Art for art’s sake… The Age of Consent (1969), BFI, Cinema Unbound, Film on Film

“… to see a painter sit down and paint a girl, this could be exciting, but I had the hardest time explaining to my scriptwriter that this didn't excite me at all. What interested me was the problem of Creation and the fact that this creation in the case of the painter was very physical. He will have to struggle, to fight, even more strongly than he will move away from reality.” Michael Powell

This was Michael Powell’s last feature film and his best film since Peeping Tom for me although not without its issues. Co-produced with the film’s star, James Mason the film is also notable for being Helen Mirren’s first and after all that goes before its politeness or mischief that notes her membership of the Royal Shakespeare Company during the end credits. At least, that’s a view a more cynical viewer might make of a film in which the actress is described by one character as being “all t***s and legs…” and we do indeed see a lot of Helen in this film but, following the lead character’s aesthetic indifference and the good intentions of Michael Powell, this has to be seen as necessary.

Mason’s character, Bradley Morahan, is in search of his artistic truth and has boxed himself into a lucrative corner as he watches his abstract works fetching a pretty price in a New York gallery, attracting buyers with the shallowest of motives all of whom are painted just a little too large. The gallery manager is over-pricing his paintings and it’s working but all Brad wants is to rediscover the authentic commitment to producing honest work. There’s only one thing for it, and he decides to return to Queensland from whence he came, not that his accent is giving that away, and rent a shack on an island on the Barrier Reef.

Harold Hopkins, Lonsdale and James Mason

The story is based on a 1938 novel by Norman Lindsay which was initially briefly banned in Australia (until 1939) and which featured the artistic relationship between a 40-year-old painter Bradley Mudgett and a 17-year-old “child of nature”, Cora Ryan. Lindsay was the subject of the film Sirens (1994) which made much of his free-thinking, bohemian lifestyle and attitude to nudity. That film is a less honourable take on the issue than Powell’s as any relationship between the people played by 60-year-old Mason and Mirren, 22 when filming began in March 1968, is purely artistic for almost the entire film and he’s not liberated by Cora’s physique or youth but by her potency as a subject for art.

It's very interesting to hear Helen Mirren talk about the film as one of the extras on the excellent Indicator Blu-ray set which has both the Director’s Cut, 107 minutes with more Mirren and the original score by Peter Sculthorpe, a leading Australian classical composer, and the 100 minute UK cut for which the studio pulled in Stanley Myers for the score – I prefer the former, which achieves more of a balance between the film’s tonality. Mirren enjoyed the experience, her first major role in a feature film*, and that’s important given that her nudity in the film could have been seen as exploitative. She was 24 and with significant theatrical experience not least with the RSC, and says she was well treated by Powell, noting that this was not always the case with others.

Helen Mirren, RSC on tour

She says that the film could have taken an altogether darker route in terms of Cora’s relationship with the much older man but, as Martin Scorsese says in an interview on the set, confirming Powell’s views at the top, the film is all about the creation of art and the relationship between Cora is more about that than anything else. Scorsese points to this being a common theme running through much of the other director’s work from The Red Shoes through to Peeping Tom and even Honeymoon (1959). Brad’s eye is caught by the lines of Cora’s body, her energies and connection to the gorgeous landscape and it’s only in the very final minute that there is a physical interaction and one initiated by Cora.

Powell used some talented artists to give Brad’s work in progress the richness required and his artistic instincts are clearly shown to be returning the more time he spends in his hut. John Coburn is used for the lucrative e abstract works seen in the opening New York Gallery sale at the film’s start while paintings and sketches by Paul Delprat were used on the island scenes. This location was Dunk Island** off the Great Barrier Reef in northern Queensland a spectacular and raw part of this vast country.

Brad is disgusted with the whole process of the New York gallery sale and decides to fly back to his home country and find a wilderness in Queensland where he grew up. In Brisbane (?) he connects with an ex-girlfriend (Clarissa Kaye***) and the two are seen in bed in ways that will prove that in terms of Cora, his aim is artistic. This is a sexually active man but, not only does his art come first he is more of a “dromedary” in terms of his sexuality than his “pal” Nat Kelly (Jack MacGowran) who, frankly, needs to be on medication.

Nat’s slapstick laddishness is where the film veers a little off course along with the comedic characterisations of Cora’s dipsomaniacal and dominating grandma (Neva Carr Glyn) and local man-eater Isabel Marley (Andonia Katsaros). MacGowran (born and raised in Dublin) plays Kelly as an unlikable rogue and, as with Mason, his accent is a broad brush; he steals from his painter pal and is constantly on the make. If nothing else though the interactions with there three serve to highlight the innocence of the connection between painter and muse.

 

One performer without artifice is Brad’s dog, Godfrey as played by noted Australian terrier, Lonsdale. As with the other characters Godfrey lightens the tone in ways that allow us to appreciate the journey as the serious business of art, honesty and genuine connections evolves.

 

It’s ultimately a happy ending for Powell who sneaks enough meaning in there to remind us all what he was capable of. He may have found it harder to make films for the last quarter of his life but as Marty says, he never stopped making plans some of which involved him as well as his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, eventually to become the third Mrs Powell.

