Nuturing nature… No Blood Relation (1932), Kennington Bioscope

Without noticing it I’ve now being attending the Kennington Bioscope for over 11 years and there is always something to learn every time I go: something that will delight and move me in unexpected ways as well as historical-cultural insights you don’t get in the same way or at least with the same frequency. The KB formula is flexible and based on a freer programming schedule than most other film clubs, and tonight was no exception with a first half celebrating the 130 anniversary of cinema in this country – RW Paul and the Lumiere brothers both projecting film programmes on the same day – February 20^th in London – and a main feature from Japanese director, Mikio Naruse, that just blew our collective socks off with its style and quality.

 

To start at the ending, No Blood Relation (生さぬ仲), is the oldest surviving feature-length film from a director who ended up making so many more over the next three decades and whose work is certainly less well known than his contemporaries like Yasujiro Ozu. They have different styles but Naruse is just as effective in dealing with the human condition and in foregrounding women in emotional narratives that address timeless questions about their role in contemporary Japan as it evolved into a more militaristic and industrialised country.

 

Naruse intimate film acknowledges the cultural clash as well as the changes in relationships as a successful film star, Tamae Kiyooka (Yoshiko Okada) returns home after six years away. Okada was the star of Ozu’s Woman of Tokyo (1933) and led a dramatic life herself and would defect to Soviet Russia after the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 with her lover, the acting coach and activist, Ryōkichi Sugimoto. She had already been the subject of industry scandal but would now remain in the USSR until her death in Moscow in 1992.

 

Back in Naruse’s film she is greeted by dozens of photographers and hundreds of admirers before finding her brother, Keiji (Ichirō Yūki) who helps her escape the hubbub and find a suitable hotel. He we have just seen working with a street thief, Gen the Pelican (Shozaburo Abe) in a slapstick strip scene in which a casing mob search the young man only for his pal to have taken the purse in question. This is played for laughs but their criminality will soon aid Tamae’s plan to be reunited with her daughter.

 

The scene shifts to that daughter Shigeko (a remarkably assured performance from Toshiko Kojima) as she plays with her toys and with her adoptive mother Masako (Yukiko Tsukuba) who is married to Tamae’s former lover and is the child’s natural father, Shunsaku Atsumi (Shin'yō Nara). The two split after the baby was born as the actress was more interested in another man and her career and so Atsumi, his mother Kishiyo (Fumiko Katsuragi) and now his new wife have raised the child.

 

It's going to get worse, but Atsumi’s day is already going badly as he has been declared bankrupt; a fact that gets him little sympathy from his mother who has got used to the wealthy way of living. He receives an unexpected offer to rescue the business and is crestfallen when he meets the potential investor, Tamae, who had left him holding their baby as she moved on to another life with another man. Her offer is simple but unacceptable: let me have my daughter back and I will save your business and your honour.

 

Despite his clear lack of business acumen Atsumi stands strong and gets arrested as a result of his business mismanagement. As the investigation proceeds the tug of love begins in earnest as Tamae bribes his mother to help her kidnap Shigeko with the aid of her brother. But the child will not be swayed and nor will her adoptive mother who is far more connected than her biological mother.

 

She is helped by her husband’s handsome pal Masaya Kusakabe (Jōji Oka who is just so cool in Ozu’s Dragnet Girl!) who is a martial artist and heroically coded, giving the bad guys a beating but otherwise trying to negotiate between the two mothers. Ultimately it’s a tale of the desire for parenthood and the love that can only be nurtured. Timeless in its way and riveting till the end.

 

Accompaniment was provided by John Sweeney who improvised a sympathetic concerto that was entirely within the film, filling out the emotional lines with fluidity and steadfast commitment to some wonderful emoting on screen. Naruse expert, programmer Dr Kelly Robinson, introduced and gave us a summary of the director’s career and highlighted his use of camera movement and pull-ins to maximise the emotional impact of his characters, it’s a startling technique and sets him apart from Ozu and others of the time. He’s certainly someone I want to see more of and this year’s Hippfest (18^th to 22^nd March!) will feature another of his films, Apart from You (1933).

 

 

Going for a song... The Garden of Eden (1928), with Stephen Horne, BFI UK Restoration Premier

Film writer David Thomson has described late period silent film as a medium just bursting to express itself through talk and watching this sparkling romantic comedy you could also add the desire to laugh and sing. Lewis Milestone’s picture is bursting with virtual sound and has an irresistible rhythm that Stephen Horne accompanied quite superbly on piano, accordion, flute and sheets of paper… of which more later!

 

This was the UK restoration of the San Francisco Film Preserve 4k restoration which I had missed in last year’s Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. It’s a revelation not just in terms of wit and Lubitsch-style “coding” – thanks to scriptwriter Hans Kraly a frequent collaborator – but also in the way it allows for the showcasing of the beauty and talent of Corinne Griffith. In her introduction the BFI’s Bryony Dixon called for a show of hands for those who had heard of the actress before and a handful of us raised our hands. Many more will now have her imprinted in their minds for the next few days.

