High and Dizzy… Laurel & Hardy: The Silent Years (1929), Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

 

This is the one boys and girls; this is the one… Following on from their definitive collections of Laurel & Hardy’s silent classics from 1927 and 1928 comes Eureka Entertainment’s presentation of their work in 1929 all presented in high definition for the first time in the UK.

 

Newly restored in 2K from the finest available materials, this Blu-ray edition is absolutely essential viewing for anyone with a sense of humour or in need of a laugh in this year when global politics (and football) went fully slapstick. Not to overplay comedy or make light of anything or any-one supposedly real, but this set contains eternal truths about love and companionship that, clearly, have never been more relevant, never been more needed in this age of performative cruelty. Stan or Ollie might poke you in the eye or strip your chest hairs off with fly paper, but they do it with sincerity, lost in the moments of petty humiliation that ultimately bring us together. You may find yourself hiding a goat in your room or kidnapping a horse but there’ll always be a lesson to be learned and even if you have to risk your lives on a skyscraper just to change into each other’s trousers… what’s left but to laugh and carry on.

 

Two moments from growing up… my Grandad Jim Joyce introducing me to Laurel & Hardy on our old black and white: “watch these lad, they’re really funny…” and, later, as a teen on a late bus in Liverpool watching a tipsy tramp fall over as he got on board saying: “it’s a shit brick la, it’s a shit brick …” looking me straight in the eye and smiling. We suffer daily in our ways but passing on these sentiments is the currency of resiliance – you can easily lose your dignity but who cares, who really cares when all we need to do is laugh. Laugh is all your need. Well, that and kindness: brotherly laughs. 

Still, here the facts are clear and we see peak Stan and ultimate Ollie in 1929 just as silence was giving way to sound, the two of them riding a wave that would make that transition easy for the funniest people on the planet. On film, at least…

Liberty (1929)

This film could have been called Putting Pants on Ollie and after starting with clips of the American war of independence we see our heroes as convicts on the run, diving into a getaway car and then spending the rest of the film trying to get changed into their proper clothes. This follows the usual self-contained logic of their and Leo McKay’s classics as they go from one compromising situation to another before Harlow finds them trying to swap their trousers in a cab. They end up high above the city after running into a construction site lift.

 

Thus, hundreds of feet above the city, balanced precariously on metal girders and with a crab in Oliver’s trousers – of course! – the duo struggle to save themselves and it is dizzying and mesmerising with a real sense of danger even though they are using a set-up on top of a building with a safety mat – just like Harold Lloyd in Safety Last. The shots are still hard to watch and, as the commentary from Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness points out it’s like a surreal dream with Stan especially on the point of falling either from a ladder tottering on a plank or when he grabs onto a loose girder which sails out over the Culver City/Los Angeles sky attacked to a crane. It’s a vertiginous ballet of near misses and mortal fear performed by two men in their early forties yet fit as squirrels!

 

This set-up was constructed on top of the Hal Roach Studios and this is also one of three of the films on this set to feature a teenage Jean Harlow, here as the young woman encountering the in-cab trouser-swapping. Accompaniment is from Maud Nelissen and there’s also the original Robert Youngson score, newly restored by Stephen Horne which is fascinating to compare – musical slapstick pattern recognition.

 

Wrong Again (1929)

 

This was Leo McCarey’s last hurrah as writer and principal director of the duo (although he stayed involved on script, directorial assistance and “brand advisor”) and it’s a surreal doozy with the boys trying to claim a reward by returning a lost horse called Blue Boy from the stables where they work, to a bewildered millionaire seeking a stolen painting also called The Blue Boy. It’s an easy mistake to make and of course they make it in style, anticipating rich reward for their act of kindness as the mix up continues in surreal style at the owner’s mansion. No animals were harmed in the making of this film, only human pride.

 

That’s My Wife (1929)

 

Lloyd French directs from a story by Leo McCarey and it’s time for Stanley to dress in drag to play Ollie’s wife so that his uncle will pay him inheritance due to his being “happily married”. Potentially meta, this one starts with Ollie’s clearly unhappily married wife (Vivien Oakland) leaves mainly due to the ever-presence of her husband’s best friend Stan, who seems oblivious. The two men then debate which of them should leave in order to restore balance but just as Mr Laurel is finally persuaded that he should quite his mate’s married home, up pops that Uncle who is so keen to see and reward his nephew’s marital bliss. Cue the wig and dress and a face that inly a drunken fellow diner could love as they head for a slap-up, slapstick meal and foot fights…

 

Big Business (1929)

 

AKA “the one with the Christmas trees”, directed by James W. Horne, and in which our fir-tree friends try to make a sale with James Finlayson who is not in the mood, not now and possibly not ever, for season’s greetings. The violence, once again, is petty and what can the modern sophisticate say except that comic life is still nasty, brutish and short-tempered. Don’t try this at home with online AI Help Bots; just go after their programmers – the guys who draw up the requirements and the specifications. Customer disservice is always hilarious.

 

 

Der letzte Mann?

Double Whoopee (1929)

 

Directed by Lewis R. Foster from another McCarey script, this is one of the most famous shorts and not just because of the appearance of rather more of Jean Harlow than might be expected, Double Whoopie is a close to perfection as you can get – so many of these films are almost as close – and sees the boys take jobs at a fancy hotel where defective lifts humiliate European princes and pride comes before a fall in a game of tit for tat that escalates from Ollie’s doorman to the front desk. I wondered if Murnau’s the Last Laugh had been an influence on Ollie’s excess of esteem.