We watched a 35mm print of the 2005 restoration and it looked glorious, wonderful colours and a tangible warmth that digital doesn't always convey in quite the same way. Such a treat to experience so many of Powell's films on celluloid. Thanks again to the BFI for this Season of Seasons!

 

 

*Helen Mirren also had a brief appearance in Don Levy’s harrowing Herostratus (1967) and played Titania in Peter Hall’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1968).

 

** I’m not sure it there’s a connection but in 1974 a small community of artists was established on Dunk Island by former Olympic wrestler turned tapestry maker, Bruce Arthur allowing a small group of creators to live and showcase their work to many visitors. It’s still there now, just about.

 

*** James Mason began corresponding with Kaye after the filming, and they were married in 1971, remaining so until Mason's death in 1984. He found a muse as well as Brad.

2023 - The Year in Silents

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'

Into the future...

We’ve had yet another big tick of the clock and, as Steve Miller (and his Band) implied, we need to establish exactly how it happened, at least in terms of the silent screenings I witnessed. So, here in no particular order, is the breakdown of twelve outstanding moments from the year they called 2023…

Game of thrones… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), with Costas Fotopoulos, Kennington Bioscope

First Bioscope of the year and it was an epic evening for one of the cornerstones of Weimar Cinema, one in fact that I’ve been saving up for just such an occasion and, judging from a non-too scientific sampling of the audience, I’m not the only one with the DVD/Blu-ray at home on the shelf, waiting to be watched after a proper screening and the Bioscope made sure that this was indeed a special screening. A 16mm print was shown, slightly shorter the restoration on which our home media is based but still very impressive, astonishing even given the scale and verve of the film making. Fritz Lang and his script-writing partner Thea von Harbou, dug deep into early 13th Century Saxon epic poetry, Der Nibelungenlied, written in High Middle German and by unknown hands in what is now southern Bavaria. 

I was transported with the help of Costas’ dynamic piano accompaniment and I’m not alone in hoping for Part 2, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge to complete the story in 2024.

 

I Don’t Want to be a Man (1919)/Beverly of Graustark (1926), Kennington Bioscope and Vito Project

Oh, this has to be one of my favourite screenings ever at the Cinema Museum with the KB co-presenting these two classics of cross-dressing and gender confusion with the Vito Project, another film club specialising in LGBTQ+ influenced film. The mixed audience brought out the best in both of these cross-dressing classics as pennies dropped and we became immersed in the moments as Ossi Oswalda and Marion Davies played with gender and sexuality in ways that resonate in the most human and historical ways. Accompaniment came from Colin Sell and John Sweeney who both love a party with atmosphere!

 

Master of the House (1925), John Sweeney, Hippfest 2023

I finally found my way to Bo’ness and the magnificent Hippfest which proved to be everything I’d expected and more, just the most friendly and good-hearted festival in the business and a small Scottish town filled with connoisseurs of silent film. Du skal ære din hustru translates as Thou Shalt Honour Thy Wife and shows Carl Theodor Dreyer at his most observational and heart-warmingly comic. It’s the story of an abusive relationship told with context and compassion; the ironic tone set from the first title card which tells us that this is a story of husbands no longer found in Denmark but still persisting elsewhere. Clearly this subject matter was just as loaded in 1925 as it is now and, if Dreyer handles the subject with such a light touch it’s only to underline the misery often experienced; he knew his audience well enough to know the prod of recognition was all they needed.

 

John Sweeney was master of the accompaniment as you’d expect.

Stella Dallas (1925) with Stephen Horne, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, Bologna

The best silent scores don’t pummel you into submission with dozens of drums, decibels and Dolby, they embrace the visuals in sympathy with the narrative and the actors, they duet with the directors and audience to connect our sympathy and imagination, interpret our response and subtly guide it too; a multi-verse of meaning, one that opens up a portal removing you from reality… irresistible forces, for un-resisting volunteers for a kind of magic.

 

This is no job for anything less than the most experienced of compositional pilots though and in the Piazza Maggiore and then the Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, first Stephen Horne and then Timothy Brock, who conducted the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, provided scores that enhanced two of the very finest Hollywood performances and silent films. Consider them as restorers, replicating the high impact of these films’ first screenings, Time Lords able to whisk us back to the feelings our grandparents felt. We are all companions now and Doctor Who plays, composes and conducts…

Irene Rich and May McAvoy

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), with Timothy Brock, Teatro Auditorium Manzoni, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII, Bologna

As the cricketing Ashes started back in the UK, rain unexpectedly stopped play in Bologna and the screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s take on Oscar Wilde’s play was shifted to the splendid Teatro Auditorium Manzoni; a purpose-built modern auditorium with splendid acoustics, all the better to experience the power of Timothy Brock’s new score as conducted by him and played by the mighty Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Given the sophisticated wordplay of Oscar Wilde, he seems an unlikely candidate for silent film but here Ernst Lubitsch takes on Oscar using the wit and sophistication of his direction. There are some excellent performances and Ernst’s inch-perfect positioning, cross-cutting and way with purely visual messaging ensures that this take on a wordy, comedy of manners works bursts into sensational silence on screen.

