The dark night… The Bat (1926), with John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

It was the KB Halloween Edition and MC Michelle Facey was accompanied by a raven and genuinely spooky tales not just about our main feature but also the fate of Roland West’s yacht, Joyita, which, to cut a unsettling mystery short, became known as the Marie Celeste of the Southern Seas after all passengers and crew disappeared leaving only and empty vessel listing and carrying mute evidence of a desperate conflagration. None where ever seen again and the ship’s former owner, director of this film, also vanished from the industry after the mysterious death of his lover Thelma Todd in 1935.

 

Whoever the fool was who directed Babylon (2022), there’s more things in Heaven and Hollywood than dreamt of in your ridiculous screenplay. Anyway, as usual Madame Mystery, sorry, Facey, was on song – unlike her raven – illuminating the stories of cast and crew and West’s seminal film about a costumed anti-hero who dresses like a bat, swoops around like a bat and genuinely terrifies in the manner of a large flying rodent. This is as she says one of the great Old Dark House films along with The Cat and the Canary, The Final Warning and Seven Footprints to Satan. Trilling, comedic and genuinely intriguing, we don’t know who The Bat is until the end and, having been told not to reveal the secret by an intertitle at the start, we must keep our silence as with The Mousetrap.

 

We were watching Ben Model’s recent restoration of The Bat which included a 2k scan from the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s original 35mm materials and it looked splendid on the big screen and with John Sweeney accompanying. I have the Blu-ray to watch having been on of the project funders and this will also be available from Ben’s Undercrank Productions site – link at the bottom. I’ve never seen the film before and whilst it’s not quite as tightly presented as The Cat…, it’s certainly an entertaining romp with plenty a twisted dark turn. Possibly too many but what the heck, it’s Halloween!

 

Directed by Roland West who also adapted from the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood which was first produced in 1920 to much success. Events kick off with a daring robbery by the seemingly superhuman Bat, who is so confident he has written to millionaire jewel-fancier, Gideon Bell announcing his intention of stealing his Favre Emeralds at midnight. Despite the presence of the police, The Bat succeeds by climbing up the outside of the elegant skyscraper and pulling Bell out the window taking his prize.

 

The Bat is audacious and even leaves a note on a kind of Bat-Post-It note announcing his intention to visit the country for his next crime… Bob Kane was influenced by the film in creating The Batman but the template is more like one of the Caped Crusader’s rogues’ gallery, Cat Woman, The Riddler or even The Joker who himself was influenced by The Man Who Laughs (1928). Talking of which, what a great Harley Quinn Olga Baclanova would have made… a proto Gaga!

Before his trip though The Bat drops in on Oakdale Bank to enhance his short-term liquidity only to find that another has got there first to steal $200,000 from the safe. He notes the number plate of the felon and, no honour amongst thieves, sets off in pursuit in his car, a mobile vehicle for the Bat. The subject of his pursuit arrives at a large darkened house and, climbing in through the basement proceeds to climb up the laundry shaft and then a hidden stairway to a secret lair of his own. There's a cat and mouse as well as a bat in this tale.

 

Sojin Kamiyama, Louise Fazenda and Emily Fitzroy

As it happens, this is the mansion of the recently deceased Courtleigh Fleming, the president of the very same Oakdale Bank, where a whole bevvy of suspicious suspects are in place. Chief suspect for this unauthorised withdrawal is Brooks Bailey played by Jack Pickford who frankly always looks guilty of something. Apparently West shot during the night hours which gave his players that extra edge and it certainly has a sleep-deprived mania generated by the cast drowned in the shadows of these huge sets designed by the great  William Cameron Menzies with help from Harvey Meyers.

Brooks is accompanied by Miss Dale Ogden (Jewel Carmen aka Florence Lavina Quick aka Mrs Roland West) who is the niece of Cornelia Van Gorder (the ace Emily Fitzroy) who is renting the property and Dale not only convinced that her Brooks is innocent, she wants to marry him too. She presents him as a new gardener even though he knows less than I do about horticulture as quickly exposed by Cornelia who is generally the smartest person in every room of the house. No competition in this respect is her nervy maid, Lizzie Allen (played by the excellent Louise Fazenda) who provides enough comic relief for two films if I’m honest but she’s such a reliable pivot for the crime and the grime.

 

After breaking contract with Fox in 1921, this was Jewel Carmen's last film

This is an ambitious story, and I’d love to see it on stage for there are still another six characters to introduce, all of whom have their suspicious edges – almost everyone is a suspect apart from Lizzy – especially the men, Dr. H. E. Wells (Robert McKim) and his black bag, the moody Detective Moletti (Tullio Carminati), Billy the Butler (Sojin Kamiyama) and “prevalent at the time” racist tropes… There’s Detective Anderson (Eddie Gribbon) with his two guns, is he as clueless as he seems? And what’s more suspicious than Fleming’s nephew, Richard (Arthur Housman) who wants to frighten Cornelia away so he can lease the mansion?

