Climb every mountain*… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Six

We finished off day six climbing every stairway, late after dinner and relegated to the Gods for the spirited but slightly odd Poker Faces (1926) featuring Edward Everett Horton and Laura La Plante in a winning combination of cheeky chappie and Universal’s top star for much of the Twenties who didn’t manage to achieve his career longevity, retiring as a movie star at just 30 in 1935 by which point Horton was pushing 50 and with years of success ahead.

 

Horton plays Jimmy Whitmore a man whose face gives nothing away expect, he’s Edward Everett Horton so, of course, there’s a lot of comic meaning flashing across his face, he’s no Buster Keaton in this regard. If anything, La Plante as his wife Betty is better at stoneface especially frustrated by his glacial career advancement – and consequent lack of new rug – and then stone-cold furious as his big break turns into a farce – a little forced compared with say Marie Prevost’s Up in Mabel’s Room, but still funny and with the charm of these two leads.

 

Jimmy gets offered a promotion so long as he can close a big new deal with out-of-town big shot George Dixon (George Siegmann) who he has to meet at the station. By this time Betty has stormed off to get a job of her own after Jimmy nixes the new carpet and thinking he sees her about to leave town, wearing a veil with similar luggage (of course) pursues her and starts to remonstrate. This attracts the attention of Big George who chivalrously steps in to defend the woman who, veil lifted, turns out to be of Chinese origin so, of course, she couldn’t be Jimmy’s wife… and our collective cringe went up a gear as an intertitle of Chinese appeared. That was 1926 that was.

 

Edward's way with women.

Jimmy and George don’t know who the other is though, despite having unknowingly got off on bad terms Jimmy’s boss Henry Curlew (Tom Ricketts) invites them to his house for dinner to finalise the deal. He also invites Jimmy’s wife which is an issue as the latter thinks he’s been deserted by his inconveniently ambitious spouse and has to hire a woman to act as his wife (Dorothy Revier). She’s married to Pug (Tom O'Brien) a prize fighter… not someone you’d want to upset in any way. Can you guess where this is going?

 

Naturally chaos erupts at Curlew’s house as the men find out who each other is and the old man’s new secretary is unveiled… it’s Betty who is probably more surprised about his new “wife” than Jimmy is about her new job. There follows extended confusion and confrontation as Jimmy tries to protect the honour of this young woman as George takes a shine to her. It’s well played by everyone, and the direction is well timed by Harry A. Pollard.

 

It’s a farce. sometimes you’re in the mood sometimes you’re not and tonight I was.

 

The daftness was enlivened considerably by a new score composed and conducted by Juri Dal Dan performed live by Zerorchestra, Pordenone’s finest and who played for this on the tradition GCM eve screening. The band were swingling and tight, turning musical direction on the flip of a dime and with short solos highlighting and reinforcing the comic energy. No wonder the Verdi was packed out to the rafters where we sat!

 

Hannes Schneider

Before our evening exertions we were on top of the world with Arnold Fanck and his intrepid mountaineering filmmakers for Der Berg Des Schicksals (Mountain of Destiny) (1924), the film that reputedly inspired dancer Leni Riefenstahl to get in touch with its pioneering director, Arnold Fanck, who then featured her in The Holy Mountain. I love Fanck’s films, the scenery obviously, the sense of actual adventure filming at these altitudes and the bravery of the leads taking on the actual crags and scrambles.

The “destiny” is for the son to follow the father in conquering the peak which he tried but failed to climb. Inspired by the fatal attempt of climber Carlo Garbari to summit the Guglia (“spire”) di Brenta in the Dolomites, Winter Olympian Hannes Schneider plays Bergsteiger who is haunted by the peak and his son is Alpine expert Luis Trenker who would star in other Fanck films and who looks like he was hewn from the granite of these mountains (was he Married to the Mountains?!).

 

Fanck would start by shooting footage of dangerous climbs and incredible landscapes and then evolve his stories later and sometimes there’s more climbing than character but there’s good support from non-climbers like Erna Morena as the climbers’ wife and mother as well as Hertha von Walther as Hella who Trenker has to go to rescue on a stormy night. She climbs well and looked familiar to me as she’s an uncredited actor in Pabst’s Joyless Street (1925).

 

Airy accompaniment was provided by Mauro Colombis and the ubiquitous Frank Bockius who is no doubt familiar with these Germanic hills! Stunning visuals on screen and hard-hitting, syncopations on stage!

 

Harald Madsen charms Marguerite Viby and Nina Kalckar

The Slapstick programme brought us down to earth with the existential crises of  Pat and Patachon in Højt paa en kvist (High Up on a Twig) (1929) which featured the following intertitle: “One is tall, the other is short”, which I though was a very dry joke I’d made about their comedic proposition at the Kennington Bioscope in 2018… The two madcaps are engulfed a series of comedic situations during the course of this feature and attempt to romance two attractive young women, played by Marguerite Viby and Nina Kalckar, who are clearly such generous souls that they see the inner beauty in both men although they are under the misapprehension that they’re rich.

