Swanson Summer… Zaza (1923), Kino Lorber Blu-ray

The fastest, easiest, most enjoyable picture I ever made…

Gloria Swanson

 

There’s a buzz about Gloria Swanson what with a UK premier of a new restoration of Queen Kelly* and a cracking book about the film fresh on bookshelves** but, then again, there’s always been a buzz around Gloria. What strikes you so often about the primary stars of this enduring medium is the sheer kinetic energy displayed in service to the narrative, the action and the story. They had faces then of course but they had to radiate and then they had to mime: no portion of the screen was uncovered and no doubt was left in audience’s minds of the feelings on display.

Gloria was, of course, one of the golden generation of short actors, arching her back and standing on tippy toes to gain a fraction of an inch when measured against Mary, Mabel or Viola Dana. Lord knows what they were feeding them in Brooklyn, but the Talmadges were almost supernaturally tall at 5ft 5” and therefore probably unbeatable in the inter-studio netball league (if there was one).

But no matter how big they were, the harder they fell if they were playing alongside Gloria and this film features a couple of catty skirmishes with Mary Thurman (5ft 4”) who goes down just as quickly as Bebe Daniels (5ft 4”) in Why Change Your Wife? (1920). Gloria is too swift, has lightning combinations and goes in harder every time and, as Zaza, the talk of Parisian nightlife, she is peerless and fearless. Thurman plays Florianne, a singer just below Zaza on the bill and in the pecking order, who loathes her more popular rival as much as the men love her but she’s a tryer, we have to give her that.

Watch out for a swinging right hook Yvonne!

The film opens with a title card invoking the spirit of Zazas past on stage and on screen – Rajane, Duse, Leslie Carter, Farrar - before introducing another – “a modern and tempestuous Zaza – the Zaza of today – “, who is to be found in a small provincial theatre not far from the capital. The new sensation dominates the bill and backstage as well and we find Zaza in a dressing-room tizz as Gloria establishes her star’s quality by playfully bullying her loyal assistant Nathalie (Yvonne Hughes) when she can’t find the silk gown she’s actually wearing. She blames her anyway then smiles a crafty smile and drops a tip on the dresser. She’s somewhat less forgiving of the stage manager and crew, not to mention Florianne whose head-dress offends her as she peers through the safety curtain spyhole and so she plucks part of it out.

Director Alan Dwan sets a Fairbanks-frenetic pace as you’d expect and how else to establish the presence of Zaza who has to be a stage stunner even in silence and with her motivations only hinted at. Opening at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, in May 1898, Pierre Berton and Charles Simon’s play contains a backstory that is not present in Hollywood, not even implied, with Zaza having been a prostitute before escaping to success in the music hall. But don’t worry, things do get a little "French"… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Gloria abides

Zaza casts a spell on her audience and one of those enthralled is the rich gentleman Bernard Dufresne (H. B. Warner) who comes to the theatre every night to stare adoringly at the petit star as she swings high over the audience in a very literal attempt to make her jump out of the screen. Technically these are so well filmed with the camera above Gloria as her swing moves to and fro at alarming speed, the cinematographer must have been moving exactly in parallel motion probably on a cherry picker or some other device, not looking down and cranking with all of his might to capture the action below.

 

Zaza’s swing is very impressive but it’s also her biggest weakness as Florianne cuts one of the ropes which frays and snaps during a performance throwing the star to the ground below and breaking her leg. Besotted Bernard takes command and arranges for the best surgeons in all of France to make her well again but she must spend a long time convalescing in his rural retreat and one thing leads to another… as it was always likely to do!

Gloria and HB Warner in the press

Yet there’s more than one twist in this particular tail as Bernard’s full situation is revealed and heads may have to rule over hearts. You really have to watch it to find out as Gloria gets to show us her dramatic range – her true superpower – emoting in ways that few could accomplish. But it’s not just her face, she is physically expressive despite not being a dancer, and has a natural pep and swagger that fills the screen and draws the eye.

The film is also splendid vehicle for Swanson as a clothes horse with stunning designs from a young Norman Norell who, recently graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where he studied fashion design, joined Paramount in 1922. He worked with Gloria and also with Valentino before the film business moved to Hollywood and he then would go on to have a huge career in fashion right the way into the early 1970s.

Gloria's glorious gowns!

His remarkable talents are well on display here and you couldn’t ask for a finer clothes horse than Swanson who wears his creations as extensions of her character’s personality. You don’t need to be tall to wear haute couture on screen, just natural grace, main character poise and Zaza-vroom energy!

This contributes to the film’s joys and, later on, acts as a counter point to the difficult choices Zaza must make as life moves from on stage and in stalls, to bucolic family settings. Love is love but there are many forms as she will discover…

The music is from Jeff Rapsis and is based on the original cue sheets from 1923 which takes us close to the original musical experience of audiences watching. It’s a 2.0 DTS-HD MA sound mix so hi-fidelity way beyond 1923 but all the better for filling your living room with Jeff’s expert extemporisation and practiced feel for the period and the musical sentiment of this joyful film. 

An excellent package all round from Kino-Lorber and apologies for only taking the nine years to watch and review it! NOW is the time though, now is Swanson Summertime!

