Crime and punishment? Strongroom (1962), BFI Restoration Re-release and Blu-ray

Watching this restored British B-movie classic on the big screen you were reminded that there are far darker places to be than the NFT2 on a Tuesday evening. The film is full of dread not least the ticking clock for the people locked in the titular space but also the men who put them there and who realise their own lives are on the line. Strongroom has always punched above its weight with contemporary reviews comparing it favourably with the main feature it was supporting, the comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962) starring George Chakiris and Janette Scott and costing £116,401, almost seven times as much as the little film that died harder.

 

Both efforts were a product of Bryanston Films established by Maxwell Setton and Michael Balcon in 1959 in an attempt to create “new collaborative enterprises to provide greater integration between production and distribution…”* It was a new “route to market” for independent film makers who could no longer get support from the likes of the Rank Organisation and the Associated British Picture Corporation who had shifted to film distribution and not filmmaking. Bryanston were the first and most successful of what was sadly a short-lived period but amongst their twenty features were the likes of the Peter Sellars comedy, The Battle of the Sexes (Charles Crichton,1960), The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) and classics of the British ‘new wave’ directed by Tony Richardson for Woodfall including A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1962).

 

Strongroom, with a budget of £17,000 was one of the company’s B-movies and was directed by Vernon Sewell who had also made The Wind of Change the previous year for the company. Based on an idea from Richard Harris (no, not that one, the writer!) it’s the kind of tight procedural crime thriller that was very much in vogue at the time. It’s nuanced and cares for pretty much all of its characters leaving you rooting for both the robbers and the robbed by the end.

 

This is partly down to the narrative hanging off a couple of dramatic double acts with Derren Nesbitt as Griff, a small-time crook after just one big pay day, and his partner in crime Len Warren (Keith Faulkner), less experienced but perhaps more ruthless as initial success sinks in. They are assisted by Len’s brother Alec (W. Morgan Sheppard) as they wait patiently outside a bank, Eastern Counties Bank at the corner of St. Margaret's Road and The Barons in St. Margaret's, (right next to Twickenham Studios, thanks Reelstreets.com!) which Griff has been casing for many months. He knows their routines perfectly and, on this Bank Holiday Saturday knows they will finish early and be empty until Tuesday… it’s going to be the perfect crime.

 

Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn

Inside the bank the rather stuffy Mr Spencer (World War II veteran and man of many parts Colin Gordon looking, if anything, younger than his 51 years) keeps on working and has asked his secretary Rose (Ann Lynn, then married to Anthony Newley, Sammy Lee himself, and star of so many kitchen sink neo-classics including the excellent Four in the Morning (1965)) to work late. This confuses the watching gang as they know two remain inside and time is against them. The plan must proceed and they break in and take Mr Spencer and Rose captive, taking them downstairs to the bank’s strongroom and forcing them to open it.

 

Once again luck is against them as two cleaners make an unscheduled visit to the bank – some great chit-chat between Hilda Fenemore and Diana Chesney – as they sweep away oblivious. Downstairs there’s consternation though and in their panic the lads decide to lock up Spencer and Rose in the strongroom, tied up for good measure. They sneak out avoiding the cleaners and begin their getaway… the mood shifting from relief and elation at what would seem to be a successful heist but then Griff begins to fret.

 

Derren Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner

It is here that the quality of Richard Harris and co-writer Max Marquis’ script comes through as Griff, Len and Alec quickly work out the implications of what has just happened. Alec, the elder brother can see more clearly what Griff is driving at when he realises that the two in the strongroom won’t be found until Tuesday and, having run out of oxygen in the airtight vault, will leave the boys as murderers destined for the gallows (the last hangings were in 1964). They agree that Alec will drive far away from the scene, leave the keys to the vault in a phone box and tell the police where it is, leaving Griff and Len enough time to go to ground with the loot.

 

That should be that but Alec doesn’t make it and the boys are shocked when two policemen arrive to inform Len that he has been killed and they need him to identify the body at the mortuary. Griff styles it out but Len is not only heartbroken but starting to panic and blame the bank workers for his loss. The story is now all about the push and pull between these two characters as they weigh up their options whilst Rose and Spencer try to figure out a way out for themselves having calculated that they only have a finite amount of air left…

 

It's a tense watch and well played by the four with twists and turns still to come: will their conscience outweigh their greed and will they make up their minds in time? It’s a near perfect ride with enough discomfort and delay to keep you on the edge of your seat.

 

Strongroom is screening at the BFI this month and also elsewhere and I strongly recommend you see it in cinema if you can. There are screening details on the BFI website here.

If not, it is also coming on BFI Blu-ray on 23^rd February and you can buy it in the BFI’s Southbank shop or from the usual online suspects. This too is recommended – obviously – as it comes with the top of the range extras you’d expect but especially another tense Vernon Sewell Brit B-movie, this time for Anglo-Amalgamated, The Man in the Back Seat (1961) which not only has a similar Crime and Punishment guilt-trip but also features the same actors as partners in crime: Derren Nesbitt (Tony) and Keith Faulkner (Frank). They rob a dog track manager of his takings but, as he’s attached by handcuff to the locked bag, they have to knock him out and take him with them.

 

Things are further complicated by Frank’s wife Jean, played by the 18-years old Battersea Bardot, Carol White, who wants her man to walk the straight and narrow and is deeply distrustful of his mate Tony. As with Strongroom, a lot of the action is in the form of ongoing debate between the men in the car as they drive around trying to think of the safest way to off-load their seriously injured passenger: if he dies their crime will have been much worse and might possibly get them killed.

