The haunted queen… Prix de Beauté (1930), with Stephen Horne, 10th Hippfest Silent Film Festival

Don’t think I’m untrue, my only love is you… Don’t be demanding, be understanding… My only love is you.

In the post-screening Q&A, Stephen Horne revealed the moments when he could “hear” Louise Brooks’ voice in his head as he played for Pandora’s Box, piano screen right in NFT2 at the BFI lost in music, film and this vision with unexpected sound. Brooksie is indeed one of cinema’s greatest naturally occurring special effects and as Pamela Hutchinson said in the Q&A, the sheer physicality of her dancer’s control, coupled with extreme intelligence and beauty draws the audience towards her on so many levels. Acting as hypnotism, but also as Stephen says, cinema as a haunting.

Prix de Beauté goes from strength to strength every time I see it especially with Mr Horne’s uncanny sympathy with a film he first accompanied in Bristol in 2006. This was the 2012 Cineteca di Bologna’s restoration based on the sole surviving silent copy with muted sections included from the French sound version filling gaps here and there. It’s a far cry from the “talkie” version I first experienced and runs at 113 minutes versus the former’s 98; largely due to a normalised, slower pace. I did attempt to watch both versions at once for comparison but I soon got too engaged to bother. The two versions are different though as they were filmed separately with the sound version presenting a smaller frame as space was given over to the soundtrack so we not only see more get a longer film, we also see more in it!

The film’s development involved both René Clair and Brooks’ mentor G.W. Pabst – the former developing the script from the latter’s story with moments of pure cinema originating from both under the eventual direction of Augusto Genina. Clair’s brilliant closing sequence was envisaged as a silent and it’s impossible to imagine it working any other way now. Overall, Genina presents his own “cut”, a visually coherent film and one that has never looked better, highlighting the work of his ace cameraman, Rudolph Maté who had worked on Dreyer’s Joan and would go on to collaborate on Vampyr too.

Louise Brooks attracting attention

The opening section in the public pools has a documentary quality like People on a Sunday and Brooks is introduced feet – or rather feet, calf and thighs – first before blowing the audience away with vivacity and a smile to brighten even the darkest metropolitan day. There’s more exceptional footage at a fairground as Brooks’ character suddenly starts to regret passing up her chance to become separate from the common men pressing all around her. Amidst the smiles and tom-foolery Brooks’ face is a mask of despair as realisation drives even the faintest smile from her lips.

It’s hard to resist drawing parallels with the star’s own situation in this film: she’s followed onto a train by press and paparazzi after winning the chance to represent France at the Miss Europe pageant and subjected to male attention at every stage. Her big break finds her conflicted between opportunity and loyalty to her man, Andre (Georges Charlia), a choice that made the actress burn a fair number of bridges, in actuality. Lucienne gets and accepts a chance in a talking picture whilst in real life America Brooks was turning down offers from Wild Bill Wellman to star in a thing called The Public Enemy (Jean went with that one…). Louise was just 23 when she made this film and it was to be her last starring role in a feature: mid-life redemption and eternal fame all lay ahead, but first she had to get lost for a while.

Brooks once described herself as an actor who largely just played herself and that’s enough if you’re picked for the right roles and well directed. But she does have to work a bit harder than Lulu as Lucienne Garnier, a sweet secretary who dreams of bettering herself through her beauty: you can’t imagine LB being so naive. She larks with her modest boyfriend – a typesetter at the newspaper where she works as a typist – and he is already jealous of the attention she attracts from other men at the pool and everywhere else. Andre doesn’t like beauty contests and Lucienne can’t even bring herself to tell him that she’s entering.

Standing by her man Andre

Executive types look at pictures of the contestants and one stands out: no one’s going to complete with that hair, those eyes… Whisked away to San Sebastien in Spain, Lucienne is soon competing in the beauty contest (actually filmed in Paris with thousands of extras). The documentary feel is again present with candid shots of the public mixed in with key players from high society (and low morality) including a maharajah (Yves Glad) and Prince Adolphe de Grabovsky (Jean Bradin).

Naturally applause is loudest and longest for Lucienne who easily beats Miss Germany and Miss England to take the crown. Now its cocktail parties and offers of jewels and riches from her betters – Lucienne sails through as if it’s one childlike adventure: never has the Brooks smile been so much in evidence. But Andre has been in pursuit and unwilling to upset him more, Lucienne decides to go back to Paris.