 

The film was apparently a return to form for the couple who had been working together for over 25 years at this point. Ulrich Ruedel is very good in the Giornate programme on the reasons for their success and on just why their comedy was different to the Brits and Hollywood. Clearly both men, Pat (Harald Madsen) and Patachon (Carl Schenstrøm) were good actors playing a different style to the gag-based Brits and it’s our challenge to understand why even if we just don’t laugh as much.

 

Meg Morley made her GCM42 debut and as usual accompanied with assured melodic invention and her jazz-practiced improvisations always have a distinctive quality even as she presents musical themes that are very much of the period, jazz age in spirit as much as form.

 

Mary Harald in the fields

Vendémiaire (1918), presented as one feature, was essentially a two parts plus prologue, from the master of the multi-part adventure, Louis Feuillade and showed a more considered and down-to-earth, director three years on from Les Vampires and the War. There were some lush landscapes of the canals and countryside near Lyon and a feature feel to the lengthy episodes as a plot unfolded about two escaped German POWs infiltrating a group of farm workers in the Great War.

 

René Cresté plays Pierre Bertin a soldier on leave to recover from his mental and physical wounds and he meets a family heading away from the front line to seek work and to find out what happened to their siblings. They all end up working on a vineyard in Lunel (Feullade’s hometown) run by Capitaine de Castelviel (Feuillade regular Édouard Mathé) and where the two Germans also infiltrate.  Wilfred (Louis Leubas) and Fritz (Manuel Caméré) cause much disruption as they try to further the fading German cause and frame a gypsy, Sarah (Mary Harald, who also featured in the director’s Tih Minh (1918) and who was of mixed race possibly born in Hong Kong or Vietnam) as they rob the Captain… there are fuller characters than in the director’s more adventure-based serials and, as the propaganda it undoubtedly was, Vendemiaire stirs your heart as you hope for the best for these refugees.

 

Accompaniment for the 143 minute run time was split between Gabriel Thibaudeau and John Sweeney who both provided the lyricism and spirit the subject matter demanded; John’s triumphant cadences at the films’ end were especially moving as the certainty of the victory at the time of release was clearly less and we now know that the new peace was only to last barely twenty-odd years.

 

There were also some extra special entrees before Poker Faces accompanied by maestro Stephen Horne and including some wonderful colour shots around Niagara Falls in, er, Wonderful Water (1922) and Max Roach comedy, A Truthful Liar (1924) featuring Will Rogers as Alfalfa Doolittle who becomes Ambassador to Cornucopia where he dispenses with formalities and gets matey with the King (Richard Pennell) who would much rather go to an American bar in the city than spend time with his suffocating court. Alfalfa duly uses his cowboy powers to rescue the King from runaway horses and would be assassins. It spoofs the whole Ruritanian idea and features the immortal couplet:

 

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I’m against royalty,

How about you?

 

There were also some poignant footage of the man Chaplin called The Master, Max Linder in 1924, still so full of charm and intelligence and yet struggling with mental health issues after the war that would lead to his death the following year. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think…

 

 

René Cresté and Gaston Michel Vendémiaire (1918) 

 

*See Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Four

Smile… Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend 2022, Day One, Cinema Museum

 

Sitting in the Cinema Museum, it’s like we’ve never been away and yet… those communal laughs feel fresher, the films more visceral and the accompaniment, richer and more poignant than ever. There were tears as well as laughter and a fulsome amount of surprises… reputations restored to living memory as well as reanimated shadows on screen. A reminder also that even films you are familiar with carry additional weight when viewed on the big screen with an audience and with live accompaniment.

 

Buddy and Mary

My Best Girl (1927) with Costas Fotopoulos

Mary Pickford’s last silent film, My Best Girl, is also one of her best and, famously, features her romancing future husband Charles “Buddy” Rogers. It’s romantic comedy of the highest order, pulling at the heartstrings as one of the masters of cinema runs through her gears form slapstick to the most intensely dramatic closing sequence that, as I fully expected, brought a tear to my eye. Can you see Mary falling in love with Buddy during this film? Maybe… but it was also her day job and to see her in her mid-thirties, playing her age, is a delight.

My Best Girl’s cinematographer was Charles Rosher who deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography, he lost it for this but won it for Sunrise and, there were moments such as the opening montage and the emotional scenes amongst the traffic when you were reminded of the earlier film.

Costas Fotopoulos provided spirited accompaniment of his own tapping into rich romantic and dramatic themes as well as tripping the comedy lightly and fantastically through the pots and pans, family rows and cultural clashes as the poor little shop girl wins the heart of the poor big rich boy. Peak Bioscope!!

Walter and the runaway tank... plus two pigs.

 

Would You Believe it? (1929) with Lillian Henley

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-esque 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 a rather 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’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… the first but not last time, I was reminded of Wallace and Gromit on the day’s programme.

A super spy and his target

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 controls events enough to not interrupt the broader narrative.

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 it shows with crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Forde later went on to direct the legendary Arthur Askey in The Ghost Train, his sense of comic timing and seamless story advancement was to stand him in good stead in his long career behind the camera.