 

Nesbitt and Faulkner are excellent and the former especially has something of Oliver Reed’s unusual and unsettling screen presence. It’s worth the price of admission alone but there are many other reason to buy this set:

 

Strongroom (1962) newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition

Newly recorded audio commentaries by film historians Dr Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt

The Man in the Back Seat (1961, 57 mins): featuring many of Strongroom’s cast and crew – see above!

John Trumper BEHP interview (1992, 158 mins, audio): the Strongroom editor discusses his career

Footpads (1896, 1 min): one of the earliest British crime films

A Test for Love (Vernon Sewell, 1937, 27 mins): a public information film on the perils of STDs

The Awakening Hour (Donovan Winter, 1957, 21 mins): a robbery goes wrong as morning breaks in London

After Dark (Mike Dodds, 1979, 14 mins): a road safety film edited by John Trumper

 

The First pressing only includes a fully illustrated booklet with new essays by James Bell, Barry Forshaw and Tony Dykes, along with notes on the special features and credits.

 

*Duncan Petrie (2017): Bryanston Films: An Experiment in Cooperative Independent Film Production and Distribution, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 

DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2017.1285150

Betty Balfour Lost and Found, Kennington Bioscope

 

In the darkened hush of the former workhouse home of Charlie Chaplin we were watching Betty Balfour on film that so far as is known, does not exist anywhere else in the world. Think about that, in a digital landscape in which seemingly everything is available to stream (or not stream) at the whims of faceless copyright owners who seek to monetise and control IP. Things were not much different back in the Twenties but things got lost, events overtook the physical media and even the films of Britain’s Queen of Happiness were misplaced.

 

Chris Bird screened a fragment of an unidentified Betty Balfour film, 20 seconds or so, with a couple of other players who might have been familiar.  A tantalising glimpse and, maybe, there’s more out there somewhere. Then he introduced us to a film from his collection, a 9.5mm copy of her 1926 British film, Cinders which is no relation to Ella Cinders staring her American counter-part Colleen Moore. Originally in 20 reels and designed for, patient, home viewing, Chris had transferred the spools onto three larger reels – as much as he could without fear of too much stress on the celluloid from the projection process.

 

Betty's Cinders is along way from the Ball. (All images courtesy of Christopher Bird)

This 95-year-old film was projected from Chris’ 70-year-old projector* and, unsurprisingly there were one or two unexpected additional stops on the way as the past was revealed in vivid action accompanied by the fleet fingers of Colin Sell on the piano. Colin had not seen the film, few others have, but he was able to anticipate the rhythms of Balfour’s perfectly timed comedy whether she was getting trapped in revolving doors, falling down or simply turning her sparkling peepers towards the camera. She has perfect timing, a mix of Stan Laurel, the aforementioned Miss Moore and even Mary Pickford with whom she was often compared. The jewel in the crown of British silent stars and voted in the top two by readers of the Daily Mirror along with Ivor Novello.

 

As Chris pointed out, 9.5mm was only ever intended for home projection but, on the big screen here it looked fabulous – the use of a single central sprocket allows the gauge to pack more punch than it’s diameter might suggest and it was Film Club as only the Kennington Bioscope can provide with every break in the film filled by improvisational flourishes from Mr Sell and the story continuing in the determined hands of Camera-Chris! Just to add more jeopardy, Chris also provided a live translation of the French intertitles on this precious celluloid survivor.

 

The Ball is in full swing and Betty is having it...

The story centred on Betty from the get-go as the down-trodden – but unbowed! – chamber maid in a guest house who gets to assist a reasonably mad Professor Pottiefax (Fred Wright) as he looks after his beetles at the expense of all other cares. He rewards her fortitude after winning a fortune and a hotel in the south of France (always a favourite hang-out of the British film set. The professor has too a time on the dance floor and is photographed in compromising positions with some of the dancers who, for reasons best know to themselves, are wearing kilts.

 

Evil French hoteliers try to blackmail him out of his good fortune but they’ve reckoned without our Betty and also her ability to make handsome friends who will pitch in when the going gets industrial, in this case Richard Dalrey (André Roanne). It’s a slight film in some ways but this is primary evidence of the extraordinary appeal of Balfour and further explains the good humour she was so effortlessly capable of supplying on the screen!

  

The view from the projectionsist (Christopher Bird)

Daughter of the Regiment (1929) was an altogether bigger budgeted affair being a British/German co-production released in Germany as Die Regimentstochter and directed by Hans Behrendt: a Euro pudding as they used to be called. This was a 16mm print courtesy of Bob Geoghegan/Archive Film Agency and, once again, the only copy of the film left anywhere. Chris and Bob projected and Ashley Valentine accompanied this slightly more robust stock and again we were drawn in by the uniqueness of the experience and the privilege of seeing a film not in circulation, not digitised, and only in a private collection.

 

The plot was based on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 opera which explains some of the grand gestures and the joyful mood of a nimble if predictable story arc. Betty is Marie, a foundling who has become the “daughter” of a French Regiment stationed in the Pyrenees on the French Spanish border. They guard against incursions from Spanish smugglers and gangs, with Quippo the sergeant, acting as Marie’s adopted father.