 

She has a spirit all of her own and shows plenty of emotional skills as well as comedic timing in a partnership with baby-faced Charles Ray – looking nothing like his 39 years and one bankruptcy – whose timing and grace had already served him well in a career dating back to 1911 and included Thomas Ince’s The Coward (1915) and The Busher (1919) in which he competes with one Jack (John) Gilbert for the hand of a young Colleen Moore.

 

Corinne Griffith in front of the cameras that loved her so...

Griffith was – also surprisingly – only four years younger and had been in the business since 1916 and starred in films like Black Oxen (1924) with a really young Clara Bow, as well as The Divine Lady (1929) for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. Her reputation has no doubt suffered as so many of her films are now lost, I make it 55 out of 72, but she was a major star and producer who was not only one of the most beautiful actors in Hollywood but also clearly among the most financially astute.

 

Bryony gave a fascinating insight into the actors’ relationship with men and money which culminated in her fourth divorce and an attempt to pass herself off as her own (fictional) sister to avoid paying alimony to her departing husband – points for effort but she could afford it and died a wealthy woman. A life well lived and in this context perhaps an unlikely pastry chef with operatic qualifications which is how her character Toni LeBrun begins the film.

 

It's a midnight flit as she leaves a note for her aunt and uncle and runs away from Vienna to join the “opera” having been encouraged by a letter from the Palais de Paris in Budapest… Sadly the venue is not so fine as its name suggests and is little more than a gentlemen’s dance hall with scantily clad women kicking up the dust for their leery clientele. She arrives with her opera diploma and finds the owner, a super smart Madame Bauer (Maude George – close cropped hair and plenty of "coding"…) more interested in her legs than her voice.

 

Maude George's Madame has a plan!

Toni takes things at face value though and is soon being kitted out by the wardrobe mistress Rosa (the exceptional Louise Dresser of The Goose Woman and more) in the most unoperatic of revealing costumes. She complains leaving Madame Bauer to offer her a seemingly more modest chiffon dress only for her to cue the stage lights during Toni’s performance which causes a mighty uproar amongst the sleazeballs in the stalls. Also watching is predatory nobleman Henri D'Avril (Lowell Sherman) whose boredom is swiftly transformed as Milestone’s camera pulls in to reveal the double image of the up-lit girl in his opera glasses.

 

Things get worse when the amorous aristocrat expects to have his post-theatrical meal in Toni’s company but she is too quick for him with the aid of Rosa, and, as tens to happen in an environment without employment rights and strong HR, both get fired. Rosa extends a helping hand though as she is due her annual leave and takes her new friend with her to Monte Carlo…

 

Now, if you have any remaining disbelief, I suggest you suspend it for it turns out that the humble dresser, Rosa, is, in fact a Baroness who gets just enough pension from her former husband, to live the life she used to in the expensive hotels of the Principality of Monaco and signs Toni in as her daughter, ennobling her and within a few days, adopting her as one later intertitle confirms.

Rosa reveals her nobility.

Now, as they enjoy the luxuries of the Eden Hotel – with its rather fine gardens… the story changes pace as Richard Dupont (Charles Ray), naughty but nice nephew of Colonel Dupont (Edward Martindel), a friend of Rosa’s, spies Toni and soon comes a courting. Griffith and Ray have a very smart interplay and this is a romantic screwball comedy in waiting as the two engage in a courtship based on misunderstandings, cheeky games and good old-fashioned coup de foudre with all of the hurdles to acceptance this usually implies.

 

There’s a lovely bit of business when Richard spots Toni playing the piano and singing, he peers across at this beauty who is naturally annoyed until – after she switches the light off to hide – he imitates and the two engage in something like l’amour de morse code, before the rooms on both sides of the hotel follow suit. Love, and lights, are in the air.

 

Richard is a songwriter when his duties as wealthy playboy permit, and he writes a song for Toni which as he plays to her, causes her to melt in his arms in a sure sign that their musicality is compatible. Later when his uncle decides to make his own proposal he also plays the song only for his phrasing to leave Toni cold. Yes indeed, the two youngsters seem destined to be together and the only tiny thing stopping the inevitable is the sleeping draught they both end up taking during a sequence that asks the question, how interesting is a proposal really?

Griffith and Ray make sweet music

Turns out it’s not quite the only thing though as soon, and what are the chances, Richard’s posh relatives arrive including his Uncle Henri, recently returned from Vienna… can you see where this is going?

 

The Garden of Eden is so smoothly directed by Milestone that it manages to serve the plot complications and keep the ball rolling without annoying even the modern audience. Griffith had fabulous timing and Ray is appealing in the gung-ho way of all noble, would-be songwriters who fall for women out of their class. Audiences now and then knew what to expect from this kind of film and Milestone delivers with emphatic efficiency and purpose aided by swoon-worthy design direction from William Cameron Menzies.

 

The jury of his peers, aunts and uncles...

Of course, whilst this 4k restoration looked gorgeous on screen it was greatly uplifted by Stephen Horne’s timing and invention. There’s one moment which I think may have surprised the audience when the Colonel sits down to play the song and the sheet music has been placed on the strings of the grand piano, Stephen had anticipated this and, diegetically, his playing also included paper on the piano strings. That’s experience! Sadly, the sheet music gave no clues as to what was being playing and so Stephen had to improvise the music that persuades Toni of her love just as he did the rest of the score… it’s a kind of magic. Another outstanding afternoon of live music, informed introduction and classic film at the BFI…

 

There’s more high-quality Corinne on the National Film Preservation Foundation site with a lovely restoration of her 1922 film A Virgin’s Sacrifice – you can screen it right here!