 

 

Bacon Grabbers (1929)

 

Lewis directs, Leo writes and there’s another glimpse of Harlow at the very end of this one as she brings the first part of a double whammy of punchlines that leaves the audience reeling. Stan and Ollie are bailiffs tasked with recovering a radio from a late paying customer and hilarity ensues as they try and serve him with his papers. Said customer is Edgar Kennedy giving it the “slow burn” in response to the boys’ persistence… so many of these films are explosive ending with the cathartic expressiveness of Stanley’s weary look to camera. Here’s the inside out almost a century before Disney’s Freudian cartoon.

 

Wikiparently, repo men were referred to as “bacon grabbers”, short for “those who grab your possessions…” pigs who steal not squeal?

 

 

Oliver, Edgar Kennedy and Stanley

Unaccustomed As We Are (1929)

 

This is the first sound comedy they made. This is the first sound comedy anyone made! *

 

Now, this is an historic film representing as David Kalat points out above* in his excellent commentary: the momentous debut of our boys in sound. As a talkie he describes how it is a major film whereas this silent version is slow in comparison with title cards delivering punchlines when we can lipread the speed of the source dialogue. Soon Hal Roach could get as much for a Laurel & Hardy sound short for as much as a full feature and that’s the kind of multiple we can all get behind. Kalat remarks on their accents but he’s wrong in saying that Laurel came from the same place as Chaplin, he was a Lancastrian and not a Londoner and you can still trace the region in his voice and his style. They grew up in the same theatres, but London and Lancashire… dare I say we have a different sense of humour?

 

Guest star, and for the first time, is the lovely Thelma Todd who was so popular she was paired with Zazu Pitts for a series of comedies as well as later staring with the Marx Brothers. In Harlow fashion, she loses her dress in a car door in This Is the Night (1932) and this element of her act was already well established by that point and in this film, as many others, she is soon down to her underwear and we can admire the figure that helped her win Miss Massachusetts in 1925!

 

Edgar Kennedy plays her policeman husband and – always suspicious – he turns to violence as retribution for the boys seeing too much of his wife. The results work a little better in sound than silence but it’s still a winning combination.

 

 

Trousers, again. Berth Marks.

Berth Marks (1929)

 

This was the duo’s second talkie but here is the silent version offered to picture houses that didn’t have sound and sees the boys as two travelling musicians on their way to Pottsville… This, as so many of their films were, is cross-referential and the expectations of mutually-assured destruction set by Battle of the Century and furthered by Double Whoopee, are taken to their logical extension here as, having blundered into a couple’s sleeping carriage on the train, Stan is not aware of the suit-ripping mayhem that is unleashed and only revealed in full at the end of the film. Chaos is guaranteed but we know that and let’s do something new as well.

 

I very much enjoyed Andreas Benz’ organ accompaniment on this and the above film, his lines are familiar ones from the versions I would have seen in the 1960s and, being old enough to remember organs rising up in front of screens in the Odeons of Liverpool and Blackpool, there’s a nostalgic resonance that is very much of Stan Laurel’s original birth county of Lancashire. With a piano there’s more light and shade and the organ has a more defined sound which takes a lot of musical agility to accompany this kind of quick-fire comedy. It works very well and gives a lovely warm hug to the boys in excelsis!  

 

 

Angora Love (1929)

 

Released on 14^th December, this was the boys’ last silent film and it’s fair to say that they had perfected the art. I’ve written about this film a few times before after live screenings (four times!) and it absolutely one of their best as they try to conceal a goat hidden in their apartment from their landlord – Mr Edward Kennedy again! There are 50 Ways to Leave Your Goat Herd…

 

That's not your wife Oliver...

Now, for those of you with a sound set up, there are also two 1929 talkies They Go Boom! and The Hoose-Gow which show the development of the duo’s comedy with the added dimension which, as David Kalat says, enabled them to speed their comedy up and develop now ways of pushing forward their narrative and punchlines. 

 

There’s a limited edition of 2,000 copies which you’ve all probably ordered anyway and which includes an O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow, a fulsome collector’s booklet featuring new notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton along with a new essay on frequent collaborator James Finlayson by silent cinema expert Chris Grosvenor.

 

In addition – deep breath - you get:

 

1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restorations by Blackhawk Films of all films

 

New scores:

 

Andreas Benz (That’s My Wife, Unaccustomed as We Are and Berth Marks)

 

Neil Brand (Bacon Grabbers, Wrong Again and That’s My Wife)

 

Gaylord Carter (Big Business)

 

Robert Israel (Angora Love, Big Business and Double Whoopee)

 

Maud Nelissen (Big Business, Liberty)

 

There’s also an alternate musical scores on select shorts including the Robert Youngson score for Liberty, newly restored by Stephen Horne

 

Don't hang about: LIMITED EDITION!!