You’ll just have to watch and find out and ideally with a live audience and as skilled an accompanist as John Sweeney who treated us to some full-blooded flourishes and mystical melodies for this gently fretful but funny silent spooky treat!

 

Some new blood – creatively speaking – was unveiled for the first part of the programme which was accompanied by Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Masterclass alumnus Andra Bacila who is studying at the Royal Academy of Music and who we will hear a lot more from in future. She accompanied The Red Dance (1928) in Pordenone and here sprinkled musical illumination for three wonderful shorts starting with La course aux potirons (1908) concerning runaway pumpkins in Paris, an hilarious film I'd also seen in Italy.

Pete the Pup is petrified!

After this was some wonderful invention from Walter Lantz with the mixed live and animation featuring the director and his cartoon dog, Pete the Pup, in Pete's Haunted House (1926) followed by a stunning The Devilish Tenant (1909) from Georges Méliès which was a trick film honed to perfection. It was hand coloured which as Chris Bird reminded us, meant that every frame on every copy was coloured individually - remarkable and beautiful film to see.

The last film was courtesy of a lucky find on eBay and was a rare surviving copy of a Cecil Hepworth film from 1922, One Too Exciting Night, a spoof on Griffith's One Exciting Night, itself an Old Dark House Mystery. What we saw may well be the only surviving copy anywhere but that's how they roll at the Bioscope - the rare, the extraordinary and the exceptional. We are privileged and all for just a few quid!

Frighteningly good!

Louise Fazenda gives her all!

To buy the Blu-ray of Ben Model's restored The Bat, please follow this link to the Undercrank Productions website - it is a very worthy release including some delightful extras. Blessed are the Kickstarters!

There's more about the mystery of the good ship Joyita here, a fascinating tale from the Bow Creek to Anatahan maritime history site.

This "near-mint" copy of the first appearance of The Batman in March 1939 last sold for $1.7 million in auction, and is now valued at $2.2 million. So, it's not just classic film enthusiasts who should check their lofts for lost treasure... I know where one copy is but I'm not telling. 

More gorgeous screen shots from the Blu-ray!

Gotham, before the Bat Signal

Elementary… Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace

If it’s Wednesday it must be London and the magnificent, arrested decay of the Alexandra Palace Theatre which as the BFI’s Jean Mitri awardee Bryony Dixon said in her introduction was not only contemporary with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series as published in The Strand magazine but also the films based on his work made by the Stoll Picture Company. The Theatre was originally opened in 1875 and was screening films as early as 1906 with the tin projector room installed in the early twenties still remaining. After 80 years of closure, the venue is being restored in much the same way as these three films we saw screened, with just 44 more to go…

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano. My mother was a huge appreciator of Ms MacGregor’s classical work and she would have loved this evening of exemplary musicality and performance.

 

The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. A vastly experienced stage actor, Norwood so impressed the author with his obsessive attempts to bring every detail of Holmes to light that he gushed about his “brooding eye” and his “rare quality, which can only be described as glamour, which compels you to watch an actor eagerly even when he is doing nothing.”

 

Screen presence - Eille Norwood  (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

That original materials survive for these films is remarkable but as Bryony pointed out, duplicate positives were made in the fifties and sixties and so the BFI was thinking ahead – not for nothing is it one of the leading archives in the world. For two of these films those duplicated formed the basis of photochemical and digital restoration whilst the third, the shattering The Final Problem (1923), was based on a tinted nitrate original and looked stunning.

 

That film left us literally on a cliff-hanger but the future of this series is ensured and I look forward to watching everyone… the French may have had Louis Feuillade but we had Maurice Elvey and then George Ridgwell, who directed the second and third series. The project is in collaboration with Iron Mountain Entertainment and will make this unique collection available on home media as well as on the big screen. Tonight, we had episodes from across the series all of which showed the flavour of the Eile Sherlock and the ways these wonderful stories were adapted for the big screen.

 

Sherlock and the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton)

A Scandal in Bohemia (1921), score Joseph Havlat

 

This was the seventh in the series and Norwood crams a lot of character into his screen time ably enabled by Elvey’s economy and focus. So many stock Sherlock moments are concentrated into this film that it underlines Doyle's desciption of “glamour”: one early example is the detective noticing that his companion Dr Watson (the ever-present Hubert Willis) has employed a new housemaid who has been over-rigorous in cleaning his shoes. I noticed that modern Sherlock writer, Stephen Moffat was on hand and probably making notes furiously!

 

Doyle was impressed with Norwood’s “quite unrivalled power of disguise…” and in Scandal we’re treated to a taxicab driver so convincing that The Strand reported he was nearly ejected from the studios as a trespasser! He also plays a non-conformist minister in his attempts to trick Irene Adler (Joan Beverley) into revealing the whereabouts of her incriminating pictures of her affair with the King of Bohemia (Alfred Drayton). Of course, Watson is fooled every time but Miss Adler proves to be altogether as smart as Sherlock… 

 

Miles Mander makes an appearance as Godfrey Norton, Irene’s true love interest and – surprisingly perhaps for those who have seen his later silent work, he’s not a bounder but a thoroughly decent chap!