Details of the restoration of The Garden of Eden can be found on the San Francisco Film Preserve website - they also stream films from time-to-time and so it is well worth signing up for their newsletter! It is also to be hoped that they add this to the films they have released on Blu-ray through Flicker Alley such as the splendid new Louise Brooks early film collection... of which more later! But a Corinne Griffith box set would be most welcome too!

 

Crime and punishment? Strongroom (1962), BFI Restoration Re-release and Blu-ray

Watching this restored British B-movie classic on the big screen you were reminded that there are far darker places to be than the NFT2 on a Tuesday evening. The film is full of dread not least the ticking clock for the people locked in the titular space but also the men who put them there and who realise their own lives are on the line. Strongroom has always punched above its weight with contemporary reviews comparing it favourably with the main feature it was supporting, the comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962) starring George Chakiris and Janette Scott and costing £116,401, almost seven times as much as the little film that died harder.

 

Both efforts were a product of Bryanston Films established by Maxwell Setton and Michael Balcon in 1959 in an attempt to create “new collaborative enterprises to provide greater integration between production and distribution…”* It was a new “route to market” for independent film makers who could no longer get support from the likes of the Rank Organisation and the Associated British Picture Corporation who had shifted to film distribution and not filmmaking. Bryanston were the first and most successful of what was sadly a short-lived period but amongst their twenty features were the likes of the Peter Sellars comedy, The Battle of the Sexes (Charles Crichton,1960), The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) and classics of the British ‘new wave’ directed by Tony Richardson for Woodfall including A Taste of Honey (1961) and The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner (1962).

 

Strongroom, with a budget of £17,000 was one of the company’s B-movies and was directed by Vernon Sewell who had also made The Wind of Change the previous year for the company. Based on an idea from Richard Harris (no, not that one, the writer!) it’s the kind of tight procedural crime thriller that was very much in vogue at the time. It’s nuanced and cares for pretty much all of its characters leaving you rooting for both the robbers and the robbed by the end.

 

This is partly down to the narrative hanging off a couple of dramatic double acts with Derren Nesbitt as Griff, a small-time crook after just one big pay day, and his partner in crime Len Warren (Keith Faulkner), less experienced but perhaps more ruthless as initial success sinks in. They are assisted by Len’s brother Alec (W. Morgan Sheppard) as they wait patiently outside a bank, Eastern Counties Bank at the corner of St. Margaret's Road and The Barons in St. Margaret's, (right next to Twickenham Studios, thanks Reelstreets.com!) which Griff has been casing for many months. He knows their routines perfectly and, on this Bank Holiday Saturday knows they will finish early and be empty until Tuesday… it’s going to be the perfect crime.

 

Colin Gordon and Ann Lynn

Inside the bank the rather stuffy Mr Spencer (World War II veteran and man of many parts Colin Gordon looking, if anything, younger than his 51 years) keeps on working and has asked his secretary Rose (Ann Lynn, then married to Anthony Newley, Sammy Lee himself, and star of so many kitchen sink neo-classics including the excellent Four in the Morning (1965)) to work late. This confuses the watching gang as they know two remain inside and time is against them. The plan must proceed and they break in and take Mr Spencer and Rose captive, taking them downstairs to the bank’s strongroom and forcing them to open it.

 

Once again luck is against them as two cleaners make an unscheduled visit to the bank – some great chit-chat between Hilda Fenemore and Diana Chesney – as they sweep away oblivious. Downstairs there’s consternation though and in their panic the lads decide to lock up Spencer and Rose in the strongroom, tied up for good measure. They sneak out avoiding the cleaners and begin their getaway… the mood shifting from relief and elation at what would seem to be a successful heist but then Griff begins to fret.

 

Derren Nesbitt and Keith Faulkner

It is here that the quality of Richard Harris and co-writer Max Marquis’ script comes through as Griff, Len and Alec quickly work out the implications of what has just happened. Alec, the elder brother can see more clearly what Griff is driving at when he realises that the two in the strongroom won’t be found until Tuesday and, having run out of oxygen in the airtight vault, will leave the boys as murderers destined for the gallows (the last hangings were in 1964). They agree that Alec will drive far away from the scene, leave the keys to the vault in a phone box and tell the police where it is, leaving Griff and Len enough time to go to ground with the loot.

 

That should be that but Alec doesn’t make it and the boys are shocked when two policemen arrive to inform Len that he has been killed and they need him to identify the body at the mortuary. Griff styles it out but Len is not only heartbroken but starting to panic and blame the bank workers for his loss. The story is now all about the push and pull between these two characters as they weigh up their options whilst Rose and Spencer try to figure out a way out for themselves having calculated that they only have a finite amount of air left…

 

It's a tense watch and well played by the four with twists and turns still to come: will their conscience outweigh their greed and will they make up their minds in time? It’s a near perfect ride with enough discomfort and delay to keep you on the edge of your seat.

