The Big Countries…The Ghost That Never Returns (1930)/Hell’s Hinges (1916), Barbican with The Dodge Brothers

Long-time no Dodge for me and it was off to the September-sunlit steps of the brutalist Barbican for a double dose of specialist silent skiffling and much more. There’s enduring debate among silent cineastes about “correct” musical accompaniment with some opting for tradition and others favouring experimentation. I can see both sides but the key is always respect for the source material and music that works with and not over the visuals.

The Dodge Brothers provide that perfect blend and somehow the roots music of post-war(s) America played by modern musicians works well not just with Soviet psycho-drama but with one of the great templates of the Western genre. Neil Brand anchors the team as you’d expect but the Brothers Dodge are not only a very tight band they’re clearly in love with the subject matter too.

The party's started in Hell's Hinges: where's John Gilbert?

Dancing’s frowned upon ‘round these parts but it’s hard not to respond to the music in upbeat moments especially when the band starts chugging along in forceful unison as Jose Real travels by train to his day of freedom or when Blaze Tracy decides his town is going straight to Hell.

But the ensemble also plays it slow and atmospheric proving that their unique brand of Americana is remarkably flexible especially with the addition of a Theremin bassist Mark Kermode described as impossible to play and yet which he controlled with a steady hand and perfect pitch.

The Very Big Country, USSR circa 1929...

Mike Hammond leads this emotionally intelligent music, providing big guitar lines that floated carefully across the epic landscapes of both movies. Aly Hirji provided rhythm guitars, Alex Hammond percussion – including washboard! - and Mr Kermode is on bass as well as that socialist synthesiser, designed by a Russian, Léon Theremin, in 1928 to be playable by all.

Apparently it was not unusual for silent films to use local bands for accompaniment and following in that tradition the Dodge’s improvised most of the score working from title cards and not sheet music. A few contemporaneous tunes were included, again as per common practice, but the music of the moment proved the most compelling with Neil Brand’s piano sounding so at home in this context.

Boris Ferdinandov

This was the first time I’d seen The Ghost That Never Returns (Prividenie, kotoroe ne vozvrashchaetsya) and Abram Room’s direction did not disappoint those, like me who are readily impressed by the insanely-cut montage and the rabid experimentalism of Soviet silents.

The film features an impressive set showing prisoners held in cells stacked high in front of an inhumane controller. Ghosts in the machine, these men are doomed to hard labour at an unspecified South American oil field crushed by an industry serving only the greed of their grotesque and unknowable masters.

If a man survives ten years here, he is allowed a single day’s freedom on the condition that he returns… If he tries to run, he will be shot and,so far, no one has ever returned.

Jail from Hell

Jose Real (Boris Ferdinandov) is our hero and a man involved in syndicalist resistance against the grinding industrial-political axis. His day is coming and he receives a message that he is needed. At the same time Jose knows he will not survive his day-off… but he takes the chance all the same.

He catches a train – cue Dodge-overdrive – and eats a hearty lunch with a man on the train. As his wife and family get ready to greet him he sleeps through his stop and has to jump train many miles onward. He is followed by the man he met,who turns out to be the officer detailed to man mark him for the day, a strange chap, skilfully wielding a gun but also fond of wild-flowers… if only he could be liberated by socialism?

Missing his stop and his wife

In truth there are more than a few off-beat moments such as this; mad cowboys who play pool more intent on aggressive posturing than potting (“remind you of anyone?” as our Theresa May might say…). Never let it be said that a sense of humour was missing in these early years of the first Five Year Plan.

Will Jose make it back to see his wife and child? Will he escape his destiny or create a new one? The answer is probably in the strength of collective action; the dialectic moves film-makers in mysterious yet hugely entertaining ways.

Can't find my way home...

Mark Kermode said that an extra reel of the film has now been found in Germany and that this could explain more of the definitive narrative and yet… it’s a mood piece that works well in its abstracted form.

Now we headed back 14 years to California and the magnificent Hell's Hinges (1916). I’ve previously written about this film and it was a joy to see it on screen and with this live accompaniment.

Bob falls for the fallen Dolly

Directed by Charles Swickard along with an uncredited William S. Hart and Clifford Smith there is something proto-soviet about the film’s masses of people (I’m reminded Grigori Kozintsev’s King Lear with its large-scale choreography…masses of humanity trailing behind their leader, waiting for an answer) some of whom were John Gilbert and Jean Hersholt.

The town of Hell’s Hinges is in a state of constant motion as the human collateral surges from good to bad and random acts of brutality. There’s matter of fact-ness about life and death in the town emphasised by these inhuman crowds and it’s no surprise that the chances of Christian ministry surviving long are so slim.

Alfred Hollingsworth takes cover

But these two films are linked by “The Struggle” whether collectivist or Christian and, in both cases there are near impossible odds.

All that I’ve said about Hell’s Hinges still stands with knobs on and William S Hart is a force of hyper-nature: a wild man tamed by the truth-force of Clara Williams’ Faith Henley even as her feckless, faithless brother Robert (Jack Standing) fades away… Bob the Preacher: can he fix it? Can he heck…

Sleazy Silk Miller (Alfred Hollingsworth) sets him up for seduction with Dolly (Louise Glaum) and his resistance lasts about as long as it takes him to stroll form his newly-built chapel to the Saloon…

Blaze and the locals listen to Faith's faith

This ain’t gonna end well… and the resultant conflagration is a tsunami of ultra-violence rained down on this septic patch of ground by a Blaze inflamed by righteous indignation. Another failed western community destroyed in order for the survivors to move on with the (holy) spirit burning that much more brightly.

As with The Ghost… Hell's Hinges ends with The Struggle about to continue.

