Back home… The House on Trubnaya (1928), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

Thus, it can be seen that even the most unworldly peasant can make a valuable contribution to the labour movement… As with Michael Powell, Boris Barnet was not phased by the strictures of propaganda and weaves his way around the need to deliver this core messaging whilst still providing entertainment. This film is funny, inventive and superbly edited with the actors giving sardonic and engaging performances that make light of the script ultimately conspired by five different writers. The original script dated back to Lenin’s era and a call for the common comrade to be ready to participate in democratic process whilst Stalin’s era was driven by a lengthening process of pulling more from the country to work in the city. Barnet meets both these objectives with wit and irreverent undercurrents which pull in the viewer in more subtly and completely than more earnest polemic.

 

I’m second-guessing historically but by the end of the film I was all for marching my support for Parasha Pitunova (Vera Maretskaya) as elected deputy of the Moscow maids' Trade Union.

 

In addition to some wonderful location shots of Moscow - Yevgeni Alekseyev’s cinematography is a wonder – there’s also a fantastic set showing the flights of stairs inside the tenement on Trubaya, like Dante’s Hell each level denoting a different level of position and snobbery with some of the worst at the lowest levels. It’s a superb way to illustrate the neighbourly interactions as well as the building’s “society” and, in a hectic start, Alekseyev’s camera pulls in and out as we witness the chaos – two men chopping wood on one landing, pausing to let a disabled child squeeze past, whilst others squabble over laundry as another day in civilisation begins.

Inside the house on Trubnaya

Barnet plays with expectations and form throughout notably when Parasha is chasing a duck in the streets and grabs it just as a tram moves at speed towards her, the driver leaps out and is suspended – freeze-framed - in mid-air as the title card reads: “… but wait, we forgot to tell you how the duck ended up in Moscow.” All this after some ten minutes of set up including rapid cuts, reversed film, montage (natch) and the goings on in the staircase set. This was Barnet’s fourth film but it’s his Revolver in terms of pushing the boundaries.

 

But wait, I forgot to tell you how I ended up in Kennington…

 

This was my first visit to the Cinema Museum since March 2020 and it was a delight to see the Kennington Bioscope back up and running. The KB carried on through the pandemic with KBTV on YouTube and whilst the path to the old place is all still familiar, what a time we’ve had. The old team was back together in the flesh and as star of stage and small screen, KBTV’s MC Michelle Facey introduced and John Sweeney warmed up for the first films… we were about to party like it’s 2019.

 

Still Dot Moving

Our first film was Still Dot Moving, a new silent short made by print-maker Julia Vogl which was a mesmerising sequence of original prints superimposed and almost glowing with a vibrant rhythm as John Sweeney overlayed his musical response. This was startling and unlike anything you might expect from the context but it was a fine way to return to the screen. John Sweeney’s accompaniment was as intricate and mesmeric as Julia’s images and this was the perfect example of the continuing possibilities of film and live music. ¹

 

John then introduced us to the ground-breaking Russian dancer and film maker Alexander Shiryaev, who not only founded character dance in Russian ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre but also (probably) invented stop motion animation. Shiryaev’s interests were strictly in support of his work – helping to show his dancers his intended movements and choreography – and were only discovered in the 1990s. As John said, his ability to capture movement using these techniques was remarkable and the three films screened, one paper animation, another stop-motion and a third showing Shiryaev performing a Cossack dance with his wife, dancer Natalia Matveeva, were captivating especially when aided by such a practiced dance accompaniment!

 

Alexander Shiryaev

A Lupino Lane short comedy followed, Goodnight Nurse (1929) a new scan of 35mm nitrate and one of a number restored by the KB’s David Wyatt and Dave Glass following a Kickstarter campaign. It showcased the Brit’s speed of movement and athleticism which matched those who’d gone over to Hollywood before if not necessarily in terms of originality, then certainly flexibility and comedy!

 

Accompaniment for this was provided by the sprightly hands of Radio’s Colin Sell who’s worked with more than a few old jokers in his time and was the perfect comedy accomplice for Ida Lupino’s Uncle, the man who used to dance The Lambeth Walk. The Lupino Lane restorations are now available on DVD and you can purchase them from Amazon soon.²

 

Yes, but what about the duck?

 

After Boris stops his film with the endangered duck, the tram driver is unfrozen and jumps backwards into his reversing tram and we’re run back to scenes of Parasha about to depart from her village where she has been staying with her aunt. She’s off to stay with her Uncle Fedya (Aleksandr Gromov) in Moscow but, just as she climbs on board with a wicker bag containing food and the present of a white duck (uncredited, sadly) her train departs just after one arrives with Fedya on it.

 

Cue dreamy views of Parasha’s train slicing through trees and fields on route to Moscow and then her disorientation in finding that Fedya is not where he’s supposed to be. She wanders all night ending up with the above Duck Distress before, as chance would have it, being spotted by someone she knows.