 

Strongroom is screening at the BFI this month and also elsewhere and I strongly recommend you see it in cinema if you can. There are screening details on the BFI website here.

If not, it is also coming on BFI Blu-ray on 23^rd February and you can buy it in the BFI’s Southbank shop or from the usual online suspects. This too is recommended – obviously – as it comes with the top of the range extras you’d expect but especially another tense Vernon Sewell Brit B-movie, this time for Anglo-Amalgamated, The Man in the Back Seat (1961) which not only has a similar Crime and Punishment guilt-trip but also features the same actors as partners in crime: Derren Nesbitt (Tony) and Keith Faulkner (Frank). They rob a dog track manager of his takings but, as he’s attached by handcuff to the locked bag, they have to knock him out and take him with them.

 

Things are further complicated by Frank’s wife Jean, played by the 18-years old Battersea Bardot, Carol White, who wants her man to walk the straight and narrow and is deeply distrustful of his mate Tony. As with Strongroom, a lot of the action is in the form of ongoing debate between the men in the car as they drive around trying to think of the safest way to off-load their seriously injured passenger: if he dies their crime will have been much worse and might possibly get them killed.

 

Nesbitt and Faulkner are excellent and the former especially has something of Oliver Reed’s unusual and unsettling screen presence. It’s worth the price of admission alone but there are many other reason to buy this set:

 

Strongroom (1962) newly remastered in 2K and presented in High Definition

Newly recorded audio commentaries by film historians Dr Josephine Botting and Vic Pratt

The Man in the Back Seat (1961, 57 mins): featuring many of Strongroom’s cast and crew – see above!

John Trumper BEHP interview (1992, 158 mins, audio): the Strongroom editor discusses his career

Footpads (1896, 1 min): one of the earliest British crime films

A Test for Love (Vernon Sewell, 1937, 27 mins): a public information film on the perils of STDs

The Awakening Hour (Donovan Winter, 1957, 21 mins): a robbery goes wrong as morning breaks in London

After Dark (Mike Dodds, 1979, 14 mins): a road safety film edited by John Trumper

 

The First pressing only includes a fully illustrated booklet with new essays by James Bell, Barry Forshaw and Tony Dykes, along with notes on the special features and credits.

 

*Duncan Petrie (2017): Bryanston Films: An Experiment in Cooperative Independent Film Production and Distribution, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 

DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2017.1285150

Betty Balfour Lost and Found, Kennington Bioscope

 

In the darkened hush of the former workhouse home of Charlie Chaplin we were watching Betty Balfour on film that so far as is known, does not exist anywhere else in the world. Think about that, in a digital landscape in which seemingly everything is available to stream (or not stream) at the whims of faceless copyright owners who seek to monetise and control IP. Things were not much different back in the Twenties but things got lost, events overtook the physical media and even the films of Britain’s Queen of Happiness were misplaced.

 

Chris Bird screened a fragment of an unidentified Betty Balfour film, 20 seconds or so, with a couple of other players who might have been familiar.  A tantalising glimpse and, maybe, there’s more out there somewhere. Then he introduced us to a film from his collection, a 9.5mm copy of her 1926 British film, Cinders which is no relation to Ella Cinders staring her American counter-part Colleen Moore. Originally in 20 reels and designed for, patient, home viewing, Chris had transferred the spools onto three larger reels – as much as he could without fear of too much stress on the celluloid from the projection process.

 

Betty's Cinders is along way from the Ball. (All images courtesy of Christopher Bird)

This 95-year-old film was projected from Chris’ 70-year-old projector* and, unsurprisingly there were one or two unexpected additional stops on the way as the past was revealed in vivid action accompanied by the fleet fingers of Colin Sell on the piano. Colin had not seen the film, few others have, but he was able to anticipate the rhythms of Balfour’s perfectly timed comedy whether she was getting trapped in revolving doors, falling down or simply turning her sparkling peepers towards the camera. She has perfect timing, a mix of Stan Laurel, the aforementioned Miss Moore and even Mary Pickford with whom she was often compared. The jewel in the crown of British silent stars and voted in the top two by readers of the Daily Mirror along with Ivor Novello.

 

As Chris pointed out, 9.5mm was only ever intended for home projection but, on the big screen here it looked fabulous – the use of a single central sprocket allows the gauge to pack more punch than it’s diameter might suggest and it was Film Club as only the Kennington Bioscope can provide with every break in the film filled by improvisational flourishes from Mr Sell and the story continuing in the determined hands of Camera-Chris! Just to add more jeopardy, Chris also provided a live translation of the French intertitles on this precious celluloid survivor.

 

The Ball is in full swing and Betty is having it...

The story centred on Betty from the get-go as the down-trodden – but unbowed! – chamber maid in a guest house who gets to assist a reasonably mad Professor Pottiefax (Fred Wright) as he looks after his beetles at the expense of all other cares. He rewards her fortitude after winning a fortune and a hotel in the south of France (always a favourite hang-out of the British film set. The professor has too a time on the dance floor and is photographed in compromising positions with some of the dancers who, for reasons best know to themselves, are wearing kilts.

