Forde every stream… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Four

Tonight’s special was Pêcheur d'Islande (1924) with accompaniment from Gabriel Thibaudeau and Frank Bockius (again) and I wonder if it is possible that in future years we will look back on this GCM as The Bockius Edition, so involved has the percussionist been in the screenings I have enjoyed the most as well as this accompaniment; excellent interplaying, spirited lines and improvisation.

As for the codfish, I suppose someone had to make a film about the fragile mortality and crashing uncertainty of the Bretton fishermen in the Icelandic sea, the anguished weeks and months for those at home waiting for loved ones to return as other members of the family were despatched in colonial wars or just dropped dead off camera; the sheer uncertainty of life on the edge, extrapolated in visceral ways on screen, making the point with the bluntest instruments of cinematic convention being used to generate expectation - hopes raised not once, not twice but three times - before finally jabbing the audience right on the nose. Pêcheur d'Islande is that film. As the advertising had it at the time, it’s an “…affirmation of crushing fatalism which brings to the scale of the elements our humble and proud humanity.”

 

The film looks a dream and there are fabulous performances from Charles Vanel, Sandra Milovanoff (see above), Roger San Juana and Madame Boyer, yet the fatalism crushes the film relentlessly. The tragedy was not earned, it was imposed.

  

Mabel resists Ford's crushing fatalism

And yet, only a few hours ago I was so happy… The morning saw a top-quality slapstick session and you just get the warm giggles the second you see a line up of Mabel Normand, Mack Sennet and yes, even Ford Sterling. The gang are At Coney Island (1912) and are probably making things up on the spot with Mabel shining brightest. The same can be said for Harold Lloyd and his practically perfect From Hand to Mouth (1919) two-reels that pack as much in as Gance of von Stroheim did over ten – well, certainly more gags. Harold’s going hungry and gets caught up in  trying to save a young girl (his first film with future wife, Mildred Davies) and her inheritance. There’s bent lawyers out to cheat her and Snub Pollard out to kidnap her with only one hungry Harry and his instant wit to help her; they don’t stand a chance!

 

What can I say about the man who went on to direct Arthur Askey, a Liverpool-born funster of World-historic proportions, in The Ghost Train (1941)?

 

Walter Forde’s last silent film is packed with inventive routines: a baby and a doll mix up in the toy store, serving up toy soldiers just like chips on newspaper with oil for gravy and trying to wrap balloons in brown paper for a bespectacled Rees-Mogg-model junior toff. Forde’s an inventor, he’s not sure what of, but it seems to work until it blows his landlord’s house up. He gets a job in a toy shop and meets an attractive young woman Pauline (Pauline Johnson) who just happens to work for the War Office, he invites her for dinner cooked by his uppity roommate, Cuthbert (Arthur Stratton) who, in a constant battle of wills, refuses to act the role of his butler.

 

Walter making a right pig's ear of things

Walter’s invention of a remote-control tank could be a game-changer but a group of spies finds out and set’s off to stop him demonstrating the kit to the Minister for War. Their leader is modelled on a similar mastermind in Fritz Land’s Spies and sits at a huge desk, pushing buttons for everything he needs, drinks, photographs, cigarette and lighters… There’s a very funny bit of business on the Underground as the baddies chase Walter up lifts and down emergency spiral staircases in scenes reminiscent of Keaton in The Cameraman and elsewhere. The gags are mostly good and Forde lets things flow without over-extending his ideas, no wonder he worked so well with Big-Hearted Arthur.

 

He gets his chance to demo for the Minister but the enemy agents kidnap him and Pauline, and, as Walter pushes his pal Cuthbert too far, the real-life tank runs amok to comic effect. The filmmakers were clearly delighted to get the loan of kit and crew and have the crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Hurry up Harry!

Harry Piel’s taken some stick at the Festival for his repetitions and improbably plotting – but things mostly came together for the epically daft Rivalen (1923) in which we finally got to see his acting as well as his directing and writing. Piel is dynamic and eye-catching with Fairbanks wit and physicality  allied to Houdini-esque escapology with one section in which he is lowered into a lake in a glass pyramid and then seen in a studio tank struggling to escape.

 

It's possible that the film was a sequel to Das schwarze Kuvert as well as being followed by Der letzte Kampf according to Hemma Marlene Prainsack and Andreas Thein in the programme notes. That would make sense of the bad blood between Piel’s character Peel (see what they did there?) and the evil Dr Ravello (Charly Berger) – he’s got a robot! – and the fact they’re both pursuing the same woman, rich industrialist John Evans’ daughter Evelyn (Inge Helgard). The pace has the relentlessness of a serial and the outlandish sci-fi plot barely makes sense nor does it need to.

 

I loved the “Heaven and Hell” masked ball with the theme, held in Evans’ castle with lots of Teutonic debauchery and outrageous set designs from Hermann Warm who worked on Caligari and Albert Korell. It provided and interesting contrast with the even more spectacular work of the French Sonia Delaunay who is also being highlighted during the festival.

 

Accompaniment was from Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius – The Man Who Never Sleeps – and they lifted the film and the fun with their swinging affinity.