 

Semyon in his motor

In the first ten minutes, Barnet has already shown us Semyon Byvalov a young chauffeur (Vladimir Batalov) preparing his car and then driving through Moscow with his sweetheart Marisha-maid (Anel Sudakevich). The narrative threads now intersect as he picks up his old friend and takes her to Trubaya. Here she gets work as a maid with the very odd couple of Mr. Golikov (Vladimir Fogel), a hairdresser, and his slovenly wife (Yelena Tyapkina) who seems to have perfected the art of lounging. Mrs. Golikov refuses to allow a union member to be their maid – probably more on economic than political grounds – so the newly arrived innocent is perfect for her purposes.

 

The Golikov’s are key characters, especially the hairdresser. He is hyperactive and ridiculous, washing their plates in the absence of a maid and after drying them flinging them across the room to smash. She is full of undeserved airs and graces… the sort of bourgeoise the Revolution was supposed to galvanise and re-purpose.

 

Another interesting sequence with Vera Maretskaya followed by (hand-held) camera through a crowd

But Parasha is of good intention and only sees other’s better motives. She is befriended by Fenya (Ada Vojtsik) who is politically active and takes her to union meetings. The workers arrange a play about the French Revolution which completely bewitches Parasha who, having not seen theatre before, attacks Golikov on stage as his character is assassinates Semyon’s… this wins her the love and support of the audience but Golikov immediately sacks her.

 

Our irritable boss has reckoned without the impact his young maid has created and soon he learns that she has been elected to the post of deputy by the maids’ trade union. This immediately elevates the standing of her former employers and Mrs Golikov is not alone in being keen to to ride this particular tide yet can her husband control himself for long enough to act in his and, more importantly, others' best interests? 

Parasha on the march

The House on Trubnaya is very clever slapstick mixed with social observation and the required political messaging: if all bosses are as venal and self-serving as the Golikov’s – even over a decade on from the Revolution – then workers need to join unions to support themselves and others. It never lectures just wends its peculiar way scoring laughs over political points and that’s exactly why it’s so watchable now.

 

Cyrus Gabrysch accompanied in style and relished this return to the silent film “club” he helped found! Welcome home Mr Gabrysch and everyone else involved in this wonderful collective!

1. More about Julia Vogl's work on her website and her Instagram.

2. More details of  the Lupino Lane project on their Kickstarter page.

No ducks were harmed in the writing of this post.

You’re next!! Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), BFI Blu-ray, out now!

‘At first glance, everything looked the same… It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.’

 

It’s starts with Kevin McCarthy’s character shouting at police officers, telling them he’s not mad and that they are here… they are talking over and they must be stopped and it continues 65 years later in a post-Trump, post-Brexit world in which myths have been injected into our minds by forces unknown. In the mid fifties this could have been communism and it could have been fascism – both sides took offence at Don Siegel’s film – but the ability and desire to wield fear to manipulate opinion hasn’t changed only the tools with which to do so.

 

You can take this film as face value and perhaps that’s best, an invasion of alien beings who take over human bodies and minds and are concerned only with being… no anger, irony, love or other emotional extremes. As is said in the documentary accompanying this film, these are the most benign of invaders and yet… no one wants to lose their ability to feel and to reach those extreme states. Maybe this is the only way to truly value our freedoms; to be close to losing them.

Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy 

Presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK, the film is based on Jack Finney’s three-part serial, The Body Snatchers which first appeared in Collier’s magazine in 1954, and which he always claimed held no hidden meanings being just a good story based on common science fiction tropes of the time. If anything, it may have been a reaction to cultural and technological changes with the writer exhibiting a nostalgia for a community-spirited smalltown America that seemed to be slipping away.

 

In one of the featurettes accompanying this sparkling presentation, Don Seigel’s former assistant said he got different things from the film at different stages of his life and with different political contexts… I think it’s the film’s ambiguity and passion which enables this longevity, its specificity is about the fear of loss of self and not necessarily political at all. That’s where the real horror is.

 

The pace of Invaders is also impressively relentless and there’s a very satisfying narrative arc that pulls no punches and is heavy with the realities of a battle for existence against a relentless enemy. Enjoy yourself it’s later than you think is fine but this is the moment between that realisation and midnight.

There's something wrong with Uncle Ira...

We kick off with a desperate Doctor Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) being taken into a psychiatric ward rambling about “them” being here and smashing the fourth wall with feverish, frightened intensity. He gradually calms down enough to explain that he’s a doctor too and we switch to flashback and the seemingly tranquil California town of Santa Mira, the setting of Invasion… and, for sure, if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.

 

Bennell has been away on a trip and on his return, he has been seeing patients exhibiting “Capgras delusion” a belief that their friends and relatives have somehow been replaced with identical-looking impostors but everyone who complains is soon fine. He finds that his old fiancé, Becky Driscoll (the divine Dana Wynter) has returned following her divorce and a stay with relatives in England and there’s definitely still a spark between them.

