Sea song... Maria do Mar (1930), with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Bonn Silent Film Days 2024

This film announces itself as a dramatized documentary about the lives of fishermen from Nazaré, and is more fiction than the "controlled actuality" of Robert Flaherty even as it is clearly influenced by his approach.  It concerns a woman and a boat both called Maria do Mar which form the basis of a love story that splits a community in the then much smaller town on the Costa de Prata – a kind of pescatarian Romeo and Juliet in which the drama dominates leaving the documentary to filter through and infuse the overall entertainment.

 

Talking of which, for the accompaniment, Stephen Horne’s flute, piano and accordion is mixed with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s harp with telepathic cohesion as they ride the unfolding waves from stillness to storm. Elizabeth has only one instrument but a huge range of sound from the thunderous deep notes to the high-end beauty of her strings and the thumping dread of the harp’s frame. The two work so well together, extemporising in solo whilst coming together on pre-arranged loose themes and creating a mix that has such sympathetic force with the action on screen. This is another one I’d love to have seen live but thanks again to the Festival for streaming such treasures.

 

Villagers haul the boat ashore

All begins in the bright sun as José Leitão de Barros’ camera drifts over the bleached white streets of Nazaré, pointing at a Dutch angle down one long street, perhaps leading our eye back to the recent past. We see the fishing boat Maria do Mar – Maria of the Sea – as it arrives on the beach after a successful expedition. The people of the village rush down to pull the ship onto the sand and we get to meet some of the main characters, the captain Falacha (Alves da Cunha) and his daughter Maria (Rosa María) also of the sea. Then there’s one of his land-based team, Tia “Ilhôa” Aurélia (Adelina Abranches) and her young son Manuel (Oliveira Martins) who hasn’t gone to sea yet.

 

As the village hauls the ship and lands the catch there’s also some comic relief in the perpetually hungry Turkey (Álvaro Horta e Costa) and his weaselly pal Lacraio (António Duarte) along with host of weather-worn locals young and old whose character speaks as eloquently as the sand, sea and rocks around them.

 

The fishermen return to their small houses for lashings of freshly-cooked fish soup, cooked by Rosa and her mother (Perpetua dos Santos) and the older crew as they celebrate Falacha’s birthday. Events are cut short though as a storm is brewing and the Captain has to decide whether to save the nets – still set out at sea – before the force of the sea becomes unstoppable. There’s some good work from de Barros as the village is mobilised and all run down the whitewashed streets to the beach even as Ilhôa counsels against it – better to lose the nets than her husband. What the film lacks here in convincing special effects it makes up for with reaction shots from anxious villagers, some in close up others on rocky outcrop warning the fisherman to avoid a course too close to the treacherous outcrop.

 

Alves da Cunha

Murderer! It was your ambition that lost them!

 

It’s all to no avail though and the Maria do Mar is lost, seemingly with all hands, until a loan figure staggers out of the foam, the captain has survived. With so many dead, and her warning still painfully fresh, Ilhôa leads the complaints against Falacha who ultimately cannot bear the guilt and the next day, after prayers and family is not enough, he takes the only honourable course he feels he has left and drowns himself in the bleakest of fashions, walking into the sea leaving his wife and daughter behind.

Time passes with the two families bitterly divided by the tragedy as they carry on their lives with their men and main breadwinners, lost. Maria toils in the fields whilst Manual avoids the military draft being his mother’s only source of income – a scene which mixes pathos with some comedy as his mother places her tiny frame on the scales, the viewer in no doubt she’d be an asset in any battle.

 

The mood shifts as we see Maria and her friends out on the beach, stripped down to their petticoats for a trip out on a boat and a swim. Amidst the sparkle of the water and the dazzle of the sun on their bleached underclothes, they don’t notice that one swimmer has drifted too far out and is in distress. Luckily a group of the young men are nearby and Manuel launches himself into the waves to save the young woman. de Barros makes this the most romantic of rescues, with lingering shots of the muscularity of Manuel and Maria’s partially exposed body hung limp with near exhaustion. It’s like a ballet as they drop silently to the sand having pulled free of the sea and only then does the boy realise exactly who he has saved.

 

No brave deed goes unrewarded or, in this case, unpunished, as the couple are brought close as they were always destined to do whilst their mothers resist with all their might, Ilhôa even bringing in an enchantress to cast a curse on the doorstep of her neighbour – none of us can pretend that’s something we’ve never considered… The push and pull grows stronger though and you’ll have to watch it for yourself to see if love can prevail against this harsh and, literally, unforgiving environment.

 

Rosa María and Oliveira Martins

It's a beautiful film and one that presents its ethnography in the most stylised of ways with huge close-ups of the people adding to the natural scale and serving to sensitise the individual conflicts and love. I can see why it is considered one of the most significant Portuguese silent films and how it is influenced by other European techniques even as it creates that unique flavour. One of the most striking things about silent film is how the new media reflects the traditions of storytelling, performance and national style. Never since have we had the same freshness of transition with each generation relying on previous cinematic technique which here, we see for almost the first time.

