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...

Dodge Brothers + Louise Brooks, Barbican, London … Beggars of Life (1928)

Mark Kermode, double bass and harmonica Dodge Brother, told us that every time they play along to Beggars of Life is different. They have cue sheets with the film’s intertitles but use no sheet music and improvise based on the rhythm of the film and the mood of the scenes.

The title song is sung with the opening titles and then Hark Those Bells accompanies the appearance of Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery) as he staggers onto screen singing and carrying a casket of hootch for his fellow hoboes.

I’d seen the Dodge Brothers, superbly augmented by Neil Brand on piano, accompany Beggars of Life at the BFI last year (review here) but, as with the music, the experience was something else this time.

The first time I watched this film was on ropey DVD and, through the under-exposed image I only had my eyes on Louise Brooks. By the time of the BFI viewing I still couldn’t keep my eyes off and viewed things largely through her time on screen.

This time though, I paid more attention to the film’s technique and the other performers. This was undoubtedly prompted by the music which has grown closer to the film and consequently highlights certain aspects more emphatically.

In the case of Edgar Washington Blue the band deliberately counter-point his appearances with more serious accompaniment than would have been originally used. Mike Hammond, guitar and voice Dodge Brother, explained that minstrel songs would have been used to emphasise the comedic aspect of this performer. Such stereotyping devalues the actor and his excellent performance but this was just a few years after white actors were still being used in black make-up. Edgar Washington Blue was a decent actor full stop but he was amongst the first black men to make a success in American film.


There’s also no mistaking the film’s intended star and that is Wallace Beery. He gives an energetic and robust performance as the anti-hero. He’s rough and always ready and whilst we don’t particularly like him for much of the story, there’s something playfully honest about him. He’s secure in his own dominance and is merely responding to a harsh, meaningless world in the only way he can.

But the two youngsters teach him a lesson he never expected and he risks all to help them in the end. Maybe this is a tale of lost potential. Red and the rest of the hoboes have mostly run out of options and are where they are because they either don’t fit or got unlucky.

Jim Tully’s original book was an autobiographical account of his own experience of vagrant culture. An orphan and a former hobo he was attempting the same kind of revelatory journalism as George Orwell (in Wigan and in Paris) albeit without the Eton education. He wanted to explain these outcasts to mainstream society.

Louise Brooks’ character, Nancy, hasn’t had much luck. “Rescued” from the orphanage by an abusive farmer, she can take no more and shoots him before he can punish her further. She is found by a young wanderer, Jim (Richard Arlen) who reluctantly agrees to help her escape.

Gradually they become close as Wellman shows them, literally, walking increasingly in step, running in tandem alongside speeding trains and sleeping in a make-shift bed Jim hollows out of a haystack. Wellman’s direction is superb here as he films his young actors running their own stunts and uses the pastoral setting to show their growing closeness and vulnerability as they almost get skewered by the farmer.



When the two enter the sub-culture of the hoboes there are lots of authentic touches. Graffitti on the trucks – with some in-jokes “Hi Louie” and a drawing of some character called "Bill" – and also the hoboes own code to help their fellow travellers find the safest routes.

The hoboes have their own rules and structure and respect is given to the strongest man. Red attempts to enforce his “right” to take advantage of the girl he is protecting but she is too smart and forces him into a fight with Snake.

After Snake removes his false teeth, the two men pummel away like school boys in what looks like a painfully improvised scrap. The rest of the gang joins in and there is mayhem until word comes that the train is being searched by the police.

The gang escape and hide out in an abandoned shack. Red tries to split the lovers apart for their own safety but is dumbfounded when he sees their true feelings… “I heard about it but I never seen it before”.

He sends them off in a car he has stolen along with some female clothing – a double-bluff for the authorities chasing a girl dressed as a boy – and then sets his plan in place to put them in the clear…

Mike Hammond described Beggars as his favourite film and you can understand why. There is a good deal of depth in this story and it certainly repays repeat viewing when its technique and social conscience becomes clearer.

It’s also a different experience when you watch a film in different company. Our two friends were not too familiar with silent film but came away uplifted by the enthusiasm of the band and the quality of the film. It was a collective endorsement of the new and the old.


Whilst the acting skill of Beery is a key component in the film’s authenticity so too (obviously) is the presence of Louise Brooks who looks and acts out of time as always. This film is precious as it’s one of the few American features that allow her to play a dramatically challenging role. She was just 21 when she made it and seemingly set for stardom.

She bravely followed Wild Bill Welham’s instructions to run her own stunts as far as possible and you wonder why, within a couple of years, she’d turned her back on a role in the same director's Public Enemy (Jean Harlow took it and it made her). But it wasn’t to be, she’d done her bit and left a handful of great performances to show us what was possible.

The band were filmed during the performance and it is to be hoped that this will form the basis of a future DVD release (there are semi-official rumours…). I hope so. You can watch Beggars of Life at the Internet Archive but it deserves a restoration and it deserves this great music to be played alongside it.


There's more information of the Dodge Brothers on their website - they accompany other silents White Oak and The Ghost Who Never Returns. Neil Brand truly "...the Doyen of silent film accompanists..." also has a site here.