What goes around, finally comes around… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Three

 

Monday night and it’s time for something mighty begun by Erich von Stroheim and completed by Rupert Julien as the studio system clamped down on all that trust, creativity and budget abuse… not to mention Erich's "...flagrant disregard of the principles of censorship”. Lewis Milestone later claimed this as the moment when “the age of the director” was superseded by the producer system. Maybe Merry-go-Round (1923) is also then, the first example of a film that suffered as a result of no single vision?

 

It's certainly a film with many powerful moments, not least the finest performance I’ve ever seen from Mary Philbin as Agnes the poor fairground worker who is romanced by a Prince incognito played by Norman Kerry. There’s part of the problem as Norman is better at the confident Prince than the lovelorn warrior and the segment after WWI could have done with some trimming, re-editing. There’s also some issues with tone with the unremitting cruelty of the demon Merry-go-Round owner, played by George Siegmann who terrorises his staff, doesn’t care of they live or die and tries to sexually assault, feels very von Stroheim whilst the more romantic interludes, perhaps Julien – accounts vary.

 

But all this said, the film is dramatic and keeps you guessing right until the far from Hollywood ending – it’s not all joyous. It was a smash hit and tonight it looked as fabulous as is possible. It is the most complete version to date and the restorers of this new version spent 20 years conducting a worldwide search, comparing each of the elements shot by shot, to restore tints and scenes in order to reconstruct the whole film in its original form. It's a Hollywood classic with excellent support from Cesare Gravina as Agnes' Punch and Judy man father, George Hackathorne as the steadfast "hunchback" Bartholomew, Edith Yorke (Ursula Urban), the fab Dale Fuller as the wicked fairground owner's terrified wife and Dorothy Wallace as the Countess Kerry's Count is contratually obliged to.

 

Their efforts were supported further by two hours of finely wrought accompaniment from Mauro Colombis, Romano Todesco and Frank Bockius – currently the hardest working drummer in show business! The three combined as a tightly together as with the film and for the second night running my arms hurt from too much clapping: just stop it guys!

 

Ludwig Trautmann

Getting to know almost forgotten German, actor, director, writer, producer… Harry Piel’s tricks and flicks. Not for nothing was he known as "the dynamite director" as cars and illicit diamond factories blew up in today’s first film, Das Teufelsauge (The Devil’s Eye) (1914), a breathless adventure spinning at a Paul Auster level of coincidence much like yesterday’s Das Abenteuer Eines Journalisten (1914) whilst also featuring two drops from bridges into water, one more than Erblich Belastet (1913). It was clearly a winning formula although there were gasps when a horse appeared to fall off a bridge and certainly there was a high risk of equine injury when our hero and his pursuers are chased down a very steep sandbank on horseback.

 

Ludwig Trautmann plays François Rennée, an attaché) who is romancing Countess Rita Pignatelli (Anny [Anni] Timm) but, dressed as a Pierrot at one of her parties, gets accused of stealing her crown jewel, The Devil’s Eye… Even though she’s a woman of influence he has to go on the run, and charges off a clown on horseback, jumping of bridges into moving cars, performing a kind of pierotte parkour, a clown in constant motion off to prove his innocence. It’s inventive, comic-book fun and an improbable story well told by Piel.

 

The other Piel film was Das Rollende Hotel (The Rolling Hotel) (1918) was altogether gentler with a young private detective trying to help his friend Editor Tom marry the girl he loves rather than the suitor her father prefers on financial grounds. Even this took us into a wild chase with scenes high in the snow and of a portable hotel/caravan which, as you’d expect, crashed off a bridge and into the waters below! This was a very entertaining film with a lively cast including Heinrich Schroth as Detective Joe Deebs, Josef Ewald as Tom and the girl he wants to marry is Addy played by Käthe Haack who, in reality, chose Heinrich Schroth.

Italia Vitaliani

La Madre (1917), featuring Italia Vitaliani, an almost forgotten Italian Diva from the great age and who was first cousin once removed of Eleonora Duse, who was considered as her rival on stage for technique and naturalistic playing. La Duse influenced everyone from Bertini and Borelli to Asta and it’s rare to see her cousin on screen. Giuseppe Sterni’s film was only recently found and restored in the Netherlands and allows the actress to run through her expressive repertoire as the mother of a would-be artist who finds the wrong muse… she preservers to save him from himself and in her anguish provides him with the perfect portrait.

