Rich mix… Kennington Bioscope 9th Annual Silent Weekend Day One

 

 

Carboard Lover (1928), with John Sweeney, introduction Ben Model

 

At the end of UK premier of restored Cardboard Lover, Dave Glass asked the audience if it was indeed, as restorer Ben Model asserted in his introduction, as good as if not better than The Patsy and Show People her other two smashes of 1928? Answer there came none… we were all too busy absorbing the film, and the fine-timing of Marion and Nils Asner in one of those silent films in which you can almost hear the dialogue, a speedball of a proto-screwball, amazing pace and so knowing. The simple answer was that we couldn’t judge on a single viewing especially against two films that many had seen on numerous occasions but, one our later it feels at least on a par.

The Cardboard Lover was the first to be filmed and the last to be released and so it absolutely shows Davis hitting a peak and also displaying a perfected screen persona incorporating influences from Mabel Normand to Stan Laurel but also so much of her own mischief. She’s a force of nature in character and performance with an energy that would be hard to catch in sound: like Douglas Fairbanks after a six-month bootcamp at a clown school run by Buster Keaton, Harry Houdini and Roscoe Arbuckle.

She’s aided by a spritely performance from Nils Arsner who shows that Swedish sense of humour to great effect, matching her gurn for gurn in a face off I did not expect. He plays elite tennis player Andre who is engaged to the sublime Simone as played by Jetta Goudal who gets impersonated to death by Marion in a scene prefiguring her taking the mickey out of Marsh, Negri and Gish in The Patsy.

Nils. Jetta and Marion. In drag. Again.

Marion Davies is Sally a preppy young woman on vacation with a group including Marion’s niece Pepi Lederer as Peppy by name, peppy by nature. In life she was Louise Brooks’ best friend and the actress wrote an chapter on the tragic Pepi in Lulu in Hollywood entitled Marion Davies’ Niece, a woman who struggled to be “… a person in her own right, not a way station or would-be friends of Marion and Mr Hearst…”. Best not to dwell on what she wrote about Marion though.

 

Here Miss Davies is at her peak and sparkling through the romance and the comedy as Sally sets her sights on Andre’s autograph and then acts as his one-woman defence against the allure of Simone who he cannot stand and yet cannot resist. He makes Marion promise to prevent his will from wavering even if it means giving him a sock on the jaw, a punchline that we know is going to arrive at some point for his struggle is real!

John Sweeney played along with Marion and Nils with a deftness of touch and laughter in his hands, what’s that modern saying about game recognising game? He was swinging!

I was one of the 600 plus silent film fans who backed Ben’s Kickstarter campaign to restore and produce a Blu-ray of The Cardboard Lover and I can’t wait to see it in May and share it with my family: watching it with an audience always brings out the reaction the comedy deserves.

 

Rediscoveries and restorations 1 – with John Sweeney, introduced by Dave Glass

To my over-caffeinated and sugar-pumped corporeality this was an injection of an accelerant that provided a high impact sucker punch after being left dazed by the emotional heft of Sprechende Hande aka Talking Hands (1925), a German documentary about the Oberlinhaus Nowawes care home and school for the deafblind neat Potsdam. Directed by women’s rights activist and co-operative pioneer Gertrud Da­vid neé Swiderski, it is a humbling film that shows the patient and richly rewarding work of the church run Oberlinhaus which won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in 1900 for its holistic approach to treatments that brought the deafblind into the world.

The film follows the painstaking introduction of language based on hand movements which taught the subjects language through which they were then able to communicate and understand the exterior world. There’s one moment in which a group communicate by hand as a sighted teacher rads the newspaper: watching people overcome disability together places so much of our daily struggles into context.

John Sweeney had seen the film and accompanied it here and almost the first thing everyone asked after the screening was what had happened to the institution after the Nazis came to power. Luckily they were protected by their National Socialist governor Dietloff von Arnim and after surviving the war – being used as a hospital to treat the wounded in 1945 – the Oberlinhaus continues its work today with over 2,000 employees and many more residents.

Also included was another previously mislaid film rescued by Chris Bird in 2022 and screened probably for the first time on well over a century, A Victim of Circumstances (1913), from the Thanhouser studio. This featured a reporter played by Harry Benham who was romancing a woman played by Mignon Anderson although her father disapproves. The young man is arrested for photographing a rich man – I know, typical eh? – and whilst be cleared of any charge, this is enough reason for the father (Justus D. Barnes) to forbid the marriage as clearly his potential son-in-law is the wrong sort.

