The Brit! Girl... Carnival (1931), Projecting the Archive, BFI

 

There are some screenings you just have to turn up for, this was the first public projection of a 35mm restoration print completed using two nitrate elements in 1997, a genuine photochemical restoration long before the new digital techniques, and the craft in evidence added to the feeling of being really treated. The BFI National Archive’s Curator, Jo Botting, was on hand to provide us with details of the work undertaken as well as the film’s star, Britain’s Clara Bow, the sensational Dorothy ‘Chili’ Bouchier who certainly had ‘It!’ – so much so she was named after the popular song, I Love My Chili Bom Bom whilst working as a sales girl at Harrods. I had only previously seen her as a bit part player in Shooting Stars (1927) in which she was cast after being spotted by director Anthony Asquith modelling at Harrods, and then in Maurice Elvey’s silent Palais de danse (1928).

 

It’s the age-old story of an older man, Silvio Steno (Canadian Matheson Lang, 42 and about a foot taller than our Chili) and his attractive (much) younger wife Simonetta (Chili B) whose attractiveness to every scoundrel in Venice and beyond will inevitably give him pause for jealous thoughts. To add that extra spice, the two are actors and in one of those parallels that seems initially too convenient, are playing Othello – Shakespeare’s Patron Saint of Green Eyes – and his poor wife Desdemona. They are introduced as he is rather convincingly throttling her only for a fellow cast member, Nella (Kay Hammond) to burst the bubble as she casually lights a cigarette immediately defusing our expectations whilst also storing them up for later on.

 

Carnival was originally filmed in 1921 as a silent directed by Harley Knoles and also starring Matheson Lang – it was based on his play after all - as Silvio/Othello along with Hilda Bayley as Simonetta and Ivor Norvello as her paramour Count Andrea Scipione of which more later. According to the BFI notes this film featured more of the play and its allusions to the unfolding action as well as more location shooting. It’s still extant so I’d love to see how it compares. Chili had been very impressed with the film and she had dreamed of playing the role and so, as Jo Botting pointed out in her excellently informed introduction, she wrote to Wilcox when the film production was announced to her him to cast her for the part.

Chili Bouchier and Matheson Lang

I can see that Novello would make for a better Scipione and Chili was disappointed in the one provided her by German actor Joseph Schildkraut, bought over from Hollywood. According to Jo Botting, quoting Chili, he would arrive at the studio every day, “short, sallow and balding and would re-appear on set two hours later, resplendent in his military uniform, heightened by shoe lifts, corseted and sporting a hair piece.”

 

Here Chili is every inch a star even at the age of just 21 during filming, especially in the stunning costumes of Scottish designer Doris Zinkeisen who also provided the stage designs too in this very effective recreation of Venice which mixes stock footage with stunning interiors, shadowy on set canals and watery alleys as our characters move about in hopeful secrecy. What happens on the rio di San Salvador stays on the rio di San Salvador unless you forget to draw the curtains on your gondola windows…

 

Doris had, according to one press piece quoted by Jo “… the knack of making actors and actresses look perfect in both face and form… the elixir of a film star’s life.” She and her sister Anna were both talented artists and whilst the latter became a sculptor, Doris pursued a career as a theatrical costume and set designer and also worked in film, providing Dorothy Gish, with her risqué gowns for Nell Gwyn (1926) directed, of course, by Mr Herbert Wilcox. There’s an interesting piece here about the two sisters and their extraordinary lives.

Every word demonostrably true... 

Here she had the perfect model in Bouchier and she slicked back her Bow-esque unruly curls and dressed her in tight-fitting silver culottes topped off with silver elaborate head gear, with feathers on top. The bodice gave the impression that the actress was wearing nothing underneath and, if the Brits had ever had a code, this would definitely be “pre…”. Schildkraut was also similarly well-adorned in a dark bodysuit accentuating his feline grace… perhaps that was the issue for Chili, she’d spent too much time with male dancers at ballet school, all with their own hair and height! We certainly see plenty of her dance skills at the carnival as Alfred Rode and His Royal Tzigane Band play but will those feet become guilty in ways later described by George Michael?

