Trick of a tail-ender… Jerzy Skolimowski in Conversation/The Shout (1978), BFI

This was an extraordinary evening in the presence of a remarkable man who probably needed an all-nighter to get through all of his amazing stories from a life encompassing boxing, drumming, poetry, directing, acting, writing, painting and then back to film. His last film, EO (2022) was Oscar nominated and is out on BFI Blu-ray on 3^rd April, his next film is due later this year written for some guy he met through a mutual appreciation of jazz – then illegal – back in Iron Curtain Poland in 1956, Roman Polanski.

 

Born in 1936 or probably 1938, Skolimowski explained that his mother had had to change his birthdate so that he would qualify for support post-war. During the war he was trained to play act as a happy child, jumping up and down on his bed when the Gestapo made a call, hiding the fact that there was a printing press underneath it, used by his parents to spread the news of what was actually happening. His father was executed by the Germans and after the war, in recognition of his parents’ activism, he was sent to a special school in Prague were his dorm included future filmmakers Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, whilst future Czech President Václav Havel, was also there.

 

Jerzy wanted to make his mark and this began with attempts at being a poet – he joked (perhaps) of visiting libraries to steal his books so that no one could read how bad they were – jazz drumming, he couldn’t really keep time, and amateur boxing which taught him to keep his eyes open during every blow so that he knew how to recover and take evasive action. Lessons in life. When his chance came with film, he grasped it with the same alertness and co-ordinated aggression, writing scripts and then planning out a full feature film based on his four student projects in film school.

 

Michael Brook, Jerzy Skolimowski and his partner/co-writer Ewa Piaskowska

His films in Poland – and Belgium – during the sixties established his name and then he went too far into politics for the authorities to bear, a four-eyed Stalin in Hands Up!, being enough to ensure they delivered his passport as the biggest hint to leave. He came to the UK, where he knew no one, and made the sublime Deep End (1970) with Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown. The dialogue was partly improvised and it was the smartly experienced Asher who came up with the “de-facing Government property” line when she rips up a poster promoting contraception.

 

By now time was running short and we didn’t get much further than Moonlighting (1982) the making of which is as fascinating as the film itself and says much about the director's generosity and determination. Essentially in 1981 when Poland was put under martial law, Jerzy came across a crowd of Poles outside a hotel where he lived who were now without a country to return to, he took them in and found a place for every one through friends and looking up Poles in the phone book; just head to the sectionwith names starting "Sz..." Then, he decides to make a film about his country's hour of need, persuades Channel 4 to back it, Jeremy Irons to star in it and theatre impressario Michael White to also fund it through a mid-tennis match sales pitch. Another extraordinary circumstance and the resultant film is one of those I'm most looking forward to seeing on the big screen.

Props to film writer Michael Brook for digging into this rich history and we literally could have gone on well into the next day had scheduling not intervened for Jerzy's uncanny masterpiece, The Shout (1978), was due to screen and he had to prepare himself for his introduction. Before he spoke though there was a unique introduction from Mark Jenkin who had taken the extraordinary step of a Cornishman, to cross the border into Devon, to seek out the locations of The Shout in ways that only he can. Is the soul of the story to be found in the spaces between the locations, Saunton Sands, the church of St Peter in Westleigh and Braunton Burrows, or in the stone and the land itself, echoing the themes of the film itself?

 

Alan Bates 

The director described this film as his happiest experience in filmmaking and that it was mostly down to his producer Jeremy Thomas, well that and the 200 Thai Sticks they were going to quote as a dedication at the end of the film! The film is indeed one wild trip but that’s more down to the story and setting as well as the performances from a remarkable cast to which he credits Thomas’ powers of persuasion. For himself, Jeremy is equally impressed with his director: “Skolimowski had a sense of shooting style then, this was the second director who I had worked closely with, and it was fascinating watching Skolimowski work. He came from a Polish tradition, the Wajda Film School, he had a different background to other directors… And it made the film much more creative to me. I saw it more as an artistic endeavour by him.”

 

The film features electronica from Rupert Hine who started out as a fold musician but ended up Chair of the Ivor Novello Awards having had hits of his own as well as producing everyone from Tina Turner to Rush and Underworld. The composers of the main theme and incidental music were Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford of the progressive rock combo, Genesis*, then extremely out of fashion but about to conquer the world with the aid of drummer Phil Collins.

 

Rutherford and Banks went to Charterhouse as did, coincidentally, Robert Graves whose story provides the basis of the film, a mysterious tale of a man who claims to have supernatural powers that is told largely in flashback during a cricket match played at a mental hospital. Jerzy was very keen to film a cricket match but this is unlike any you’ll have seen – of course – and I’m still having nightmares about a nearly naked Jim Broadbent running around in only his cricketer’s box and covering himself with cow dung. Jim worked with Ken Campbell early doors, what can one say?

Alan Bates and Tim Curry

 

The film’s flashback begins after Susannah York rushes to a remote hospital after an incident, crying “where is he?” before entering the billiard room in which three dead bodies are laid out under clothe. We don’t quite catch the faces before the scene changes to the pastoral calm of a cricket match as a young Robert Graves (Tim Curry) arrives in his whites. He meets the head Doctor (Robert Stephens) who introduces him to a man known as Crossley (Alan Bates), whom he describes as the most intelligent man in the place.

