Games for May: Yet Another Movie - Pink Floyd in Film, Regent Street Cinema, Part One: UK

Speed-walking up Regent Street after the Victoria line closed on the hottest day of the year so far, I was overwhelmed by the anxiety of missing the first film as well as the ever-present sense of Floydian past as London’s sunny streets blurred the perception of time around me. Maybe I’ve read too much Peter Ackroyd and Michael Moorcock, but psycho-geography is real, as indeed is psychedelic-geography, man. Only last week I’d been in the 100 Club in which the Yardbird's Jeff Beck smashed guitars for Michelangelo Antonioni, whilst Middle Earth still haunts Covent Garden as does UFO Club Tottenham Court Road, music and place pulls you right back, as does film: combine all three and it’s not just Grannie who takes a trip.

 

In terms of the where, the Regent Street Cinema is celebrating the 130^th anniversary of the first film screening in this country from the Lumiere Brothers and it also happens to be the alma mater of former architectural students Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright who all attended when what is now Westminster University was Regents Street Polytechnic. Add Roger’s old Cambridge friend Syd Barrett and then another, David Gilmour (the Floyd were a five piece for a brief moment) and you had a group that was at the forefront of British psychedelia from 1966 onwards.

 

Yet Another Movie is a season of Floydian films assembled by Sophia Satchell-Baeza, a freelance researcher and curator of impeccable taste, who set the scene with details from Nick Mason’s biography. Mason attributes at least his and Roger’s fascination with lighting and staging to their broader education as “Architectural Abdabs” (an early group name) at the Poly and, with Rick and Syd’s more emotional musicality it was understandable that they’d be drawn to film and vice versa. 

  

Speak (1962) and The Committee (1968) with introduction from series curator Sophia Satchell-Baeza

 

The Pink Floyd improvised a score for fellow Regent Street alum, John Latham’s 1962 Avant Garde flicker Speak, in 1967 but the version we saw today featured a proto-industrial electronic score from the artist himself which, along with the rapidly changing images on screen, drove a couple of the audience to head for the bar early. It’s remarkable that over 60 years on this work can still startle and disturb (possibly for medical reasons admittedly). Latham didn’t want any “tunes” breaking out accompanying his free-flow and like so many artists of this scene, wanted the watchers to impose their own meaning or, indeed, lack of… we turned on but maybe didn’t all drop out or relax to float downstream.

 

Latham's film and others were used as background projections by the band in ground-breaking ways as what we would recognise as the modern concert experience was created as a mixture of sight and sound. The Floyd’s score can be found on the massive Early Years boxset as can outtakes from their other films including those screened today including the entirity of the next film on Blu-ray.

 

The Committee (1968) I haven’t seen on the big screen or in this restored state and whilst Nick Mason describes their score as a jumble of extended sound affects there are certainly some representative examples of extended instrumentals which sound like either an early version of Keep Smiling People a piece played in their 1968 spring tour and which morphed partly into their proto-post-rock classic Careful with that Axe, Eugene.

Robert Langdon Lloyd and Paul Jones discuss meaning

The Committee was written by an economist and social scientist, Max Steuer, then as now a lecturer at the LSE and a founding member of the Centre for Philosophy and Social Science. It was his only film but it is not surprisingly a reflection of his concerns about the way society is managed. It’s not clear whether the committee(s) in question make decisions or whether they are large-scale focus groups to help the powers that be command and control through informed opinion testing, but there’s a sinister management elite behind them alright… maybe.

 

Director Peter Sykes had approached Syd for a score but when he came up with an improvisation in early ’68 and suggested that it be played backwards, he turned to the other four for a more disciplined outcome and its this we hear, from the opening electronica to the Hammond organ driven main theme and that early Eugene, hinting at menace and possible violence – I wonder if Michelangelo Antonioni was watching and listening? More on that later…

 

Some versions of the film start with a quote from Joseph Shumpeter which lays out the agenda... our likes and dislikes do not amount to a programme of independent action: are we really more concerned with the strategies of games than living a clear-headed existence? But this is perhaps more help than the audience needs.

 

Arthur Brown sets the party alight

The story opens with a car driving through country lanes, the driver (Tom Kempinski) incessantly chewing wine gums as he blathers on to a seemingly hapless hitch-hiker – the Central Figure (Paul Jones) – about the inconsequentialities of his life. They stop in a glade so that the driver can check his engine and he carries on his prattle as he does so. The Central Figure is impassive, smoking a cigarette and wandering around the clearing – seemingly relaxed.

 

Then, almost out of nowhere, we feel unease as the driver sticks his head under the sharp edge of his car bonnet… the Central Figure looks intent for a brief second and then slams down the bonnet completely severing the man’s head. In the silence that follows he remains calm, continuing his smoke and his even-paced stroll. Finally, he drags the body into the car and, bizarrely, sews the head back on. His wrong-headed acquaintance continues on his journey, bewildered.

 

Later he is called to a special Committee… is this heaven, a higher force or an advanced form of market research? It’s an interesting film as you try to make sense of it and Paul Jones is very good at being distant and disaffected. There are some choice moments as the Committee members enjoy a party with music from Arthur Brown along with his Crazy World, in front of an audience that includes a few familiar faces such as John "Hoppy" Hopkins who set up the London Free School, co-founded International Times (IT) and, with producer and early Floyd manager, Joe Boyd, the UFO Club at which the group were the house band. I think we also saw Barry Miles with his distinctive chunky glasses and blonde hair, he co-owned the Indica Gallery and also helped start IT.

Like so much of today's efforts, this film came out of the general philosophical and political underground centred with thus relatively small London in-crowd. British psychedelia is often considered less radical than its US counterpart but there is no doubt of the commitment to experimentation and alternative views of how society should be organised.