 

Watson, Prof Coram (Cecil Morton York) and Sherlock

The Golden Prince-Nez (1922), score Neil Brand

The quirkiest of the three, this puzzler was the 14^th of the second series – directed by George Ridgwell who covered series two and three after Elvey moved on – and  involved the death of one Professor Coram’s secretary, who died clutching his killer’s eyeglasses in his hand. Sherlock quickly deduces that the murderer was a short-sighted woman with a broad nose and so it proves just not the one the police grab. There’s always a twist and a logical explanation and this one was a doozy.

 

Norwood has such presence and also a twinkle in his eye – his Sherlock enjoys the challenges and, just like our puppy Mungo, likes showing off how clever he is! Here the mystery is “readable” by the viewers and we can join in matching wits with the detective and the guilty parties.

 

Percy Standing and Eille grappling...

The Final Problem (1923), score Joanna MacGregor

 

To Cheddar Gorge and the culmination of Sherlock’s final battle with his criminal nemesis, Professor Moriarty… This was the last of the series and was directed by George Ridgwell. Here Holmes faces his evil equal, Moriarty (Percy Standing) with both men nearing the end of their tether after a series of bruising score draws in the streets of London. Sherlock makes a number of early signifying references to being willing to stop the man even at the cost of his own life.

 

He thwarts the evil schemer one more time and, leaving instructions with the police of Moriarty’s gang’s secret lair, heads of for some relaxation with Watson at Cheddar Gorge… it’s not quite the Reichenbach Falls but you may guess what’s coming. This featured stunning tints - restored from an original nitrate print – which really brought out the flavours of the locations and the epic battle of wits.

 

The orchestrations were powerful and evocative with each composer taking a slightly different route but delivering compositionally and as scores illustrating these timeless tales. Norwood plus time equals more or less Cumberbatch and I have the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on my side. MacGregor tackled her dual role with ease and the players brought out rich textures in each approach creating a seamless whole of pure invention, deduction and delightful problem-solving verve!

 

Neil Brand and Joseph Havlat take their bows (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

The Final Problem was written in 1893 and viewers of 1923 would have been fully aware that Sherlock would return as he did originally in 1903’s The Adventure of the Empty House… but, as then, the finale here seems final. But, gentle reader, do not worry about our favourite sleuth for he will return, along with Maurice Elvey, in the feature film The Sign of Four (1923).

 

And now we must await further developments and restorations for the rest of the series; this was a most exciting entrée to the programme and probably the biggest such undertaking since the Hitchcock Nine back in 2012. I can’t wait.

Joanna MacGregor (Photo Yves Salmon BFI) 

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Fourth row back, chap with the beard, looks quite concerned... that's me! (Photo Colby Todisco BFI)

Michael Powell: Early Works, BFI Blu-ray Set

 

‘What fascinated me was the attitude: the planned yet flexible operation, led by the director, to seize the moment … to turn the light of common day into something beautiful and entertaining. This was for me! I never had the slightest doubt that I was meant to direct films from that day to this. Ten years later, I made my first.’

Michael Powell*

 

My family remember the BFI’s 2023 Powell and Pressburger season very well and with some fondness as my regular disappearances up to the Southbank were greeted with ironic jeers along the lines of “Mickey Powell a-gain, A Life in Movies eh?”, “Oh, so you’re not going to the tip then?” and “Is it a matter of life and death then?” The great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly might well have said that football wasn’t a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that… but latterly Jurgen Klopp added the balancing view that it was the most important of the least important things.

 

So it was that Michael Powell became, for a few golden months at least, “the most important of the least important things" and, from Cinema Ritrovato to the BFI, I tried to watch everything I could from the rare to the restored. The films on this set are mostly branded as “Quota Quickies”, a loaded term now and then referring to the need for US studios to invest in British B movies in order to not blow our domestic industry completely out of the domestic picture houses.

 

Stewart Rome in Rynox (1931)

Tight of budget and time they may have been though but for ambitious men like Powell they were a way into making films along the lines of the Rex Ingram features he had been involved in (Mare Nostrum and The Magician, in which he appeared as well) and Hitchcock’s Blackmail on which he was a photographer and, as quoted by the BFI’s James Bell in one of the extras, claimed to be responsible for the dramatic denouement. Once a bank worker, but always a film fanatic, celluloid ran in Mickey’s veins or at least the drive to create stories for the screen of a British flavour.

Here there are five of these short films – not all definitively quota quickies as King’s College London’s Dr Laurence Napper describes on one of the excellent commentaries – along with some fascinating silent shorts made by Powell as a travelogue for the South of France where his father ran a hotel. Together they form the most serious effort yet to document this most distinctive of British filmmakers and the forging of a genuinely British style during the post silent period.

 

In other words, it wasn’t all just Alfred.