 

The two visit Becky's cousin Wilma (Virginia Christine) who’s convinced that her father, Ira, is not the same man he was… there’s much detailed conversation about the change in him and how he’s still Ira but has lost his emotional connection with the World. At this stage, it all sounds fantastical and we see Ira, we know there’s a change but, even pre-warned and informed, it’s hard to pin it down.

Meeting Teddy and Jack

Bennett’s colleague, psychiatrist Dr Dan Kauffman (Larry Gates) cheerfully puts it all down to some form of mass hysteria and, as with all good mysteries, the audience, is lulled into a false sense of comfort. But the film doesn’t linger long and starts to accelerate towards the unlikeliest of explanations.

 

Bennett and Becky go to see his friends, Jack Belicec (King Donovan) and his wife Theodora "Teddy" (the wonderful Carolyn Jones, later Morticia, wife to Gomez Addams…) for a drink. What could be more normal and comfortingly routine and yet they find a strange mannequin which looks like an unfinished version of Jack growing out of a pod in his greenhouse. Truly, something is rotten in the state of California. Bennett calls Kauffman to see for himself but the body has disappeared…

 

Seigel doesn’t linger on the disappearing evidence though and soon the four find exact replicas growing in the Belicec’s greenhouse… and it’s not long before they realise that many of their most trusted friends and local officials have already been replaced by these strange doppelgangers and their personalities gone for good.

 

Running out of places to turn to Bennell and Becky hide away in his office overnight and watch the town gather in the morning to send off more and more of the pods to neighbouring towns. The arrival of Kauffman and a transformed Jack makes their situation look hopeless and as the Professor calmly explains what is happening – an alien invasion, the pods taking over and freeing the humans from daily stresses but also freewill – the horrific reality becomes clear.

 

The two make a break for it and the sight of them being chased by the entire town is even more dispiriting than the biggest of Twitter pile-ons… is there anyway they can escape? All they have to do is stay clear and awake… to prevent their consciousness being pushed out.

 

Invasion is still an agitating ride especially in crystal clear high definition and unsettles you for all kinds of reasons… this play on human insecurity is the most “noir” of all the fifties sci-fi classics and betrayal by your community and society is right up there with loss of self as the ultimate in nightmarish narratives.

 

Hertford, June 2016.

There’s a pod-full of extras including commentary from filmmaker and critic Jim Hemphill as well as the 50^th anniversary commentary with stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter, and Gremlins director Joe Dante (2006). There’s a number of featurettes on the film along with archive shorts on communism and ground-breaking botanical cinematography in Magic Myxies (1931, 11 mins) and Battle of the Plants (1926, 11 mins)

 

An illustrated booklet is included in the first pressing, with new writing on the film by Dr Deborah Allison, an archival feature by J Hoberman from Sight and Sound, May 1994, a biography of Don Siegel by Charlie Bligh and notes on the special features.

 

Another impeccable release from the BFI and you can order it now from their Shop – if they haven’t already left one growing in your greenhouse - and remember…

 

"They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

 

Shocked again… Short Sharp Shocks Volume 2, BFI Blu-ray set, out now!

Clare Binns, Ritzy Cinema alumnus – usherette, tickets seller, projectionist, programmer and beyond – in her interview here about the Brixton venue points out the significance of diverse programming especially at a time when streaming services push their top content at us in every decreasing algorithmic circles. The importance of independent cinemas, production houses, publishers, distributors etc has never been greater as informed recommendation cannot be replicated – yet – by AI. There is an art to finding things and, as the BFI’s Flipside series continues to show, a bunch of uber geeks raiding the archive and sharing is a winning formula.

 

This double disc set is the 43^rd disc in the series and follows on from the first volume of Short Sharp Shocks that was one of the BFI’s biggest sellers last year proving that there’s a  sizable amount of folk who want to experience the shock of the new even if they are sometimes old and very strange… there’s not a single film on here that isn’t worth re-discovery and some, such as The Mark of Lilith (1986) represent a moment in feminist film making that certainly deserves wider recognition: Derek Jarman was a fan and there’s plenty of contemporary value in the film’s polemic.

 

We start with more deliberate mysteries with a couple of Ronald Haines’ Quiz-Crimes from 1943-4 in which Detective Inspector Frost challenges the audience to solve the murders of showgirls, golfers, along with Soho kidnaps and botched boarding house killings. The films plug into the whodunnit fad which has been ongoing for well over a century now and make the strangest of aperitifs for film programmes then and now, pulling eth watcher into mysteries as surely as the dramatic tensions of the main features.