 

Crossley and Graves are set to score the match and as they watch it unfold from the edge of the pitch, the former begins to tell his strange tale involving his involvement with a couple who, he considers, have lost their way in their marriage. Anthony Fielding (John Hurt) is an experimental composer working away in his home studio supported by his wife Rachel (Susannah York). Whilst we have already seen Susannah, John Hurt is one of those out on the cricket pitch… we assume now that they’re the same characters and, they might well be.

 

In Crossley’s story, we see him engineer a meeting with Anthony after he has been playing the local church organ and had a secret assignation with a young married woman (Carol Drinkwater), he starts talking to Anthony about his faith and ends up following him home and inviting himself to lunch and to stay. Gradually he reveals his strangeness and his past decades spent in the Australian outback during which, in addiction to apparently killing any offspring as his right under their supposed rules, he learned much magic including the ability to kill men with his voice, The Shout or The Scream.

 

John Hurt, Alan Bates and Susannah York, a talented table

He pushes both of the couple’s sensibilities and the viewer is left wondering what is real and what is simple fantasy but there are so many layers as events unfold.

 

The cast is, of course fabulous, but its Bates who dominates with his thousand-yard stare and a restless power that continually wrongfoots expectation and social norms unsettling both those o and off screen. It’s a very centred performance that conceals as much as it reveals and only generates more mystery as the story is fully revealed.

 

The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival and received the Grand Prize of the Jury, in a tie with Bye Bye Monkey.

 

The Jerzy Skolimowski Season continues into April andthere are full details on the BFI site.

 

The BFI are also releasing the Oscar nominated EO (2022) as well as a double set, Identification Marks (1964) the film he made over four years at film school and Hands Up! (1967) the film that got him exiled from Poland, on 24^th April.

*Hence my incredibly forced and childish play on words... for the youngsters, A Trick of the Tail was an LP released by them in 1975.

Triple Talmadge… The Love Expert (1920), Helpful Sisterhood (1914), Colin Sell, John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Constance Talmadge

Blessed are the collectors, the archivists and the programmers, the people with a bee in their bonnet about preservation, the completists and those for whom quality goes with rarity. I’d seen The Helpful (?) Sisterhood (1914), the first of tonight’s films on a semi-legal DVD collection of early Norma Talmadge Vitagraph shorts but what we saw projected tonight was something else. A 16mm copy made from a 35mm nitrate print, replete with all the original tints and, as its owner Chris Bird pointed out, a lot of the sparkle you’d expect from the original. It’s the difference between a bootleg and a surround sound remix, something almost as good as the original experience and who knows how many other copies exist to this standard out in the world.

 

The Talmadges have so often been over-looked in the modern “canon” of silent film possibly as Anita Loos suggested in her biography, because they barely ventured into sound films but also because, famously, they didn’t need to. Whether Norma’s Brooklyn accent could ever have been tempered enough to earn her the plaudits of the other Norma in the thirties or Joan, Greta and Lillian, we’ll never know but she didn’t need to prove herself anymore, even if her fans would have wanted her to.

 

I came across Norma early in my silent film journey (ooh, it’s like Strictly!!) thanks to The Parade’s Gone By and in, her entertaining and informative introduction, KB’s MC Michelle Facey, quoted Kevin Brownlow who regards her as one of the finest actors of the era able to show restraint even in the most unlikely scenarios along with Clarence Brown’s appreciation of one of the finest pantomimists.

Norma Talmadge

Well, here she is aged around 18, showing some of the range and instinctive skill she would gradually develop in Van Dyke Brooke’s tidy two-reel morality play about the dangers of peer group pressure and those who place style over study at what turns out to be Talmadge’s actual alma mater in Brooklyn. The story was written by one Margaree P. Dryden, and features Norma as the poor but bright Mary who, living at her Gran’s (Mary Maurice) humble home, gets to join a sorority group at college led by the daughters of wealthy men played by Marie Tener, Mary Anderson and her younger sister Constance aged just 16 and with bags of the pep we’ll be covering in a moment.

 

Mary is delighted to find herself with these new peers and stretches to keep in with them but when money comes into the picture, to buy fancy clothes she resorts to stealing. Is it worth the moral compromise and will lessons be learned by Mary but also her new friends, all of whom probably failed the entrance exam for Columbia. It’s a near perfect example of what Norma was doing as she raced towards over 100 films made between 1910 and 1915 and the start of longer features such as The Social Secretary, The Devil’s Needle and Going Straight. She would marry Joseph Schenck and together they would build the family with production companies for both Norma and Constance. Smart, smart women!

 

John Sweeney accompanied this gem with diligence and finesse; and also eased into the spirit for footage of Constance Talmadge wearing a drawn-on moustache and larking about with Roscoe Arbuckle and others. Then there was film of the actress with her second husband, Alastair Mackintosh in Scotland in 1926, one of the last places you’d expect to find her and, indeed, she divorced him the following year after he committed adultery. She was married four times, Norma three and Natalie once.

The Sisterhood with Norma in the foreground and Constance second from right 

I’m always struck by the differences between Norma and Constance with Natalie a delicate mix of both. Norma was elegant, certainly more controlled and with Big Sisterly behaviours – trust me, I know! – whilst Constance aka “Dutch”, was a hyper energised ball of energy who, as with Doug Fairbanks, was described by Loos as not so much an actor as an incredibly likeable personality. Hyper likeability goes with the job description I suppose and the energy levels are something to behold in the BFI’s 35mm print of The Love Expert.

