Crime & Punishment… Schatten der Weltstadt (1925), Horne & Baldry, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2026

 

When night sets on the big city

And lights and make-up and laughter mingle

Then, from streams and deceptive pomp emerge

The shadows of the metropolis, the shadows of the night…

 

Have to say that the “F” in FOMO reached a peak this year for the Bonn Silent Film Festival as I not only “MO” on a two-part screening of the magnificent SFI restoration of Gösta Berling Saga (1924) but also a rare screening of L’Inferno (1911) as well as many goodies including this stylish Weimar thriller with accompaniment from the many hands of Stephen Horne and Elizabeth Jane Baldry… if only I’d been there. I say it every year and there will be no stopping me in 2027!

 

A man dies in the agony of a heart attack, grabbing the dark-stylish hair of a would-be younger conquest, falling down with frozen grip as her silent scream is given startling verbal reality by our harpist (probably not pianist…). It is but one moment in a two-hour tour-de-force accompaniment from Elizabeth and Stephen which sees them intertwining phrases and melding tonality of strings plucked or hammered with hand or keys. I can’t imagine how it feels standing on the precipice of even a practiced and prepared for cinematic trio: piano, flute and accordion interplaying with harp, percussion and voice, all relating to the action on screen.

 

But Stephen and Elizabeth Jane are pitch-perfect musical adventurers, sure of each other’s contribution just as they are of their ability to match the momentary moods and themes of the film unfolding in front of them. A fourth element is always the audience and, whilst I played my part in our living room, it’s the immediate ambience that provides a call and response as compelling as the narrative. In the live stream from the festival, you can feel this almost tangible atmosphere. You are, very quickly caught up in the mix and the focus on film which is the ultimate magic of live cinema… contrapuntally rubbing circles on our stomachs and patting ourselves on the head, two things are true at the same time even moving in different time, space and direction.

 

Ellen Richter

It's all about the hair though. Ellen Richter was a one-woman industry by this time in Germany with her own production company, Ellen Richter-Filmgesellschaft, managed with her husband Willi Wolff, who directs her in this film as most of her others. Ellen was once described as a forgotten star but is now resurgent with recent screenings at key festivals including Moral (1928) and others at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 40^th Edition. She’s a German diva with sharp features, eye-drawing presence and jet-black hair that is often pulled back to allow the focus on eyes as deep as the Danube of her native Vienna and which beguile as they inform. And clothes, she wears these with the grace of a Borelli or Bertini exuding a Germanic athleticism which saw her feature in many action adventures.

 

Her physicality is on display here as she goes in search of her husband’s killer into the dark underbelly of Paris but first she must play her part in the demimonde of the wealthy as Olly, the wife of a just-promoted prefect, Henry Bernard (Alfred Gerasch). The film’s opening already gives us a hint of the degradations to come as a well-dressed man is propositioned in the street after the theatre and a young woman, presumably poisoned by the skin game throws herself in the Seine in the establishing shots bookended by portentous poetry.

 

No wonder! Making a career with a wife like that…

 

Horrid Henry: Alfred Gerasch

We then join the couple at the lavish party they’re giving to celebrate Henry’s elevation and it soon becomes apparent that a price is being paid for his career and by Olly. The inference is clear, she has been abused for her sex as much as the desperate women of the streets and, as leering men of influence pass inappropriate comments we see her being approached by her husband’s benefactor, the government minister (Philipp Manning). One man, a journalist Felix Granier (Walter Janssen) complains about the language and assumption that an attractive wife is a professional asset… and we soon learn that he is Olly’s lover, her refuge from her brutal husband and the deals he makes using her body as collateral.

 

But enough is enough and when the minister makes his way to Olly’s boudoir to collect his reward she cannot go through with it and, as the shadows of the musicians and the dancers at the party play against the curtained windows the old man has a heart attack and promptly dies. Henry tries to cover up the location of the death and sends the dead man away in a cab pretending he’s dead drunk… It’s not a particularly clever ploy and the police soon come knocking only to find the new prefect dead with a pair of scissors deep in his back. Olly enters the room and seems shocked but these guys know a good actress when they see one.