 

One of the gangs breaks into their compound whilst the troop are away and Marie bravely – or as she thinks – frightens them away by firing a single shot that Quippo hears and brings his men back to then suffer his charge’s boasting about her soldierly prowess. She goes out riding in the hills and falls trying to collect wildflowers. She is rescued by a handsome young man Tonio (Alexander D’Arcy) who is reluctant to give her his name even though she clearly wants to know all about him… Maria and Tonio… this is a Southwest Side of France Story?

Directed by Hans Behrendt the film shifts in scale from these locations shots of the parched Mediterranean hinterland to the crowded traffic of Paris as the visiting Countess Brascani (Olga Limburg) notices her lost brother’s family crest on the swaddling Maria had been found in and which is now frames on her wall. There can be no doubt that she is a Brascani and has to leave her regimental family for a noble lifestyle in the north. Naturally she must marry another noble and her response when the countess shows her “the man she is going to marry” is hilarious “what, that?!”.

 

But, what about Tonio I hear you ask? Well, after reacquainting themselves as Maria rides her pony through Paris and spots him in his car, she starts to suspect that he might be a smuggler. She loves him but how can she marry such a man and, is the unattractive wealthy man the least worst option?

 

We’ve all been there, to varying degrees, and I hope you get your chance to see this film sometime. Any Betty is good Betty and despite the mixed reviews Chris read out from the British press, the Germans seem to have been far keener. We have more in common that that which divides us in Europe, especially our sense of humour!

 

Ashley Valentine competed the picture with elegant flourishes and good anticipation for this unseen film and is fast becoming a vital part of the Bioscope operation. London’s Silent Film Speakeasy** is flourishing and we’ve never needed it more!

 

At the start of the evening Chris also showed an unidentified fragment of another Betty Balfour film which one keen-eyed Bioscoper identified as Raise the Roof a 1930 UK musical directed by Walter Summers and starring Betty, Maurice Evans, and Jack Raine. But even that’s still a mystery, as Chris’ fragment doesn’t have a soundtrack: is this an unknown silent version?

 

And, this being the Biosxcope, there was even more with another collector handing Mr Bird a reel containing all that survives (not much) of George Pearson’s Satan’s Sister (1925), featuring Betty, Guy Phillips and Philip Stevens. Hopefully, this will be screened at a later show.

 

Discovery and entertainment all delivered in real time in Kennington: it’s what they do and the way that they do it!

 

And not forgetting this glorious audience! Pic from Christopher Bird

Screen shots from Cinders... courtesy of Mr Bird - unseen in a long time!

*Designed by a Czech refugee, J Danek, in the 1930s - Chris' was made in the 1950s at their factory in Windsor.

**As PH from SL famously put it!

Lost and found… The White Heather (1919), SFFP with Stephen Horne

This is a rediscovered film and there is no more pleasant watch than seeing something that, until 2023, was considered gone for good and yet, here it is, looking wonderful with restored tints, a ghostly crispness and accompanied by Stephen Horne on top form accompanying himself. I’d previously seen it in Pordenone at Il Cinema del Cinema Muto in 2024 and now it is available for all to see streaming from the splendid National Film Preservation Fund website: a gift to the film community and one we must not only celebrate but support (donation details at the bottom).

Watching the film in luxury of this Englishman’s castle, with a single Bolonoodle dog standing in for the Duke of Shetland’s lurchers and more self-service than he’d have been used to from his various servants in his grand Scottish caisteal, I was struck by the excellence of Director Maurice Tourneur’s framing and the dynamics of shots in which his human components are moved with such interest and effect. As Dick goes in search Captain McClintock there’s the profile of an older woman against an arch and as our hero proceeds, figures walk towards him staggering…. At first I thought it was my mate Colin’s Dad getting arrested yet again on Liverpool’s Dock Road after closing time but, similar sailors, different port.

Frame that and put it on your wall.

Every scene is like a painting for Tourneur… albeit with moving parts and whilst the camera is mobile there are so many tableaux that catch the eye such as the hunting party sequences and the vivid, recreation of the Stock Market with sunlight casting beams over a frenzied floor of traders pushed to the limits, investments going up in smoke as the dealers chomp hard on the cigars of defeat.

Based on the play of the same name by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton which opened on Drury Lane in 1897, with multiple scenes and a running time of some four hours including a climactic underwater sequence in which two divers fight to the death. I would love to know more about the stage technology of the time but clearly putting on a spectacular show was key to success then as now and it ran for years on Broadway as well as in London. The reviewer in Punch 2^nd October 1897 was impressed, if sardonic (hi bro’!), remarking on the “capital dialogue (when not melodramatic)…” of the new drama at the Old Drury Theatre which combined with the “smiling villainy” of Mr Henry Neville and the musical accompaniment of Mr Glover in the orchestra, was encouraging packed houses: “nightly, a congested district”…

 

Mabel Ballin roamin' in the gloamin'...

Also praised was “… the admirable acting of Mrs John Wood, which is beyond all praise” and, hinting at the technical side of things suggesting that “Were all the iron-work machinery to collapse (as in fact it did one night and the theatre had to be closed), the drama could go on as its mainstay, its chief support is Wood…” The review mentions the White Heather was seen to ascend heavenwards “quite a wonder of the deep!” and the villain played by Neville ends up attired in a diver’s attire… his huge diver’s helmet and mute demise raising a few titters before the hero despatches him with further blows and a dramatic flourish. It must have been some spectacle but we have a film to consider and this is right up Maurice’s waterway!