Stephen Horne and Timothy Brock in Bologna

The Cave of the Silken Web (1927), with Richard Seidhoff and Frank Bockius, Silent Film Days Bonn 2023

Very little survives from Chinese cinema of this vintage and indeed this film was considered lost until a copy was found in the Norwegian National Library and restored with both Chinese and the Norwegian intertitles which add extra Scandinavian flavours. It feels something like a miracle, popping off the screen with so much style and energy in this film with director Dan Duyu and Yin Mingzhu, wife, spier woman and expert collaborator unleashing an imaginative riot based on Journey to the West, one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature dating from the 16^th Century.

Accompanists, Richard Seidhoff and Frank Bockius had so much fun with this, Franks’ percussive variety and energy reflecting the extremes of violence and drama whilst Richard weaved some delicious lines over the sweet and sour storyline.

Yin Mingzhu

The Crowd (1928) with Stephen Horne, BFI

King Vidor’s The Crowd undoubtedly breaks a number of golden rules for Hollywood and indeed a full seven different endings were filmed and tested reflecting MGM’s concerns about the more realistic style deployed and their audience proved them wrong by preferring Vidor’s take. Vidor’s wife, the glamourous and divinely elegant Eleanor Boardman, threw herself into the project with one of the most selfless performances of the twenties; hair tangled, dowdy-clothed and make-up free all a long way from the glittering gowns of Proud Flesh, subjugating her star-status to play the long-suffering but steadfast lower-middle class wife and thereby enabling her surprise leading man to excel. James Murray was far from Boardman’s level and had been pulled from the ranks of the extras after being spotted by Vidor. Certainly, nearer failure than success at this point, he acts his heart out in the film a good-looking guy with natural charisma and yet who might not have that extra drive and/or skill to really stand out from the crowd.

Stephen Horne accompanied with his usual elan, taking the moment as we all did to watch a film that is just not screened enough and is not even on home media. Perhaps it’s still far too close to the bone?

 

Murray and Boardman

It (1927) with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope 10th Anniversary

This was the Kennington Bioscope’s 10th Anniversary edition and the package was so sweetly wrapped it even had a Bow on it. Cyrus Gabrysch is, he said, often accused of starting the whole thing but what he and then John Sweeney thought would be a connoisseurs-only cinema club was transformed by a brave dog fighting his way up the stairs of a lighthouse to relight the beacon. Kevin Brownlow’s copy of a Rin Tin film provided the moment when the audience erupted with applause for the heroic hound and Cyrus realised something special was happening.

 

This was a 35mm print from Photoplay – company by-line “Live Cinema” - which had the natural warmth of a pre-digital restoration and looked stunning on the big screen. I say stunning and I mean Clara Bow who, despite a cameraman buddy complaining how difficult her kineticism made her to catch on film, featured in close-up after close-up that left the watchers hanging on her every smile. Clara remains her own special effect as her light shone through the celluloid and Cyrus added his own sparkle.

You know...

Hindle Wakes (1928), with Maud Nelissen Ensemble, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42

 

Maurice Elvey told the BFI in 1949 that Hindle Wakes was “the greatest play ever written” and one of the films he most enjoyed making. Watching this new BFI 35mm print – a full restoration is apparently ongoing – the film stands out as one of the major works of British silent cinema because of the expertise with which Elvey controls character and the narrative; everything is there to serve a purpose and every character will have their moments.

The score was composed and conducted by Maud Nelissen and performed live by Daphne Balvers (soprano & alto sax), Lucio Degani (violin), Francesco Ferrarini (cello), Rombout Stoffers (percussions & accordion) as well Maud on piano. In the catalogue she talked of how she researched locations and culture for the film, immersing herself in mill town history and the times of the annual Wakes weeks when the whole mill shut down and the workers went off together in search of precious joy. On the evidence of this lovely, soulful score she’s now an honorary Lassie from Lancashire.

 

Hell's Heroes (1929), John Sweeney and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42

After the first half an hour of this film, after the four main characters, all outlaws, have terrorised a small town, robbed their bank and killed in the process, and as they made their getaway across the parched desert I was thinking what could possibly redeem these characters, especially with no heroes in sight apart from the two six-gun totin’ preacher. I was, of course, wrong – which is very much this blog’s USP – and as the rogues survive a sandstorm and lose their horses whilst Bill has also been shot in the shoulder by the posse. They proceed on foot, their only hope a well spring miles ahead, they come across an abandoned wagon and inside find a new reason to live…  John Sweeney and Frank Bockius rode along with sensitive accompaniment as this film took us all into the desert and made us question our hearts.

Sherlock Jnr (1924), Daan van den Hurk, Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42

Even the most enthusiastic silent soul can become jaded but here Daan van den Hurk's emphatic new score provided the jolt I needed to re-connect with the timeless and universal appeal of this very familiar film anew. The music highlighted pretty much every section of the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone and it just grew in momentum and delicious tonality with the film. It was a symphony to silent style pretty much as Keaton intended but given extra emphasis and depth as the adventure of the Projectionist and all the films he has shown is laid before us.

A thrilling sonic adventure all round and, most of us tired after a full week, the Verdi still erupted with the joy of recognition or holding this shared fascination close!! In the best showbusiness tradition, Le Giornate always leaves us wanting more!

