Love and Death… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Edition 44, Day Two

Harry Solter on the job. Photo from Biograph Project showing restored image on right vs old paper copy...

Oh, Willie, my child dead, dead, dead! and he never knew me, never called me mother!*

Morning Mr Griffith... Something about a woman hiding a jewel thief in case her husband thinks he’s her secret lover, then a bloke gets stranded on an island for years enough to grow a big beard and returns to suspect his wife of “moving on” and then pirate gold is hidden in a kitchen, next to the hob, almost impossible to find when the next generation need it? Yes, these were just three of the scenarios facing the American Bioscope players under DW Griffith’s direction in 1908 and, luckily, they were all able to act their way out of it! To appreciate these films is an act of imagination and sympathy, it’s enabling yourself to ignore 117 years of over sophistication and also the “presentist” view that where we are now is somehow where we’ve always been (and will always stay – even if we vote in authoritarians…) but… no, in 1908 things were quite different and these films remind us of what changes and what stayed broadly The Same.

John Sweeney appreciates this more than most and used to hearing him at the BFI and Bioscope, I have to say he blew the lid off of the slick top-of-the-range Fazioli (if Ferrari made pianos..) and made us believe in these stories.

Blanche Forsythe and the rotter, Fred Morgan

East Lynne (1913) with Philip Carli

East Lynne was all the rage in the 1910s as it had been since the publication of Ellen Wood’s novel of the same name in 1861 and the subsequent attempts to capture the book’s fire in a bottle narrative on stage. Now on film, in the first of a number of adaptations, director Bert Haldane probably assumed familiarity with the story, and that might certainly explain some of the pacing issues.

The DCP screened to day is the result of a restoration of a 35mm nitrate from the collection of Christopher Bird who said at the recent screening in London’s Kennington Bioscope that whilst East Lynne is not a lost film as such but when quality is, as Kevin Brownlow says, the main thing archive cinema has to sell itself to modern audiences, this film has certainly been missing in terms of the vibrancy, contrast and tasty tints we glimpsed today.

Chris obtained an almost complete nitrate copy from a private collector which, compared with the black and white copy held by the BFI maybe missing the first reel but comes with an extra three minutes and those high-quality tints. Together with film archivist Bob Geoghegan and the BFI the restoration work has continued leading to today at the Teatre Verdi – a rare surviving copy of a British feature film from the pre-war era. Graphic designer and blogging wunderkind Fritzi Kramer (aka Movies Silently) has been involved in reconstructing some of the film’s title cards and, as she said to Chris, melodramas like this have to be watched in the spirit in which they were made and meant to be received – “loving the hokum, not taking it too seriously”.

All too true and the film looks good, courtesy of DOP Oscar Bovill, even though the same few locations – “just through the bushes… yes, the same ones as before…” – do a lot of the heavily lifting for “The Outside”, and some of the background actors, notably the partially-animated blonde male servants and a Doctor far younger than his wig,  should have stayed off shot. BUT, and it is a very British But!, there are serviceable performances from Blanche Forsythe as Lady Isobel, handsome Fred Paul as the steadfast Archibald Carlyle and whoever it was playing Barbara Hare, the sister of the man falsely accused of a murder committed by Isobel’s would be paramour, Captain Levison, as played with pantomime menace by Fred Morgan.

As a trained historian (well, they tried!) I delighted in the nods to period politics when Carlyle goes up against the scheming Levison to become the local MP, there are placards calling for the abolishment of the Window Tax and the Corn Tax (Corn Laws), as well as in support of Chartism which indicate that Bad Fred is a radical Whig whilst the goodie is a Tory. The Chartists stood apart from both main parties and were calling for such things like a vote for all men over 21, secret ballots and an end to property qualification for MPs, and, of their six main demands, all but one – annual elections – were achieved by 1919. The fact that Mrs Wood’s next book was A Life’s Secret (serialised in 1862) which attacked what she saw as unscrupulous Trade Unionists tells us all we need to know of her politics. She’d fit right in these days mind…

*East Lynne was adapted into a play - East Lynne. A Domestic Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts by T. A. Palmer in 1874 and it was on stage where the story became a phenomena, almost guaranteeing success and the half-joking line “East Lynne’s playing next week”. It was also the source of much ridicule with Palmer’s line during Little Willie’s death scene, given birth to the term “dead and never called me mother…”

Italia Almirante Manzini in Notte di Tempesta (GIF from the excellent Silents Please!)