 

Rediscovering Roscoe with Steve Massa and Lillian Henley

The second programme was a video essay from film historian Steve Massa who gave an overview of the unfairly maligned Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle based on his recent book. Roscoe was an exceptional talent who understood cinematic comedy better than most using his expressive wit, supernatural timing and extraordinary athleticism to become one of the leading players in the 1910s. Steve discussed numerous examples of Roscoe’s comic invention, quick fire physical comedy which exhibited his grace and timing and his ability to fall headfirst and backwards in a 180-degree flop.

Roscoe enjoyed a successful run of seventeen films with Mabel Normand at Keystone and worked with Chaplin, Lloyd and his nephew, Al St John before setting up his own production company, Comique Film Corporation, with Joseph Shenk (Mr Norma Talmadge) in 1917. Steve showed a clip from the company’s first film, The Butcher Boy (1917) which also introduced a young vaudeville performer by the name of Keaton.

Of course, Roscoe’s life was turned upside down by his unjust prosecution for the death of Virginia Rappe, but even before he was completely exonerated, he carried on working with Buster in Sherlock Jr and other films. He stayed active and made a successful series of shorts in the early thirties that as Steve said, left his life on the up…

There was a full screening for His Wife’s Mistake (1916), one of Arbuckle’s best starring shorts, with Al St John. There was swinging piano accompaniment from Lillian Henley who caught the mood as always and syncopated perfectly with the pandemonium on screen.

 

Almost Lost Laughs… Charley’s Bowers and Chase plus EE Horton, Meg Morley

 

Charlie Bowers' house...

Many a Slip (1927) The Non-slip Banana

This was the inventive Charley Bowers at his most surreal, struggling to invent a non–slip banana peel at the behest of a potential rich benefactor. As with Walter Forde, Bowers is an inventor in search of a cause and he finds it when offered the seemingly impossible task of removing that staple slippiness from Slapstick’s most valuable fruit.

This being Bowers, the cause of the slippiness was not the texture of the skin but tiny bugs only viewable through one of his “Pat Pending” tele-microscopes. Cue a series of Bower’s amazing stop-motion animations along with repeated efforts to go the long way round in order to test the solution. As Matthew Rose, who runs The Lost Laugh digital magazine and website, pointed out Bowers may not have been the best comedic performer but he was an extraordinary animator and film director. Many a Slip is great fun and it’s good news that more of Bowers’ work is being found and released on home media by Lobster Films.

There’s an article on Charley from Matthew on his site here.

 

Stan is the best lawyer Charley can afford...

Now I’ll Tell One (1927) when Ollie met Stan and Charley

Before they were officially a team, Laurel and Hardy feature in a few films together including this one, which features more of the former as Charley Chase’s lawyer in an outlandish divorce case. Charley’s wife is played by Edna Marion who accuses him of all kinds of outrageous crimes against her, including having shot her dead. Quick as a flash Stan the Lawyer asks how this could be given that she is still alive, only to provide her with an unlikely explanation; “perhaps the bullet hit a bible you kept over your heart. It’s typical Chase, fast paced, comedically vindictive and stylishly silly. In addition to being a legal loose cannon, Stan also dismantles clocks and watches… and I still don’t know why. Every lawyer needs a hobby.

Horton hopes for a honeymoon?

 

Dad’s Choice (1928)

Edward Everett Horton (forgotten until recently as a silent star) made a series of highly polished two reelers at the end of the silent period before establishing himself in talkies for the next two decades. He’s another class act and plays it earnestly deadpan through this comedy of manners, as he tries to elope with his sweetheart (Sharon Lynn) whose father (Otis Harlan) certainly does not approve of the match. There’s a lovely confusion between Charlie and his girl’s mother (Josephine Crowell) who keeps on been presented with accidental winks and other signals that she’s the one he’s after.

It's very polished and Horton shows all the comic calm that made him a staple of such later classics as Top Hat, Arsenic and Old Lace and The Ghost Goes Wild. Again, there’s a set of his comedies out on Blu-ray this time from Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions - link here!

 

Meg Morley accompanied all three films in slightly different styles, responding with an effortless range of themes and tempos to suit the rhythms of the comedy on screen. A jazz player perfectly suited to the jazzed action on screen.

 

Unfortunately, I was then called away by a prior appointment at the Royal Albert Hall and so I missed the Harry Langdon in Frank Capra’s The Strong Man (1926) – his first film as director - with more Meg and then the headlining Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923) accompanied by John Sweeney.  One of the all-time classics of silent comedy and the Fourth Musketeer of twenties male comedians. I’ve seen the Lloyd film and will catch up with the other Harry later on… he made some great films with Capra writing including Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) with Joan Crawford, and was on a roll to rival even the Big Three… the more the merrier.

 

Good to have the laughter days back at the Bioscope and, as the Cinema Museum’s future now looks assured in Kennington, here’s to many more!

 

AND, this is why bananas are so slippy...

And why mice truly are the smartest species on Earth... Charley Bowers was there first!