New audio commentaries:

 

Liberty and Berth Marks by film writer Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness, author of The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films

 

Double Whoopee, Unaccustomed as We Are and Wrong Again by film historian and writer David Kalat

 

Big Business and Angora Love by silent film accompanist Neil Brand

 

That’s My Wife and Bacon Grabbers by Kennington Bioscope regular Glenn Mitchell, author of The Laurel and Hardy Encyclopaedia

 

Unaccustomed As We Are alternate sound version

 

Alternate dubbed version of Double Whoopee

 

1929 sound shorts They Go Boom! and The Hoose-Gow

 

New documentary by David Cairns and Fiona Watson

 

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (excerpt)

 

Crazy Heights – Alternate Super 8 version of Liberty

 

Super 8 versions of Big Business, Double Whoopee and Angora Love

 

Stills Galleries

 

You can order direct from the Eureka website and, frankly, no home should be without what are some of the finest comedies ever put on screen! But you know that… "it"/"Life" may well be a "shit brick" at any moment but, even tossed onto our arses by outrageous fortune, this is laughter, this is (self) love!

There's Jean!

Edge of the World… Finis Terrae (1929), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

Bannec. On an island where winter storms wipe out all forms of life, four men come in two teams to spend the summer collecting seaweed in total isolation…

 

I was going to headline with Ultima Thule but that’s just daft so I thought I’d link back or rather forward to Michael Powell’s brilliant depiction of life on a remote Scottish island as seen and described a few weeks back. Islands, it seems, you just cannot get enough especially if they face the roaring uncertainty of the Atlantic and concern the relationship between the families and the fisherman, the island and the mainland. I don’t know if Powell saw this film or, indeed, Michael Flaherty before his trip to the Irish Arran, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

Presented on Blu-ray for the very first time in the UK and North America, and sourced from an astounding 4K restoration Jean Epstein’s film is one of the silent elite, an almost documentarian approach that still manages to bring plenty of human interest from the mix of locals and professional actors. Does that sound familiar? It may do but we should never take for granted the achievements of shooting in these unforgiving places and in conditions that threatened more than just the shooting schedule.

Epstein was a writer on film and a film theorist as well as a director and with his third film, Coeur fidèle (1923), he experimented with a deceptively simple story of love and violence "a melodrama so stripped of all the conventions ordinarily attached to the genre, so sober, so simple, that it might approach the nobility and excellence of tragedy".¹ His most famous film, La Chute de la maison Usher (1928) was more typical of the French Impressionist school of film, with Henri Langlois calling it “the cinematic equivalent of Debussy's works…”. By 1929 the director wanted to present reality in its most cinematic form, mixing documentary discipline with impressionist technique to stunning effect.

In her excellent video essay on this disc, film writer Pamela Hutchinson explains Epstein’s use of the concept of “Photogénie” which is essentially the use of cinematic technique to make the everyday extraordinary on screen: the creation of what we’d perhaps call “pure cinema”. There’s a lot of theoretical detail around this term and the director did not coin the term but it certainly featured in his work and in this film especially.

 

Finis Terrae is the first of the director’s Breton trilogy, and was shot entirely on location off the Finistère coast in the part of France we Angles and Celts often forget projects far into the Atlantic Ocean… No channel or Irish or North Sea to ease the traveller into the thrashing ocean… this is the highway to halibut and four men very much alone with their cod. Epstein places his characters very much in their surroundings and they’re dominated by the landscapes, often viewed from behind rocks or from overhead. They are dramatically reduced in human significance against the terrible beauty of the earth and sea.

There goes the wine

Epstein chose to cast local seaweed harvesters rather than professional actors, giving the performances a raw, authentic quality and an ethnographic sense of documentary realism with the aid of sophisticated cutting. Epstein is concerned with time and there are frequent examples of his mixing up real-time action with slow-motion cut-aways sometimes involving symbolic moments. One such instance is when one of the four men on the island of Bannec, Ambroise Rouzic - the characters do not have names - drops their last bottle of wine and we see the anguished reaction of his mate, Jean-Marie Laot, and then cut repeatedly to the broken bottle spilling the precious fluid onto the sand. As it slowly drains into the ground tempers flare as a knife goes missing and the split that drives the rest of the narrative begins.

Ambroise has cut his finger and this very quickly becomes infected which, in a time before anti-biotics is bad enough but they are miles from the nearest doctor. He gradually loses his strength but having fallen out of favour with the others they leave him be as he falls sick and they carry on harvesting the seaweed, pushing into pits and burning it to create kelp which was used for its iodine.

 

Gradually Jean-Marie’s character realises that his pal is in trouble, after seeing him trying to get off the island on his own – an impossibility given there’s no wind and he’d need two hands to paddle his way, He falls unconscious on the sand and, finally they see how sick he is. Meanwhile those on the mainland have noticed the absence of smoke from the island and they make their way to the doctor to get him to go and help.

Jean-Marie Laot and Ambroise Rouzic

With fierce currents around the coast and no wind, can the mainlanders and/or the men find each other in the treacherous middle. It’s a simple story but a powerful one and the outcome is far from certain creating a tense finale in which Epstein also manages to pick up the nuances of his untrained cast on land and sea.

There’s a poignant new score from Roch Havert which, using a small ensemble comprising brass, woodwind and strings, provides a sympathetic score which matches the visuals with understated jazz and modern composition which allows the full flavours of the original material to play out. Havert is an experienced composer and musician who has written a number of scores, this one greatly enhances the film and brings a humble sincerity to the enterprise as befits its ethnographic vitality.

 

A masterful score for a Master of Cinema. Buy it now and if you need any more persuasion, here are the especially salty extra features:

·         Finis Terrae presented in 1080p HD from a 4K restoration by Gaumont Film Company

·         Optional English subtitles

·         Impressions on Jean Epstein – new interview with film historian and critic Pamela Hutchinson on the life and work of the director

·         Stranded – a new video essay on Finis Terrae

·         The Bottom of the Wave – an archival appreciation of Finis Terrae by Joel Daire

·         Limited Edition of 2,000 copies

·         Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by John Dunn

·         Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring a new essay on Finis Terrae by Jean Epstein expert Christophe Wall-Romana and archival writing by the director

 

The Limited Edition is out now so I’d be quick and order as soon as you can from the Eureka website here!

