Colleen can dance… Twinkletoes (1926), Grapevine Blu-ray

I heard it through the grapevine, how much longer can you be mine…? is a song Marvin Gaye sang and he could indeed have been addressing the transient nature of physical media as well as his love for Tammi Tyrell. Grapevine video, who for the last few decades have been issuing public domain silent films in various degrees of quality, most unrestored, has decided to cease its current approach. Founder Jack Hardy retiring, his colleague Jason, will continue the brand as the home for Kickstarter transfers and restorations whilst running the current stock down - the site still seems fully functional, but this is no time to dither if they have something you want!

 

Whilst this is not the greatest of news for the seeker of rare silent film grooves, and it did precipitate a rush to obtain some of the finite stock on their site, it does leave us with another route to market for higher quality transfers from archive film along with those offered by Ben Model, Ed Laruso and Red Mill Films. This model has also already been running at Grapevine and the peak Colleen Moore vehicle, Twinkletoes (1926), was one of those I backed, always keen for, erm, more Moore.

 

Coming to any film entitled Twinkletoes did give me pause, the title alone red-flagging what sounds like a feel-good rags to riches story based on a happy-go-lucky dancer with natural-born talent? Well… think again you cynical old fool, keep your post-post-modern toy-comedies and post-nuclear doom-dramas, this film is the kind of small-world drama that Greta Gerwig would love albeit one with a linear narrative that might confuse Christopher Nolan… it is filmed on celluloid though mate.

 

Colleen Moore and Tully Marshall

The superpower here is, of course Colleen Moore and time after time she rises above the source material to impress the viewer with her gleeful zest and supernatural energies. Despite the twee title, Twinkletoes is actually more at the dramatic end of her films, sure there are playful street fights, high hopes and winsome stainless steel melting smiles, but there’s also infidelity, violent confrontations with sad drunken competitors, crime, betrayal and dark motivations.

 

Perhaps more than anyone else since young Pickford does Moore represent everywoman in her twenties’ heyday with an incredible audience connection, created by her sharp-eyed expression, physical dynamism and looks that whilst they lack the style and sexuality of those other bob-wearers Clara and Louise, can be easily as pretty as the part demands. Colleen’s ordinary in an extraordinary way and as tough as the audience dream of being too. An avatar of ambition and affection rivalled by few others.

 

Perhaps the most shocking thing here is seeing Moor on point, I wasn’t aware of her dance background and that moment speaks not so much of showbusiness as ten thousand hours of pain and dedication; a tailor-made woman determined almost beyond reason to dance in those grey shoes, to stardom on stage or on screen. A multi-tasking master.

 

Colleen Moore on point and possibly wearing red ballet shoes.

Directed by Charles Brabin based on Thomas Burke’s novel Twinkletoes: A Tale of the Limehouse (1918). This was Burke’s first publishing success at the time and another of his tales from the collection, “The ‘Chink’ and the Child” (ow, apologies) had already formed the basis, of course it had, of DW Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919). Burke was born in Clapham and having lost his father when just a baby, had lived in Poplar with his uncle and attended a home for middle-class boys who were “respectably descended but without adequate means to their support…” He was attacked by the Times Literary Supplement as a “blatant agitator” but gained a reputation as “the laureate of London’s Chinatown”.

 

Brabin’s sets certainly convey the cramped poverty of the East End 5,000 miles away and the opening brings most of the central characters together in one fluid sequence… we find bare-knuckle star Chuck Lightfoot (Kenneth Harlan) striding through Limehouse taking all the congratulations for his latest victory. None of this is good enough for his dipsomaniacal wife Cissie (Gladys Brockwell) and a conflagration gradually escalates watched from above by Dad Minasi (Tully Marshall) as he cleans windows above. As the police arrive to break things up, young Twink (Moore) distracts everyone with an impromptu jig… and as the crowd dissipates, she derides both Chuck and Cissie for their bad behaviour, the former surprisingly willing to listen to the lass.

 

Twink and her father return home and there’s much affection between the two with the young woman aiming to take after her mother who had been a great dancer and the original “Twinkletoes” … a poster outside still stands testimony to her popularity, even as one of the locals, doubts his young friend can be that dancer. It’s Colleen Moore you fool, of course she can.

 

Best of friends, Colleen and Kenneth Harlan

Luckily the film doesn’t focus on the inevitability of "Twinkletoes Two" but her love triangle with Chuck and his no-good wife, Cissie. This is quite a daring course for a film of this time and makes for a much more interesting drama especially as we see the lovesick boxer, removed of his physical prowess by his compromised marriage and the tenderness of his feelings for Twink; it’s an interesting role for the big lunk and he excels with what are no doubt big old Irish eyes.

 

Cissie herself is a real piece of work, another juicy role, and when she can’t beat Twinks in a fist fight or battle of wills – let alone a dance off – she is cunning and reports the dancer’s father to the police. No one likes a grass Cissie but I guess you’re not that keen on yourself either… Dad has, of course, been keeping his criminal side-lines away from Twinks as he tries to wrap up his obligations; now it’s all in danger of collapsing in on him and his pure-hearted daughter.