 

Fishing about on the river

No greater contrast could be found than in the long-lost documentary, Amazonas, Maior Rio Do Mundo (1918) which was only rediscovered this year and even made the news in The Guardian. It’s a fascinating document of the life and importance of the huge waterway which revealed hitherto unknown details about Brazil Nuts – they’re encased in fruit!? – as well as rubber and mahogany. Vegetarians and omnivore’s alike looked away for the scenes of manatee hunting but at least they killed what they ate. It reminded me of the basking shark hunt filmed by Flaherty for Man of Aran only real. A window into the past that was seemingly shattered exists again.

 

Accompaniment was from José María Serralde Ruiz and it was definitely Amazon prime!

 

Mack and Mabel provided my third trip to Coney Island in a few weeks after Eleanor and James in The Crowd (BFI) and Clara and Antonio in It (Kennington Bioscope). They used to say it was The Playground of the World, a bit like Blackpool… and that’s exactly where we’re headed tomorrow on Wakes Wednesday! I can not wait!

I want you to crush him, fatalistically!

I spy Asta… S1 (1913)

“The happiness of the country, It is the happiness of all.”

Thanks to those wondrous folks at the European Film Gateway, we are able to view one of The Asta Nielsen Series of films made in Germany by Asta and her director husband Urban Gad; this one from the third annual series, one of seven made in 1913/14 and released just after Die Suffragette (1913).

“The famous Danish actress… enjoys unchallenged popularity. Her acting, the vivid expression of her gestures, have earned her the honorary title of a ‘Duse* of cinematic art’…” raved Union-Theater-Zeitung about this “fully acclimated Berliner” in 1912. It’s easy to see why she was a sensation in the World’s third largest cinema market.

Asta Nielsen

The story is slight and lacking in dramatic pace but Asta’s acting overcomes it all in a series of virtual tableaux in which she shows her mastery of delicate, natural expression. Asta goofs around with her girlfriends, cigarette in mouth as she messes up daddy’s secret papers, exchanges secret glances with her beau and messes around on the beach just like you or I. There had probably never been a beach frolic quite like it up to this point – Asta’s dressed in practical light clothing anyway and rolls her bloomers up to allow most of her legs to paddle – we never saw that much of Lilian’s limbs of Pickford’s pins.

Out on a limb

In every scene Asta’s thinking and moving as if the entire exercise was just to enable her expression.  This film has just about the least happening of any film I’ve seen her in from 1910-1913 but she fills the gaps in dramatic tension with emotional improvisations.

Asta Nielsen is an extraordinary figure and in more ways than one… and no, there’s not a hint of Sid James in that observation. Asta confounded even future director Carl Theodore Dreyer with her willowy frame and slight physique, writing under the pseudonym Tommen in a 1913 review he decried her “…terribly unfortunate features. She is lanky … flat-chested and with no calves to speak of. But what does Asta Nielsen-Gad do? She is determined… to reveal her scrawniness.”  Young Carl’s protests to one side, Asta’s form found considerable favour in Denmark and beyond: something new.

The new look

Asta was the precursor of slimmer, smarter, leading ladies who would not only act well but lead their audience towards a future less-constrained by smothering fashion and manners. What we see in 1913 is a flaming youth and an “it” girl far from lost even after the box is flung open.

As Karl Bleibtreu, amongst the first film reviewers in the German speaking countries noted: “In every moment The Nielsen is the life, the nature, in every of her aspects she is real truth.” He thought she was better than Elenora Duse too… and he didn’t think her “scrawny” at least, I shouldn’t expect so.

At the airfield

Asta plays Gertrud von Hessendorf, daughter of General Hessendorf (Siegwart Gruder) who is charged with procuring new aircraft for the military. The two travel to Copenhagen to take a test flight in a giant airship – thrillingly, Asta is in the air for a few seconds although she is soon climbing out of the ship…

Military invention is at a delicate point and following a major crash, the country is badly in the need of the confidence boost that a new, indefatigable airship could bring: cue the S1 a ship so advanced enemies will quake and, of course, do anything they can to stop it.

This is where the handsome Graf Baldini (Charly Berger) comes in – a man who has already left his mark on the General’s daughter; he is also a spy for a foreign power charged with stealing the designs for the revolutionary new plane.

With Baldini

Instead of furtive looks and skulking shadows, Gad, focuses on the relationship between the two which gives his real-life wife ample opportunity to pull the viewer into what will become her conflicted world. She enjoys the frisson of her illicit relationship sneaking small affections during public functions and, most emphatically, enjoying the most liberated of seaside runs as she and the Count break free from a society picnic and just let rip splashing in the shallows and leaving the watcher in no doubt that their affection is real and very true.

But this cannot last and Gertrude’s loyalties will be tested to the limits once her love’s true nature is revealed: we she be loyal to father and state or will love guide her heart in frightening, new directions?

For the greater good?

The camerawork from Herr Karl Freund and Emil Schünemann is superb even whilst Gad’s direction is a little on the static side: he prefers to let his actors do the talking and there’s a lot of 1913-style pantomime within the static frame.

But Asta is never static and is in the constant flow of showing us who her character is and what she wants.

The film can be viewed on the European Gateway if you follow this link – there’s no sound but if you watch carefully you can hear the chamber players at the elegant parties, the dramatic tension of the aerial scenes and the sweep and descend as Gertrude’s heart almost splits in two…

Quotes lifted from the fascinating deep dive into Asta's break-out years that is Importing Asta Nielsen, KINtop 2 (KINtop Studies in Early Cinema). Available still from Amazon.

Men making plans

Gertrude, fag in mouth, and the girls

Freedom of movement

Partie de campagne

Der Asta