Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande (2022), BFI Blu-ray and on general release

 

You don’t really think about the great era of black British music. We weren’t allowed one to be honest…

Craig Charles

 

There’s some music that’s just bigger than music and you think to yourself, why isn’t this band huge?

Jim James, My Morning Jacket

 

I love the way Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s documentary begins, as various talking heads from the last few decades of music making, Mark Ronson, DJ Maseo of De la Soul, Cut Chemist and a dozen more talk passionately about Cymande as the band, largely in low, shadowy lighting in a modern studio, start playing the transcendent Dove from their first album released in 1972. The longer the music plays and the more plaudits pass the band’s way you’re totally convinced that this is a musical injustice of the highest order: what happened, we need to know. Then we start to meet the band and the screen fills with sunshine…

Cymande are certainly getting it back, especially those who left the music business even if two did become successful lawyers. We all love a happy ending and this documentary in itself forms part of that whilst also explaining just how such a talented group of musicians came to slip through the cracks in the UK even as they were playing Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theatre and supporting Al Green in the USA where their first album peaked at No. 85 on the Billboard Top LPs and No. 24 on the Soul Albums and singles, The Message and Bra were hits, with the former Top 50. They headlined their next tour in support of their second album, riding higher and higher.

 

Patrick Patterson on guitar playing the epic Dove.

We’re full up with noisy foreigners and we don’t like it.

Middle-aged white man on the street, interviewed with his wife for TV sometime in 1972.

 

Sadly, this success was not reflected at home and the documentary is clear on just why that might have been with clips of various racist comments and quotes from Enoch Powell illustrating the prevailing mood of some in the mid-70s when the youth of the Windrush generation, of which the group was a part, were coming of age and starting to make their own way culturally. Growing up in the 70s, not only were there very few British black music artists neither Liverpool nor Everton had any black players until Howard Gayle from Toxteth became the Red’s first in 1977.

Home-grown black musicians were similarly not given the same respect as those from America or Jamaica until groups like Liverpool’s The Real Thing showed that soul wasn’t limited to Detroit or Chicago. In the US, black music was far more established, as it now is in the UK, and easier to categorise, sell and find a market for. In London there was Osibisa, a Ghanaian- Caribbean-British Afro-rock band founded in the late 1960s who’s music was broadly within the progressive rock banner including album covers from Roger Dean which helped them break the top 20 album charts.

 

England was not simply the mother country but the place to go to maximise our potential.

Patrick Patterson, Guitar and Co-Composer

Cymande in 1972

Cymande had more in common with the out-there jazz funk of the Americans though and perhaps it was easier to market “African” or “World music” than music that took so many influences? As the band’s website says their music has been described as “spiritual… versatile…smooth, sweet and very different” also Nyah-Rock, Afro-Rock, even Calypso Rock but, as they say, “Cymande is just simply Cymande”: a mix of culture and sound, truly progressive.

 

The band originally split up in 1975 after a third album failed to take off home or abroad and the logistics of touring the huge expanse of America became too much to bear… without home business to enable them to balance. TV producers didn’t want to provide them with a platform in the same way they would for Earth Wind and Fire or The Jackson Five. Soul from Brixton was too difficult to accept, Americans were something else. Why don’t I see more of me on the TV? asked Patrick Patterson.

 

The band’s parents were well educated, professional people but their dreams for their children and themselves very quickly vanished after they arrived and then as their boys grew up. But they were going to do something and in 1969 neighbours Patrick Patterson on guitar and Steve Scipio on bass, also the main songwriters, formed the band. Mike "Bami" Rose was the first core member to join followed by Sam Kelly, then his cousin Derek Gibbs on saxophone, with Bami bringing in Rastafarian Pablo Gonsales on congas. Ray King sang with the touring band but, after meeting producer, Joe couldn’t make the recording so they brought in Joey Dee and then was in return replaced with Jimmy Lindsay.

The name Cymande came from a well-known calypso song; the band were tipping a hat to their roots whilst looking forward and into space…

Steve Scipio

All were self-taught musicians with an original style and it shows with Scipio’s five-string bass playing right at the hard of the musical movement and Patterson’s guitar fills exactly what the sound needs as the irresistible percussion mix of Kelly and Gonsales creates and rhythm that is the lead line for the song, often aided by the other players on congas. This is dance music for the head in ways that are now very much in vogue and yet fifty years ago didn’t exist in this way, this mixture of inspiration and innovation. Also, joy. Cymande is heart-felt and sincere, music to make you feel and think too.