 

They’re followed by the purely threatening The Three Children (1946) a public information film warning drives, parents and children about the perils of road death at a time when three children were killed every week in traffic accidents. It’s very reminiscent of safety films of the seventies with the threat personified by a human figure warning you to avoid deep water or strange film makers…

 

John Le Mesurier

Probably the person you’d least expect would need to Escape from Broadmoor (1948) is John Le Mesurier, but here he is alive with menace as Langford, a psychotic professional thief aiming to make a score at the scene of a previous crime in which he shot a woman. He’s being pursued by Inspector Thornton played by frequent detective John Stuart, a veteran who started off in the silent era with Hitchcock in The Pleasure Garden and Elvey in Hindle Wakes. Langford’s sure there’s more to be had and he takes along his apprentice Jenkins (Antony Doonan) to what they hope will be an empty house… only to find a rather confident housekeeper (Victoria Hopper) running unwanted commentary as they try to break the safe…

 

Director John Gilling ramps the atmosphere and tension up as Le Mesurier effortlessly transitions from hard and cocky to uncertain and supernaturally scared…

 

There are more uncanny happenings in Theodore Zichy’s quirky Mingoloo (1958), in which an artist, Mark Langtree (Anthony F Page) wakes from a vivid dream featuring a Chinese dog which he is compelled to sculpt with the help of his assistant Linda Burrows (Therese Burton). Mark’s on his uppers and has a deal that will keep him afloat with a foreign government to decorate a building. One of their number, Mr Leventa (Reed De Rouen) just so happens to run a night club and dodgy business and decides that the plaster pup could be very useful.

 

He arranges a date with Linda thinking she’s made the statue and ends up gifting her £1000 for the dog, even as she gets too squiffy on champagne to sign the paperwork. The next day Mark is too cross to listen to Linda after the dog gets napped and he gets slugged… It’s a daft but engaging story and more dreams will come that enable a denouement. Made on a shoestring, it’s fun and Zichy? He’s quirky.

 

My old girlfriends’ dad used to manage clubs in Lancashire which is how he came to know Screaming Lord Sutch who, aged about three, she found having breakfast in their kitchen, not in his make-up but with his long hair and sunken eyes enough to frighten her into running straight out into the street. We get to see his gothic charm in the video for the 1963 near-miss, Jack the Ripper, produced by Joe Meek which tastefully summarises Jack’s murderous career with the Lord showing how much The Damned Dave Vanian owed him for make-up and style.

David Allister not quite dead

Things get more seriously weird and contemporarily resonant on the second disc which kicks off with The Face of Darkness (1976) which is written and directed by Ian FH Lloyd and features genuine forces of darkness intervening in British politics for the first and far from last time… surely non one expects the last five years to be devoid of devilment?

 

Edward Langdon plays Lennard Pearce an MP with a law-and-order private members bill which will bring back hanging (avenging his murdered wife) and a clamp down on our freedoms. The numbers are against him in Parliament but he has a plan to rouse the Undead (David Allister) a being long ago buried by a medieval Inquisitor (John Bennett) and a peasant helper (Roger Bizley). The Undead will do as he is bid but in the strange ceremony bringing him back to consciousness, Langdon fails to remove his tongue allowing him the leeway to follow a broader course. He meets Eileen (the excellent Gwyneth Powell, headmistress of Grange Hill and much more) the mother of his intended victim, a schoolgirl and in unsettling scenes plays magic tricks for her schoolmates before drawing a perfect circle and placing a box inside for his “Pandora” to open and blow them all up.

 

Lloyd is featured in an interview on the disc and admits that the resurgent IRA had informed his writing and as with everything in the disturbing allegory, there’s much to be wary of as politicians plough ahead with myths of their own, sowing anger, fear and division. The timeless nature of evil and the immutability of history are but a couple of themes in the entertaining, intelligent and unsettling film.

Geraldine James

Talking of unsettling, Robert Bierman succeeds in scaring the modern watcher with the home-invasion horrors of The Dumb Waiter (1979) in which a young Geraldine James (star of pretty much everything since…) is pursued by a nameless man who is determined to attack her no matter what. Locations are shot around West London with commercials director Robert Bierman creating an edge of the seat thriller in his first fictional film. James is superb and so is the young director as he creates a dark atmosphere through expert editing and beginner’s improvisations!

 

Just as dark but more educatively so, David Evans’ Hangman (1985) is a health and safety film designed to make building workers aware of the risks at their workplace. The beefy Hangman – played by a mainstay of period hardmen characters as found in Bergerac, The Bill, Minder and many more, here uncredited – speaks direct to the workers in the audience as he tests them on the workplace dos and don’ts. It’s a little like the Quiz-Crimes only viewers are being asked to prevent their own manslaughter rather than identify the guilty parties post-facto.

 

The final film is perhaps the most interesting, The Mark of Lilith (1986) was essentially the graduation project for a number of students at the London College of Printing with, a budget of £7,000, including a huge amount of of begged, stolen and borrowed kit and their fellow students goodwill, Bruna Fionda, Polly Biswas Gladwin and Zachary Nataf were able to make a work aimed at deconstructing the vampire genre as well as asking questions about feminism in film.