 

Iggy... aka Evelyn Joyce

Iggy the Eskimo Girl (2002) + Tonite, Let's All Make Love in London (1967), Introduction by Sophia Satchell-Baeza and Dr Alissa Clarke, De Montfort University, co-curator of the Cinema and Television History Institute's Peter Whitehead Archive

 

Iggy the Eskimo Girl (2002) featured film shot in the late sixties of Syd Barrett’s sometime girlfriend – also known as Evelyn Joyce (no relation) and who is featured on the cover of his first solo album, The Madcap Laughs, adorning the newly painted floors of his flat in Egerton Court which he shared with the artist Dougie Fields. Directed and filmed by Anthony Stern, partly for a film originally called The Wheel, he repurposed the materials to create this tribute to Syd’s latter-day muse which was set to the blistering 170-odd seconds of See Emily Play, Syd’s Floyd’s finest moments in pop. Stern’s distinctive stop-start technique – he worked with Peter Whitehead, see below – still leaves the audience discombobulated and, unlike “Emily” it’s pretty clear that Iggy did “understand”. 

 

Tonite, Let's All Make Love in London – a Pop Concerto for Film – was presented in a recent remastered format and looked very fresh. It starts with Peter Whitehead’s rapid cutting as he synchronises dancers in swinging London’s clubs to a trippier version of Interstellar Overdrive than we’re used to, which still allows for some remarkable alignments as Syd’s lighter flies up and down his fretboard, Nick’s cleverly propulsive light touch, Roger’s angry bass (it’s still furious 60 years later…) and Rick’s elegant anticipation. Wright was the only classically trained musician having attended the Royal College of Music for a while before changing course and knowing how to hold an improvisation together in the manner of his jazz heroes. Whitehead filmed the band recording both this and an improvisation called Nick’s Boogie, and it’s a great document of the band in their psychedelic pomp with Syd leading on guitar and that cigarette lighter.

It’s split into sections addressing: Loss of the British Empire, Dolly Girls, Protest, Pop Music, Movie Stars, Painting and the US scene. There are some of the talking heads you would hope all of whom have to contend with Whitehead’s curt interview technique which certainly leaves Julie Christie slightly defensive but then she also comes across as open and genuine, relishing strength of relationships and her week on holiday away from everyone after finishing Dr Zhivago. In comparison Andrew Loog Oldham comes across as about as genuine as Malcolm Maclaren or Simon Cowell, being too busy planning for tomorrow rather than worrying about today and deliberately over-tutoring one of his new charges in the studio. That said, Vashti Bunyan is allowed to get on with it… ALO was a master of marketing and probably still is!

Julie Christie

 

His most famous success, The Rolling Stones were filmed previously by Whitehead for Charlie is My Darling (1966) and they’re here too in revelatory film as fans throw themselves at the stage and each member – Charlie apart – before being thrown back into the crowd like so many fish. Jagger is interviewed and almost ties himself up by fretting about the future we now enjoy in which machines mean we only work four hours a day. Oh. Hang on…

 

Michael Caine frets about the end of empire and its influence on the shortness of skirts whilst there’s more sexism to come much to Lee Marvin’s delight. In the section on the opening of the Playboy club in London, we see Dolly Reid who, fact fans, was later to feature in Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert’s Hollywood exploitation pic, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1969). It’s as the chap representing Hugh Heffner says, in London there was a relatively small scene and you could expect to find “faces” in most of the key haunts. Indeed, we see Terrence Stamp, Jim Brown and Sharon Tate arriving at the premiere of her husband, Roman Polanski's film Cul-de-sac (1966).

 

The same was true of Cambridge creatives with Sophia Satchell-Baeza reading out excerpts from Jenny Spires’ diary about how, this ex-girlfriend of Syd’s in Cambridge, met Whitehead and suggested his film needed not juts current pop music but something from the underground. She was thinking Astronomy Domine but her went with the entirely instrumental Interstellar Overdrive… she was living with Syd and his new girlfriend in Soho and offered to introduce the director to Barrett, no problem, he had known him since their Cambridge days… Like minds, a few streets apart in swinging Soho, and on the same artistic plane. What are the odds?

 

More overlap and co-incidence were to come and I’ll tell you all in the next post… Meanwhile, tickets are still available for next Saturday's continuation of the season with some rarely-screened Floydian curios. Details on the Regent Street Cinema website!

 

Jenny Spires and Syd

Adorée arrives... The Eternal Struggle (1923), Joe Harvat Restoration

Restoring reputation as well as materials, performance and craft! This film has a measly 5.9 on IMDB with 20% giving just 1.0 which makes you wonder how many have actually seen it or, in fairness, at least in its current form as restored by Joe Harvat, who used a Kickstarter to fund the project in 2025. The sole user review there says it is “dated” which is an unhistorical term with no utility… how can anything be created and immunised against the opinions and shifted tastes of the generations to come, especially over a century later. It is of its time, but then, aren’t we all. The film was considered lost until the Russian archive handed over a copy to the Library of Congress in 2010… but it is not only found but "reborn" for a new generation to properly evaluate.

 

And, what The Eternal Struggle is, is a fun ride with some superb performances, action scenes and with outstanding location work in what looks like somewhere near Nell Shipman’s God’s Country on the borders of the US and Canada. The Silent Film Stills Archive has a snippet in which the director, Reginald “Realism” Barker explains that almost all of the outdoor scenes were shot “in the glacial fields of Alberta”. Almost certainly, Nell was an influence on the film’s rugged approach but there was also a trend in films based on the Canadian Mounted Police as well as the location with the adaptation of Jack London's The Call of the Wild released only a couple of weeks before.

 

Reginald Barker directingPat O'Malley and Renée Adorée (SFSA)

This story was based on New Zealander Edith Joan Lyttleton’s 1913 novel The Law-Bringers, the film places the performers not just in the context of the time but also in the chilling rivers and frozen mountains close to the actual locations. The most spectacular backdrops were around Banff and Lake Louise, Alberta with the production crew travelling to the Canadian Rockies. Other scenes used the reliably more accessible and far warmer, Big Bear Lake, California.

