Lazybones (1925), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Dave Glass’ introduction included a visual essay starting with William Fox (of whom more later at the KB) which then focused on an overview of the director of tonight’s main feature, Frank Borzage with a reminder of his chief elements of style, his longevity and quality. He made four features in 1925 starting with perhaps Norma Talmadge’s finest performance and finest film, The Lady and ending up with Lazybones (1922) – an outstanding year commercially as well as artistically.

 

The title may indicate a romantic comedy with some predictable turns of fate to enable the titular character, Steve Tuttle (Buck Jones) redemption as a hard-working, hero and yet the film is so much more than that and is an a-typical romance in which the main character’s laziness is a more existential challenge to his self-awareness. When the need arises, he is decisive and quick to action, but he is faulted by an unwillingness to challenge his heart even as he often does the right thing and has moral courage. Borzage – and Frances Marion’s script – enable our full sympathy but there’s something unsaid, un-done and unfulfilled which at the last is revealed as a very smart piece of filmmaking.

 

Mr Glass covered the arrival of Herr Murnau at Fox where he was sent to encourage and review other director’s to add more Germanic nuance to their work but seemingly he spent as much time watching Borzage at work as advising him, the results of this cross-continental pollination are there for all to see in the combinations of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor with a bit of George O’Brien and a bit more of the splendid Mary Duncan (City Girl and The River being two of the greatest films about love made by each director or any human).

 

Buster Jones... how's he gonna to get the day's work done?

Buster Jones is a handsome chap albeit no Charles Farrell I hear my wife – and a number of others –cry, but he’s got his charms and here is conveys “Lazy” in ways that belie his casting in so many westerns. He’s a careful ploy by Borzage, playing against type and in ways which the audience really can’t pin down. Bones is indeed lazy and he gets caught napping even by the local fish quick enough to leap off the line after waking the somnambulant fisherman, insists that his ragged roof doesn’t need fixing as it’s not raining and asks his Mom (Edythe Chapman) to remind him to fix their wonky gate: “that darn gate!” says everyone who passes through it today, tomorrow and for years to come.

 

Jones looks like one of life’s easy winners and yet here he presents as a man preparing himself for disappointment by prevarication: why look life square in the eye when you can just sleep it off. Borzage makes sure his audience isn’t lulled into the dream by wrong-footing us and heaping humiliations on Steve, and us, as time and again he’s caught napping. It’s enough to drive Erich von Stroheim out of the theatre in floods of tears.

 

We are waiting for something to happen, something to reveal the hero within as good defeats evil in a world in which bad men do not profit for being rotten bullies by being promoted. Turns out that it’s that American Dream we used to hear about.

 

Zasu Pitts and Jane Novak

It begins with Frank’s gentle routines being disturbed by the arrival of his sweetheart Agnes Fanning (Jane Novak) and her fearsome mother (Emily Fitzroy). The two ride in by tandem and Mrs Fanning’s stiff-backed posture lets you know to expect the worst… She cannot disguise her disgust at Steve and certainly doesn’t want his relationship with Agnes to develop. Steve manages to get his jalopy running and momentarily impresses before it blows up, he tells Agnes he has plans and whilst in a more typical film there would be a hidden secret to rescue his fortune here you cannot be so sure.

 

Mrs Fanning much prefers the local “Beau Brummel”, Elmer Ballister (William Bailey) who she has lined up for her elder daughter Ruth (Zasu Pitts); he’s a real go-getter and full of it. She writes to Ruth telling her to return from her teaching post and prepare herself for wedlock. But Ruth has been rather busy away from home having married a sailor and born his child only to be rapidly widowed following his death at sea. She returns home with her child convinced that no one will believe that she has ever been married and in a moment of desperation, throws herself into the fast-running waters on the edge of town. Now we see how fast Lazybones can move if he wants to as, hearing her cries he wakes from his slumber-fishing to dive in and save her.

 

Safely on the riverbank, Ruth tells all and Steve agrees an unlikely plan to save her reputation by looking after her baby daughter until she has the strength to confess all to her mother. He returns home with the baby spinning the tale of finding her abandoned and spurred on by Elmer’s callous disdain, announces that he will adopt. Ruth is safe for the moment but when she finally tells her mother the old harridan refuses to listen or believe taking a stick to her terrified daughter in a genuinely shocking moment. Mrs Fanning may well be the wicked witch of the mid-West but a shadow of shame hangs momentarily across Emily Fitzroy’s brow before she grits her teeth in cruel resolve.