Prince Adolphe advises that Andre will never understand her and we get the feeling he has a point. Shadowy days in a meagre apartment lie ahead for Lucienne and she is as imprisoned as their pet budgie ironing and cooking for Andre. He tears up her fan mail and bans all talk of Miss Europe but the fresh Prince tracks her down and makes her a fateful offer.

Jealousy

Then comes the funfair and those moments of doubt all leading to a change of heart and that stunning closing sequence. That may be the best part of the film but Louise Brooks is so much more powerful in silence and without the clumsy dubbing; she’s a spectacular – haunting - vision and one that is almost hard to watch… and ultimately, she just doesn’t need words.

Stephen Horne’s experience with the film showed with a subtle and forceful score featuring piano, flute and accordion. It’s fascinating to hear him play for a film he knows this well and to hear him maintain the freshness of improvisation with such practiced and hard-hitting emotional content. No musical spoilers: but you really must hear this show yourself and a closing sequence that is so perfectly timed as the piano brings dark discord and the flute lifts us high with Lucienne’s light and laughter as she watches herself on screen singing the lines above... 

Clair’s next film was to be the excellent Under the Roofs of Paris whilst Pabst went on to film The Threepenny Opera and a remake of L'Atlantide (featuring Brigitte Helm) the restoration of which is due a release.

For Brooks, this was to be her last major role. For those in the business who she hadn’t already alienated, she served out a few more roles, most notably in God’s Gift to Women but blew her last major chance with Public Enemy… Would she have made more of the opportunity than Jean Harlow? Hard to say; there was a potentially great actor in Brooks but as Pamela Hutchinson indicated, she just wasn’t going to sacrifice herself to this career. During filming Brooks infuriated her director by staying out late and having too good a time. Genina was convinced that this was preventing her from becoming “the ultimate actress” and he was probably right but, I doubt anyone could make Louise Brooks do much she didn’t want to do.

Festival director Alison Strauss pointed out that the French title contains a pun; it is not only the prize for beauty but the price. 

Alison's introductions have been a great feature of Hippfest Online as she highlights some of the many attractions of this part of Scotland. For this film she was at the futuristic Falkirk Wheel, the world's only rotating boatlift; something else I have to see in 2022!

The Q&A with Alison, Stephen and Pamela is available to watch on the Falkland Community Trust YouTube channel and it's an excellent mix of silent film musicology, scholarly Brooksology and unexpected hauntology...

 

This restored version of Prix de Beauté is out now on a two DVD set featuring three more of Genina's films, Goodbye youth! (1918) and it's remake from 1927, as well as The Mask and the Face (1919). You can order it through Amazon of direct from the Cineteca Bologna’s CineStore.

Cultural exchange… A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), with John Sweeney, 10th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

 

Why aren’t you a star?

 

As plans go, Sergei Komarov’s was pretty good and it says something that the writer/director’s game was – according to some - only fully up some years later when someone handed his titular star a copy of this film in the 40’s or 70’s depending on your source. Either way, I’ve no idea what Mary Pickford thought of the finished film, I’d hope it would have brought back some very happy memories of her time in Europe with Douglas Fairbanks and also that it would remind her how absolutely loved she was by millions. It would have made her laugh no doubt and at her own expense and the sheer ludicrous nature of the fame she experienced in a uniquely successful way in over twenty years of filmmaking and beyond.

 

In 1926 Mary and Douglas came to Moscow as part of a grand European tour and seeing how rapturously they were greeted, how fetishized they were as something beyond ordinary humanity, Komarov devised a means of using this to both shine a light on the nature of this ultra-fame and to lampoon it. He had no special access to Pickford and Fairbanks just a collection of newsreels and one crucial sequence in which Mary agreed to perform a short skit with Igor Ilyinsky at the end of which she kisses him on the cheek; the moment which makes this film transcend its sources, from meta to better.

 

As a standalone comedy, A Kiss from Mary Pickford works as a kind of Russia cousin of the lost Merton of the Movies or Souls for Sale, Show People and so many films that are about films. Its humour is slapstick and pointedly surreal, revelling in the magic whilst at the same time making vicious fun of Pickfair mania and the need to not just see stars but to own anything connected to them, a kind of amoral materialism reflective of  the current state of capitalist decline... 