 

At this point, Renée Adorée’s acting also owes much to Mary Pickford with high energy bounce and a fighting spirit. But, whilst this was one of her first leading roles in Hollywood, possibly her breakthrough, she already had her own skill-set honed in Europe* and when her eyes flow with tears and her face is set she can be both frighteningly febrile and sweetly sympathetic. Her most famous role was probably in The Big Parade (1925) as the French girl who steels John Gilbert’s American heart in war-torn France, the woman who like the war, never leaves him. With her huge brown eyes, slight overbite and liberated movement, she was atypical for a Hollywood leading lady of the time and in a less obvious way brought a European sexuality to the screen as with the Polish Pola. This is a significant film for presenting her breakthrough in a starring role.

 

Renée Adorée AKA Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves

“Renée Adorée, who was often given French-Canadian roles, was at her most ebullient in The Eternal Struggle, leaping up and down in the middle of the street and egging on two fellow French-Canadians to fight over her with knives…”

Hollywood's Canada : the Americanization of our national image by Berton, Pierre, 1975, McClelland and Stewart

 

As Berton goes on to say, this film was very much part of the genre of a “Mountie Film” which normally featured the North-Western Mounted Police in a “love versus duty” quandary, usually pursuit of a sister, a brother or a romantic interest (and has done the maths analysing some thirty films that fit the brief) who they have to decide to capture or let go… and the Mounties always get their man (or woman).  

 

The film starts with one such moment as Bucky O'Hara (Pat O'Malley) – possibly the sole Irish immigrant in North America who didn’t join the NYC Police Department – is on the trail of one Oily Kirby (Pat Harmon). He finds a cabin in the woods which is inhabited by the very fine looking Camille Lenoir (Barbara La Marr aka "The Girl Who is Too Beautiful" and Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler’s namesake when she came to Hollywood in 1938). Bucky takes a shine to Camille and decides to stick around – which doesn’t sound to me like the typical MO of the NWMP but whether be luck or design, he spots Oily hiding in a basket and proceeds to arrest him. Camille pulls a gun and Oily almost escapes following a short chase… Bucky got his man.

Pat O'Malley and Barbara La Marr

Back in the town of Grey Wolf we meet the locals including the vibrant Andrée Grange (Renée Adorée) who is dancing for the locals, two of whom almost come to blows over her after offering her presents. She is the “idol” of every man in Grey Wolf although there are perhaps different words that could be used to describe their regard. Take the distinctly dodgy Barode Dukane (Wallace Beery) who has a name as well as a face that only a mother could love and yet who seems to think he can buy anything, even love, telling Andrée that he has presents for her.

 

Meanwhile Bucky arrives with Oily in tow and delivers him to Sgt. Neil Tempest (Earle Williams) at the Mounties’ headquarters. Bucky goes to the bar, run by Andrée’s father Pierre Grange (Josef Swickard), and in the drinking and dancing melee meets the young woman and gets a slap for being just too forward. Now, you know and I know that this is cinema code, even in 1923, for the start of true love but there’s a big fly in that ointment: Sgt Tempest has already proposed.

 

Pat O'Malley, Renée Adorée and Earle Williams make a crowd.

One thing leads to another thing and then another… the two men realise their mutual interest and both do the decent thing as Bucky pretends to only be “joking” about his affection for Andrée. Broken hearted she goes to see Barode Dukane who has been so generous with his presents and who we now know has some kind of criminal connection to Camille… One thing leads to another and a title card reveals that he sees his chance to “comfort” the distraught girl who we next see running into her father’s bas saying that she killed Ducane!

  

“She is not mine and she is not yours… She belongs to the Crown and she’s going back!”

 

Her father and her “loyal best friend” Wo Long (George Kuwa, Japanese and American actor) help her to escape and she heads to Herschel Island – in the Yukon and far, far North-West of the actual locations - to board a ship and away to the mercies of the sea but O’Hara follows and after an altercation with two sailors, Capt. Jack Scott (Anders Randolf) and his first mate (Fred Kohler who plays second mate in The Hell Ship (1927)), does his duty and arrests his sweetheart. With love overpowering his sense of duty, Sgt Tempest also follows and tries to help her free, initiating the film’s most thrilling sequence as the two canoe down a stretch referred to as the Devil’s Cauldron “a six-mile gash through solid granite” ending with a waterfall that would leave them dashed on the rocks below, unless… someone can get to them in time.

 

Renée and Wally

And still, the question remains – did Andrée kill Dukane and what actually happened on that dark and stormy night?

After Gosfilmofond gifted a digital copy of the film to the U. S. Library of Congress along with a number of other films, in 2010, Joe Harvat was able to secure a 2k scan and then spent seven-months, digitally cleaning the film. The opening and closing credits were missing and all of the title cards had to be translated/rewritten as English. Apart from some deterioration at the beginning the film looks so crisp and detailed – a pleasure to screengrab!

 

Joe also commissioned David Drazin to provide a fresh piano accompaniment for the film which enhances the viewing experience with an energy and style of the period.

What the papers said:

 

The New York Times reviewer, Mordaunt Hall, was a tough man to impress but he saw the film as a "vigorous and interesting" melodrama in his write up of 10^th September 1923. He considered it as a superior example of the "Mountie" genre, praising Del Marr for her presence and Adorée for her "extraordinary charm" and ability to convey the character's terror and innocence – exactly as I said above! He was also impressed by the film’s “ruggedness” and I should think so given the effort involved in filming in Alberta…

 

The Variety review of 23^rd September called the film "one of the best of the snow pictures" and expected it to be a “solid money-maker” as a superior Mountie film. They focused on the box office draw of Barbara La Marr but were also very impressed with Adorée’s "vivid personality" and "emotional depth” as she carried the weight of the film’s dramatic tensions. There was praise too for the location shoots which captured the beautiful isolation and with Barker's ability to make the cold feel "visceral" and "authentic" to the audience.

 

Rugged

Photoplay Magazine (November 1923) described the film as a "thrilling and picturesque" drama, with the "Northwest" setting feel like a character itself, thanks to the "magnificent snow photography". There was also praise for the chemistry between Renée Adorée and Pat O'Malley – and, for me, the latter looks much more convincing once he’s in the great white outdoors with stubble softening his made-up features!