 

 A Woman of Paris (1923), with Mark Fuller, BFI Cinema Unbound

 

The BFI treated us to the most exhaustive programme of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger films in decades, perhaps ever, which stretched from October to December. The Powell Silent Connection was represented by Rex Ingrams’ gonzo The Magician (1926) in which the young Mickey had a comedic cameo or three, followed by one of the films that had the biggest influence on him which as Archers expert Mark Fuller explained he saw as an 18-year-old bank clerk in Boscombe near Bournemouth. Powell’s reactions and praise made me reappraise Chaplin’s film for the ground breaker it was and for the influence it would have on Lubitsch and others.

 

Thank you to ALL who make these screenings and events work, and here's to more of this in 2024!!

 

 

Film on film on stage: Chris Bird of the Kennington Bioscope

Seasonal spirits… Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2, BFI Blu-ray Set

 

Hallo, below there, look out…

 

Amidst the sweet excitement of Christmas Eve, the BBC aimed to catch those of us still half believing in Father Christmas and turn our febrile imaginations towards the dark side of supernatural possibilities. This was rarely done more effectively than in the adaptation of Charles Dickens’ The Signalman, a brief but impactful drama featuring Denholm Elliott at his most feverish and frightened. This tale is the unsettling jewel in the crown of this lavish three-disc collection from the BFI, which features the stories BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas series not included on the frighteningly good first set released last year, all newly remastered from original film materials and presented on Blu-ray for the first time.

 

Michael Bryant in the library

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974)

 

Lawrence Gordon Clark directs this episode, as he does for four out of five of the series, which features the mighty Michael Bryant as the Reverend Justin Somerton, another of MR James’ over-confident academics who, having exposed fakery at a seance run at the ancestral home of his student Lord Dattering (Paul Lavers), finds himself confronted with the genuinely fantastical. Researching a local monastery, he becomes fascinated by the legend of a stash of gold hidden by the disgraced Abbot Thomas who made the usual ill-advised deal with the Devil and paid the price after hiding it in a tunnel under the graveyard. The two follow the clues throughout the atmospherics of Wells Cathedral and the 13th-century church of St Mary, Orchardleigh before encountering a guardian set to protect the ill-gotten gold.

 

Bryant is wonderful to watch as he gradually shifts from scientific certainty to mortal terror and Clark handles the mood so well, you’re watching through your fingers and edging behind the sofa well before the climax.

 

Edward Petherbridge and some foliage

 

The Ash Tree (1975)

 

More MR James and the dangers of entitlement and assumption adapted by David Rudkin and staring Edward Petherbridge in the dual role of Sir Richard and his Great Uncle Sir Matthew who was cursed by a woman he denounced as a witch, Anne Mothersole, played by Barbara Ewing, who he condemned to death in 1690. Since that time the family lineage had passed to the sons of siblings with no direct heir being produced. Sir Richard  aims to marry the lovely Lady Augusta (Lalla Ward) who rides horses as well as any gentlewoman in the land I should dare say but he is gradually unsettled by strange dreams and noises emanating from the Ash Tree outside his bedroom…

 

Rudkin felt he could have done a better job with the script but it’s a creepy tale all the same and the cast are grand. I might never think of trees in quite the same way ever again…

 

Kate Binchy looking for signs

Stigma (1977)

 

This is the bloodiest of the series and is based on an original story by Clive Exton located near Avebury, Wiltshire with standing stones in the field and Silbury Hill not far away. A family are moving to an old cottage and have an inconvenient standing stone fallen in their garden which they have asked workmen to remove… and you can’t help feeling that’s a bad idea. The mother Katherine (Kate Binchy) arrives with their daughter Verity (Maxine Gordon) and the two watch as the workmen try to move the stone. You know what’s coming but the pacing is well-crafted and who doesn’t love stories about the stones and witchcraft.

It's folk horror and after the stone is removed Katherine starts to experience strange visions and what may or may not be blood appearing on her body and clothes. It’s atmospheric in the same way as Enys Men, and you’re never sure what’s real or imagined. Peter Bowles arrives to anchor the story in everyday reality and that’s an excellent piece of casting: surely nothing weird will happen with his affable confidence in place?

 

John Stride, Elizabeth Romilly, Geoffrey Burridge and those flowers

The Ice House (1978)

  

Directed by Derek Lister from original story by John Bowen, this story features John Stride, who I once saw on stage as Rosencrantz (or was it Guildenstern?) and he’s another subtle performer and not one you’d expect to find themselves in the middle of John Bowen’s eerie tale of a spa that is anything but good for the health. This is the least spectral and arguably least convincing of the series with oddness overtaking the occult as the brother and sister who run the facility Clovis (Geoffrey Burridge) and Jessica (Elizabeth Romilly) are about as obviously ordinary as the Adams Family.

 

Still, it’s not unenjoyable with the first signs that the health spa might be all it seems with strange disappearances and attacks of "the cools” felt by an uneasy masseur. All the reassurances from Clovis and Jessica just adds to the mystery and every time Paul (Stride’s character) is mollified you just want to scream at him to get out and get out now before the strange flowers at the old icehouse reveal their true meaning.

 

 

The Signalman (1976)

 

Denholm (Elliot) was so wonderful in that role, like a tightly coiled spring. There was such tension in the character: he was always only a step away from insanity.