 1.       Jean Epstein. Présentation de "Cœur fidèle", in Écrits sur le cinéma, 1, 124 (jan. 1924)

 

Home movies? Sirk in Germany 1934-35, Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-rays

 

Douglas Sirk is best known for his lavish Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s such as Magnificent Obsession (1954) and All That Heaven Allows (1955) – both featuring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman – up to Imitation of Life (1959) with Lana Turner and John Gavin. In 1955 he went to Ireland to film Captain Lightfoot with Hudson and it is here that he directed my Uncle Mike Nolan who played Willie the Goat! It’s an under-rated film but perhaps one for another day… Rock did give Mike a bracelet which he then gave to our Thelma though.

 

Born Hans Detlef Sierck in 1897 Sirk made a number of films in his native Germany before leaving in 1937 unable to risk the persecution of his Jewish wife. This set highlights three features all of which foreshadow the above later work with romantic tales that deal with clashes of cultures, the differing worlds of the rich and poor, the morally superior and “inferior”, royalty and new money. In these films people move in different circles and there’s plenty of social commentary as individuals connect in transgressive ways. The Power of Love but so much more.

 

I had to start with The Girl from Marsh Croft (Das Mädchen vom Moorhof) (1935) as it is based on Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf’s novella from 1908 which was first adapted for film by Victor Sjöström in 1917 starring Lars Hanson and Greta Almroth. The author was pleased with the outcome – she was by no means easily convinced – but I don’t know how she viewed this version. For me, it’s an equally good reading of the story with the focus on the moral strength of the titular character and the Christian faith and boggy myths that inform her thinking.

 

Helga Christmann is a wonderful creation here played by Hansi Knoteck who gives a performance of remarkable stillness and expressive tone, she had trained in ballet and her physicality is an important part of her impression here. She plays a lowly farm girl from the marshy edges of the community who has a child following an affair with the married farmer who employed her, Marten (Carl Jönsson). Driven by circumstance as well as morality she takes him to court for income support only to withdraw her claim to prevent him perjuring himself by swearing on the bible.

 

The judge shakes her hand, recognising her moral courage and she also impresses Karsten Dittmar (Kurt Fischer-Fehling) who subsequently gets her employment at his family farm after following her to the Marsh Croft as she contemplates her mortality. Sirk is in no doubt as to where our sympathies should be and he also presents the film with the lyrical beauty often found in Lagerlöf’s work. Soon Karsten is engaged to Gertrud Gerhart (Ellen Frank) from the richest farm in the area and she sees Helga as a threat but the rarest of Helga’s qualities is that she always does the right thing and what she feels she must do for everyone else, even at a cost to herself.

 

She is the most morally consistent character and whilst other’s learn from their mistakes as they go they eventually learn from her too. In his commentary Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove points out that in Sweden even working women such as Helga would have been educated enough to stand firm at this point but less so in the Germany Sirk relocated the story too but that only makes Helga more remarkable and I’m sure Selma would have agreed.

 

Some have described the film as a prototypical Heimatfilm which would place it firmly among the rural tales of nuclear family favoured by the Nazis and other extremists but whilst Wingrove brushes this aside I would agree given the still challenging nature if Helga’s situations; she’s a single mother with agency who follows her God and conscience first and foremost. To date the story has been made into seven films so the resonance is way beyond German nationalism and Selma’s proto-feminism drives the appeal.

 

Far from portraying a rural idyll, Sirk depicts an almost noirish view of the countryside, inhabited by proud, superstitious and reserved folk living in medieval dwellings and according to unforgiving social norms.

Tim Bergfelder, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Southampton – booklet essay.

  

Sirk’s first feature April! April! (1934) the German announcement for April Fool!  is an altogether different being a comedy of manners, deference, pasta manufacture and royalty with a surprisingly common touch… It too deals with behaviours of sectors of society and, in this case the hubris of the nouveau rich. Julius Lampe (Erhard Siedel) is a self-made pasta magnet whose product has bought him wealth and an arrogant assurance. Along with his wife, Mathilde (Lina Carstens) he hosts extravagant social occasions in which the gathered people of means must endure their ceaseless boasting.

 

One friend, Finke (Paul Westermeier) decides to teach them a lesson and sends them a letter supposedly from the Prince von Holsten-Böhlau, placing a large order for Lampe's noodles to take on an African expedition. The Lampes cannot contain their glee and read the good news out to the gathered throng forcing Finke to double down and pretending to be the Prince’s PA, phone up to arrange a visit to their factory.

 

Now things get complicated as Lampes discovers the deception but cannot lose face so arranges for a man named Müller (Hubert von Meyerinck) to play at being the Prince only for the real Prince (a splendid turn from Albrecht Schoenhals) to see the story in the newspaper and decide to visit for himself. Confusion reigns as the fresh Prince gets mistaken for the real one and vice versa with Lampes treating his royal highness as if he’s the phoney. Meanwhile the journey’s not a fruitless one for the actual Prince as he takes a shine to Lampes’ secretary Friedel (Carola Höhn) who is as down-to-earth as her employers are on another planet.