 

Cue the music, start the dance!

 

OK, this is hardly Pabst or Sjostrom but it is a very well-directed film that builds up a decent head of suspense and dramatic tension, from the bit set piece riot at the start to Twink’s stage triumph and the dark betrayals of Cissie. Produced by her husband John McCormick and distributed through Moore's resident studio First National, it shows her dramatic chops which they rotated with comedy fare like Why Be Good? She had the range and reminds me a little of a silent Anna Kendrick, quirky but interesting and with additional talents; sure, Anna can sing though but I doubt she can do ballet…

  

The Grapevine Blu-ray which is a transfer from 16mm materials in decent if not full restoration clarity. We should be grateful we have it at all though, these are tough times for content and there’s still a certain satisfaction in collating your own home library; you can’t take it with you but you can rewatch it and, should the family agree, take it with you in an outsized coffin buried at the base of a modest garden pyramid… 

Anyway, if you want to grab a copy it's available on their website here.

Conny and Valerie II - Contraband (1940), BFI, Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Powell and Pressburger’s second film was also their second with Conrad Veidt and intended to be a follow-up to their first, The Spy in Black (1939). Released in May 1940, it was a propaganda film aimed at highlighting Britain’s readiness for action during what was still The Phoney War, with volunteer sailors beefing up the Royal Navy to help in protecting out extended coastlines and preventing the wrong kind of goods, contraband, from ending up in enemy hands.

It's a stirring film that also re-unites Veidt with his SIB co-star, the vibrant Valerie Hobson and for both Powell quotes Pressburger as having written “… two stunning parts… which they simply could not refuse, even if England were to be invaded the next morning.” It’s another one of those films in which Hungarian and Kentish humour percolates through and the two leads are entangled in a sure fire rom-com scenario from their meet-cute when Valerie’s Mrs. Sorensen refuses to put her life jacket on only to be threatened with being put in irons by Veidt’s Danish merchant seaman Captain Andersen. He might be joking but don’t worry fans of human bondage, they’ll be tied up together later in the film.

Hobson has been a revelation to me, I’m way behind on 30s-40s British film, and although I have seen her in Great Expectations and Kind Hearts and I know that she had a very unfortunate second marriage to a certain John Profumo, whom she never gave up on. Here she is just about 23 and for a girl from County Antrim, sounding very English, and matching the embodiment of Weimar cinema, 47, blow for blow as the kind of confident female lead war seems to bring out in British cinema: she can look after herself, is forthright and decisive and only gets caught by the Captain if she wants to.

Conrad Veidt

This season is also highlighting Pressburger’s writing – I know, I know, late to the party… - with the programme notes quoting Powell’s A Life in Film and Emeric’s grandsons providing ample evidence of the family skillset: they’re both filmmakers of note. Having now seen 11 of the surviving 13 Powell “quota quickies” you can appreciate the impact the Hungarian had on their collaborations. Certainly, Spy in Black showed his instant success in turning a predictable story into an exciting one with edgy male and female leads. Powell appreciated Pressburger’s novelistic range and there’s no doubt that he fills his characters with so much personality and purpose his decade in German film being well spent.

The film moves quickly and manages to balance its drama with a light touch and it’s great to see Veidt in such a role, cracking jokes, being somewhat relaxed and playing a hero for once. His freighter Helvig is stopped in the channel by the Royal Navy who send them for cargo inspection at what were termed Contraband Control Ports. All his well but their cargo full of iodine is “contraband” and has to be cleared before they can proceed to Denmark. They must wait a night in port and, as Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin would later demonstrate, a lot can happen to a sailor in just a few hours on shore.

Valerie Hobson in a hat

Firstly, the troublesome Mrs. Sorensen steals Anderson’s landing passes along with and spivvy “talent scout” called Mr Pidgeon (Esmond Knight). Knowing he’ll be in a lot of trouble without them, he sets off with first mate Axel Skold (Hay Petrie), to track them down to London via the train to Victoria. He finds both on the train and, after Pidgeon flies away, sticks to Mrs S like a glue man.

 

From this point the film becomes something of a travelogue for London in the Blackout, with the couple eventually united and trying to find their way across town using torches and taxis in a shadowed capital bracing itself for what may come. Mrs S has had a very suspicious phone call with her Aunt in Chester Square, filmed in that very square, and there’s more geography to come as Anderson takes his new companion to dine at the restaurant of Skold's brother Erik (also Hay Petrie), where there’s lots of funny business as Danish food is delivered in copious amounts and the Captain explains the significance of his fob watch and its Danish sailor song. The characters are rooted in another country, neutral at this time, which, all things considered, is odd. But they knew what they were doing.

 

Our heroes are tied up at the moment.