 

In the notes, Patrica Viera is quoted* linking the film to the burgeoning Salazarism movement with the idea that “… society was the reproduction of nature in the realm of human relations”. There was an emphasis on “natural cinema” showing the Portuguese living naturally and “habitually” all of which would serve a more conservative mindset as António de Oliveira Salaza came to power in 1932 and went on to serve as Prime Minister until 1968. But that’s a different story: silent film is always an education.

 

The film was restored by Cinemateca Portuguesa in 2021 and along with the sublime accompaniment I hope again that we get to see this all on the big screen in the UK.

 

* Patricia Vieira: Portuguese Film, 1930-1960. The Staging of the New State Regime. New York, London 2013

Champagne Katya... The Girl in Tails (1926), Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane-Baldry, Bonn Silent Film Festival

I’m to be disgraced simply because I’m a girl. A meek and mild, simple and unassuming girl…

 

Warm glow… this is such an uplifting film, a delicate mixture of comedy and drama that fully lives up to its promise as A Light Summer Film Story especially with truly delicious accompaniment from Horne and Baldry, without whom no remote access Bonn would be complete. It is notable for addressing so many issues that might be considered more modern concerns and it tackles proto feminism in ways which are never black and white, flowing naturally with the story. It’s sophisticated about its subject and uses cross-dressing as a means of creating conflict as well as comedy and makes points about fairness that doesn’t bang the drum so much as rolls it around the ballroom between social conservatism and the heroine’s “fight against injustice”.

 

This restraint is ostensibly surprising as the film, Flickan I Frack in Swedish, is directed by Karin Swanström who also plays the terrifying matriarch, “the undisputed monarch” of the small-town society of Wadköping, Widow Hyltenius, but that’s acting for you. She was one of the few women directing film in Sweden in this period – or anywhere else by this stage – and is clearly responsible for the emotional intelligence that raises the film above broader comedy and simplistic melodrama.  The characters are fulsome and nuanced and there is a very satisfying pace to the story throughout; it’s coherent and never forgets to entertain.

 

Who knows what conversations it started in contemporary Sweden but the debate is still ongoing in certain aspects of equality…

Magda Holm

There are many good performers in the film but everything revolves around the outstanding verve of Magda Holm as Katja Kock. Holm featured in several Swedish films during the silent period and was also a top-class sailor, with the nickname” Bimbi”, which was also the name of one of her dogs. Both Bimbi’s feature in a nautical interlude in which the hound’s mistress falls into a lake, swimming to shore with all the assurance you’d expect. But, far more impressive in this context, is Maga’s acting ability and she performs as well as she freestyles.

 

The tonality of the film turns of Holm’s expressiveness and her ability to flick from the dramatic to the tongue in cheek without ever the giving the game away. She has so much of the camera’s attention and rises magnificently to the challenge every time – what a team with Swanström!

 

Holm plays Katja the eldest child of Karl Kock (Nils Aréhn) the town’s unsung genius not only down on his luck with unwelcomed inventions, but also being defrauded by his accountant Björner (Gösta Gustafson).

 

Einar Axelsson

Katja is the smart one in the family with brother Curry (Erik Zetterström) being “Wadköping’s only, or at least, most perfect, snob” and the favoured sibling, his father’s investment matched only by his sister’s endless patience and generosity. They both attend the town’s co-educational school where Magda’s pal Count Ludwig von Battwhyl (Einar Axelsson), is on course to fail all his exams. Magda decides that he can still be saved if he studies with her help for a solid month although the Counts get up and go has got up and gone and his main interest is in his new tutor…

Axelsson is also a delight in this film with a world-weary energy informing Count Ludwig with a cheerful listless charm; he’s a decent chap though just saddled with the burden of his position even though he will prove to be steadfast when the going gets reactionary.

 

How can the world see how pretty you are when you dress like a washerwoman?

 

Ludwig chides Katya for her dowdiness and she agrees so, when the Count arranges a ball to celebrate the end of term, she asks her father for funds to buy a dress to impress. Father is not unsympathetic but he’s broke and decides against this investment even though he has long splashed out on Curry’s living beyond their collective means. This, patently, is unfair… but Katya is determined and she will go to the ball!

 

Anna-Lisa Baude-Hansen and pals

 

The Count is heir to the Larsbo estate, 20 kilometres south of Wadköping and where his cigar-chomping Aunt Lotten Brenner (Anna-Lisa Baude-Hansen), university lecturer in comparative anatomy, leads The Wilde Hoard of Learned Ladies a group of bluer-than-blue stockings who do as they will. It’s a great group and I’d love to know more about this lot, a mix of future-thinkers and privileged political thought who, as with everything in the film, Swanström paints evenly with hints of intellectual snobbery mixed in with their liberalism.