 

The Love Expert is not, I would venture, Anita Loos’ finest work nor that of her co-writer John Emerson but what it is is the perfect vehicle for her friend Constance to not only act and react but to slay the audience. To watch this film is to be assailed by close up after close up of Connie, majoring on profiles, semi profiles – lovely both left and right – and wide-eyed smiles that melt the cynical grey of a working day all away. Yes! I have certain feelings for Constance Talmadge and this film has completely disarmed me in ways that the script could barely suggest. OK, maybe I’ve OD’d on the 35mm freshness that reveals the freckled freshness of our star’s face and the depths in those huge eyes, but this is some mighty powerful potion, a screen to audience transfer of pure star power.

 

Constance T: love is all you need.

Director David Kirkland is the man to blame, as he’s used his main asset to devastating effect and, to be fair, he had been given a story that begins in Wendy Goes to College territory showing three types of university student, the athletic woman, the scientific one – wearing glasses naturally – and one who is determined to become expert in the emotions and the science of love. Back in my college days this was all classed as extracurricular activity like, rowing, sports and membership of the Everton Supporters Club (there wasn’t a Liverpool one and well… I missed the accent!).

 

Constance plays Babs who has learned the signs of love – blushing and heart palpitations when holding hands or in close proximity and all of the rest, all scientifically tested, presumably emotionally as well. The original film came with spot tints to illustrate the blushes of certain characters but all that remains on the BFI print are the written instructions for the tinting which flicker past every so often.

 

Unfortunately for Babs, at least in academic terms, her subject a. isn’t really recognised as such and b. is distracting from her proper studies and so she is asked to leave which delights her as she can now really push on with the field work her theories require. Her mean old Dad John Hardcastle (Arnold Lucy) is equally of the opinion that her “subject” is a frivolous one and nixes her planned trip to Palm Springs when she attempts to establish A Love Connection with his colleague Thompson (James Spottswood) but no signs are present.

 

Middle sister Natalie Talmadge in The Love Expert.

Kicked off the Palm Springs junket, Babs gets sent to her Aunt Cornelia (Nellie P. Spaulding) in Boston and who is engaged to a moderately handsome man (it’s my blog) named Jim Winthrop (John Halliday). Their engagement has been for six years and counting as Jim won’t wed until the rest of his family is taken care of: sister Dorcas (sister Natalie Talmadge) a clearly good-looking woman in glasses worn to prevent her getting short-sighted and, of course for comedic affect. Men rarely make passes at ladies who wear glasses and even fewer would risk a conversation with Jim’s other sister, Matilda (Fannie Bourke) who is far more believably eccentric than Natalie T is plain.

 

The real fly in the ointment is Aunt Emily (Marion Sitgreave) who is convinced her end is nigh even as she threatens to go on for years. All of these things matter to Babs as her own test has revealed that she is in love with Jim, their faces blushing, their hearts fluttering and their pulse rate increasing. Now, apart from the fact that Jim is engaged to her aunt, Babs has decided that he is The One and she hatches a plan to settle the others down so she can get her man…

 

Do you need to know the plan? I don’t think so but safe to say there’s a lot of daft fun to be had when Babs engineers a trip to Palm Springs where she uses every bit of her “expertise” in love.

 

"Think what it means to find your mate?!"

It’s not a great movie, and that can be said for a fair few Talmadge films, but it is a very impressive demonstration of Constance’s screen presence and her ability to hold not just your attention but an entire film together. Colin Sell played along with style, debonair digits delivering the elegant bon mots this film deserved, celebrating not the epic or the groundbreaking but the sheer entertainment and helping to restore the love for one of the brightest stars of the silent era.

 

So, another evening of film that is pretty much impossible to see anywhere else. Come to the Kennington Cabaret old chums, it’s his and her stories featuring gobbets of first and secondary sources like no other.

 

If you want to find out more about Norma Talmadge then I would heartily recommend the website put together by Greta de Groat from Stanford University. It’s the most comprehensive source of all things Talmadge and full of rigorous analysis.

Bit of an over-sell on this ad...

Stars, volcanoes, crimpers and goats. Hippfest 23 Day Five

The lights go out one by one and as they do Stephen Horne synchronises a pure note as if the chimes of midnight are running us slowly towards tomorrow and Annette Benson, silently ignored by Brian Aherne in his director’s chair turns and walks shamefully across the massive studio floor, trudging through pools of light as Stephen’s flute, with regretful reverb, highlights her ultimate exit from the life she had and lost…

 

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been quite a few days and, almost as soon as it began it ended, sweeping by in a rush of high-quality organisation, beautiful cinema and music and the warmest of welcomes on the East Scottish Riviera… But what a way to finish?! Farewell Annette, Brian and Mr Donald Calthrop, Falkirk and the Forth, see you next year!

 

Shooting Stars is some film and, as the BFI’s Bryony Dixon reminded us in her introduction, not only was this 25-year-old Anthony Asquith’s first film, but it was also one her scripted so tightly that the nominal director A.V. Bramble was more an administrator of his vision. Asquith made certain to hire the best cinematographers available in Henry Harris and Stanley Rodwell – the expertise he wanted to ensure the success of a production that in his script notes he explained “…will depend to a great extent upon the excellence of the photography… The most modern form of technique is involved.”

 

He also insisted on the film being shot at Cricklewood so the enormity of his vision could be fully realised as we’re treated to incredibly complex shots as the cameras fly down and across the action on the floor and on different sets high and low in this magnificently textured space. This is top-end, late-silent sophistication and not without intrinsic purpose for a plot absolutely reliant on this sense of space; the proximities of heartbreak in the Middlesex dream factory.