 

Kate Rorke played the heroine in the Drury production – “self-effacing with not much to say…” and Mr Neville, played Lord Angus Cameron. In Tourneur’s film we have Holmes Herbert as Lord Angus Cameron and Mabel Ballin as Marion Hume and, as luck would have it, having not much to say is pretty much her advantage in this silent film, with the director focusing on her emoting as the extent of her betrayal is revealed.

Lord Angus promises financial ruin to Marian's father unless he keeps quiet...

The story is a mix of financial intrigue, the perils of marrying below oneself, the need for effective auditing and corporate governance as well as the dangers of marrying at sea, even if everything is above board and in accordance with Scottish Law. Against this is a good-hearted woman backed by an array of loyal friends and family although not all filial relationships in the film are unconditional, far from it. Ultimately it comes down to a battle beneath the waves as mentioned in the above play, this is a cinematic tour-de-force, with some realistic aqua-action and peril!

 

We start in England where the black sheep of the Shetland Clan, Lord Angus Cameron, has run his business into the ground. Initially you feel some sympathy for the man, especially when he goes to ask for help from his rich uncle, the Duke of Shetland who aware of his nephew’s wayward approach to fiscal irresponsibility advises that he really ought to marry a well to do lass of his own station before he could consider a loan. Luckily he has the exact person in mind and it’s Hermione de Vaux (a stunning but uncredited Gertrude Astor) who he offers to match-make.

Lady Hermione and Lord Angus - the ruling British oligarchy self perpetuates, comrades!

We quickly learn that Angus has already been married and to a lowly kitchen maid, Marion Hume, with whom he had an affair some years earlier and married her either before or after their child was born. Is Angus going to put love before duty and business or… is he just a lily-livered cad who will stop at nothing to save his own skin no matter who gets cast aside. Things come to a head on a hunting party when Marion and Angus’ child, a young boy, accidentally gets hit by some shot and his mother reveals all. Angus quickly denies it and Marion heads back to her home in London to consult her estranged father James (Spottiswoode Aitken)

 

Marion, why didn’t you tell me it was Lord Angus that you married?

Now this is a very good question and the young lady’s response is far from satisfactory as she agreed to the secrecy to prevent Angus’ relationship with the Duke from being damaged. The result cost her the good will of her father and, meant she had to find other way of bringing up their child – who is charming but surely in need of his father’s company, or perhaps not as things unravel…   There’s a court case but – darn it! – the couple were married at sea aboard a ship called the White Heather and only one of the two witnesses is possibly still alive to confirm either way.

A glimpse of the John Gilbert we know so well, just 21 here and playing his part

Marion has real friends though, both of whom love her so much so that Dick Beach – played by a very youthful and skinny John Gilbert – volunteers not to rest until he has found the missing witness, a Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed and very unsettling here as always). He sets off on a lengthy search of every bar in every port determined to clear the name and rescue the reputation of his secret love.

 

If I understand you correctly, shortly after the ceremony aboard the White Heather, the yacht sank and the evidence, namely the marriage record, went down with the ship…

If ever an intertitle had hard work to do, this was it as the stage is set for the dynamic second half of the story. There will be drunken sailors, double crossers and violence and there will be an epic underwater fight that still has us on the edge of our seats wondering how it was all done as well as how it will all end!

Stephen’s accompaniment is a rare chance to hear him play all of his instruments but separately with his score featuring piano, flute, accordion, electronic keyboards and more mixed into one piece. It is full of emotionally engaging melodies and manages to enhance the mood, appearing to be right inside the film as usual. The shared humanity of creatives split by a century of changes in circumstance and fashion if not the basic instinct to connect in sympathy. This music is archeological, patiently uncovering the original feeling of the film for those who are prepared to put down their phones to just watch, listen and understand.

It's easy to assume that history is what happens to ther people multiplied by time and technology but the persistent “now” can be viewed with such clarity through this restoration and listening to this music.

 

You can connect right here, right now on the San Francisco Film Preserve site!

 

The link for donations to this most worthy cause is to be found here.

  

About the Restoration – from the NFPF site:

Long presumed lost, a tinted and toned nitrate print of The White Heather was discovered at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in 2023. Because no original titles are known to survive, new English language titles have been created. The new text is based on translation of the Dutch titles and by referencing the script for the 1897 play, The White Heather, upon which the film is based. The title text was also reviewed in comparison to contemporary trade press sources, the United States copyright registration, censor records, and the published musical cue sheet. Title graphics and typography are adapted from the style of other films produced by Maurice Tourneur Productions in the same year. The colour tinting and toning reproduces the colouring of the original nitrate print. This restoration is a collaboration between Eye Filmmuseum, the San Francisco Film Preserve, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It is made possible through the generous support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.

 

The Great Drury Lane Melodramatic Success... even in 1919 this was worth quoting!

Nature vs nurture… Alraune (1928), Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray

 

The photo play ALRAUNE could easily become a sensation were only its name: BRIGITTE HELM! ¹

Santa delivered and this release is one of the finest of this or any year – if you haven’t already voted in Silent London’s annual poll, please do so now and come back to my ramblings when you have. We have restored and remastered versions of two films directed by Henrik Galeen, The Student of Prague (1926), now running at 133 minutes, and Alraune from the same year and clocking in at a wonderfully clear and tinted 131 minutes (I’ve previously only seen a 98-minute version). For both it’s their first time on Blu-ray and in these restored to within a gnat’s crochet of their original running time.