 

Against this is not only Widow Hyltenius and her Council of Mothers but also the traditions of the school as embodied in Rector Starck (Georg Blomstedt) and yet the latter shows more understanding when the ball arrives and Katya makes her grand entrance in her brother tails. The ball sequence is so well developed, at first showing the town’s social structure in miniature with the Widow and her Mothers overlooking the dancers and then the absolute shock when Katya arrives in male clothing – the reaction shots are a hoot but the whole room visibly pulls away from this “unnatural” apparition leaving her confidence draining.

 

The belle of the ball.

Starck intervenes and turns everything on its head, seeing only a “damsel in distress” and turning the Mothers’ prudishness around by pointing out how sober Katya’s clothing is in comparison to distasteful modern décolletage – on awkward display in a number of the group. The tide turns and the young men queue to dance with Katya but disaster strikes when her drink is spiked by creepy Björner and she enjoys herself rather too much.

 

Ludwig sees only one route froward from now, they must leave to become missionaries in the Congo but with Katya now disowned and the town’s elders attacking her in the local newspaper with a series of articles on modern youth… she finds refuge with The Wilde Hoard of Learned Ladies at Larsbo…

 

And that’s barely the half of it; can young and old, father and daughter, vindictive and forgiving be brought together. The conclusion is as easy going and narratively uncompromised as the rest of the film, an absolute belter!

Karin Swanström and Georg Blomstedt

 All of this was of course enlivened by the piano, flute and accordion of Stephen Horne and the harp of Elizabeth-Jane Baldry. The two work so well together leaving each other space and supporting as they share the leading lines with the harp being used as percussion and bass as well as the heavenly flourishes you’d expect. There we some exceptionally lovely themes and the improvised was hard to separate from the pre-arranged which says it all. The ideal accompaniment for this uplifting film!

 

As if by magic, the date of the film’s climactic moment is Thursday 12^th August, the day before Friday 13^th August and… the Bonn organisers chose this film to be the first streamed last Thursday, 12^th August. 

 

The link to the full schedule, screenings and, most crucially, donations is right here. Please help to support this festival and, hopefully, see you there next year.

Free festival… Storm Over Asia (1928), Silent Film Days Bonn, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

Valéry Inkijinoff

With the exception of Bristol’s Slapstick Festival, so glorious and so long ago, this year is likely to be festival-free for me thanks to our global pandemic and quarantine strictures. The 36^th Silent Film Days in Bonn is one of the first to run in Europe and the organisers having decided to stream some of the films along with the live accompaniment mean that for a few days, those of us who couldn’t make it, can experience something of the immediacy and ambience of the festival.

 

So it was that I huddled my laptop, in Berlinale t-shirt with Pordenone mug topped up, to watch this crystal clear restoration of Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928) and listen to the visceral interplay between accompanists Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne on headphones… and it was almost like being there; the most exciting stream I’ve watched in lockdown.

 

This is the first time I’ve seen this third part of Pudovkin’s so-called revolutionary trilogy – after Mother (1925) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927) – and it has the same paced intensity as those films but, moved to the steppes of Mongolia, is a simpler and lighter film that ultimately carries as much emotional force. It’s an almost symphonic film with the restored version including even more shots of the sunning countryside which punctuates the human interactions and the remarkable story arc of Bair, the Mongol (Valéry Inkijinoff). It’s easy to imagine sense being lost in these endless deserts and Blair’s journey is bewildering, comic and ultimately ferocious.

 

These 143 minutes of shifting moods and fortunes could ask for no finer accompaniment than that provided by Baldry and Horne. Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane first collaborated on a score for Stella Dallas which was as the former says on an interview on the Festival site, not “through composed” but a mixture of composition and improvisation. Since that first collaboration they have mostly worked with “a plan” which allows them both space to improvise and to join together on some pre-medicated sections whilst they know each other so well they also play on spec, and sometimes sight unseen. The beauty of their method is that most of us can’t spot the join and I’d be hard-pressed to guess how much of what they played for Storm was composed beforehand.

 

Pudovkin’s film is full of shocks and sudden turns as well as lengthy sections of pastoral outlooks and monastic calm and between piano, flute, accordion, harp, bells and wooden percussion, the two musicians had everything covered in a seamless flow of invention, uncanny interplay and some delicious melodies. Their choice of notes followed the lines of narrative but also the most pleasing of musical decisions, themes that chimed exactly with the watcher’s emotional response as well as the characters. They make it sound so easy but even as a man sitting on the end of the row in a virtual seat, I felt the live audience’s reaction to the mix of sound and sight.