Zena (Pamela Lofton) is a lesbian film student looking onto the genre and the role of legend in fuelling such stories, especially the passage of female gods from good to bad in myth. She meets Lillia (Susan Franklyn) and actual vampire who has grown dissatisfied with life with her pain in the neck boyfriend Luke (Jeremy Peters) whose “Gothic and go” has got up and gone. Lillia wants to be real and more seen… Zena agrees and the two characters set off in search of more substance.

 

All three of the directors are interviewed as part of the box set’s extras, the film was an important mark in their careers.

Pamela Lofton, looking for Lilith

Sat in her taxi searching for Zena, whose presence she’d sensed on screen, Lillia tells the driver to take her to the Rizty… nineties code for independent and free-thinking cinema! There were cheers in the venue when the film showed and there are cheers now we can see this and the rest of this superlative package from the BFI.

 

Short Sharp Shocks is out on 25^th October and you can order direct from the BFI – do it, do it now! The first pressing only includes a fulsome booklet with many interesting essays from filmmakers and historians Vic Pratt, William Fowler, Josephine Botting, Jon Dear, Jonathan Rigby and Caroline Champion so, be quick about it!

Screeming Lord Sutch considers electiral reform... he lost all his deposits standing a record 39 times for parliament with his Monster Raving Loony Party.

 

Look at life. Peeping Tom (1960), BFI, Edgar Wright’s London After Dark

Michael Powell did live long enough to see the reputation of this artfully disturbing story rise like the reanimated but skewered remains of the far-too-likable-and-lovely-to-kill, Moira Shearer, Peeping Tom’s third murderee. He never saw Rotten Tomatoes which has the film ranked at 96% - 2% ahead of Avengers Endgame and level with Black Panther – but his art transcends their populist appeal and I'm pretty sure Stan Lee would agree. This is a film you can watch over and again, still finding new details, new meanings and cinematic resonance and I'm delighted that the BFI allowed us to view it on the big screen.

 

Tom, as Powell obsessives do not call it, was being screened as part of the new Edgar Wright curated season of London films and others that influenced his latest retro fun-pack Last Night In Soho, including Beat Girl, Sammy Lee and Primitive London. Peeping Tom shares those film’s fascination with the sleezy side of old Soho and even features Pamela Green who my Uncle Harry assures me was the sexual superpower of late 50s/early 60s Dad’s mags and “art films” such the saucy travelogue Naked as Nature Intended (1961) and who also made films for the deaf along with George Harrison Marks her partner and director. Pam plays Milly the model and adds authentic glamour in some outrageous flimsy lingerie and is thoroughly believable as the bored model waiting to be clicked at.

 

Carl Boehm: Mark is a camera

Retro porn is of course "perfectly harmless"… but Powell has a deeper point to make (literally, etc.) given that his tripod-wielding murderer, Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) is obsessed with documenting fear in the most coldly calculating way after being brought up by a father (played, of course, by Michael Powell himself) who experimented on him and recorded the results on film and tape. There’s a comment here on the nature of filmmaking and also the obsessive-compulsive collation of experience in a manner that is now commonplace thanks to mobile phones and social media. We’re all of us “Peeping Toms” now, recording content every day and sharing it good or bad… are we reduced as the subject and is our capacity to just experience hindered by our urge to collect and collate?

 

Powell clearly had in mind the driving force of directors like Hitchcock and not excluding himself, who were drawn to the extremes of human behaviour not to mention the audience that enable their films through watching. Hitchcock made voyeurs of us all and his P.O.V. killer Psycho was released mere weeks after Tom… Powell was also worldly enough to not sensationalise but send up the burgeoning sex industry just as much as he does the film industry here.

 

Pamela Brown as Milly the Model

Powell’s casting of Carl Boehm is crucial to the film’s strangeness with the German actor not looking or sounding English but rather something alien much like the character in Paul Auster’s City of Glass, Peter Stillman, whose father kept him in isolation as a child expecting him to emerge speaking the one true language. Mark has been thoroughly twisted by his upbringing and the film opens with his murder of a prostitute called Dora (Brenda Bruce) in Newman Passage, Fitzrovia, which he films before, during and after as the Police arrive to investigate. Dora’s face is shown as he thrusts the blade hidden in his camera tripod and it’s the most unpleasant of deaths even compared to the modern “slasher” films supposedly influenced by this film.

 

Mark has a side-line in taking dirty pictures – in the old vernacular – over a newsagents on the corner of Rathbone Street and Percy Street, Bloomsbury, which sells soft porn as well as under-the-counter “views” if the dirty raincoat brigade are brave enough to ask for them – there’s a lovely cameo from Miles Malleson as “Elderly gentleman customer”, one of a number of humorous episodes that lighten the film and offer you sweet before the sour.

 

The uneasy lensman oozing queasy need

He has a session there with Milly who introduces a new model, Lorraine (Susan Travers) who has a disfigured upper lip which immediately makes Mark very sweaty… he’s a creep, he’s a weirdo and I know exactly what the hell he’s doing there.