All the while the Captain is checking this watch as the clock counts down on the train they must catch at Victoria but they soon find themselves with even more serious worries when they are captured at her aunt’s house by a group of German spies led by Van Dyne (Raymond Lovell), who knows Mrs. Sorensen is a British spy after an incident in Düsseldorf. Away to the elaborate hide out where the interrogation begins as Van Dyne tries to establish ways of making our girl talk.

 

Powell marvelled at Alfred Junge’s work on the set for this hideout and the final third of the film is played out here as our heroes try to escape and prevent the German’s from spreading deadly misinformation. After the two escape they enlist his countrymen from the restaurant to try and locate the secret base, knowing it’s next to a cabaret with a singing man playing a ukelele and in a certain direction based on Anderson’s reading of the stars… they pore over the map calling out locations from Piccadilly to Soho; the old town ain’t changed that much! All is set for a fast-paced finale and lots of West End frolics, one of which originally featured a young Deborah Kerr as a cigarette girl… Mickey was suitably impressed.

 

There's also some very funny business in the workshop next to the hideout where busts of Neville Chamberlain are manufactured. As Powell said, Mr Peace in Our Time was already a laughing stock by ths stage and the delays in the film's release only increased the dark humour of the former Prime Minister's likeness being shot at by enemy agents and, when he uses one to knock out one of the baddies, Veidt says "they always said he was tough..."

Pieces in our time... Neville and Conny

Contraband is less cohesive than The Spy in Black, and less suspenseful but it’s still enjoyable given the two leads chance to play off each other and for the writer and director to evolve their technique. It’s another step on the way to the more playful and deeper efforts of Blimp and Canterbury but the War was just starting as were the Archers. Next up was a hugely successful diversion, Korda’s epic The Thief of Bagdad (1940) for which Powell directed most of the action sequences and the famous Genie section, along with several others as production was switched to the US following the outbreak of the Blitz. There was nothing phoney about the war from this point onwards and the cinema had to reflect this more and more.

Andrew Moor argues in Powell and Pressburger, a Cinema of Magic Spaces, that these early films show a more Germanic influence, unsurprisingly given Pressburger’ s background and Powell’s time at UFA, and even treat British soil as “alien”, certainly for the main protagonists. Only after the war progressed do the two start addressing Britain as “home”, given the needs of a patriotic industry supporting the home front. That said, this England and Scotland, will be one full of strangeness and wonder and there will always be sympathetic, humanity from around the globe, friends and enemies alike.

An expressionist flurry as Conrad awakes from a dream

Ice cool as the Nazi spies put the pressure on

Imperious

Hay Petrie in hospitality mode.

The film was called Blackout in the US, which Powell preferred.

Tricks of the trade… The Magician (1926), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Michael Powell

Stephen Horne had a meeting in the evening with a dark figure at a crossroads and rumour had it, not for the first time given his uncanny ways with multiple instruments, melody and improvisation. Before his renewed pact with Faust in Guy’s Chapel though, he was on the Southbank with piano, electronic keyboard, accordion and flute accompanying more evil acts as Paul Wegener got all unnecessary with Alice Terry in Rex Ingram’s The Magician.

The last time I saw this many keyboards they were being played by a man in a sparkly cape called Rick, but that’s where the comparison ends as Stephen’s music was as usual, submerged imperceptibly within the extraordinary action on film. The wider Paul Wegener’s eyes, the more skill required to musically anchor the events on screen to our suspended disbelief; to calm and not just flavour the extravagance. Even the film is aware of its own sensationalism with Alice Terry’s character describing Wegener’s as looking “… as if he’s stepped out of a melodrama”, he stops, looks disgruntled and with a swirl of his cape, walks off. No one can fault Paul’s timing!

I have form with this "…weird, fantastic, adequately suspensive, and shivery…” * film, having backed Redwood Creek Films, 4k restoration of a 16mm print on Blu-ray and then gone after the WB Archive DVD as it was from a tinted source following recommendation from Mr M Fuller of Bristol. So, this was my first time with the BFI’s 35mm monochrome print, which comes in at 88 minutes according to the notes, vs the Redwood 80 and WB 79.

Paul Wegener 

The film was being screened as part of the BFI’s Powell and Pressburger season as it was the first film on which Michael Powell worked on with Rex Ingram. This was during the young man’s time in the south of France, staying with his father who owned an hotel near Nice and who got him his introduction to Ingram and his crew according to Thelma Schoonmaker’s testimony last week. Writing in his autobiography, Powell couldn’t recall whether he’d co-written with Ingram in adapting W. Somerset Maughan’s story which, in his view, “defeated him; and his own good taste”.

For Powell The Magician was a naturalistic production, with its actual locations featuring Paris, Monte Carlo and villages around Nice, jarring with the more effectively gothic studio creations, especially Professor Haddo’s tower and the lighting from John Seitz all too bright for such a shadowy tale. Ingram had been inspired by German horror epics such as Nosferatu and Faust (there goes that man again) but it was Powell who eventually used German technicians to realise his expressionistic ambition in the Red Shoes and even The Small Back Room. Clearly, you learn as much from mistakes as from success and this film helped cement some key lessons in Powell’s mind which is why this film fits so well with the BFI’s Cinema Unbound, especially as I watched Colonel Blimp on 35mm immediately afterwards.