 

One of The Sacred Crates of Hip-hop and before that Disco… House too.

 

Then came the band’s first rediscovery with America once again playing its part after a generation of DJs from Disco to hip-hop discovered and sampled their music. From Studio 54, through the 80s and eventually to major artists such as De la Soul to The Fugees, which must have been a welcome validation as well as financial spur. In the UK Rare Groove and Acid Jazz was developing momentum and the likes of Jazzy B of Soul II Soul and the Ruthless Rap Assassins took inspiration and samples from Cymande. Black music in Britain was maturing and now mainstream at least in the dancehalls and there were just too many acts breaking though – grooving on the shoulders of giants like Cymande.

 

The late Pablo Gonsales enjoying his daily dose of sunshine

By this stage, both Patterson and Scipio had become lawyers, what better way to represent their community and to do their parents proud, whilst other band members had either retrained or carried on in music, George Kelly kept on drumming – Tom Jones, Gary Moore, Robert Plant, Ben E King! and also became a successful sculptor, whilst Bami joined reggae giants Aswad, Courtney Pine, Paul Simon and has played with Jools Holland since 1999.

Derek Gibbs went a long time without playing his bass and Pablo Gonsales on congas and keyboards kept on searching. Sadly, he passed away in December 2020 but he adds so much to their music and this documentary, philosophical and just such a warm intelligent man. He was involved again, along with a rehearsing at speed, Mr Gibbs as the continued interest from artists in the UK and USA sparked their first reunion in 2011 and an album then followed in 2015. Now the band are touring again playing the Shepherds Bush Empire on 20^th April – I’ve got my tickets and they’re going to sell out what is likely to be one of the gigs of the year.

 

I’m still trying to play the perfect note, who knows, one day I may do that… Bami

Bami aiming for that perfect note.

 

Well, I’m going to find out for myself in Shepherds Bush and in the meantime I urge you to see this life-affirming film, listen to the music and buy this Blu-ray. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think… but never to late to Get it Back!

 

Special funky features:

 Presented in High Definition

 Steve Scipio and Patrick Patterson Q&A (2023, 34 mins): the founding members of Cymande are interviewed by journalist Jason Solomons

Extended clips and deleted scenes (2022, 14 mins): a selection of clips chosen by director Tim Mackenzie-Smith, including the genesis of Bra; Cut Chemist listens to Cymande; DJ Hollywood Bra rap; Jazzy Jay Cymande mix; Ruthless Rap Assassins (extended feature); Cymande’s school days

 Black Music Party (c1975, 7 mins): rare footage of Cymande performing in the 1970s

Original theatrical trailer

For the first pressing only there’s a fabulous, illustrated booklet with essays by Kevin Le Gendre and Greg Wilson; The Treatment by director Tim Mackenzie-Smith and an essay on Cymande’s roots by founding members Patrick Patterson and Steve Scipio; notes on the special features and credits.

So, pre-order from the BFI Shop with out delay and book to see the film on the Southbank today!

You can also order the re-released first three albums on vinyl and download via Bandcamp, trust me, it will change your day!

Good luck with finding an early 70's pressing at a good price! 

*Also on BFI Player Subscription, iTunes and Amazon Prime.

Dorothy and Clara go filming. Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley/The Wild Party (1929)

She was too tough for Hollywood most of her movies were hits which Hollywood loves but she didn’t modify her looks or ways or manner and as a woman directing movies she was looked on by most as a freak and as that kind of woman she was accepted less and less. 

George Cukor on Arzner’s eventual departure from Hollywood

 

Before we get to Clara we had an entertaining and revelatory panel discussion of her director Dorothy Arzner’s silent films hosted by Bryony Dixon, BFI National Archive curator and featuring season curator Caroline Cassin, provider of the quotation above, and film historian Pamela Hutchinson also of Silent London.