Lawrence Gordon Clark

 

From an original story by Charles Dickens, well adapted by the Andrew Davies (A Very Peculiar Practice and many more) this tense tale mixes a superb location, a lonely signal box down a deep cut rail track running through the darkest of tunnels, with extraordinary performances from the aforementioned Denholm Elliott, as the titular rail worker and Bernard Lloyd as the Traveller who becomes fascinated with this lonesome and deeply disturbed man. The Traveller is out walking and coming across this strange gorge waves down at the Signalman calling out and shielding his eyes from the sun in a manner that appears to terrify the man. The Traveller befriends the man and the two spend long hours discussing the strange nature of the latter’s fear.

 

The story is so well paced with darkening mood increasing with every failed rationalisation and moment of failing relief, it pulls the viewer in to the fragile world of that deepened location as the inevitability of realisation, confounding though it is, pulls towards us, relentless, like the train…

 

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without it, would it?

 

Denholm Elliot feels the pressure

Spooky features!!

 

Newly recorded audio commentaries:

-          The Treasure of Abbot Thomas by writer and broadcaster Simon Farquhar

-           The Ash Tree by writer and TV historian Jon Dear, incorporating material from author and editor Johnny Mains

-          The Signalman by Jon Dear and actor and writer Mark Gatiss

-          Stigma and The Ice House by writer Kim Newman and writer and filmmaker Sean Hogan

PLUS... 

• A View From a Hill (2005) A later adaptation of MR James’ story about an archaeologist visits a decaying country estate to survey its artefacts, only to find his investigations leading him to the dark and unexpected past.

• Number 13 (2006) More of academics and their unwise curiosity from MR James with Greg Wise an academic lodging in room 12 of a moody hotel in an English cathedral town whilst authenticating ancient papers. 

• Spectres, Spirits & Haunted Treasure: Adapting M R James (2023), newly commissioned video essay by Nic Wassell exploring some of the classic BBC adaptations.

• Introductions by Lawrence Gordon Clark (2012), the director of seven of the BBC’s classic A Ghost Story for Christmas episodes discusses his part in the last four instalments he directed.

• Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee – Number 13 (2000), Ronald Frame’s adaptation of MR James’s story is brought to life by the horror maestro.

• For the first pressing only there’s a fascinating Illustrated booklet with essays by Alex Davidson, Dick Fiddy, Simon Farquhar and Helen Wheatley; credits and notes on the special features.

 

If it’s not in your Christmas stocking be sure to pick it up in the New Year as the strangeness only grows in 2024… You can order direct or in person from the BFI Shop, an uncanny delight in these bewildered times.

Shades of Dr Mabuse in The Treasure of Abbot Thomas?

Gorgeous locations too...

Child of the Stones... Avebury.

Ash Tree atmospherics

Lalla Ward abiding...

Child of The Stones??

It's 1977 and no one can convince me that Maxine Gordon would be into The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Starship and The Strawbs! Mind you that Black Sabbath LP is worth a bit... Almost certainly from the cameraman's collection... bloody hippy!

The Chaplin Touch… A Woman of Paris (1923), BFI with Mark Fuller, Cinema Unbound

Hollywood had been taught a new and sophisticated attitude to sexual relations by, of all people, Charlie Chaplin in a Woman of Paris…

Michael Powell, A Life in Movies

 

There was a moment when Edna Purviance’s character Marie St Clair, is being visited by her former love Jean Millet (Carl Miller) to discuss his painting her portrait. She’s seemingly done well for herself but as one of her maids opens a draw to fold away her washing, a man’s shirt cuff falls to the floor and catches the eye of Jean who notes as does the audience, the significance of such familiarity with a man’s wardrobe. It’s the economy of the moment and Chaplin’s cinematic intelligence that catches our attention now as we sit and do the maths for subsequent releases such as Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle (1924) or Three Women (1924) and Monte Bell’s Lady of the Night (1925).

But we weren’t here to discuss the influence of Chaplin on his contemporaries but the impact of this film on an 18-year-old Michael Powell who at this point was just a regular cinema- loving bank clerk based in respectable Ringwood, Hampshire as Archers expert Mark Fuller explained in his informed introduction. I would say that Mark has forgotten more about Powell and Pressburger than most remember if not for the fact that I don’t think he forgets any details of these two. His diligence and thirst for knowledge led him to the rediscovery of Smith (1939) a short film Powell made to promote the Embankment Fellowship Centre with Ralph Richardson (and Wally Patch!).

"... using objects for their metaphoric and metonymic value..."*

Years later, interviewed by Kevin Brownlow in an unpublished article for Time Out, Powell recalled how he was collecting everything in a “romantic sort of way… and I looked on films the way that people did then, as a wonderful new plaything, but not serious…”. Then he saw A Woman of Paris, in either the Boscombe Hippodrome of Boscombe Cinema near Bournemouth, and “I was absolutely knocked by it, because suddenly the whole medium grew up.”

For Powell, Chaplin a clown with “all the power in the world”, had not only made a “grown-up” film, he’d done it out of pure love and loyalty for his long-time on-screen partner Edna Purviance, who was given the prominence you would expect of an Italian diva or a Pickford, Gish or Talmadge in a project with something of his innocence but also sense of tragedy based on the worldview you could expect of a man who grew up in the poorhouse. Charlie and Edna had also been romantic partners until his marriage to Mildred Harris but they remained firm friends and he supported her throughout her life.