 

Earlier on as the troupe rehearse Othello, and Silvio bemoans the lack of passion thinking his own character flawed in conception as surely a little infidelity should not prevent such a marriage as Othello and Desdemona’s from being pulled apart. It seems to reinforce the foreshadowing of the earlier strangulation scene especially as Simonetta does indeed attract many men and has been flirting with Scipione. Still, she seems fully committed to her Silvio and their young son and promises him a special costume for the impending Carnival.

 

Earlier she had been compromised by Scipione in a clinch on a gondola trip which was unfortunately spotted – before she pushes him away, by her good for nothing brother Lelio (Brian Buchel) who naturally uses this knowledge to blackmail her so that he can take Nella to the ball. This raises Silvio’s suspicions and playing the part of the jealous Othello, perhaps this is only natural. His sister Italia (Lilian Braithwaite) also has no time for Simonetta and has been playing Iago for some time it seems, pouring poison into her brother’s ear at every opportunity.

 

Shine on Dorothy Chili Bouchier!

Silvio is called away to see a dying friend though and Simonetta responds with childish petulance – she cannot bear to miss her Carnival and to wear her costume. Her husband has to travel overnight and so she decides to go to the Carnival anyway, to enjoy the dance and the freedom with Scipione even though she must suspect the younger man will see this as his big chance for conquest.

 

Unfortunately for everyone, Silvio has missed the last train and, as he returns to the apartment he soon stops enjoying the spectacular-coloured fireworks and wonders where his wife has got to… Are our players doomed to re-enact Othello off stage as well as on? Or will there be a deeper lesson to be learned? I hope you all get the chance to see for yourself as this film deserves more exposure.

 

The film has some issues with tone and pacing and being an early British talkie, sometimes moves slowly but all of this is mitigated by the brilliance of Zinkeisen’s design as well as Bouchier’s genuine star quality. Carnival was intended to propel her to home-made stardom but it didn’t work in the end, especially as other, less interesting choices, were forced on her. She spent more time on theatre work as the thirties progressed and was still working into the 1980s before being “rediscovered” as one of the last surviving stars in Britain, especially after the publication of her memoirs Shooting Star: The Last of the Silent Film Stars was published – copies still available on eBay and Abe Books at reasonable prices!

 

She died just shy of her 90^th birthday in 1999 almost exactly 25 years ago as Jo pointed out. None of those present at this screening will forget Chili any time soon, her star still twinkles - indeed, in the BFI's NFT 1 last night, it shone!

The Archers origin… The Spy in Black (1939), BFI Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Since talkies took over the movies, I had worked with some good writers, but I had never met anything like this… Michal Powell, A Life in Movies

 

So, here it is, the first of the twenty films Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made together which would some of the finest ever released in Britain and beyond. Having seen A Matter of Life and Death (1946) on Monday introduced by Thelma Schoonmaker (Powell’s wife and a film editor of world-renown) and Scottish director Kevin Macdonald (Emeric’s grandson), it was interesting to watch and compare with a film bookending their Second World War collaborations both in terms of style, budget and viewpoint. It’s never darkest than before the dawn and colours of AMOLAD are contrasted by the bleak greys of this starker spy thriller released in August ’39 just weeks before the declaration of war on 1^st September.

 

After Powell’s first major feature, The Edge of the World, Alexander Korda offered him a contract at Denham Studios and put him to work on potential projects with limited appeal and budgets. The director’s experience on so-called quota quickies, such as the comedic Hotel Splendide (1932) and the business thriller Rynox (1932) – screened last Monday before AMOLAD - showed Powell could make the most of limited budgets and scripts and by this stage he was confident enough in his abilities to make the most of any opportunity even if it meant heading to Hollywood.

 

This project was based on a 1917 novel by J. Storer Clouston and a scenario from Roland Pertwee which did not impress Powell at all, cue a re-write which Korda’s co-producer, Irving Asher, also had his doubts about: “… someone is supposed to re-write the script; he has already messed everything up, transformed the masculine role into a feminine role, invented a few new characters…” A voice piped up announcing himself as the re-writer, Emeric Pressburger, who read out his notes “… about a film that had nothing to do with the original script…” as Powell told Bertrand Tavernier in an interview for Midi-Minuit Fantastique, October 1968. A slightly different sequence of events is described in his memoire.