Igor Ilyinsky takes it all in

It begins with our hero, Goga Palkin (Ilyinsky), a ticket collector at a cinema, being rejected by his “actress” girlfriend, Dusya Galkina (the striking Anel Sudakevich) for not being able to hold a candle to her hero, Douglas Fairbanks. Come back to me when you’re a star she demands unreasonably, not revealing the auditions she herself failed that morning. Their quarrel comes after watching Zorro – itself a reminder of Valentino’s The Eagle, screened earlier in the festival – and Goga makes plaintive Fairbanks faces, as he wonders how he can possibly compare.

 

Luckily, even Soviet Moscow has an industry prepared to train would be film stars and Goga enlists on a programme to test his suitability to be a star. This course is perhaps unnecessarily rigorous as the latest reject is hauled out unconscious by an aggressive looking man. Stardom is clearly not for everyone and clearly makes demands that the average citizen finds hard to bear… Then he appears before three white coated old men who, naturally, get him to stand under a cold shower in a swimming costume. He pulls out the picture of his love to remind himself why this ordeal will be worth it and then strikes an exhausted Fairbanks pose and smile… is that all there is?

 

He passes the first test perfectly although he’s only just keeping it together… then he’s spun around until he disappears, the men worry he may have been disintegrated and then he has to stand on his head for long minutes – he cheats by putting his shoes on his hands. The result? A pass with flying colours – Genuine Certification of Cinematic Ability (Stunts)… Russia’s Buster Keaton is born… or is he?

 

One for Zorro, Anel Sudakevich

The pace is unrelenting and there’s some excellent funny business with the glass of water Goga slips into his pocket… he forgets and sits down only to realise that there’s water running down his leg. For a few horrible moments he relives childhood torment.

 

Soon Goga wanders onto his first film set which, conveniently enough, seems to be situated right next to the cinema. There is a superb overhead shot of a studio at work, with two separate scenes being filmed, the actors dwarfed by the scenery and the technology. The studio was Mezhrabpom-Rus, now the Gorky Film Studio, where over 20 films, including Aelita, Queen of Mars were shot.

 

Goga looks dumb enough to do stunt work and so it transpires as he’s hefted high up to the rafters for an especially dangerous stunt, promptly falling asleep 100 feet in the air after the cast and crew below are distracted by the imminent arrival of two American superstars…

 

What if we make a Russian Harry Piel out of him?

 

Show people at the Mezhrabpom-Rus

The producers decide that Goga is a natural comic and that they can make him into “a Russian Harry Piel”. Who’s that, I hear you cry – me too – well, Harry was a hugely successful comic actor and director who made over a hundred films, 72 of which were lost, including most of his silent, in an allied air raid during the war. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and paid the price with post-war imprisonment never recovering his popularity. He was known for his explosive comic style and for allegedly doing all his own stunts (spoiler: he didn’t) but would have been closer to the dafter version of early Keaton/Chaplin that Ilyinsky presents here.

 

Mary and Doug arrive and within the film, even watching now, there’s a thrill in seeing such candid shots of them. Mary’s beautiful smile is if anything more marked than on screen whilst suntanned Doug looks as fit as a butcher’s dog as the saying used to go in Stalingrad… Star power shines out as they wave from a train window, from their hotel and as they arrive as the film studios. I’m reminded of the time when Doug had to carry his wife on his shoulders among one crush in London on their honeymoon, even though they are protected, they feel much closer to the crowds than you’d expect; reality about to crash their fragile fame.

 

But Goga walks into the reception and is only concerned about seeing his love who is far too intent on viewing the royal couple to pay him any heed. Dusya has been one of a group pursuing the Americans with wide-eyed fanaticism, moving forward en masse like a plague of cineaste zombies; the undead, avoiding the light and staring, always staring, in search of a screen…

 

Douglas and Mary

When it comes to love scenes, I’m always ready.

 

Who is that funny little man? Asks Miss Pickford, clearly with an eye for style. The studio execs ask him to do his stunt for her but he hides in fear of falling only to reveal himself when Miss Pickford asks if she can do a love scene with him instead. After seeing only, the fiction and the newsreel footage it is indeed as surprise to see the two actors together and it must have caused a sensation in Russia. If Mary wanted to show her support for Russian film it worked.

  

And how it works in the film too as Goga himself becomes a superstar with eager fans chasing him everywhere for just a strip of shirt or grab from his wig. It’s like George Harrison running from fans in A Hard Day’s Night or, more pointedly, David Hemmings fighting for Jeff Beck’s guitar in the 100 Club in Antonioni’s Blow Up; you maybe saw it here first Michelangelo? Is Goga now too good for Dusya or will he get over himself and his legions of fans?