Valéry Inkijinoff with silver fox fur

 

The film was shot in the Buriat-Mongolian republic, in and around the capital, today called Ulan-Ude, in south-central Siberia, just north of Mongolia. The restoration shows how fine the cinematography of Anatoly Golovnia is and there look to be far more location shots than in the older copy I was watching at the same time for the English translation – two laptops, one notepad, and a pint of something brown.

 

The story begins in these wastelands as a dying man (star Inkijinoff ‘s actual father) sends his son off to market in order to bring back food. He gives his son, Bair (Valéry Inkijinoff) a silver fox pelt which will buy them security and food, but a visiting priest wants to take the fur as the family’s contribution to the upkeep of the temple. Bair and the priest tussle and as the former prevails, the priest’s amulet falls to the ground and, as he leaves, Bair’s mother picks it up, later to gift it to her son.

Inkijinoff gives an extraordinarily powerful performance and was a graduate of Vsevolod Meyerhold’s “biomechanical” theatre – as was Sergei Eisenstein – which aimed to allow a greater range of emotional expression than the naturalistic approach of the time. According to Professor John Mackay of Yale University, Pudovkin asked Inkizhinov to produce “a deliberately narrowed range of movement to indicate emotion, and explosions of accumulated energy in sudden fury…” and edited the film around his actor’s remarkably controlled physical expression. Such control and release is, of course, a rhythmic gift to the accompanists and the interplay between actor and editor, piano and harp was more exhilarating than any Sunday afternoon solo silent film stream had any right to be!

Viktor Tsoppi is the face of imperialist exploitation

 

Bair heads off across the steppes to market where we find lots of fascinating faces – the film is full of them, all used by Pudovkin in the manner of Eisenstein to create a physiological discourse on their own. Among this local colour the western features of unscrupulous fur-trader, Henry Hughes (Viktor Tsoppi) stands out like a bad pelt. He tries to under pay for Bair’s silver fox fur leading to a riot. The troops are called in and Bair ends up in the mountains where he gets caught up helping a group of partisans in fighting the British!?!

 

It’s interesting now to consider Great Britain’s place in the World in 1928, a time when, incredibly as it might seem, we were even more unpopular than we are now… The British were never a colonial power in Mongolia although at the time the film is set, 1920, we were certainly supporting the White Russians in the civil war against the new Bolshevik regime. It seems that the British, being the imperial power, bar none, were the perfect casting for the film’s bad guys; unlike his previous two films, Storm was not based on domestic events and was more of a revolutionary fable; none the less powerful as propaganda and, in some ways, more enduringly affecting… I was certainly ready to run out and take on the powers that be in Hertfordshire by the end.

 

Fantasy it may be, but Storm is meticulous in the details it presents of Mongolian life and none more so than in capturing the Buddhist ritual Feast of Tzai near the residence of the lama. There’s a lovely sequence when preparations for the feast are juxtaposed against the preparations of the British Commandant (I. Dedintsev) and his wife (L. Belinskaya) as their extensive collection of toiletries and state paraphernalia contrast with the holy symbolism of the ritual dress and circumstance. There is a distinctly un-revolutionary preference for the traditional rituals but they represent the independent culture of the un-conquered souls of the native population.

 

The Feast of Tzai

Away from the temple, the business of imperial rule must continue as British soldiers attempt to take two hundred cattle from the locals by force only to be met with resistance from the partisans and Bair. In the skirmish Bair is captured and sentenced to execution by a decent-looking soldier who reluctantly marches him off to a lonely ridge to do the deed. Bair has no idea of what his fate is to be but as he slumps off to his doom the British notice his amulet and open it to find an ancient script confirming that he – or rather the priest – is the descendent of Genghis Khan.

 

This makes Bair ideal for a puppet leader and the Brits scramble to counterman their orders only to find that he has been shot, twice, and fallen over a deep sand bank. He is carried back and there are bloody scenes of surgery as he’s brought back to life almost like a Golem and finally stuffed into evening clothes and given respectability and new rank. It is here that Inkijinoff’s physicality is at its most powerful; he doesn’t smile or react, he just is… an unyielding, taught body, refusing to connect or even drink, eyeing up the goldfish captured for display just as surely he has been.

 

Now, just when you’ve almost forgotten, that silver fox fur returns to the story as a gift from Henry Hughes for the Commandant’s daughter (Anel Sudakevich) and it proves to be the catalyst for Bair’s re-awakening. Events begin to speed up towards a breath-taking finale that literally sees the Mongol whip up a storm that blows away not just the British but all possessions and the shackles of empire. Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane joined in the revolutions, bringing the noise in a perfectly paced crescendos of chaotic chords and tumultuous tones; you have to wonder how long piano and harp would take to re-tune but it was worth it!

 

So, a taste of the unique atmosphere of the Bonn Silent Film Festival and a combination I look forward to being replicated in the UK whenever possible.