 

Powell is typically counter-intuitive, selecting the right players for his characters and Anna Massey is arguably more important that Boehm as Helen, who lodges on the ground floor of the house Mark has inherited. Massey’s a great technician – I once saw her imperious as Queen Elizabeth to Isabelle Huppert’s Mary in Schiller’s Mary Stuart at the National, darling - and she gets through a lot of the emotional narrative as the wholesome, determinedly faithful Helen who only sees the best in her painfully shy new friend. She’s the one who will be left to find Mark guilty but with extenuating circumstances, understanding the painful reality of his situation in ways the police, good as they are, won’t comprehend. Helen experiences the horror in the same way as the audience in a typical thriller, we know from the start that Mark is the killer but she must find his bloodied dark side through his innocence.

Anna Massey arrives bearing cake

Mark’s social interactions are painful to watch as he first meets Helen as she greets him on the stairs outside her 21^st birthday party, he’s the shyest of serial killers but she only sees his vulnerabilities and fascinated by his innocence and creativity wants to know more about the “documentary” he is working on. There’s a strong cameo from Maxine Audley as Helen’s mother, she is blind – therefore incapable of being another Peeping Tom – but hears more than other’s see and is always suspicious of the man she can hear moving around on the floor above in his dark room.

 

Mark’s main job is as a focus puller at a film studio and this is where the film adds some slapstick, at least initially…  Esmond Knight is Arthur Baden, a director of nervous disposition who is exasperated by his young star Diane Ashley (Shirley Anne Field - also in Beat Girl!) and her inability to faint just as he wants her, there’s take after take until she collapses from exhaustion and that’s the shot. Any relation to Director Alfred is probably accidental.

 

Vivian/Vicky/Victoria - Moira Shearer gets ready for her close up...

Diane’s double is Vivian played with cheerful ethereality by prima ballerina Moira Shearer, Vicky/Victoria in The Red Shoes and, here again, thank you Mr Powell, we do get to see her dance for a little while at least. This is one of several self-referential points in the film and to see a “character” from the Powell extended universe, an earlier more earnest one, throws the horrors of this film into sharper relief. Vicky dies for her art in her film whilst Vivian – all light and joy – is despatched as a meaningless bit player in Mark’s greater scheme, she even gets left on the cutting room floor as the death isn’t captured well enough to meet his vision. So, he goes in search of another victim…

 

The police are now involved, with Chief Insp. Gregg (Jack Watson) and Det. Sgt. Miller (Nigel Davenport) assigned to Vivian’s case, and the dots start to connect around Mark. It’s all as he planned though, part of a greater picture of which even he is a player to be sacrificed in the name of film.

There’s endless fun to be had with pulling out the hidden meaning Powell smuggles into the film, as always, and whilst the film has been described as “horror” it’s rather more than a thriller which is why it has outlasted the opinion of the contemporary critics. For me it’s far less obnoxious than Psycho and once you accept it as a kind of very high comedy the action leads to self-examination as much as revulsion with the director keeping the violence as much in our minds as on screen.

 

Very pleased to have seen this on screen so thankyou BFI as always and for this season of seedy Soho swinging… next up, Beat Girl and in 35mm!.

 

Miles Malleson asks for the latest issue of Sight and Sound...

Iron man… Maciste All’ Inferno (IT 1926), with Teho Teardo and Zerorchestra, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming Day Eight

And, as always, the masses sided with the strongest…

 

This was essentially a cross-over event in the Dante Extended Universe, L’Inferno II plus Maciste XXVI equalling a completely decadent vision of Hell and an Earth of fairy tale pleasantry. It was a return to the glories of ground-breaking Italian film making with a soul-devouring Lucifer drawn directly from Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan and Giuseppe De Liguoro’s masterpiece, a feature film diligently drawn from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. Three years later and Giovanni Pastrone’s sensational Cabiria introduced the character of Maciste, a mighty slave who rescues the Roman girl of the title. The character was played by Bartolomeo Pagano who returns here for his 26^th performance as the likeable lunk who combines power and morality as the Italian superuomo.

 

I could quote the works of Professor SE Finer on the enduring nature of political cultures but it’s not an over-stretch to say that the Italians had always favoured strong individual leaders and, indeed, this film accepts as much with the quote at the top. Il Duce was indeed a fan and wikiparently adopted several trademark Maciste poses as part of his fascist fantasy. He was prime minister when Maciste All’ Inferno was made so perhaps that puts a more intense spin on that line… Mussolini was five feet sex inches whereas Pagano was fully six feet and Lord knows what his chest measurement was.

Maciste assailed by hundreds of extras!

Anyway… this is such a wild ride with amazing special effects from the legendary Segundo de Chomón along with direction to die for – literally – from Guido Brignone, along with set and costume direction from Giulio Lombardozzi. This looks like Hell and it’s ugly, fierce and outrageously sexy. Hellzappopin’ alright with Pluto (Umberto Guarracino) ruling over all he surveys with the definite exception of his second wife Proserpina (Elena Sangro… statuesque ain’t the word!) and daughter, the barely clothed Luciferina (Lucia Zanussi).