 

The story moves on in swiftly in detailed ways and the trial of Olly follows in a magnificent studio set - designed by the art directors Otto Erdmann and Hans Sohnle – which emphasises the pomp and process with Olly isolated on the stand, distant from her judges and jury with a circle of lights illuminating the search for the truth among the murky testimonies below. By this stage Olly is almost defeated and reluctant to tell a story that no one will believe over and again but gradually her situation is revealed and she shows the scars of her husband’s beatings. She is acquitted due to lack of anything other than circumstantial evidence but this is not enough to stop the media portraying her as a murderer who got away with it.

 

The most hurtful of this group is Felix who hasn’t the stomach to see through the whole trial and still won’t see her as she begs his mother (Frida Richard) to understand that she is innocent. In the face of this intransigence and the police’s indifference, she resolves to find the murder herself. She gets her first clues on returning home to find that a rough looking gentleman of the streets, Emil, aka Egghead (Robert Garrison) had wanted to see her urgently. We encounter Emil at her court case where he was so worked up by Olly’s evidence that he shouted out support and a caricature is printed in the paper below the acquitted.

 

Emil knows something but has been forcefully removed by a man who we later discover is Boxer Karl, but Olly’s maid gives her enough detail for her to head off to spend long weeks searching for the man who can save her reputation and identify the true killer of her tormenter.

 

The third act involves her perilous journey through darkened streets at risk from criminal and cop alike until she finally finds out Emil’s name and likely location at the Black Stork. This is the deepest dive-bar you can imagine; two women waltz with a cat as a violin and accordion play on and Boxer Karl’s gang look on… there’s Egghead, Elegant Hugo and Cocaine Max (who later went into advertising I believe). And it has to be said that Harald Paulsen performs a mini masterpiece as the relentlessly cruel boxer, never giving an inch and driving the narrative uncertainty with convincing menace, flashing fists and a sharp blade.

 

Olly in the Underworld

Will Olly manage to outwit both the forces of the legal and criminal enterprise… it’s another job for Richter the adventurer and allows Richter the clothes horse, plenty of scope as she pulls the audience with her to the end.

If crime dramas primarily pursue the purpose of keeping the viewer in exciting suspense and astounding him with a witty and unexpected ending, the film corresponds to this intention throughout. 

The Grazer Tagblatt

 

The film was another successful one for Richter and Woolf with the latter showing plenty of Weimar style and featuring some expressionist scenes (even though there’s nary a mention in Lotte Eisner’s Haunted Screen) with oppressive staircases, guilty apparitions in court and her bedroom curtains and a demimonde of the darkest hue. I like the use of eggagerated flashback to show how the prosecution frame the murder and the different takes – a technique we’d take for granted now, especially after Columbo and Murder She Wrote!

 

Richter’s success continued into sound but being Jewish, she was banned from acting after the election of the Nazi government in 1933. She and Woolf moved to Vienna and then ended up in New York after the annexation of Austria in March 1938. They returned to Germany after the war and although she started another production company although her husband died in 1947 (according to Wikipedia) there’s no evidence I can find that she resumed her career either side of the camera, living mostly in Dusseldorf until her death in 1969, aged 78. Still, we have this film and other precious examples of her glittering career and can understand how and why she was so successful during the good times.

 

Which is where I came in and Stephen and Elizabeth-Jane, helping to reanimate her star power in front of our very eyes.

 

Harald Paulsen is Boxer Karl

No animals were harmed in the making of this film

Cocaine Max

Hair death grip 

Feathers!