The Magician is undeniably a fun film though and is almost Todd Browning strange and proto-Universal odd. All begins artistically enough with sculptor Margaret Dauncey (Alice Terry) moulding a huge clay statue of Pan which is of such a scale that I really doubt she’ll be able to get it out of the room. Also present is Margaret's painter friend Susie Boyd (Gladys Hamer) who provides the first moments of light relief as she changes the title of an abstract painting from sunrise to sunset over the Seine.

Iván Petrovich and Alice Terry consider the nature of melodrama...

I was right about the scale of the work though for the clay suddenly cracks and the giant head falls onto Margaret threatening more than just her promising career. Her spine damaged only the state-of-the-art intervention of handsome surgeon Dr Arthur Burdon (Iván Petrovich) saves her with an onlooking doctor praising his skill as almost magical.

Also watching – really, really, wide-eyed – is Professor Haddo, who plans on actual magic, and more, with this most attractive of patients. The operating theatre is the strangest of places to pick up potential subjects for hypnotism and heart donation but it’s the early worm who catches the worm even though Margaret and Dr, Arthur soon begin a romance. Haddo meanwhile discovers the rare recipe for creating life in his local library of such things and makes his plans to, literally, steal Margaret’s heart.

After engineering a chance meeting in the park, Haddo then turns up at a visiting circus as the young couple along with Susie and her quirky pal (played by Michael Powell, who also plays a shaven-headed clown) watch a snake charmer. Haddo, has some words with the Indian, before picking up the snake and holding it to bite his hand, within seconds he makes the bite disappear, but the snake then bites and almost kills the charmer’s assistant. He’s either a genuine magician or a master of prestidigitation.

L'après-midi d'un faune à la BFI. Deux faunes en fait...

Haddo then makes a visit to the young woman’s apartment and proceeds to hypnotise her, using the completed head of her sculpture to present her with a vision of a pre-code Hell in which people seem to be doing exactly the kinds of things that got them sent there in the first place. He urges one especially lithely demonic, dancing faun (Hubert I. Stowitts, an American dancer at the Folies Bergère), to make his moves on Margaret who succumbs in ways that would dismay William Hays… Henry Lachman claims to have directed this saucy Sabbat section and it’s like a visit from a completely different film with no bearing on plot, just an excuse for sensationalism: yes, you guessed it, the future of cinema!

After all, do as thy wilt shall be the whole of the law as Aleister Crowley said and the occultist was certainly an influence on the production “…being quite a vogue among impressionable undergraduates…” according to Powell. Haddo was one of Crowley’s pseudonyms and he was clearly the inspiration for Maughan’s original character after the author met the mage in Paris in 1908 and took against him. In terms of Wegener’s portrayal, Powell was not alone in thinking the German lacked the Englishman’s wit as Crowley unsuccessfully filed an injunction to prevent the film’s premier in France. Lighten up Al… let them do as thy wilt man.

Back in the film, Margaret and her good Doctor plan to marry but on the morning of their ceremony, Arthur discovers that she has not only been whisked away by Crowley Haddo but has married him. Convinced that her will is being controlled, he begins to search Europe for them finally tracing them a year later to Monte Carlo where Haddo is using Margaret to somehow fix the odds at the gaming table presumably to fund his greater plan. Oh, he’s clever this one…

I watched Queen of Hearts (1949) just before, cards and magic on my mind...

Arthur and his friend Dr Porhoët (Firmin Gémier) set out to foil the Professor and the closing segment is full of classic horror tropes right down to a lightning-illuminated tower and an eager “Igor” played by Henry Wilson. It’s high camp and schlock horror but this is one of the places were that all began, missteps and all. James Whale certainly took notes and the influence can be seen in both Frankenstein and Dracula.

Wegener does get the job done, ham included, and Powell was certainly not impressed with saying his "one expression to indicate magical powers was to open his huge eyes even wider, until he looked about as frightened as a bullfrog." Terry also doesn’t always fit the mood but then a) she is in a hypnotic trance for half the film and b) that mood is a moving target in a story with so much range… from the sublime to the gore blimey as my Nan would say. Yet it is partly down to this very experience that Powell was able to manage such extremes with so much ease in Blimp and his other major works with Pressburger.

Before all that, Powell was to feature as comic character Cicero Simp in the Riviera Revels travelogues – called Travelaughs ha-ha! - directed by fellow Ingram alumni Harry Lachman. Two were screened before the main features, No. 9: Cold Feats (1927) and No. 10: Fauny Business (1927). Powell does all his own stunts and these are delightful snippets of a very British nature. It’s hard to underestimate the influence of “daft” on the great man’s work. 

And there is so much more cinematic magic to follow in this season of all seasons.

Mickey was taking notes.

*Lawrence Reid, Motion Picture News

My stash of The Magician home media.