Born on 17^th March 1908 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, Brigitte Helm was astonishingly still only 19 when this film was released having started her ten-year career at 17 years old on Lang’s Metropolis after which she was offered a UFA contract. But it’s not just her youth but also her lack of formal training that is notable. According to filmportal.de she had featured in school plays and been interested in acting – presumably dancing too – from an early age none of which would have recommended her so much as her poise and presence to Fritz Lang when casting her in his epic.

After the success came the contract which defined and delimited her career, she retired in 1935 after transitioning to the talkies and left Nazi Germany for Switzerland where she raised four children and, until her death aged 88 in 1996, refusing to discuss her film career as far as I can tell? She came she saw, performed like few others and left on her terms as society took an horrific twist. I recall GW Pabst talking about her playing a blind person in The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927) in the British Close Up film magazine:

“Do you know the scene when she walks with Jeanne Ney in the streets of Paris, she was almost killed. The actor driving the taxi was not a driver really but had had to learn. He was not very sure of his steering. Brigitte Helm walked right in front of him. I had to run before the camera to save her. Do you know why? She was blind. She simply did not see it.”²

Brigitte Helm

Helm was the daughter of a merchant father who sadly passed away when she was just five, so who can tell what influence this had on the course of her interests. She attended the Johanna-Stift Gymnasium in Werftpfuhl secondary school which focused on the arts and, according to its Wikipedia page, it was here that Fritz Lang saw her perform in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other sources claim that her mother sent her photograph to the director and pushed her case, maybe both are true but there’s no denying her magnificence and instinct.

The same skills are in evidence in Galeen’s film with the director dwelling on her face and sinewy, almost balletic expressiveness – her hunched shadow contorted against the walls, her hands twisted with murderous hate hovering over her “father” and tormentor’s throat as he sleeps, her huge eyes drooping as the innate furies fill her mind, freezing all compassion and flushing stone cold across her face. It’s an exercise in meaningful movement that you would normally see only through dance.

The story is based on the outrageous 1911 novel of the same name by actor, poet and all-round oddball, Hanns Heinz Ewers which took the medieval myth of the human-shaped mandrake root which was believed to be the result of the semen of hanged criminals somehow impregnating the plant underneath the gallows. Modern science would disagree but who trusts the experts… other than the educated? Anyway, it makes for a ripping yarn in which the new techniques of artificial insemination are used to enable an examination of innate evil versus the nurture of responsible upbringing.

A scientist, Professor Jakob ten Brinken, conducts an experiment using the root, a (dead) hanged murderer and a prostitute to produce a baby girl whom he christens Mandrake/Alraune and attempts to civilise. In the novel the inherent evil is dialled up to the max with Alraune capable of all kinds of perverse behaviour but whilst this no doubt led to the success of the book, it couldn’t be reproduced directly in a feature film, even in Weimar Germany.

The book was the second part of a trilogy featuring one Franz Braun, a cipher for the author, who encounters the supernatural and arcane in books entitled: The Sorcerer's Apprentice or the Devil Hunters, Alraune and Vampire: A Wild Story in Scrap and Colours encourages the Professor to conduct the experiment whereas in the film, he (played by Iván Petrovich) is the one calling for the scientist (Paul Wegener) to think again. The Professor is not for turning though and is determined to play God and put his theories to the practical test with the mystical promise that the resulting child has strange qualities that cause people to love her and that leads them to destruction. She may bring luck but also ruin…

Alraune ten Brinken (Brigitte Helm) is the fully grown results of his experiment, and we find her at boarding school and is first seen toying with fly as it attempts to escape from a glass of water, she reaches out, not to rescue but to push it back, not the behaviour of a well-educated young woman. There is more to come as she leads her classmates into acts of rebellion, she dances, wears cologne and plants a stag beetle on the mother superior’s robes. All of this is but a hint of the novel’s decadence with Baum describing her as the “wild, sinful sister of my hot nights”, her “wild soul stretches forth, glad of all shame, full of all poison…”³

Alraune has out-grown school and to facilitate her escape has lured a young man, Wölfchen (Wolfgang Zilzer) into loving her: getting him to steal money from his family so they can run away. Once on their train to freedom she quickly proves faithless, ordering champagne and flirting with a likely lad who spies her from the corridor. Then a troop of circus performers join the train and Alraune is immediately impressed by the magician’s sleight of hand especially when in one sexually obvious moment he lets a mouse run up her skirt; she leans back and looks him straight in the eye when even Bad Maria might think twice.

At the circus things move on and Alraune is seen sharing a cigarette with the lion tamer (Louis Ralph) standing so close that she can light his fire with her own as it were. Chided for her wanton troublesome-ness Alraune walks into the lions’ cage challenging the beasts to come and have a go if they think they’re feline enough. The animals don’t move until the tamer rushes in with his whip…

The Professor finally catches up on his “daughter” after years of searching and whisks her off to polite society where she plays tennis with Der Vicomte (handsome Britisher John Loder out of The First Born) who soon proposes… But he’s not the only man to have fallen for Alraune and the Professor blackmails her into staying under his “care” as his mind is lost to passion for his subject and scientific rigour is relaced by the need for sexual ownership…

I’ve seen the film on screen before but this restoration adds so much to a story that is still missing a few sections, most notably Valeska Gert dancing in front of a den of iniquity – this is represented by a still and a descriptive intertitle. This digital restoration was made by the Filmmuseum München, supervised by Stefan Drössler and was made from a number of sources which still leaves the film some 12 minutes short of the original German release which no longer exists. Distribution elements from the Danish Film Institute and Russian archive were merged with the censor’s report and the director’s script for the second half of the film helping to recreate the running order and intertitles.