 

Arzner was the missing link of female directors in Hollywood, bridging the considerable gap between late period Lois Webber and the emergence of Ida Lupino in a hostile environment that treated the idea of female directors almost as a novelty. She was, however, a “novelty” who made hit pictures with all of her four silent films being successful followed by her run up until the Joan Crawford vehicle, The Bride Wore Red (1937). She made just two films after this, including Dance, Girl Dance (1940) – screening later this month – partly because, as others had found, especially after the passing of Irving Thalberg, there was no escaping the displeasure of noted homophobe Louis B Meyer.

 

How Arzner survived so long is illustrated not only by her run of success and sheer professionalism, but also by her privileged background. Unlike, say, Billy Haines, who paid the Hollywood price for being openly involved in what Joan Crawford called the strongest marriage in Hollywood with Jimmie Shields, Arzner did not have to care what others thought of her sexual preference – she had a forty-year relationship with dancer/choreographer Marion Morgan – firstly because she was of independent financial means and secondly because she was a force of nature determined to be who she wanted to be; and that was very profitable for the powers that be. In fairness to Billy though, he made a hugely successful second career, aided by customers like Joan, Marion Davies and Eleanor Boardman. Joan also stayed friends with Dorothy and got her work directing her in Pepsi commercials later on.

 

Arzner described her time filme editing as the happiest of her working life... 35 films in one year alone.

Caroline Cassin explained the director’s background and how she gave up on her study of medicine and joined the medical corps in World War One before being drawn towards the emerging art of the cinema as a force for social good. With all the confidence of her background she started working her way up the chain in movies from a disastrous start as a typist to script and film editing with her meticulous eye for detail and inventiveness gaining her big break cutting stock footage of bullfighting in Spain with Valentino miming around in California for Blood and Sand. Further editing work followed as her discipline was recognised and she was kept very busy by the likes of James Cruze and others.

 

Arzner was “very game” as Hutchinson says, learning how to play with the boys, working out how to be Hollywood’s female director of big films, being on set dressed as a cowboy during The Covered Wagon and as a sailor for Old Ironsides, she had to prove herself theatrically that she knew what she was doing. Even Frances Marion – script-writer supreme – struggled with directing but Arzner was happy to take the leadership role ignoring expectations of both sexes.

 

Cassin says she was in a very privileged position an allowance from her father that enabled her to take more risks and pick and choose in her career. Also, as Hutchinson points out, previous women filmmakers from Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Webber, Nell Shipman… had been married and this helped them to both fit into the heterosexual film business model and to fund productions. After divorcing their men, all three struggled to maintain their position, not so for Dorothy.

 

The final step to directing followed an enormous bluff from Arzner when she announced to Walter Wanger, the head of Paramount's New York studio, that she would have to change from Paramount to Columbia in order to do the work she wanted. Duly spooked Wanger gave her the script for the now-lost Fashions for Women (1927) featuring Ester Ralston in her first starring role, which emerged a hit enabling a repeat, Ten Modern Commandments (1927), with Ralston and Neil Hamilton, and a further film, Manhattan Cocktail (1928), with Nancy Carrol and Richard Arlen of which the splendid surviving final minute was shown, an array of silhouetted dancers with dynamic montage beyond, Skyline Dance by Slavko Vorkapich.

 

Her third silent film, and the only one largely surviving, was Get Your Man (1927), with Clara Bow before she was given the chance to direct the studio’s first talkie again with Bow, The Wild Party (1929).  The roots of Clara’s success in The Wild Party can be seen in the relationship she established with Arzner during the making of Get Your Man (1927) and there are some similarities between the films notably the freedom of expression the director encouraged in her vibrant star and the trust is clear to see as in both silent and sound, Clara is at her best; an emoting powerhouse making the most even of some of the bum lines in The Wild Party. How good do you have to be to overcome lines that even Frederick March struggled with?

Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley

 

The BFI blurb described Get Your Man as a triumphant celebration of female sexuality and it’s hard to disagree watching this precious 35mm recovery/restoration: it’s not quite complete with two reels missing but the key moments are intact and others are covered by new intertitles to illustrate the humour and vibrancy of the story and Bow’s supernatural energies.

 

It begins in a modern fairy-tale France, with a young rich boy pledging to marry a young rich girl when they are both of age and soon we fast-forward 17 years to see the grown boy, Robert as played by Charles “Buddy” Rogers who had romanced Clara in the epic Wings, released in the summer of 1927. His father looks admiringly at the young woman, Simone de Villeneuve (Josephine Dunn) who clearly meets expectations of class and society:

 

She will make a fine wife, son. Imagine an innocent young girl… in an age when there aren’t any!