The Archers origin… The Spy in Black (1939), BFI Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Since talkies took over the movies, I had worked with some good writers, but I had never met anything like this… Michal Powell, A Life in Movies

 

So, here it is, the first of the twenty films Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made together which would some of the finest ever released in Britain and beyond. Having seen A Matter of Life and Death (1946) on Monday introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker (Powell’s wife and a film editor of world-renown) and Scottish director Kevin Macdonald (Emeric’s grandson), it was interesting to watch and compare with a film bookending their Second World War collaborations both in terms of style, budget and viewpoint. It’s never darkest than before the dawn and colours of AMOLAD are contrasted by the bleak greys of this starker spy thriller released in August ’39 just weeks before the declaration of war on 1^st September.

 

After Powell’s first major feature, The Edge of the World, Alexander Korda offered him a contract at Denham Studios and put him to work on potential projects with limited appeal and budgets. The director’s experience on so-called quota quickies, such as the comedic Hotel Splendide (1932) and the business thriller Rynox (1932) – screened last Monday before AMOLAD - showed Powell could make the most of limited budgets and scripts and by this stage he was confident enough in his abilities to make the most of any opportunity even if it meant heading to Hollywood.

 

This project was based on a 1917 novel by J. Storer Clouston and a scenario from Roland Pertwee which did not impress Powell at all, cue a re-write which Korda’s co-producer, Irving Asher, also had his doubts about: “… someone is supposed to re-write the script; he has already messed everything up, transformed the masculine role into a feminine role, invented a few new characters…” A voice piped up announcing himself as the re-writer, Emeric Pressburger, who read out his notes “… about a film that had nothing to do with the original script…” as Powell told Bertrand Tavernier in an interview for Midi-Minuit Fantastique, October 1968. A slightly different sequence of events is described in his memoire.

 

Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson

He had stood Storer Clouston’s plot on its head and completely restructured the film…

 

Powell had already met with his star, Conrad Veidt, who was hard to impress to put it mildly, but Powell’s vision of his character as “… a man who has a fanatical conception of his work…” piqued him and was realised by Pressburger’s re-write. Korda agreed and the course was set for an adventure on the Western Isles only fifty miles as the gannet flies from Foula as Powell put it. Whilst Mickey had been making the quickies, Emeric had been scripting in Germany and other European productions, the two were no overnight success, they had learned their craft. Emeric had been hired by his fellow Hungarian “Alex” who, Powell felt sure, had manipulated the situation to get him involved in this film.

 

From separate directions writer and director imagined not only a fuller role for Veidt but also one that would allow Valerie Hobson to shine in her role as a double agent. Powell describes the four pulling the script together with Veidt and Hobson acting out script revisions on a daily basis and honing their narrative along with their working bond.  The film is remarkable for the treatment of The Enemy; even once the war had started, their German characters were always people even ones compelled by alien duty, and this can be found in everything from Colonel Blimp, Battle of the River Plate, One of Our Planes and more. How much more stirring to show the intelligence and dignity of the other side rather than just caricatures. The War Ministry didn’t always agree though.

 

Back in Spring ’39 though and hopes of peace were still present, the motivation for this film is therefore somewhere in what Powell described as Korda’s aim to establish Denham Studios as a ready-made propaganda unit for when war was inevitably declared. In doing so, Powell believed that he saved the British film industry.

 

The Old Man of Hoy

Location and place are very strong themes in The Archers work and Powell went up to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys and visited not just the Old Man of Hoy, as featured in the film, but also Storer Clouston to get as much information on the locale and the story as possible from the author. He also had a small team with him, “a wildcat filming unit” who could take not just reference shots but shoot atmospheric and establishing shots using doubles. The trip helped inform the set design of Vincent Korda – Alexander’s brother – who faithfully recreated the tight spaces of Hebridean buildings and enabled Powell’s sense of place to be supported on their tight budget.

 

The results are impressive still with Powell’s creation of an urgent and unsettling Isle of Hoy, with Veidt imperious and sensitive as the principled German U-Boat commander, Captain Hardt and Hobson magnetic the spy Fräulein Tiel masquerading as a schoolmistress and Hardt’s commander in this operation. Also good is Sebastian Shaw as the drunken and faithless Lt. Ashington who is willing to sell out the Royal Navy in revenge for his treatment. Hardt has little respect for this lack of professional loyalty but is set on leading a squad of U-boats to pick off dozens of Royal Navy ships in what could have been a pivotal moment for the war.

 

It's a tense film, set mostly in darkness and which has rich characters as well as many surprises in a twisty script that is tribute to Pressburger’s skill, a man Powell had been waiting for, a writer of novelistic vision and who could create spies and others with plenty of grey…

 

“There were close-ups of Conrad Veidt that were as good as any of eth German expressionist films. Veidt knew how to use the muscles of his face and eyes and I knew how to photograph them…”

 

Powell’s next film involved working with Veidt again on The Thief of Bagdad and, after that Contraband with Connie paired again with the remarkable Miss Hobson. Powell had learned his lessons well from Rex Ingram and he knew that filmmaking was teamworking, not just with his new writer but also with cast and crew. The Spy in Black was how it began and the films started to flow thick and fast as the war began and these alliances brought further fruit.