Things are nicely turned around though once the old bigot himself is arrested after being found in possession of stolen goods foisted on him by a fleeing snatch thief. It’s not a fair cop but the film takes us through his ritual humiliation as he is photographed, finger printed and even filmed by the forces of the law before realising that not only is Justice blind it is also fallible.

 

Young John Gilbert 

The White Heather (1919) with John Sweeney

 

Directed by Maurice Tourneur, this fab restoration from the San Francisco Film Preserve was only rediscovered in 2023 and is a beautifully filmed drama of faithless cads, true brave-hearts and financial skull-duggery that you can find on the SFFP website. I’ve previously written about it here, but it was great to see it on the big screen and with live accompaniment. Holmes Herbert plays the increasingly unlikeable Lord Angus and Mabel Ballin as Marion, the woman he wrongs. She has steadfast friends though in the form of the youthful John Gilbert playing Dick Beach who sets off in search of the Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed…) and Alec McClintock (Ralph Graves) who also loves Marion and will fight through hell and deep waters to save her… A cracking adventure and with some exceptional underwater scenes.

 

Ivor and Isabel

The Triumph of the Rat (1926) with Costas Fotopoulos, introduction from Bryony Dixon

The more I see of British silent films the more I wonder how they got such a bad reputation in the first place. Granted this one is strangely uneven but it’s also deeper than you’d expect allowing Ivor Novello to demonstrate the most existential of triumphs against the most intractable adversity…

Graham Cutts’s direction was very fluid with lots of deft camera movement around the ballroom and, capturing it’s grimy decadence in most expressionist ways, the Coffin Club. It really is a film of two halves as the reformed Rat, Pierre Boucheron (Ivor), rather bored with being the kept man of Zélie de Chaumet (Isabel Jeans is A Queen!) who, as fans will recall, he seemingly spurned in the first of these three films… makes a bet that he can capture the heart of the stunning Madeleine de l'Orme (Nina Vanna) after glimpsing her at a ball.

This begins a charming rat and mouse between the former rodent and the young woman with Pierre using his wiles to catch her attention before, somewhat inevitably, falling for her. This is too much for the controlling Zélie who tells all to ruin their relationship. Pierre is too decent to make excuses and tumbles into a descent that sees him falling into poverty and being forced away from his friends at the Coffin – the always watchable Marie Ault (from Wigan) playing proprietor Mère Colline and Julie Suedo as Mou, one of the club’s dancers who has a soft spot for our hero.

 

Ivor relishes the chance to show he can play despair although he’s no Lillian Gish (but could she sing?). It’s heart-rending and his only triumph might well be to just survive… we’ll have to wait for the final film in the trilogy, The Return of the Rat (1929) to find out where this story ends up. The three have the same characters but tend to not follow the dramatic instructions left by their predecessor.

 

Week-End Wives (1929) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lisa Stein Haven

The day started with another very fine British film which was a pretty-much perfectly exercised bedroom farce directed by Harry Lachman and starring Monty Banks. Following on from her presentation of her research into the Italian born-American star at the previous day’s silent Film Symposium (of which more later!), Lisa gave us another expert overview of this impeccable comic actor with the tiny moustache who was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena in North Eastern Italy just down the E45 from Bologna… before emigrating aged 17 to the USA. He started on stage then joined the Arbuckle company in 1918 making 35 short comedies by the early twenties.

 

Of course, for course many Britishers Monty is always down as the future Mr Gracie Fields – they wed in 1940 – but this was a marriage of Lancashire wit and talent with Umbrian nous and charm: they were a powerhouse couple and obviously great fun at parties. Banks’ British adventure began after he was declared bankrupt in 1927 after which he came to work for British International Pictures (BIP) in 1928. As Lisa points out this was after the passing of the 1927 Cinematographic Films Act which brought in the Quota Quickies. His films included Adam’s Apple (1928), Compulsory Husband (1930) and this one, the most complete and thankfully in the BFI archives on 35mm.