Gently down the live stream… 12 from 21, Silent Film in the Modern Age

So, here it is... and what another resilient year it’s been for cinema. I saw a lot more films in theatres this year and stand in admiration all those involved in making this possible, so thank you for the projecting, programming, popcorn and perseverance. Thank you for showing me to my seat, introducing and politely requesting that we all wear masks… every little really does help. But this year’s list is dominated once again by digitally streamed films albeit from live events with Bonn, Bologna, Pordenone and others re-emerging and offering the choice to be there in person or the opportunity to watch from home. the way forward as many are still vulnerable whilst the pandemic lasts whilst those who could attend did so with appetite renewed.

So without further ado and in no particular order here's twelve highlights from the year behind us.

 

When Igor met Mary

1. A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), with John Sweeney, 10th Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

I’m hoping that 2022 allows me to attend Scotland’s premier silent film festival… OK, one of Europe’s premier festivals! This delicious soviet comedy typifies the focus on programming a mix of well-know and more obscure but historically significant films and is a film I’ve wanted to see for some time.

In 1926 Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks came to Moscow as part of a grand European tour and seeing how rapturously they were greeted, how fetishized they were as something beyond ordinary humanity, Sergei Komarov devised a means of using this to both shine a comic light on the nature of this ultra-fame. He had no special access to the stars, just a collection of newsreels and one crucial sequence in which Mary agreed to perform a short skit with Igor Ilyinsky at the end of which she kisses him on the cheek; the moment which makes this film transcend its sources, from meta to better.

John Sweeney provided accompaniment and delighted in every comedic twist and turn in this joyful film that is as much a celebration of the Muscovite sense of humour as its cinema. As John said in his introduction, this is exactly the kind of film you fall for… one that is largely unseen but one that is further evidence of the strength of Russian comedy and cinematic ideas during the Twenties.

 

2. Siren of the Tropics (1927), Günter A. Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Slapstick Festival 2021

My first missed Slapstick Festival for a few years but the programme was as strong as you’d expect especially this opportunity to see the great Josephine Baker in her first feature. At the time, Hollywood was certainly not ready to go as far as French directors Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant do by placing Baker as the main focus in La sirène des tropiques and by giving her a story largely free of the cliqued tramlines of other multi-ethnic stories. Baker is perhaps treated as more overtly sexual than most white actors at this time – she’s topless twice -  is portrayed as both innocent and with a childlike wildness; she attracts (white) male lust as well as love and protectiveness, revels in powerfully expressive jazz dancing – seriously, that core and the way she co-ordinates massive extensions without any apparent strain -  and yet her character remains in awe of western spirituality. So many questions… but it’s still a shock to see someone as naturalistic as her placed, largely, at the centre of a story from this period and one in which race is not really mentioned.

Live musical accompaniment was provided by Guenter A. Buchwald on piano and Frank Bockius on percussion, who, in addition to deploying an almost telepathic musical synchronicity, smartly avoided the cliches of cultural referencing. This being one of the great jazz babies, they gave us a rip-roaring, hi-tempo jazzed score that not only kept pace but lifted the film to the vibrational level of its all-powered star. When Baker eventually struts her considerable stuff towards the end of the film you felt that this is the moment the players had been pacing themselves for.

 

Marthe Fabris... L’Arlésienne

3. L’Arlésienne (1922), Il Cinema Ritrovato, Günter Buchwald and L’Octuor de France

 

A film with a fantastic sense of place, shot on location in the gorgeous city of Arles and the surrounding countryside of the Camargue, it’s almost entirely shot outdoors, featuring the images of locale and rural practice you’d expect from André Antoine, the director of L'hirondelle et la mésange (1920) and La Terre (1921).

 

This 4k restoration is a thing of beauty completed in 2020 by Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé and La Cinémathèque française from two unique diacetate prints preserved at the latter and it benefited mightily from musical accompaniment based on orchestral arrangements by Gabriel Diot from the score edited by Pathé in 1922. Günter Buchwald rearranged the score, which features compositions from Bizet (who incidentally wrote an opera based on this story), Gillet, Rachmaninov and others. He also added his own Impressions d’ Arles and conducted L’Octuor de France to create a perfectly synchronised emotional narrative that not only pull at present day heartstrings but also recreates the sound of the contemporary silent experience.

