These are a few of my favourite things… 10 from 2022

 

And so this is Christmas and what have we done...? Turns out quite a lot more than in the Year of Our Covid, 2021 but still not as much as we’d like to have done… in this game you take what you can get though and savour each experience as much as you can. Silent film doesn’t throw itself at you like an overeager superhero flick desperate to win back it’s $200 million budget, oh my no, you have to make an effort and all of that is rewarded with the shocks and joys of unremembered humanity and artistic enterprise. All of which is a Boxing Day hungover way of saying; hey Ma, will you look at these apples (and no, I don’t really know what that means)!

Woman of the Year: Dora Brandes (1916)/Poor Jenny (1912) with Stephen Horne, BFI Asta Nielsen Season

She acts, that’s the thing… she does not just pose before the camera… She impersonates a character, she makes it live and have meaning, a hundred meanings… New York Times, 1921

Who could have foreseen that Asta Nielsen would be 2022’s MVP – someway ahead of Liz Truss in terms of relevance, attainment and talent – but Pamela Hutchinson and the BFI set out one of the finest seasons of silent treasures for many a year with screenings of rare Nielsen grooves propelling us into the year with a spring in our step and a growing appreciation of this most important actor. Sure, I’d seen Asta’s before but mostly in her greatest hits, Hamlet (thrice), Joyless Street (twice), Afgrunden (so many times…) but it was a real connoisseur’s delight to be able to dig deeper into a body of work that is very rarely screened in this breadth and depth.

Asta Nielsen

As an example of Die Asta’s almost unparalleled range I’ve picked these two with accompaniment from Stephen Horne who has a way with Silent Sirens (and a CD to prove it, available here if you are shameless and unhip enough to have not bought a copy!). Poor Jenny (1912) was from the early days of the Asta series, written and directed with partner Urban Gad who the actress insisted at the time came with her to Germany to carry on the work begun with Afgrunden. It’s a typical rags-to-riches-back-to-rags again narrative but, as she joked, this was more than enough to feed her dramatic energy.

Dora Brandes, directed by Magnus Stifter, following her break with Gad, plays with the already well-worn Star is Born tropes. Asta playing a successful actress who finds herself having to choose between an older politician and a much younger journalist. Drama ensues… hearts break. As you watch you can begin to fully understand Asta’s ability to express and connect. So often at the start of her films, she’s seen smiling straight to the audience before the action begins, melting hearts and renewing her intimacy with the watchers and unflinching honest look, the only time she’s out of character, or at least the character she’s about to play. As a person she’s a mystery and her pre-show smiles just hint at the complexity to come whilst showing how easily she can draw us in… it only takes a few seconds looking at those huge dark eyes. Queen.

Asta and her infinite variety...

Downfall (1923) with John Sweeney, introduced by Pamela Hutchinson, BFI Asta Nielsen Season

Sorry, but I’m not just having one Asta moment and this was a breath-taking film that showcased the full power of Asta’s performance level whilst also confronting the fact that she was getting older – she commissioned the film aged 41. Watching her character with minimal make-up. looking in horror at her unfamiliar face in the unforgiving mirror before being deadened by her lover’s unyielding humiliations and finally vanishing from the love of her life’s vision… is oddly rewarding. Certainly, she presents one of the most searing portrayals of aged tragedy in silent film and proof, if any were needed, of her ability to transcend melodrama and to give something extra special entirely from within character.

 

Back in Bologna… Foolish Wives (1922), Timothy Brock, Il Cinema Ritrovato 36th Edition

At last, I was back in Italy and it was too hot, there was too much to do and far too much to see: I loved it!! So many highlights, watching the restored Nosferatu with Mr Brock and full orchestra in the Piazza Maggiore,  watching, The Conformist and Singing in the Rain in the same space and then the almost supernatural hit of three hours’ worth of The Beatles in Peter Jackson’s third episode of Get Back, including the full Rooftop Concert: the gear does not get any fab-er than that, a revelation and a stunning twist of the Extended Scouse Universe.

The big silent showcase was this splendid restoration of the first million-dollar movie, as acclaimed the publicity… Spectacularly, Erich von Stroheim delivered on the ROI and Universal had another hit on its hands from the most complex man in most parts of Hollywood whose productions had the skill of DeMille, the scale of Griffith and a dark heart the latter could never explain to himself. This is a slick crime caper movie from before the days when slick crime capers set in this period were all the rage. But Erich is making sure we see the seedier side as well, he and his two “cousins” are charming con artists, but he has a debauched sexuality which makes his character all too difficult to root for and yet we are conditioned to try… even now.