It's a hoot and showcases the German sense of humour as well as Sirk’s already impressive skills of performance management and narrative control.

 

The final feature, Pillars of Society (Stützen der Gesellschaft, 1935) was the director’s third and took it’s inspiration again from Scandinavia, this time Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen’s 1878 play. It’s a tale impossible to separate from the circumstances of its making with enough anti-capitalist/corrupting greed to satisfy both left and right as well as being what Bergfelder calls “an advance in Sirk’s staging and editing”. It’s very much a Play for Today featuring a corrupt and lying man who sacrifices the truth for profit and also has more children than he knows how to betray…

 

Oddly enough it also starts off in the United States where émigré Johann Tonnessen (Albrecht Schoenhals) has made a success as a farmer and after twenty years away decides to accompany his friend’s circus on their tour of his home country. This is inevitably going to be bad news for his former friend and business partner, Consul Karsten Bernick (Heinrich George) who is the titular pillar of society with wife Betty (Maria Krahn), ward Dina (Suse Graf) and his beloved son Olaf (Horst Teetzmann) who is strangely obsessed with America, cowboys and Native Americans.

 

Consul Bernick has lied his way to the top though, falsely accusing Johann of embezzlement to cover his mismanagement of the shipping firm they used to run together and so the latter gets the coolest of welcomes on his return even though both Dina and Olaf are immediately interested in Uncle Johanne’s adventures in the land of the free. Bernick has also spread the word that Dina is Johanne’s illegitimate daughter when in fact she is the result of his indiscretion.

Be sure, however, that your sins will find you out and sure enough everything unravels for the Consul as it is revealed that Johann committed no crime and his daughter is actually Bernick’s. As Bernick tries to buy himself time he forces one of his ships to set sail before being fully refitted and it steams off into trouble during a storm with Olaf stowed away in search of America…

 

There’s some splendid work as the ship battles the storm and Johann joins the locals in trying to rescue the boy… Will Bernick’s tragic lies create even more sorrow?  Once again, Sirk deals with different worlds and the natural justice for those who are true to themselves and others; it’s an affecting film even knowing that Heinrich George went on to make propaganda films for the new regime.

 

 

Also included in the set are Sirk’s shorts Two Greyhounds (Zwei Windhunde) (1934), Three Times Before (3 x Ehe) (1934) and The Imaginary Invalid (Der eingebildete Kranke) (1935). These were Sirk’s first three projects at UFA and gave him a chance to show what he could do away from the stage and with the help of experienced hands at the studio. All the films are on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK from brand-new restorations by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.

 

It’s quite the package and provides an invaluable introduction to the formative work of this major director as well as a snapshot of German filmmaking during the early years of the Nazi government. By 1937 he had escaped with his wife to first France and then onto the USA and new stories which would eventually see him placed in the highest regard. This is where it all began.

 

There’s a must-have limited edition of just 2,000 copies including and O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow along with the following features:

 

·         New audio commentaries on all three features by Sirk expert David Melville Wingrove

·         Magnificent Obsessions – a new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall who gives an excellent overview of Sirk’s career from Germany to Hollywood

·         Optional English subtitles on all features and shorts

·         Alternate “sound” presentation of Three Times Before (made at the same time as the “silent version,” the original sound reel no longer exists – this version is presented with subtitles)

·         A limited collector’s booklet featuring a new extended essay on Sirk’s early works by German cinema expert Professor Tim Bergfelder

 

The set is released on Monday 24^th February so do not hesitate in placing your pre-order NOW via the Eureka website!

 

Ruthless Robinson - Black Tuesday (1954), Eureka Masters of Cinema #300

 

I’ve got those Black Tuesday blues

Black Tuesday, Black Tuesday,

I pray for that day to never come…

That’s when my life on this earth will be done.

 

There’s a certain formula to noir, even though only the French had codified the form at this point, yet the use of these elements doesn’t preclude the possibilities of refining the components and making a film that both engages and leaves the jaded modern viewer impressed and not a little shocked. So it is with Hugo Fregonese’s Black Tuesday which is now being released in a crystal clear 4k transfer from those fabulous folk at Eureka. Not being familiar with the work of this much travelled Argentinian director I have to conclude on this evidence at least that he is indeed a master of cinema. I want to see more and could have seen more at Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato in 2022 when a retrospective of his work clashed with my usual pursuit of silent film restorations.

 

The film is the last of the much-travelled Fregonese’s in Hollywood and represents the darkest of takes on the nature of crime and humanity’s rules of survival. As critic and co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato Ehsan Khoshbakht, who programmed the retrospective says, it has the biggest “kick” of the director’s films in terms of morality and nihilism. Noir was well populated with anti-heroes but few as genuinely frightening as Edward G. Robinson’s Canelli whose logic still stands in an era of global anti-truth and burgeoning conflicts. Might is right has never changed, and we’re about to see this creed tested again over the next few years.

 

For Fregonese escape was a way of life for his characters, it certainly was for him based on his field of operations and, much as we feel the flight or flight in 2024, there’s little comfort to be offered in Black Tuesday even as we’re engaged in the taught narrative for the get-go.