 

No wonder it left such an impression on Federico Fellini who remembered it as the first film he ever saw – aged five or six? – even down to the details of Proserpina’s capture of Maciste. If Albert Camus is right and a man’s work is nothing but a trek to rediscover those great images in whose presence his heart first opened then, ladies and gents, I give you Satyricon and many more…

Pluto... Umberto Guarracino

Back in the Underworld, no one’s finding much satisfaction and after Maciste despatches a troop of demons back from whence they came, Pluto despatches his best guy Barbariccia (Franz Sala, who is having the time of his life!) to Earth with a group of others all wearing evil cloaks, hats and leers. Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to gather as many good souls as possible including that of Maciste.

 

After his many adventures, Maciste has settled in a rural idyl, tending his garden, smoking fine tobacco and drinking barrels of fine wine. He looks after his lovely neighbour Graziella (Pauline Polaire) and all is peace until the arrival of Barbariccia and the boys… After a direct confrontation doesn’t work, Macist’s brawn versus Barbariccia’s brain and magical cheats, the latter looks to find the former’s weaknesses. He targets Graziella who, though far too holy for a direct attack, is vulnerable when helping Giorgio (Domenico Serra) a young man thrown from his horse by a demon storm. The two youngsters fall in love and soon a baby arrives only for Giorgio to hop off back to the city and his bachelor freedoms, this distracts Maciste enough for Barbariccia, having stolen the baby, to trap him and transport the big man straight to Hell.

 

Franz Sala giving his all

Now the fun really begins… as Maciste fights off hoards of demons, Brignone depicts his raunchier version of Dante’s inferno and Pluto’s women try to trap Maciste into kissing them for, if any earthman kisses a she-demon he is turned into a demon and condemned to remain in the fiery pits. Well… upon the basis of the images shared here, how long do you think Maciste is going to last?

 

But damnation is not the end and there’s battles a plenty as all Hell breaks lose as Barbariccia storms Pluto’s palace.

 

This hugely enjoyable romp was perfectly accompanied by Pordenone-born composer Teho Teardo who’s electronica was accompanied by local favourites the Zerorchestra along with Accademia Musicale Naonis and cellist Riccardo Pes. For this tale of many contexts, the cello represented Dante’s “voice” whilst the booming brass of the Accademia Naonis was that of Maciste. I think this was the performance that kicked off the pre-Festival event in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile judging from the applause at the end and, as with everything streamed, I’d have loved to have been there in person to see it!

Elena Sangro

 

Before all this we had maestro John Sweeney accompanying three Vitagraph shorts that told stories of Japan at a time when the West was fascinated in the still emerging country. Thoroughly entertaining the three shorts said as much about the country that made them as their subject: Love of Chrysanthemum (1910), Ito, the Beggar Boy (1910) and Hako’s Sacrifice (1910).

 

So, another year over and done and a brilliant “bundle” of digital and live screening… here’s to 2022 and a 41^st Edition viewed in person! 

Fellini particularly remembered Lucia Zanussi's belly button - fact!

OK, how Dante was this film?

Almost nine circles...

Feeling in Limbo

The wind-buffeted second circle... 

Nude heretics (probably) level six...

The Malebolge, eighth circle for fraudsters...

Old Nick exactly as he appears in  L'Inferno (1911) below...

For 'tis no enterprise to take in jest,

To sketch the bottom of all the universe…

The piano teacher… Moral (DE 1928), with Donald Sosin, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Seven

Imagine it: a prince under the skirt of a shameless woman! It makes a mockery of the strict morals of our royal house!

The rediscovery of Ellen Richter has been one of the big themes of this year’s Giornate live in Pordenone and I’ve been waiting all week to meet her digitally… I was not disappointed. As the festival’s artistic director, Jay Weissberg, said in his online introduction, Richter has been overlooked as she didn’t make any films with the major directors of Weimar film, with her husband Willi Wolff directing her from 1918 onwards, and this has left this once major star somewhat in the shadows. Well, she’s not there anymore and this film shows off her radiance to full effect.

She’s one of those performers who naturally draws the eye and apart from having charisma to burn she has a richly centred persona with a smile that radiates glee as powerfully as sardonic rage. You don’t mess with Ellen but, if you do, she’ll have you back and relish her casually cool revenge with glee not to destroy but to educate; here it’s not just piano she teaches, it’s self-respect. Then we have the fashions… Ellen wears clothes in ways you cannot, gold lame pantaloons that only a true diva could carry off especially one with such a refined south German sense of humour. The fashions are spectacular but so is she and knowing that enables even the truly improbable garb to hang naturally and unselfconsciously.

Beyonce was on the Southbank at the London Film Festival this week, she and Ellen would have got on like a palace on fire… the flames holding back, unable to compete with the heat.