Donald Calthrop and Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier

This film gives a lie to the myth of British cinematic incompetence, perpetuated by our own snobbery as well as the crushing competitiveness of Hollywood and, yes, he’s on a level with Hitchcock for much of this film, A Cottage on Dartmoor and Underground. Here Asquith – already seeped in film culture – takes aim at the darker and dafter side of the business and creates one of the first domestic films about film: a narrative that manages to be both effective as satire and affecting as a story of love gone awry.

 

This film opens with an outrageous overhead tracking sequence that you could have easily belonged in a German studio rather than one in Cricklewood. The stars of the film are the stars in a film – Prairie Love - a western, the least likely genre you’d expect from the hapless English to make a success of; a cliched clunker. We find star on the rise, Mae Feather (Annette Benson) being filmed in a blossom tree cosying up to both a white cove and her real-life hubbie, Julian Gordon (Brian Aherne) on a wooden horse (and wearing the most outrageous cowboy chaps). The bird pecks Mae’s lips, she shrieks and lets it fly and then chaos breaks loose as the scene is ruined, the crew stand down and the camera follows the chao looking down on the stage from on high then tracking the pursuit of the dove and the characters as they move around the studio cleverly revealing the set up.

 

Mae pauses to watch a comedy being filmed, women in swimming costumes a la Mack Sennet bathing beauties, including the especially eye-catching Dorothy "Chili" Bouchier as one of the girls cheering the Chaplinesque figure of Andy Wilkes (Donald Calthrop) as he makes a fool of someone’s fleshy husband… There’ll be more of that to come as we learn of his affair with Mae who, improbable as it may seem, prefers him to a man who looks every inch – at least six feet of them – the British Gary Cooper. Maybe she’s short on laughs or just finds handsome boring.

 

The marital betrayal and the offer of work in America, with a strictly no-scandal clause, build up the odds as Mae makes a drastic decision and the tone darkens… I hadn’t seen this film since the Restoration Gala at the 2015 London Film Festival and it’s a richly rewarding rewatch especially with the uncanny accompaniment from Stephen Horne who as is his practice, follows every nuance of the narrative in ways that seem to defy the laws of physics but not musicality.

 

Enrique Riveros and Brita Appelgren

His Majesty the Barber (1928) with John Sweeney

 

An altogether lighter tone was struck in the preceding film which I’d missed live at Pordenone 22 (ta C-19…) but seen streaming and had been longing to see in cinema and with accompaniment from Mr Sweeney. Not to be puritanical but you really can not beat seeing a silent comedy in the company of others and will live music; especially when, like me, you’d forgotten the series of twists that come at the end of this hairdressing hilarity.

 

As its title suggests, here we have a perfectly ordinary tale of a man who may, or may not, be an actual barber and who is operating as a street hairstylist in complete ignorance of a royal heritage that might immediately make him question his choice of career. Sounds plausible doesn’t it but director Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius has some form in this arena having produced the marvel of mirth that is A Sister of Six an extraordinarily silly film that featured Britain’s Queen of Happiness (no, not Camilla Parker Bowles but Betty Balfour!).

 

The film was a coproduction between Sweden and Germany not to mention Tirania, that ancient state nestled in the lower regions of the Ruritanian Alps in which it is set. An outstanding international cast includes Swedes Julius Falkenstein (known from films by Lubitsch, Murnau, and Lang), actress-director Karin Swanström (whose last directed film was the marvellous Girl in Tails (1926), and the teen Brita Appelgren, who, born in December 1912. must have been just 15 during filming; a scandic Loretta Young in looks and youth.

 

Karin Swanström and Hans Junkermann

The romantic hero/barber/potential Prince Nickolo was played by the Chilean actor Enrique Riveros who was much older at 21 and bizarrely touted as the Swedish Valentino. The German, Hans Junkermann plays the key role of André Gregory, the local barber and is the centre of much comedy as well as the underlying plot. He’s the former hairdresser of the Tiranian King who’s baby son and rightful heir, was placed in his care after a revolution. He has kept this even from Nickolo but now the moment of truth approaches and affairs of state and the heart collide in the most wonderful of ways.

Li Lili born Qian Zhenzhen in Beijing

 

Volcanic Passions aka Loving Blood of the Volcano (1932) with Stephen Horne

 

The “europudding” was preceded by a Chinese concoction performed with great gusto and culminating in the best fist fight climbing up a volcano that I’ve ever seen. Mr Horne is the man for protracted pugilism though with a wealth of experience including the extraordinarily vicious Behind the Door (1919). The film is not without its charm and power though – far from it! - and there’s an extraordinary motivation for the hero Song ke (Junli Zheng) when a local warlord, Cao Renjie (Congmei Yuan), lusting after his younger sister, ends up murdering her father and brother after she opts to jump to her death rather than become one of his concubines.

 

Director and writer Sun Yu’s film plays like a cowboy drama in a country dominated by such men in the period between colonial subservience and communist rule. Culturally it shows far more Western influence than you might expect, Sun having studied theatre and film in the USA at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia in the 1920s. There is also the Dietrich-like presence of the legendary Li Lili, in the first of her dozen collaborations with Yu. Lili plays a show girl in a bar, strutting around in confident style showing a sexual confidence and level of agency that marks her out as a real star.