 

Powell made some 23 films for various companies in the early to mid-1930s of which only 13 survive. Some are already on DVD, such as the lovable lighthouse mystery, The Phantom Light (1934), The Fire Raisers and Red Ensign (both 1933) also but this marks the first time the five “quota” films included have been on Blu-ray let alone the recently restored versions. All picture digitisation has been carried out at 4K resolution and 16-bit colour depth whilst nitrate sound negatives for the features were digitised at the BFI’s Conservation Centre. Regardless of the various sources, they all look wonderfully crisp whether you are viewing on home cinema or on the big screen

  

Michael Powell gives instruction during filming of Her Last Affaire

Take quota quickies, for example. You know what they are? Films made in a hurry, and much too cheaply, for an American distributing company to offer for sale, in order to comply with the law of the land. These are made by “independent” companies – so called, presumably, because they can’t afford to be independent.**

The films range from the first to the last of Powell’s so called quota quickies:

 

Rynox (1931)

 

… there never was an English film so well made. The director’s name is Michael Powell.

John Grierson, Everyman magazine

 

Powell was also clear that Rynox was not a quota-quickie production: It was a British feature, financed and distributed by Ideal Films, a respectable and respected English film-maker.***

 

The film stars Stewart Rome in twin roles, not to give the game away, and boss of a failing company who decides to finish himself off and go undercover to determine who his enemy is.  Then there’s Blackmail’s investigating officer, John Longden playing his son Tony Benedik. The film is one of the more suspenseful and rushes along at pace with some silent style in terms of cinematography. There are many soundless moments - as you'd expect at this point in British film making, and this makes for an odd experience for those of us used to fuller scores. Powell would later use silence for effect such as in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942).

In his commentary Marc David Jacobs draws the links from Rome's struggling company boss to Colonel Blimp, with the actor playing a man running out of options and yet who bravely faces the ultimate decisions for the sake of his family. As Jacobs says, it's very rewatchable with a lot packed into the running time and all very well played all round. The design is also very striking with art deco Rynox branding heightening the poignancy of the human drama.

 

Jerry Verno and guests at the Hotel Splendide!

Hotel Splendide (1932)

 

This is a likeable comedy that shows some visual flair from Powell on his tiny budget. As senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Kings College London, Lawrence Napper points out in his booklet essay notes, “Powell’s resourcefulness in the face of meagre resources is everywhere evident, perhaps nowhere more so than in the brief sequence that shows Verno travelling from London to Speymouth…. The entire journey is handled in less than two minutes with 18 shots edited across eight camera set-ups…”

 

I’ve now seen this film a number of times and I have a fondeness for Jerry Verno’s jumped up optimisem and Joyce Dacre’s plucky Vera Sherbourne. You’ll believe that a Speymouth hotel can indeed be Splendide!

 

 

Ernest Thesiger and Jane Millican

The Night of the Party (1935)

 

In her booklet essay, film writer Pamela Hutchinson summarises this one with trademark economy  as “… a witty parlour-game whodunnit, dismissed by its young director Michael Powell as ‘a piece of junk’ but which offers plenty of arch amusement within its brief running time, and an explosive courtroom finale.”

 

There’s good work from Malcolm Keen as Lord Studholme along with Leslie Banks as Sir John Holland and Ian Hunter as the reliable, solidly masculine character he came to specialise in. Then there’s Ernest Thesiger, who’s character couldn’t be anymore coded. As for time immemorial, cash-strapped British filmmakers had a ready supply of highly-trained theatrical talent who could turn up do the job and not require endless re-takes.

 

Francis L. Sullivan, Sophie Stewart and Hugh Williams

Her Last Affaire (1935)

 

This one has my favourite cast including Googie Withers in an early role, Powell stalwart John Laurie and two more legends Felix Aylmer as Lord Carnforth and Cecil Parker Sir Arthur Harding. Hugh Williams, once again, plays Hugh Williams… he was totally “method” on this one.

 

Film historian and Powell specialist, Ian Christie writes the booklet essay and expects that modern audiences will note Powell’s ingenuinty in resolving the plot and story line with “…the ingenious use of a BBC broadcast SOS message (the play had a message tapped out in morse code) that is striking. And even more, the montage sequences Powell and Dalrymple devised, first for Alan’s journey to the New Forest inn, and then for his return by plane from Paris.”

  

Behind the Mask (abridged reissue version of The Man Behind the Mask (1936)) (1944)

 

This last film was long considered lost until the discovery of this abridged version from the US which makes for a slightly unbalanced tale in terms of the master-mind behind the operation and the grandiose science fiction elements of his secret base… some 40% is still missing. That probably wouldn’t elevate this into a classic but it would have explained more about the grandiose plans of the chief villain, The Master aka Paul Melchior as played by Maurice Schwartz.

As with all the rest, it is charming and well made romp with good performances from Donald Calthrop especially as Dr H E Walpole and Jane Baxter as June Slade. Hugh Williams also gives another example of the Hugh Williams School of Acting. It's an enjoyable romp that takes in old school friendships and betrayal, masked balls, kidnap and chase, country pub stand-offs - with Esme Cannon as a waitress - and mystic hokum for the deranged conclusion. Another very entertaining ride!