 

Steve finds a baby

Ruth cannot take her baby back and Steve realises that he’s in for the long haul. Agnes cannot face this with the inevitable implications concerning the child’s true father, and she tells poor Steve that she will never speak to him again… her final card played to her lasting regret. Events move forward to 1915 with Kit now a young girl (played by Virginia Marshall) who is still regarded with suspicion by the locals. Agnes sees her trying to befriend a local child only for the mother to pull her away whilst Steve tells his adopted daughter that it’s all his fault for being lazy.

 

War comes and Steve listlessly enlists only to find himself an accidental hero after he sleeps through the order to advance and ends up capturing a German squadron from the rear. He returns to a hero’s welcome and to find Kit all grown up and looking mighty pretty (Madge Bellamy). Kit is in love with one Dick Ritchie (Leslie Fenton) who has even fixed that darn gate. Richie proposes but Steve also realises that he has feelings for his young ward…OK, that’s a bit from left field but it’s not the only surprise as events play out in a very European way…

Lazybones packs an accumulation of little punches that leave your thoughts provoked long after the film has stopped playing. It is an intelligent film from Mr Borzage and one that stands the test of time with a message that nothing should be taken for granted in a world of false formalities. Zasu Pitts is a vital counter to the easy-going, she’s a remarkable performer with a uniquely-unsettling way here wilting in front of our very eyes as the woman with her life ruined by the need to keep up her mother’s appearances. Emily Fitzroy is also good as her sister Ruth whose heartbreak is slower burning but none the less real.

 

Madge Bellamy and Buck Jones

Don’t be lazy, make real choices and don’t sleep on the job of life. Borzage’s woke agenda still speaks powerfully.

 

All of this was added extra force by the immaculate improvisations of John Sweeney on the piano as he matched the subtle turmoil on scream meeting every triumph and disaster with carefully conceived flourishes melding with the action in that uncanny way he does, holding us rapt in the space between the thoughts and expressions.

 

The plan unravells in The House of Flickers

A seemingly more straightforward task was provided in his accompaniment of the evening’s first film, The House of Flickers (1925) a short directed by Benjamin Stoloff and starring James Parrott who, as I’m sure you all know, was the brother of the even more famous Charles Joseph Parrott also known as Charlie Chase. It’s a fast-moving comedy about a man trying to sell his picture house only for a cheeky chimp to mess up the nitrate in the projection booth. It features lots of guest players and none more famous that the primate, name of Josephine, who would later steal the limelight from Buster Keaton in The Cameraman. Also featured is The Wonder Dog Pal as Pete the Pup who gives a performance of nuanced dexterity as you would expect.

 

The Kennington Bioscope has never shied away from working with animals or, indeed, children should the need arise.

Home truths… Back Pay (1922), with Andrew Earle Simpson, Undercrank Productions DVD

 

The story of Hester Bevins is as old as sin, but sin is just a little bit younger than love, and often the two are interchangeable…

This film is about karma but in terms of its survival, it’s hardly been instant given that we can only now rewatch it a century after its release. Any film directed by Frank Borzage you’d expect to be not only commercially viable but also available and yet it took a Kickstarter campaign from composer Andrew Earle Simpson, supported by Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions to produce the DVD I now hold in my hand (typing with my right!). My name is on the credits along with hundreds of others world-wide who have pitched in on this one and it feels good to be a small part of preserving these films not just in digital formats but also in memory and wider study.

The only copies of Back Pay and its companion on this project, Borzage’s The Valley of Silent Men (1922) are held as part of the Marion Davies collection in the Library of Congress, and Back Pay is presented from a new 2K scan of the LOC’s 35mm acetate duplicate negative, printed from the sole surviving 35mm nitrate print.  It includes the film’s original tinting scheme and looks fabulous, especially as it also includes Grace Waller’s original art titles and “art” is what they are with illustrations enhancing the witty script from the great Frances Marion, who adapted from the short story of the same name by Fannie Hurst.