 

Junli Zheng with his cinematic siblings playing Cat's Cradle

Song ke travels away from his family devastation a man obsessed with ridding the world of all monsters such as Cao. He’s miserable and turns to drink, especially in the Coconut Grove Tavern, where he is known as “the man who never smiles”, he needs to get together with Olga Baklanova from The Man Who Laughs perhaps but instead he meets Willow Blossom, a beautiful dancer recently employed there.

 

Willow reminds him of his home – same name – as well as his sister which makes his growing affection for her rather unusual… but they are the same sort of beautiful, independent women so let’s forgive him. As his heart starts to soften old enemies resurface and the fight of their lives is about to begin.

 

It’s pure entertainment and very well made, and it’s always such a treat to see such gems screened and given serious attention. The Li Lili fan club starts here!

 

G.O.A.T.

Angora Love (1929) and Bacon Grabbers (1929) with Meg Morley and Frank Bockius

 

The first of these was Laurel and Hardy’s final film before they went on to conquer the world of sound as well as silence. The boys are adopted by a four-legged friend who really gets their landlord Edgar Kennedy’s goat and it’s a tour de force of comic violence. As with all their best work the two are seemingly incapable of letting things go and rather than just hoping on a bus – there are 50 Ways to Leave Your Goat after all… they try and live with it without letting the landlord know. It’s a bad plan and we loved seeing it go wrong.

Mr Kennedy is back again this time improbably married to a young Jean Harlow and owing money on a radio he bought on the HP. Stan and Ollie are trainee repo men sent to serve papers for reclamation by the Sherriff’s Office.

 

Things do not go to plan completely unlike this festival which was the epitome of a good time as organised by The Queen of Scottish Silents: Alison Strauss. I’ve manged events and teams in my career but I’ve rarely seen a more effective and happier crew than this one. You guys deserve all the awards going and thank you, by the way, for the one you handed to me for these reviews. It’s been my pleasure, absolutely!

 

See you in 2024!!

 

The light goes down on Bo'ness for another year...

The Hounds of Love… Hippfest 2023 Day Four

I’m no expert but I reckon the best pace to appreciate an ovation, apart from the stage of course, is up in the gods, with a view of the stalls erupting with cheers and applause whilst all around you in the wide sweep of the second tier join in even as you find yourself whooping. At the best festivals the applause accumulates through the day as the feeling moves in the face of fascinating presentations and high-quality programming and we saw it today, from the genius of Charlie Chase at the start through revelations of early women animators to stunning Ukrainian documentary and onto one of the canon, the iconic gothic neo-horror of The Man Who Laughs.

Neil Brand, John Sweeney, researcher Mindy Johnson, Ukrainian players Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin then finally Meg Morley and Frank Bockius built up a momentum of good will and, indeed, vibrations throughout this splendid Saturday that reached a crescendo at the end of Conrad Veldts’/Gwynplaine’s great escape – with the aid of his dog Homo of course; have there ever been so many heroic hounds on one screen? The Hippodrome is circular in construction, built when Picture Houses had yet to find a set design, and that’s perfect for the acoustic and emotional response that built high into the rafters as the evening closed, a swirling storm of appreciation under the concave roof.

The day had started with a classic one-two from Charley Chase with Dog Tired (1926) and the mighty Mighty Like a Moose (1927) a work of World-cultural significance. Charlie’s the white collar comic, as Neil Brand suggested, a Basil Fawlty figure who always trips himself up with his over elaboration and yet who wins us back with his charm and self-depreciation; he knows what a fool he’s been. Things also tend to work out for Charley, he gets the girl (Mildred June) thanks to the unlikeliest of coincidences in Dog Tired and even after trying to bath her intended groom, a rich but untrustworthy duke (Stuart Holmes) after confusing him with the dog, also called Duke.

Vivien Oakland and Charley Chase

In Mighty Like a Moose, Charley and his wife, Vivien Oakland, both get plastic surgery on the same day, he for his buck teeth and she for her nose. They bump into each other and, failing to recognise themselves, embark on an illicit flirtation which culminates with Charley having to pretend to have discovered his own interlope and battling himself for his wife’s honour in the bathroom. It’s meta and it’s hilarious.

I’m definitely in the doghouse for missing Rin-Tin-Tin in his debit feature, Where the North Begins (1923) but, to be honest, I prefer his later stuff… this did leave me refreshed for the revelations in Mindy Johnson’s talk about early women animators. This is ongoing research but it’s clear that women we as involved in this line of work as they were in the whole film industry in the teens and early twenties before male corporate oppression. The focus was on Bessie Mae Kelley who worked with and inspired the likes of Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Walter Lantz, not to mention some young fella named Walt Disney. As ever the prime movers in collaborative enterprises like film are hard to untangle but without doubt Bessie Mae deserves recognition and more will come as Mindy’s research continues.

Next up we went to Ukraine for a poignant documentary In Spring (1929) based in an around a Kyiv during the punishing first of Stalin’s five year plans, not that you would know it from a film with a no-doubt propagandist remit. That said, filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman’s face-paced spectacle shows the people as much as the landscape and the industry and their spirit says everything both historically and in terms of the daily lives. The work is as hard as it ever was and yet there’s joy amongst the enterprise and cycle-riding, sometimes backwards too.

 

Kaufman was Dziga Vertov and had been cameraman on Man with a Movie Camera; here he shows the same deft touches, the ability to make connections and convey dozens of micro-narratives within an over-arching “symphony” of the city and surrounds. The angles are acute, the cutting highly-energised and the overall effect is remarkable.