 

As Steven Morrissey once said: Fame, fame, fatal fame, It can play hideous tricks on the brain…

 

John Sweeney provided accompaniment and delighted in every comedic twist and turn in this joyful film that is as much a celebration of the Muscovite sense of humour as its cinema. John tracked the full range with accompaniment that was as in tune with Sergei Komarov’s larger purpose as it was Ilyinsky’s every gurn and pratfall. It is, as John said in his introduction, the kind of film you fall for… one that is largely unseen but is further evidence of the strength of Russian comedy and cinematic ideas during the Twenties.

John Sweeney on piano cam!

 

Mary and Doug also met with Sergei Eisenstein on their Moscow trip having helped get his Battleship Potyomkin released in the US. Fluent in English, Eisenstein took them on a tour of the city and gave them its history cinematically and otherwise. Mary’s kiss was her contribution to a film industry that fascinated them and which they hoped to encourage; a glimpse of the contemporary view of fellow creatives at a time when the Soviet project was very much in the balance.

 

You can still catch the weekend programme via the Hippfest site and Q&As are on the Falkirk Community Trust YouTube channel.

 

You can still catch up on the weekend programme until tomorrow so better be quick, especially for Louise Brooks in a restored silent Prix De Beauté (1930) with Stephen Horne score, Marlene in The Woman Men Yearn For (1929) and Mary Pickford in the above film and the brilliant southern gothic of Sparrows (1926).

 

It’s been a joy and I look forward to attending next year’s festival in person!

 

 

 

 

Rudy can't fail... The Eagle (1925), with Neil Brand, 10th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

 

Back when Arthur was young, I went to watch Kevin Brownlow introduce this film at East Finchley’s ultimate picture palace, the Phoenix Cinema, and he shared his coversations with one of the silent era’s most calmly professional directors along with clips from films I just had to see. Since then, I’ve watched them on the big screen; Flesh and the Devil (1926), The Signal Tower (1924) and The Goose Woman (1925). Brown never disappoints and brings out the best in his actors; a real warmth of performance amongst the smoothly worked narratives.

 

Watching first time my focus was on Rudolph Valentino as this was the first of his films I’d seen (and I still haven’t seen either The Sheik or The Son of the Sheik…) but now I was watching as much for Louise Dresser, who was so heart-breaking in The Goose Woman and is grand again here playing Csarina Catherine the Great as passionate and impetuous with a penchant for young officers and for executing those who don’t please her.

 

Her scenes with Valentino as the dashing Lt. Vladimir Dubrovsky, are wry – if conflicting - with sexual role-reversal as the predatory monarch tries to get her man tipsy, offers him a career path based on favour and generally behaves like a man. Dubrovsky has enlisted to be a fighter and not a lover and absents himself even though he knows this will seriously affect his prospects both in military life and, well, just life.

Louise Dresser and Rudolph Valentino

 

This isn’t any man Catherine is sexually harassing though, it’s one played by Rudolph Valentino. No other silent actor comes with quite so much baggage as the Latin lover, the man who broke so many hearts that people seemingly took their own lives rather than face up to life without him… Surely, he had to take himself that seriously too? But no, what we find is a very handsome man who can act and who has a deliciously inclusive sense of humour to prick the bubble of heroic pomposity: think Antonio Banderas in an Aldomorvar film: a little camp but in that masculine way only the most “secure” can carry off.

 

Valentino’s Dubrovsky is one of the bravest officers in the imperial elite and arrives at a parade for the Csarina at the film’s start full of promise. He’s a man of action and spotting a runaway carriage he leaps onto the Csarina’s favourite horse, and she did like her horses… (“not true…” says History) and sets off in pursuit – Brown’s cameraman fast behind – pulling level, jumping on and pulling the horses to a halt in classic cowboy style.

 

The party he rescues includes a beautiful young noblewoman, Mascha Troekouroff, played by the delectable Vilma Bánky, who has great chemistry with Valentino and pretty much every single thing around her. She would star with him again in Son of the Sheik, her beauty and intelligence matching his own with a challenge that his persona needs; she’s not being swept off her feet by anyone.

Rudolph and Vilma

 

Pleasantries are exchanged and there’s an instant connection but Mascha ‘s head is not easily turned and her Aunt Aurelia (Carrie Clark Ward) is the one waving enthusiastically after Dubrovsky as their carriage pulls away. He laughs but his quick thinking has earned him that awkward appointment with his Czarina who is more than happy to see her horse returned unharmed…

 

It’s not a good day on balance for Dubrovsky as he receives the news that his father is seriously ill because of his estate and fortune being stolen by the by the villainous Kyrilla Troekouroff (James A. Marcus on fine form). Dubrovsky won’t take this lying down and soon turns himself into a Robin Hood figure – The Black Eagle – who leads his father’s remaining loyal staff into an escalating set of countermeasures aimed at over-throwing the usurper.