 

Lyda Borelli 

4. Fior di male (1915), Bonn Silent Film Festival with Cellophon

 

I’m not having a best of list without a new-to-me classic Diva film and here was a prime cut of imperial Borelli in all her operatic pomp and with a collection of magisterial emotional displays only matched by her gorgeous and frequently changing wardrobe. Only in Italy miei amici and it took a German film festival to highlight that point.

Accompanying were the Cellophon duo, aka Paul Rittel and Tobias Stutz who both play cello in ways that are emotionally resonant and respectful of the source visuals. They used admirable flavour and restraint with both recognising the need to underplay when confronted by the operatic fireworks on screen using this most mournfully flexible of instruments in musical tribute to perhaps the greatest Italian silent film diva…

Another excellent presentation from this year’s Bonn festival and I have completely run out of reasons not to go there in 2022.

 

Magda Holm

5. 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…

Karin Swanström’s 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”.

Stephen’s multi-instrumentation and Elizabeth-Jane’s harp work so well together as they leave each other so much space and support, sharing the leading lines with the harp being used as percussion and bass as well as the heavenly flourishes you’d expect. There were some exceptionally lovely themes and the improvised was hard to separate from the pre-arranged which says it all. The ideal accompaniment for this delightful film!

 

Leslie Howard and some of my old neighbours

6. Breaking the silence… The Wit and Wisdom of A.A. Milne, BFI, with Bryony Dixon and Neil Brand

This was not my first cinema of the pandemic but it was the first silent screening with live accompaniment since March 2020… and, what a way to break the silence with BFI Curator Bryony Dixon providing expert introduction and Neil Brand accompanying with all the contextual flourish and narrative instinct you would expect.

There were two films written by Alan Alexander Milne for Minerva Films, founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard with his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel. The company’s board of directors included C. Aubrey Smith, Nigel Playfair and A. A. Milne. First up was The Bump (1920) featuring Smith as the famous explorer with a “bump” that enables him to find even the darkest parts of Africa but in London he gets hopelessly lost. Smith was 57 and the film makes great play of his cragginess with a sequence notating the origins of the scars on his face, a shark bite here and a lions’ claw there; he’s explored the world and has the autographs left by every predator he’s met.

The second film featured Leslie Howard in Bookworms (1920) another witty tale of love and adventure this time transporting a knight and fair maiden to Edwardian semi-detached suburbs in what is now West Wimbledon. Turns out the location was just around the corner from where I used to live too.

 

Henry Edwards

7. The parade returns… The Joker (1928), with Stephen Horne, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day One

The 40th Edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto mixed physical media and digital content with the cinemuto-philes returning to Pordenone for the full programme including live screenings, accompaniment and lashings of Aperol Spritz late into the night… and a lighter schedule available online and worldwide. It was the best of both worlds and the best we can hope for as the cautious C-19 recovery continues.

 

The streaming got off to a rip-roaring start with a big party in Nice, featuring the annual carnival, covered extensively, including one or two hangovers and a reunion of Mander and Horne; not a long-lost music hall pairing but the star of The First Born, accompanied once again by the man who produced one of the most memorable scores for modern restorations at the London Film Festival in 2011. Directed by Danish Georg Jacoby this “Euro pudding” had a charming cast to match its location and story of playboy jewel thievery with The Joker played by the British actor and director, Henry Edwards, in prototypical Bond fashion admittedly more Niven than Craig.

 

Ellen Richter

8. Moral (1928), with Donald Sosin, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Seven

 

The rediscovery of Ellen Richter was one of the big themes of this year’s Giornate live in Pordenone and she did not disappoint digitally either. She’s one of those performers who naturally draws the eye and apart from having charisma to burn she has a richly centred persona with a smile that radiates glee as powerfully as sardonic rage. You don’t mess with Ellen but, if you do, she’ll have you back and relish a cool revenge that aims not to destroy but to educate; it’s not just piano she teaches, it’s self-respect.