 

Of those who would feature again in Archers’ films, Marius Goring plays Hardt’s second in command, Bernard Miles plays a German hotelier and Esma Cannon has a bit part as a Scottish lassie.

 

We watched a 35mm print of the BFI restoration, supported by the BBFC, that looked fabulous on the big screen. You can also watch the film for free on the BFIPlayer whilst details of the full programme of the Powell and Pressburger season is on the BFI site: a Season of Seasons! Four films for me so far and dozens more to follow, see you on the Southbank.

Of time in this city… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Eight

 

Is an interest in silent film nostalgia for a time before we were born? Let’s ask Albert Camus shall we, who said that: A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. So, the fascination is more in understanding the working parts as much as the feeling and in the historical, creative circumstances for the filmmakers and film audience alike. 

 

Camus also said that the artist must contact the reality of his or her time, wresting from it something timeless and universal so what we are searching for is people who have done achieved this for their time and to look beyond the ludicrous concept of “dated” in assessing the content and the context.

 

Succeeding today was William de Mille who came up with some very pertinent questioning of his own in Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) in which Thomas Meighan’s Conrad has something of a mid-life crisis and tries to regress to childhood. So, not too far off Camus’ concepts but in a more homely way which is frankly more on my level and that of Thomas Meighan, pretty well-educated but in pharmacology not philosophy. Thomas plays the titular Conrad, who a few years after the First World War is living in comfort, supported by his faithful valet, Dobson (Charles Ogle) and wondering what it’s all for. Conrad is jaded and decides the best way to reconnect with his zest for life is to revisit his childhood by calling three old friends back to the cottage they used to spend summer in.

 

It's all too much for Conrad - he's watching a Pat and Patachon...

Ah, but you can’t just go back Conrad, as his pals quickly tell him but he’s not listening and decides to track down his first love, with future director and Mr Louise Brooks, A. Edward Sutherland playing him in flashback with Kathlyn Williams playing the older woman Mrs. Adaile, who gently rebuffed him. Conrad tracks her down to Italy and tries to rekindle their previous affection; can reliving young love work for either?

 

No spoilers, but Conrad is to discover that you can over-analyse and that sometimes you need to just stop thinking and simply engage with “Life” to find that chance of happiness. It’s a perfect little fable and Meighan is his usual self, intelligent, sensitive and always watchable.

 

Donald Sosin accompanied with the air of a man completely in touch with his creative consciousness (and moral compass).

 

Also connecting with the timeless and universal and in doing so creating it, was Daan van den Hurk whose emphatic new score for Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jnr (1924) made me enjoy 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. After an opening prologue including the earworm main theme, the music chased around with Buster in the quieter early stages only fully coming to life when his projectionist’s dreaming begins. From then on, it’s 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.

 

Daan reveals Buster’s own symphonic approach as the film and the music crescendos with stirring strings and full-bodied brass – and tha’ knows, I love a bit o’ brass as Hindle Wakes’ Fanny Hawthorn might say. It was one of those uplifting orchestral moments Le Giornate does so well and congratulations must go to Daan, the full orchestra (70+ players?) as well as Ben Palmer who conducted so well. I was up in the Gods again but, by ‘eck the sound filled the space so well. A thrilling sonic adventure all round!

 

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 leave ‘em/us wanting more!

Charlie and Monta Bell

 

Before Buster there was Charlie with a film I’ve not seen before, The Pilgrim (1923) which featured Chaplin’s 1958 score arranged by Timothy Brock and performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone as conducted by Ben Palmer.

 

It’s a film full of Chaplin’s movement and impish humour with heart as his escaped convict steals a pastor’s clothes as he bathes and then gets mistaken for the new vicar and has to follow through as the citizens are so friendly. This was Chaplin’s final film with long-term collaborator and paramour, Edna Purviance and once again her character provides the key to Chaplin’s redemption as a former cell-mate recognises him and wants in on “the action”. It’s an old argument but there’s enough comedic violence and pointed situations to make political points and some evangelicals were also upset by The Life of Charlie. Who knows what modern US politicians would have made of the closing sequence on the US/Mexican border… or what their fundamentalist Christian brethren would. Chaplin was another able to create something timeless and universal out of the realities of his time.

 

Marlene by the wall next to Harry Piel.

A Marlene Surprise!

 

I need to pay more attention as I had no idea that our Marlene was going to feature in Harry Piel’s Sein größter Bluff (The Big Bluff) (1927) nor that he was going to play himself and his brother as well as write, direct and produce. Nobody likes a show-off Harry apart from Marlene that is.