 

Evil French hoteliers try to blackmail him out of his good fortune but they’ve reckoned without our Betty and also her ability to make handsome friends who will pitch in when the going gets industrial, in this case Richard Dalrey (André Roanne). It’s a slight film in some ways but this is primary evidence of the extraordinary appeal of Balfour and further explains the good humour she was so effortlessly capable of supplying on the screen!

  

The view from the projectionsist (Christopher Bird)

Daughter of the Regiment (1929) was an altogether bigger budgeted affair being a British/German co-production released in Germany as Die Regimentstochter and directed by Hans Behrendt: a Euro pudding as they used to be called. This was a 16mm print courtesy of Bob Geoghegan/Archive Film Agency and, once again, the only copy of the film left anywhere. Chris and Bob projected and Ashley Valentine accompanied this slightly more robust stock and again we were drawn in by the uniqueness of the experience and the privilege of seeing a film not in circulation, not digitised, and only in a private collection.

 

The plot was based on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1840 opera which explains some of the grand gestures and the joyful mood of a nimble if predictable story arc. Betty is Marie, a foundling who has become the “daughter” of a French Regiment stationed in the Pyrenees on the French Spanish border. They guard against incursions from Spanish smugglers and gangs, with Quippo the sergeant, acting as Marie’s adopted father.

 

One of the gangs breaks into their compound whilst the troop are away and Marie bravely – or as she thinks – frightens them away by firing a single shot that Quippo hears and brings his men back to then suffer his charge’s boasting about her soldierly prowess. She goes out riding in the hills and falls trying to collect wildflowers. She is rescued by a handsome young man Tonio (Alexander D’Arcy) who is reluctant to give her his name even though she clearly wants to know all about him… Maria and Tonio… this is a Southwest Side of France Story?

Directed by Hans Behrendt the film shifts in scale from these locations shots of the parched Mediterranean hinterland to the crowded traffic of Paris as the visiting Countess Brascani (Olga Limburg) notices her lost brother’s family crest on the swaddling Maria had been found in and which is now frames on her wall. There can be no doubt that she is a Brascani and has to leave her regimental family for a noble lifestyle in the north. Naturally she must marry another noble and her response when the countess shows her “the man she is going to marry” is hilarious “what, that?!”.

 

But, what about Tonio I hear you ask? Well, after reacquainting themselves as Maria rides her pony through Paris and spots him in his car, she starts to suspect that he might be a smuggler. She loves him but how can she marry such a man and, is the unattractive wealthy man the least worst option?

 

We’ve all been there, to varying degrees, and I hope you get your chance to see this film sometime. Any Betty is good Betty and despite the mixed reviews Chris read out from the British press, the Germans seem to have been far keener. We have more in common that that which divides us in Europe, especially our sense of humour!

 

Ashley Valentine competed the picture with elegant flourishes and good anticipation for this unseen film and is fast becoming a vital part of the Bioscope operation. London’s Silent Film Speakeasy** is flourishing and we’ve never needed it more!

 

At the start of the evening Chris also showed an unidentified fragment of another Betty Balfour film which one keen-eyed Bioscoper identified as Raise the Roof a 1930 UK musical directed by Walter Summers and starring Betty, Maurice Evans, and Jack Raine. But even that’s still a mystery, as Chris’ fragment doesn’t have a soundtrack: is this an unknown silent version?

 

And, this being the Biosxcope, there was even more with another collector handing Mr Bird a reel containing all that survives (not much) of George Pearson’s Satan’s Sister (1925), featuring Betty, Guy Phillips and Philip Stevens. Hopefully, this will be screened at a later show.

 

Discovery and entertainment all delivered in real time in Kennington: it’s what they do and the way that they do it!

 

And not forgetting this glorious audience! Pic from Christopher Bird

Screen shots from Cinders... courtesy of Mr Bird - unseen in a long time!

*Designed by a Czech refugee, J Danek, in the 1930s - Chris' was made in the 1950s at their factory in Windsor.

**As PH from SL famously put it!

Lost and found… The White Heather (1919), SFFP with Stephen Horne

This is a rediscovered film and there is no more pleasant watch than seeing something that, until 2023, was considered gone for good and yet, here it is, looking wonderful with restored tints, a ghostly crispness and accompanied by Stephen Horne on top form accompanying himself. I’d previously seen it in Pordenone at Il Cinema del Cinema Muto in 2024 and now it is available for all to see streaming from the splendid National Film Preservation Fund website: a gift to the film community and one we must not only celebrate but support (donation details at the bottom).

Watching the film in luxury of this Englishman’s castle, with a single Bolonoodle dog standing in for the Duke of Shetland’s lurchers and more self-service than he’d have been used to from his various servants in his grand Scottish caisteal, I was struck by the excellence of Director Maurice Tourneur’s framing and the dynamics of shots in which his human components are moved with such interest and effect. As Dick goes in search Captain McClintock there’s the profile of an older woman against an arch and as our hero proceeds, figures walk towards him staggering…. At first I thought it was my mate Colin’s Dad getting arrested yet again on Liverpool’s Dock Road after closing time but, similar sailors, different port.

Frame that and put it on your wall.