 

Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson

He had stood Storer Clouston’s plot on its head and completely restructured the film…

 

Powell had already met with his star, Conrad Veidt, who was hard to impress to put it mildly, but Powell’s vision of his character as “… a man who has a fanatical conception of his work…” piqued him and was realised by Pressburger’s re-write. Korda agreed and the course was set for an adventure on the Western Isles only fifty miles as the gannet flies from Foula as Powell put it. Whilst Mickey had been making the quickies, Emeric had been scripting in Germany and other European productions, the two were no overnight success, they had learned their craft. Emeric had been hired by his fellow Hungarian “Alex” who, Powell felt sure, had manipulated the situation to get him involved in this film.

 

From separate directions writer and director imagined not only a fuller role for Veidt but also one that would allow Valerie Hobson to shine in her role as a double agent. Powell describes the four pulling the script together with Veidt and Hobson acting out script revisions on a daily basis and honing their narrative along with their working bond.  The film is remarkable for the treatment of The Enemy; even once the war had started, their German characters were always people even ones compelled by alien duty, and this can be found in everything from Colonel Blimp, Battle of the River Plate, One of Our Planes and more. How much more stirring to show the intelligence and dignity of the other side rather than just caricatures. The War Ministry didn’t always agree though.

 

Back in Spring ’39 though and hopes of peace were still present, the motivation for this film is therefore somewhere in what Powell described as Korda’s aim to establish Denham Studios as a ready-made propaganda unit for when war was inevitably declared. In doing so, Powell believed that he saved the British film industry.

 

The Old Man of Hoy

Location and place are very strong themes in The Archers work and Powell went up to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys and visited not just the Old Man of Hoy, as featured in the film, but also Storer Clouston to get as much information on the locale and the story as possible from the author. He also had a small team with him, “a wildcat filming unit” who could take not just reference shots but shoot atmospheric and establishing shots using doubles. The trip helped inform the set design of Vincent Korda – Alexander’s brother – who faithfully recreated the tight spaces of Hebridean buildings and enabled Powell’s sense of place to be supported on their tight budget.

 

The results are impressive still with Powell’s creation of an urgent and unsettling Isle of Hoy, with Veidt imperious and sensitive as the principled German U-Boat commander, Captain Hardt and Hobson magnetic the spy Fräulein Tiel masquerading as a schoolmistress and Hardt’s commander in this operation. Also good is Sebastian Shaw as the drunken and faithless Lt. Ashington who is willing to sell out the Royal Navy in revenge for his treatment. Hardt has little respect for this lack of professional loyalty but is set on leading a squad of U-boats to pick off dozens of Royal Navy ships in what could have been a pivotal moment for the war.

 

It's a tense film, set mostly in darkness and which has rich characters as well as many surprises in a twisty script that is tribute to Pressburger’s skill, a man Powell had been waiting for, a writer of novelistic vision and who could create spies and others with plenty of grey…

 

“There were close-ups of Conrad Veidt that were as good as any of eth German expressionist films. Veidt knew how to use the muscles of his face and eyes and I knew how to photograph them…”

 

Powell’s next film involved working with Veidt again on The Thief of Bagdad and, after that Contraband with Connie paired again with the remarkable Miss Hobson. Powell had learned his lessons well from Rex Ingram and he knew that filmmaking was teamworking, not just with his new writer but also with cast and crew. The Spy in Black was how it began and the films started to flow thick and fast as the war began and these alliances brought further fruit.

 

Of those who would feature again in Archers’ films, Marius Goring plays Hardt’s second in command, Bernard Miles plays a German hotelier and Esma Cannon has a bit part as a Scottish lassie.

 

We watched a 35mm print of the BFI restoration, supported by the BBFC, that looked fabulous on the big screen. You can also watch the film for free on the BFIPlayer whilst details of the full programme of the Powell and Pressburger season is on the BFI site: a Season of Seasons! Four films for me so far and dozens more to follow, see you on the Southbank.