So here it is (against all odds)… 2020's Silent Highlights

“A journey in one’s armchair – a journey of the mind – is the nicest kind of journey, because it’s what we want it to be, because there are no obstacles, and all our dreams are granted.”

In such a year as this with no accompanied silent film screenings since the middle of March… how can Arthur find very much to thank? Well, let me tell you there is more to be thankful of in 2020 than in any normal year because, despite it all, people did carry on and they did put the show on Right Here! So here they are - in no particular order - my top twelve silent delights from a year spent mostly at home...

Buster and Natalie Talmadge 

1. Slapstick Festival – Our Hospitality (1923) with The European Silent Screen Virtuosi

If it was January it must have been Bristol and the reliably sensational Slapstick Festival which was again packed with rare and beautiful shorts as well as features I’d previously missed such as Lubitsch’s So This is Paris (1926) and James Cruze’s On to Reno (1928) starring Marie Prevost. The highlight was Buster’s Our Hospitality screened in the cathedral with an informed, passionate introduction from actor Paul McGann who this year joined with me in celebrating victory for Liverpool Football Club in the Premier League as well the World Club Championship… 2020 eh!?

Our Hospitality was the first of Buster’s features and a huge leap for comedy kind with a substantial budget enabling him to shift the legendary Canfield and McKay feud back to the 1830s resulting in a very funny and genuinely thrilling film with real drama added to the gags by one of the greatest of comedy innovators.

The European Silent Screen Virtuosi joyfully accompanied with Günter A. Buchwald, Romano Todesco and Frank Bockius filling the cavernous spaces with perfectly judged collaborative improvisation.

Pierre Magnier gets a hat, gets ahead.

2.       Cyrano de Bergerac (1925), with John Sweeney, Phoenix Cinema

Pure joy in February Finchley with a Cyrano that is one of the few surviving colourised silent features; a sumptuous classic that revels in its own excesses in full expectation that the audience know exactly what’s coming from this classic tale of secret love. It is a film that demands to be watched in a beautiful 108-year-old cinema and with accompaniment from someone as skilled as John Sweeney who provided so many stirring motifs that you could almost see a feathered hat bobbing over the keyboard.

I remarked at the time that it was “…well worth braving Storm Ciara for on a day National Rail told us not to travel! Faint hearts and all that…” Go on, tempt fate, why don’t you?

3.       Tatjana (1923), with John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

I don’t think anyone took the Cinema Museum for granted, even before all of this… but I wouldn’t have ever thought that this would be my last trip there for nine months and counting. This show was a very rare screening of a skilfully made tale of love and obsession during the turbulence of the Russian Revolution. Made in Germany with direction from the Danish Robert Dinesen, it does at least feature a Russian lead, Olga Tschechowa, as the woman distracting several comrades from purposeful politics.

John Sweeney is, of course, very much your man for the Russians and wove splendid dramatic and romantic lines through the web of revolutionary intrigue. He hadn’t seen the film – who had? – but he was, of course, spot on.

Jenny Hasselqvist y'all!

4.      Ingmar's Inheritance (1925), Selma Lagerlöf’s Jerusalem

Everything closed in the first Lockdown, those of us who could worked from home and, in my case, programmed an in-house season of Swedish films based on my reading of Selma Lagerlöf’s epic Jerusalem as translated by the well-intentioned but over fussy, Velma Swanston Howard. Four films were made of the two books of Victor Sjöström made the first two, The Sons of Ingmar (Ingmarssönerna) (1919) and then Karin Daughter of Ingmar (Karin Ingmarsdotter) (1920) which failed to repeat the success of the first film leaving the director to turn his attention elsewhere.

Gustaf Molander picked up the project and completed the story with his brace, Ingmar's Inheritance (Ingmarsarvet) (1925) and Till österland (1926). The two directors had many differences in approach with Sjöström’s narrative much closer to Lagerlöf’s text and more focused on the interior life of her conflicted characters whilst Molander broadened the palate, taking more liberties and setting up more action.

I especially enjoyed Ingmar's Inheritance which has a stellar cast including Lars Hanson, Mona Mårtenson, Conrad Veidt and Sweden’s actor/prima ballerina superstar Jenny Hasselqvist!