 

Monty has adventurer Max Ammon who cannot keep his driver in his golf-bag for long and forms a potential relationship with bored housewife Helene Monard - played by the spirited Annette Benson of Hitchcock’s Downhill fame and also Anthony Asquith’s brilliant Shooting Stars… One misunderstanding leads to another especially as Helene’s husband, uptight and grouchy Henri played with dashing flair by Jameson Thomas, is also bored and certainly fed up of egg and bacon breakfasts. It’s the little things…

 

The love quarter is, almost, completed by wannabe divorcee Madame le Grand, played by the fabulous Estelle Brody, so interesting to see her so far from the cotton mills of Hindle Wakes in this more vampish role. Brody was another American emigree who enjoyed success in the UK although this was not long to survive the coming of sound. Madame seeks legal advice from Henri and soon they are playing consultations of a more amorous kind. Then we discover that there is a fifth element and it’s the violent and unpredictable Monsieur le Grand (George K. Gee) out to win his wife back and to remove any obstacle.

Everyone gets wonderfully entangled and just when you think it’s getting too complicated it just gets more so and funnier. Comedy is precision work and Harry Lachman directs with near perfect timing.

 

I like Monty a lot and look forward to Lisa’s upcoming biography! She has also written about Sid Chaplin who made his Hollywood exit at the same time as the movies changed.

 

Der Student von Prague (1926) with John Sweeney, introduced by Michelle Facey

I missed the evening show which was the classic Weimar gothic adventure directed by Henrick Galeen and starring Conrad Veidt as the hellraising student who makes a deal with the Devil and has to confront the horror of his own dark soul. Based, as was the 1913 version, on a mix of Faust and a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson, this is a fabulous tale of a man who haunts himself with marvellous location shots and overall cinematographic excellence from Gunter Krumpf – Veidt vs Veidt is something to behold.

There’s a recent Blu-ray release from Deaf Crocodile which features the recent restoration which  runs at 133 minutes with a score from Stephen Horne. If you haven’t got it already, why not? It also has Brigitte Helm in Alraune (1928) – absolutely essential!

 

It was a day of rich content at the Cinema Museum and the best thing is, we have more of the same tomorrow! *

 

 

*Written before the Day Two write up for reasons best known to the author…

Ballroom blitz… Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s been a long time since I last watched this film and, as ever when viewing Joan Crawford through the lens of her later power roles, it’s fascinating to see her strengths absolutely in place with this, her major break out role. Whilst Crawford had worked her way in successful but slight comedies like Spring Fever with William Haines, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp with Harry Langdon and most memorably in Tod Browning's gonzo The Unknown with Lon Chaney, Our Dancing Daughters was the film that turned her into a major star. And it’s easy to see why.

In his introduction, Chris Bird quoted her co-star Anita Page in highlighting how hard she worked and there’s not an ounce of effort left off-screen as Joan wrenches every last drop of drama from what could have been a routine exercise. Of course, we know now, but who knew at the time, who really knew what magic she could create on screen with her energies and almost subconscious emoting pulling the viewer in to those huge, bright blue eyes and a face that could switch from triumph to disaster in the flicker of her eyelids… and it’s heart-breaking to watch. Difficult to credit that she was just 20 when this film was made or possibly 24… she updated the year although not the date, 23^rd March, of her birth.

Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastien

With so many silent films under her belt before the advent of sound, she is one of the major examples, along with Garbo and her nemesis Norma Shearer, of silent stars who transitioned to sound but she enjoyed a longer career than those two and her renaissance post war was reflected by three Oscar nominations and a win for Mildred Pierce (1946). She wasn’t done yet either, continuing to refine the talent she had and breaking down barriers of age and preconceptions.

Here she plays Diana Medford an energetic jazz baby who is running wild in a very Clara Bow fashion, in a hurry to have a good time whatever her parents expect. The film starts with the camera focused on a pair of feet dancing ferociously in front of three full-length mirrors, the feet carry on their complex movement as, cheekily, a pair of pantyhose are pulled up over them. The camera pulls back to show a full-clothed and party-ready Joan dancing like the Charleston champion she had been on route to the movies.

“Dangerous” Di is a party animal but when asked to raise a toast, toasts herself as she wants to be able to be able to like herself all of her life and this is the key to a film that stresses the importance of being true to yourself. Di’s best friend is Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastien) who is less vivacious but steadfastly so and then there is Anni (Anita Page) a girl who is anything but as innocent as she looks – she wants to marry well and more importantly, so does her mother.

Anita Page and John Mack Brown

They have variable relationships with the men in their social group, the mischievous Freddie (Edward Nugent), the serious Norman (Nils Asther) and the seriously loaded Ben (John Mack Brown). Di and Anni have a competition for the millionaire’s affection which Ann wins through guile and pretending to be the innocent girl that Di is not. Yet Di won’t compromise her way into Ben’s affections and she suffers for it even though – red flag! – Ben is clearly lacking instinct!