 

Diva film are perfect little arias that make sense unto themselves, every time I watch I relax and float down stream suspended entirely by belief.

Alternative title

The programme had this next section as Slapstick – Prog 2 "Clowns and Cretins"? I understand why this subtitle was chosen but “cretins” is now an ableist slur used to cover a whole range of neuro-atypical conditions. Yes, André Deed used a number of screen names but Cretinetti Che Bello! was made in 1909, we’re all historian enough to understand the title but we shouldn’t be reducing the significance of this word which, as the father of an ASD son I find uncomfortable.

 

On the bright side Deed is on fine form, with a typically surreal adventure – whatever his name he was anarchic and innovative, tearing himself apart and pulling himself together again.

 

As for the clowns, the famous Fratellini Brothers, François, Paul and Albert, get a chance to show parts of their act and then to fill out the thinnest of plots as they try and work out why Dolorès Braga (Yane Odoni) is the only person in the tent not laughing at their jokes. Dolorès, I’m with you babe, I was traumatised as a small child at Blackpool Tower Circus and I now can’t look at a clown without crying…

Madeline Hurlock, Ben Turpin and Dave Morris

In the battle of two mythical mid-European states Ben Turpin emerged as a surprise winner on account of laughs per minute and the coherence of his ideas in When a Man’s a Prince (1926) leaving Elinor Glyn’s project, The Only Thing (1925) in it’s wake as a confusion of anti-royalist/anti-revolutionary/pro-glamour. Ben’s on top form and the timing is impeccable throughout with a great supporting cast including Madeline Hurlock as a flirty lady-in-waiting, Dave Morris as Grand Duke Ludwig and Blanche Payson Hilda, The Princess of Amazonia!

 

On the plus side, having seen Eleanor Boardman in the deliberately “unglamourous” The Crowd, last month at the BFI, it’s great to see her on the big screen showcasing the kind of style she was famous for. She doesn’t have much to work with but does have good chemistry with the equally decorative Conrad Nagel and the two form a classy bubble in a story also full of Glyn’s entitlement and exploitative cruelty.

 

Boardman is Thyra, Princess of Svendborg, politically forced into a marriage with the ageing King of Chekia (Edward Connelly) and there’s a running joke about how he has ‘orrible big ears as do all of his family, even the one working with the revolutionaries. Its hardly a prospect that would delight and carries uncomfortable echoes of royal marriages before and since. Anyway, she fancies the British noble, he fancies her and yet what could stop her fulfilling her duty? A revolution perhaps, and one involving perhaps a bit too much tortured female flesh and outlandish cruelty for my liking. Mildly grumpy on Day Three... 

 

King Charles, Eleanor Boardman and Conrad Nagel

Another fine day in Pordenone, feels like Wednesday but it’s still barely Tuesday. Weds is Hindle Wakes Day, in fact it’s Wakes Week in so many ways… (niche Yorkshire/Lancashire reference that will make sense come the day!!

Don't dream of clowns...

Money can’t buy you love… Charlie Chaplin: The Essanay Comedies, BFI BluRay/DVD

Charlie Chaplin became the most famous man in the world when working for Essanay in 1915. In Beatles terms, if the Mutual Comedies are his Rubber Soul, Keystone Please, Please Me, then the films of this period are his A Hard Day’s Night – a real, albeit uneven, progression in the definition of his style and comedy character.

This new BFI set is the result of a 12-year project, led by Lobster Films and the Cineteca di Bologna, and features all of Chaplin’s Essanay output on two disc Blu-ray and DVD. The films are fully restored and presented alongside exclusive special features – all released for the first time in the UK.

This was a transitional period for the pop-cultural superstar as he cemented his fame and developed his style. Keystone had been punk cinema, instant scenarios developed through improvisation and riffing off the talents all around, Mack, Mabel et al. But at Essanay with more control and bigger budgets, Charlie was able to produce more measured comedies albeit still at some rate of production – with 15 films released between February ’15 and March ’16 and his departure.

Edna and Charlie

Included were some average fare but also what Glenn Mitchell, in his accompanying essay, considers Chaplin’s first true classic, The Tramp (11^th April 1915) and The Bank (9^th August 1915) described as an “undisputed classic” by Frank Scheide in his piece.