It’s 1922 and there’s still plenty of women involved in Hollywood and Fanny Hurst was arguably the most popular writer in America with a stonking twenty nine films based on her stories. Hurst chronicled the lives of working class urban lives and was, according to Grace Paley in The Stories of Fannie Hurst*, “…a pioneer in writing about working women, from maids to secretaries to garment workers, from prostitutes to artists,” weaving these together into “… captivating, deeply human stories that capture her characters’ struggles, triumphs, conflicts, and loves.”

Seena Owen

You can see the huge cinema going everywoman audience relating to this and especially Back Pay, which ponders the right of women to hold ambition in ways reflective of post-War equality – in the US as in the UK – women’s role in the war effort had earned them more respect and recognition. It’s easy, but remiss, to overlook this context in viewing what is a melodrama and also to take the proximity of the Great War for granted; four years on, countries were still full of physically and mentally damaged veterans who had lost their place in a society that didn’t always understand their sacrifice. In this way Back Pay reminds me a little of Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919), which dealt with the social and welfare aftermath of the conflict.

Hester Bevins had spent her life in Demopolis, one of those small, changeless towns which stand like sentinels beyond the outer gates of New York.

 

Here we start with a small town called Demopolis in which young Hester (Seena Owen) is gradually suffocating, every train heading away breaking her vaguely ambitious heart just a little bit more and with all around her seemingly satisfied with their lot. “She was filled with a passion for excitement and luxury – and certainly neither of these could be found in the boarding house of Mrs Elmira Simmons…” with every mealtime a thudding reminder of the past, present and potential future if she stayed.

Her one bright spark is boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who loves her even more deeply than he loves the town and his job at the General Store. He’s scrimping and saving but $150 a month isn’t going to buy Hester the lifestyle she wants as she tells him they’re simply too poor to marry.  Borzage and his cameraman Chester A Lyons, capture some idyllic scenes of country life, especially the town’s annual picnic with egg and spoon plus sack races, dancing and music; it’s like something from a Sjostrom outdoor adventure with some craggy-faced locals providing realist flavour.

Hester and Jerry make their way for some peace and quiet and have their faithful disconnection as he proposes and she smiles briefly before declining as they talk into the night. She sings a partially finished song for them and tells him she will finish it later… only much later, as she decides she must find herself in New York. Hester’s train leaves Jerry abandoned as Frances Marion writes, two decades before Cole Porter, that to say goodbye is to die a little…

To New York City and a jump five years ahead, years of struggle… in which old beliefs and high ideals went one by one… Until luxury claimed her – on its own terms. Hester’s journey is only thus hinted at but she is now living in a fine appartement maintained by her wealthy boyfriend, the presumably married, and certainly much older, Charles G. Wheeler of Wall Street (J. Barney Sherry). She has other friends with names such as Kitty (Ethel Duray) and Speed (Charles Craig) and life is one long, well-dressed, well-watered, party with jazz music on tap and plenty of joie de vivre. Hester has a Rolls from Charles but now wants a $22,000 fur coat from her sugar financier, and she’ll get it too by making him have to out-compete friend Speed’s generosity.

 

The wages of sin is death. If sin has any wages, some of us are going to collect a lot of back pay!

On a weekend away, she asks to get dropped off in the old town and, spotting Jerry, reconnects with the man who has never stopped loving, or waiting, for her. Jerry is now on $200 a month but, as Hester says, that wouldn’t even cover her mink stole. Hester still loves Jerry but she loves the high life more… The story moves on and, as the parties continue, Hester in platinum gown dancing on a chair, we see Jerry fighting in Europe, and calling out Hester’s name as the bombs fall in No Man’s Land. The film is about to pivot as Hester reads of Jerry’s heroism and his return, injured from the front… everything she knows is about to be challenged by the conflicting realities of love, war and commerce.

I love a good location

 

It's a measured film, slow by modern standards but the narrative doesn’t feel forced from Borzage who is more than willing to let his talented cast pull the viewer along. In this so much rests on the almost ever-present Seena Owen whom I have not seen before but is so good here. I must seek out more of her work.