Notte di Tempesta (IT 1917) with Meg Morley

Not only do we get to be introduced to La Diva della settimana: Italia Almirante Manzini but we also got to hear jazz specialist Meg Morley on the Fazioli and, it might just be me, but amongst her perfectly in 1917-character improvisations there’s the occasional fluid line of which McKoy Tyner would be proud! Her playing whisked us through this stylish drama which, as with the above, was a melodrama made firmly in the theatrical tradition of the country from which they came.

I’m not sure if Manzini breaks in to the Bertini-Borelli-Menichelli champions league of elite Divas but she is a very effective performer. And, just when I really wished that I had my copy of Angela Dalle Vacche's Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema, I find myself revisiting the power of the other three in order to judge Italia, but she is her own woman at the end of the day with the author mentioning Manzini's "operatic, stylised, and statuesque" way of acting, which are much in evidence during Night of the Storm, with Italia as The Storm!

Manzini is stylish, sporty – she plays tennis although always in a way that keeps her in camera shot, leaving herself vulnerable to passing shots from the back line… she plays a lot more too in a film that often falls foul of its narrative convolutions but it’s fun, and anyone falling for a bad Count in this type of undertaking had better be prepared for the consequences.

The Bioscope reviewer of 25^th October 1917, as quoted in the magnificent Giornate catalogue was keen: “It is admirably mounted and its exteriors are full of the glowing sunlight and rich shadow which mark the Italian filmmaker as a supreme pictorial artist. The acting constitutes a good example of the emotional school…” and it does! As much as the light and the shade, this is the mark of a true Diva film!

I look forward to seeing more of her as the week progresses.

 

Japanese Paper Films with Yoko Reikano Kimura and Hikaru Tamaki

This was a treat I didn’t know I needed but through dozens of ultra-quirky flipbooks, so much pleasure was derived especially with the superb accompaniment of Yoko Reikano Kimura on koto, and Hikaru Tamaki on cello. It was a madly compelling session with so much humour and plain silliness all held together by the accompaniment and the ability of the two players to catch and match the mood! Excellent!

 

Fleischers!!

The Clown’s Little Brother (US 1920) leads me to suspect that Max and Dave Fleischer might be highly addictive with their hybrid cartoons showing Max in the studio as his creations create havoc on paper and on the ground. The use of filmic photo-reference gives The Clown a fluidity not always seen in animation at the time and when he is joined by his more dynamic little brother… things go blotto! Later in the day there was more madness with Jumping Beans from 1923. Fleischer's greatest success was still to come with his extraordinary Superman cartoons, his eye for detail as well as motion was unmatched.

This was followed by another in the Ukrainian Children’s Films strand, Lazar Frenkel’s Robinson on His Own (UkrSSR, 1929) which showed the what unites little boys is always greater than what divides them. Daan van den Hurk accompanied both films with elan, humour and humanity.

There were two hours of Charlie Chaplin from the Chaplin Archives and many rare actualities with Stephen Horne accompanying the fact and the fiction.

 

Bernhard Goetzke and Lil Dagover

Der müde Tod (1921), with Ilya Poletaev

Made in 1921 when there were over half a million war-widows in Germany, Fritz Lang’s stunning Destiny or Der müde Tod (literally The Weary Death) suggests that love is stronger than death but no less avoidable. To a nation still mourning the Great War’s devastation, its gothic kindness would have touched so many: fairy-tale frankness masking a more eternal and hopeful message that we go on beyond...

Death is played rather convincingly by Bernhard Goetzke who carries his dark duties with a heavy heart and weary resolution: it’s not easy being the man in black but he wears it well and is nothing if not fair. Lil Dagover is the Maiden who tries to reason with The Glum Reaper after the untimely demise of her love (Walter Janssen) her selfless pursuit of his life touching even his grief-drenched soul.

It is interesting that the man is in distress and not the damsel; she is relentless and willing to risk all and give all to save her love. It is a sad sign of the Weimar’s new hopes that we get to see Lil Dagover playing something of the swashbuckling hero, not that she wasn’t capable just that actresses would be less “allowed” later on and by no means just in Germany.

Ilya Poletaev accompanied on three keyboards: piano, harpsicord and organ bringing dynamism and vivid shades of dark and light as the action demanded for the three segments in which The Maiden fights for her love and the Verdi was, not for the first or last time, transfixed!

The message? Love is stronger than death.

 

A certain Mr Fairbanks was so impressed he would take ideas for his new film about Bagdad...

 

PS: DONNA… In the early evening there was a memorial drink for film historian Donna Hill who passed away not long after this event in 2024. Donna was someone I knew mostly through social media and from our discussions of not just silent film but also cats and the music of Bauhaus. I still owe her a gelato but she was a warm and imaginative person who was always so willing to discuss her passions. Her death affected many in this community and I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that this was going to be the first Giornate in which her absence was going to be truly felt. Rest in peace.