 

Ultimately The Eternal Struggle makes the most of its story and provides a fine example of staple fair at this stage of silent cinema. It’s a very worthwhile project from Joe Harvat and I applaud his efforts to make the film available again – a Kickstarter page to follow with interest!.

 

* Adorée presented as French in Hollywood but was in fact born Emilia Louisa Victoria Reeves on September 30, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany the daughter of a London-born circus performer, James Reeves, and a Belgian mother, Victorine Schreiber. The theory is that it was more interesting to be French at the time when there were many famous Brits in town but she actually adopted her new identity in Australia - see link below. In Europe, she had come up through the circus and then theatre but her first film was made in Australia: £500 Reward (1918).

 

She’s billed as Rene Adorée on a poster for the film and as a member of The Magleys, a duo she had formed with the American dancer Guy Magley. The Melbourne Punch described them as among most graceful dancers to ever visit Australia and this poise, along with her circus abilities – acrobat and horse riding – stood her in good stead with the action and dancing in The Eternal Struggle and many more!

There's a fascinating  post outlining the actor's early years by Nick Murphy on the Forgotten Australian Actors site from which the image of The Magleys is taken below - excellent research on a person still seen as French by many, the truth is far more interesting!

Cor blimey, n’est pas!!

Guy Magley and Renée Adoree performing in Samples in Australia in 1918.

Rich mix… Kennington Bioscope 9th Annual Silent Weekend Day One

 

 

Carboard Lover (1928), with John Sweeney, introduction Ben Model

 

At the end of UK premier of restored Cardboard Lover, Dave Glass asked the audience if it was indeed, as restorer Ben Model asserted in his introduction, as good as if not better than The Patsy and Show People her other two smashes of 1928? Answer there came none… we were all too busy absorbing the film, and the fine-timing of Marion and Nils Asner in one of those silent films in which you can almost hear the dialogue, a speedball of a proto-screwball, amazing pace and so knowing. The simple answer was that we couldn’t judge on a single viewing especially against two films that many had seen on numerous occasions but, one our later it feels at least on a par.

The Cardboard Lover was the second to be filmed and the last to be released and so it absolutely shows Davis hitting a peak and also displaying a perfected screen persona incorporating influences from Mabel Normand to Stan Laurel but also so much of her own mischief. She’s a force of nature in character and performance with an energy that would be hard to catch in sound: like Douglas Fairbanks after a six-month bootcamp at a clown school run by Buster Keaton, Harry Houdini and Roscoe Arbuckle.

She’s aided by a spritely performance from Nils Arsner who shows that Swedish sense of humour to great effect, matching her gurn for gurn in a face off I did not expect. He plays elite tennis player Andre who is engaged to the sublime Simone as played by Jetta Goudal who gets impersonated to death by Marion in a scene prefiguring her taking the mickey out of Marsh, Negri and Gish in The Patsy.

Nils. Jetta and Marion. In drag. Again.

Marion Davies is Sally a preppy young woman on vacation with a group including Marion’s niece Pepi Lederer as Peppy by name, peppy by nature. In life she was Louise Brooks’ best friend and the actress wrote an chapter on the tragic Pepi in Lulu in Hollywood entitled Marion Davies’ Niece, a woman who struggled to be “… a person in her own right, not a way station or would-be friends of Marion and Mr Hearst…”. Best not to dwell on what she wrote about Marion though.

 

Here Miss Davies is at her peak and sparkling through the romance and the comedy as Sally sets her sights on Andre’s autograph and then acts as his one-woman defence against the allure of Simone who he cannot stand and yet cannot resist. He makes Marion promise to prevent his will from wavering even if it means giving him a sock on the jaw, a punchline that we know is going to arrive at some point for his struggle is real!

John Sweeney played along with Marion and Nils with a deftness of touch and laughter in his hands, what’s that modern saying about game recognising game? He was swinging!

I was one of the 600 plus silent film fans who backed Ben’s Kickstarter campaign to restore and produce a Blu-ray of The Cardboard Lover and I can’t wait to see it in May and share it with my family: watching it with an audience always brings out the reaction the comedy deserves.

 

Rediscoveries and restorations 1 – with John Sweeney, introduced by Dave Glass

To my over-caffeinated and sugar-pumped corporeality this was an injection of an accelerant that provided a high impact sucker punch after being left dazed by the emotional heft of Sprechende Hande aka Talking Hands (1925), a German documentary about the Oberlinhaus Nowawes care home and school for the deafblind neat Potsdam. Directed by women’s rights activist and co-operative pioneer Gertrud Da­vid neé Swiderski, it is a humbling film that shows the patient and richly rewarding work of the church run Oberlinhaus which won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in 1900 for its holistic approach to treatments that brought the deafblind into the world.

The film follows the painstaking introduction of language based on hand movements which taught the subjects language through which they were then able to communicate and understand the exterior world. There’s one moment in which a group communicate by hand as a sighted teacher rads the newspaper: watching people overcome disability together places so much of our daily struggles into context.

John Sweeney had seen the film and accompanied it here and almost the first thing everyone asked after the screening was what had happened to the institution after the Nazis came to power. Luckily they were protected by their National Socialist governor Dietloff von Arnim and after surviving the war – being used as a hospital to treat the wounded in 1945 – the Oberlinhaus continues its work today with over 2,000 employees and many more residents.

Also included was another previously mislaid film rescued by Chris Bird in 2022 and screened probably for the first time on well over a century, A Victim of Circumstances (1913), from the Thanhouser studio. This featured a reporter played by Harry Benham who was romancing a woman played by Mignon Anderson although her father disapproves. The young man is arrested for photographing a rich man – I know, typical eh? – and whilst be cleared of any charge, this is enough reason for the father (Justus D. Barnes) to forbid the marriage as clearly his potential son-in-law is the wrong sort.

Things are nicely turned around though once the old bigot himself is arrested after being found in possession of stolen goods foisted on him by a fleeing snatch thief. It’s not a fair cop but the film takes us through his ritual humiliation as he is photographed, finger printed and even filmed by the forces of the law before realising that not only is Justice blind it is also fallible.