Timothy Brock’s extraordinary new score was performed with vigour by L’Orcestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna which he conducted. His score included Russia themes reflecting the grandiosity on screen and also delicious lines of his own mapping every strange and unusual nuance from von Stroheim’s screen. It felt complete with the film and completed that magical connection between the place, the audience and the film that makes live silent screenings so compelling and which makes this place, almost uniquely, a truly silent city.

 

Les Misèrables (1912) with John Sweeney, Gabriel Thibaudeau and Silvia Mandolini

This was epic in length and was an unexpected joy equalling in its own way, the lengthier silent serial of 1926. Based in four parts totalling 168 minutes in length it was split into two screenings with different accompanists. The first parts, focusing on Jean Valjean and then Fantine, featured John Sweeney’s accompaniment and we were back the next day for Gabriel Thibaudeau’s piano and Silvia Mandolini’s violin as the story shifted onto Fantine’s daughter Cosette.

Recommended for students of French history and film alike; extraordinary clarity of purpose from Albert Capellani who was able to capture so much from the book with a narrative fluidity not often associated with this early period.

 

Evelyn Greeley

Phil-for-Short (1919), with John Sweeney, BFI

This film was introduced by me at the BFI and for a few hours at least, I was an honorary Nasty Woman.

Inspired by a remark made by the grandson of a one-time Yukon bordello owner, there has been an ongoing project to research and revive interest in unsung women filmmakers who broke new ground in the early years of cinema. This film is a deceptively nuanced take on gender roles in the wake of the Great War and increased recognition of women’s roles.

I wouldn’t say that Phil is a nasty woman, but she is a liberated one and just imagine how good it felt to watch her in 1919 newly enfranchised and with a range of choices starting to open up. As played by the energetic Evelyn Greeley, Phil stands out as practical, inventive and a leader; all very male characteristics for the older generation. She has to deal with reality as her aged father is still buried in the myths and legends of his books and, lovely and liberating though he is, she works the farm and is happy to step up to make things happen for herself and the men in her life.

There is now a magnificent new box set from Kino which includes this film and 98 others. It’s out now and is THE Archive Release of the Year – US and Canada can order direct.

  

Mary Johnsson - Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) 

Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) with Guenter A. Buchwald and Neil Brand, Bonn Silent Film Festival

Have Internet will travel and virtual Bonn was as excellent as usual. As many may know I’m always up for a Saga directed by Mauritz Stiller and based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf and, even though this one is still missing about half an hour, it is a thoroughly entertaining romp through snow, love and madness which features the humanity you’d expect from Selma along with the mastery of locations and character you can rely on from Mauritz. It’s a story about reindeers and redemption (the latter, always a Selma theme) and, how fitting that a film featuring two violin players and the healing power of music, should be accompanied by the Silent Film Supergroup of Guenter A. Buchwald on violin and Neil Brand on piano… I really wish I’d been there to witness this gig in the flesh but the streaming screening will have to do for now and how!

 

Norma Talmadge in The Lady (1925)

The Lady (1925), Daan Van Der Hurk, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming

Oh, outrageous fortune! All set, ALL SET, for my first Giornate since pre-C, and I catch the latest variant a few days before I’m due to head for Venice Airport. So it goes, so it goes and at least we had the streaming version to give us some of the finest films from the full festival. 

Norma Talmadge has always been relatively undervalued in recent times, not afforded the screen time or respect of stella contemporaries Gloria, Mary or Lilian and so I was pleased to see her featured so extensively in this year’s programme and, if I had to pick just the one film to watch t would have been Frank Borzage’s The Lady, a film rated so highly by Talmadge scholars such as Greta de Groat. Norma and Frank did not disappoint and she provides perhaps the most affecting, emotionally powerful performances of her career although not one she wanted to repeat too quickly.

After the mid-teens, Talmadge called the commercial shots and as Jay Weissberg pointed out in his introduction, The Lady was too louche for middle American audiences and did not perform that well. As Talmadge herself said, quoted by Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs in their notes on the Giornate site, she wasn’t going to follow up the film’s style “… I am not going to do any more like it for a time, anyway. Not that I don’t like to do characterizations – I love it. But what can we do? We must play to the box office… So, for a while I am going to do modern things. I think they want to see me in gowns, in style.”