Indoor adventure with Raymond McKee

5.       KBTV – Kennington Bioscope Online, Kidnapped (1917) with John Sweeney (ITMA!)

When the going got tough, the tough went online… It was Dame Pamela of Walthamstow who once described the Kennington Bioscope as London’s Silent Speakeasy, an exclusive yet inclusive, almost mythical club of the committed and persistently passionate silent cinephiles who gather under shadowy circumstances once every three weeks or so… When the door of the Museum had to shut, these movie mobsters just stayed calm and carried on, shifting to digital and, with casual ease, bloomin’ well going global!

Hosted by Michelle Facey – literally the face of KBTV – throughout lockdown the Kennington Bioscope have been broadcasting shorter films on their YouTube channel but this episode was something else as there was a full feature film with live accompaniment from John Sweeney and an introduction from Fritzi Kramer, America’s premier silent blogger with Movies Silently and the woman who crowdfunded the restoration and DVD release of Alan Crosland’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. It’s a film for all the family and one which retains its sense of adventure and charm a century on.

Nita Naldi and John Barrymore: two great profiles...

6.       Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), HippFest at Home with Neil Brand

One of the first and biggest disappointments of the year was the cancellation of Hippfest – ock, we were just a week away…  The Hipponauts stayed connected via social media though and after an earlier shared watch-along of Clara Bow’s It, this was the full Monty: a learned introduction from Pamela Hutchinson and the wonderful – properly diegetic – scoring of Neil Brand for one of the classics of the silent era, courtesy of Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of the 2011 restoration.

This was also another of those “appointments to view” with so many of the silent film community watching and commenting as the film played; from London, Bristol, Scotland, Europe and the USA… we were all in the room sharing the film just as we do in festival. Sure, we had to bring our own drinks and nibbles, but this was a night when social distancing became merely a physical construct.

Valéry Inkijinoff acting up a storm

7.       Storm Over Asia (1928), Silent Film Days Bonn, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

Some countries did better than others post lockdowns and in August the 36th Silent Film Days in Bonn was one of the first to run in Europe. The organisers also decided to stream some of the films along with the live accompaniment so that those of us who couldn’t make it, could experience something of the immediacy and ambience of the festival.

 

So, huddled over my laptop, in my Berlinale t-shirt and with my Louise Brooks Pordenone Silent Film Festival mug topped up, I watched this crystal-clear restoration of Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928) and listened to the visceral interplay between accompanists Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne on headphones… and it was almost like being there; certainly one of the most visceral streams of the year.

Ruan Lingyu

8.       Guofeng (National Customs) (1935) with Gabriel Thibaudeau, 39^th Pordenone Silent Festival

Talking of Le Giornate del cinema muto… this year’s edition moved spectacularly online with an afternoon and evening’s worth of musician masterclasses, main feature and post screening discussion that gave us something of the festival’s immediacy and intensity. Every day for a week festival director Jay Weissberg bounded out from our screens drawing us into the programme of restored gems and quoting the above lines from Michel Robida about our shared armchair journeys.

The films were a treat from the restored Weimar sophistication of Abwege (sex and drugs and Brigitte Helm…) to the small-town, mid-west, juvenile Americana of Penrod and Sam (1923) via a rare trip to Greece for The Apaches of Athens (1930). It’s a close-run thing but my favourite was probably Guofeng (1935), accompanied by Gabriel Thibaudeau. Made during a fighting pause in the China’s lengthy civil wars the film promoted Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) call for a return to core values with its New Life Movement. The movement, sharing values with the opposing Communist Party, was reaction against Western imperialist influence and urged the people to observe social and political responsibilities, practice frugality and to know one’s sense of shame.

Now, if that sounds too functional a brief the resulting drama is nonetheless well made and acted especially by a radiant Ruan Lingyu, the star of Goddess (1934) among many other Chinese silents, before she committed suicide aged just 25 in early March 1935, some two months before the film’s release. She is extraordinary here as every time I’ve seen her, gently emoting and disarmingly direct, sometimes straight to camera if not to the audience, she never leaves her character.

The Masterclasses were also uniformly fascinating and provided extra dimensions to the screenings along with Jay’s masterfully chaired discussions. Sorry Jay, but next year’s festival is just going to have to be that much longer to allow for this all!! Immacolato!!

BFI's Bryony and KB's Michelle introduce

9.       The Cheaters (1929) with Cyrus Gabrysch, London Film Festival 2020

After Pordenone it was straight on to London for the next streaming festival and one that brought a collaboration from the Kennington Bioscope and the BFI. KBTV MC Michelle Facey introduced along with the BFI’s Bryony Dixon who filled us in on the remarkable McDonagh Sisters, Paulette who directed this and seven other features, Isabel, the star, acting under the name Marie Lorraine and Phyllis who worked as art director. They even had their own set, using their splendid family home Drummoyne House as well as some stunning locations around Sydney.