 

Special features

 

The whole set feels like a celebration of British film preservation and specifically the BFI with both Inside the Archive extras showcasing the steps taken to restore and preserve the work with not just the head of departments but also specialists within shown at work in the painstaking process which is by turns stressful in terms of the unknown condition/completeness of original materials and most rewarding when a previously-lost film can re-emerge.

 

This box set is a bargain in terms of it’s breadth and depth of information and also in showing the passion involved. So, please look at these extras as extra-special!

Newly recorded feature commentaries by Marc David Jacobs (Rynox, Behind the Mask), Lawrence Napper and Dom Delargy (Hotel Splendide), Dr Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt (The Night of the Party), and Ian Christie (Her Last Affaire)

 

Riviera Revels – Travelaugh No.1 and No.10 (1927, 26 mins total): Powell himself appears in these rare short comedy curiosities from the silent era, with optional audio commentary by Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the BFI

 

Inside the Archive: Riviera Revels (2024, 12 mins): Bryony Dixon explores the origins of Riviera Revels and Michael Powell’s work on them

 

Inside the Archive: The Early Films of Michael Powell (2024, 42 mins): a new documentary on the BFI National Archive’s role in rediscovering and remastering the early films of Michael Powell

 

Visions, Dreams and Magic: The Unmade Films of Michael Powell (2023, 41 mins): a new documentary exploring some of Michael Powell’s unrealised films

 

Interview with Erwin Hillier (1988, 26 mins, audio): in these extracts from an interview recorded by the British Entertainment History Project, cinematographer Erwin Hillier recalls working with Michael Powell

 

The Archers in Argentina (1954, 21 mins): Michael Powell and an international film-star entourage are captured on camera at an Argentinian film festival in this home movie footage shot by Emeric Pressburger, with optional audio commentary by Marc David Jacobs

 

Image galleries

 

There’s a handsome illustrated booklet featuring contributions from James Bell, Marc David Jacobs, Lawrence Napper, Pamela Hutchinson, Ian Christie, Bryony Dixon, Dr Josephine Botting and Kieron Webb; notes on the special features and credits. It’s only available with the first pressing but is an essential companion!

 

So, go straight to the BFI’s shop in person or online and buy this set immediately!

 

 

*Powell writing in his autobiography, A Life in the Movies after seeing an article in Picturegoer magazine, aged 15 in 1920. Quoted by James Bell in the booklet for this set.

 

**On the British Sets – The Crime of quota quickies’, EG Cousins, Picturegoer, 9 September 1933, p28

 

***  A Life in the Movies

 

Civil Engineering, Module One… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Day Eight

And, just like that, it was over but not before a final day with some incredible highs and a desperate search for a restaurant that wasn’t fully booked prior to the evening’s special event. Amidst the cut and thrust of a silent film festival it’s possible to completely forget that tonight was Saturday night and the locals were out for a good time too even if it was strange for us to contemplate: no live accompaniment, just recorded, not always sitting down or, indeed, sitting quietly with outbursts of boisterousness that would certainly concern those she say “shush” in the Verdi balconies.

 

Each to his own as we say in the patriarchy and we had plenty of energy of our own for Neil Brand’s new score for The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) which was arranged by George Morton, and performed live by the mighty Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer. Giornate artistic director, Jay Weissberg, described before hand how Neil Brand had wanted to score a western and asked him for suggestions and the film he had in mind had been a formative silent screening for him and soon Neil was equally enamoured with this unusual story of civil engineering and the human heart.

 

At the Kennington Bioscope Kevin Brownlow once revealed that Samuel Goldwyn’s wife had been the Imelda Marcos of silent film preservation. The great mogul had stored all of his films in her closet and, in order to make room for her shoes, she cleared them out except for the ones featuring Ronald Coleman and Gary Cooper. So, we have Mrs Goldwyn and her fondness for these terribly ugly men, to thank for Barbara Worth still being extant!

Vilma Bánky

Despite their physical shortcomings, these two men are two big reasons to celebrate this remarkable film but it also features some of the most stunning cinematography of the era and if you think Abel Gance was impressive in capturing equine movement on frame than check out Henry King and his cinematographers George Barnes, Thomas Branigan and Gregg Toland. Overwhelmed by this biggest of projections we could almost be alongside Ronald and Gary as the sun-baked, sand-drenched, landscape swirls around you in a crystal clear golden-yellow.

 

And on top of all that you have Vilma Banky… born Vilma Koncsics in what is now Hungary and exported to distract the Yankees as much as she causes both Coop and Ron to lose their focus on business. The film starts like an outtake from Greed as a young woman (Vilma Banky) buries her husband in the sand and then battles to save her daughter from a sandstorm. It’s a brutal and photographed so clearly it could have been made tomorrow. The woman perishes but her daughter, Barbara, is found alive by a Mr Worth (Charles Willis Lane) and grows up to be played by Vilma.