Buddy and Bow

 

Oh boy, clearly no one is expecting Clara Bow to arrive in this story. And arrive, she duly does as Nancy, a socialite on holiday in Paris at the same time that Robert has been sent there to collect the family pearls that father, Duc de Bellecontre (Josef Swickard) has sent to be re-strung for his son’s impending nuptials with Simone (Josephine Dunn) and tout Les de Villeneuves! The rom-com starts as Nancy nicks Robert’s taxi, then they meet again in the perfumery – cue astonished Clara close-up and winsome Buddy smile – before chance throws them together in the Wax Museum.

 

This sequence was choreographed by Marion Morgan, is a delight as Nancy is confused by life-like automatons and impressed with the tableaux vivant of Joan of Arc at the coronation of Charles VII; it’s all a bit more impressive than Madame Taussauds’ in Blackpool! Sadly, the whole sequence does not survive but there’s enough left in this charming build up to the inevitable spark with Robert. They meet as Robert crouches over, apparently part of a scene of murder before looking at Nancy and we see that “sweet Santa!” look from Bow – “it must be fate!”. He knows the museum off by heart and so offers to give her a guided tour, even though his memory is not quite as good as he promised.

 

This is where the film has the missing reels and the restoration used new title cards to fill the gap before part four resumes the moving pictures. Essentially it’s Nancy and fate versus the patriarchy as she has to battle not just Robert’s feeling of responsibility but the best laid plans of the Duc and Simone’s father, Marquis de Villeneuve (Harvey Clark); that’s three men vs one woman, they don’t stand a chance.

 

Clara waits to make a call

As Pamela said in the introduction, the film zips along at some pace and whilst it knows you know exactly where it’s going it contrives to entertain and surprise all the same! The ending is satisfactory in all the right ways and whilst a point has been made for the romantic audience they’ve also seen the might of Clara’s pluck blow away every obstacle and dusty preconception. Arzner enables her cast but especially Clara whose exuberance and expression does rather overshadow Buddy’s reliance on his good looks; he’s a charmer, but she’s a charmer who can act and rightly Dorothy gives her the screen time to show exactly what she can do.

Variety (12 Oct. 1927) described this picture as an ‘all-woman production’ with script from Hope Loring and Alice Brand Leahy, with choreographer Morgan and business manager Henrietta Cohn. It illustrates that there was a marketing benefit in Arzner’s position with the majority of filmgoers also “all-women”.

  

Meg Morley, “all-talented” herself, completed the experience with Clara-like energy and invention of her own with her modern-day jazz sensibilities playing catch and chase with the film’s rhythms and spirit. Meg enhances every film she accompanies and I was almost encouraged into an aisle-side Charleston by my daughter! This spirit lives on and Our Beth is keen to find out more…

 

 

The Wild Party (1929)

 

In Silent Women – Pioneers of Cinema, Francesca Stephens describes how Arzner brought a unique sensibility to the development of female characters – not just a subversion of the all-pervading male gaze but a presentation of believable and real personas. This could hardly be more apparent than in the opening scenes of The Wild Party as Clara Bow and her mates clown around in the dorm, relaxed and thoroughly modern.

 

Clara was a kinetic actress though and to enable her full range of expression Arzner devised the boom microphone, getting her sound man to lash the mic to a broom in order to allow both artists and camera to move more freely. So, rather than hover nervously within range of a static mic, Clara is free to run wild and gives a compelling and genuine performance and if she was scared or distracted by the microphone you wouldn’t know. Both Fredric March and the under-used Marceline Day join in the general over-enunciation of this period so cruelly lampooned in Singing in the rain.

 

Clara with Marceline Day as Bo-Peep

Clara plays Stella Ames, the loudest and most liked gal in her dorm of the all-girl Winston College. She is, as has been said elsewhere, very like Clara Bow or at least the Clara we think we know - bubbly, flirty, sassy and never someone to let a good party get in the way of study. One of the most under-rated actresses of the era, Bow was an emoting wonder able to hover between tears and smiles all in one moment of unconscious flow and here Arzner was able to harness this all in a sound context. And the voice? Pretty good as it goes no trace of Brooklyn to my Anglo-ears and clear diction that sounds more relaxed and natural than some of her fellow actors including Mr March.