 

Young John Gilbert 

The White Heather (1919) with John Sweeney

 

Directed by Maurice Tourneur, this fab restoration from the San Francisco Film Preserve was only rediscovered in 2023 and is a beautifully filmed drama of faithless cads, true brave-hearts and financial skull-duggery that you can find on the SFFP website. I’ve previously written about it here, but it was great to see it on the big screen and with live accompaniment. Holmes Herbert plays the increasingly unlikeable Lord Angus and Mabel Ballin as Marion, the woman he wrongs. She has steadfast friends though in the form of the youthful John Gilbert playing Dick Beach who sets off in search of the Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed…) and Alec McClintock (Ralph Graves) who also loves Marion and will fight through hell and deep waters to save her… A cracking adventure and with some exceptional underwater scenes.

 

Ivor and Isabel

The Triumph of the Rat (1926) with Costas Fotopoulos, introduction from Bryony Dixon

The more I see of British silent films the more I wonder how they got such a bad reputation in the first place. Granted this one is strangely uneven but it’s also deeper than you’d expect allowing Ivor Novello to demonstrate the most existential of triumphs against the most intractable adversity…

Graham Cutts’s direction was very fluid with lots of deft camera movement around the ballroom and, capturing it’s grimy decadence in most expressionist ways, the Coffin Club. It really is a film of two halves as the reformed Rat, Pierre Boucheron (Ivor), rather bored with being the kept man of Zélie de Chaumet (Isabel Jeans is A Queen!) who, as fans will recall, he seemingly spurned in the first of these three films… makes a bet that he can capture the heart of the stunning Madeleine de l'Orme (Nina Vanna) after glimpsing her at a ball.

This begins a charming rat and mouse between the former rodent and the young woman with Pierre using his wiles to catch her attention before, somewhat inevitably, falling for her. This is too much for the controlling Zélie who tells all to ruin their relationship. Pierre is too decent to make excuses and tumbles into a descent that sees him falling into poverty and being forced away from his friends at the Coffin – the always watchable Marie Ault (from Wigan) playing proprietor Mère Colline and Julie Suedo as Mou, one of the club’s dancers who has a soft spot for our hero.

 

Ivor relishes the chance to show he can play despair although he’s no Lillian Gish (but could she sing?). It’s heart-rending and his only triumph might well be to just survive… we’ll have to wait for the final film in the trilogy, The Return of the Rat (1929) to find out where this story ends up. The three have the same characters but tend to not follow the dramatic instructions left by their predecessor.

 

Week-End Wives (1929) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lisa Stein Haven

The day started with another very fine British film which was a pretty-much perfectly exercised bedroom farce directed by Harry Lachman and starring Monty Banks. Following on from her presentation of her research into the Italian born-American star at the previous day’s silent Film Symposium (of which more later!), Lisa gave us another expert overview of this impeccable comic actor with the tiny moustache who was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena in North Eastern Italy just down the E45 from Bologna… before emigrating aged 17 to the USA. He started on stage then joined the Arbuckle company in 1918 making 35 short comedies by the early twenties.

 

Of course, for course many Britishers Monty is always down as the future Mr Gracie Fields – they wed in 1940 – but this was a marriage of Lancashire wit and talent with Umbrian nous and charm: they were a powerhouse couple and obviously great fun at parties. Banks’ British adventure began after he was declared bankrupt in 1927 after which he came to work for British International Pictures (BIP) in 1928. As Lisa points out this was after the passing of the 1927 Cinematographic Films Act which brought in the Quota Quickies. His films included Adam’s Apple (1928), Compulsory Husband (1930) and this one, the most complete and thankfully in the BFI archives on 35mm.

 

Monty has adventurer Max Ammon who cannot keep his driver in his golf-bag for long and forms a potential relationship with bored housewife Helene Monard - played by the spirited Annette Benson of Hitchcock’s Downhill fame and also Anthony Asquith’s brilliant Shooting Stars… One misunderstanding leads to another especially as Helene’s husband, uptight and grouchy Henri played with dashing flair by Jameson Thomas, is also bored and certainly fed up of egg and bacon breakfasts. It’s the little things…

 

The love quarter is, almost, completed by wannabe divorcee Madame le Grand, played by the fabulous Estelle Brody, so interesting to see her so far from the cotton mills of Hindle Wakes in this more vampish role. Brody was another American emigree who enjoyed success in the UK although this was not long to survive the coming of sound. Madame seeks legal advice from Henri and soon they are playing consultations of a more amorous kind. Then we discover that there is a fifth element and it’s the violent and unpredictable Monsieur le Grand (George K. Gee) out to win his wife back and to remove any obstacle.

Everyone gets wonderfully entangled and just when you think it’s getting too complicated it just gets more so and funnier. Comedy is precision work and Harry Lachman directs with near perfect timing.

 

I like Monty a lot and look forward to Lisa’s upcoming biography! She has also written about Sid Chaplin who made his Hollywood exit at the same time as the movies changed.

 

Der Student von Prague (1926) with John Sweeney, introduced by Michelle Facey

I missed the evening show which was the classic Weimar gothic adventure directed by Henrick Galeen and starring Conrad Veidt as the hellraising student who makes a deal with the Devil and has to confront the horror of his own dark soul. Based, as was the 1913 version, on a mix of Faust and a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson, this is a fabulous tale of a man who haunts himself with marvellous location shots and overall cinematographic excellence from Gunter Krumpf – Veidt vs Veidt is something to behold.

There’s a recent Blu-ray release from Deaf Crocodile which features the recent restoration which  runs at 133 minutes with a score from Stephen Horne. If you haven’t got it already, why not? It also has Brigitte Helm in Alraune (1928) – absolutely essential!