Meanwhile Beatrice marries the controlling Norman and they struggle to balance their relationship. Even though Ben realises his mistake it seems that only the amoral schemer has got what she wanted and things are set for an almighty showdown and a dramatic climax.

There's a lovely moment when a drunken Anni looks down on three washer women scrubbing the floor of the night club: "Women, women... working!" – she finds them ridiculous and unreal but is this the future calling? Written by Ruth Cummings, with titles by Marian Ainslee from a story by Josephine Lovett, it’s a “woman’s film” in many respects and it was her ability to connect with her sisters in the audience that would make Joan Crawford an immortal star.

 

The Red Devils Jazz Band

Crawford won competitions not just for the Charleston but also the Black Bottom – so called after the Black Bottom area of Detroit where it was invented in the early 1920s. During the first half of the show Chris Bird treated us to some rare and probably unique films on 95mm including one which he says was recorded in Paris featuring The Red Devils Jazz Band and a couple dancing the BB. This featured a slow-motion section so jazz babies could work out the moves ourselves although it’s beyond me even with the annual Bioscope Silent Film Weekender in a few days. I can reveal that it’s a more suggestive dance than the Charleston and what it lacks in the latter’s delightful angularity it makes up for in more frenetic limb throwing and the frequent grasping of the sides between your torso and your legs. This is an important document and one we need to study further.

DJ Bird also made a welcome return pre-show with a variety of 78 rpm nuggets including - I'm guesssing - Jack Hylton and His Orchestra playing Do the Black Bottom with Me (1927). He certainly played the madly infectious Jollity Farm, later made famous by the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. Now, if you’ve ever wondered where Mr Vivian Stanshall got the name from, we were about to find out with an episode of Bonzo the Dog an anarchic canine created in 1922 by British comic strip artist George Studdy and the subject of some 35 short cartoon films. Here he teams up with a fox to evade the hunt a sure sign of the growing influence of the labour movement in Great Britain at the time…

 

Our King of Jazz projected by Chris Bird

Back to jazz and a world premiere of a nitrate short featuring Jack Hylton, Britain’s King of Jazz, playing as part of the Playtime at the Piccadilly cabaret at the Piccadilly Hotel that Chris had exchanged for some cartoons with a collector in America. He asked big band expert Mark Beresford about the dating and he estimated 1926-7 but it may be even earlier given the songs featured. These included Vamp Me from 1922 and My Cretonne Girl written by Earl Carroll for his Vanities of 1923 as a love song for a young woman wearing the fabric in questions which, according to the online Britannica, is a printed fabric usually made from cotton which was used to make smocks for women.

This might be the only surviving record of this band line-up, which had played in Jack Hylton’s Cabaret Follies at the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place, from autumn 1922 to mid-1924, although Hylton gave up control at the end of 1923 (according to fabulous The Jazz Age Club website). So, this film could well be his next review at the Piccadilly Hotel.

Also on the bill were a dancing troupe of eight simply called The Girls – probably the Dolly Girls, dressed by Dolly Tree and previously featuring in Dolly’s Revels at the Piccadilly with Jack’s band. They are four dressed as Cretonne clothed country girls and four in male drag, illustrating the music in the manner of a prototypical Pan’s People. Dolly was a busy woman and the Jazz Age Club website has her in London for ’24-’25 working on this review, further evidence of its date.

We're all Pan's People really... (image from Chris Bird's film)

They are followed by “Leo Bill”, a ventriloquist who has the exact same M.O. as the Spanish vent, Senor Wences who had an extraordinary career after joining the circus aged 15 and then starring on stage and screen, eventually featuring on the Ed Sullivan Show and then The Muppets, living to 101 years of age. The trick was to paint a face on his hand and use this as the head on top of a dummy’s body – here Toto but later Johnny and variations of the same. The dates fit and there’s a facial resemblance so I’m calling it, especially as there couldn’t be two vents with this bizarre technique.

Next we have two gents from New York, Brooks and Ross who sing Wild, Weak Warm and Willing which was a shortening of  the full title: I Want 'Em Wild, Weak, Warm and Willing published in1923. And written by Sam Coslow and Eddie Cantor, yes, he of the wide-eyes and Clara’s Kid Boots (1926), for the Ziegfield Follies.