 

The same can be said of the accompaniment from Ukrainian musicians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin who created a deceptively space soundscape interchanging leading lines between Roksana piano and Misha’s effects-laden guitar. The connection between the modern invention and the century old film not only served the traditional purpose of accompaniment but obviously re-contextualised the essential continuities of a society now under so much threat. A wondrous humanistic statement and Alison Strauss in her introduction once again found just the right words to capture our support and sympathy; this festival has some heart.

Promotional poster for In Spring

 

After some tea and cake – Scotland you’re treating me – we took our seats for today’s big finish and the combination of Conrad Veidt’s teeth, Mary Philbin’s sweetness and Olga Baklanova’s erm, everything guaranteed the entertainment, not to mention Zimbo the Dog who plays Homo, the Dog!

 

An American film about seventeenth century England, based on a French novel, starring one extraordinary German and directed by another, The Man Who Laughs is a truly international picture. Made at the peak of silent film technique it represents a Hollywood high-point of expressionist unease from Paul Leni, the man who directed Waxworks and The Cat and the Canary. It says much for contemporary sensibilities that audiences were attracted to the dark disturb of this tale. Connie plays Gwynplaine a man scarred for life from childhood by a group of travellers led by Dr Hardquanonne (George Siegmann) who specialised in cosmetic disfigurement in order to create oddities suitable for circus performers. In this case the latter’s brother and successor James II (Samuel de Grasse ) has ordered the mutilation as revenge on the boy’s father who has displeased him. The father, Lord Clancharlie, is mercilessly squished in the Iron Lady and the boy’s face will forever be locked in an horrific grin… laughing at his father’s betrayal… or some-such evil.

 

On paper it sounds daft as all get out but the film’s style and substance begins to work its uncanny rhythm and hope emerges as the boy, cast adrift even from his tormentors, rescues a blind baby from the bitter cold and finds sanctuary with an itinerant circus performer called Ursus (Cesare Gravina) who lives in a caravan with his pet wolf Homo. Now that’s a modern family!

 

Connie and Mary

The years pass and naturally Gwynplaine’s clown-face has made him the most popular clown in town – people just can’t help but laugh when they see his hysterical smile but, in spite of the gadgetry and painful false teeth he wore, Veidt’s eyes give so much more away: pain but also something more, his love for blonde, beautiful and blind Dea (Mary Philbin) who loves him back. But she has never seen his disfigurement nor felt his smile… Gwynplaine cannot believe that she would still love him if she knew what he actually looked like.

 

Gwynplaine’s father may be long gone but he has an inheritance and a peerage he knows nothing about.  The current beneficiary is one Duchess Josiana (Olga Baklanova – so good in von Sternberg’s Docks of New York and on fire in this film) who leads a life of carefree debauchery and expressive bathing as a servant’s key-hole view of her bathroom reveals. The Queen’s evil aid, Barkilphedro (Brandon Hurst having A Ball!), has found out that Gwynplaine is the rightful owner of the Duchess’ land: for her to retain her title and property she will need to marry him. The Queen orders his capture and immediate ennoblement…

 

A baddy, yesterday

Things are complicated by the Duchess Josiana’s response on seeing Gwynplaine’s show, she cannot decide whether to laugh or lust… there’s something more deeply intriguing about Gwynplaine’s unrelenting grin and she is determined to explore the possibilities.

 

The intrigue ramps up as Queen Anne appoints the clown to the House of Lords – I know! – and responsibility of state and political machinations once again threaten the happiness of all citizens… perhaps only Homo can save the day??

 

Meg Morley and Frank Bockius absolutely raised the bloody roof on this one with two hours of playful accompaniment with so much swing and propulsive charm – I love to hear their jazz sensibilities in this kind of endeavour and there’s was not a hit or a note out of place. Magnificent and everyone else in the room agreed with me!!

 

Bravo Hippesfest!

Hipp at last! Master of the House (1925)/What Happened to Jones (1926), Hippfest 2023 Day 3

Perhaps the contortionist was the main surprise, even more so than the magician with his cup and ball, but they were entirely in keeping with the spirit of the evening and the connection between variety/vaudeville theatre and early film as projected in Bo’ness’ Hippodrome, Scotland’s oldest purpose-built cinema dating from 1910 and the glorious hub of this fascinating festival, this jewel of the Forth.

Out of the mists of the Firth, it came, a mixture of Brigadoon and Eldorado, I place I have been waiting to get to for years (Covid Interruptus); McPordenone, the friendliest silent film festival in Britain and beyond, a place you have to work a little to get to, cars, trains, taxi drivers that mysteriously arrive just when you need them at Linlithgow Station, and a robust landscape - that’s just between my hotel and the town centre – but which richly rewards the effort. Immediately you know it’s been worth the wait, friendly staff who clearly love what they do, a whole community willing to help you and an invading community of passionately informed and engaged silent cineastes from the World over.

It's like the World Cup being played in Tobermory. The best films, the best players, the best audience. and the best atmosphere. And, I do love a bit of atmosphere! Friday on the Firth showcased everything I’d hoped to find with two cracking films, superb accompaniment and brilliant company.

Johannes Meyer and Astrid Holm

Master of the House (1925), with John Sweeney

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.

As Pamela Hutchinson’s eloquently informed introduction pointed out, Dreyer builds his characters up with forensic control and he’s careful to fill out each one, even the villain of the piece, especially him for love is not merely about taking sides nor winning the debate it is about support and understanding, family and, ultimately, going at each other’s pace.