A great actor but also a smart businesswoman who played the game until, to paraphrase, she no longer needed to.

 

Faces of Children (1925), with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope

2022 we were back home to the Cinema Museum and here was one of the great films of the French silent period, and one accompanied with consistently emotive, compelling improvisation with hints of period classical as well as Meg’s diverse jazz chops, so in tune with Jacques Feyder’s tale of childhood grief. The film was critically-acclaimed yet a commercial failure and for a long time this it only circulated as a two-reel 9.5mm condensed version – available on YouTube and worth watching! – and as Christopher Bird said in his excellent introduction, this encouraged the young Kevin Brownlow to seek out more complete versions. The film was finally restored over a twenty-year period starting with the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique in 1986 and ending with Lobster Films in 2004 but it is still rarely screened which is exactly why we need the Kennington Bioscope more than ever!

 

Face off: Ivan vs Brigitte

Manolescu (1929), with John Sweeney, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming

This was like watching Fantasy Silent Film, a game in which the combination of two of the best strikers in cinema muto score hattrick after hattrick combining in ways that seemed impossible especially to this viewer who had no idea they had ever played together. Manolescu… Ivan “The Cat” Mosjoukine versus Brigitte “The Panther” Helm in a battle for our eyeballs, our attention… our love. Honestly, you could have taken the script for Carry on Cabby and given it to these two and we’d all be collapsed in a pool of utter distraction. You want engagement well here he and she are…

Mr Sweeney was fully aware of all of the above and slotted into musical midfield as the great playmaker he is (that’s enough footie references. Ed.)

 

Up in Mabel’s Room (1926), Günter A. Buchwald & Zerorchestra, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming

Directed by E. Mason Hopper, this perfectly executed farce was based on the play by Wilson Collison and Otto Harbach from 1919, and like every successful comedy of this type it relies on perfectly executed performances and timing, whether from the performers and director or in the editing suite. There’s also some exceptionally pithy title cards courtesy of F. McGrew Willis’ script and Walter Graham’s text… and if a picture paints a thousand words, the expressions on Marie Prevost’s face are a British Library’s worth of inuendo!

Extra spice was added by accompaniment recorded right at the start of this year’s festival at the screening in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, it had that live energy some of the streaming films don’t always get, although, to be fair this was an ensemble, with the local group Zerorchestra improvising alongside Günter A. Buchwald’s piano and violin. This film was the perfect finale for the streaming version though, setting us up for a physical return in 1923, sorry, 2023!

 

We’re back up and rolling and 2023 I aim to attend as many screenings and festivals as possible, I’m looking at you Hippfest, Slapstick, Europe and even further afield… as for Pordenone, we are long overdue!

Happy Christmas and a let’s have a brilliant 2023!

 

 

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Clara's baby… Children of Divorce (1927) on Blu-ray

“Gary’s such a big boy, so strong, so manly and so bashful, I always wanna rumple his hair an’ listen to all his troubles.” Clara Bow

Clara Bow in Blu-ray high-definition and the clearest possible view of her soon-to-be-stellar co-star, Gary Cooper; what could possibly go wrong?!

Even in her annus mirabilis when every single film topped the charts from Mantrap, Kid Boots to It! – it was recognised that Miss Bow needed better scripts to fully reach her potential. Sadly, much as it tries, Children of Divorce was not to be it... Joseph von Sternberg was brought in to re-shoot and re-direct the ending and whilst elements of the work received high praise – Clara’s soon-to-be-ex, Victor Fleming saying that the final sequence was amongst the greatest in cinema – overall the audience is left unsatisfied by characters with obscure motivations. The film tries to make a serious point about the importance of family life and the damage done by un-committed parenting but… it feel half-hearted and more concerned with the big dramas of duty.

Clara

All this said, what it does have is the magical realism of Clara Bow – an “expression-engine” who could break the heart of the most cynical viewer with a quicksilver intensity possessed by few other performers. Next to her, the ridiculously handsome Coop struggles to get beyond mildly forlorn or slightly distracted… he’s eye-catching alright but not really enough to draw your focus from Clara.