You can download the sheet music here... 

The Girls return in one-legged costumes to dance to I’m Just Wild Over Dancing, which they clearly are… in the manner of “jazz agents” whilst Jack, facing away from his band, holds the rhythm in his hands. Two “Bolsheviks” join the dance, throwing some vaguely Cossack steps but this ain’t no history lesson… It’s murder on the dancefloor but next there are two dancers in Hawaiian costumes and you wonder where the music is leading us? And all the while, Jack is smiling and I’m sure the audience is too!

Zelia Raye takes to the floor with the band and The Girls watching (image courtesy of Chris Bird)

Now for some culture with ballerina Zelia Raye who was a pioneer of modern dance in the UK, eventually establishing the Modern Theatre Faculty at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. “Straight from Paris”, Josephine Head and Albert Zapp follow and perform to Vamp Me! with the odd hint of the Apache dancing to be found in many depictions of the City of Light at this time. Finally, The Girls return to dance Hooting de Hoot which is as poignant appraisal of the contemporary political situation as you’ll find…

John Sweeney put on his dancing shoes and accompanied the variety with verve, stamina and distinction – it was a foot-tapping evening and we were only lacking a rug to cut! This was probably for the best.

 

This film captures the dances in particular in clear detail and it is so rare for this vintage. More than that it shows the spirit of the jazz age in this country and is a significant discovery reflecting the entertainments and the style of our great grandparents!

 

Pictures from the Projectionist Chris Bird

The film itself - you can see the different tinted sections (Chris Bird)

Chris's projector: a Specto with enhanced lighting

Spring Silence... Kennington Bioscope 9th Annual Silent Weekend Day Two

 

This is Part Three of the Cinema Museum Silent Spring long weekend, I’m putting my hot takes out in reverse order because… why not!? A brilliant few days incorporating the British Silent Film Symposium 2026 run by Kings College London and the 9^th Kennington Bioscope Weekender.

 

Ypres (1925) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lawrence Napper

“… fantasy must cower before the stark realities of mankind’s agony – such as Ypres.”

Former soldier Blair Philips writing in The Stoll Herald, November 1925¹

Philips was qualifying his description of this film as being like a “dream…” emerging from “the mist of yesterday…” which would still be a living nightmare for those who survived one of the bloodiest and most desperate battles of the Great War.

Directed by Walter Summers, using a mix of reconstructions of the Battle of Ypres mixed with contemporary footage from both side, this was one of a number of films aiming to pay tribute to the loses and bravery of a nation still in mourning. Produced for British Instructional Pictures, Ypres followed on from The Battle of Jutland (1921), Armageddon (1923) and Zeebrugge (1924) in this approach and also focused on the experience of individuals to humanise the almost inconceivable events.

A series of maps are also used to show how the British and Commonwealth soldiers in particular were able to, just about, defend the Ypres Salient – a bulging line of attack/defence which emerged as the warring parties fought their way up through North-Western Europe as the Germans attempted to outflank their opposition and cut off supplies from the French ports. It’s a film and a series of events I could easily spend a lot more time on – so watch this space and read Lawrence’s book (link below).

Summers manages to make an entertaining as well as instructional film and the comic asides were more necessary for the audience then rather than now, although we don’t have to look far to see the horrors of war as filtered through the modern apparatus of “instruction”.

“Whole companies were annihilated and the marvel is how anyone remained to break up the infantry attacks which were delivered again and again.”

An officer of the 1st Gloucestershire’s who was at Gheluvelt

 

Rediscoveries and restorations Part II, with John Sweeney, introductions from Dave Glass and Glenn Mitchell

The Cattle Rustler’s End (1911), starring J. Warren Kerrigan as Curley Temple (Shirley not!?)  and Pauline Bush as his sweetheart Fannie, was a pacey tale of illicit love and cattle theft directed by a young Allan Dwan. Fannie’s father disapproves and so the couple meet by a tree where, unfortunately, a cattle rustler has also hidden the branding tools of his evil trade. One thing leads to another and Curley is accused and, as usual, it’s left to the woman to sort things out. This was another rare gem transferred from a nitrate 35mm print for digital restoration by Bob Geoghegan’s Archive Film Agency.

Racing for Life (1924), a five-reeler directed by Henry MacRae and starring Eva Novak and William Fairbanks, featured some extensive time-dilation as motor cars raced around their practice lap and, in the minute or so of elapsed time, our hero, seemingly miles away, has to fight off his kidnappers – including his own brother – race on foot, steal a police motorbike and run across the track to the pit in order to start half a lap behind the others.