 

The film is no longer streaming on the Bonn site but there’s an interview with Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane. There’s also a link to donate to the Festival as this helps provide the support to keep it going in these impossible times. You must keep believing though, what would Bair do? 

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

 

Secrets and lies… British Silent Film Festival 2019, Part Two

The Runaway Princess (GB/Germany, 1928) with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry

There is more joy in Heaven over a newly watched British silent film than a dozen from Hollywood… certainly in my house. Personally, I found Anthony Asquith’s fairy tale charmingly entertaining even if it's not quite up there with his Shooting Stars, Underground or A Cottage on Dartmoor. It stars Austrian actress Mady Christians in what Laraine Porter described as a woman’s adventure, and one close to the heart of Lady Elizabeth Russell, the author of  the novel,“The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight” on which the film was based, who lived a life of suffocating duty only enlivened by lengthy country walks with her many dogs.

Here the poor Princess makes a break for it when she is told she is to marry the Prince of Savonia and, accompanied only by her Professor (Fred Rains, father of Claude!), the two head off to London for adventure and a normal life. En route Priscilla meets a handsome man (Paul Cavanagh) who is immediately taken with this strange but pretty woman and follows her to offer help in a non-stalky way.

There are mishaps aplenty and some great shots of London especially when 'Cilla rides down Fleet Street up top on a double decker only to be turfed off with no ticket just yards from the Edgar Wallace and Devereux Arms public houses… Mady Christians is excellent as the innocent but resilient royal and there’s some great casting as she encounters a group of forgers including Nora Baring, who’s screen intensity instantly creates a new dynamic mix. Things are about to get a little more serious but Asquith – who co-directed with Fritz Wenhausen – balances the tension with the humour and this is a satisfying romantic comedy that would soon be christened screwball. All is never as it seems but we know that!

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, playing Oberon the Harp, created some wonderful atmospherics and plays the instrument like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar: every part is used for sound, percussion from the frame, loose-peddled block chords and deep bass as well as two-handed melodies that contrast the comedic with the romantic.

Spion Kop

The Boer War on Screen with Stephen Horne

Bryony Dixon and Matt Lee of the Imperial War Museum, talked us through a series of films from the Second Boer War which ran from 1899 to 1902 as the British Empire suppressed an insurgence from the Transvaal and Orange Free State sparked by the discovery of gold in South Africa (and much more besides). The conflict was a key one for Great Britain as it was not only harder to win than had been expected but it also showed up the poor physical condition of many conscripts.

Over 6,000 Boer soldiers were killed against over 22,000 from the Empire with Matt Lee pointing out that more died from disease than from direct action. Talking of which 46,000 civilians died in the concentration camos the British devised and which were recently defended by Jacob Rees Mogg… even 120 years on his kind are still whitewashing a policy which both parties at the time decided to abandon.

The films largely showed a mix of routine behind the lines operations and “staged” activities but the scenes showing the aftermath of the British rout at Spion Kop were incredibly powerful as thousands of men snaked their way back from the battle: carrying a stretcher would have been Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and nearby, covering the event as a journalist, was former soldier Winston Churchill – a man all too familiar with military failure but not lacking in bravery; he was captured as a prisoner of war but managed to escape from a Boer POW camp in Pretoria.

Adolf Philipp and Marie Pagano

The Midnight Girl (US, 1919) with Neil Brand and Michelle Facey

KenningtonBioscope programmer and film historian, Michelle Facey, wowed us all with the tale of entrepreneurial entertainer Adolf Philipp and Marie Pagano, stunt woman, horse rider, extra, Theda Bara body double and, finally, film star. Michelle is rescuing Miss Pagano from shadows of film un-history and gave us a feel of the personality of a woman described as “prominent in the world of players” and whose riding was so expert, that Motion Picture News wrote “… her seat is so perfect that she is a joy to watch both on and off the screen”.

The Midnight Girl is the only extant film she made and it allows us to see her vibrance and dancing skills as she plays the cabaret star by night/nurse by day Clarisse, who nurses a grumpy alcoholic, Tomas n Gee (Adolf Philipp) who is in a real tizz about prohibition.

Always having an eye to commercial spin-offs, Philipp had a theme song for this and his other films, which viewers could purchase as sheet music; Michelle sang it beautifully accompanied by Neil Brand.

Toni (GB, 1929) with Neil Brand

Back to Britain next with a Jack Buchanan comedy featuring another runaway princess, this time called Eugenie (Dorothy Boyd) caught up in some nonsense featuring Jack as Toni Marr, a low-powered socialite so in need of some adventure that his doctor has him change places with a detective called Marini (also JB) who has as many enemies as Jack has hangovers. It’s a riot and features hidden passageways, Moore Marriott (hurrah!) and Forrester Harvey as Watts the manservant.