Here she plays stage performer Ninon d’Hauteville who causes a stir when her troop come to play in the provincial town of Emilsburg and whilst battling the self-appointed Moral Society, gets the chance to teach the Prince Emile XXVII’s “milksop” of a son piano and much more besides. There’s much comedy and cabaret and the fashions are spectacular but so is Ellen and knowing that enables even the truly improbable garb to hang naturally and unselfconsciously. Donal Sosin accompanied with the appropriate sense of occasion and humour.

 

9. Maciste All’ Inferno (1926), with Teho Teardo and Zerorchestra, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming Day Eight

This was Bartolomeo Pagano’s 26th performance as the likeable lunk who combines power and morality as the Italian superuomo first introduced in Cabiria (1913). It was something like a cross-over event in the Dante Extended Universe, a follow-up to L’Inferno (1911) with a soul-devouring Lucifer drawn directly from Bertolini, Padovan and De Liguoro’s masterpiece, a feature film diligently drawn from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.

 

It’s a wild ride with amazing special effects from the legendary Segundo de Chomón along with direction to die for – literally – from Guido Brignone, along with set and costume direction from Giulio Lombardozzi. Maciste must fight in Hell and it’s ugly, fierce and outrageously sexy. Hellzappopin’ alright and wonder it left such an impression on Federico Fellini who remembered it as the first film he ever saw – aged five or six? – even down to the details the capture of Maciste by Proserpina (Elena Sangro).

Spirited accompaniment was provided by Pordenone-born composer Teho Teardo who’s electronica was accompanied by local favourites the Zerorchestra along with Accademia Musicale Naonis and cellist Riccardo Pes. For this tale of many contexts, the cello represented Dante’s “voice” whilst the booming brass of the Accademia Naonis was that of Maciste. This was the performance that kicked off the pre-Festival event in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile and I’d have loved to have been there in person to see it. Next year… next year.

 

Franciszka Themerson

10. Europa (1931/2). BFI London Film Festival 2021, Opening Night

Well, I made it to one festival at least… this was the first night of the BFI London Film Festival and the screening of a film not seen since 1933; a World Premier of its restored version no less, followed by a second screening. Europa was the first film made by Stefan and Franciszka Themerson, two radical minded Polish artists who believed in the political importance of art at a time of confusion.

This was an extraordinary session, not just in terms of the content but also the context given by William Fowler, BFI National Archive Curator, along with renowned Polish film historian and programmer, Jasia Reichardt who first met the Themersons as a child. Europa was based on a poem from Anatol Stern publishing in Reflektor magazine in 1925, attacking the relentless violence of propaganda designed to undermine critical thinking and fuel populist sympathy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? An important film and one believed destroyed by the Nazis, Europa has outlasted them and stands as a message to us all.

 

Their house

11. Back home… The House on Trubnaya (1928), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope 

This was my first visit to the Cinema Museum since March 2020 and it was a delight to see the Kennington Bioscope back up and running. The KB carried on through the pandemic with KBTV on YouTube and whilst the path to the old place is all still familiar, what a time we’ve had. The old team was back together in the flesh and as star of stage and small screen, KBTV’s MC Michelle Facey introduced and John Sweeney warmed up for the first films… we partied like it was 2019.

Boris Barnet’s The House on Trubnaya is very clever slapstick mixed with social observation and the required political messaging: if all bosses are as venal and self-serving as in the film – even over a decade on from the Revolution – then workers need to join unions to support themselves and others, not to mention their ducks… It never lectures just wends its peculiar way scoring laughs over political points and that’s exactly why it remains so watchable.

Cyrus Gabrysch accompanied in style and relished this return to the silent film “club” he helped found. This was a fitting welcome home to him and everyone else involved in this wonderful collective.