This was, without doubt, great fun though and, coming on 35mm from Tony Saffrey’s collection, almost the first time in a century that this extraordinary race has been seen and it was a thrill!!

There was also time for a quick Mabel Normand film, Mabel lost and Won (1915) from Bob Geoghegan’s collection and which is so rare it doesn’t even have an IMDB page! Once again the KB brings you the rarest of the rare as well as the finest of everything else (yes, I work in marketing and I cannot lie!).

 

Charles Vanel, one man alone with his cod...

Pêcheur d’Islande (Fishers of the Isle) (1924), with Stephen Horne, introduction by Liz Cleary

I was rather grumpy (Liverpool FC might have lost again?) when watching this in Pordenone in 2023 but this film was transformed for me here with Liz Cleary’s introduction being a large part of that. Liz became interested not just in the film but in the novel from which it was drawn, as well as the location and the way of life depicted, being driven to find out more and even to visit the locations. Inspiration is infectuous but she also added so much context to enable me to see the strength and purpose of the film.

Perhaps it’s also as I’ve just watched Rose of Nevada, Mark Jenkin’s new film about the lives of trawlers on a small fishing boat. If you go to Whitby, Fleetwood or former fishing villages such as Aberdaron in North Wales, you will see grave after grave marking generations of deaths at sea and for this reason too, the film’s downbeat yet also inspiring narrative rings so true. Without giving any spoilers away, sometimes in cinema deaths have to actually mean something and not simply be a plot point… Also, the exhausting practicalities of line fishing here and trawling as in Rose are humbling in themselves.

Pierre Loti abides...

Liz’s pilgrimage to the film’s locations, Paimpol and Ploubazlanec in northern Brittany, gave us a sense of the unchanging waters and she also gave us the background of former naval seaman Pierre Loti’s 1886 novel on which the film is based. Loti was an extraordinary character as the photograph above might suggest and the story drew on his experience of the Far East as well as the Atlantic – his ability was in his description of the land and the sea and director Jacques de Baroncelli crafts a poetic tale that pulls the viewer in with stunning locations, and compositions as characters fade in and out of each other’s thoughts: the shooting of one character features flashing images of his loved ones in the manner of Abel Gance.

Charles Vanel – who really did have an issue with transport in his career (c.f. The Wages of Fear) – is an unknowable rock of conflicted emotion as Yann the fisherman and elfin Sandra Milovanoff is sadly beguiling as Gaud – the woman who does battle with his affection for the stormy seas.

Stephen Horne’s accompaniment included Breton folk songs as well as his own improvisations, as usual it made for the perfect connection between the sentiments and the time.

 

Harry, Bebe and Snub play with shoes

Focus on… Rolin’ with Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass, accompaniment John Sweeney

Glenn Mitchell and Dave Glass resumed their ongoing mission by discussing the history and early output of Hal Roach’s Rolin’ company before it rebranded as the Hal Roach Studio and the Kings of Comedy did battle – Sennet vs Roach! Here we find a number of soon to be extremely famous folk such as Snub Pollard, Bebe Daniel’s and Harold Lloyd, just not the Harry we’re that familiar with.

Initially Lloyd played the role of Willie Work in one-reelers but by 1915 “Chaplinitis” was in full bloom and he wore an odd two-whisp moustache and tight-trampy clothes as Lucky Luke – the Chaplin you can meet between reels?  Giving them Fits (1915) was Lloyd, Pollard and teenage Daniels’ debut for the company and is a riotous tale of events in a shoe shop in which Harry is for some reason called Luke the Fluke – a chance-based play on words.

Luke proved popular enough to move to two-reels and under his own name, “Lukes” as opposed to Rolin’s. Pollard also got his own series and in 1918 Roach started making films with a fellow called Stan Laurel and the rest was, eventually, history. You can’t help but be infected by Glenn and Dave’s enthusiasm and this reflects the high energies of these wonderful comedies and the fast-developing world of the business of laughter on screen: there was no luck involved, just talent and application.

Irene (1926), with Stephen Horne, introduction by Kelly Robinson

Colleen Moore knew the score alright and she was one of the most vivacious personas cinema has ever seen: an icon of the Jazz Age who even had an F. Scott Fitzgerald-autographed mini-copy of The Great Gatsby in the library of her legendary dolls house. Kelly Robinson showed the evidence in her introduction to this zippy film which showcased Moore at the height of her powers and popularity.