 

The story then settles into Mr Worth and his business partner/rival, McDonald (Ed Brady) efforts to try to change the landscape by damming the Colorado River in order to irrigate the Californian plains. Coleman plays Willard Holmes who works with the rival whilst Cooper plays Abe Lee, the boy Barbara grew up with. Their romantic rivalry runs parallel to business as the mood gets mean as McDonald refuses to recognise the need for additional reinforcements on the dam… In a film like this that’s never a good sign. This all culminates in the inevitable flood and a terrifying sequence in which the townsfolk flee the deluge with not all making it. Henry King could also martial a cast of thousands and, looking back to 3 Bad Men, this is another classic silent human stampede.

 

The implications of all this for construction projects is clear in terms of risk management and the importance of senior stakeholder buy-in for completion to full safety and technical requirements. But I suppose the film was mostly about the spirit of enterprise that made the West and the loves of the lovely people who exemplify the best of humanity: civic minded and careful people who try to bring everyone with them in the joint enterprise of society. Sadly, current political systems lack many who are trained in Prince 2 project management and who care to put people ahead of profit.

 

The score was quite simply huge, with Mr Brand adopting a musical project management of his own in terms of establishing clear objectives for mood and narrative cohesion and meeting every single one in the most joyous and potent of ways. Tonal milestones – deserts, sandstorms, epic landscapes, love, hate and everything in between – were nailed with his schooling in seemingly the entirety of cinematic composition in evidence mixed with his flair for melody. There were rousing themes that pricked the hairs on the back of our necks and we fell in love with simply everyone of the cast but especially Vilma!

 

As with his other scores, Robin Hood, Blackmail, The Lodger et al, you feel that Neil builds out from the heart of each film, working his way outwards in building a musical structure that not only hangs off the narrative but supplements it. This is the very essence of meeting specification and, with Mr Palmer swinging the baton, the Orchestra Verdi lifted the roof and our spirits. We always hope for such a big finish and, yet again, we got one.

 

Forgotten Faces (1928) with Stephen Horne

 

I’ll tell you someone else who always delivers on promise and to spec, and that’s the mercurial Stephen Horne who here delivered one of the biggest musical surprises of the week by “playing” silence during the nail-biting sequence in which Clive Brook’s character leads his mortal enemy and ex-wife as played by Olga Backlanova, up darkened stairs in the moments before she realises who her mysterious guide is… it was unexpected, meta and perfectly timed.

 

In this well-crafted family thriller, directed by Victor Schertzinger, Olga plays a mixture of the shark in Jaws and Anthony Perkins’ character in Psycho, she is violently over the top and hysterical in every way – the Jack Nicholson of her day! Against this Russian fire-cracker is faced the utterly controlled Clive Brook as gentleman thief “Heliotrope” Harry who, along with his trusted right-hand man, Froggy (William Powell) is responsible for the most principled of crime sprees.

 

After one precisely-timed raid on a gambling house sees the police arrive almost in time to catch them, Harry returns home to find his wife Lilly in bed with another man as their baby daughter screams in the hallway. He despatches the other man and, realising his jig is up, leaves his baby with a well-to-do couple who he knows have recently lost a child before kindly handing himself in. Froggy keeps tabs on the daughter whilst Harry duly serves his time and she grows into Mary Brian, a fine young woman who he has given the best chance in life.

 

But, when Lilly tricks Froggy into revealing her daughter’s whereabouts and then taunts Harry in prison about taking her back, he knows he must find a way to stop her. Can he do so without breaking his strict moral and his promise to the prison governor not to harm his hellish ex?

 

OK, there are holes in this scenario but Brook is terrific, such a measured performer – a Rolls Royce if you will – whilst Olga is Olga. MY eyes may have moistened more than once, heart strings were tugged but on Brook could make for such a charming criminal who is father first and foremost.

 

Desdemona Mazza, Ivor Novello and Gabriel de Gravone

L’Appel du Sang (1919) with John Sweeney

 

After our musical Messi and Ronaldo, we also had the compositional equivalent of Mo Salah with the studied elegance of Mr John Sweeney accompanying Louis Mercanton’s tale of love, lies and longing set in Sicily. John’s elegant lines made the most of this film’s spectacular scenery from the island and also Rome, as well as the suitably classic love tangle passing in front of both.

 

This was Ivor Novello’s film debut and his Maurice Delarey is an odd creation, with even his wife, Hermione Lester (Phyllis Neilson-Terry) describing him as “like a kid”, he’s immature, full of enquiry and lust for life (his grandmother was from Sicily) unlike his bookish other half and they make the most unconvincing of partnerships. Hermione has disappointed her intellectual, much older, “best friend” Émile d'Arbois (Charles Le Bargy aged 62 here) in marrying a man of her age (both actors were 27) if not maturity.