 

The new score from Andrew Earle Simpson is also very enjoyable, lyrical and rich in tone it provides the sincerest of accompaniments and elevates the whole experience; I’d love to hear it live. Until then, we have this excellent release from Undercrank which in addition to a 4k restoration of The Valley of Silent Men** also includes a video essay on Borzage at Cosmopolitan, Randolph Heart’s company for which he made these films. The sets also have informative Film Facts that run along the intertitles to explain the background to the films.

 

The set is being generally released in February/March 2023 and you can order direct from Undercrank right here.

 

* The Stories of Fannie Hurst, (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004) Fannie Hurst, edited by Susan Koppelman and with and introduction from Grace Paley.

** This film does raise the question of whether Ben Model can see Steve Massa’s house from his roof… if there is a Valley of Silent Men, these two surely live in it, along with Mr Simpson!

Down and out in London and Marseille... The Lady (1925), Daan Van Der Hurk, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day 8

Now we have it, Norma Talmadge’s finest dramatic performance and a story in which she gets through two or three times the amount of work for a normal film and probably even more for Heart of Wetona. Directed by Frank Borzage, it’s tempting to visualise him coaching her through some of the heaviest emotional lifting, which occasionally stretches her technique but she always comes through, sometimes with cheeks soaked in tears, a dewdrop on her retroussé nose, working at a pace with even Gish or Garbo. It’s a remarkable film and it gives her the opportunities she often missed, partly through her own choice.

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

To European audiences, there would have perhaps have been less of a negative reaction but maybe Norma was also typecast to a degree and the idea of her playing a character making a living as a prostitute, no matter how understated, was not the "Norma" her public loved.

Frank Borzage had already worked with Talmadge on the more successful Secrets (1924) and must have earned her trust for this bolder film. Adapted by Frances Marion from Martin Brown’s play of 1923, the narrative is unusually structured with an older Talmadge running The Brixton Bar, a “British” pub in Marseilles, during the Great War before a flashback which explains how she got there. Apparently, the play was the first in mainstream theatre in which the heroine announces she is pregnant, be that as it may, it’s less “announced” in the film and the child appears allowing inferences to be drawn.

Two Tommies wander, one a young private the other a rather drunken sergeant, very very arf’arf’an’arf, who staggers around before squirting the landlady, Polly Pearl (Talmadge) comically in the face. That ain’t no way to treat a lady she exclaims to general mirth from some of the regulars before settling down and talking with the kindly Mr. Wendover (Marc McDermott). Wendover comes from the same village as Polly although the pictures he shares are of Magdalen Bridge and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, rather bigger than a village!

You wouldn’t believe that 24 years ago I was knockin’ them off their seats in a London music hall…

She recounts her history and how she came from England to this moment… the camera pulls across a swarming theatre floor and we meet Polly Pearl, the Girl with the Glad Eye, entertaining the throng with a song and a dance. Watching intently is Leonard St. Aubyns (Wallace MacDonald) a proper swell who, only has eyes for his Pearl as she arranges for a cigar-chomping stage boy to rebuff other visitors.

Soon the fantasy is rudely interrupted by the arrival of St. Aubyns, Sr. (Brandon Hurst, lovable as always) who offers her money to leave his son alone but it’s too late old chap, the couple have already married and, as quick as Senior can say “you’re disinherited” they’re off to Monte Carlo for an extended/belated honeymoon with fellow dancer Fannie Clair (Doris Lloyd) and her man Tom the Bookie (Alf Goulding). All seems fine until Leonard, unlucky at the tables, starts taking an interest in a Countess Adrienne (Paulette Duval) and, in front of her very eyes, Polly’s live crumbles. There are two moments in the film when Talmadge absolutely lets rip and here she attacks Duval’s character, knocking her swiftly to the ground. I’m not saying Borzage encouraged proto method but you don’t often see silent actresses engage in a proper Bank ‘oliday (c.f. your Cockney Music Hall Dictionary).

 

Polly is Friendzoned in the cruelest way...

Down and out on the Riviera, Polly finds herself in a bar run by one Mme. Blanche (Emily Fitzroy), completely unaware that it’s a bordello. It’s at this point that Polly’s baby appears and, out of options she finds friendship and a way to survive in the bar, whether by performing on stage or other means… you can see how some would have been displeased with Our Norma’s predicament.