 

This was a lively adventure which featured car chases filmed in the South of France, double crosses and quadruple bluffs which make me extra thankful for being woken up by my esteemed colleague Ms Hutchinson of Worthing just as Giornate fatigue kicked in and I was able to re-join the film as it stepped up a gear in search of stolen diamonds with a hoard of gangsters chasing it as well as the twin Piels. Over the Festival we’ve seen Harry advance his work to such a level of polished populist filmmaking that this had so many elements of a sixties caper movie; he wasn’t Pabst or Murnau but as this 76^th film shows, he was a skilled crowd-pleaser, no matter whatever came after 1932…

 

Dietrich often played down her silent films not wishing to be deemed as too old school but by 1927 she was beginning to feature more and here she plays Yvette, “a ‘lady’ who puts her intellectual – and other – qualities exclusively into the service of worthwhile enterprises”, in this case acting to steal the jewels before her rivals can. She’s a perfect fit for a Lang-type super spy/secret agent and stands out in her scenes for poised screen energy. Having just watched A Touch of Evil I can see how she refined this persona of intelligence and bold sexuality. The perfect fit for Harry’s anti-hero and twin heroes with floppy fringes and fast cars: the name’s Piel, Harry Piel.

 

Accompaniment was from Masterclass student Timothy Rumsey who did a splendid job, I look forward to hearing more in future!

 

Madeleine Renaud and Maurice Touzé

I Married the Sea, Part Deux - Vent Debout [The Headwind] (1923)

 

After the French fishermen of Pêcheur d’Islande (screened on Tuesday) gave their life to the Atlantic Ocean, Jacques Averil (Léon Mathot) finds himself drawn to the sea to rebuild his life after his father ruins the family business and commits suicide. Viewed as a part-timer by the tough nuts on the fishing boat, he asserts his authority through violence emerging as top sea dog and winning grudging respect. This maritime Fight Club does move beyond the sea and there are many turbulent times on land as a potential fortune to be made from fossil fuels presents itself.

 

After being flung into an alcoholic depression after the accidental death of the ship’s cabin boy, Guillot (Maurice Touzé), Jacques meets Marie Richard (Madeleine Renaud) begins to find his legs on land again. So, my headline isn’t entirely appropriate, will he divorce the sea and marry a human? And, will he be able to avoid financial ruin from the land-based sharks aiming to drag him down?

 

Meg Morley accompanied with the smooth transitions we’ve come to expect and melodies for drama in all weathers and surfaces!

 

So, returning to the questions at the top; why exactly do I write this blog? Well it’s an attempt to capture the feeling of what has been screened and the experience of the location, audience and accompaniment for the screening. It’s a diary, one featuring well over 1000 screenings now and which evolves over time and circumstance. Like any diary it’s a discipline and I only keep on because I enjoy trying to that slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art…  I hope you do too and thank you so much to everyone who has read so far!

 

See you next year for #GCM43!

 

 

The Queen of Le Giornate Blogging is, of course, Pamela Hutchinson and if you haven’t already caught her daily reports on Silent London head over there right now!

The orchestra and crowds pack the Verdi for this year's finale.

Quirks, strangeness and charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Seven

And so, to penultimate day and, as the minstrel sang, “I’m still standing…” or rather sitting, a lot, in the dark, watching. Today there was charm Sonia Delaunay’s innovative shaping and it was approaching midnight when Mae Murray moved to a convent, taught children, had her ankles runover by truck and, oh my, was inspired to take up her bee-stung lips and walk! If there was such a thing as a typical day at Le Giornate, this wouldn’t have been it, at all.

 

So, let’s start at the very ending as that’s a very good place to start as dozens of cinemutophiles (TM P. Hutchinson of Worthing) staggered out of the Verdi trying to process what we’d just seen with Circe, the Enchantress (1924) which progressed from a saucy mythical entree, Circe/Cecilie Brunner (Murray) turning men into pigs (I know, right?), through nightclub low-jinks with her gaggle of male admirers, to the aforementioned redemption sequence. It was undoubtedly great fun and considering it was a lost film for so long, a miracle of mythical proportions that it exists at all especially as it shows us so much of why Mae was a true star.

 

While she is more than capable of inhabiting the role of an enchantress ancient and modern, we also get a chance to see her dance as well as pout and she can dance having, as Artemis Willis puts it in the catalogue notes, pioneered the path from Ziegfeld Girl to Hollywood star. There’s one number influenced by modern ballet – say Denishawn or even Isadora Duncan – then a dance with a jazz ensemble. This is American cabaret and there’s even a moment when Cecilie jumps into a water feature in the club and her men follow her. There’s one gay character, not even coded and there’s William Haines too who always has a twinkle!

 

Interesting that this festival has feature both Billy and his friend Eleanor Boardman who won the "New Faces of 1922" contest and travelled to Hollywood together. He’s good as Cecilie’s most passionately lost paramour surrounded by harder hearts in the group all still unable to resist their lady’s allure. It’s only when surgeon Peter Van Martyn (James Kirkwood, Sr.) arrives on the scene that things change as he’s got the moral strength to stand apart and Cecilie finds that very attractive.