 

One wonders again and again how it is possible that a girl so young as Brigitte Helm is able to play her part with such highly subtle artistry the character of the leading part needing such spiritual and inner comprehension.⁴

The film was a sensation at the time and further cemented Helm’s position as a European star with reviews seeing the emergence of a star of similar sexual magnitude to Garbo and others who played the “vamp” role so popular in America. To the vampire gallery, which runs from Theda Bara to Greta Garbo, let me add the German Brigitte… wrote C. Hooper Trask breathlessly in The New York Times whilst "Trask" in Variety noted that Galeen "squeezes all the horror juice out of [Ewer’s story], and Brigitte Helm, the vamp, is at least 200 percent… When will some American director take a look at this extraordinary fascinating girl. She has an individuality of her own."

Well, Brigitte had a mind of her own and when the time came she would walk away aged just 27… TWENTY SEVEN! Probably thinking like Norma Talmadge that the movies didn’t need her anymore and she, certainly didn’t need them, at least the films that Hitler’s Germany was offering.

Both films are available on DVD from EditionFilmuseum and these Blu-rays are from the Deaf Crocodile imprint in the UDS which include some excellent extras:

•       Excerpt from AUF GEFÄHRLICHEN SPUREN (DANGEROUS PATHS), 1924, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf, 15 min. This clip from the 1924 crime film is a rare opportunity to see Galeen’s work as both writer and actor, alongside frequent collaborator, director Harry Piel.

•       New video interview with Stefan Drössler of the Filmmuseum München about the preservation of Galeen’s films, moderated by Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile (90 min., in English).

•       New audio commentaries by film historian Jan-Christopher Horak, former director of the UCLA Film & TV Archive and the Filmmuseum München.

•       Reversible Wrap Art by Beth Morris

 

Sadly, there wasn’t space to include Helm’s 1930 talkie remake as directed by Richard Oswald, I’ve only seen it on grimy YouTube and Brigitte is quite different… singing and acting like she’s working in Der blaue Engel… things were moving fast!

There’s more on the Limited Edition including a booklet and Dave McKean cover but you’ll have to look on eBay as it’s sold out!

 

Details on the Deaf Crocodile site and all good online retailers.

The EditionFilmuseum DVD set is available on their site.

 

 

1.  Erich Hellmund-Waldow, Close Up March 1928
2. Close Up, December 1928
3.  Two films by Henrik Galeen: Der Student vonPrag (1926) and Alraune (1928), translated from the original German by Paul Cuff*, on therealmofsilence.com 
4. Erich Hellmund-Waldow, Close Up March 1928

 

*Paul Cuff also has a book on Brigitte Helm in the works and I am positive that I am not alone in awaiting the results enthusiastically!

 

Fool in love... The Vampire (1913), Made in New Jersey, Milestone Blu-ray

 

“The pair at the Fifth Avenue this week go into a disagreeable number with a degree of vivid detail that is almost medical…”

"Rush", Variety, July 1909

In July 1909 dancers Alice Eis and Bert French put on their "Vampire Dance" at the Fifth Avenue theatre. The act featured Eis as "a Parisian woman of the streets" striking "a particularly snaky posture…” culminating in the removal of a "thin red veil", revealing a tight-fitting dress with "a skirt slashed almost to the waistline and the only underdressing is a covering of fleshings." The New York Dramatic Mirror was equally outraged at this “vulgarity…” - “…to call it a dance is a libel against the name of art." ¹

 

Despite or let’s be frank, because of this Eis and French were very popular and were still packing out halls in February 1913 when they were arrested for giving an “indecent performance” at Hammerstein’s Victoria in New York’s Times Square. Such were the double standards of the press and the public during an era when Vaudeville, as Andrew L. Erdman² notes, became an excuse for showing audiences more flesh in the name of art. Naturally the new medium of film wanted to get in on the act and perhaps looking at Italian films showing classical tales, looked for ways to illuminate stories with morally-defensible artistic statements.

 

So it was that Robert Vignola captured the dance on film for this three-reel morality tale that – as per Richard Koszarski’s excellent sleeve notes accompanying Milestones’ epic two-disc collection – he fleshed out this film to act as a pretext for showing Eis and French. I’d come across the film when the dace section was screened at the Kennington Bioscope as part of Tony Fletcher’s evening covering the release, one of 2025’s most essential and a most thorough compilation of the films made in New Jersey, before and after the move to Hollywood.

 

This film is a standout because, all salaciousness apart, the dance is very interesting, capturing the kind of movements you’d expect from the, sadly never filmed, Isadora Duncan and other modern dancers such as Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn who are seen in Griffith’s Intolerance and who would later feature a young Louise Brooks in their Denishawn company. It’s also possible that the producers had seen Asta Nielsen’s outrageous dance with her cowboy, leather dress and whip in Urban Gad’s Afgrunden (1910) and wanted some home-grown source. I don’t know, who really understands how the Marketing Mind works?

 

It’s not all about “art” though and you can also blame Rudyard Kipling who wrote his poem, The Vampire after being inspired by a drawing by his cousin Philip William Burne-Jones.  This was was included in the frontispiece of the first edition published by Boston Press in 1898…

A fool there was and his goods he spent,

   (Even as you or I!)

Honour and faith and a sure intent

(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),

But a fool must follow his natural bent

   (Even as you or I!)

The picture and the poem, first impression for sale on Abe Books...