 

Polly has her standards though and has the boy christened by preacher John Cairns (John Herdman) who, along with his wife (Margaret Seddon, as featured in Just Around the Corner elsewhere in this Giornate). Who turn out to be crucial when St. Aubyns, Sr. arrives with the news that his son has died and that he wants to take possession of his grandson. He has the legal papers to do so and Polly has no option but to hand her baby over to the Cairns. Talmadge is at full stretch during the sequence, misery piled on misery and injustice. She launches herself at St. Aubyns, Sr… echoing the wishes of the entire audience.

The only gig in town?

Polly heads back to London in a forlorn search for her son, at rock bottom she’s shown in blue darkness trying to sell flowers and hoping beyond all reason to chance upon her boy. It’s desperately sad and, Talmadge judges it just right and there’s not a dry eye in our house… We fast forward another two decades and her old friend Mme. Blanche has helped set her up in this bar where she can life out what remains of her wasted life in relative comfort.

 

Wendover urges her to not give up, even as she displays every sign of having done so. But… well, you really have to seek this out and marvel at her final flourish!

 

The Lady thoroughly deserves its reputation and this restoration has balanced the meaning as far as possible given the state of the surviving materials. Now we can all see for ourselves what the reviewers and audiences of the time could see in this remarkable actress and I would echo Jay Weisenberg’s hope that this is just the start of Norma’s wider rehabilitation.

Wit's end?

As he said, Talmadge is also so generous with her co-stars, allowing them to shine alongside her; it was her production company after all but she knew the value of teamwork and of honest artistic expression as well as crowd-pleasing box office fare.

Daan Van Der Hurk accompanied with some gorgeous lines and the full measure of Talmadge’s ambitions here. This was delicately nuanced playing that, just like the star, never dropped into melodrama or over-expression. Wonderful stuff that, again, I really wish I could have been there to see live! Next year Pordenone, I’ll be Covid free and ready to buy round after round of Aperol Spritz… just you wait!

Talmadge’s career dénouement has long been a puzzle with legend having Constance reminding her that Ma’s trust funds meant that they didn’t need to work again and Norma saying to fans, "Get away, dears. I don't need you anymore and you don't need me." as quoted by both Anthony Slide and Denise Lowe. Jay suggests the words of her second husband George Jessel in his book Elegy in Manhattan (1961, after Norma’s passing), offer a clue with his poem, told from her point of view explaining that she’d never been a stage actress, only a silent one, and it was just too late to learn another craft. She’d done enough and now it was time to just live.

 

Norma Talmadge

 

Brock and Bologna: Paradiso… 7th Heaven (1927), with Timothy Brock, Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival 2018

If Mary and Ernst lifted had us on our feet in the Piazza then Janet, Charles and Frank took us off the ground in the stunning setting of the eighteenth-century Teatro Comunale. Rain had stopped playing on the Wednesday and the whole shebang shifted to the orchestra’s home to sensational effect.

You couldn’t find a grander venue for a film, the acoustics were perfect for Timothy Brock’s outstanding score – soaring, heartfelt, powerful and emotionally-aligned; this was a mighty song for the two humans on screen, locked in their story of perfect love… The picture itself was a new digital restoration funded by 20th Cebtury Fox, based on a nitrate print from the 1927 negative made in 1930... this was its European premier.

Lights down and the focus is immediately on Janet Gaynor’s amazing febrility, her delicate face anguished and alive with the interminable terror of Diane’s life crushed by the ferocious disdain of her alcoholic sister Nana (Gladys Brockwell). The New York Herald Tribune noted at the time that Gaynor could “…combine ingénue sweetness with a certain suggestion of wideawake vivacity; to mix facial lyricism with a credible trace of earthiness.” There is no doubt in her presentation nor in Brockwell’s for that matter; Nana is in Hell and even her sister - especially her sister – must join her. She beats her senseless with a whip and forces her to forage for every drop of absinth.

There are further depths but only literally, as we find the ludicrously dashing Charles Farrell as Chico the cleaner: he is by his own mantra, a “remarkable man” and one, who whilst he works in the sewer is always looking up and dreaming of the gutter… and beyond.

Things getting out of hand...

A visit from their well-off Aunt Valentine (Jessie Haslett) and Uncle George (Brandon Hurst) offers the women some hope but Diane has just enough strength to resist her sister’s attempts to make her lie about their virtuosity. She is violently cast down for this and is in the process of being throttled in the gutter when Chico’s hand reaches out of the drains to lift Nana high above a manhole – there’s a superb overhead shot of her struggling against his might.