 

The film has some ten minutes missing but the sense remains even if the final turn-around is a jolt. It matters not as Murray the Enchantress is in full bloom. Willis quotes Florence Lawrence writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, “The story…gives the piquant star a vivid and chameleon-like characterization. She is alternately the spoiled and petted darling of a circle of rich adorers, and the wistful woman, beseeching attention from the one worthwhile man in the whole of her acquaintance.”

 

Accompaniment was from a spirited trio comprising Günter Buchwald (piano and violin), Aaron van Oudenallen (sax and woodwind) plus Frank Bockius who I believe is a percussionist and without whom no GCM 42 day is complete!

 

Peter C. Leska, Mady Christians and Diana Karenne

Eine Frau Von Format (1928) proved to be the most delightful of any of the Ruritanian stream, with a superb performance from Mady Christians which caused my hardened heart to melt with a pitch perfect performance of wit and intelligence, timing and a smile that charms as it disarms. Christians enjoyed a long and successful career including as Priscilla Queen of the Deserters in The Runaway Princess (1929) and many more. She’s got such presence and whilst obviously not a stunner in the manner of Russian diva, Diana Karenne, she draws the eye with expressiveness and energy.

 

She plays Dschilly Zileh Bey the ambassador from Türkisien who has been sent to negotiate the acquisition of an island from Princess Petra of Silistria (Karenne, who it was good to see again after the rediscoveries of her work screened at this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Bologna). In this she must compete with the ambassador from neighbouring Illyria, Count Géza von Tököly (Peter C. Leska) and we’re into classic romcom territory from the get-go. The Count tries to woo Princess Petra and moves her reception forward a day so that he can be alone with the Princess, but Dschilly responds by reversing that and leaving him to think on his feet as guests arrive in their dozens to rain on his private parade. This is only the beginning of a light-hearted competition that demonstrates its operatic origins as it makes light of the diplomatic love triangle, if that’s what it is?

 

In their catalogue essay, Amy Sargeant and Jay Weissberg quote a positive review from La Dépêche (02.08.1930) “It’s a lively, graceful work, with all the colour of Viennese operetta and in a thoroughly modern vein. It takes place in the midst of enchanting locales, on a marvellous island that bears a strong resemblance to those of Lake Maggiore, and the perfume of the Borromean Islands wafts ceaselessly in the luminous air.”

 

Meg Morley provided her own musical travelogue with accompaniment that was as airily in touch with the film’s tone as well as location in time and space. There were some sumptuous recurring motifs and the playing generated the same good humour as Mady on screen, in terms of all-round engagement a festival highlight!

Hope Hampton

Now, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style and for sure Sonia Delaunay’s stands out a mile. Here we had a collection of short films showing her design as well as her influence in the case of Ballet Mécanique (1924), that classic of cubist/Dada cinema from Fernand Léger, a member of the Delaunay circle, along with Dudley Murphy. Then there was striking haute couture in two-colour Kodachrome which highlighted model and actress Hope Hampton’s shock of red hair as much as the designs from Vionnett, Poiret et al. Hampton was in The Gold Diggers (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), The Truth About Women (1924) and fair few others into the talkies.

 

Others shorts from Germaine Dulac and Marcel Duchamp were shown along with L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (1926) directed by Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay and The Delaunay Keller-Dorian Colour Test (1928). All of which made my chance meeting with some friends in Venice and our visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection make artistic sense of the last eight days. Cinema was part of the artistic innovation of the early part of the last century and there was a boldness and dynamism which still strikes as “new” and challenging in 2023.

 

Masterclass student Andrea Goretti provided artful accompaniment! Welcome on board.

 

Now for the quickfire round:

 

The slapstick special today included Modern Love (1929) which gave a rare chance to hear Charley Chase talk, the film was an early sound film with a mix of sound and music with title cards before we get to dialogue. Charley was in his usual mess as his dress designing wife (Kathryn Crawford) has had to keep their relationship secret and then gets an offer of work in Paris with a new customer, François Renault played by the super Jean Hersholt. It’s a fine mess but you know our hero will win through and it’ll be a lot of fun in the process. It must be said that this hybrid format was not that popular at the time and the recording quality of the voices was not hi-fidelity, age or original process/both.

 

The Oath of the Sword (1914) a story of a Japanese family whose son goes to study in the USA and who pledges an oath with his beloved to return on his return. Time passes, as does he with flying colours but all this Americanisation is as nothing when he returns to find she has married a US airman… cue the sword and that oath…

 

Harlem Sketches (1935) directed by Leslie Bain was a slice of cinéma verité showing the black community of Harlem in New York City. The title cards talked of their “miserable existence” and there is much poverty in evidence as well as defiance and humour. The film was banned in some American states, including Ohio, whose censorship commission turned down the print: “Reason for Rejection: Showing Negroes of Harlem banded together in groups carrying banners displaying Communistic ideas. Advocates equal social rights for Negroes.”

 

That future the artists in Europe could see wasn’t coming anytime soon to certain communities, was it?

 

Mady makes her point.