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!

Murder on the dancefloor... Palais de Danse (1928) with Costas Fotopoulos, BFI

“We are a nation that suffers from… mock modesty and it applies to British film… there is no reason why our films should not rank higher… Are we downhearted, emphatically no!”

Speaking thus in 1929, Maurice Elvey bemoaned the attitude of the British to our own cinema and, commenting as above, issued a rallying cry for the creative arts to stand up and be counted. Dr Lucie Dutton in her excellent introduction addressed this ongoing narrative of “mock modesty” and offered this film as yet another example of domestic cinema’s quality. Elvey himself wouldn’t have ranked Palais de Danse on a level with say his own Hindle Wakes (1927) but it’s clear to see that the former is not only highly competent but stylistically adventurous and entertainment.

Lucie quoted the above from a 1929 radio interview and an earlier interview in which Elvey also talked about wanting to make stories that touched on the common experience of the audience: “depicting human emotions in a reasonable way… (and) just the sort of happenings that must have happened to themselves.” This film, as with Hindle, helps explain why audiences at Granada cinemas voted him the most popular director in 1927.

One of my favourite sequences in Hindle Wakes is that showing the dancing in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom and here Elvey filmed 1500 extras in the Tottenham Palais (built in 1910 and only demolished as recently as 2003), Percy Strong’s camera following the mass as the circle the dancefloor marshalled impeccably by the director (was anyone better with crowds than Maurice?) and his assistant, one David Lean.  It’s hypnotic and poignant, these were are grand-parents’ moves, it was how they met and how they courted.

Mabel Poulton promotes the Danse

The film is packed full of cross-fades, dolly shots, montage, and Germanic camera mobility and it draws you into the Palais and moves the narrative onwards so effectively. At one point, Lady King (Hilda Moore), enjoying a rendezvous with “Count Alban” (aka No. 1 played by the marvellously menacing John Longden, who also co-wrote the story), are followed as they stand up from their table in Eugene’s Club and move over the room to open a door revealing a roulette table. There are also plenty of “Elvey Touches” such as when the legs and feet are shown of the professional dancers/escorts as they march out from their changing rooms to face another day of being bought and danced with… or when our modern Cinderella (Mabel Poulton) is first caught up in the show, nervously reacting to the extreme close-ups of “Prince Charming”, Tony King (Robin Irvine) as he attends to her in a tableaux vivant at the start of the film.

In the same way that, say Julian Barnes or Ian McEwan are easier reads than other middlebrow heavyweights who use too much technique (yes Martin and, especially you Will…), Elvey focuses on the story and only uses that which advances the process. I’d say he is under-rated from what I’ve seen and there are a growing number who would agree with Dr Dutton in recognising his importance in the development of British cinema from the 1910s onwards.

Mabel Poulton is an actress new to me but she’s excellent in the film as the daughter of a disabled war-veteran road worker who is plucked from her father’s side opposite 415–419 High Road Tottenham, to fill the glass shoes of a missing Cinders in the aforementioned tableaux. She catches the eye of the Hall’s owner and auditions for the leading professional dancer, Number One (Longden) who is extremely impressed after a false start in which she dances ballet.

She is allocated the number 16 and is soon foxtrotting her feet off on the daily drag round the dancefloor. The other dancers are well observed especially Number 2, played by a perpetual motion gum-chewing Chili Bouchier, as the world-weary girl with the curls who comes out with such lines as “c’mon you flat-footed son of a saxophone!” – I think we’ve found the English Marie Prevost!

It’s a culture shock for our innocent Cinders and there’s another great sequence in which she backs away, mesmerised and horrified at the mass of human interaction, shadows falling in constant motion one her face and the walls. She retreats staring at the action and finally sneaks out of the door, pausing only for one last look.

Her Prince Charming returns and gradually No 16 falls in love with Tony King but it’s not a relationship approved of by his mother nor his father, Sir William King (Jerrold Robertshaw) a judge “of few words but long sentences”. Tony pleads with her ladyship – “this is 1928, times have changed…” but not by that much and the class divide stands firm even as Lady King finds out who her Count really is.

As Number 1 starts blackmailing his Lady, Cinders overhears and tries to help… things are about to get a lot more complicated; there’ll be more dancing and a heck of a fight before the day is done in a thrilling, if completely predictable, ending.

The curved entrance to the Palais de Dance on Tottenham HIgh Road

Costas Fotopoulos accompanied with sure-footed flourishes that captured the mood and the period; rhapsodic elements mixed with jazz-age poignance. Just what the film asked for.

Palais de Danse could easily have been a Hollywood or French comedy-drama and proves Mr Elvey’s point precisely by its quality – it’s not his best work but it is very good all the same!

For more on British Silent Film, I can recommend theBritish Silent Film Symposium which takes place at Kings College London on 11thand 12th April – it’s a fascinating line up of research and films and plays a major role in the ongoing rehabilitation of British silent film.

Are we downhearted? Emphatically no!

Chili Bouchier, the English Marie Prevost?