All the best tunes...

It also left us wanting more… Neil, Mark, Al… how about a Beggars encore next time?!

More details of the band are on their website. They have plans to release The Ghost on DVD and one hopes that their other film scores will also see the digital light of day.

Never The End...

William S. Hart burning down the house - Hell's Hinges (1916)

"No actor before the screen has been able to give as sincere and true a touch to the Westerner as Hart. He rides in a manner indigenous to the soil, he shoots with the real knack and he acts with that sense of artistry that hides the acting."    New York Press (1916)

I’m not sure what experience the Post’s correspondent had in order to form this opinion but from my long years of Saturday TV westerns, Hart does appear more authentic than I might have expected: the ten gallon hat for a start along with leather wrist bands (very sensible with all that lassoing) and gaudy shirts... they had to be real.

William S. Hart

Hart was indeed a dedicated student of the era and was a personal friend of Wyatt Earp (only 17 years older…) who owned Billy the Kid’s genuine six-shooters. Born in the civil war years, Hart was already 51 when he made this film and a veteran actor with a serious classical stage background having played on Broadway as well as Shaftsbury Avenue. This skill is much in evidence throughout this film and his instinct that screen acting required toned down expression although I’m sure the mighty landscapes and frenetic action took the edge of any over emoting.

He was already in that late mid-period stage that John Wayne struggled with: still a believable man of action but perhaps less so a romantic lead. Which might explain his almost chaste fascination with Clara Williams’ character Faith. He looks like a man who has seen trouble and travelled long and hard to find some more – Blaze Tracy isn’t the name of a man who has been taking life easy after all.

Hart is the core of this dynamic film which has something of the vengeful force reproduced by Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter but so many westerns to come would have been influenced by Hell’s Hinges. This is the West wild in tooth and claw, in which the moral compass has not just been lost but crushed by a stampede of settlers. Some folk want order and religion whilst others just want the good times force and will power can bring. It’s a primal western and westerns are just about as primal a genre as cinema has… hold on to your hats and leave your guns at the door.

Charles Swickard directs with real pace and the film has a raw intensity clearly influenced by Griffith’s narrative invention but also with a stylized focus of its own. Blaze is a wild creature who won’t be entirely civilised by the coming of Christianity although he’s big on an eye for an eye. To paraphrase Alan Moore: westerns are revenge fantasies for the impotent – might with right on its side.

Jack Standing and Clara Williams

All begins way out east where young Reverend Robert Henley (Jack Standing) holds forth in front of his congregation in chapel. But not all of his audience is held rapt, his sister Faith (Clara Williams) looks worried as she sees his performance exceed his belief: he relishes the acting and not the actions. His superiors look to find him a placement somewhere less… demanding, and come up with a small town out West: surely they must be so sorely in need of the Good Word that Robert will finally find his feet in less urbane sophisticated climes…

Faith – who hasn’t lost hers - insists on accompanying him to help him settle in… they travel hopefully across magnificent valleys and then arrive amidst a dusty gun battle: the clue’s in the name, they’ve come to Hell’s Hinges.

Silk and Blaze in happier times...

The two dominant figures in town are slick, Silk Miller (Alfred Hollingsworth) a professional gambler and runner of the local saloon and all that goes with it. Against him is alpha cow-hand, Blaze Tracy (Hart) – a force of nature not naturally favouring neither good nor bad: just survival of the fastest.

Neither men want to see the town get organised by organised religion and both fully expect the new arrivals to fall flat on their faces. Silk aims to speed this up by arranging for a party to crash the first sermon at the town’s makeshift church. Reverend Henley collapses under the pressure but his sister’s made of sterner stuff and starts singing… the sound is enough to sooth the savage breasts of drunken townsfolk and to stop Blaze in his tracks.

Faith sings and the townsfolk listen

Thus the immovable object makes the force stop and think… there is hope in this town. But, even as the townsfolk start building a new church, Silk is playing the Reverend… he tells him that the dancers in his saloon would appreciate a sermon and, like a fool he goes off to try: well, why not, as the showgirl said to the reverend…

He catches the eye of one Dolly (Louise Glaum: the woman who put the amps in vamps even before Theda arrived!) who Silk has lined up to lead him down the – darkened – garden path.  Dolly and Robert have such a good time that he drunkenly sleeps through Sunday morning… there’s no one to christen the new church.

Louise Glaum turns on the charm

Things head downhill… all the way to Hell in a hand-cart to be exact.

Mild spoilers:  There is now open war between the Gamblers and the God-fearers and Blaze must decide on the role he must play. The film builds to a spectacular physical crescendo as tragedy leads to vengeance and a balancing of the burning books as Blaze sets his destiny…

In Hell

There are moments when Hell’s Hinges feels almost modern: it's so stripped down in its attempt at authenticity. The Western template was being set but this is also a representation of how things actually were just a few decades before - this was living memory and Hart’s meticulous research influenced the film’s direction as well as his performance.

There’s great support from Alfred Hollingsworth as the unlikeable rogue and Louise Glaum as the tart without much of a heart. She's the antithesis of Clara Williams’ Faith who manages to bring subtlety to what could so easily have been one-note purity. But it’s Hart that draws the eye throughout, a man of gentle strength who looks to find redemption. He knows a good thing when he finally sees it…

There are also blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos from Jean Hersholt as a rowdy townsman and John Gilbert as a rowdy cowboy – not too sure how you’d spot the difference.

Hell’s Hinges is available in a really good quality print as part of the Nation Film Preservation Council's, Treasures Volume 1 collection. That essential set is currently out of print but there are copies available from Amazon: better hurry though as it’s getting pricey, but you’ve probably already got it, right?