 

Léontine takes flight

12. Anarchy in the UK… Nasty Women: A Comic Tribute, BFI with Meg Morley 

There was a guy, I’m not sure if you remember him, who once referred to his presidential rival as a “nasty woman” long ago in The Time Before. In response film historians Maggie Hennefeld and Laura Horak ran a programme of comedy shorts at the 2017 Le Giornate del Cinema Muto featuring women behaving nastily for comic effect. As there is plenty more where that came from the BFI decided on a re-run with a new-old favourites thrown in.

Thus, we had Florence Turner’s incredibly flexible fizzog in Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914), Alma Taylor and Chrissie White giving plenty of cheek in Tilly’s Party (1912) and Texas Guinan our riding and out gunning the men in The Night Rider (1920). There was also the enigmatic gallic anarchy of the legendary Léontine, also known as “Titine” in France and Betty” in the United States, about whom almost nothing is known. Three films Léontine s’envole (1911), Léontine enfant terrible (1911) and Léontine garde la maison (1912) showed her daredevil comic flair and it is to be hoped that her story emerges in more detail. What a talent she was.

Meg Morley accompanied with thematic variety and satisfying melodic invention. No two scores were the same and she kept pace with the on-screen anarchy with the acuity of a seasoned jazz player, one used to working as part of an improvisational team, this time with her bandmates on screen.

A splendid afternoon on the Southbank and we drank a toast to the nasty but nice trailblazers who are being remembered anew.

 

So much more to discover in 2022… I hope to see you all then!

 

The piano teacher… Moral (DE 1928), with Donald Sosin, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Seven

Imagine it: a prince under the skirt of a shameless woman! It makes a mockery of the strict morals of our royal house!

The rediscovery of Ellen Richter has been one of the big themes of this year’s Giornate live in Pordenone and I’ve been waiting all week to meet her digitally… I was not disappointed. As the festival’s artistic director, Jay Weissberg, said in his online introduction, Richter has been overlooked as she didn’t make any films with the major directors of Weimar film, with her husband Willi Wolff directing her from 1918 onwards, and this has left this once major star somewhat in the shadows. Well, she’s not there anymore and this film shows off her radiance to full effect.

She’s one of those performers who naturally draws the eye and apart from having charisma to burn she has a richly centred persona with a smile that radiates glee as powerfully as sardonic rage. You don’t mess with Ellen but, if you do, she’ll have you back and relish her casually cool revenge with glee not to destroy but to educate; here it’s not just piano she teaches, it’s self-respect. Then we have the fashions… Ellen wears clothes in ways you cannot, gold lame pantaloons that only a true diva could carry off especially one with such a refined south German sense of humour. The fashions are spectacular but so is she and knowing that enables even the truly improbable garb to hang naturally and unselfconsciously.

Beyonce was on the Southbank at the London Film Festival this week, she and Ellen would have got on like a palace on fire… the flames holding back, unable to compete with the heat.

Making an entrance!

We will not tolerate this Berlin filth here in Emilsburg!

Anyway… here Ellen plays stage performer Therese Hochstetter known as Ninon d’Hauteville who causes a stir when her troop come to play in the provincial town of Emilsburg. We find her on a train, standing room only apart from the first-class section where she catches the eye of the town’s MP Beermann (Jakob Tiedtke), who lets her sit with him, calls himself “Meier” (“Smith”) before trying to further their intimacy before she turns the tables on him by sending another passenger into the darkened compartment.

 

Therese walks past the deflated hypocrite at the station little knowing that his daughter Effie (Hilde Jennings) is the one who designed the poster for her show, an image her father decries at that evening’s meeting of the male, pale and stale Moral Society. The men of the MS meet in the Blue Lion hotel to debate all the things that are debasing local society and there’s no end of irritations including a guide to marriage which is essentially a cookbook. If Beermann epitomises their hypocrisy Professor Otto Wasner (Ralph Arthur Roberts) exemplifies the priggish element, if he’s not having fun nobody else should.