*BFI 20^th September and tickets go onsale 6th August - there's also an introduction from Pamela Hutchinson author of…

**The Curse of Queen Kelly, (Sticking Place Books) – you can order from here or the BFI Shop and don’t forget to bring them along for signing on 20^th!

Gloria expects you on 20th... NO excuses!

Midnight at the oasis… On the Beach (1959), BFI Blu-ray out 27th July!

 

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river…

 

TS Eliot, The Hollow Man (1925)

 

In 1959 the Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to symbolize the threat of nuclear war, stood at seven minutes to midnight. In 2026 it is just 85 seconds… the closest ever. So, any attempt to review this film as a “period piece” is undermined by proliferation and the persistent threat of global conflict involving weapons of mass destruction.

 

 

I hadn't previously seen On the Beach, it sounds like an upbeat Cliff Richard musical with that title, but this is a Stanley Kramer film and it could well be one of the most sobering ever made as the remnants of humanity await the drift of the nuclear radiation down south to Australia. Yet, even in the face of almost certain doom, there are new tales to tell and moments of humanity, and warmth. It’s no longer that hard to place ourselves in the mindset of 1959 when the Cold War was in full freeze and nuclear stockpiles were already big enough for mutually assured destruction. Growing up through the end of the Cold War we had every expectation that The Bomb would slowly be defused… but there you go.

 

Directed by Kramer, sandwiched between The Defiant Ones (1958) and Inherit the Wind (1960) this is another in his string of films addressing topics Hollywood normally avoids. Adapted by John Paxton from the novel of the same name by Australian writer Nevil Shute, it is an unflinchingly clear view of what course human history could take just over a decade after the World war which followed on from the War to End All Wars two decades before. It wasn’t such an unreasoned expectation that conflicts were inevitable even if the costs were to be so great and so universally unavoidable. We never learn.

Gregory Peck

It begins on a submarine, an illusion of safety among the routine, under the auspices of Commander Dwight Lionel Towers played by Gregory Peck, whose Mount Rushmore visage of wisdom and pained humanity opens in concerned close up, scanning the seas for signs of life. They are heading south to Melbourne, the last survivors of the US Navy which, like most of the planet has fallen under a hail of nuclear weapons in a conflagration that is not explained but which is still ongoing. The radiation of the war is mostly in the Northern hemisphere but it is slowly being carried towards them… some months away.

 

The film gives us a scenario of slight hope with the submarine being sent north to investigate the distribution of the radiation cloud, which according to the theory, may be dispersing more quickly than at first thought leaving the possibility of inhabitable land. At the same time, a series of morse code signals are received from San Diego… is it possible that another group has managed to survive?

 

In Melbourne though, life continues almost as normal with the only real difference being the lack of gasoline and the city full of cyclists, electric trams and horses. One of the local naval officers, Lieutenant Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) is assigned to the Americans. He’s a family man whose wife Mary (Donna Anderson) is in denial about their limited future and who can blame her with a small child to protect.

 

Melbourne after the fall

As Towers arrives he is met at the station by Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) who instantly catches his eye – as Ava Gardner is apt to do… - although he is living as a man whose wife and children are somehow still alive back in America. There’s also a British scientist, Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire) who drinks too much mourning his involvement in the nuclear programme and knowing exactly what is coming. Both Gardner and Astaire are magnificent and give quite possibly some of their finest performances in the mid/late careers, freed of the lightness of much of the material they had to work with in this time. Both also have important roles to play in showing that there is new life and new love even in the direst of circumstances as Julian rebuilds a Ferrari racing car, winning a race that whilst it has a few too many crashes to be anything other than “a ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines…”, does allow him one last hurrah. Peck is excellent of course as convincing as ever as a man of duty and dignity who will follow his course no matter what the personal cost.

 

He and Ava get to bring new romance to the final laps of humanity as Moira and Towers get close as the reality of his situation finally sets him free. But, for how long. The local authorities have dispensed suicide pills to be used when the options are a slow death by radiation or nothing… Peter and Mary have the hardest journey to take with their child, once the future now requiring a desperate choice. Perkins is at his most sympathetic and young Donna Anderson acquits herself well.

 

As the congregation outside the church starts to dimmish with the coming of the summer winds, the banner reads that “there is still time Brother…”

 

Fred Astaire, Donna Anderson and Anthony Perkins watch a yacht race on the beach

Scott Harrison, in one of two new commentaries, points out the title is taken the verse at the top from TS Elliott’s poem The Hollow Man. These beach is terminal* which presents a desolate landscape and a state of moral destitution “it is not about hope or optimism but about when we chose to give in to the inevitable and how we chose to live under a death sentence. It may even – as the book – be about suicide. Most of all though, it is a warning and one that stands to this day.