Making an entrance!

We will not tolerate this Berlin filth here in Emilsburg!

Anyway… here Ellen plays stage performer Therese Hochstetter known as Ninon d’Hauteville who causes a stir when her troop come to play in the provincial town of Emilsburg. We find her on a train, standing room only apart from the first-class section where she catches the eye of the town’s MP Beermann (Jakob Tiedtke), who lets her sit with him, calls himself “Meier” (“Smith”) before trying to further their intimacy before she turns the tables on him by sending another passenger into the darkened compartment.

 

Therese walks past the deflated hypocrite at the station little knowing that his daughter Effie (Hilde Jennings) is the one who designed the poster for her show, an image her father decries at that evening’s meeting of the male, pale and stale Moral Society. The men of the MS meet in the Blue Lion hotel to debate all the things that are debasing local society and there’s no end of irritations including a guide to marriage which is essentially a cookbook. If Beermann epitomises their hypocrisy Professor Otto Wasner (Ralph Arthur Roberts) exemplifies the priggish element, if he’s not having fun nobody else should.

 

Men. Yesterday.

The group believe they act in the name of the monarchy’s strict moral code but we switch to Prince Emile XXVII (Julius Falkenstein) looking at the advert and reminiscing about his youth in Berlin studying the trombone and watching the dancing girls at the Metropoltheatre; what a dandy fellow I was in my youth, and my son is such a milksop! He decides to find a music teacher for his son (Harry Halm) amongst the ladies of the ballet…

 

Meanwhile, back at the Blue Lion, the MS decide to disrupt the disgraceful show during the prince segment and the clash of cultures is set.

 

The film gives great cabaret with precious original footage of the Haller Review Where and When featuring Marcella Rahna, June and John Roper, Thelma de Lorez and the Lawrence Tiller Girls. There’s a riot on stage with hundreds of legs choreographed to perfection performing routines that would make Mr Berkley drool with envy, the visceral thrills of live entertainment produced by a cast with muscle memories drilled by thousands of hours practice all delivering in seconds of smiling precision.

Tiller Girls

Follow that Ellen/Therese and she’s about to in the sketch, The Prince and the Courtesan, atop a large stage prop bustle through which another dancer appears cross-dressed as a prince, before the Moral Society’s protest kicks off, the old men blowing their own trumpets, penny whistles and making a racket to drown out the act and force the curtains closed. It’s a comedy but this feels uneasy… then as now there were plenty of people wanting to censor expression.

Therese is confronted by Beermann and Professor Wasner after the show is forced to stop and spots her would be abuser from the train. Then she gets an offer she can’t refuse from the Prince as Von Schmettau, the royal chamberlain (Ferdinand von Alten) asks her to teach the young prince piano… the Moral Society will not get rid of her that easily.

 

The prince is bowled over by his new teacher as she slinks towards the piano in a backless dress and their hands keep clashing on the keyboard even as his leg brushes against hers on the pedals. He’s learning about a lot more than crotchets and semi-breves and is more than semi-quavered in her presence as the original Piano-Cam reveals (you don’t get this at the Kennington Bioscope!).

 

Harry Halm and Ellen Richter

The young man is not alone in seeking instruction from Therese and soon all of the Moral Society are signed up for lessons, all using assumed names. She decides to secretly film her new students and their non-musical advances and isn’t disappointed as the dirty old fellas try it on every time. She even manages to capture the priggish Prof off guard and trousers down… There’s a lovely cameo from the actress playing her maid who looks with increasing alarm at every Muller, Meier and Mayer.

 

It’s a film in which those looks are core to the meaning with Richter’s own expressiveness a delight throughout, her husband knowing exactly how to catch her humour and flashing glances to side and ceiling, exasperated by the male ego and the moral guardian’s ability to divorce libido from appearance. Only if we all learn to play music as she does will we be free to dance… seems to be the message and the arrival of the police starts the narrative on course for a hilarious clearing of the air all round in the final segment.

 

Ellen Richter

Richter had a rich theatrical background and had played in Ludwig Thoma’s original play as far back as 1909 as an ensemble player at the Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre) in Brno. Wolff and prolific writer Bobby E. Lüthge’s screenplay retains only the basic plot and characters, watering down the more explicit elements and leaving a lot to those suggestive looks from Ellen. It’s the most enjoyable of moral tales and despite her character’s elaborate revenge you get the feeling the actress could be endlessly forgiving if people were more honest, considerate and just didn’t scrimp of the floral tributes!

Donald Sosin accompanied on fine form with some support from the broader family for the protest scene. His was an upbeat and wholly sympathetic score that recognised Richter’s zestful appeal. An old star is reborn and whilst two thirds of her films are lost, I want to see more – there just aren’t enough gold lame trouser pantaloons in films these days.

Bonus theatrical scenes!! 

John about to catch June Roper

Fab title cards too!