 

She brings her new husband to the family pile in the hills of Sicily and he spends all his time having adventures with Gaspare (Gabriel de Gravone), one of the family retainers, including night fishing, yomping and swimming… it’s hard not to impose a modern “coded” view of their relationship. Interestingly both Novello and Neilson-Terry were cast to reflect the original author’s descriptions and so the physical mismatch was intentional. Novello looks so boyish and young and when he is in Sicily his Sicilian nature resurfaces, bringing recklessness and compulsive behaviour. All that midday sun for the Englishman – although, lets be honest, he was Welsh.

 

Hermione goes off to save d'Arbois who is dying in Africa leaving Maurice free to explore further and to fall in love with the fisherman Salvatore (Salvatore Lo Turco)’s daughter Maddalena (Desdemona Mazza) and there’s a beautiful shot of them finally embracing, silhouetted in the half darkness of a cave with the sea behind them. This can not be good though and to add complication, Salvatore is a mad man with easy access to weaponry…

 

Overall a dreamy film, especially with John’s playing, and worth it for the visuals and early Ivor!

 

The Red Dance (1928) with Masterclass student Andra Bacila

 

This film’s approach to history could be said to be exemplified by the appearance of an aircraft clearly not of 1917 vintage but this is the least of its crimes against Russian history. In terms of its treatment of Rasputin, the Boney M pop song, Rasputin, is more historically accurate and the general depiction of white and red Russians as inter-changeable baddies is mind wobbling given the century and more of poor treatment the Tsars had imposed on the populace. Criticise the Revolution and outcomes by all means but there were plenty of reasons for one to happen…

 

All this aside, Raoul Walsh’s mini-epic is, as you’d expect, full of grand scale and great characters. Dolores del Río as Tasia, a politicised activist determined that people should be able to read after the Tsarist regime bans schooling and arresting her father and shooting her mother on the spot in front of her blackboard and pupils. Ivan Linow plays Russian Bear Ivan Petroff, a likeably roguish army officer who is prone to sexual assault and steaking horses with which to exchange for marriage to Tasia.

 

Ra, ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen is played by Demetrius Alexis, and various other actual characters appear as 2D cut-outs. Talking of which, likable Charles Farrell is the most unlikely Grand Duke Eugene, a Russian toff with a heart of gold who wins Tasia’s heart. It struck me that Farrell is a fine romantic actor so long as he’s with a talented other half and you can add Delores to the list with Mary Duncan and Janet Gaynor in this respect.

 

Long story short, the stakes are raised when the people revolt and the Cossacks are on the defensive. Now it’s the Trotsky look-alikes and the evil revolutionary leader with a Germanic monocle who are the enemies of the people. This disappoints Tasia who announces that “women’s only cause is love…” and it may be true that love is all you need but this messy lack of faith in governance via tradition of revolution echoes our present plight and, yes, there’s an agitator called Boris.

 

Excellent accompaniment was provided by Masterclass student Andra Bacila, one of many new and younger faces at this year’s festival. As the BFI’s Bryony Dixon said in her acceptance speech for the Jean Mitri award, the Giornate is a focus for world-wide efforts on film preservation and long may this continue.

 

And that, m’lords, ladies and gentlepeople, concludes the proceedings from this blog on Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43! Thank you too all of those who made it happen and who I spent time with – let’s twist again in 2025!!

 

Grazie mille!!

Punishment and reward… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Seven

 

In receiving her richly-deserved Jean Mitry Award, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon pointed out the importance of this festival in terms of enabling international collaborations but also as a peer group for the often embattled national archives. The Giornate had inspired Dixon along with others to elevate the reputation of British silent cinema and with the restorations not just of the Hitchcock back catalogue but also key films from Anthony Asquith especially, it has been mission accomplished with more to come. It’s a group of people who inspire each other and as an outsider in professional  media terms, I’ve always been impressed with the dedication of Bryony and others to the main goals of preservation and education. The value is in the content and to be able to achieve what she has in over three decades at the BFI is remarkable – hers are the giant shoulders on which other generations of archivists will stand.

 

At a time when the DFI are stopping filmic preservation and shifting entirely to digital, you realise the odds that are stacked against the archives – when even Germany won’t invest in the original media who else is going to stay in the game? That the other Mitry Award went to Mark-Paul Meyer from the EYE Cinema Museum in Amsterdam says it all. Long may you protect and survive.

 

Pavement Butterfly (1928) with Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Mirko Cisilino

 

This week we’ve witnessed the evolution of Anna May Wong’s performance and prestige from bit parts as racial cliches to the full flourishing of her talent in Song and this film, both made in Germany. In her home country, Anna May Wong had struggled since her first film in 1921 to gain substantial roles and also characters that weren’t stereotypes. Yet in Europe for this film and Song (1928), her first film with director Richard Eichberg, she is not only a desirable and acceptable romantic lead, she is the star.

 

Eichberg simply took her natural talents and ran with them and with this freedom of expressiveness there’s  critique of Western culture’s willingness to believe the worst of people of Asian origin: first the crowd at the circus where Wong’s character Mah works, turn on her very quickly assuming she has killed her magician partner and then later, when she is blackmailed by the man who committed that murder, her artist and romantic interest, all too readily thinks she has stolen the money.