The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (Le fantôme du Moulin Rouge) (Fr, 1925) with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne

This was the UK premier of Lobster films restoration of René Clair’s first feature and, as with his earlier short film, Paris qui dort, it is a science fantasy film in which the human drama is magnified rather than obscured as is so often the case.

Georges Vaultier plays Julien Boissel who is devastated when the love of his life, Yvonne (Sandra Milovanoff) is about to be forced into marrying Gauthier (José Davert) an evil newspaper proprietor (no real need for the “evil” there…) who has some kompromat on her father Victor, ex-minister of state (Maurice Schutz). His lively cousin Jacqueline (Madeleine Rodrigue) invites him to forget himself at the Moulin Rouge and here he is spotted by experimental psychologist Dr Window (Paul Ollivier) who offers him a way to, literally, leave his troubles behind by detaching his soul from his sad body…

Julien bilges and starts haunting Paris in the most amusing of ways, refusing to go back to his boring corporeal form as it’s far more fun being a phantom and he has, almost, forgotten Yvonne. An intrepid reporter Jean Degland (Albert Préjean) is a little too intrepid and discovers Julien’s body; a murder investigation is launched and the phantom is about to become permanent when an autopsy is announced…

Clair’s Phantom is redeemed by an ever-present sense of ridiculous as well as good performances and outrageous ambition. I especially liked the moment when Julien floats across Paris streets arms out, followed immediately by a traffic cop using the same movement.

The dynamic duo of Horne and Baldry were perfectly in tune with this uncanny action as they collaborated with almost telepathic cohesion flavouring the action with a sumptuous repeated theme from strings and keys, aided by flute, accordion, woodwork, base pedals and, startlingly voice! Silent film musicians are amongst the finest of collaborators as they’re so used to working with visually active partners with emphatic opinions!

María Corda on the poster

Follow that, early British talkie, Tesha (GB, 1928) with your original soundtrack, some dialogue and Jameson Thomas!?

Bob Dylan said never to finish your album with an epic and so Tesha was, not to damn with faint praise, the perfect end to the day. It concerns the love affair between a businessman Robert Dobree (Thomas) and Tesha, a ballerina (Hungarian actress María Corda) dedicated to her art but lacking the one thing she most wants in the world; children.

Sadly, as his doctor explains, having suffered injury and shellshock in the war, Robert, might not be able to reproduce and, after the couple get married, we shift to five years later with no offspring… A chance encounter at a Southampton hotel ends up with Tesha pregnant and, Robert is none-the-wiser. Sadly, the father of Tesha’s baby turns out to be Robert’s “greatest friend” Jack Lenane (Paul Cavanagh) … what are the odds?! It’s tense stuff and a subject that many childless (by choice or otherwise) people, as well as the shell-shocked trying to live on with normal lives, would have identified with.

Brigitte Helm and her gypsy

Secret Film: The Blue Danube (GB/Germany 1932) with original soundtrack

The final day and Geoff Brown teases us with clues I’ll never get for the festival’s secret film… it’s another early British talkie and, as with the rest, essentially a silent film with music superimposed, in this case rich gypsy takes on the title tune and other hot Austro-Hungarian hits.

These gypsies are organised (they are Alfred Rode and His Royal Tzigane Band after all) and they can play so well that a passing Countess (Brigitte Helm, at last!) decides they’re perfect for her party, especially the tousle-haired Sandor (Joseph Schildkraut) who laughs at life even as he plays guitar and sings to his sweetheart Yutka (Chili Bouchier, who is, erm, as warm as she sounds). Sandor is drawn to the close-fitting clothes of the curvy Countess and breaks Yutka’s heart… she runs out leaving him wrecked and a shadow of the gypsy he used to be. The years pass and the couple meet again; Yutka is married to a wealthy soldier but is she really happy… he has barely any hair let along a curly kiss-curl after all?

This is not one of Herbert Wilcox’s finest moments but is entertaining all the same with some rousing music and performers making the most of what they got given. I liked the way he used sound in the narrative, his characters reacting to these new elements in inventive ways.

Say cheese

A slow journey across Europe – A programme of early travelogues

Presented by Bryony Dixon, with Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne once again accompanying, this compilation of early travelogues was the perfect end to my Festival. Bryony took us all round Europe and, as ever with these early films, the sight of long-lost ways of life is compelling in itself. I especially liked the film of Dutch cheesemakers but I still don’t know how they get the skin on. Europe eh? So different and yet so very much the same.

Thank you to everyone at the British Silent Film Festival who organised this splendid event, I think we all appreciate the amount of effort that goes into programming, presenting, performing and promoting; see you again in 2021!