Viktor Frandsen (played by Johannes Meyer, such a striking performer) is disappointed in his life, his business failed he is unhappy at the work he can get and makes his whole family miserable with his diktats and heart-hardened daily cruelties. His wife Ida (Astrid Holm of The Phantom Carriage, Häxan and more) is the centre of his ire and the film starts as she enters their living room, opens the curtains, empties the bird cage and starts the boiler as her day of relentless chores begins.

Karin Nellemose and Mathilde Nielsen

As Pamela suggested, this film changes our view of bread and butter for good as Viktor annoyed by what he sees as a few scrapes of butter on his breakfast forces Ida into scrapping butter from her own food to give to him and his gratefulness is strictly limited to “So, you’re not short of butter?”. He’s not able to bring enough money into the house and blames her for poorly managing the domestic budget, holes in his shoes as his other pair remain in the cobblers, Ida unable to divert funds from her already restricted budget.

 

The children fare little better Karen (Karin Nellemose in her debut) the oldest taking the brunt and also her brother Dreng (Aage Hoffman), forced to stand facing the corner, hands behind his back after a snowball fight, all of this to come for the youngest Barnet (Byril Harvig). All of this is watched over by Mads (Mathilde Nielsen) an older woman who once looked after Viktor when he was young and who know only feels anger at what she sees that he’s become. She helps with the family chores and is urged by Ida to keep her counsel knowing Viktor’s retaliation will only be in one direction. But everything must come to ahead, Ida’s health is failing and as Mads brings in her mother (Clara Schønfeld) to look after her, she devises a plan to bring her former charge back to sanity.

 

The bare bones of the plot don’t credit the skill with which Dreyer and his players make this drama work. Mads is rescuing both parts of the couple and is a very modern hero in this sense in a morality tale not just with shades of grey but tints of compassion and understanding. Dreyer’s humanity goes the distance as always.

 

Accompanying with wonderful grace and invention of his own was John Sweeney who recognised the soulful humour in this patient work and responded as he always does, a part of and in tune with the emotional narrative.

What Happened to Jones (1926) with Neil Brand and Frank Bockius

A complete change of pace for the evening’s Gala which was unlike anything you’ll find in Bologna, Pordenone or London, a champagne reception, canapes and fancy dress, evening gowns for the women and more bishops than you’d find in the Vatican even at the weekend! Travelling light the best I could muster was looking like a cast member of The Archers according to one well-known composer, writer and TV presenter, and he wasn’t wrong.

Hippfest Supremo Alison Straus adds so much personality to the festival and leads the team effort from the front with enthusiasm and invention. This much I would have confessed to her husband The Bishop, but you know how taciturn we Methodists are.

Between the fore and after-party was one of the funniest of Hollywood comedies with the irresistible Reginald Denny playing the titular Jones, a man more sinned against than sinning… just about. He’s Tom Jones, a smart “out of towner” who’s about to be married the next day to Lucille Bigbee (Nixon) one of the local favourites and whom even her parents (Melbourne MacDowell and the fearsome Frances Raymond) would prefer to wed scion of respectability, Henry Fuller (William Austin, always so wide-eyed and fretful in these roles).

The night before the wedding and all is well… what could possibly go wrong? Friend of the family Ebenezer Goodly (Otis Harlan) suggests a quick game of poker, Tom get’s lucky with his first hand and decides to cash in but before he can, the police raid, chaos breaks out and Tom and Ebeneezer just about escape into a women’s Turkish bath… what could possibly go wrong? The next day Tom wakes up in the Goodly’s house and has to dress up as a Bishop, Ebenezer’s brother, the man who is dues to officiate at the wedding which now looks to be between horrible Henry and Lucille… what, indeed, could possibly go wrong?

 

Reginald Denning and Otis Harlan try to explain.

This is a farce and it is indeed like Brian Rix on speed, especially with the sprightly accompaniment of Brand and Bockius accelerating the action and fuelling the fun. There was almost telepathically intricate interplay between the two with percussion leading in some parts and the piano delivering sexy speakeasy jazz in others; also, some excellently timed swanee whistling!

ZaSu Pitts also features as a biddable housemaid, she steals every scene!

As a programming finishing touch, the film was proceeded by a short involving the smashing of cases of whiskey in the cause of Prohibition in 1922 and then a film advertising a DIY home sauna kit which, in addition to looking unworkable and dangerous, foreshadowed Jones perfectly. Then we had the magic and the contortion… 112 years or so since these arts would have been commonplace on this stage and others. It’s these flourishes that finesse the fuller programme, surprises and a commitment to not only the business of silent film but also its enduring celebration and, had the coaches not arrived well before midnight, that process would have continued well into the morning.

Still, it’s now only Saturday… More anon, as I have Charlie to Chase along with some dogs this morning plus a stand-up quiz involving the use of body parts in a live setting that might be best kept secret in the interests of the participants…

You don’t have to be mad to be at Hippfest but you do have to be happy and ready for anything.

If you're in the area, or even if you're not, there's a wealth of informtion on the Hippfest site including Pamela Hutchinson's programme notes.

Boardman talks in colour… Mamba (1930)

Things you never expected to see… on several levels. This film was considered mostly lost for a long time until a nearly complete 35mm nitrate copy was located in Australia in 2009. This has subsequently been fully restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation in 2016, but what I watched was a rather fuzzy copy on YouTube… sometimes you must take what you can find. How could I resist seeing elegant Eleanor Boardman, silent star of The Crowd, Bardleys the Magnificent and Souls for Sale, in Technicolor and, talking too?

