‘There is nothing connected with staging of a motion
picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man and there is no reason why
she cannot completely master every technicality of the art.’ Alice Guy
Blaché
Like London buses, you wait years for a box set of early
women film pioneers and then four of them arrive almost all at once. This BFI
set is the latest and for those wondering which to buy I’m here to make the
case for this over Flicker Alley, Lobster and even Kino Lorber, although in the
latter case you really should buy both with the caveat that the Blu-ray version, which has the most content, is Region A and you'll need a compatible player.
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| Making an American Citizen (1912), unique to the BFI set |
The Kino set is six Blu-ray discs and, of course, has a
greater range of material than the others but it dovetails pretty well with the
BFI set and together they give you 8-9 discs of unique, must have, material
from an era that is only now being fully rediscovered. Even in the span of my relatively
recent interest in early film, the directors in this set have been re-evaluated
with pioneers like Guy Blaché and hugely popular filmmakers like Lois Webber
been restored to their rightful position. There are some great films on these
sets and they help to broaden our appreciation of the new media as one not just
dominated by Méliès, Griffith, de Mille et al.
Kino goes long on Alice Guy Blaché with 14 films from 1911
to 1913 of which the BFI replicates five and adds two, Making an American Citizen (1912) and The Girl in the Armchair (1912). Only Flicker Alley covers her
earlier work with Les Chiens Savants (1902), Une Histoire roulante
(1906) and La Barricade (1907).
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| Guy Blaché's utterly lovely Falling Leaves (1912) |
Guy Blaché pretty much invented narrative film making as
Pamela Hutchinson explains in her essay in the excellent BFI booklet which also
allows the contributors to comment on each film. There are two films not
covered on Kino, Making an American Citizen (1912) and The
Girl in the Armchair (1912) with the former taking the director’s
experience of immigration and turning it into a proto-feminist fable. As PH
notes, equality in marriage is a condition of acceptance in the new country,
and the heroine, played by Blanche Cornwall, sees her husband Ivan abandon his
domineering Euro-bullying to fit in with the New World after various American men step in to force him to adjust his behaviour.
It’s not just the fact of these films but their themes;
there is a different sensibility at work and a willingness to tackle subjects
from within rather from on high (and yes, DW, I’m looking at you).
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| Claire Windsor and Louis Calhern in The Blot (1921) |
Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the films of Lois
Webber whose work often contains a depth and intimacy that others lack. The BFI
set includes The Blot (1921) which is not only one of her best but also
one of the most impressive character-based dramas from the period, its tale of
bourgeois poverty trap, neighbourly jealousy and conflicted love delivered by
superb performances especially from Webber discovery Claire Windsor as the
librarian at the centre of a love triangle between an educated but poor theology
student and a wealthy Phil West played by Louis Calhern (who I’ve just seen in
the BFI’s smashing restoration of Notorious (1946)). Her mother is also
well played by Margaret McWade who hangs on in quiet desperation as the family
suffers daily humiliation from their immigrant neighbours who make a healthy
living through trade. There’s no right or wrong to either side and Webber’s
take is sophisticated to stand the test of time better than Griffith’s
Victorian morality tales.
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| Triangulated tension - Lois top right in Suspense (1913) |
Webber tackles social issues with an even-handedness that
eludes many and Discontent (1916) about an old man who is happier in his
old soldiers’ home than with his well-intentioned relations, is another
example. Her technical skill and innovation are also evidenced by a crisp
restoration of the superb Suspense (1913) famous for its three-way split
screen and overhead point-of-view shots: it’s a genuinely pioneering and tense
story of home invasion on a par with anything coming out of Biograph.
Kino has 13 Lois Webber films including noteworthy features
such as Too Wise Wives (1921), Hypocrites (1915) and Where Are
My Children? (1916) yet, apart from the spectacular Suspense (1913),
the BFI disc alone includes Discontent (1916) and The Blot (1921).
I’m beginning to suspect collusion…
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| Here's Mabel! |
The BFI set gives you by far the most Mabel for your money
with five films of which Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913, 14 mins), His
Trysting Place (1914, 22 mins) and the magnificent late period riot Should
Men Walk Home? (1928, 28 mins) are unique to the BFI set. Mabel’s a marvel
and I especially enjoy the rawness and energy of her work with Chaplin in Trysting
and Mabel’s Strange Predicament (1914). Mabel directed the former
and, probably, co-directed the second which sees Charlie progress from
irresponsible parent to slightly chastened – and battered – husband; these two
were making up so much content on the hoof and had improvisation to burn.
Mabel’s adventures are also marvellously accompanied by the
Meg Morley Trio who’s tight, jazz-age playing catches the mood and movement of
Mabel’s quicksilver narratives.
