Nurturing 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 cinemas, and tonight was no exception with a first half celebrating the 130th 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.

Yukiko Tsukuba, Toshiko Kojima and Jōji Oka

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 young 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.

 

Shozaburo Abe and Ichirō Yūki

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.

 

Yoshiko Okada

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).

We kicked off with Ian Christie and those magnificent men and their projection machines. First up on 20^th February 1896 was a performance at the Marlborough Hall in Regent Street – now remodelled as the Regent Street Cinema - arranged by the Lumiere’s, or rather their enterprising father Charles-Antoine, which was presented by multi-skilled theatrical Félicien Trewey, a frequent collaborator of the boys who specialised in making funny hats and, indeed, we saw a film demonstrating this. There had been earlier screenings in France and their most famous film, Train Entering Station, was almost certainly not part of the programme until later in the year.

 

The films we about 50ft long and lasted some 50 seconds but still a step forward in the recording of life and entertainment. The films included Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon (1895) as well as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) which had been shown in the French screenings but no one really knows the programme for Marlborough Hall, although these early films were more likely than not. Surprisingly the brothers were not really interested in moving pictures and it was their father who thought they could improve on the equipment of the time and they had moved away from motion pictures in 1905. Their company issued about 2,500 films and, astonishingly all have been preserved and now restored. They are however, closely guarded by the Association frères Lumière and rarely screened… which is maddening, n’est pas?

 

Finsbury Technical College

Far – far – fewer of RW Paul’s films are extant and yet we can see him advancing the art of direction and narrative in ways that his technocratic colleagues from Paris did not. His programme took place in Finsbury Technical College, Britain’s first technical college opened almost exactly three years before on 19^th February and eventually to become part of Imperial College. Paul was an electrical engineer who developed his camera with the legendary Bert Acres – the pair had no option given Edison’s approach to IP… hoarding patents as well as necessity, is truly the mother of invention!

 

Paul produced 800 films and all that we have are just 83… he was an innovator and famously created the first two-shot film which Ian has restored to show a man waiting outside a museum and then looking at exhibits inside it. One small step for the cameraman but a huge one for film-kind… and there’s an HG Wells sidebar here in that the two talked about using Paul’s camera to create the effects described in HG’s The Time Machine. It sounds like Virtual Reality way too soon… neither man had the time to complete the project at the time.

When is a car not a car? The ? Motorist (1906)

 

Ian chose a variety of Paul’s films as, again, the exact programme is not known. What we could see was more narratively rich, humorous and – dare I say it – more genuinely “cinematic” than the Lumiere’s work. But it was all stunning, 130-year old life flashing in front of us and all illustrated musically by John Sweeney’s wonderful accompaniment.

 

Another one of those special Bioscope evenings. The place is haunted by the ghosts of cinema past as well as the nerds of cinema present and future. The elements intermingle and the results are always inspiring!

 

Félicien Trewey in a hat!

Spending time with HG Wells and Georges Méliès...