The film was not a smash hit – perhaps Powell suggested, it was not just realistic but too realistic – but he felt more modern viewers should be made aware of it and the influence it had on the cinematic language of the twenties and beyond. Modesty would have forbidden but we certainly watched this film with fresh eyes after learning of its impact on Powell himself. Props to the BFI for including it in the Cinema Unbound programme and to bringing in Mr Fuller to explain the connection.

Adolphe Menjou and Edna Purviance

Charlie Chaplin not only wrote, produced and directed the film by 1976, he had even written the music for it which today we heard on a recording conducted by Timothy Brock. I must admit that I don’t always like Chaplin’s score but this one, possibly because if was for Edna, rang so true to the narrative and was like an audio commentary on his intent from the 87-year-old to his 34-year-old self. It was the last of his films he scored and it was to be his final completed work.

Chaplin was frustrated by the reaction to the film and it’s a shame for Edna that it didn’t raise her profile in the way it did for Adolphe Menjou who was to feature in Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle and many more. Edna is superb though and in addition to wearing some fabulous costumes that would have graced a Borelli or a Boardman, gives such a nuanced and commanding dramatic performance. Her timing is, of course, perfect and whilst Chaplin’s comedies had always required dramatic chops, here she’s inverted her usual performance with some controlled comedic touches mixed with a dominant and thoroughly convincing lead performance as a woman torn between two lives and loves.

There are Germanic touches in the sets and lighting and the film feels almost more European than American but what would you expect from a boy from Kennington. But the themes and the timing – sometimes comic and otherwise tragic – are all his own.

Edna looks nervously towards the future

The film opens with a bravura shot of a small house in a French village with the enclosing camera gradually revealing the figure of a young woman staring with concern from her bedroom window. The young woman, Marie St Clair (Purviance) nervously packs her bags in her room and as her father creeps up the stairs and locks her door, Chaplin gradually reveals the scenario: an elopement is being planned and both sets of parents disagree.

Marie’s lover Jean Millet (Carl Miller) helps her climb down from outside her room and they walk to his house where an equally frosty reception awaits. What has caused this parental disapproval is not made clear but it’s deep-seated. Refused entry back home, the couple head for the station to catch a train to Paris: their city of hope. Jean leaves Marie to go and collect his things but, tragedy strikes when his father has a heart attack and dies. A fateful miss-communication then occurs as the lovers telephone each other and Marie, thinking than Jean has just got cold feet, heads off to Paris alone.

A year later she seems to have found her feet exceptionally well, being the kept woman of Pierre Revel (Menjou), “the most eligible bachelor in Paris”, living in luxury and spending her time socialising or being prepared for the next occasion along with her proto-flapper buddies Fifi (Betty Morrissey) and Paulette (Malvina Polo). Everything is well except for the fact that Pierre is planning to marry the wealthiest spinster in Paris. The story is revealed in the papers but Marie doesn’t know until her helpful friends show her, she hides her disappointment well: she’s learned a great deal of city ways. Pierre tells her that it won’t change their relationship but she’s not convinced.

Parisians un-winding...

She sulks and stays in whilst her friends head off to an outrageous party in the Latin Quarter… Chaplin gives a good party and clearly enjoys showing the risqué side of life as the drunken debauch is topped off by an elegant striptease in which a young woman (Bess Flowers - sometimes dubbed the Queen of the Hollywood Extras) is gradually revealed to the on-screen audience as a white sheet is slowly unwrapped: glasses and monocles are raised even by the women and a drunken man faints in dis-belief.

Fifi tells Maria she can’t miss out and she heads over only to open the door to the wrong address, a small apartment home to a struggling artist: it’s Jean. So, chance has re-united them and whilst their guards are now up, Marie invites Jean to paint her. As Jean arrives wide-eyed at her opulent home Marie finds out with a shock the reason for his none-appearance and her sympathy shifts back but there can be no simple reconciliation especially when Marie sneaks at peek at her portrait and, rather than paint her in the stunning satin gown she has chosen, Jean depicts her as she was when he left her. This can’t be healthy and it’s a very neat touch from the director.

Carl Miller

But as romance is re-kindled, parental dissatisfaction again plays a part as Jean’s mother – disapproving of Marie’s lifestyle – makes him promise not to marry her and he agrees only for Marie to overhear at the door… The course of true love never runs smooth and in real life second chances are few yet Chaplin’s players are compelled to try and there’s a very elegant mess building that he plays out as well as in any of his comedies. The relationship between Marie and Pierre is especially well handled, so many then transgressive aspects left unsaid but the full meaning conferred perfectly by these two wonderful players.

Ultimately the film stands as testimony to Chaplin’s enduring qualities as an instinctive and innovative filmmaker as well as to his loyalty and influence. It should also ensure that Edna Purviance’s reputation remains as simply one of the finest screen actors of the period: not just a "straight guy" or a foil but the emotional foundation on which he built some of his finest work. As for Mr Powell, we can see the inspiration he took from this work and the role Chaplin had in inspiring his fellow Englishman: a daisy chain of genius.

Powell loved this simple intertitle as Pierre laughs at Marie's frustration: a perfect moment...

Edna abides...

*Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema (2003), Jeffrey Vance,  New York: Harry N. Abrams. 