Directed by Alfred E Green, Colleen plays the titular Irish-American as the daughter of the Ma and Pa O’Dare – played by Cork’s wonderful Kate Price (who even mimes in Oirish) and Charles Murray who presents as drunk for most of the story. Is it just me or whether The Irish only ever drunk and/or policemen in most silent films? Anyway, Irene is the scatty but definitely smart heart of the family of five, sorry foive!, who scrape by in an apartment until she loses her job.

Madame Lucy – whose business motto is “Pay cash – look what happened to the Light Brigade – they charged!”

Colleen and Kate from Cork

After being kicked out by Ma who, y’know, was only joking… Irene moves to New York and gets a job – that luck of the Irish! – delivering parcels to the posh estates on the Boston Park Road. This is where she meets handsome and likable rich person Donald Marshall (Lloyd Hughes) who has just invested in a fashion house run by one Madame Lucy who, you’ll never believe… is Aberdeen’s George K. Arthur who inherited his aunt’s business and her name, somehow?

Lucy declares that to make any woman beautiful is a simple art and, well, soon Irene arrives with some parcels and Donald decides she should be the proof of this theory – much to “Madame’s” dismay. Irene asks for two pals to accompany her – there’s a lot of female solidarity in the film – and Lucy spends most of the remaining storyline extremely unconvinced to comic effect of course. I like George in this role and he sparks well with Colleen’s feisty resilience.

There’s a grand finale at a fashion show that was filmed in Technicolor and on the BFI’s 35mm print this has faded so the section from a copy held in Russia was used – it was colourful but lower quality, Moore’s smile radiated through though. It’s another fine exhibit in the case for Colleen Moore being one of the stars of the age and of enduring charm. My Gen-Z daughter was impressed with her pep and sisterly attitude, especially when sharing roller skates with another late-night reveller who missed the last bus.

Stephen Horne accompanied with the style and verve Colleen demands – Moore not less! A good time was had by all!!

Sadly, I had to away before the grand finale with the UK premier of the latest restoration of The Three Musketeers (1921). It’s available direct from the Film Preservation Society on Blu-ray and hopefully will be screened somehow and somewhere else.

 

A fabulous long weekend of silent frolicking – details of Day One and the Silent Film Symposium to follow in the coming days… Thank you to all at the KB and KC!

 

1.       The Great War in Popular British Cinema of the 1920s: Before Journey’s End, Lawrence Napper, Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

Jigsaw feeling… Rose of Nevada (2025), Out on 24th April

This is the kind of film you need to see in a cinema, it is the kind of film you need to work out for yourself and, it is the kind of film that doesn’t get made that often these days. Based on an idea from Mark Jenkin and his partner Mary Woodvine, Jenkin writes, directs, films, edits and then composes, and plays, the score. It’s the kind of film that could only have come from the mind of Mark Jenkin and builds on his impressive features Bait (2019) and Enys Men (2022).

 

As with those two films Jenkin uses 16mm film and a Bolex clockwork camera which only runs for 27 seconds before it needs rewinding. Jenkins develops the stock himself – surely that’s a new award category?! – and brings out incredibly vivid colours from the stock, almost hyper-real deep green and red-rusty textures, the reddest red since Jack Cardiff spun his camera for The Archers. This being 16mm, there’s a rough edge to this beauty which makes it vibrant and alive with the end of reel “spoiling” sometimes in the mix to blur the edges like a flash of sunlight caught in your eye or something you only thought you saw.

 

Made in Cornwall, silent style with no sound recorded live, Jenkin is able to completely control his sound-world too with the actors re-voicing their entire dialogue during the edit, along with foley and sound effects added along with his bleakly ambient score which reflects the visual in the most “silent” of ways. The texturing is for flavour and doesn’t encroach on the narrative working with the performances and the visuals to create an atmosphere you can not shake, even when it ends and you are typing away on the train home…

 

Jenkin uses repeated images, locations, events to tease out as much meaning as he is willing to present on first viewing. There is tremendous discipline here as the etched message inside the titular fishing vessel or its name plate are all part of the greater linear narrative which plays out whilst characters interact, gut fish, or refuse to give each other their proper names as the fishing village world tosses and turns like the ocean and the only stable environment is the boat itself as the three men go about the laborious and dangerous task of trawling for fish.