 

Encountering a man who has been employed to teach French (incidentally, the language of the Tsarist court even up to the pre-revolutionary period…) to Kyrilla’s daughter, Dubrovsky takes his place as a means of breaking in and causing chaos. Yet, when he arrives, he sees that his student is to be the beautiful girl he rescued in the runaway carriage.

James A. Marcus as the Fearless Kyrilla!

 

Thus, things go as rom-coms go with enough will-they/won’t-they to keep you guessing as Bánky and Valentino work their humorous rapport as far as they can without popping the dramatic bubble. Kyrilla is revealed as more bullying buffoon than despot as the threats of imminent retribution from the Black Eagle un-nerve him more and more: you do wonder how he ever managed to take control of the Dubrovsky estate… still, he does have a bear chained in his wine cellar for playing “jokes” on guests.

 

Brown directs with deceptive efficiency and with more than the odd flourish. Not for nothing was he “blind-tasted” as Lubitsch by one Hollywood insider according to Kevin Brownlow, with some innovative shots including an amazing dolly shot along the full length of Kyrilla’s banquet table. It’s a very well-made film with sumptious sets from the legendary William Cameron Menzies, and the restored print is in superb condition; watching it is indeed, as Mr Brownlow said at the Phoenix, “…seeing silent film as it really was”.

 

Accompaniment was provided by Mr Neil Brand who had dressed for the occasion and entered his music room in colour before sitting down to accompany in back and white. His themes went well beyond those chromatic limitations though and he gave us the rich romance and visceral daring the film deserved. As festival director Alison Strauss put it in her introduction, we were watching “together, alone” and the improvised music gives the immediacy that binds us as viewers, sat in front of screens from Worthing to the Winter Palace.

  

Who is The Black Eagle?! 

The Eagle is now available on spruced up Blu-Ray from Kino and is well worth filing between Camile and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse if you like your Latin Lover in alpha order or, Monsieur Beaucaire and Cobra if you’re going by date.

 

The Hipp-fun carries on and you can still catch up on most of films, intros and Q&As via the festival website and the Falkirk Community Trust YouTube channel.

Hearts and minds... Body and Soul (1925), with Wycliffe Gordon, 10th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

I’d previously seen the world premiere of this restored version of Oscar Micheaux’s major work at the BFI with Peter Edwards and Nu Civilisation Ensemble whipping up a storm and this screening, complete with jazz composer Wycliffe Gordon’s soul-pleasing ensemble score, was the perfect entrée to the tenth Hippfest! It’s hard to believe that a year ago we were all waiting, hotel booked, tickets at the ready, for our trip to Bo'ness and the start of the most perfectly formed silent film festival in Scotland’s first purpose-built cinema. Covid had come though and the show couldn’t go on but gradually it resumed with streaming shows and thousands online connected in virtual silent communion with Clara Bow and John Barrymore.

 

Restrictions still in place this year’s festival is online only but features fulsome introductions, inspired new music and after show Q&As utilising the benefits of the medium in much the same way as last autumns Giornate: digital is different but there are ways in which it allows more detailed examination of the content as well as maintaining the engagement of communal viewing. Flexible Hippfest also allows you to schedule your viewing around work, family and lockdown exercise whilst still making you feel involved in a unique, well-curated experience. You simply have to take a seat, chose between say Laphroaig and Glenlivet, click your clicks and watch away…

 

According to Charles Musser in Race Cinema and the Colour Line – an essay in the BFI’s Pioneers of African American Cinema box set – Paul Robeson disowned this film, which is a shame as he is superb playing two characters: utterly convincing as the homicidal pretend priest Reverend Isaiah T. Jenkins as well as his decent “twin” Sylvester. Robeson felt he had been duped by director and writer Oscar Micheaux who used this film to humorously critique tropes from plays about black culture written by white writers and in which he had featured.

Paul Robeson

Eugene O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones along with the now obscure Nan Bagby Stephens’s Roseanne had all featured Robeson and helped establish him as a stage force. But the actor seemed unaware of Micheaux’s agenda until after the film was made or possibly unaware of the impact it would have on his future prospects. Maybe the lure of cinematic popularity was too great to resist or at least the potential profit share, especially at a time, as Professor Charles Musser pointed out in his introduction, when theatre was still considered the more legitimate art.