 

Edward G Robinson

The opening is as stylish show of flair that marks this mid-budget film out from most of its peers as we enter the cells of condemned men all counting down the days and in some cases hours until their fate. One man, Sylvester (Don Blackman) starts tapping out a rhythm on his stool and singing a plaintive song about Black Tuesday, the traditional day for public executions in the USA and as his words roll out the camera tracks across the faces of the men. Canelli prowls his cage like a lion full of hate and guile, still looking for any chance, then the cool and collected Manning (Peter Graves) still working on an intricate match-stick model of a bridge where possibly he has stashed $200,000 of stolen money) and then onto one prisoner who cannot stand the music and its reminder of his impending fate.

 

They all appear doomed and yet, the scene shifts to a couple sitting outside the prison in a car, Canelli’s lady friend Hatti (Jean Parker) and one of his men, who are watching one of the prison guards Norris (James Bell) being dropped off by his daughter Ellen (Sylvia Findley). At the end of the day when the guard gets home he finds Hatti sitting inside his house with an offer he simply can’t refuse if he wants to see his girl again. Once again the camera angles are ramped up to highlight Hatti’s measured menace and as Norris sits down in his chair there’s a cross-fade to the electric chair being prepared for Canelli and Manning a foreshadowing of the guard’s own fate as much as theirs.

 

The film had benefited enormously from restoration and has a distinctive look anyway. Kodak Tri-X film used for the first time in a feature film and, as it was much more sensitive to low light conditions without impacting film grain, it enabled high contrast and easier setups in terms of artificial lighting. It helped enable the dynamic use of deep focus and depth of field by cinematographer Stanley Cortez who worked on The Magnificent Ambersons and, the following year, Charles Laughton’s brilliant Night of the Hunter. He spans the gap between expressionism and noire here creating a crystal-clear view of the darkness at the heart of men.

 

Depth of feels: James Bell and Peter Graves 

So many shots are simply stunning especially when Canelli, in extreme close-up, is telling the prison guard Norris that if he wants to see his daughter alive again, he better co-operate. Norris’ face is shown in profile in focus with Manning’s in the neighbouring cell, both are in sharp focus heightening this crucial moment and Norris’ fearful distraction. Canelli’s cackle when he knows he has his man is genuinely chilling… the perfect meld of performance, lens and direction as a good man is brought down and the escape plan is on…

 

Then there is the night of the men’s execution with the scene a in a starkly lit room with the journalists and onlookers jostling for the best view of the death scene about to spark in front of them. They enter filmed from a low angle with the electric chair looming large in the opposite corner. Norris fulfils his part of the bargain by strapping a gun under a chair which Canelli’s man Joey (Warren Stevens the star to be of Forbidden Planet and hundreds of TV episodes), impersonating a newspaper man, retrieves it and launches the escape plan.

 

After a tense shoot out during which Manning is injured the men are picked up by a van and, after dropping off the other three from death row, more as a police distraction than a favour, Canelli arrives at the warehouse Hatti has prepared. They have brought the prison doctor (Vic Perrin) to tend to Manning as he and his $200,000 are very much part of Canelli’s plan. There’s also the prison chaplain Father Slocum (Milburn Stone) who more than anything is to provide a moral equivalence for the gang in the desperate hours to come. Norris’ daughter is also there along with Carson (Jack Kelly) the journalist replaced by Joey along with one of the prison guards, the one who really used to needle Canelli.

 

This stage of the film is even more intense than the first half as death hovers even closer to life than in death row as the gang are discovered and a siege begins. Canelli has no intention of surrender and starts to execute his hostages as the police close in. It’s the interactions between the “good” and the “bad” characters that keep the interest though, how can these men insist on other lives being worth less than their own? Is there no morality other than survival of the meanest and the basest of motives. The film pushes these questions to the absolute limit and the cast are universally up to the task.

 

First amongst these is, of course Robinson and for once the press puff was right in claiming this as the most ruthless Robinson of all time! His Canelli is not only believable but likeable in some moments, it’s like The Sopranos half a century earlier, business is business and ruthless is the way with apologies if the innocent just happen to get in the way.  

 

Eshan Khoshbakht describes Fregonese as “a master of creating claustrophobic spaces…” and the film with its sparse empty sound stages, unseen threat, sharp angles and extraordinary cinematography, is unpredictably engaging right to the end. I’m not surprised that the Nation Legion of Decency rated it “B” for “excessive brutality and low moral tone…” but the real horror is the amorality and not the manner of these deaths but their justification.

 

This is all typical of the director’s work as Khoshbakht points out, recalling the common themes from his Ritrovato notes including the constant self-justifications, the impact of their criminality on their motivation and the loneliness of the huge spaces in the film… these men are all islands with their past behaviours and future fortunes all inextricably and unavoidably linked. More than anything though, the physical escape is a reflection of their ongoing quest to be free of consequences and their inevitable demise: “escape as a way of life.”.

 

This set contains a highly informative video essay on Fregonese from the thoroughly well-researched Sheridan Hall, which explains his subject’s world-spanning career whilst putting this picture in the context of his other major works. It’s an essay that dovetails perfectly with Khoshbakht’s which is more centred on the film and you’re in safe hands with these two!

 

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Limited Edition (2000 copies) with O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a 2K scan of the 35mm fine grains
• A new audio commentary with film noir expert Sergio Angelini, host of the Tipping My Fedora podcast
• From Argentina to Hollywood a new interview with film historian Sheldon Hall on director Hugo Fregonese
• – No Escape another new video essay by Imogen Sara Smith, author of In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
• An interview with critic and co-director of Il Cinema Ritrovato Ehsan Khoshbakht covering the career of Hugo Fregonese
• Theatrical trailer
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Black Tuesday by critic Barry Forshaw and film writer Craig Ian Mann

 

You can order Black Tuesday direct from the Eureka website and do it quickly because the Limited Edition is only 2000 copies and I sense we’ll be seeing more of Hugo Fregonese’s work!