Every scene is like a painting for Tourneur… albeit with moving parts and whilst the camera is mobile there are so many tableaux that catch the eye such as the hunting party sequences and the vivid, recreation of the Stock Market with sunlight casting beams over a frenzied floor of traders pushed to the limits, investments going up in smoke as the dealers chomp hard on the cigars of defeat.

Based on the play of the same name by Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton which opened on Drury Lane in 1897, with multiple scenes and a running time of some four hours including a climactic underwater sequence in which two divers fight to the death. I would love to know more about the stage technology of the time but clearly putting on a spectacular show was key to success then as now and it ran for years on Broadway as well as in London. The reviewer in Punch 2^nd October 1897 was impressed, if sardonic (hi bro’!), remarking on the “capital dialogue (when not melodramatic)…” of the new drama at the Old Drury Theatre which combined with the “smiling villainy” of Mr Henry Neville and the musical accompaniment of Mr Glover in the orchestra, was encouraging packed houses: “nightly, a congested district”…

 

Mabel Ballin roamin' in the gloamin'...

Also praised was “… the admirable acting of Mrs John Wood, which is beyond all praise” and, hinting at the technical side of things suggesting that “Were all the iron-work machinery to collapse (as in fact it did one night and the theatre had to be closed), the drama could go on as its mainstay, its chief support is Wood…” The review mentions the White Heather was seen to ascend heavenwards “quite a wonder of the deep!” and the villain played by Neville ends up attired in a diver’s attire… his huge diver’s helmet and mute demise raising a few titters before the hero despatches him with further blows and a dramatic flourish. It must have been some spectacle but we have a film to consider and this is right up Maurice’s waterway!

 

Kate Rorke played the heroine in the Drury production – “self-effacing with not much to say…” and Mr Neville, played Lord Angus Cameron. In Tourneur’s film we have Holmes Herbert as Lord Angus Cameron and Mabel Ballin as Marion Hume and, as luck would have it, having not much to say is pretty much her advantage in this silent film, with the director focusing on her emoting as the extent of her betrayal is revealed.

Lord Angus promises financial ruin to Marian's father unless he keeps quiet...

The story is a mix of financial intrigue, the perils of marrying below oneself, the need for effective auditing and corporate governance as well as the dangers of marrying at sea, even if everything is above board and in accordance with Scottish Law. Against this is a good-hearted woman backed by an array of loyal friends and family although not all filial relationships in the film are unconditional, far from it. Ultimately it comes down to a battle beneath the waves as mentioned in the above play, this is a cinematic tour-de-force, with some realistic aqua-action and peril!

 

We start in England where the black sheep of the Shetland Clan, Lord Angus Cameron, has run his business into the ground. Initially you feel some sympathy for the man, especially when he goes to ask for help from his rich uncle, the Duke of Shetland who aware of his nephew’s wayward approach to fiscal irresponsibility advises that he really ought to marry a well to do lass of his own station before he could consider a loan. Luckily he has the exact person in mind and it’s Hermione de Vaux (a stunning but uncredited Gertrude Astor) who he offers to match-make.

Lady Hermione and Lord Angus - the ruling British oligarchy self perpetuates, comrades!

We quickly learn that Angus has already been married and to a lowly kitchen maid, Marion Hume, with whom he had an affair some years earlier and married her either before or after their child was born. Is Angus going to put love before duty and business or… is he just a lily-livered cad who will stop at nothing to save his own skin no matter who gets cast aside. Things come to a head on a hunting party when Marion and Angus’ child, a young boy, accidentally gets hit by some shot and his mother reveals all. Angus quickly denies it and Marion heads back to her home in London to consult her estranged father James (Spottiswoode Aitken)

 

Marion, why didn’t you tell me it was Lord Angus that you married?

Now this is a very good question and the young lady’s response is far from satisfactory as she agreed to the secrecy to prevent Angus’ relationship with the Duke from being damaged. The result cost her the good will of her father and, meant she had to find other way of bringing up their child – who is charming but surely in need of his father’s company, or perhaps not as things unravel…   There’s a court case but – darn it! – the couple were married at sea aboard a ship called the White Heather and only one of the two witnesses is possibly still alive to confirm either way.

A glimpse of the John Gilbert we know so well, just 21 here and playing his part

Marion has real friends though, both of whom love her so much so that Dick Beach – played by a very youthful and skinny John Gilbert – volunteers not to rest until he has found the missing witness, a Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed and very unsettling here as always). He sets off on a lengthy search of every bar in every port determined to clear the name and rescue the reputation of his secret love.

 

If I understand you correctly, shortly after the ceremony aboard the White Heather, the yacht sank and the evidence, namely the marriage record, went down with the ship…

If ever an intertitle had hard work to do, this was it as the stage is set for the dynamic second half of the story. There will be drunken sailors, double crossers and violence and there will be an epic underwater fight that still has us on the edge of our seats wondering how it was all done as well as how it will all end!

Stephen’s accompaniment is a rare chance to hear him play all of his instruments but separately with his score featuring piano, flute, accordion, electronic keyboards and more mixed into one piece. It is full of emotionally engaging melodies and manages to enhance the mood, appearing to be right inside the film as usual. The shared humanity of creatives split by a century of changes in circumstance and fashion if not the basic instinct to connect in sympathy. This music is archeological, patiently uncovering the original feeling of the film for those who are prepared to put down their phones to just watch, listen and understand.