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| That's not how we rehearsed it Charlie... |
None of the material on the third and fourth BFI discs is available on the Kino set and one of the main delights is a film from Olga Preobrazhenskaya,
regarded as the first female Soviet filmmaker. Kat Ellinger’s essay reveals
that little is known about the director and that whilst many of her films are
lost, what survives reveals a concern for character over propaganda even though
the film included here, The Peasant Women of Ryazan (1927) could be seen
as an attack on the Kulaks (rich peasants) who were viewed as in the way of
industrialisation/modernisation by
Stalin’s regime.
The Kulak in question is Vasilii Shironin (Kuzma
Yastrebitsky) who allows his son, Ivan (G Bobynin) to marry Anna (R Pruzhnaya)
a poor girl from the neighbouring village, only to rape her when he is away in
the First World War. Anna has her father-in-law’s baby but has to live in
disgrace with the village not knowing the cause of her shame. Shironin’s
daughter, Vasilisa, (Emma Tsesarskaya) is the face of the new Russian woman,
forging her own destiny by deciding who she marries and setting up an
orphanage.
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| Damned by tradition and a Kulak's greed (R Pruzhnaya) |
Even as the villain of the piece, Shironin has shame and
regret and there’s a lot going on in a narrative that is true to itself and not
just instructions from on high. There are some superb sequences of rural life
showing the vibrancy of a culture that was under threat even just over a decade
after the story was set. The performances are also excellent especially from R
Pruzhnaya as the long-suffering Anna and from Emma Tsesarskaya as the modern
Vasilisa. Ellinger has this as a feminist film but sadly things were to get
worse in the ensuing decade and beyond.
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| The face of the future? Emma Tsesarskaya's character makes her own decisions. |
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| Some fairies, yesterday |
Marie-Louise Iribe has already made a stylish impression on
me in Hara-Kiri (1928) which she co-directed with Henri Debain’s and in Le
Roi des aulnes (1929), her only film as sole director, she proves to have
an uncanny style all her own. Based on Goethe’s poem Erlkönig (1782) and
Shubert’s song of 1815, it features a father battling through a forest to take
his sick son to a doctor. The two confront all manner of imagined horrors in
the deep woods as the Erl King magics up fairies to obstruct their purpose, as
if the illness wasn’t real enough…
Last but not least is The Woman Condemned (1934), an
early talkie from Dorothy Davenport also known as Mrs Wallace Reid, wife of the
film actor who died from drug addiction in 1923, who was determined that his
death would not be in vain and that she would fulfil her own ambitions. Ellen
Cheshire’s essay details Davenport Reid’s determined creative drive after being
widowed as she wrote, produced and directed films with a social conscience. She
transitioned to sound films and The Woman Condemned, an entertaining but
over-worked and under-budgeted crime film that features an outstanding
cross-examination scene with Claudia Dell giving her all.
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| Under pressure: Claudia Dell |
Cheshire quotes Ivan Spear in Boxoffice (13th May 1939) wondering
why so few women ‘attain high production or executive niches in the [film]
industry and, further, why those few women who have done so have failed to stay
at the top’. Davenport Reid was one of those who he said had “dropped from
sight” but she continued working as a scriptwriter into the fifties and deserves
to be remembered as a filmmaker in her own right and not just a widow.
The set also includes a snippet from Dorothy Arzner’s Dance
Girl Dance (1940) along with Mary
Ellen Bute’s experimental Parabola (1937). There are also three short
featurettes on Mabel Normand, Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber: fascinating
lives and there’s a lot more to come in their rehabilitation as all the essays
make clear.
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| Smoking is bad for the health... |
I’ll leave the last word to Germaine Dulac writing in ‘Ayons
la Foi’ Le Film (1919):
‘The time has come, I believe, to listen in silence to
our own song, to try to express our own personal vision, to define our own
sensibility, to make our own way. Let us learn to look, let us learn to see,
let us learn to feel.’
The BFI set is full of these “songs” and it’s essential for
all who want to listen. Available now from the BFI Shop on and offline.
The Kino-Lorber set is also available direct from their site and a reminder that it is Region A so you'll need multi-region capability. It features a mind-boggling range of filmakers including Nell Shipman, Alla Nazimova (Salome in great quality!), Ida May, Julia Crawford Ivers, Frances Marion - her feature Song of Love (1923), starring Norma Talmadge - serial queens, Grace Cunard and Helen Holmes and more (two silent features from Dorothy Davenport Reid!). There's a 40% discount at the moment and together with the BFI set, this wonderful box set opens up a whole new-old world of cinematic and social history.
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