The Cheaters was the third of the McDonagh sister’s films and shows a remarkable consistency of tone and aesthetic. It’s a very proficient melodrama with Hollywood-level performances allied to a crispness of direction and that visual cohesion described by the National Film and Sound Archive as evidence of the McDonagh sisters' “understanding of mood and atmosphere.”

Cyrus Gabrysch’s accompaniment was a gorgeous gamelan, matching the drama but also the thread of family and love. Occasionally I glanced down at his work on the now famous Bioscope “Piano Cam” but mostly, as John and Neil had said in Pordenone’s masterclasses, the music was at the heart of the film and it felt exactly as if it was coming out of the screen!

10.   The House of Shadows (1924), Stephen Horne & Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Silent Stream

There is much discussion about the “new normal” and whether cinema viewing will return in the same ways after the pandemic is ended but some things can stay, especially archive streaming. The Danish Film Institute has – literally – hundreds of silent films available to view on its site (of which more anon) whilst the San Francisco Silent Film Festival also provides highlights from previous screenings. Le Giornate has The Silent Stream which in addition to the masterclasses, features films from earlier editions including this gem from 2017, my first year in Pordenone.

The House of Shadows is an intense melodrama set in northern Norway and Anders Wilhelm Sandberg’s film is an intense, mystical family drama that is as disturbing as it is haunting with some outstanding locations matched by some exceptional performances.

Elizabeth-Jane and Stephen make for an intuitive paring and they fill the characters with so much musical warmth as well as dread, lifting their lines above the swooping panoramas and pacing the viewing narrative with a measured precision that confounds the occasional reminder that this is all played live. There’s a rapture of applause at the end and I think you can hear me whooping as well!

11.   Digital release of the year? The Intrigue (1916)/A Son of Erin (1916), Kino Lorber Blu-ray

Like many compulsive obsessives I have a stack of unwatched Blu-rays and DVDs, in order of release date or sub-sectioned by Director… and whilst this has been the year to eat into that reserve there’s also been good reason to add to the challenge by bringing in more! One I bought and watched was this great set from Kino Lorber featuring forgotten films from Julia Crawford Ivers.

Included are four films either written by or written and directed by Ivers all of which compliment her film, The Call of the Cumberlands (1916) included on the company’s boxset of Women Film Pioneers which, a six discs and 25 hours long, is the perfect lockdown companion.

This set majors on The Intrigue, a science fiction spy adventure from 1916, and whilst it’s very interesting, it was A Son of Erin (1916) written and directed by Ivers that drew my eye the most as it had a number of thematic parallels with Cumberlands; humble men making good, steadfast romance in a changing world and corruption in public office. Ivers sense of morality is consistent across these films and that draws you in further to the history of the films and the time.

Ben Model

12.   Streaming King: The Silent Comedy Watch Party, Ben Model and Steve Massa

Incredibly Ben Model hosted his thirty eighth silent comedy streaming on Sunday 20^th December making him one of the most relentless bringers of digital joy for the year. The redoubtable Steve Massa provides deeply informed introductions and Ben live-accompanies shorts comedies starring every silent comedian you have and haven’t heard of. It’s an education and an inspiration. Also *funny*!

This week’s episode featured champion Charley Chase in There Ain’t No Santa Claus (1925) which proved that, actually Chaz, there is one, as this was the perfect comedy gift on a day, we desperately needed it! We also had Martha Sleeper – who I’ve previously descried as the silent era Parker Posey (OK, just me then…) and who is literally slapstick on skates in Sure-Mike (1925) - effortless amongst the mayhem in a two-reeler which also features some youngster name of Fay Wray. There was also lovely Lillian Peacock in A Shadowed Shadow (1916) which is not as dark as it seems… no shades of grey just grade “A” comedy.

Martha Sleeper

Steve and Ben take the digital biscuit and epitomise the resilience and invention of our silent cineaste subculture and its positive refusal to stand by in disconnected silence. As Ben says, people are contacting them and letting them know how the show is heloing them cope with social restrictions and much more beside; laughter maybe the best medicine but so is routine and dedication. 

Thank you boys and thank you everyone above for continuing to shine your light in 2020. We go again in 2021 and I look forward to seeing you online and in theatres as soon as possible.