 

 

Watching the detectives… Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials (1913-1918), Blu-ray

 

Louis Feuillade not only popularised the dramatic serial as we still know it, he did so during a period when his country was at war with the majority of these four epic series made during the Great War either in and around Paris or in the relative safety of Nice. In truth the form had many parents across the cine-world with America providing The Perils of Pauline starting in 1914 and Edison's – or someone’s - What Happened to Mary in 1912 then Germany, Viggo Larsen's Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes in 1910 and even earlier, in 1908, the French with Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset launching his series of six Nick Carter films: le roi des detectives! Carter le roi? Je ne pense pas, messieurs... cet homme vit à Baker Street!

Anyway, using the same techniques as these great and not so great detectives, Feuillade evolved the cinematic style across four series, Fantômas, Les Vampires, Judex and Tih Minh all of which left their mark and established motifs that have been used ever since. Some have been available on Blu-ray overseas but for the first time in the UK Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series has now pulled all together in one luxurious and absolutely essential box set celebrating the birth of the box set in many ways!

The films have all been transferred from 4K restorations from original 35mm nitrate originals where possible and the results create such an immediacy and connection with the material, it almost feels like you’re clambering on a roof top with Irma Vep, with the distant sounds of German guns only 70 kilometres away at one point, with the First Battle of the Marne, in September 1914.

 

René Navarre in disguise as Fantômas, the master criminal!

Fantômas (1913)

Adapted from a series of popular novels by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantômas stars René Navarre as the eponymous criminal mastermind. Across the serial’s five episodes, Fantômas is pursued by Inspector Juve (Edmund Breon) and newspaper reporter Jérôme Fandor (Georges Melchior) as he carries out his nefarious schemes. As Kim Newman says in his video essay on the set, Fantômas is a supervillain, a “fusion of Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes…” He’s certainly a master of disguise with each episode opening with Navarre in the disguise he will use in each story and, as Newman observes, we never really find out exactly who he us. He’s a universal and uncatchable master villain.

Each episode features Detective against Villain… and cliff-hangers are the order of the day. Fantômas is relentless and Juve is always one step behind. The serial was hugely successful and spawned many impersonators in print and on screen with both the public and, Newman again, the intellectuals, the surrealists attracted by the anarchy and the anti-establishment agenda.

 

Feuillade filmed so often on location, here at Avenue Junot...

Les Vampires (1915-1916)

 

Most people’s first introduction to Feuillade and probably the best and most entertaining of this set, the ten-episode Les Vampires tells of a group of vicious criminals who terrorise Paris, stopping at nothing to gain money and to disrupt the powers that be. They are led by the Grand Vampire (Jean Aymé) who adopts different guises and disguises in most episodes and his key operative (possibly even superior?) is the anagrammatical Irma Vep, played with such vibrant menace by Musidora (the rightfully legendary Jeanne Roques*), who helps to infiltrate elegant society, financial institutions and even the hero’s household for the Vampire cause. She is, as Newman says, the first female super villain, years ahead of Cat Woman and in every way transgressive – a challenge to audience and mankind from her first appearance on stage rousing the gathered gang members.

 

The hero in pursut is not a policeman but an intrepid reporter – one of the first of his kind - Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé) who is mostly helped (occasionally hindered) by the comic Mazamette, knowingly played by the fourth wall busting Marcel Lévesque who moves from working with the criminals – his family being under threat. It’s not the first example of characters’ mutability in the free-running serial that sees an ever-changing battle between the forces of order and disorder.

 

Les Vampires also had to contend with costumes of silk and wool with elasticated fabric still scarce...

As film scholar Elizabeth Ezra says in her video essay, the serial included a number of references to the ongoing conflict beyond with code breaking, gas attacks and other weapons of war such as the canon in episode seven and the exploding ship in episode eight all to redolent of events so close and yet, cinematically, so far. So many men were mobilised too and the original Vampire leader had to be called off, after the actor playing him, Louis Leubas, was called up.

 

Another fascinating observation from Ezra relates to the multiple personalities each character potentially presents, with this being an extension of paranoid delusion, Capgras Syndrome patients traumatised by the loss of loved ones belived that those around them had been killed and replaced by imposters in their bodies. Les Vampires is therefore full of people who are not quite as they seem, and there is frequent reference to loss, the serial may not specifically mention the conflict but it’s “haunted by the war” in Ezra’s words.

 

René Cresté, Édouard Mathé and Louis Leubas in Judex; secret lair

Judex (1916-17)

 

Judex is probably the first Masked Avenger – essentially a good version of Fantomas/Musidora possibly after an official reaction to the criminality of the first two serials. At this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, I was able to watch the screening of the entire series – 12 episodes plus prologue - with live accompaniment which really brought out the full flavour of Feuillade’s sense of drama, his eye for dynamic framing, and his team building and his ability to keep the narrative ball rolling even when you think he’s backed himself into a dramatic dead end.

 

It's not quite up there with Les Vampires but it does have the essentiality of Musidora playing Diana Monti aka Marie Verdier, a scheming opportunist who becomes more and more dominant the longer the story unwinds. Judex himself as played by René Cresté, is a goodie version of Fantômas, part Sherlock Holmes, maybe part Eugène-François Vidocq – an actual French criminal turned criminalist - certainly an outlier for The Shadow, Doc Savage and even The Batman. Feuillade had been criticised for glorifying his evil masterminds and so here was one of good intent even if he does kidnap and fake the death of the businessman responsible for his father’s death and many others, Favraux (Louis Leubas) before imprisoning him for life in a remote castle.