The People’s Pictures… Slapstick Festival Gala Friday, Bristol Watershed and Colston Hall

My third year at the Slapstick Gala and again I marvel at the event’s support from the city of Bristol; the Colston Hall was filled to the rafters not just by curious locals or travelling hipsters but by local folk who know how to have a grand time! No one talked throughout the show, continually checked their phones, laughed at the quaintness of it all or, indeed, some of Tim Vine’s jokes*… they get it: they know Stan and Buster and they really understand Charlie and Oliver. Heck, even the obscure Arthur Lake, casually dropping a baby in convenient dump bins… they got him too.

Waves of laughter flowed around the Hall, genuine, belly laughs, all feeding each other as recognition of the ridiculous, the daft and the jaw-dropping was shared by the warmest audience you’ll find in all the kingdom. Bristol, you are the most educated and fun-to-be-with crowd! Comedy is a team sport and in this respect, you are City and Rovers united.

I had a conversation with my mother-in-law about why she hadn’t found Chaplin as funny as she’d expected up to now but what’s been missing is an audience and a live musical setting – tonight’s showing of A Dog’s Life (1918) took the roof off and she laughed.

The Bristol Ensemble played Chaplin’s own score and Günter A. Buchwald conducted for a film that is so much more knowing than most “civilians” would expect… aside from this crowd that is. From Edna Purviance’s tear-jerking singing – buckets of tears… a splash in the face for those who talk “sentimentality” – to Charlie’s knowing look at the end, the film is razor sharp.

Laurel and Hardy kicked us off in fine style with Angora Love (1929) – accompanied by maestro John Sweeney on the Hall’s amazing grand and Frank Bockius on percussion. This film may well have been the origin of the “don’t work with animals” rule as the lads just about manage to cope with a goat that just won’t let them go.

Arthur Lake’s Whose Baby (1929) may well have completed the other half of that rule as our rarely-screened hero has to cope with looking after a baby whilst convincing his girl that it’s not his. I use the term “looking after” loosely as Arthur dumps the kid in bins, lets his pram run into traffic and hangs him up on hooks. It’s all in the best of bad taste but a riot all the same.

Sherlock Jnr (1924) was the headline act and not the first time Buster’s meta-masterpiece had an audience gasping in disbelief as he puts his body on the line for laughs in some of his best stunts. The action is far-fetched but as the boy in the row behind observed, these things make sense as he’s in a dream… this Bristol audience is well informed at all ages!

Gunter played along on violin and piano with The European Silent Screen Virtuosi featuring Frank Bockius (percussion), Romano Todesco (double bass) and Marc Roos (trombone). The acoustics in the Hall are darned good to my ears and, sat dead centre, the music was rich and satisfying.

A stunning end to a full Friday which began with...

The Three Keatons

The Young Keaton (1895-1917) with David Robinson

David Robinson talked us through the golden age of vaudeville and variety and the birth of Buster! Keaton’s remarkable theatrical career began in 1899 aged 3, and we learned that it was not Harry Houdini who earned him his nickname but another vaudevillian who witnessed his fall down the stairs. Keaton’s father was an astute self-publicist and came up with the “better story” later. It was a tough existence and seeing Buster talk on film later in the day, you got the impression that he was a forceful, intelligent man with intent forged on the road in medicine shows and lower-league theatres. 

By the time he stepped in front of a camera he was a comedy seventh dan ready to knock his block off for our delight.

Betty Balfour's eyes

Vagabond Queen (1929), Betty Balfour with introduction form Lucy Porter

In which our Queen of Happiness plays Sally a humble maid in a London boarding house who temporarily becomes the Princess of Balonia – a woman she resembles to the last freckle – in order to act as a decoy on coronation day as rebels in the fake Balkan state, use knives, bombs and bullets to try and assassinate their future monarch.

It is an aptly named country and there’s a certain Marx Brothers zaniness to Douglas Furber’s script: “My friends and Balonians!”, directed with brisk efficiency by Géza von Bolváry. The film was essentially a silent but had a recorded soundtrack added post-production to turn it into a “talkie” of sorts. The score was from John Reynders – a renowned musical compiler – and sticks like glue to the narrative with sound effects galore as it follows the action like a shadow.

Betty is super-charged charm throughout and is aided by Ernest Thesiger as Lidoff, the Balonian diplomat and young Glen Byam Shaw as her boyfriend Jimmie. The real Princess’s actual husband, Prince Adolphe, as played by the decidedly louche Charles Dormer, is in a drunken confusion wondering how his poor Zonia has lost her loving feeling.

Like anyone introducing their mate to a party, Lucy Porter perhaps worried that we’d not get Betty, but who couldn’t love Chester-le-Street’s finest: she does indeed still make us happy!