 

It was a day of rich content at the Cinema Museum and the best thing is, we have more of the same tomorrow! *

 

 

*Written before the Day Two write up for reasons best known to the author…

Ballroom blitz… Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s been a long time since I last watched this film and, as ever when viewing Joan Crawford through the lens of her later power roles, it’s fascinating to see her strengths absolutely in place with this, her major break out role. Whilst Crawford had worked her way in successful but slight comedies like Spring Fever with William Haines, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp with Harry Langdon and most memorably in Tod Browning's gonzo The Unknown with Lon Chaney, Our Dancing Daughters was the film that turned her into a major star. And it’s easy to see why.

In his introduction, Chris Bird quoted her co-star Anita Page in highlighting how hard she worked and there’s not an ounce of effort left off-screen as Joan wrenches every last drop of drama from what could have been a routine exercise. Of course, we know now, but who knew at the time, who really knew what magic she could create on screen with her energies and almost subconscious emoting pulling the viewer in to those huge, bright blue eyes and a face that could switch from triumph to disaster in the flicker of her eyelids… and it’s heart-breaking to watch. Difficult to credit that she was just 20 when this film was made or possibly 24… she updated the year although not the date, 23^rd March, of her birth.

Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastien

With so many silent films under her belt before the advent of sound, she is one of the major examples, along with Garbo and her nemesis Norma Shearer, of silent stars who transitioned to sound but she enjoyed a longer career than those two and her renaissance post war was reflected by three Oscar nominations and a win for Mildred Pierce (1946). She wasn’t done yet either, continuing to refine the talent she had and breaking down barriers of age and preconceptions.

Here she plays Diana Medford an energetic jazz baby who is running wild in a very Clara Bow fashion, in a hurry to have a good time whatever her parents expect. The film starts with the camera focused on a pair of feet dancing ferociously in front of three full-length mirrors, the feet carry on their complex movement as, cheekily, a pair of pantyhose are pulled up over them. The camera pulls back to show a full-clothed and party-ready Joan dancing like the Charleston champion she had been on route to the movies.

“Dangerous” Di is a party animal but when asked to raise a toast, toasts herself as she wants to be able to be able to like herself all of her life and this is the key to a film that stresses the importance of being true to yourself. Di’s best friend is Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastien) who is less vivacious but steadfastly so and then there is Anni (Anita Page) a girl who is anything but as innocent as she looks – she wants to marry well and more importantly, so does her mother.

Anita Page and John Mack Brown

They have variable relationships with the men in their social group, the mischievous Freddie (Edward Nugent), the serious Norman (Nils Asther) and the seriously loaded Ben (John Mack Brown). Di and Anni have a competition for the millionaire’s affection which Ann wins through guile and pretending to be the innocent girl that Di is not. Yet Di won’t compromise her way into Ben’s affections and she suffers for it even though – red flag! – Ben is clearly lacking instinct!

Meanwhile Beatrice marries the controlling Norman and they struggle to balance their relationship. Even though Ben realises his mistake it seems that only the amoral schemer has got what she wanted and things are set for an almighty showdown and a dramatic climax.

There's a lovely moment when a drunken Anni looks down on three washer women scrubbing the floor of the night club: "Women, women... working!" – she finds them ridiculous and unreal but is this the future calling? Written by Ruth Cummings, with titles by Marian Ainslee from a story by Josephine Lovett, it’s a “woman’s film” in many respects and it was her ability to connect with her sisters in the audience that would make Joan Crawford an immortal star.

 

The Red Devils Jazz Band

Crawford won competitions not just for the Charleston but also the Black Bottom – so called after the Black Bottom area of Detroit where it was invented in the early 1920s. During the first half of the show Chris Bird treated us to some rare and probably unique films on 95mm including one which he says was recorded in Paris featuring The Red Devils Jazz Band and a couple dancing the BB. This featured a slow-motion section so jazz babies could work out the moves ourselves although it’s beyond me even with the annual Bioscope Silent Film Weekender in a few days. I can reveal that it’s a more suggestive dance than the Charleston and what it lacks in the latter’s delightful angularity it makes up for in more frenetic limb throwing and the frequent grasping of the sides between your torso and your legs. This is an important document and one we need to study further.

DJ Bird also made a welcome return pre-show with a variety of 78 rpm nuggets including - I'm guesssing - Jack Hylton and His Orchestra playing Do the Black Bottom with Me (1927). He certainly played the madly infectious Jollity Farm, later made famous by the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. Now, if you’ve ever wondered where Mr Vivian Stanshall got the name from, we were about to find out with an episode of Bonzo the Dog an anarchic canine created in 1922 by British comic strip artist George Studdy and the subject of some 35 short cartoon films. Here he teams up with a fox to evade the hunt a sure sign of the growing influence of the labour movement in Great Britain at the time…

 

Our King of Jazz projected by Chris Bird

Back to jazz and a world premiere of a nitrate short featuring Jack Hylton, Britain’s King of Jazz, playing as part of the Playtime at the Piccadilly cabaret at the Piccadilly Hotel that Chris had exchanged for some cartoons with a collector in America. He asked big band expert Mark Beresford about the dating and he estimated 1926-7 but it may be even earlier given the songs featured. These included Vamp Me from 1922 and My Cretonne Girl written by Earl Carroll for his Vanities of 1923 as a love song for a young woman wearing the fabric in questions which, according to the online Britannica, is a printed fabric usually made from cotton which was used to make smocks for women.

This might be the only surviving record of this band line-up, which had played in Jack Hylton’s Cabaret Follies at the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place, from autumn 1922 to mid-1924, although Hylton gave up control at the end of 1923 (according to fabulous The Jazz Age Club website). So, this film could well be his next review at the Piccadilly Hotel.

Also on the bill were a dancing troupe of eight simply called The Girls – probably the Dolly Girls, dressed by Dolly Tree and previously featuring in Dolly’s Revels at the Piccadilly with Jack’s band. They are four dressed as Cretonne clothed country girls and four in male drag, illustrating the music in the manner of a prototypical Pan’s People. Dolly was a busy woman and the Jazz Age Club website has her in London for ’24-’25 working on this review, further evidence of its date.