It's easy to assume that history is what happens to ther people multiplied by time and technology but the persistent “now” can be viewed with such clarity through this restoration and listening to this music.

 

You can connect right here, right now on the San Francisco Film Preserve site!

 

The link for donations to this most worthy cause is to be found here.

  

About the Restoration – from the NFPF site:

Long presumed lost, a tinted and toned nitrate print of The White Heather was discovered at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam in 2023. Because no original titles are known to survive, new English language titles have been created. The new text is based on translation of the Dutch titles and by referencing the script for the 1897 play, The White Heather, upon which the film is based. The title text was also reviewed in comparison to contemporary trade press sources, the United States copyright registration, censor records, and the published musical cue sheet. Title graphics and typography are adapted from the style of other films produced by Maurice Tourneur Productions in the same year. The colour tinting and toning reproduces the colouring of the original nitrate print. This restoration is a collaboration between Eye Filmmuseum, the San Francisco Film Preserve, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It is made possible through the generous support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.

 

The Great Drury Lane Melodramatic Success... even in 1919 this was worth quoting!

Nature vs nurture… Alraune (1928), Deaf Crocodile Blu-ray

 

The photo play ALRAUNE could easily become a sensation were only its name: BRIGITTE HELM! ¹

Santa delivered and this release is one of the finest of this or any year – if you haven’t already voted in Silent London’s annual poll, please do so now and come back to my ramblings when you have. We have restored and remastered versions of two films directed by Henrik Galeen, The Student of Prague (1926), now running at 133 minutes, and Alraune from the same year and clocking in at a wonderfully clear and tinted 131 minutes (I’ve previously only seen a 98-minute version). For both it’s their first time on Blu-ray and in these restored to within a gnat’s crochet of their original running time.

Born on 17^th March 1908 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, Brigitte Helm was astonishingly still only 19 when this film was released having started her ten-year career at 17 years old on Lang’s Metropolis after which she was offered a UFA contract. But it’s not just her youth but also her lack of formal training that is notable. According to filmportal.de she had featured in school plays and been interested in acting – presumably dancing too – from an early age none of which would have recommended her so much as her poise and presence to Fritz Lang when casting her in his epic.

After the success came the contract which defined and delimited her career, she retired in 1935 after transitioning to the talkies and left Nazi Germany for Switzerland where she raised four children and, until her death aged 88 in 1996, refusing to discuss her film career as far as I can tell? She came she saw, performed like few others and left on her terms as society took an horrific twist. I recall GW Pabst talking about her playing a blind person in The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927) in the British Close Up film magazine:

“Do you know the scene when she walks with Jeanne Ney in the streets of Paris, she was almost killed. The actor driving the taxi was not a driver really but had had to learn. He was not very sure of his steering. Brigitte Helm walked right in front of him. I had to run before the camera to save her. Do you know why? She was blind. She simply did not see it.”²

Brigitte Helm

Helm was the daughter of a merchant father who sadly passed away when she was just five, so who can tell what influence this had on the course of her interests. She attended the Johanna-Stift Gymnasium in Werftpfuhl secondary school which focused on the arts and, according to its Wikipedia page, it was here that Fritz Lang saw her perform in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Other sources claim that her mother sent her photograph to the director and pushed her case, maybe both are true but there’s no denying her magnificence and instinct.

The same skills are in evidence in Galeen’s film with the director dwelling on her face and sinewy, almost balletic expressiveness – her hunched shadow contorted against the walls, her hands twisted with murderous hate hovering over her “father” and tormentor’s throat as he sleeps, her huge eyes drooping as the innate furies fill her mind, freezing all compassion and flushing stone cold across her face. It’s an exercise in meaningful movement that you would normally see only through dance.

The story is based on the outrageous 1911 novel of the same name by actor, poet and all-round oddball, Hanns Heinz Ewers which took the medieval myth of the human-shaped mandrake root which was believed to be the result of the semen of hanged criminals somehow impregnating the plant underneath the gallows. Modern science would disagree but who trusts the experts… other than the educated? Anyway, it makes for a ripping yarn in which the new techniques of artificial insemination are used to enable an examination of innate evil versus the nurture of responsible upbringing.

A scientist, Professor Jakob ten Brinken, conducts an experiment using the root, a (dead) hanged murderer and a prostitute to produce a baby girl whom he christens Mandrake/Alraune and attempts to civilise. In the novel the inherent evil is dialled up to the max with Alraune capable of all kinds of perverse behaviour but whilst this no doubt led to the success of the book, it couldn’t be reproduced directly in a feature film, even in Weimar Germany.