Stories abound of Bow getting her beau-to-be the part in this film and/or fighting for him to keep it after a stinker of a start. There is still no denying his own potent star appeal but Clara’s was in full burn and Coop was still learning the ropes alongside this sexual superpower. As he said in an off-set interview: “…you couldn’t steal scenes from Clara Bow. Nobody could… She just naturally walks away with every scene she’s in.”

Mr Cooper

He was also up against the equally lovely and capable Esther Ralston.

Esther is so polished and focused and knows exactly how to present face to camera whereas Cooper is often at unflattering angles. The big galoot has charm to burn possessing what Colleen Moore called “that peculiar personality, that intangible quality that communicates on camera…” Yet here, in terms of craft, he’s miles behind Ralston who glides with effortless sadness through the film. Her Jean is the only character really sure of herself around whom Bow’s impulsive Kitty and Cooper’s confused Ted struggle to make the right choices.

Ralston knows how to pose for intense close-ups and works the camera so well throughout. There was a lot for Coop to learn.

Esther Ralston

The film had five writers and it shows with a wayward central message about damaging divorce and also the need for socially convenient marriage getting in the way of emotional fulfilment: we – or rather the upper set – marry for money and do not always follow their hearts. Sadness and despair can be the only result.

The film starts in a de-facto orphanage for the sons and daughters of divorced ex-pats living in Paris and it is here that a young Kitty (Joyce Coad) is dropped off by her mother, (Hedda Hopper in her acting days), who tells her she’ll see her in the Summer – that’s a long time out of the way. She is befriended by the young Jean (Yvonne Pelletier) who provides the unqualified affection her parents cannot. Soon they meet a fiery young boy, Ted Larrabee, who forms a strong attachment to Jean…

Soul sisters

Fast-forward some years to a party at a country house where Kitty (now Clara) entertains the smart set including the titled but broke Prince Ludovico de Saxe (Einar Hanson) who loves her but cannot afford to marry her. Sailing impressively over a hedge on horseback is Ted (now Coop) who lands impressively to gulp down a glass of champagne from Kitty. This scene took some 23 takes according to Bow biographer David Stenn and almost got Cooper fired.

Enter the grown-up Jean (Esther), now very wealthy and a target for any cash-strapped socialite but wealth is the furthest thing on Ted’s mind as is transfixed. Kitty bounds over, as she will many times, to push herself between the two and poor Prince ‘Vito dies a little more inside.

Vito dying a little more...

Jean still loves Ted but wants him to make something of himself before they can consummate their childhood pledge to wed. Kitty loves Jean but also wants to marry into success and if she can’t afford have the man she loves, that’s the Prince, she’ll take the next best thing once Ted has become a success as a bridge-building architect.

Kitty arranges a party starting at Ted’s office and ending up the following morning with the biggest hangover imaginable for, even though Ted struggles to remember, the two got married at the culmination of the previous night’s revels.

WHAT a hang-over!

It’s the worst of timings as Jean has written to Ted saying that maybe they should marry but chance has gone and she sentences herself to noble exile in Paris in order to give Kitty a chance at happiness…

Some years later Kitty and Ted along with their well-cast daughter – the spit of a juvenile Bow -  arrive in Paris and this convoluted quadrangle of love is about to come crashing down around their sad heads.

There are some bold images in the closing segment – perhaps from von Sternberg – but… no spoilers! Overall the main director Frank Lloyd works competently with the narrative in spite of a repeated need to flash back to the younger versions of Jean and Kitty as if to remind us that the child is mother to the woman.

But the restoration is super quality and you can’t fail to be moved by the three leads especially and of course, Clara Bow. When those sad eyes open wide and Klieg lights giving her ample tears a powerful glow, you’d have to be made of stone not to feel more than a little welling up of your own.

There a cracking score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra which incorporates contemporary songs within a carefully crafted whole: for instance, JS Zamecnik’s Heart of Dreams is a recurring theme beginning as the youngsters become friends and returning for every key moment.

To top it all the set also includes the Discovering the It Girl documentary narrated by Courtney Love which, if you haven’t seen it features contributions from David Stenn, Diana Serra Cary (Baby Peggy) and Clara’s son, Rex Bell Jnr.

Children of Divorce in excellent production from Flicker Alley and is available direct. It deserves to do well and let's hope for more Blu-ray Bow in the near future!

Buy it! Buy it NOW!