 

For anyone who gets frustrated by such “misunderstandings” the film’s ending is richly satisfying reminding me of Hindle Wakes screened here last year, a blow for self-determination for women in general at a time when their choices were so much more limited. We don’t know what Mah will do but she’ll make her way, her way. It’s interesting to note the differences in the British and German versions of this ending too, as noted in the catalogue essay from Yiman Wang, in the latter Mah says “Ich gehöre nicht zu euch” (“I do not belong to you”) whereas for the former “I don’t belong to your world. I belong to the pavements.” - she has to know her place or the remains of Empire would crumble, clearly… (see below for more stirring Tales of Empire).

 

It’s The Eyes!!

 

There are so many close-ups of AMW in this film showing her stillness and presence from every angle and catching one of the most interesting technicians of the period who conveys so much with so little movement. Much of this stems from her extraordinary eyes but she knows how to use them and how to under-react for the camera to maximise the impact on the audience engrossed in the big screen.

 

Fred Louis Lerch plays the handsome but hopeless Fedja Kusmin an artist who lacks the purity of trusting the thing he loves and the wickedly convincing Alexander Granach as Coco the Coincidental Clown who pops up throughout the film to throw mischief in our heroine’s way. Elwood Fleet Bostwick is Mr. Working a rich business man who encourages the young artist and Tilla Garden has a fine turn as his daughter Ellis who is also interestingly enough a woman who knows her mind.

 

Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and with Mirko Cisilino on saxophone accompanied with the tightest of sets, bursting into life during the loft party sequence featuring the remarkable dancing of an un-named couple of hyperflexible and ultra-syncopated boys from the Cabaret, bringing out the full flavour of the gorgeous locations of Nice and underpinning the emotional narrative with the subtlety that Anna deserves. Another fabulous evening show in a week full of them!

 

Stronger than Death (1920) with Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius

 

I was standing outside the Teatro Verdi discussing the drumming of Frank Bockius with Catalonian accompanist, Florenci Salesas who pointed out from a musician’s point of view how tonally flexible and supportive of the narrative his percussion is. From the explosion of jazz technique in Saxophone Suzi to Frank’s use of subtle Indian flavours or the martial beats for the British troops in this film, he’s able to switch from rhythm section to lead player in ways that are exceptional. The hardest working drummer in Pordenone and probably anywhere!

 

Here he and Donald Sosin provided an improvised score for another of the great faces of silent film, Anna Nazimova who plays a renowned dancer, Sigrid Fersen who has a heart condition that will kill her if she has just one more dance (I know…). She has come to India to find a rich husband which seems slightly at odds with her otherwise cool bohemian aesthetic and gets one she didn’t bargain for in a love and hate triangle featuring a racist British Colonel Boucicault (Charles K. French), his caring son Doctor/ Major Tristam Boucicault (Chris Bryant) and a wealthy man of mix-race heritage James Barclay (Herbert Prior).

 

Barclay is reviled by the ex-pat Brits as he is of mixed race – terms “of the period” are used to describe this unfortunate situation not of his own making – and he hopes to gain respect by marrying Sigrid. He’s backed by the local priests though who in a surprising development are looking for revenge on the British for something or other. Lots happens but the worst of it is when the Colonel shoots Tristram’s dog Wickey. As if I could hate him more…

 

It's a load of old hooey BUT it has Naz and she is brilliant as usual. Bryant’s also good in spite of his parenting, perhaps there’s hope for the World.

 

 

Raskolnikow (1923) with Richard Siedhoff

 

We all had the same thought after this stunner ended – Lotte Eisner was wrong, there are more than three expressionist films with this adaptation of Crime and Punishment being as emotionally titled as Caligari and with crazy-angled set design to match plus the same typography. Maybe she didn’t have access to the full cut of the film and certainly this restoration was a feast for the eyes…

 

Directed by Robert Wiene it adapts Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in ways that carry the force if not the substance – how could it? Gregori Chmara is just fabulous as Rodion Raskolnikow who finds meaning in his life after wasting so much of his own and killing two women in a bungled robbery. So many heist movies follow similar lines but none examine the nature of guilt in so detailed a way. String cast, a-mazing set design which might jar initially but soon melts behind the human stories presented in unrelenting close-ups.

 

Too much to say, so little time, more films to see!

 

We were also treated to avant garde shorts from the studio of Joris Ivens which contained some interesting ideas and some irritating… as a migraine sufferer I couldn’t watch the five minutes of flashing lights from Willem Bon’s Is Er etc… covering my closed eyes with the programme and I’m speaking as a regular gig-goer. This was something like the brain-washing scene from Funeral in Berlin. The audience might well be under Dutch control for all I know, which is no bad thing in itself from experience! Gerard Saan’s Botsingen (1934) with its clever comparison of billiard balls with human activities provided an entertaining counter point, the eight-ball dropping pleasingly in the corner pocket after a repeat showing complete with sound.