 

We still have this capacity to destroy whilst at the same time are plunging the planet into a slow hot death with fossil fuels… this is the science fiction of probabilities, a warning we have still to head and the circumstances of which have only worsened over this new century. In this respect, we are all Mary…

 

 

Anthony and Donna

Special features:

 

Presented in High Definition

Audio commentary written by Dr Philip Davey, author of When Hollywood Came to Melbourne

Newly commissioned audio commentary by Scott Harrison

Making On the Beach (1959, 9 mins): rare 8mm footage shot by amateur filmmaker Richard Goslin

Interview with Donna Anderson (2015, 19 mins): the actor discusses her time working with the cast and crew of On the Beach

Kim Newman on Apocalypse Cinema (2022, 22 mins): the film critic deconstructs On the Beach and discusses the socio-political environment in which the film emerged

Clothes to Die For: The Costumes of Ava Gardner (2022, 16 mins): costume historian Elissa Rose explores Ava Gardner’s impressive wardrobe in the film

A Tribute to Stanley Kramer (2004, 14 mins): a celebration of Stanley Kramer’s life and career, featuring interviews with screenwriter Abby Mann and Karen Sharpe, Kramer’s widow

Operation Hurricane (1952, 33 mins): after the first Soviet atomic weapon was detonated in 1949, the British accelerated the development of their own nuclear deterrent. This haunting film documents the first atom bomb test on the Monte Bello Islands

Original theatrical trailer and galleries

 

Fred on form

For the first pressing only there’s also an illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Dr Christina Brennan and Barry Forshaw and a biography of Stanley Kramer by Jennifer Frost. Also includes writing on Operation Hurricane by the BFI’s Vic Pratt, notes on the special features and film credits

 

In his commentary Scott Harrison reads out the most pertinent and the most well-known closing section of Eliot’s poem, which aptly describes the fate of these last few survivors. At the time one of the reviews has noted that perhaps On the Beach could be the film that “saves the World” … well, it’s getting its second chance now thanks to this excellent release.

 

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

TS Eliot, The Hollow Man (1925)

 

You can order direct from the BFI Shop in person or online and from all good retailers of home cinema. Poignant, terrifying and sobering.

 

 

*JG Ballard’s Terminal Beach (1964), a short story based on a man’s physical and mental deterioration on a nuclear testing site, may or may not have been inspired by this film. There was something in the air and the World came very close with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962… ever closer to midnight.

The best in silents… Il Cinema Ritrovato 40, Bologna

 

It’s just struck me that not only was this edition number 40 of the Ritrovato but that was the number in centigrade the temperature hit from time to time. Four dozen or so films to see out of 500 on offer in just eight days, crossing the city, finding the shadows in long medieval streets and I’m an old white guy from Merseyside wearing socks and old band t-shirts? No problem. After locking my flight bags in my room on the day of my departure – all perfectly normal, no sign of heat exhaustion or “sauteed Brit-brain” there – I’m now sat on the tarmac dredging the cranial swamp for the best silent treats of the week.

Matinee Idols Death Match

OK, this wasn’t what they called the strand, that was Women’s Male Stars who were developed to meet the largely female audiences of the growing matinee by the increasingly commercialised studios. In practice this was a competition to decide which of the following was going to be crowned the Male Matinee Idol of the Festival or, to be fair, who was going to come second as Rodolfo “Rudy” Valentino was nailed on in the rather interesting playboy to cabin boy coming of age film Moran of the Lady Letty (1922).

Rudy can't fail. Just ask Dorothy, his friend.

In a lesson to Capital from the Proletariat, Rudy’s character learns purpose in hard work and also finds love with Comrade Moran (Dorothy Dalton) who turns out, to be the very womanly Letty Sternerson. All this after he’s fellow sailors called him Lilly of the Fields… projection methinks! Love and Merchant Seamen is a big topic but mark this one for future reference. It’s a rollicking good adventure!

The ill-fated Wallace Reid has drawn the short straw in terms of his surviving work and his career was also tragically cut short after a studio accident left him addicted to Morphine. But he’s a charming performer and you can see enough in this restoration of Sick Abed (1921) although his is in the rather unheroic position of having to feign sickness in order to avoid a financially troublesome trip into work. He’s a charmer but there are better examples of his full appeal although his chemistry with Bebe Daniels is spot on.

Now for the Irish contender and Male and Female (1919) with Thomas “Tommy” Meighan as the Admirable Crighton who steps up to save the aristocratic by useless family who employs him after a shipwreck. He wins the heart of Gloria Swanson even though their hearts are approximately a foot apart, but class tells after they are rescued and the butler heads off for a new life in the country of opportunity south of Canada…

Torrence takes the competition far too seriously.

Contender No. 4 please… Tol-able David (1921) and its young Richard Barthelmess fighting to defend his family against a bunch of murderous men who are occupying his neighbour’s house. This is quite the best of the four films and as directed by Henry King is a deserved part of the canon. Barthelmess has to act young but this is a right of violent passage with all too believable and nasty stakes. When I say nasty, I mean the extraordinary Ernest Torrence who shows his dark side which such glee: one of the definitive bad men of this era who could also flirt with Clara Bow in Mantrap or do comedy till the cows came home….

 

Enrico Guazzoni’s World

No Ritrovato is complete without two things:

    Divas

    Films of antiquity and the ancient world

On the latter point we were spoiled with a new restoration of Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis? (1913) which take the tableau style as far as it could go with multiple depth of field slowly revealing the full effect of a well designed and choreographed set piece whether in a palatial room or at the Circus Maximus. There are crowds of thousands and the effect is to offer a deep and stylised window into the Italy of emperors and Christian revolt. I’m sure it will all work out… but this is a major film in the history of long-form cinema. What’s that Mr Griffith? Oh, your thing… that’s not due for a couple of years yet. The Hell it is.

