisson, 

The Ring (UK 1927) (digital restoration) with Neil Brand, presented by Neil Alcock, author of Hitchology

 

Sadly, I had to miss the evening’s highlight, one of Hitchcock’s silent best accompanied by Neil Brand but this is a good chance to remind you all that you can hear this combination and others on the new Blu-ray box set – Alfred Hitchcock: The Beginning! Available at all good retailers and Amazon.

The same can be said of Neil Alcock’s recent book, HITCHOLOGY: A film-by-film guide to the style and themes of Alfred Hitchcock which is, of course, essential reading.