 

Men. Yesterday.

The group believe they act in the name of the monarchy’s strict moral code but we switch to Prince Emile XXVII (Julius Falkenstein) looking at the advert and reminiscing about his youth in Berlin studying the trombone and watching the dancing girls at the Metropoltheatre; what a dandy fellow I was in my youth, and my son is such a milksop! He decides to find a music teacher for his son (Harry Halm) amongst the ladies of the ballet…

 

Meanwhile, back at the Blue Lion, the MS decide to disrupt the disgraceful show during the prince segment and the clash of cultures is set.

 

The film gives great cabaret with precious original footage of the Haller Review Where and When featuring Marcella Rahna, June and John Roper, Thelma de Lorez and the Lawrence Tiller Girls. There’s a riot on stage with hundreds of legs choreographed to perfection performing routines that would make Mr Berkley drool with envy, the visceral thrills of live entertainment produced by a cast with muscle memories drilled by thousands of hours practice all delivering in seconds of smiling precision.

Tiller Girls

Follow that Ellen/Therese and she’s about to in the sketch, The Prince and the Courtesan, atop a large stage prop bustle through which another dancer appears cross-dressed as a prince, before the Moral Society’s protest kicks off, the old men blowing their own trumpets, penny whistles and making a racket to drown out the act and force the curtains closed. It’s a comedy but this feels uneasy… then as now there were plenty of people wanting to censor expression.

Therese is confronted by Beermann and Professor Wasner after the show is forced to stop and spots her would be abuser from the train. Then she gets an offer she can’t refuse from the Prince as Von Schmettau, the royal chamberlain (Ferdinand von Alten) asks her to teach the young prince piano… the Moral Society will not get rid of her that easily.

 

The prince is bowled over by his new teacher as she slinks towards the piano in a backless dress and their hands keep clashing on the keyboard even as his leg brushes against hers on the pedals. He’s learning about a lot more than crotchets and semi-breves and is more than semi-quavered in her presence as the original Piano-Cam reveals (you don’t get this at the Kennington Bioscope!).

 

Harry Halm and Ellen Richter

The young man is not alone in seeking instruction from Therese and soon all of the Moral Society are signed up for lessons, all using assumed names. She decides to secretly film her new students and their non-musical advances and isn’t disappointed as the dirty old fellas try it on every time. She even manages to capture the priggish Prof off guard and trousers down… There’s a lovely cameo from the actress playing her maid who looks with increasing alarm at every Muller, Meier and Mayer.

 

It’s a film in which those looks are core to the meaning with Richter’s own expressiveness a delight throughout, her husband knowing exactly how to catch her humour and flashing glances to side and ceiling, exasperated by the male ego and the moral guardian’s ability to divorce libido from appearance. Only if we all learn to play music as she does will we be free to dance… seems to be the message and the arrival of the police starts the narrative on course for a hilarious clearing of the air all round in the final segment.

 

Ellen Richter

Richter had a rich theatrical background and had played in Ludwig Thoma’s original play as far back as 1909 as an ensemble player at the Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre) in Brno. Wolff and prolific writer Bobby E. Lüthge’s screenplay retains only the basic plot and characters, watering down the more explicit elements and leaving a lot to those suggestive looks from Ellen. It’s the most enjoyable of moral tales and despite her character’s elaborate revenge you get the feeling the actress could be endlessly forgiving if people were more honest, considerate and just didn’t scrimp of the floral tributes!

Donald Sosin accompanied on fine form with some support from the broader family for the protest scene. His was an upbeat and wholly sympathetic score that recognised Richter’s zestful appeal. An old star is reborn and whilst two thirds of her films are lost, I want to see more – there just aren’t enough gold lame trouser pantaloons in films these days.

Bonus theatrical scenes!! 

John about to catch June Roper

Fab title cards too!