Over ten years later an attempt was made to revive the Italian Golden Age with The Last Days of Pompei (1926) – an adaptation of the English novel by Lord Bulwer-Lytton, as had been the two competing versions of 1913. As UCL’s Maria Wyke points out this attempt to recreate the recent cinematic as well as antiquarian past  “… tries to reject the detached tourist gaze on the city of 19^th century imaginings for an impassioned, participatory vision of ancestral suffering.” Cecil B deMille could only watch and admire.

Pina Menichelli beguiles in Alla Deriva

We also had three films featuring one of the three main Diva of the cinematic golden age with Pina Menichelli in three of the seven she was directed by Guazzoni, including La Casa di Nessuno (1915), Una Tragedia al Cinematorafo (1915) and Alla Deriva (1913) which, as Giovanni Lasi writes in the programme, revolves around the presence and intense performance of the actress “… with her ability to hypnotise the viewer with magnetic and unsettling gazes…”. Consider me cross-eyed.

1906 given voice

I missed a couple of Japanese films with Benshi accompaniment but was treated to the Italian version for the 1906 compilation strands which was a delight, especially late night in the Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini. Here Gabriel Gabriel Thibaudeau played piano with Alice Zecchinelli on drums and Julie Linquette providing what could be described as  vocalise combining sound effects, dialogue and narration. This was especially funny for Aux bains de mer (1906) as she provided commentary from a middle-aged couple watching events on the beach and then in the hand-coloured tour de force that is Aladin ou la lampe marveilleuse (1906) from the genius Albert Capellani.

It was one of the most joyous sections of the week and peak Ritrovato under those stars as our laughs drowned out the incessant cicadas.

Aladin and there's also a lamp...

The Child of Paris/ L'enfant de Paris (1913) with Gabriel Thibaudeau & Fabiana Sommariva

Proving that it was not just the Italians but also the French who were leading the cinematic World Cup in the early 1910s, Léonce Perret’s film positively barrels along even though it is based on an unpromising premise of a young girl seemingly orphaned by the death of both parents in quick succession and then kidnapped by a criminal gang for reasons that they only make up on the fly… It is tense and content rich with a high level of cinematic technic from the director and his cameraman, Georges Specht. It’s two hours long and whilst there are some padded sequences overall you are gripped by the search and the chase from Paris to Nice.

There is so much pleasing technique in the film from backlighting, low-angled shots, close-ups and surprising camera movements which allied to the location shooting and a plot involving chases across France, trails gone cold then warmed again, persistence and steadfast heroism sees good win out. After all the shibboleths drummed into audiences about film development, you keep on finding innovations “out of time”… we see more every year with these restorations.

 

Depth of field, lighting, framing... such a complex shot.

Finish Films and Cleaning Women…

If it was Wednesday it had to be Finnish film day with two excellent titles from Finnish actor and filmmaker Teuvo Puro; the first Meren kasvojen edessä (Before the Face of the Sea) (1926), accompanied by the mighty Stephen Horne and the second Noidan kirot (Curses of the Witch) (1927) projected in the Piazza Maggiore and accompanied by Helsinki’s finest Cleaning Women.

Silent film is as much about travelling in space as well as time and I shall be saying more about both films in the coming days but just to say that the three cleaning robots (CW01, CW03 and CW04) that form the band know how to support the narrative of the film screening above them and how, despite their unusual dress senses, to focus musical energy in dramatic sympathy.

Suomi tuntee elokuvan!

Sisterly solidarity in Noidan kirot 

Vögel sind seltsam, aber die Liebe ist blind: Asta and Connie Restored

 

Cheating here but two German films for one with Conrad Veidt first up in a comedy, Liebe Macht Blind (1925) accompanied by Herr Neil Brand with the usual informed wit and wealth of reference. Connie is a psychiatrist Dr Lamare in love with his patient, the very married Diane (Lil Dagover). Her husband Viktor is having an affair with a woman played by one of Britain’s finest silent actors, the sublime Lillian Hall-Davis who is as eye-catching as always. It’s Veidt’s mad professor who takes the comedy biscuits though even after Emil Jannings pops up to spoof his role in The Last Laugh.

The film was considered lost until a pristine nitrate copy was discovered in Chile and another piece of Connie’s range was preserved in all its quirkiness.

Asta messes about on the river.