We're all Pan's People really... (image from Chris Bird's film)

They are followed by “Leo Bill”, a ventriloquist who has the exact same M.O. as the Spanish vent, Senor Wences who had an extraordinary career after joining the circus aged 15 and then starring on stage and screen, eventually featuring on the Ed Sullivan Show and then The Muppets, living to 101 years of age. The trick was to paint a face on his hand and use this as the head on top of a dummy’s body – here Toto but later Johnny and variations of the same. The dates fit and there’s a facial resemblance so I’m calling it, especially as there couldn’t be two vents with this bizarre technique.

Next we have two gents from New York, Brooks and Ross who sing Wild, Weak Warm and Willing which was a shortening of  the full title: I Want 'Em Wild, Weak, Warm and Willing published in1923. And written by Sam Coslow and Eddie Cantor, yes, he of the wide-eyes and Clara’s Kid Boots (1926), for the Ziegfield Follies.

You can download the sheet music here... 

The Girls return in one-legged costumes to dance to I’m Just Wild Over Dancing, which they clearly are… in the manner of “jazz agents” whilst Jack, facing away from his band, holds the rhythm in his hands. Two “Bolsheviks” join the dance, throwing some vaguely Cossack steps but this ain’t no history lesson… It’s murder on the dancefloor but next there are two dancers in Hawaiian costumes and you wonder where the music is leading us? And all the while, Jack is smiling and I’m sure the audience is too!

Zelia Raye takes to the floor with the band and The Girls watching (image courtesy of Chris Bird)

Now for some culture with ballerina Zelia Raye who was a pioneer of modern dance in the UK, eventually establishing the Modern Theatre Faculty at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. “Straight from Paris”, Josephine Head and Albert Zapp follow and perform to Vamp Me! with the odd hint of the Apache dancing to be found in many depictions of the City of Light at this time. Finally, The Girls return to dance Hooting de Hoot which is as poignant appraisal of the contemporary political situation as you’ll find…

John Sweeney put on his dancing shoes and accompanied the variety with verve, stamina and distinction – it was a foot-tapping evening and we were only lacking a rug to cut! This was probably for the best.

 

This film captures the dances in particular in clear detail and it is so rare for this vintage. More than that it shows the spirit of the jazz age in this country and is a significant discovery reflecting the entertainments and the style of our great grandparents!

 

Pictures from the Projectionist Chris Bird

The film itself - you can see the different tinted sections (Chris Bird)

Chris's projector: a Specto with enhanced lighting

Spring Silence... Kennington Bioscope 9th Annual Silent Weekend Day Two

 

This is Part Three of the Cinema Museum Silent Spring long weekend, I’m putting my hot takes out in reverse order because… why not!? A brilliant few days incorporating the British Silent Film Symposium 2026 run by Kings College London and the 9^th Kennington Bioscope Weekender.

 

Ypres (1925) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lawrence Napper

“… fantasy must cower before the stark realities of mankind’s agony – such as Ypres.”

Former soldier Blair Philips writing in The Stoll Herald, November 1925¹

Philips was qualifying his description of this film as being like a “dream…” emerging from “the mist of yesterday…” which would still be a living nightmare for those who survived one of the bloodiest and most desperate battles of the Great War.

Directed by Walter Summers, using a mix of reconstructions of the Battle of Ypres mixed with contemporary footage from both side, this was one of a number of films aiming to pay tribute to the loses and bravery of a nation still in mourning. Produced for British Instructional Pictures, Ypres followed on from The Battle of Jutland (1921), Armageddon (1923) and Zeebrugge (1924) in this approach and also focused on the experience of individuals to humanise the almost inconceivable events.

A series of maps are also used to show how the British and Commonwealth soldiers in particular were able to, just about, defend the Ypres Salient – a bulging line of attack/defence which emerged as the warring parties fought their way up through North-Western Europe as the Germans attempted to outflank their opposition and cut off supplies from the French ports. It’s a film and a series of events I could easily spend a lot more time on – so watch this space and read Lawrence’s book (link below).

Summers manages to make an entertaining as well as instructional film and the comic asides were more necessary for the audience then rather than now, although we don’t have to look far to see the horrors of war as filtered through the modern apparatus of “instruction”.

“Whole companies were annihilated and the marvel is how anyone remained to break up the infantry attacks which were delivered again and again.”

An officer of the 1st Gloucestershire’s who was at Gheluvelt

 

Rediscoveries and restorations Part II, with John Sweeney, introductions from Dave Glass and Glenn Mitchell

The Cattle Rustler’s End (1911), starring J. Warren Kerrigan as Curley Temple (Shirley not!?)  and Pauline Bush as his sweetheart Fannie, was a pacey tale of illicit love and cattle theft directed by a young Allan Dwan. Fannie’s father disapproves and so the couple meet by a tree where, unfortunately, a cattle rustler has also hidden the branding tools of his evil trade. One thing leads to another and Curley is accused and, as usual, it’s left to the woman to sort things out. This was another rare gem transferred from a nitrate 35mm print for digital restoration by Bob Geoghegan’s Archive Film Agency.

Racing for Life (1924), a five-reeler directed by Henry MacRae and starring Eva Novak and William Fairbanks, featured some extensive time-dilation as motor cars raced around their practice lap and, in the minute or so of elapsed time, our hero, seemingly miles away, has to fight off his kidnappers – including his own brother – race on foot, steal a police motorbike and run across the track to the pit in order to start half a lap behind the others.

This was, without doubt, great fun though and, coming on 35mm from Tony Saffrey’s collection, almost the first time in a century that this extraordinary race has been seen and it was a thrill!!

There was also time for a quick Mabel Normand film, Mabel lost and Won (1915) from Bob Geoghegan’s collection and which is so rare it doesn’t even have an IMDB page! Once again the KB brings you the rarest of the rare as well as the finest of everything else (yes, I work in marketing and I cannot lie!).

 

Charles Vanel, one man alone with his cod...