 

In fairness Arzner clearly established a relaxed working environment and the antics in the dorm are naturalistic and familiar with banter and japes a-plenty. With the exception of her best pal, Helen Owens (Shirley O'Hara), chained to her desk studying hard and aiming high, the others are keen on a good time. There’s a Babs (Adrienne Dore) – there had to be! – and a gaggle of wise-crackin’, nail-paintin’, gum-chewin’ pals who generally treat schooling as that dreary period of obligation sandwiched between the hangover and the hair of the dog: Mazie (Alice Adair), Thelma (Kay Bryant), Gwen (Marguerite Cramer) and more.

 

Balanced against this is the strait-laced Faith Morgan (Marceline Day), something like the Head Girl who makes no secret of her disdain for the 24-hour party people. But then there’s the college creep, Eva Tutt (Joyce Compton) who’ll split on anyone if she thinks she’ll benefit. Given the girl’s lifestyles, Eva will find plenty of tales to tell and she listens well to Stella’s story of accidentally climbing into the wrong bed bunk on the train returning from vacation. The bunk is already occupied by a handsome man and the two narrowly avoid reputational damage.

 

Fredric March and Clara Bow

However, it turns out this man is Professor James 'Gil' Gilmore (Fredric March) the new anthropology teacher and queue rom-com friction between attracted opposites. Then there’s a genuinely unpleasant sequence in which the girls are harassed by a group of toughs who proceed to kidnap Stella with who knows what intention. The other girls alert Gil who runs off after the car cutting across the country roads to intervene and rescue the distressed dame. The relieved couple soon fall into each other’s arms but back in class it’s business as usual and Stella resumes her partying ways… the film isn’t quite ready to succumb to narrative convention just yet.

 

OK, the story is standard fare with some cringe moments relating to “savages” but what makes it stand out is the focus on the women – the men are almost incidental and surely this is one of the few films of this period that would pass the Bechdel test? It’s about love and loyalty and all the genuine feeling is between the women whether it’s Faith’s realisation of Stella’s goodness or the latter’s unselfish and steadfast love for her friend Helen.

 

It’s another grand showcase for Bow’s star power and she delivers, punching her way into the sound era with conviction. In the end it would be external factors that curtailed her career but she shone so brightly and her director did right by her here and in their silent film. Who knows what could have been had they carried on working together… Clara Bow was made for the Thirties, Pre-Code, Screwball… she had it all. Unlike some Clara clearly had no problem whatsoever with working for a female director and it showed!

 

Vic-Tok… The Story of Victorian Film, BFI talk with Bryony Dixon

 

 

We can only strive to realize, in some dim measure, the fascination which those pictured ribbons of celluloid will exercise upon the eyes and minds of future Londoners – let us say, at some remote epoch, when the throne of Great Britain will be occupied by a monarch of whom we can form no conception, under social conditions which may differ widely from those existing at the present day.

 

Canadian scientist, Joseph Miller Barr, 1897 concerning film of Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee*

 

Well Joseph, here we were 127 years later, for a spectacular show and tell from BFI archivist Bryony Dixon who has just published a book on Victorian cinema which starts in 1896 and ends in 1901, the year of Queen Victoria’s death. It’s a remarkable period and one which in the presence of such expertise, suddenly bristles with modernity and commercial opportunity. The new media of the time was not so unlike out own and Bryony made a convincing case for parallels between Tik-Tok – short films, sometime silent, often with music – with the 60-second high-impact and content rich output of ground-breaking Victorians.

 

Everything was fresh and competition was high with William KL Dickson, making great PR out of filming the 1900 Grand National in Aintree, riding a fast horse-drawn cab to Lime Street, catching the express to London Euston, developing the film on route and screening it at the Palace Theatre at 11.10pm in the evening. How fast do you want your sports news? This must have seemed so exciting and ground-breaking at the time, and it was: projected media in the age of steam speed.

 

Dickson, Scottish by reputation but Liverpudlian by birth had worked with Thomas Edison in America and, frustrated by the great copyright-hoarders focus on the nickelodeon, broke free of his contract to escape to the projecting future as it was opening up in Europe. He had an eye for news and wanted to make his own way even differentiating his film stock from that of his ever litigious former employer.