Seff on the left and Cocl on the right

Cocl & Seff: Austria’s Laurel & Hardy, introduced by Chris Serle

Now here’s a couple of queer fish… one of cinema’s very first double acts who from 1913 appeared in many films sometimes together and sometimes apart. Both Austrian boys, Rudolf Walter (Cocl) and Josef Holub (Seff) had the distinguishing traits of most double acts: one tall, one short and one brainy the other less so… as things progressed Seff – who on this evidence was slightly funnier – evolved to look a little like Harold Lloyd.

Their earlier shorts shown lacked the finesse of a Chaplin or Mabel Normand but by the twenties they were more oddball. One film was set in a hotel with the characters all moving like jazzed automatons, John Sweeney expertly followed their rhythm and it was an hilarious combination.

The funniest film was a Seff solo from 1926: Seff on the way to power and beauty (extracting der Mikel from the earnest Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit) which was a commercial for the Viennese Dairy that – wait for it! – milks the association for everything it’s worth. Also features cheese.

John Sweeney and Elizabeth Jane Baldry took turns accompanying and played together to sublime affect. Let’s have more piano and harp!

Lost and Found… David Robinson, Elizabeth Jane Baldry and Daan van den Hurck

Mr Robinson was on fine form today and took us through some enthralling snippets starting with the Odd-Father of Slapstick film, Leopoldo (Luigi) Fregoli a hugely-popular transformist, a quick-change artist, who could go from old gentlemen to lady… and young man faster than you could say, er, David Robinson.

There followed an English film featuring a lady on skates flying through the streets at an incredible whack, causing all manner of chaos; well done that stunt man!

Next an Italian film, featuring a lady whose huge hatpins knock into the heads of all around her and wonderful solo accompaniment from Elizabeth Baldry who plays her harp as percussion, rhythm and lead – a one-woman band who finds rich tones from deep bass, atonality (scratched strings) as well as the gorgeous lines you’d expect: a joy to watch her work form the second row!

André Deed – the World’s first comic superstar and a man of many monikers, featured in Boireau déménage (Boireau Changes House) and a bonkers tale of a door fitter creating mayhem with his door en route to a job… improvised and shot mostly on location, these are fascinating as well as funny.

As David Robinson said, there’s hardly any visual gag going that Max Linder didn’t invent or improve and we got to see a sample of his earlier work in Two Great Sorrows (1908) that even David hadn’t seen. It was a darkly comic tale about a young widower and a young widow that showed the root of Linder’s appeal was his ability to act…

Marcel Perez

Marcel Perez – who had even more names than Monsieur Deed – was next Mademoiselle Robinet (1912) in which he has to cross dress to cover up a dalliance with another man’s wife with the inevitable consequences.

Ray Hughes, a Chaplin imitator, was next in the genuinely “lost and found” Love and Lunch. I had no idea that there were Charlie tribute acts at the time but given his popularity it’s not too surprising… he’s pretty good but he’s no Charlie!

Lastly, we had a Stan Laurel treat, the recently recovered full version of his 1924 solo movie Detained (1924), provided by The Frisian Film Archive in Holland. Stan was great in this film and very funny; not for nothing did Buster consider him the greatest, he connects so well with the audience, even now, we’re all in on Stanley’s jokes!

Stanley hanging on...

As David said, having seen these films so often, they’re a lot funnier when accompanied by Elizabeth and Daan, there’s so much range in their playing and they make for an intuitively subtle combination –  as indeed did Elizabeth and John.

So Funny it Hurt: Buster Keaton and MGM (2004), Kevin Brownlow and David Robinson

Perhaps the abiding memory of this day will be our Kevin and our David trading tales of meeting some of the artists featured: yes, Mr Brownlow met Buster Keaton and Mr Robinson met Laurel and Hardy.

They were in conversation after the screening of Brownlow’s documentary of Buster’s difficult years at MGM, a period of declining creative output despite commercial success. The Cameraman was perhaps the last film in which Keaton had something like full creative control and the MGM brass mistook its success for their own… With every subsequent film from Spite Marriage (screened the day before) onwards, the studio took more away from its star in an attempt to leave him as just a “performer”. Buster was more than that though and even though the film’s earned good money he 

wasn’t going to go quietly.

It’s a shame we can’t see more of Brownlow’s amazing interviews with Keaton and others but when studios are asking up to $600 per minute for use of footage integral to the stories in Hollywood and elsewhere, there’s no affordable way. So… the very same guys who wasted these talents and destroyed their work in the first place, now stand in the way of what remains being more widely seen. And yet… Warners can find the odd $70 million just for Justice League re-shoots and MGM/Sony $100s of millions for remakes of Death Wish and Tomb Raider. Valuable work gentlemen, valuable work.

If you want to see the true spirit of cinema, you only had to look at David and Kevin, two people in love with film and who, after many decades of involvement, are still youthfully excited about their subject. Right back at you boys!

Kevin Brownlow and David Robinson

*To be fair, Mr Vine was very funny too!