Less manic but equally important was the restored version of Urban Gad’s Der Fremde Vogel/The Strange Bird (1911) accompanied by James Shelby. The film was one of the first pictures he made with fellow Dane Asta Nielsen in their initial German contract. It’s a tale of an outing on the waterways of the Spree Forest, near Berlin during which Asta’s character forms a romantic attachment with a boatsman (Carl Clewing). The restoration has added some four minutes to the screen time and has added the tints missing for so long from. Shot almost entirely on location – to great acclaim – it’s presents Nielsen’s naturalistic emoting and physicality in ways that we revolutionary for the time. Europe’s first silent superstar was beginning to shine…

 

What Price Glory? (1926) with Gabriel Thibaudeau

The Ritrovato Road is long with many a wind and turn and, sometimes Pilgrims, we’re a bit less than match fit depending on a mix of self-care and the demon drink that my wide’s forebears signed the pledge against (no such thing in Liverpool I have to say…). So it was that my first attempt as watching this quite fabulous restoration failed after a missed the first skirmish with the Hunn lost to Morpheus sweet charms… I dreamt a parallel film that soon took off on its own narrative…

Back for a second try with a strict agreement between myself and Mr M Fuller of Bristol, to wake each other should an old war wound cause us to lose consciousness, we both saw the entirely of Raoul Walsh’s spectacular and, whilst there is perhaps too much larking about and attempts at mutually assured destruction from leading men “Big” Victor McLaglen and Edmund Lowe as they fight over who’s best and, mostly, who gets the hand of Delores del Rio, it’s undoubtedly a major film.

The combat scenes are extraordinary especially with the colourisation of the explosions so well done it’s hard to work out how they were done – double exposure possibly but there’s no overlap of the images. But the war scenes are so well handled and their intensity explains just why the boys’ squabbling are so necessary – they both recognise the reality of the war and their chances of survival… what else is there to do but enjoy yourselves whilst you still can.

 

Josephine Baker

Someone had mentioned that it was only when you see Ms Baker on film that you realise what a complete package she was: acting, looks, timing, range and humour all quite remarkable but it when Josie dances that my ears popped and musicians Meg Morley on piano with Alice Zecchinelli on drums, set the Jazz tempo to “11” as we saw probably the most energetic and distinctive Charleston I’ve ever witnessed (no one’s doing this on Strictly Come Dancing that’s for sure…).

Baker had longer-stronger legs than most mortals and greater strength than most of the stage-trained actor-dancers around her with the result that she was able to move faster and harder to create the most bewildering spectacle that drew from jazz dancing as well as throwing in some moves that I’ve not seen from other dancers of this era.

Josephine Baker

If it was just this and only this she did then she would still be a legend but her charm and ease with story-telling, her quickness of thought and expression also marks her as a fine dancer. In Siren of the Tropics she somehow manages to rise above the racist subtext - the idea that she doesn't belong in the Paris of her rich white love interest (and his rich white girlfriend) and that she should go “home”. She wants none of that and decides to take her chance in the new world of America.

There’s the obvious irony that she had to leave the US to finally be accepted as a leading lady on screen. As in these French films she was also a sensation in the clubs and revolutionised dance.

What I like best is her impish grin and dimples, she is having the time of her life and it is liberating.

Best festival freeby, evah!!

Sunrise (1927) – Piazza Maggiore

What more can I say about Sunrise? Looking back a week after this stunning World Premier moments stay with me and I can’t wait to watch it again… Albert Camus famously suggested that all art was a search for those first few things that really moved us and there’s something in that with silent film but also in the native experience of this film and Timothy Brock’s music.

Edna, Charlie and a friend

A Dog’s Life (1918)/Shoulder Arms (1918) – Piazza Maggiore

The version audiences have watched for decades was reconstructed from back-up camera angles and second-choice takes, assembled from degraded C and D negatives after the original A negative deteriorated beyond use.

Dave Kerr, Moma

Dave Kerr of the Museum of the Moving Image asked how many of us had seen these two films and after a considerable number of hands went up in the throng he said maybe not… Seems like the former workhouse boy from Kennington was not just a creative genius but an organised one who kept copies of all of his films based on what he considered to be the best takes.

Grade A were used to create copies for the American market and Grade B – almost but not quite as good – were mostly used to cut films for the European and wider markets. So, all of these years, we haven’t seen the very best takes in regional releases nor any others. The restoration team went in search of the material featured in the best canister and, using elements from across the world, from C and D as well as B, came up with about 95% of Grade A material within which to re-construct these films in the way that they were first seen 108 years ago.

Whether it was the suggestion, the occasion, the heat or Timothy Brock’s world-class re-construction of Chaplin’s later scores for these films but Mr Kerr’s point was well made and, with every impish thought shadowing across Charlie’s face, every quicksilver improvisational spark or perfectly executed punchline, it felt like we were indeed watching a more beautiful version of what we already loved. And you know, that can’t be bad.

Hi co-conspirators were also at the best with Edna Purviance revealing and equivalent level of imp to her partner and the two firing off each other with knowing smiles on their faces. Maybe this was something quickly learned from Mabel Normand but Charlie and Edna glance to camera both to make sure we not only know what their thinking but also how much fun they’re having.

This happens even in the middle of Shoulder Arms with it’s faithful representations of life on the font line taken to extremes – the boys sleep underwater in their flooded trench - but as a mark of respect to the millions fighting over there. It’s a mark of Chaplin’s ability and status that he managed to make this film – it’s a matter of how important and loved he was by those who were fighting or who had family fighting that they queued in their millions to see the funny side.

Tonight, the aforementioned Mr Brock conducted the all’ Orchestra Senzaspine in a reworking of earlier reorchestrated Chaplain music to fit the new material. It was again another powerful performance in the piazza and one enjoyed by thousands, in the seats, the bars and on the stage. Charlie’s made something that will last forever and he’s made Edna and his other friends immortal.