 

Anyone who has seen the Theda Bara film, A Fool There Was (1915) will have seen this Vampire/Vamp role perfected but Vignola’s film remains the earliest known attempt to capture the essence of the lady who drains her victims of their wealth, energy and pride. Whether the Baronet Burne-Jones or his cousin had first hand experience of such company one could only guess but whether in art, literature, stage or screen sex sells and sex-witchery especially is always popular with the patriarchy.

 

I am going to the city to make my fortune…

For the film, the story begins in the countryside just north of New York City as it was in the days when Hackensack was still countryside. A hardworking young couple, Harold (Harry F. Millarde) and Helen (Marguerite Courtot) are saving up to get married and the former decides to head off to New York to get work after tiring of rural life. Cue fond farewell and a train ride from the sepia tinted countryside to monochromatic Manhattan where Harold finds digs and an office job for which his agricultural experience serve him well.

Six months’ later he has saved $500 and she $100 and they’re close to affording that wedding until one day spending his hard-earned in an expensive café he encounters a woman in a tight-fitting dress with a jewelled armband and an eye for men with fulsome wallets. Her name is Sybil (Alice Hollister) and she is the Vampire your mother may have warned you about. Soon she has set her sights on the hapless Harold and the only way is down. For those who love Reel Streets, Sybil’s is on Claremont Avenue just off Broadway after you pass Columbia University on the Upper West Side.

Harold’s letters home tail off as does his commitment to the farm products trade with the result that he loses his job and Helen, concerned about his lack of communication, comes to the Big City to find him. She’s soon facing her own difficulties as a man tries to lure her into sex work, in a line freely borrowed from many a tale of trafficking and the white slave trade such as the hit Traffic in Souls released a month after this film in November 1913. Another Dane, August Blom, made Den hvide slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) in 1910 and this was followed by two sequels such was its popularity (although banned in the US…).

Helen thinks on her feet though and makes a daring escape down the fire escape against a backdrop of New York clothes lines – it’s a well-made film with camerawork that whilst static does capture the atmosphere and action well. Helen get’s a job in a hat shop just as Harold hits rock bottom… Rejected by Sybil and with no money he plans to rob a rich theatre goer but, bored of waiting, he goes inside and watches the performance that will turn his life around.

The dance was performed at Cliffside Park near to the Kalem Studios under natural light as the stills show even as the camera framed it as being in the music hall. Harold watches the Vampire Dance and realises what a fool there was…. Thus, the importance of public arts programmes is proven and well, you can only imagine what happens next!

Philip Carli accompanies and is completely in tune with this entertainment as you would expect. The picture quality is exceptional and Milestone have done a splendid job with this set which I can’t recommend highly enough.

You can purchase direct from Milestone/Kino Lorber in the US and Canada whilst those overseas can find the Blu-ray in all the old familiar places!

 

 

¹ From Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915, Andrew L. Erdman, City University of New York

 

Yet another Top Ten, 2025 in live silent cinema...

Have you noticed that there are more and more best-of lists this year? Most are aimed at generating engagement either with heated debates on the socials or via ecommerce, but some are just the outpourings of unquiet minds, butterflies who just need to bring some order at this disturbing time of the year between normal service and Christmas’ mourning. This is one of those, it punctuates the space between regular rants about live screenings and hot digital media – or lukewarm in the case of the last post. So, here we go after the year in which I published the THOUSANDTH post on this blog and crossed the one MILLION words mark… I’ll try be brief.

Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney

January was the hottest month as a cool breeze blew in from Sweden as the BFI screened the SFI’s restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s adaptation of Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloff’s novel. I was honoured to introduce the film and to interview Sonja Kristina, the granddaughter of Gerda Lundequist (who played the matriarch of Ekeby), who then attended the event with her children and grandchildren.

The film is long and may have its faults but it is a major work and features Lars Hanson, the young Greta Gustafson and my favourite Silent Film Principal Dancer/Actor, Jenny Hasselqvist. The restoration looked stunning bringing new vibrancy and order to the film and, cometh the three hours cometh the accompanist - John Sweeney topped things off with energy and invention, as ever the perfect player for the long dance!

Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird's collection

Museums of Dreamworlds… Kennington Bioscope Programme of Antiquities

This was a collaboration between the Bioscope, the BFI and the Department of Greek and Latin, at my daughter’s alma mater, University College London as part of Museums of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity in the BFI National Archive. Introduced by the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, and presented by Professor Maria Wyke from UCL it was a selection of films from 1901 to 1927 all of which drew their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome – very loosely in some cases!

Most of the films were from the BFI’s archive with one - Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird’s collection on 28mm digitally scanned by the Cinema Museum. The project asks “…how did silent cinema design its Greek and Roman dreamworlds? What did cinema gain from recreating the distant past? What did the past gain from being recreated in moving images?” On the night, we found some answers and some more questions and we also discovered how Helen’s fabulous face and fancy for the tailors of Troy led to the war between Sparta and Troy: even now we know these stories so well we can understand these jokes.

A 1919 Erdmann with colour filters!

 

Early Colour Live!, Birkbeck University with John Sweeney, Christopher Bird and Iain Christie

Another collaboration and a set of early colour films on celluloid from Chris Bird’s collection and hand-cranked by the man himself on his own projector. We saw hand-coloured film that would have required sixteen images hand colouring for every foot of film equating to one second, Pathé’s pioneering stencil colour system, William Friese Greene’s Biocolour and more all revealing the sophistication and relentless innovation of cinema’s first decades.