Pêcheur d’Islande (Fishers of the Isle) (1924), with Stephen Horne, introduction by Liz Cleary

I was rather grumpy (Liverpool FC might have lost again?) when watching this in Pordenone in 2023 but this film was transformed for me here with Liz Cleary’s introduction being a large part of that. Liz became interested not just in the film but in the novel from which it was drawn, as well as the location and the way of life depicted, being driven to find out more and even to visit the locations. Inspiration is infectuous but she also added so much context to enable me to see the strength and purpose of the film.

Perhaps it’s also as I’ve just watched Rose of Nevada, Mark Jenkin’s new film about the lives of trawlers on a small fishing boat. If you go to Whitby, Fleetwood or former fishing villages such as Aberdaron in North Wales, you will see grave after grave marking generations of deaths at sea and for this reason too, the film’s downbeat yet also inspiring narrative rings so true. Without giving any spoilers away, sometimes in cinema deaths have to actually mean something and not simply be a plot point… Also, the exhausting practicalities of line fishing here and trawling as in Rose are humbling in themselves.

Pierre Loti abides...

Liz’s pilgrimage to the film’s locations, Paimpol and Ploubazlanec in northern Brittany, gave us a sense of the unchanging waters and she also gave us the background of former naval seaman Pierre Loti’s 1886 novel on which the film is based. Loti was an extraordinary character as the photograph above might suggest and the story drew on his experience of the Far East as well as the Atlantic – his ability was in his description of the land and the sea and director Jacques de Baroncelli crafts a poetic tale that pulls the viewer in with stunning locations, and compositions as characters fade in and out of each other’s thoughts: the shooting of one character features flashing images of his loved ones in the manner of Abel Gance.

Charles Vanel – who really did have an issue with transport in his career (c.f. The Wages of Fear) – is an unknowable rock of conflicted emotion as Yann the fisherman and elfin Sandra Milovanoff is sadly beguiling as Gaud – the woman who does battle with his affection for the stormy seas.

Stephen Horne’s accompaniment included Breton folk songs as well as his own improvisations, as usual it made for the perfect connection between the sentiments and the time.

 

Harry, Bebe and Snub play with shoes

Focus on… Rolin’ with Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass, accompaniment John Sweeney

Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass resumed their ongoing mission by discussing the history and early output of Hal Roach’s Rolin’ company before it rebranded as the Hal Roach Studio and the Kings of Comedy did battle – Sennet vs Roach! Here we find a number of soon to be extremely famous folk such as Snub Pollard, Bebe Daniel’s and Harold Lloyd, just not the Harry we’re that familiar with.

Initially Lloyd played the role of Willie Work in one-reelers but by 1915 “Chaplinitis” was in full bloom and he wore an odd two-whisp moustache and tight-trampy clothes as Lucky Luke – the Chaplin you can meet between reels?  Giving them Fits (1915) was Lloyd, Pollard and teenage Daniels’ debut for the company and is a riotous tale of events in a shoe shop in which Harry is for some reason called Luke the Fluke – a chance-based play on words.

Luke proved popular enough to move to two-reels and under his own name, “Lukes” as opposed to Rolin’s. Pollard also got his own series and in 1918 Roach started making films with a fellow called Stan Laurel and the rest was, eventually, history. You can’t help but be infected by Glenn and Dave’s enthusiasm and this reflects the high energies of these wonderful comedies and the fast-developing world of the business of laughter on screen: there was no luck involved, just talent and application.

Irene (1926), with Stephen Horne, introduction by Kelly Robinson

Colleen Moore knew the score alright and she was one of the most vivacious personas cinema has ever seen: an icon of the Jazz Age who even had an F. Scott Fitzgerald-autographed mini-copy of The Great Gatsby in the library of her legendary dolls house. Kelly Robinson showed the evidence in her introduction to this zippy film which showcased Moore at the height of her powers and popularity.

Directed by Alfred E Green, Colleen plays the titular Irish-American as the daughter of the Ma and Pa O’Dare – played by Cork’s wonderful Kate Price (who even mimes in Oirish) and Charles Murray who presents as drunk for most of the story. Is it just me or whether The Irish only ever drunk and/or policemen in most silent films? Anyway, Irene is the scatty but definitely smart heart of the family of five, sorry foive!, who scrape by in an apartment until she loses her job.

Madame Lucy – whose business motto is “Pay cash – look what happened to the Light Brigade – they charged!”

Colleen and Kate from Cork

After being kicked out by Ma who, y’know, was only joking… Irene moves to New York and gets a job – that luck of the Irish! – delivering parcels to the posh estates on the Boston Park Road. This is where she meets handsome and likable rich person Donald Marshall (Lloyd Hughes) who has just invested in a fashion house run by one Madame Lucy who, you’ll never believe… is Aberdeen’s George K. Arthur who inherited his aunt’s business and her name, somehow?

Lucy declares that to make any woman beautiful is a simple art and, well, soon Irene arrives with some parcels and Donald decides she should be the proof of this theory – much to “Madame’s” dismay. Irene asks for two pals to accompany her – there’s a lot of female solidarity in the film – and Lucy spends most of the remaining storyline extremely unconvinced to comic effect of course. I like George in this role and he sparks well with Colleen’s feisty resilience.

There’s a grand finale at a fashion show that was filmed in Technicolor and on the BFI’s 35mm print this has faded so the section from a copy held in Russia was used – it was colourful but lower quality, Moore’s smile radiated through though. It’s another fine exhibit in the case for Colleen Moore being one of the stars of the age and of enduring charm. My Gen-Z daughter was impressed with her pep and sisterly attitude, especially when sharing roller skates with another late-night reveller who missed the last bus.

Stephen Horne accompanied with the style and verve Colleen demands – Moore not less! A good time was had by all!!

Sadly, I had to away before the grand finale with the UK premier of the latest restoration of The Three Musketeers (1921). It’s available direct from the Film Preservation Society on Blu-ray and hopefully will be screened somehow and somewhere else.

 

A fabulous long weekend of silent frolicking – details of Day One and the Silent Film Symposium to follow in the coming days… Thank you to all at the KB and KC!

 

1.       The Great War in Popular British Cinema of the 1920s: Before Journey’s End, Lawrence Napper, Palgrave Macmillan (2015)