Epic Thursday… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 44, Day Six

White Heather (1919)

Are Parents People? (1925) with Neil Brand

Not a lot of people know this but, when this film was screened at the Kennington Bioscope Kevin Brownlow revealed that silent cinema’s sophisticate with that European air, Adolphe Menjou was actually half Irish and could speak Gaelic as well as probably his father’s French. Further investigation shows his mother’s maiden name to be Joyce who was also a first cousin of James Joyce, the writer not the railway worker who is my connection. The more I look at Adolphe the more I can “hear” that brogue…  but also the harder to accept his republican politics and later support of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his co-founding of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Still… it’s the art and not the artist and he was, on screen at least, always a consummate professional and great to watch. Co-star Florence Vidor later told Kevin that Menjou “fell apart with success”, unable to cope with too much good fortune he fell to self-medicating with a bottle and who knows what impact that had on his politics? In this film as with many others, he makes us happy. Life may be disappointing but it’s also rewardingly contradictory, comic and complex.

Kevin explained the influence of Chaplin’s Woman of Paris on director Malcolm St. Clair’s style with the latter eschewing flamboyant camerawork in favour of a focus on character development. A supposedly simpler approach but the narrative was still driven by silky editing and some touches that might even be described as Lubitsch-esque; a pair of impatient feet here, a door opened just for slamming and the flicking of peanut shells off an armchair in tribute to a habit of Mabel Normand’s… Lubitsch also was influenced by Woman of Paris, thanks Charlie, as ever!

This was an original print from the Kodascope Library and from Chris Bird’s collection – the same one we saw back in 2017 at the KB. At the time it was my first exposure to the sparkling brilliance of Betty Bronson but having recently seen her quicksilver emoting in Peter Pan (1924) I was even more impressed than on that initial viewing. Here she’s Lita, a teenager torn between two parents, Menjou and the elegant Florence Vidor, who are so in love they hate each other. Unable to see beyond their mutual inflexibility they divorce leaving their daughter in a boarding school trying to figure out a way to reunite them. She hatches a plot involving a movie star – an hilarious turn from George Beranger – expulsion and handsome Doctor Dacer (Lawrence Gray).

It’s a hoot, the cast are wonderful and it’s as sophisticated as Hollywood gets! Talking of which, our learned friend Maestro Neil Brand was on hand to provide the lightness of touch for his accompaniment including a wealth of melodic references and an instinctive way with improvisational composition that can only a lifetime of study make! Chapeau!

 

GLI ULTIMI GIORNI DI POMPEI (IT 1913) with José Marìa Serralde Ruiz

 

Eleuterio Rodolfi’s film was one of two competing adaptations of the British novel by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, published in 1834, and itself inspired by the painting The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian painter Karl Briullov. The other was directed by Giovanni Enrico Vidali for Pasquali & Co. and was released just four days after this version produced by Ambrosio. That version was screened earlier this year at the Kennington Bioscope and whilst I had previously seen this one on the Kino DVD todays’ screening was much longer – 107 minutes compared with just 78 on the DVD - plus far more enjoyable on the big screen and with exceptionally energetic and epic accompaniment from José Marìa Serralde Ruiz!

It is one of the last great “tableau” films, so called as they consisted of a series of, often quite intricate, single takes using a largely static camera. Here there are literally thousands of people placed in some shots, as the action moves across the frame creating the kineticism of a moving shot so convincingly that you stop noticing. One shot is of many hundreds of people and it’s extraordinary although rather spoilt by the presence of one man wearing a modern suit… evidence below!

The story revolves around Glaucus (Ubaldo Stefani) – one of Pompeii’s most eligible, who opens the film walking down the main street with his friend Claudius (Vitale Di Stefano). They are chatted to by a couple of young ladies but Glaucus only has eyes for Jone (Eugenia Tettoni Fior) one of the city’s great beauties. We are shown exterior shots of the two lovers enjoying a picnic in the lagoon but they are observed from the shore by Arbace, Egyptian High Priest (Antonio Grisanti) who, when not plotting to increase the popularity of Isis and other “new” Egyptian gods, is trying to force Jone into his arms… by foul means or fair.

Against this upper-class backdrop is introduced, a poor blind girl, Nidia (Fernanda Negri Pouget, who maintains her eyes in an excruciating upward tilt for the whole film… method miming!). She sells flowers when she isn’t slaving away at one of the local taverns. Glaucus, appalled at her miss-treatment, rescues her and buys her from the landlord. He sets her up as a handmaiden in his splendid villa... a very mixed blessing as it turns out. Nidia falls very quickly for her rescuer but she’s quickly in misery following a visit from his true love… and we see her agonising against the curtains while Glaucus and Jone make love down stage.

So, the human drama unfolds with magic and cult religion used in attempts to divide the lovers by jealous priests, noble but lovestruck blind servants and those of bad intent. But, spoilers ahead, you juts know that the big spoiler is the mountain and that at some point things are really going to kick off.

It’s from the golden age of Italian silent cinema and on a line from L’Inferno to Cabiria and beyond in terms of dramatic ambition and operatic – mythical intensity. It’s an extraordinary document from just 17 years into the new media’s development and I am so pleased to have seen it on the scale intended! And, well played José Marìa Serralde Ruiz: an explosive performance mixed with much intensity and delicate phrasing!

My other highlights…

The White Heather (US 1919) with Stephen Horne

A tinted and toned nitrate print of Maurice Tourneur’s long believed lost The White Heather was found at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in 2023 and subsequently restored by the SFFP. It looks gorgeous and was presented here in 35mm with a dynamic score from the multi-instrumentalism master improviser Mr Stephen Horne

It’s a rip-roaring nautical yarn and court-room drama in which monied baddie Lord Angus Cameron (Holmes Herbert) tries to annul his secret marriage to castle housekeeper Marian (Mabel Ballin) – and subsequent off-spring – so that he can get even more money by marrying a fellow posh person (honestly, rich folk, are they normally this nasty?). The two were married at sea and unfortunately the ship sank including the only record of their nuptials although the Captain (Greed’s Gibson Gowland who was from County Durham!) survives and could attest to the ceremony, should it be worth his while… A legal battle is followed by a race to find the Captain led by an impossibly skinny John Gilbert as Dick Beach, whilst legal follow up and under-water combat skills are provided by Ralph Graves as Alec McClintock.

Excellent fun and we cheered!

Maggie Hennefeld on weaponising Nasty Fashion!

UCLA David C Copley Lecture: Costume Design and Silent Cinema

Dressed for Chaos: Costumes, Nasty Women and Social Change

This was an excellent lecture by Maggie Hennefeld, Laura Horak, Elif Rongen-Kaynakçı aka The Nasty Women Collective which highlighted the tremendous importance of costume design in the act of creating the chaos of comedy. Costume designers, mostly women, supported the ambition of the leading players by providing clothes fit for purpose as well as the narrative authenticity.

I hadn’t expected to be so fascinated in the subject but that’s education for you and there’s a whole depth of detail I would love to understand more. Professor Hennefeld said that the talk was being recorded and I do hope so as my niece is studying costume design at Central St Martins and I know she will get a lot from this.

I also have to say I love the continuing momentum of this project it only gets stronger and more interesting as the years progress and, as an agent for truth and resistance it is a remarkable tribute to silent cinematic scholarship!

Make more noise!!

 

That man in a suit... small things amuse small minds. Sorry!