 

A detail from Launch of the Worthing Lifeboat (1898), it looks stunning on a proper screen

Clearly, the invention and appetite for innovation of the late Victorian age was so intense, we’ve spent the last 120 years just trying to catch up which is exactly why Bryony Dixon’s book, The Story of Victorian Film is so vital especially after her work leading the restoration of hundreds of films from their original materials over recent years. Bryony decided that transfers to video and other early digital media would not be good enough and showed a number of examples, in particular Dickson’s Launch of the Worthing Lifeboat (1898), a staged rescue for the camera of which showed the huge difference in depth of field, clarity and content between the decades old copies and the restoration from the negative: A vista which even in freezeframe simply invited you back to 1897, as silent waves crashes on pebbled shore and the locals watched as lifeboatmen rescued a volunteer even as he had to be dragged back into frame.

 

These restored films had formed the basis of The Great Victorian Picture Show at the BFI IMAX during LFF in 2019 and almost everything is now available to view on the BFI Player: our national heritage from these white-hot early years, a step into immersive Victorian cinema that is still so fresh and so familiar.

 

The book is very much the companion and guide to these films and is designed, as Bryony stressed, not only as an accessible and entertaining read in itself but also as a guide to resources now available and which require further academic study. There were questions even from the samples shown in tonight’s talk and, as with archaeologists who leave at least 10% of each dig for their successors, so the BFI’s whole project has raised more questions than answers.

 

Dixon split the films thematically in lose groups that show the breadth of Victorian film and she covered about half of those featured in the book with examples and explanations tonight:

 

Children Dancing to a Barrel Organ (1898)

Actualities and News including Dickson's Grand National Mar 24th, 1900. Bryony’s scouring of the archives and contemporary catalogues makes for fascinating reading with the majority of films being news-based at this time. Does the public’s base fascination drive visual technology? This was certainly the case with Wilkinson’s films of the Boer War which even though they mostly lacked the action he sought, showed those at home the conditions in which their friends and relatives were fighting and dying.

 

Street Life Bryony screened Children Dancing to a Barrel Organ (1898), a marvellous film shot near Kings Cross – an area I walked through on to the BFI, these locations feel so familiar in style as much as atmosphere. It’s not known if these young performers were professional but as Bryony pointed out, that’s part of the investigation that needs to follow the restoration.

 

There was time for Panoramas and Phantom Rides – again the fascination with place and the window on humanity only distanced by time and fashion – as well as Trick Films, humanity of all ages just as fascinated by seeming impossibility as actuality; the MCU began here with spring-heeled Jacks from across Europe. Looking beyond, we also saw the astonishing film of a solar eclipse from 28 May, 1900 by the magician, Nevil Maskelyne, while on an expedition by The British Astronomical Association to North Carolina. He’d first worked the trick in India in 1898 but the film was stolen on the way home… the battle between science and greed.

 

I'll see you on the dark side of the Moon...

In the book are also sections on: Artistic/Aesthetic, Natural History and Science, Variety acts and novelties, Comic sketches and facials, Erotic films – although the British were somewhat less active than the French in this area, and probably remained so. Travel and industry includes a detailed look at Feeding the Pigeons in St Mark's Square, Venice (1898) all that has changed is the dress, the pigeons still the same insistent grey.

 

Actualities and Topicals include The Launch of HMS Albion (1898), a breach launch into the Thames which created a backwash that led to the drowning of 34 people, filmed by both E. P. Prestwich and Robert W. Paul, the release of their films sparked one of the first debates on the public right to view such a loss of life. You don’t have to try very hard to find much worse on Twitter especially.

 

Drama and Adaptation

 

Bryony showed James Williamson’s five-minute long Fire! (1901) which, in the context of what we had seen before and what we generally understood of the narrative capabilities of the time, is a quite astonishing film, shifting from the scene of a fire, to a fire station and then a magnificent shot of horse-drawn fire engines and firemen on their way to the fire and then not just outside but inside the property rescuing a sleeping man. Now this is obviously well before Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903) and more narratively complex than Alice Guy-Blaché’s earlier efforts involving more than one scene but, all one should really do is marvel at technique at this stage as the styles we now take for granted were rapid-prototyped by the engineers, chemists and secretary-visionaries!

 

The firemen on their way...