In an era of fake prizes, THIS is exactly worth having!

 

See you next year Bologna! Keep it cool.

 

A symphony of two humans… Sunrise (1927), SFFP Restoration Premier, Il Cinema Ritrovato #40

Sometimes you come into these events after a hectic period working and preparing, doing the things you won’t be doing for eight days of potential self-indulgence. Sometimes you get frazzled by the early morning starts and “flight discipline”, maybe you don’t like Ryan Air or, just maybe you get snagged for 90 minutes of passport control? But, as Uncle George said, Here Comes the Sun and, indeed, here came a Sunrise unlike any I’d ever seen before.

My history with FW Murnau’s film starts with home media – Eureka I think – but I didn’t see it on screen as I was waiting for live accompaniment and, as it’s part sound in common versions, which didn’t happen until Elizabeth Jane Baldrey played magical harp accompaniment in the Early Music Centre in York. It was perfect. A decade later and those excellent folk at the San Francisco Film Preserve – who are on some kind of incredible run at the moment – have restored the film from various sources* and it not only looks different, it is different featuring more sunrise than previous versions.

It was unveiled on the first night of the 40^th edition of Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato and it was one of those times when even the beauty of the Piazza Maggiore faded into the background as you lost yourself in the magic of Murnau with this fable of human frailty and love, featuring extraordinary performances from Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien. George dwarfs Janet and Murnau uses this to his advantage getting the most from O’Brien’s impressive physicality – all awkward angles and shadowy purpose, with surprising tenderness to counterpoint the vein popping rage and passion you’d expect.

George. Images from San Francisco Film Preserve

Even with that wig – and it’s an important prop – Gaynor delicate emotional radiance is indeed Oscar worthy and without her the brutality of her husband’s betrayal and callous connivance would not be so hard felt by audiences over the last century – it is a timeless crime and reflects the guilt we all carry at some point (not drowning but ditching…). Part of the play is also that the audience shares in the husband’s desire to experience something new in the city, perhaps these two were a marriage made in a small town with little choice? Maybe they are holding each other back or, just maybe, they’re the perfect partnership poisoned by soulless desire – sexual and societal: the tram to nowhere?

But it was also Timothy Brock and his 80-piece orchestra – maybe more I stopped counting – who really blew the roof off (I know it’s an open square but you know…) with a truly powerful score that had so much quality of emotional phrasing, thematic shifts and unexpected tonality – rich dense power chords illustrating the looming dangers, the heart wrenching strings of passion and despair, a piano seemingly under assault at certain points and all of the smart stylistic references you could want.

This was richly satisfying music, and the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale ill Bologna were having a time of it – lost in their own music - all dressed in formal wear on a day when the city left many of us broiled and sautéed… and yet it was entwined with the narrative, waxing with the richest of silent cinematic emotionalism and wanning with ferocity, murderous intent and extreme peril. A drunken pig was chased though a dance hall by incongruous violins and Margaret Livingstone’s was the amplified vamp, her allure, never more clearly on show, swirling above the conflicted output of an orchestra under instructions to pull us in but show us no way out.

It felt like watching the film for the first time – it really did – and there’s no higher tribute to this combination of the restoration and the score, but what more could you ask, to see and feel this film again as something new and unpredictable. Lost in music, enjoying the silence. A perfect Bologna evening and a reported audience of seven thousand - live cinema in the hottest week of the year!

It was a day for women falling into water – is this a separate strand?** – as we had both festival poster girl Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Swanson (the IT Girl of 2026 for many reasons: Queen Kelly!!)

The first was in frank Capra's Ladies of Leisure (1930) which features a powerhouse performance from Ritrovato poster girl Barbara Stanwyck who plays Kay Arnold who is living the life of [insert period code words for sex worker] when tiring of one yacht-based gentlemen’s event, rows to freedom only to meet an artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) who gives her a lift. He resolves to paint her, for no other reason than to show the “Hope” he feels in her.

Initially it’s all about the work, and long hours of him asking her to gaze upwards at imagined stars – it’s only a ceiling she replies – but gradually she falls for his creative approach and, inevitably, her very presence is more than enough to upset the elevated circles in which he moves, his prudish parents and his trophy wife. There’s splendid support from Marie Provost as Kay’s best buddy and leisure lady but the jokes about her weight are hard to watch.

Tom and Gloria back in time

For Gloria it was not just her character, Mary, but everyone in the ship who crash into a lonely tropical island…after her pappa Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts) takes his family and servants on a cruise. Male and Female is an adaptation of JM Barrie’s stage play, The Admirable Crichton from 1902 and you suspect that the themes of class and entitlement examined by the play’s dislocation of the “natural order” were played down as DeMille went for his now familiar targets. This is exemplified by the re-titling – “now, why didn’t I think of that…” Barrie commented at the time.

Yacht-wrecked with no service operations to provide for them the clueless aristos have to rely on good old Irish ingenuity as head butler William Crichton (Thomas Meighan) emerges as the handiest man and the natural leader. His position in this new society draws the attention of Mary and the two share a bizarre fantasy of themselves in a mythical Byzantian dream in which Swanson famously got ready for her claws-up with an actual lion.