George MacKay

Having recently rewatched Jean Epstein’s Finis Terrae (1929), on the Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray, I was also reminded of some of his technique with moments of when Jenkin slows down the action to reinforce the dream-like quality just like the French pioneer. Elsewhere the landscape and seemingly random details are focused on to pull the viewer into the moments and the mystery of the observable World. Its hypnotic and hyper-real… a trip into the surreal that marks our everyday existence.

 

The Rose is the enigma at the film’s start as it reappears at the quayside after being lost for 30 years. Soon this is being taken for granted as the owner, played by Jenkin regular Edward Rowe, and the widow of one of the men who had gone missing all those years ago, Tina (played by Rosalind Eleazar of Slow Horses fame), decide to put her back to sea. A crusty old mariner Murgey, played by Francis Magee, pops up and when asked if the owner knows him only says, you might do… and he might do at that. Names and knowing… it’s a muddle but, as in a dream things have a propulsion all of their own.

 

Edward Rowe, Mary Woodvine and Adrian Rawlins

We see a young father called Nick (George MacKay), collecting food for his elderly neighbours played by Adrian Rawlins and an almost unrecognisable Mary Woodvine who has been aged up to reflect the rigours of the 30-year old tragedy that led to the loss of the Rose’s crew and her son Luke. Her husband has just returned from laying flowers at the cliff where his son had jumped to his death thereby leaving the vessel one crew member down and, eventually doomed. For these two the tragedy has never stopped and the mother seems lost in her grieving time, moving in and out of focus submerged by the enormity of her loss.

 

Nick lives next door with his wife Emily and their child and, as the rain pours down on the village, we see him try to fix the hole in their kitchen roof, which is possibly, to coin a Doctor Who reference, a fixed point in time… and it’s not alone. We meet the others who are related to the lost with the other sailor’s grown-up daughters Jess and Linsey (both played by Yana Penrose) one of whom still wears his hat and, meeting the handsome new arrival Liam (Callum Turner, who is currently engaged to Dua Lipa I believe pop fans?) in the pub, gives it to him on a promise,

 

Callum Turner

A crew is found for the Rose when Nick decides he has to do something to pay for his roof and Liam, in need of money and a roof over his head, joins the team and away they go learning the ropes and the art of gutting a fish as Murgey – the old man from the sea - takes them back onto the waves... “Don’t worry lads, she always returns…” There’s a forensic depiction of the methods of trawl-fishing as they start to fill the Rose’s compact hold with mackerel, bream, bass and hake. The atmosphere is tense as the electronica broods and Nick already begins to sense that something is out of joint – namely time, as an etched warning to “get off the boat, now” disappears during the journey.

 

When they do return to port though the harbour does not look at all as they left it and it soon becomes clear that not only are they no longer in the present but they are being mistaken for the two men who disappeared along with the boat before either man was born. Whilst Liam is greeted by a younger version of Tina and her eldest daughter, there’s some arguing to be done but he styles it out – this is different for him than for Nick. Meanwhile the latter returns to find his family gone and that he is now being seen as the lost Luke by his now much younger neighbours.

 

They are lost in time and circumstances beyond their control and Nick’s hopes that, after every return trip to the sea things will revert to normal begin to look increasingly forlorn… They’re not just trawling fish the film is smuggling meaning and that’s increasingly perplexing as the mood builds and we wait for the moment of clarity…  

Perhaps this is a rumination on the essence of place, the echoes within The Stone Tapes or the ever-present past sensed by the pilgrims in Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale and in Peter Akroyd’s London? It certainly another work of hauntological exploration that plays on the feelings of the obliquely familiar: the walkers over our graves and the sense we can never quite pin down that our experience has always happened and is always happening.

It also has to be noticed that for a one-man-band (almost), Mr Jenkin leads a heck of a team with the performances universally excellent. George MacKay is the centre of most of the action and presents a terrified and unsettled man in the most visceral of ways; he's our conduit into this unreality and we feel his bewilderment at suddenly losing everything. How did it come to this and is this how we all wake up one day to find our lives unrecognisable, our lievlihoods destroyed and events elsewhere driving us to the edge.

There’s an entire Jungian analysis I was about to dive into but best you just go see the film and make your own minds up. It really is that kind of film…

 

Details of screening at the BFI and elsewhere are on their website.

 

British film is alive and weird and taking place with increasing frequency in Cornwall!  

Rosalind Eleazar