Ultimately, what’s interesting is how quickly fashions and the technology changed. Local films, with Mitchell and Kenyon being the experts, were largely limited in their appeal to 1900-02 after which the novelty had worn off. In the case of drama, the films became longer with earlier shorts like Scrooge being joined together to form longer narratives. There were experiments with sound and colour and throughout the 1900s technology drove the new medium forward.

 

Bryony quoted Canadian scientist, Joseph Miller Barr writing in 1897* and who seemed to have guessed the future very accurately. He saw the development of sound, colour and 3D as well as the development of longer features; whoever guessed in 1993 that we’d end up with 60-second videos dominating the screen time of the younger generations must have found the same crystal ball… what goes up must come down and diversity and experimentation is the commercial norm.

 

To discover more I can’t recommend this book highly enough: through a glass brightly!

 

You can order The Story of Victorian Film direct from the BFI shop online or in person whilst you can view the 100s of Victorian restorations on the BFI Player: the search for meaning and connection is personal and it continues.

Rare Mary… Heart o' the Hills (1919), Kennington Bioscope with Colin Sell

I remember [Pickford] telling me that she couldn't bear the way [D. W. Griffith] directed adolescent girls. She said, "Oh, he directed them so they ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. And I would not do that sort of thing..." She already saw that naturalism was terribly important, even more than Griffith did. 

Kevin Brownlow

 

For the first time since the Pandemic, it was time to play Six Degrees of Kevin Brownlow and, as usual, the answer was two; Kevin had met and interviewed Mary Pickford on a number of occasions. This direct relationship with the “source material”, one of the major players, one of the three of four, who really made the cinema of Hollywood in the 1910s, predating even Kennington’s own Charlie and her husband Doug, even outshining her director on so many occasions, David Wark, distancing herself in a way Lillian didn’t as she set up her own production company in 1918 and took charge of her intellectual property as well as her career.

 

Kevin’s introduction focused on fellow film collector Bert Langdon and his own meetings with Heart o' the Hills’ cinematographer, Londoner Charles Rosher, who shot all of Pickford’s films from 1918 to 1927, became the first cameraman to win an Oscar for Sunrise and grabbed a second for The Yearling (1946). Kevin’s friend was able to screen his original 35m nitrate original not just of this film but also My Best Girl (1927) neither of which Rosher had seen in years.

 

Heart o' the Hills impressed Kevin in terms of its technique but also Pickford’s range; “characters no sooner look at each other, than they exchange blows…” The hillbilly dance is “a classic sequence” featuring the ethnic authenticity director Sidney Franklin was looking for. Kevin also singled out art director Max Parker for his creation of the backwoods locations and living spaces; as he says, there was nothing “cutsie” or sentimental about this endeavour and the producer herself also has to take great credit for that… Kevin concluded by saying: If anyone needs to be converted to Pickford, this picture should do the trick!

 

Pickford's character shows her scars from maternal beatings...

I suspect Kevin was preaching to the already converted but this is indeed a wonderfully spirited film and one that treats its audience with respect, another key element of Pickford’s approach. After all, she was a working-class women just like most of her audience, her agenda was to deliver the kind of stories they understood and morality they would agree with in a tough environment they would recognise. We don’t talk enough about silent film stars and class, except to note that they “escaped”, but I don’t think Mary, or Charlie and many others, pulled the ladder up.

 

Here Mary is Mavis, who’s father was shot in the back when she was young and whose mother Martha (Claire McDowell) has been worn down over time, fighting to keep going in their ram shackled homestead. Her best pal is young Jason Honeycutt (Harold Goodwin) who takes her out on fishing trips – some worms were sadly harmed in the making of this film – and other larks.

 

Jason’s father Steve (Sam De Grasse) is the opposite of fun and, as we quickly learn, many other things including honesty, fairness and virtue. He’s hard on his boy and Mavis while targeting Martha, her hand and, her land which, as Mavis shows Jason, is rich in coal, surprising for such an elevated location but there you go.

Hootenanny show-down! John Gilbert on the left.

Money comes to town in the form of “forrigns” Colonel Pendleton (W.H. Bainbridge) and his entourage including son Gray (a surprise appearance by young John Gilbert, just 22 here and on the brink of stardom) and his intended Marjorie Lee (Betty Bouton). Also with them is the scheming Morton Sanders (Henry Hebert) who is plotting with Steve Honeycutt to grab Martha’s land and swindle as much of the community as possible.