 

Robeson is so very watchable though, a handsome and energetic presence who switches from the good brother Sylvester to the bad seed Isaiah with ease. He’s an escaped convict who makes a living fleecing his deluded flock in order to support his gambling and drinking. Robeson even makes a good drunk, staggering around his house in the early hours applying ice to his temples with the urgency of lived experience.

 

Micheaux has form in terms of spoofing organised religion with the boorish, Uncle Tom preacher of Within Our Gates pre-dating Robeson’s “Reverend” Jenkins’ drunk sermonising in this film. He also paints the congregation as either bored or complicit in the ecstatic distractions of the Holy rolling… in his view perhaps not so different from the bars and gambling dens the gangsters inhabit. He hits his targets over the head but his sense of humour is there throughout and you can see it in the performance of his actors who look so relaxed and unafraid to push the emotional boat out.

Mercedes Gilbert

Mercedes Gilbert is an example as Sister Martha Jane in many ways the story’s centre as the mother who falls prey to the Reverend’s lies and criminality. There’s a lot of swooning but there’s also a glint in the eye as she addresses the audience through the most outrageous elements – tragedy and comedy so closely aligned. Her daughter, Isabelle, is well played by Julia Theresa Russell who is both frail and brave refusing to buckle under the physical domination of the rotten Reverend.

 

Lawrence Chenault provides a suitably twisted turn as 'Yello-Curley' Hinds, Jenkins’ former cellmate who spies his pal preaching with his beady, evil eyes. Chenault has a good deal of stage make-up prompting my daughter to suggest he may even be in white face… now, that’d be a turn up wouldn’t it!

 

Other caricatures echo earlier Micheaux films with Marshall Rogers as a sleazy speakeasy proprietor and with a delightful double act of Lillian Johnson as "Sis" Caline and Madame Robinson as "Sis" Lucy, two Pious Ladies of excitable disposition. The clichés were no doubt all true – they always are - and these folk would have been recognizably real to their audience.

 

Julia Theresa Russell

It’s Robeson’s show though as the “Reverend” Jenkins slips further and further down the slope to eternal damnation as his booze-funding church con runs into extortion, sexual violence and ultimately murder. It’s an emotionally controlled as well as physically dominant performance as he towers over his victims whilst ultimately succumbing to his own ability to wield force; his body never enough to save his soul.

 

This restoration remains far shorter than the original nine reeler and something has been lost in parts of Micheaux’s complicated story which, according to Musser, many felt was the fault of cuts made by white censors. That said, he suggests that this does the director a discredit as he is narratively ambitious, cross-cutting throughout whilst also working his story backwards and forwards through flashbacks and dreams. Is the story one great flashback leading up to the headline at the start of the film regarding Jenkin’s arrest or is it more likely that that was what happened to him before these events… a drunken recidivist, doomed to forever repeat the same mistakes?

 

Wycliffe Gordon is an experienced composer, educator and band leader and here he deploys sixteen musicians on a score that moved dramatically with and around the action. It really was a Micheaux-mix of muscular jazz styles that, whilst occasionally appearing to run ahead of the game, was very forcefully bound to the spirit on screen. The director cuts very quickly and Gordon wisely decided to stick to his themes across Oscar’s multiple lines with deliciously sleezy smooth modern jazz indicating Jenkin’s intentions whilst gospel themes reflected his religious “mask” and his audience’s willingness to believe.

Methodists don't drink

The music was always in flow, morphing without losing purpose with disjointedly judgemental New Orleans’ trad as the Reverend experienced his stumbling hangover, which suddenly softened as Sylvester meets his sweetheart, then tightened up as we switched to 'Yello-Curley' playing cards in the speakeasy. This film is a challenge for any composer and I loved Gordon’s sweet energy and cohesive orchestration; if he were still alive it would get the Oscar approval, I’m sure!

 

This is just the start of a festival that features only high-quality films, today there’s Merian C. Cooper’s classic documentary, Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life (1925), as well as what promises to be a sobering and fascinating talk on Scottish Cinema and the Flu Pandemic of 1918-19. There’s nothing new save for that which has been forgotten and we’re here to – collectively – recall and celebrate.

 

Full details are on the festival website; it’s a snip at twenty notes. There’s Scottish pricing for you!

 

You can also catch up on Body and Soul via this link.