In both films, class plays a part, and love is not enough to bridge the gap… or so it seems. JM Barrie’s tale leaves things open by the admirable Crighton has certainly moved on to find himself in a country once called the United States of America.

All this on Day One… more to come as we plod the streets in search of fresh fruit, hot drinks and new celluloid excess… In The City!

 

 

* Restored in 4K in 2026 by San Francisco Film Preserve at BFI National Archive, Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Cineric, Haghefilm and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratories, from 35mm elements provided by BFI National Archive and MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts and San Francisco Film Preserve Preservation Partners

This version runs 94 minutes matching the original runtime of the 1927 Fox Movietone theatrical release but upping the quality in ways that demand rewatching!

 

**There were indeed many more films across the week featuring scenes of women falling in water with surely a missed opportunity not to include Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet although the actress takes a splash in the restored er fremde Vogel (1911) directed by Urban Gad.

 

 

Nasty woman? The Red Kimona (1925), Pioneers - First Women Filmmakers Blu-ray

“The illustrated journalism now prevalent finds its finest achievements in the publication of photographs surreptitiously taken. The value does not seem to lie in the fact that the photographs are of notabilities, but that they have been taken by stealth.”

The Right of Privacy (1896), John Gilmer Speed

This one is a doozy, absolutely newsworthy and, with apologies to Mrs. Wallace Reid and her subject, Gabrielle “Dolly” Dardley aka Darley, Layral, Layradi, D'Arley… later Mrs Wiley, the characters in real life are more extraordinary than those we see on screen. Probably best to start with the film but be prepared for murder most frequent and some substantial case law.

Dorothy Davenport had a highly successful career as a leading actress and after the death of her film star husband, Wallace Reid after he became addicted to morphine following an on-set accident, she fought to raise awareness of the perils of drug dependency with a series of films she produced starting with Human Wreckage (1923) which was based on this subject and featured her playing the wife of a drug addict then onto Broken Laws (1924) about the consequences of bad parenting, in which she also featured. She was the prime mover behind these films but her first directing credit was Linda (1929). She would also write and later on would take whatever role she could earn going forward including working with her friend director Arthur Lubin, co-writing scripts for the TV series, Francis the Talking Mule (1950-56).

Dorothy Davenport aka Mrs Wallace Reid

All that’s a far cry from this film, announced as being based on a true story – well, certainly a story – and which starts with Mrs Reid sitting in an almost expressionist set of a public library reading through old newspapers about a crime of the heart committed by a woman betrayed in 1917 (the date was changed to wartime for dramatic reasons). Actually, before this, we get the titles which are set against a fallen woman appealing to heaven for redemption and as the titles end we see her trying to climb her way out of the lower depths towards the light. The film may have been described as having been “made under the personal supervision of Mrs Reid”, but the director was Walter Lang making his first film in a career that would include Technicolor musicals like The King and I (1956). This inventive beginning is followed by many pleasingly framed sequences in a well-made film.

In the library the newspaper headline reads Story of Gabrielle Darley Startling Human Document with the quote “I didn’t know what to do… I loved him so…” from “a beautiful child-like girl”. Let’s stick with that for now as Mrs Reid turns to camera and the title card reads: This is a true story. Much of it is on record in the Superior Court of California. If it contains bitter truths, remember that I only turn the pages of the past… She calls for understanding of women like Gabrielle and hopes the audience will play their part in helping them.

We cut to the innocent face of Priscilla Bonner as Gabrielle Darley who is wrestling the news that her supposed fiancée has headed off to California to marry another woman. She cannot believe that her Howard (Carl Miller) truly intends to marry someone else and follows him, finding him buying an engagement ring in a jewellery store. He turns and cuts her dead and then she shoots him in a moment of disbelief – the very definition of the French concept of un crime passionnel although surely that’s not going to protect her in an American court.

Carl Miller and Priscilla Bonner

The court case is well handled and I have to say Bonner is excellent and Lang makes the absolute most of her abilities with frequent close-ups of her huge eyes welled up with tears and hooded with bitter regret; the crushing weight of lost love, false promises and an action that killed a large part of herself as well as her cruel lover. Bonner’s peepers are almost constantly moist and with such a reflective quality you can see the outline of the camera in her irises. All this is used to great affect when, to my surprise as a first-time viewer, and no doubt many others at the time, she is acquitted by the jury of twelve men. Much is made of her poor background and her unloving parents with Harold promising romance and escape and yet delivering her only to a life of degradation and prostitution in New Orleans, then renowned for its red lights.

But she retained faith in her man and was sorely misled as he stole her money and her heart.

After the judgement Gabrielle wants to atone for her crime and is taken under the wing of a wealthy socialite, Mrs. Beverly Fontaine (Virginia Pearson) who is virtue signalling at her expense and, as her housekeeper (fab Brit Emily Fitzroy) points out, will soon tire of her. During this period, she meets and falls in love with Mrs Fontaine’s chauffeur Freddy (Theodore von Eltz as Terrance O'Day) and we can see a romantic redemption ahead but not so simple.

Events get in the way as Gabrielle has to leave to find work and Freddy is called away to the army and the war in France… she gets the chance to work in a hospital and focuses on paying back the debt she feels that she owes.