Chico has to lift Diane up – there is almost no fight left in her. When her sister is arrested and tries to drag Diane with her, he intervenes again telling the police that Diane is his wife. This lie needs to be substantiated and so Chico takes Diane up the stairway to the seventh floor – the arrangement is meant to be temporary, only until the Police are satisfied that their relationship is real. There’s a lovely light touch in this film and Diane’s panic at seeing the single bed in Chico’s room is played out with comedic concern until she sees her gallant room-mate set out to sleep on the floor.

But things don’t end there, and Diane grows on Chico in spite of her wayward hairdressing skills. Farrell towers over Gaynor but there’s a real gentility and respect in their physical relationship. What was a marriage for convenience soon becomes something more – Chico and Diane are Heaven together. There’s faith in the film but it isn’t necessarily derived from organised religion. Diane and Chico’s love is based on their faith in each other and they remain true to themselves. Even their marriage is a home-made affair: no need for a priest when they are sure of love.

War is declared… and the real tests are to come as Chico heads off to the front. He gives Diane one of two religious medals handed to him by a priest but, again, these symbols will prove to be more about their own devotion. They promise to hold the necklaces every day at 11 and to “be” with the other – to connect no matter what the distance and to find their personal heaven.

This is something of a repeated theme for Borzage and you find it even with his early films such as Pride of Palomar. I don’t know if he believed in the “Beau Dieu” but he was sure of love alright. As are we all, at the end of the day, it is all you need. Even after death… the war will be long and with so many tragedies around them can Diane and Chico’s state of grace possibly be maintained? Please see this film and find out.

Mr Brock’s score simply shone, radiating with emotional force out from the orchestra pit filling the Teatro Comunale’s baroque walls and stalls with a magical mix of cinematic fantasias: a timeless mix of cinematic symphonies perfectly moulded around this most emotionally-engaging film.

Rich brass lifted our hearts as strings combined with the wind section in depicting the everyday drudgery and threat of Diane’s struggles. This was classical film composition of the highest order with far more subtle give and take than most modern thunderation… Brock knows what he’s dealing with and is as carefully delicate with his Gaynor as he is playful with Farrell: he underscores their love story and pricks our tear ducts as they are united and re-united. An enigma variation of unresolved, beautiful lines, that converge more than once in joyous crescendo. The violence from Nana and then the War is conveyed equally well – with stark atonal clashes, hope-less clarinet and weary strings… we share in musically-living every moment. And, after Ares finally comes Diana and a simply lovely recurring theme for our couple that all but breaks my cynical old heart…

A few days earlier we’d walked past the Teatro Comunale and dearly wished we could see a concert there; well, we did and it was indeed something to write home about!

Bravo Timothy Brock, Teatro Comunale di Bologna Orchestra and Borzage and his players. 7^th Heaven is one of the greatest love stories in silent film and tonight we were all indeed high in the air, past Cloud 9 and in Heaven no. 7 with Chico, Diane and a full house of silent dreamers. Grazzie Mille!

 

Kickstarted… The Pride of Palomar (1922)

Crowdfunding has played an increasing role in securing the future and wider-distribution of silent films. It is indeed the internet done properly with like-minded people connected to projects that match with their specific interests just so long as the target group is big enough and the rights holders are pre-disposed.

This project, the clean up and release an early Frank Borzage film, The Pride of Palomar, was eventually able to also “rescue” a second film, Back Pay (1922) and to support an excellent pdf document on the director, Frank Borzage - A Dossier as well as a smaller document featuring contemporary details and much else on the main film.

I am very glad that I supported True Film’s project and impressed with how Patrick McInerney, John Heath and Patrick Ford Bowerin realised their objectives and then some more. Gentlemen, well done!

Crowdfunding?