 

Judex has worked a very long game, disguised as Favraux’s secretary, to infiltrate his business dealings. His plan is soon complicated when he falls in love with the banker’s daughter, Jacqueline (Yvette Andréyor) who is soon targeted by the evil Monti! There’s great support from Vampires’ alumni Édouard Mathé as brother Roger and Marcel Lévesque as the comedic Cocantin whose swimming-costume clad fiancée Miss Daisy Torp (Lily Deligny) helps save the day. The kids are alright too and Le petit Jean (Olinda Mano) and The Liquorice Kid (Rene Poyen) deserved their own series!

René Cresté and Mary Harald

 

Tih Minh (1918)

Tih Minh is a change of pace - and technically the most polished - with a new cast of characters and a number of Feuillade’s regular cast playing them again. Set in the South of France the focus is on the goodies again with explorer Jacques d'Athys (René Cresté) who has returned from the Orient with a new fiancé from Laos, Tih Minh (Mary Harald) – a half Vietnamese heroine, interesting in itself - to be greeted by his mother (Madame Lacroix), sister Jane (Lugane) and maid Rosette (Jeanne Rollette) who is romancing his faithful, cheeky, manservant Placido (Georges Biscot).

 

The baddies are the mysteriously bearded “Asian” Kistna (Louis Leubas), Doctor Gilson (Gaston Michel) and the La marquise Dolorès (Georgette Faraboni) who has the real dash of stylish super-vixen, biting a rose with menace in the introductory segment. What they’re about is disrupting the old order… undermining the British Empire and controlling minds with chemical concoctions. They also hold a cellarful of chemically controlled young women… for what purpose we can only guess but there is some nudity revealed at this point… and, whilst you’d never see that in a British or American film at this point, it is a reminder that down the same avenue as entertainment is the darkened rue latérale of exploitation.

 

This serial looks stunning and it’s rare to see such detail and to feel the century melt away as you watch the performers inhabit their roles and the familiar spaces of Nice, with such clarity. The Palais de la Jetée and the beautiful Crystal Casino may be long gone but this is very much a travelogue for the jewel of the Riviera, magnificent views, glorious mansions and the warm breeze of a Mediterranean mistral running through the relentless, narrative parkour, pace of the storyline.

 

Without doubt as film historian and author David Kalat says in his commentary, Feuillade’s crime serials had a huge impact on Fritz Lang who responded with Dr Mabuse, Spies and much more not to mention Alfred Hitchcock and everyone that came after. The influence spread also to pulp magazines – The Shadow – as well as comic books, radio, television and one of the most successful Caped Crusaders also known as Bruce Wayne.

 

Musidora in command, hands on hips, sleeves rolled up...

Join me in investigating these suspiciously special features…

 

·         Limited Edition Hardcase Box Set [2000 copies]

·         Set includes all four serials across 9 Blu-ray Discs, all presented in 1080p HD from stunning 4K restorations courtesy of Gaumont Film Company, with uncompressed LPCM 2.0 audio on all serials

·         Fantômas – audio commentaries on In the Shadow of the Guillotine and Juve vs Fantômas by film historian and author David Kalat

·         Les Vampires – new audio commentaries on The Red Cipher and The Spectre by film historian and author David Kalat

·         Judex – new audio commentaries on the prologue, The Mysterious Shadow, Atonement, The Water Sprite and The Forgiveness of Love by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas

·         Tih-Minh – Brand new audio commentaries on The Potion of Forgetfulness, The Mysteries of Circé Villa and Justice by genre film expert and Video Watchdog founder Tim Lucas

·         Casting a Long Shadow –  new interview with critic and author Kim Newman

·         Pamela Hutchinson on Musidora –  new interview with critic, film historian and silent cinema expert Pamela Hutchinson on the star of Les Vampires and Judex

·         The Spectre of War in Les Vampires –  new video essay by film scholar Elizabeth Ezra, editor of European Cinema and France in Focus: Film and National Identity

·         Feuillade in Context – a new interview with writer, composer and silent film accompanist Neil Brand

·         A Closer Look at Feuillade – Brand new interview with critic, writer and film commentator Tony Rayns

·         Fold-out poster – yay!!

·         A limited edition 100-page collector’s book featuring new writing by Louis Feuillade experts Jonathan Rosenbaum, Calum Baker, Annette Förster, Wendy Haslem, Robin Walz and Leon Hunt on the filmmaker and his crime serials alongside select archival imagery

 

The set is released on 11^th November and can be ordered direct from Eureka, not home should be without it. As Neil Brand says in his video essay on the director, not only are these lengthy series with their lose plotting – “one damn thing after another” – enthralling and still engaging, they’re also a social document of the Third French Republic, the war years and the development of one of the most enduring genres in cinema. Where would The Avengers be without HYDRA or James Bond without SPECTRE? And just where would Netflix, Apple TV and everyone else be without crime and punishment? Where would any of us be? This is one to binge and relish. But you know that already.

 

*For more information on Musidora visit the Womens Film Pioneers Project pages and follow on from there. Pamela Hutchinson’s video essay on this Eureka set is also thoroughly recommended!