Have you noticed that there are more and more best-of lists this year? Most are aimed at generating engagement either with heated debates on the socials or via ecommerce, but some are just the outpourings of unquiet minds, butterflies who just need to bring some order at this disturbing time of the year between normal service and Christmas’ mourning. This is one of those, it punctuates the space between regular rants about live screenings and hot digital media – or lukewarm in the case of the last post. So, here we go after the year in which I published the THOUSANDTH post on this blog and crossed the one MILLION words mark… I’ll try be brief.
Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney
January was the hottest month as a cool breeze blew in from
Sweden as the BFI screened the SFI’s restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s
adaptation of Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloff’s novel. I was honoured to introduce
the film and to interview Sonja Kristina, the granddaughter of Gerda Lundequist
(who played the matriarch of Ekeby), who then attended the event with her children
and grandchildren.
The film is long and may have its faults but it is a major work and features Lars Hanson, the young Greta Gustafson and my favourite Silent Film Principal Dancer/Actor, Jenny Hasselqvist. The restoration looked stunning bringing new vibrancy and order to the film and, cometh the three hours cometh the accompanist - John Sweeney topped things off with energy and invention, as ever the perfect player for the long dance!
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| Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird's collection |
Museums of Dreamworlds… Kennington Bioscope Programme of Antiquities
This was a collaboration between the Bioscope, the BFI and
the Department of Greek and Latin, at my daughter’s alma mater, University
College London as part of Museums of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity in the
BFI National Archive. Introduced by the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, and presented
by Professor Maria Wyke from UCL it was a selection of films from 1901 to 1927
all of which drew their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome
– very loosely in some cases!
Most of the films were from the BFI’s archive with one - Dans
l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird’s collection on 28mm
digitally scanned by the Cinema Museum. The project asks “…how did silent
cinema design its Greek and Roman dreamworlds? What did cinema gain from
recreating the distant past? What did the past gain from being recreated in
moving images?” On the night, we found some answers and some more questions
and we also discovered how Helen’s fabulous face and fancy for the tailors of
Troy led to the war between Sparta and Troy: even now we know these stories so
well we can understand these jokes.
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| A 1919 Erdmann with colour filters! |
Early Colour Live!, Birkbeck University with John Sweeney, Christopher Bird and Iain Christie
Another collaboration and a set of early colour films on celluloid
from Chris Bird’s collection and hand-cranked by the man himself on his own
projector. We saw hand-coloured film that would have required sixteen images
hand colouring for every foot of film equating to one second, Pathé’s
pioneering stencil colour system, William Friese Greene’s Biocolour and more
all revealing the sophistication and relentless innovation of cinema’s first decades.
Such treats do not come around very often and here’s hoping
for more from the gang in 2026.
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| Inka Länta |
With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (1926), Hippfest at Home, Hippfest #15
I wasn’t able to get to Falkirk this year but luckily was able
to enjoy the online edition. As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home
is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of
actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions
shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest
cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the
film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the
front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned
poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the
audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so
well.
Pick of the pics was this dramatized documentary about the reindeer
herding lives of the Sámi people who co-existed with them in the most
precarious of ways in the far north of Sweden, across Scandinavia and even into
Russia. The screening encompassed Sámi old and new with the UK premiere of a
new score by Sámi-Finnish joiker and electronic musician Hildá Länsman plus
sound designer Tuomas Norvio, collaborating with the Norwegian Sámi musician
Lávre Johan Eira and Swedish composer, cellist and bass guitarist Svante
Henryson. Traditional forms of Sámi song – “joik” - were deployed alongside moder
instruments and electronica to create a visceral and sometimes startling score
to this restored documentation of this remarkable people.
Hotel booked; I look forward to the 16th
Edition in March!
Betty Balfour
The Sea Urchin (UK 1926), with Colin Sell, 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend
April and it was time for an early breakfast and the finest
coffee that Lambeth can provide as we dove into this mini-Giornate del cinema
muto in Charlie’s old workhouse home. Highlights came thick and fast and
included the World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking
Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle
Facey. There were British films, Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with
Cyrus Gabrysch playing, introduced by Lawrence Napper and with Ivy Duke and Guy
Newall on screen, along with rare US prints, Clive Brook in The Yellow Lily (US
1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine and introduction by Liz Cleary
My favourite was The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper which included Britain’s Queen of Happiness, Betty Balfour (more of whom is coming in ’26 with a recently rediscovered film… check out the KB website!). It was a proper delight with The Sea Urchin in question being our BB’s Fay Wynchbeck who as the film starts is a disruptive student in a Parisian girls’ boarding school. Her singing and dancing leads the other girls slightly astray and there’s a fabulous shot of their after-hours partying through the keyhole which Alfred H would have been lauded for. Fay has rich relatives but there’s a family feud in her way… I swear Colin Sell laughed at parts as he played along with glee!!
Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)
Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate, live 78 RPM DJ Chris Bird, BFI
June was a mixed blessing as I couldn’t make it to Cinema
Ritrovato but at least I had the BFI’s Film on Film long weekend to provide the
look and feel of nitrate and celluloid! This was a wonderful weekend with lots
of colourful treats and my chance to stay awake (see original post in October, 2017) for all of
Lubitsch’s wonderful The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), but my
favourite live cinematic experience had to be the surreal presentation of Bunel’s
masterpiece in NFT1.
"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only
method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [Luis and Salvador...]
Luis Buñuel’s original score was a “mash up” – as The Kids
now say – of Argentinian Tango music with Wagner et al, thereby inventing
Classical Lounge Core without knowing it. Chris Bird, who collects shellac as
well as celluloid, was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing
contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the
range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range. It was
the hip-hop triumph of the season and exactly the kind of madness the creators
wanted!
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| Anna May Wong in The Thief of Bagdad |
The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand, BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention
The BFI’s Anna May Wong season was my favourite of the year
and included one great day in which I caught up with her in two of the great
silent fantasy films which I had been waiting to see on film and on screen. Peter
Pan (1924) caught the eye with JM Barrie’s hand-picked pocket rocket betty Bronson
and its closeness to the original play as well as accompaniment from Costas
Fotopoulos but The Thief of Bagdad (1924) featuring a dazzling Douglas
Fairbanks and epic accompaniment from Neil Brand featured more AMW and was on
such a scale it have NFT1 buzzing!! I could happily watch both films every day
of the week!
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| Italia Almirante Manzini abides |
Zingari (IT 1920), with Günter Buchwald, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44
This was the pure diva pomp and circumstance of Italia
Almirante Manzini playing the Queen of the Gypsies in Zingari (IT 1920) and
it brought the Teatro Verdi to its feet with a combination of on-screen energy
and the startling accompaniment from a super group comprised of Baldry,
Buchwald and Bockius or BBB for short. The film tells the story of Vielka,
daughter of the Gyspy King Jammadar (Alfonso Cassini) who is fierce and unruly,
determined to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Sindel (Amleto
Novelli) even though he is from a rival clan and physically puts the old man in
his place when challenged, starting the feud that runs the entire narrative.
Vielka is supposed to marry Gudlo (Franz Sala), who’s not a
patch on Sindel so no wonder she burns their farmhouse and gets herself exiled.
Will there be any happy ending, do operas ever have happy endings? Günter let
loose his inner gypsy on violin and the others followed on with one of the most
passionate accompaniments of this year’s Giornate!
The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44
Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and
has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum
of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the
events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent..
Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme
films and this film is another great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in
the greater context. It didn’t feel
triumphant though, more grimly determined to help complete the job and this was
partly down to the excellence of Laura Rossi’s musical choices.
Laura has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear
her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone
& Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Her score enabled us to
really see the film, devoid of any post-facto contextualisation, in ways that
were connected to the original intent. She allowed us a bit of both but
underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a
most historical musical agenda, incredibly effective and created.
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| Lillian Gish |
Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film
Another film that anyone professing to blog about silent
film should surely have seen already but as with the two above, I’ve been
waiting to see it “live” on film and with an ace accompanist. I was not
disappointed and am persuaded that Lillian Gish probably influenced Griffiths’
development of the story. Working not only with the best actor he also had one
of the best cameramen and had clearly been watching the works of Sjostrom and Weber
as this story is uncompromising. It’s also a surprise to see the film take the
approach it does to Gish’s unmarried mother character and, indeed, to see her
fight back against the guilty party: This man – an honoured guest at your
table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been?
This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a
direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage
of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that
through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the man she
actually loves – played by Richard Barthelmess.
Stephen Horne provided yet another one-man orchestral score
off the hoof and covered this film’s vast space and time with constantly
evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments with
just the two hands, or so he says!
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| The UK forecast... |
Thank you to all who have programmed, played, introduced
and archived this year, lets do even more in 2026 as I write my way towards my
second million words…
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