On the face of it, Boardman could be seen as one of those who’s career stalled after sound but she made seven talkies including the fascinating part-talkie She Goes to War (1929) enough of which survives to show how she was more than capable of sustaining her career, should she have really wanted to. Now in her early thirties, Boardman was married to and having children with King Vidor and, film fans, that’s an activity which doesn’t always sit well with the Hollywood sausage machine especially if you are, famously, “the most outspoken girl in Hollywood”! She liked Redemption (1929), the picture she made with John Gilbert, which didn’t enhance his (or her) prospects but gave her a gorgeous wardrobe, and then got loaned out by MGM to Tiffany Studios for Mamba.

Her last Hollywood film was de Mille’s remake of his own The Squaw Man (1931) and, as family duties and her increasingly unhappy marriage began to pre-occupy her, she refused to dance to the studio’s tune and return from an Hawaiian make-or-break with Vidor, to be loaned again this time to Paramount. By 1933 she had divorced King and taken her children off to Europe where she eventually met and married writer/director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast for whom she starred in her last film, The Three Cornered Hat (1935) made in Italy. She appeared in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series interviewed in 1977, still strikingly sharp and eloquent, comfortable with her life and perhaps slightly dismissive of most of her films, save The Crowd.

Jean Hersholt

Here she’s perfectly fine, good at the grander emotions, dressed like a clothes horse if a little under-powered in some scenes in which she’s outshone, as everyone else, by a perfectly nasty turn from Jean Hersholt. Jean’s upbringing in Denmark, enabled him to nail the German accent required for the part of the titular snake, August Bolte (Mambo), a German opportunist who doesn’t care who he exploits as long as there’s profit in it. Born Jean Pierre Carl Buron, he started acting in short films in 1906 but emigrated for New York in 1913 aged 27 and established himself quickly, making films, most notably in Greed (1924) into the 1950s. He also translated 160 of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales into English and ended up as Leslie Nielsen’s paternal half-uncle… fact fans!

The film is one of those exhibiting a considerable amount of silent style especially when it begins with an extraordinary single take – some 90 seconds long – during which director Albert S. Rogell’s camera moves down and through a number of street scenes on an African reservation, showing us the local colour, and the nature of the place we are about to experience: Neu Posen in German East Africa, sometime in 1913. Like many other “pre-code” films of the period it comes with heavy doses of language and actions reflecting “the attitudes of the time” … Your honour, may I refer you to the statement made by one English officer to a German one: “… too many blacks to run after and too few of us whites to ever be able to hold them in line…” a sentence that is followed by the artful suggestion that those civilised whites of Britain and Germany would never be caught fighting amongst themselves. The audience knew and of course we still know, what this means.

Bolte arrives and is immediately confronted by a local woman (Hazel Jones) who claims he is the father of her child; the other Europeans look on is disgust as he pushes her away. He goes for a drink in a bar full of singing German and British officers only to be given the coldest of shoulders and to be told to his face that he’s not invited to Colonel Cromwell’s party. Bolte sings alone and throws his beer away ordering a champagne…

Bolte reviews his options...

“With more land und money than anyone else in East Africa… I could buy und sell the whole army!

A begging letter from a nobleman in debt back in Germany, offers the hand of his daughter Helen (Eleanor Boardman) in marriage in exchange for Bolte paying his creditors off. After reviewing Helen’s photograph, Bolte decides that this is the way to gain proper respect from society; married to a Lady, his snobbish detractors will have no option but to pay her their respects. He goes back to Germany and brings back his already traumatised new wife back with him. As his cockney manservant (a lively Will Stanton) says: “Blimey sir! But she’s a real aristocrat… she’s got quality!”

On the ocean journey she meets a handsome German officer, Karl von Reiden (Ralph Forbes) who is certainly more along the lines of the kind of man she’d hoped to wed. They connect but are soon separated by Bolte who demonstrates a grotesque mix of jealousy and pride. Back in Neu Posen in Bolte’s grubby mansion, Helen is holding out as long as she can, her honour still at stake as her contractual-obliged partner invites his former enemies to a party in her honour to which everyone is invited and duty bound to attend for her sake. Before the party begins, the native woman pays Bolte another visit and, after an altercation, she falls over his balcony and to her death.

Initially his grand party goes well but when news of the death breaks out the mood turns sour and the faint-hearted merrymaking stops, leaving Helen at the mercy of her husband until, that is, she is rescued by von Reiden who takes her off to see the local natives’ “Moon Dance” - perhaps it will help you forget… He delivers her back to her predatory partner just as he receives news that way has been declared between Germany and Great Britain. Now things reach a peak as Bolte tries to avoid the draft and to hold onto his ill-gotten gains…

Eleanor Boardman and Ralph Forbes

Mambo is alleged to have cost over $500,000 to produce and appears to have been well received with the colour photography impressing. It’s more than just a novelty though with the colonial questions raised and the moral dangers presented by Bolte and then the War. Hersholt makes the picture though and seems able to raise sympathy for his misbegotten creation of Bolte who very rarely, if ever, does the right thing but still presents as a victim in comparison to the taller and more handsome officers, just about to fight the War to End all Wars.

This would look amazing on the big screen and I look forward to a 35mm screening at some point and somewhere…