After his barnstorming year at Keystone Charlie knew his earning potential was far greater elsewhere and he negotiated a huge deal with Essanay, a company famous for the Bronco Billy westerns - drama as well as comedy. You can take the boy out of Walworth but this 25-year old still knew his way round the block and, reputedly, Charlie had himself paged when meeting Essanay exec GM Anderson – Bronco Billy himself - at the Alexandra Hotel in Chicago thereby drawing a large crowd – instant proof of popularity.

Ben Turpin was just a little too funny for Charlie's tastes!

Relations with Anderson and his Essanay co-owner, George K Spoor, were not always to be smooth – particularly the latter. The company was to not only frustrate his ambition for longer form features nixing the idea for a feature called Life – but also re-cut some of these two reelers such as the Burlesque on Carmen (April 1916) and Police (27^th March 1916) by including outtakes and, for the former, shooting additional footage with Ben Turpin.

There is a freshness here and an inevitable clash between the creativity of the star and the moneymen: Charlie’s velocity was simply too great.

His New Job, released on 1^st February, was appropriately Chaplin’s first Essanay film (featuring a then unknown Gloria Swanson as a typist!) and A Night Out followed just two weeks later, released on 15^th.

That's Gloria in the corner!

The latter featured Charlie’s new leading lady, the Edna Purviance, who was all but one of his films for the next eight years. He cast her after they had met socially and she more than justified his faith by providing a deeper emotional foil for him to interact with – Edna would muck in with the best of them but she could also act.

Chaplinitis had already begun but reached its full flowering in 1915 with merchandise, comics, books etc… There were Chaplin look-a-likes… and the kind of multi-media explosion you might think started with those mop-tops fifty years later.

Lloyd Bacon, Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in The Tramp

None of this promotional excess would have worked had the product itself not been so good and by the time of The Tramp (11^th April 1915) you can see the brand equity reaching its initial peak. This film shows Chapin’s increasing emotional content with our hero tramping off alone in the hope of better romantic fortunes at the film’s conclusion. In his earlier films, Chaplin had not always been sympathetic and indeed he had been an irritant; drunk and malicious but here he was beginning as a romantic hero and an everyman not guaranteed to win in love or war… someone 1915 could really identify with.

Interestingly Chaplin would still dip into earlier characters and in A Night in the Show (20^th November) he played a drunken dandy and an unruly reprobate: Mr Pest and Mr Rowdy. This was an adaptation of the old Fred Karno sketch Mumming Birds and is a hoot; a precious example of his origins in live performance.

Mr Pest and Mr Rowdy

Work (21^st June) was also descended from the stage sketch from his time with Fred Khano and filmed at the imposing Bradbury Mansion – the only thing missing is Shaggy and Scooby Doo! Slapstick with irony…

A Woman (12^th July) featured some old school British drag, which for some providing further evidence for that minority who found Charlie a little crude. It wasn’t just in the US though as the film was seemingly banned in Sweden until 1931.

Charlie gets the wrong end of the stick...

The Bank (9^th August) is indeed just about the pick of the bunch from the opening gag about Charlie storing his mop in the safe to the endless battles with Bristolian Billy Armstrong. The slapstick is balanced perfectly with romance and action as Charlie mistakes Edna’s intentions and falls hard for a woman out of his class. There’s a genuinely dramatic closing sequence but never a guarantee that Charlie’s heart will triumph.

Police (27^th March 1916) was Charlie’s last Essanay film to be made and ends the run on a similar note: Chaplin is trying to go straight and it all boils down to whether his co-burglar (Wesley Ruggles) will persuade him to make his crime worse or whether Edna’s goodness will turn his fortunes. He does better here but, as he walks off into the sunset, arms aloft as in celebration of his new possibilities, a stray copper pops into view to chase him back from the sunset.

Charlie defends Edna

That’s just a small sample of the delights in the set. Sold?

Charlie Chaplin: The Essanay Comedies is released on 23^rd January and you can pre-order your copy from theBFI Shop. The films have never looked so good in digital form and come with fresh music from silent-scoring experts the Mont Alto Orchestra and Robert Israel. It is a sumptuous celebration that no fan of silent comedy will want to be without, Chaplinitis may have peaked in 1915-18 but it’s never really gone away.

And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make…