Composing film… The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), BFI, Cinema Unbound, Film on Film

 

There was no script… we simply followed the score.

 Michael Powell, Ecran (1979)

 

This is a spectacular, complex and unusual film from an extraordinary set of film makers, one that crosses boundaries and responded to the formality of opera and ballet with something like the improvisational techniques of silent film. The director, Michael Powell, was always at pains to highlight the contributions of his team too all of whom were among “the most talented artists in the World…” who brought “excellent ideas…” leaving him the job to “choose from them and to elaborate, little by little the film you saw.” ¹ So, some cinematic "jazz" with which to capture the dance and the song, with the finest players and with Pressburger and Powell exercising the kind of leadership that only true improv virtuosi can command. Powell's ambition was to "compose film" in the same as the score had been created and to do that, he started with that music and composed scenes, shots and segments in silence, working to the rhythms and the notations of the source material.

Based on Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera Les contes d’Hoffmann, which was itself inspired by the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann a German writer, artist and musician from the turn of the nineteenth century who was very influential, also writing the story that became The Nutcracker. His stories were fantastic and this strangeness was as perfect for adaptation on stage as it is for film. Here The Archers recorded Offenbach’s music first with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the mighty Sir Thomas Beecham and including world class singers from the Royal Opera House company and elsewhere.

 

This was a screening on a fresh 35mm print taken from the BFI’s national archive and the colours were good enough to eat although I was prevented from nibbling the screen by the diligence of the BFI’s long-suffering stewards. This was my first-time viewing Tales even though I’ve had the Blu-ray of the 2015 restoration for some time; some things just have to be done right and a packed NFT1 is the only way to experience one of the peaks of The Archers’ glory years.

 

Moira Shearer

The Tale of Moira

 

Yes. It was more daring but also rather clumsily put together. … Powell put all the action into the first third of his film and was then left with long static stretches almost to the end. For a man with such a gift for cinematic effect it seemed very odd. ²

 

Moira Shearer was never a women lacking opinion and you can imagine feisty discussions across the breakfast table with husband Ludovic Kennedy throughout their long marriage. Shearer had a complex relationship with ballet and film after her experience with the hugely successful The Red Shoes. Pressburger she liked, Powell much less so, and yet she respected his abilities working with him three times, the last on Peeping Tom when another actor had dropped out – according to Powell - with a cameo that fills the film with life and yet failed to prepare her for the end product; another example of “Michael’s sadistic streak” for her.

 

Here she was lured not only by the reassuring presence of Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine but especially by the choreography of Frederick Ashton with Powell and his cameraman Christopher Challis filming with less editing and artifice than the director used, with Jack Cardiff, on The Red Shoes – and once again I can heartily recommend Pamela Hutchinson’s new book on that fascinating subject³. Here Fred was the director and as Shearer said in 1994, “This was purely dance - it was choreography... It was very enjoyable - we had to hit a few marks for the lighting and there was a certain amount of stopping and starting for technical reasons, but working with Fred was such a pleasure and relief.”

 

 Moira 3, Ludmilla 1

There is certainly more uninterrupted footage of Shearer’s abilities and, as she said herself, her technique is not only better than three years’ earlier but she is allowed more room for expression by Ashton. The Red Shoes may be the best ballet film but these sequences are the best of Shearer’s ballet on screen; incredible energy and control even on perfect point as she whirls around flicking her legs in high step with the metronomic quality of an automaton during the Olympia/Doll sequence and so expressive during the opening segment set in a theatre for The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly.

 

She has three main dances and dominates the film’s first hour  and exhibits the honed physique of a top-level prima, almost painfully thin but with the leg strength of a professional footballer. Ballet is surely the most demanding of the arts hence the confusions surrounding her life and that of her character in The Red Shoes. Art for art’s sake is the aim with both films but none of these players got here without the thousands of hours isolated dedication. No imposters here, just world-class practitioners as Powell said.

 

Robert Helpmann as Lindorf

“Helpmann’s theatrical persona is almost more than an ordinary film could bear…” ⁴

Which brings me to the genius known as Robert Helpmann who is also freed up by this film compared with The Red Shoes, he plays Hoffmann’s nemesis Councillor Lindorf and various other characters throughout – Coppélius, Dapertutto, Dr Miracle - who attempt to thwart the writer’s romantic ambition. He’s so dynamic both as an actor and dancer, having worked with the Royal Ballet - the Vic-Wells Ballet as it began - and acted through most of his career in mainly Shakespearean roles as well as other classic theatre. He is so expressive and fits in perfectly with the mad make-up of Connie Reeve and the eye-popping Oscar-nominated designs of Hein Heckroth.

Helpmann was lauded on stage and occasionally on screen, he danced with Margot Fonteyn in Frederick Ashton's Façade and many more and, of course with Shearer as her star rose. You have to wonder again at why there was so much of a reaction to her and not him. As ballet critic Clive Barnes wrote after a full and frank exchange with Shearer for a Dance Magazine interview in 1962: I wonder how much we in British ballet circles were prejudiced, consciously or subconsciously, against the glamorous Shearer. 

Let the regaling commence... Robert Rounseville starts singing...