 

There’s a great confrontation between the two at the local hop, where Gray, who has caught the eye of Mavis and vice-versa, joins the dance only for Jason to try and out-manoeuvre him in a kind of strictly-come-country dance-off. In the end Mavis joins in and a proper scrap is narrowly averted.

Soon though she has worse to come as Steve pushes Martha to marry him and orders her to leave home. She takes her issue to the locals, led by her wise Granpap Jason Hawn (Fred Huntley) and they decide that dressing up in white hoods and costumes to confront the land-grabbers is the way to resolve this. 

Don't mess with Mary...

Now I’m not sure why it is that certain Americans like wearing their sheets in this way but I’m also not convinced it’s a Ku Klux Klan moment – although it might well be. It ends badly though as someone shoots Sanders and, of course, given motive, opportunity and her outspokenness, Mavis is soon standing trial accused of his murder.

 

As Kevin Brownlow points out, this film doesn’t pull its punches and the stakes are high. Mavis’ character also stays true to herself and the resolution is worth the wait. It’s an entertaining film with that mix of humour and grit our great grand parents knew and loved to see on screen. Pickford is mighty as you’d expect and Rosher packs as many glorious head shots in as possible as we watch her unconscious naturalism lead the emotional charge!

 

We were watching a 35mm print made from an original copy at the Mary Pickford Foundation and it was full of rich textures and stunning depth of field. This is one of the real pleasures of the Bioscope, the connection between the audience, the celluloid and the general ambience of this unique venue. The atmospherics are also heavily informed by the subtlety of the accompanist and in this case it was Colin Sell who not only as Kevin predicted, showed his powers of controlled syncopation for the dancing sequence but also played along so sympathetically with Pickford and the rest of the players.

 

The British version of the sheet music

We were also treated to a wonderful performance of the song released to accompany the film from Colin and the Bioscope’s MC Michelle Facey. On BBC programmes you sometimes witness “experimental” archaeologists attempting to recreate certain processes to illustrate and find out more about the techniques and the “taste” of the period. The Bioscope is a working example of this experimentalism and Facey and Sell recreated another key element of the spirit of this film and the emotional reaction this song would have brought. Glenn Mitchell had a copy of both the US and UK version of the sheet music and naturally we went with the British copy. Loveliness ensued… and the film was set up!

 

Early Mary…

 

White Roses (1910) directed by Frank Powell was screened first on a 16mm from Chris Bird’s collection and, whilst its plot was a little outlandish, it was all good fun with Mary’s character Betty for some reason in love with a very shy man called Harry (Edward Dillon). Harry hasn’t the courage to ask her directly so her arranges to send three colours of flowers to her and a note saying that she should wear red for yes and white for no… Sounds simple but he gives the task to a young lad (Jack Pickfor, who’s other sister, Lottie is also involved), who promptly gets robbed of note and flowers.

 

A well meaning man steps into help and buys replacements but there’s no note and so Betty wears white forcing Harry to propose to his cook in retaliation… That’s not the end of things but you really have to watch this to believe it! John Sweeney accompanied and suspended all our disbelief in the process.

Mary and Elmer wait for the law...

The Narrow Road (1912) directed by D. W. Griffith on rare and possibly singular* 16mm print made from a nitrate original by legendary collector John Cunningham, now from Chris Bird’s collection, the film is only otherwise preserved in the Library of Congress paper-print collection as a paper copy of the celluloid made for copyright purposes. It was another of the unique Bioscope occasions, watching Mary married to ex-convict played by the great Elmer Booth, who is torn between going straight at a wood merchants and his loyalty to fellow con and recidivist forger, Charles Hill Mailes.

 

Ashley Valentine accompanied with lovely lines and in tune with this short but powerful tale. As Michelle said in her introduction, some say DW was at his best for these Biograph shorts and on the evidence of this and others, I’d have to agree but part of that is down to the contribution of players like Pickford who would eventually fall out with him and others, such as Booth who would die tragically early in a car, driven by an inebriated Tod Browning.

 

 

 *According to Movies Silently, the film is featured on the Image Entertainment, Origins of Film DVD set, now deleted. This may come from another source although it doesn't - as featured above - look like anything like as clear as what we saw.