The book was the second part of a trilogy featuring one Franz Braun, a cipher for the author, who encounters the supernatural and arcane in books entitled: The Sorcerer's Apprentice or the Devil Hunters, Alraune and Vampire: A Wild Story in Scrap and Colours encourages the Professor to conduct the experiment whereas in the film, he (played by Iván Petrovich) is the one calling for the scientist (Paul Wegener) to think again. The Professor is not for turning though and is determined to play God and put his theories to the practical test with the mystical promise that the resulting child has strange qualities that cause people to love her and that leads them to destruction. She may bring luck but also ruin…

Alraune ten Brinken (Brigitte Helm) is the fully grown results of his experiment, and we find her at boarding school and is first seen toying with fly as it attempts to escape from a glass of water, she reaches out, not to rescue but to push it back, not the behaviour of a well-educated young woman. There is more to come as she leads her classmates into acts of rebellion, she dances, wears cologne and plants a stag beetle on the mother superior’s robes. All of this is but a hint of the novel’s decadence with Baum describing her as the “wild, sinful sister of my hot nights”, her “wild soul stretches forth, glad of all shame, full of all poison…”³

Alraune has out-grown school and to facilitate her escape has lured a young man, Wölfchen (Wolfgang Zilzer) into loving her: getting him to steal money from his family so they can run away. Once on their train to freedom she quickly proves faithless, ordering champagne and flirting with a likely lad who spies her from the corridor. Then a troop of circus performers join the train and Alraune is immediately impressed by the magician’s sleight of hand especially when in one sexually obvious moment he lets a mouse run up her skirt; she leans back and looks him straight in the eye when even Bad Maria might think twice.

At the circus things move on and Alraune is seen sharing a cigarette with the lion tamer (Louis Ralph) standing so close that she can light his fire with her own as it were. Chided for her wanton troublesome-ness Alraune walks into the lions’ cage challenging the beasts to come and have a go if they think they’re feline enough. The animals don’t move until the tamer rushes in with his whip…

The Professor finally catches up on his “daughter” after years of searching and whisks her off to polite society where she plays tennis with Der Vicomte (handsome Britisher John Loder out of The First Born) who soon proposes… But he’s not the only man to have fallen for Alraune and the Professor blackmails her into staying under his “care” as his mind is lost to passion for his subject and scientific rigour is relaced by the need for sexual ownership…

I’ve seen the film on screen before but this restoration adds so much to a story that is still missing a few sections, most notably Valeska Gert dancing in front of a den of iniquity – this is represented by a still and a descriptive intertitle. This digital restoration was made by the Filmmuseum München, supervised by Stefan Drössler and was made from a number of sources which still leaves the film some 12 minutes short of the original German release which no longer exists. Distribution elements from the Danish Film Institute and Russian archive were merged with the censor’s report and the director’s script for the second half of the film helping to recreate the running order and intertitles.

 

One wonders again and again how it is possible that a girl so young as Brigitte Helm is able to play her part with such highly subtle artistry the character of the leading part needing such spiritual and inner comprehension.⁴

The film was a sensation at the time and further cemented Helm’s position as a European star with reviews seeing the emergence of a star of similar sexual magnitude to Garbo and others who played the “vamp” role so popular in America. To the vampire gallery, which runs from Theda Bara to Greta Garbo, let me add the German Brigitte… wrote C. Hooper Trask breathlessly in The New York Times whilst "Trask" in Variety noted that Galeen "squeezes all the horror juice out of [Ewer’s story], and Brigitte Helm, the vamp, is at least 200 percent… When will some American director take a look at this extraordinary fascinating girl. She has an individuality of her own."

Well, Brigitte had a mind of her own and when the time came she would walk away aged just 27… TWENTY SEVEN! Probably thinking like Norma Talmadge that the movies didn’t need her anymore and she, certainly didn’t need them, at least the films that Hitler’s Germany was offering.

Both films are available on DVD from EditionFilmuseum and these Blu-rays are from the Deaf Crocodile imprint in the UDS which include some excellent extras:

•       Excerpt from AUF GEFÄHRLICHEN SPUREN (DANGEROUS PATHS), 1924, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf, 15 min. This clip from the 1924 crime film is a rare opportunity to see Galeen’s work as both writer and actor, alongside frequent collaborator, director Harry Piel.

•       New video interview with Stefan Drössler of the Filmmuseum München about the preservation of Galeen’s films, moderated by Dennis Bartok of Deaf Crocodile (90 min., in English).

•       New audio commentaries by film historian Jan-Christopher Horak, former director of the UCLA Film & TV Archive and the Filmmuseum München.

•       Reversible Wrap Art by Beth Morris

 

Sadly, there wasn’t space to include Helm’s 1930 talkie remake as directed by Richard Oswald, I’ve only seen it on grimy YouTube and Brigitte is quite different… singing and acting like she’s working in Der blaue Engel… things were moving fast!

There’s more on the Limited Edition including a booklet and Dave McKean cover but you’ll have to look on eBay as it’s sold out!

 

Details on the Deaf Crocodile site and all good online retailers.

The EditionFilmuseum DVD set is available on their site.

 

 

1.  Erich Hellmund-Waldow, Close Up March 1928
2. Close Up, December 1928
3.  Two films by Henrik Galeen: Der Student vonPrag (1926) and Alraune (1928), translated from the original German by Paul Cuff*, on therealmofsilence.com 
4. Erich Hellmund-Waldow, Close Up March 1928

 

*Paul Cuff also has a book on Brigitte Helm in the works and I am positive that I am not alone in awaiting the results enthusiastically!