Priscilla Bonner

It’s a very affecting film with flavour added by the likes of Tyrone Power Sr. as Gabrielle's father, Mary Carr as the protective prison matron and the imposing George Siegmann as Mr. Mack, “a client” who dwarfs Gabrielle and is the epitome of the physical and moral degradation she has had to endure. But without even knowing anything of the truth you wonder at the circumstances of the murder – why was she carrying a gun? – not to mention Gabrielle’s subsequent determination to find a humble route back to good grace.

Tightly scripted by future director, Dorothy Arzner the Red Kimono itself is an emblem of Gabrielle’s fall from grace, tinted bright red to highlight the guilt of the oldest profession and her frequent flashbacks… It’s a very effective device and combined with Bonner’s photogenic emoting makes the films narrative and moral arc a compelling one. That’s Hollywood though… there’s more outside than inside this film.

 

Another cameraman who should have got his union to prevent his having to do a roller-coaster reel!

"Historical accounts credit Dollie Wiley with murdering six people – five husbands and her best friend. However, police arrested and charged her with only one murder, that of Leonard Topp whom she gunned down in 1915. A jury acquitted her of that crime."

Prescott Daily Courier, 13^th January 2002

Now, I don’t want to harsh your mellow, but the true story of Gabrielle is not quite as it is advertised. This doesn’t invalidate the film’s good intent nor the efforts of cast, crew and Mrs Reid to make something positive of it but it is interesting in of itself. Also, as luck would have it, the real nature of Gabrielle aka “Dollie” was such that reality and fiction would meet in court and again with an outcome that arguably did more good than the motivations guiding the action intended or deserved. Fiction is stranger than truth.

After seeing the film in 1927, having previously been unaware, Dollie decided to sue upon the basis of the film highlighting the past that she was trying so hard to move beyond – her argument being that she wanted to assume a quiet and anonymous place in society. Reid made the mistake of using her actual name as well as her story and in Melvin v. Reid (1931) the court decided that "any person living a life of rectitude has that right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary attacks on his character, social standing or reputation." So, the fiction that presented her in the best light as a reformed and Christian character ended up landing her a windfall when Reid eventually lost.

But it seems that Dollie was another performer creating a version of herself, perhaps one closer to the film version. Her reality was far more complex and far from walking away from the life of sex work she was very much an active participant running houses of ill repute on a commercial scale, not so much a victim but a manager. Indeed, by the time she met the man she would shoot, her lover and pimp Leonard Topp, Dollie was already running a brothel in Prescott and was a woman of some disrepute*.

Film Gabrielle haunted by her past...

Defended by the flamboyant Earl Rogers, one of the most successful criminal lawyers of the time, Dollie was able to defy the odds as she and Rogers swayed the all-male jury. Rogers was a master of detail and persuasive argument losing only three of his 77 murder trials as defending counsel and he had a client here who was clearly some actress. His daughter, Adela Rogers St. Johns covered the case in one of her first journalistic assignments, and it was her story that was adapted by Arzner for the screenplay. After journalism she wrote novels and a number of screenplays including Lady of the Night (1925), Children of Divorce (1927) and A Free Soul (1931) and even had an uncredited hand in A Star is Born (1937) which was loosely based on What Price Hollywood? (1932) which she had based on Colleen Moore and her husband, alcoholic producer John McCormick.

Nothing sums up the trial so much as a line decades later in Final Verdict, St. Johns’ 1962 memoir, where she wrote that with men like Topp, homicide was not only justifiable, but obligatory. For Dollie's personal narrative and Mrs Reid's film this is the money shot, but murder it was and, as in the film, the verdict is still astonishing.

Dollie’s second case followed the film about her first and Melvin v. Reid (1931) established the limits of First Amendment defences and the privacy tort when republishing true but shameful past facts lacks public interest… The court reasoned that "any person living a life of rectitude has that right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary attacks on his character, social standing or reputation." This decision still stands as a key precedent.

The real "Dollie"

Yet, whilst Mrs Reid took a financial hit, Gabrielle resumed her chosen profession and went through a series of marriages all of which ended up unhappily, especially for her husbands. The full lurid details are to be found in various places, there’s even a book in the works, but Leo W Banks article in the Phoenix New Times from 12^th August 1999 takes some beating**!

It all connects to the prescient line at the top from John Gilmer Speed, which is ever more relevant in today’s society in which our souls are captured unwillingly by the demon devices in everyone’s pockets. What we are doing is one thing but how it is presented in seemingly infallible moving images is often something else entirely.

The Red Kimono was banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors, as with its predecessor Human Wreckage, if only they’d known the full true story, they would have banned it even more! You can find the film in the indispensable Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers box set from Kino Lorber.

 

There's also a short booklet by Julie McDonald,The Murderous Madam: The True Story of Gabrielle "Dolly" Wiley of Prescott, Arizona (Wild West History) which you can find on Amazon!

 

*Gabrielle Darley: Murderess or Misunderstood Maiden? March 22, 2013, By Sam Lowe

**A Madame, a Murder, a Mystery, Leo W Banks Phoenix New Times, 12/08/1999