The Tales of Hoffman

 

The story begins in Nurnberg in the Opera House where a young writer, Hoffmann (the opera singer, Robert Rounseville, later to sing You’ll Never Walk Alone in Carousel) is watching Stella (Shearer) a ballet dancer performing The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly. Watching also is Lindorf who intercepts a note she has written to the writer on a doily setting the scene for another romantic disappointment. In his BFI Classics book on the film, William Germano, describes this six minute sequence as acting as an introduction to the style of the film, with Challis' camerawork, Reginald Mills' editing and Frederick Ashton's choreography - all dynamism and laced with erotic intent - all working together to "...give the audience a view of Moira Shearer doing what they came to see her do: dance". ⁴ 

Would you hear the three tales of my folly of love?

 

In scenes eerily reminiscent of our school trip to see King Lear at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1979 during which we took a half-time drink in the Shakespeare public house, never to return to the play… Hoffmann joins his pals in Luther’s Tavern during the intermission and, as the drink flows and the ornate pipes are passed around, Hoffmann, already moody and disheartened, decides to regale his pals with three stories of his thwarted love. Whilst Lindorf is traditionally played by the same actor, this section of the opera normally involves three different singers or, in this case, two dancers miming and one singer singing.

 

Leonide Massine and Moira Shearer

The Tale of Olympia

 

Shearer returns in the remarkable puppet dance of Olympia, an automaton devised by scientist Spalanzani (Grahame Clifford) and magic spectacle maker Coppélius (Helpmann) who proves that animated beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, as they try to convince Hoffmann that not only her intentions but her entire being is true… Shearer’s movement as the puppet is technically superb and she holds the eye with her control, precision and bounce; she snaps into positions and out again with an almost contemptuous ease; she's here to show what she can do encouraged by the best choreographer in the business. She's matched by Helpmann's charismatic energy as well as the verve and skill of Ashton himself playing the half human/half puppet, Cochenille.

 

The Tale of Giulietta

 

A completely different style is required for this take as we find Hoffmann in Venice pursuing the heart of Giulietta as danced by Ludmilla Tchérina another Red Shoes alumnus and another prima ballerina who danced across Europe but primarily as principal dancer with the Ballet des Champs-Élysées. She is earthier than Shearer and well able to play the femme fatale in this battle for soul and sensuality as, under the influence of the magician Dapertutto (Helpmann) Giulietta captures Hoffmann’s reflection and gains possession of his soul. The writer must duel with her former paramour, Schlemil (another Red Shoes star, Léonide Massine) to get the key to free her but is it just another ruse… your guess, it is after all, an opera based on a fantasy.

 

Helpmann and Ludmilla Tchérina

The Tale of Antonia

 

This final segment is, in the restored version, the longest and most purely operatic with Hoffman in love with Antonia played and sung by the American opera singer, and future Dr Kildare star, Ann Ayars. Antonia’s mother, also a singer, has already died young as a result of consumption and her father hides her away on a Greek island – a magnificent setting again from Heckroth – in an attempt to prevent her from singing and also succumbing to the same fate.

 

This time Helpmann plays Dr Miracle who was actually responsible for the death of Antonia’s mother and who claims to channel the spirit of her mother in encouraging her to sing and die. There is magnificent duet between Ayars and Miracle (sung by Bruce Dargavel) as the spectral conclusion is reached among some of the film’s most powerful imagery utilising more in camera trickery than the rest of the film combined. It almost does for pure opera what The Red Shoes did for cinematic ballet and no doubt there was a similar dislocation of certain snobby noses.

 

Ann Ayars and Robert Rounseville

After the fatal climax it’s back to the opera’s gorgeous main theme and multiple Shearer’s converging into one as she completes the dance at the Opera House before heading to find her lover in a most dishevelled state at the cellar; having told and drunk too much, forever to be unlucky in love and outmanoeuvred by Lindorf…

 

The film cuts to Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the last few notes and closing the book as a Made in England stamp is thumped down – The Archer’s pride in helping to establish an English operatic tradition just as Shearer’s boss, Dame Ninette de Valois, the Irish-born, Russian trained former dancer who was aiming to create an English tradition in ballet through the Royal Ballet.

 

Again, this underlines the creative and improvisational power of Powell and Pressburger, the former may have known more about ballet than he let on but it was the latter who understood opera. The fact that they could take all of these high-powered talents and produce this coherent whole says so much. Perhaps shooting the film as a silent was liberating with Thelma Schoonmaker says in the Studio Canal Blu-ray interview, that her former husband kept on saying how free he felt. Maybe not amongst their greatest films Hoffmann is surely the finest example of their abilities as collaborators.

 

It's also an eminently rewatchable film as more details of dance, design and direction are revealed with every viewing. A film for life and love.

  

1.       Interview by Bertrand Tavenier in Midi-Minuit Fantastique, October 1968

2.       An Autobiography of British Cinema (1997), Brian McFarlane, Methuen/BFI

3.       The Red Shoes (2023), Pamela Hutchinson, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan

4.       The Tales of Hoffmann (2013), William Germano, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan

Sir Thomas Beecham

Ludmilla Tchérina and the woman she mimes for, Margherita Grandi

Pamela Brown

Shearer dancing with Edmond Audran (Tchérina's husband)

An orchestra of Helpmanns... 50 years before The Matrix!