Such treats do not come around very often and here’s hoping for more from the gang in 2026.

 

Inka Länta

With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (1926), Hippfest at Home, Hippfest #15

 

I wasn’t able to get to Falkirk this year but luckily was able to enjoy the online edition. As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well.

Pick of the pics was this dramatized documentary about the reindeer herding lives of the Sámi people who co-existed with them in the most precarious of ways in the far north of Sweden, across Scandinavia and even into Russia. The screening encompassed Sámi old and new with the UK premiere of a new score by Sámi-Finnish joiker and electronic musician Hildá Länsman plus sound designer Tuomas Norvio, collaborating with the Norwegian Sámi musician Lávre Johan Eira and Swedish composer, cellist and bass guitarist Svante Henryson. Traditional forms of Sámi song – “joik” - were deployed alongside moder instruments and electronica to create a visceral and sometimes startling score to this restored documentation of this remarkable people.

Hotel booked; I look forward to the 16^th Edition in March!

Betty Balfour

The Sea Urchin (UK 1926), with Colin Sell, 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend

April and it was time for an early breakfast and the finest coffee that Lambeth can provide as we dove into this mini-Giornate del cinema muto in Charlie’s old workhouse home. Highlights came thick and fast and included the World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle Facey. There were British films, Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch playing, introduced by Lawrence Napper and with Ivy Duke and Guy Newall on screen, along with rare US prints, Clive Brook in The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine and introduction by Liz Cleary

My favourite was The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper which included Britain’s Queen of Happiness, Betty Balfour (more of whom is coming in ’26 with a recently rediscovered film… check out the KB website!). It was a proper delight with The Sea Urchin in question being our BB’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. Fay has rich relatives but there’s a family feud in her way… I swear Colin Sell laughed at parts as he played along with glee!!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate, live 78 RPM DJ Chris Bird, BFI

June was a mixed blessing as I couldn’t make it to Cinema Ritrovato but at least I had the BFI’s Film on Film long weekend to provide the look and feel of nitrate and celluloid! This was a wonderful weekend with lots of colourful treats and my chance to stay awake (see original post in October, 2017) for all of Lubitsch’s wonderful The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), but my favourite live cinematic experience had to be the surreal presentation of Bunel’s masterpiece in NFT1.

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [Luis and Salvador...]

Luis Buñuel’s original score was a “mash up” – as The Kids now say – of Argentinian Tango music with Wagner et al, thereby inventing Classical Lounge Core without knowing it. Chris Bird, who collects shellac as well as celluloid, was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range. It was the hip-hop triumph of the season and exactly the kind of madness the creators wanted!

 

Anna May Wong in The Thief of Bagdad

 The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand, BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

The BFI’s Anna May Wong season was my favourite of the year and included one great day in which I caught up with her in two of the great silent fantasy films which I had been waiting to see on film and on screen. Peter Pan (1924) caught the eye with JM Barrie’s hand-picked pocket rocket betty Bronson and its closeness to the original play as well as accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos but The Thief of Bagdad (1924) featuring a dazzling Douglas Fairbanks and epic accompaniment from Neil Brand featured more AMW and was on such a scale it have NFT1 buzzing!! I could happily watch both films every day of the week!

Italia Almirante Manzini abides

Zingari (IT 1920), with Günter Buchwald, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

This was the pure diva pomp and circumstance of Italia Almirante Manzini playing the Queen of the Gypsies in Zingari (IT 1920) and it brought the Teatro Verdi to its feet with a combination of on-screen energy and the startling accompaniment from a super group comprised of Baldry, Buchwald and Bockius or BBB for short. The film tells the story of Vielka, daughter of the Gyspy King Jammadar (Alfonso Cassini) who is fierce and unruly, determined to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Sindel (Amleto Novelli) even though he is from a rival clan and physically puts the old man in his place when challenged, starting the feud that runs the entire narrative.

Vielka is supposed to marry Gudlo (Franz Sala), who’s not a patch on Sindel so no wonder she burns their farmhouse and gets herself exiled. Will there be any happy ending, do operas ever have happy endings? Günter let loose his inner gypsy on violin and the others followed on with one of the most passionate accompaniments of this year’s Giornate!

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent.. Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme films and this film is another great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in the greater context.  It didn’t feel triumphant though, more grimly determined to help complete the job and this was partly down to the excellence of Laura Rossi’s musical choices.

Laura has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone & Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Her score enabled us to really see the film, devoid of any post-facto contextualisation, in ways that were connected to the original intent. She allowed us a bit of both but underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a most historical musical agenda, incredibly effective and created.

 

Lillian Gish

Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film

Another film that anyone professing to blog about silent film should surely have seen already but as with the two above, I’ve been waiting to see it “live” on film and with an ace accompanist. I was not disappointed and am persuaded that Lillian Gish probably influenced Griffiths’ development of the story. Working not only with the best actor he also had one of the best cameramen and had clearly been watching the works of Sjostrom and Weber as this story is uncompromising. It’s also a surprise to see the film take the approach it does to Gish’s unmarried mother character and, indeed, to see her fight back against the guilty party: This man – an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been?

This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the man she actually loves – played by Richard Barthelmess.

Stephen Horne provided yet another one-man orchestral score off the hoof and covered this film’s vast space and time with constantly evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments with just the two hands, or so he says!

 

The UK forecast...

Thank you to all who have programmed, played, introduced and archived this year, lets do even more in 2026 as I write my way towards my second million words…