These works may not feature the Frank Borzage who directed some glorious late period silents but they still show an interesting film-maker honing the vision and subtle emotional flavours he would display in Lazybones, The River and Seventh Heaven. Back in 2006 Slant magazine ran a career appraisal which mentioned “…embarrassments” in Borzage's career giving specific mention to “…a shameful anti-Japanese drama for William Randolph Hearst (The Pride of Palomar) …” but, whilst the racism is not comfortable (lazy Mexicans, scheming Japanese…) it’s not enough to damn the entire work 90 years on and Palomar is a fun film to watch with some lovely emotional peaks and enough narrative edge to leave you aching for the final resolution.

As Molly Haskell notes in her dossier essay, Borzage Soulmates, the director often features “…lovers who cannot be separated by distance or time…” and, whilst this is true of our two leading characters Don Mike Farrell (Forrest Stanley) and Kay Parker (see-saw, Marjorie Daw) – who are mostly blocked by family interests and the various arts of The Deal – it’s also the case with Don Mike and his father, Don Miguel (Joseph J. Dowling) who dies in mourning after hearing that his heroic son has been killed in the Great War.

There’s a terrific sequence when Don Miguel goes into the old mission at San Luis Rey to pray for his loss, he is connected to his son through his faith just as much as his housekeeper who believes that the still flaming lamp in his room, lit by his mother, shows he still lives.

Don Miguel in mourning

Indeed, young Mike is very much alive, a tragedy for father and son, and the film is as much about his saving the family honour as finding the love of his life… rights must be wronged and the Spanish-Irish Farrells must recover their ground to overcome both Yankee corporate manoeuvres and opportunist land-gabbing from Japanese property investors… specifically, and this is the difficult bit, Warner Oland in heavy make-up as Fuji Okada: a clumsy stereotype of the yellow peril.

“Land deals with Japs are not very popular in California…”

Okada’s business is buying up Californian land for “Japanese colonization” and he relies on the “shiftlessness” and “short sightedness” of the fun-loving but commercially incompetent Latinos… living la vida loca without managing cash-flow or sustainable business strategies. It is a bit rich but at least we have a baddie and injustice to be prevented.

Okada is travelling by train along with Kay Parker and her father John (Alfred Allen) who is going to foreclose on the mortgage on the Farrell’s El Palomar ranch, which the family has seemingly failed to manage. A young army officer joins them, instantly charming young Kay with his impressive character and firm jaw… he is, of course, Don Miguel “Mike” Farrell.

Travelling in style... Forrest Stanley, Alfred Allen, Warner Oland and Marjorie Daw

The two talk on the train and it’s only when he departs that she realises who he is and how he will be affected by her father’s business aims. A war moratorium means that Mike will now have twelve months to raise the $300,000 needed to settle the mortgage his father was forced to take. It’s a tough task but he soon finds that Loustalot, an ill-shaved local rancher (bad moustache) not only owed his dad over $100,000 but continues to graze his cattle on Farrell land. He’s a tricky customer backed by Parker and even more so by – boo! – Okada.

There’s also an irrigation project under construction which would, interestingly, turn the land into a bit of a goldmine  (worth $5 million!) if only Farrell could afford to keep it… so close yet so far from redemption. There’s also a rather splendid racehorse called Panchito that might, if I were you, be worth a few bob in the Kentucky Derby…

Now, I think you’ll be in little doubt how all of this will develop but its skilfully wrought by director, cast and crew. As Patrick Ford Bowering says in his essay The Path to the Summit, Palomar “demands to be seen” serving as “an important stylistic link for Borzage, with hints and treats not seen in Borzage’s prior feature films, but would appear again in his later work.” with the director’s “romanticized and gorgeous approach” in evidence, even amidst the stranger moments of the film. Back to those stunning visual set-pieces and an almost magical realist approach… life, death, balancing of the books, love and honour.

An almost mystical return...

I especially liked the repeated shots of the line of trees near the opening to the ranch; characters come and go through this tunnel as though to another world. When Mike walks back home for the first time, Kay waits for him behind a tree and as his faithful pet dog runs to greet him, the light is lovely and love is, indeed, in the air. Borzage stages some great set-piece action scenes, the pursuit of Loustalot is across stunning valley views and the horse racing scenes are genuinely exciting. It is a satisfying and well-made film.

Yes Don dresses up in disguise as a Mexican slobby gambler and he is wounded by a Chinese man with a grudge (they’re all in together these "orientals"…) and his house servant Pablo (Tote Du Crow) gets caught dozing a few times, but there are far more loyal and decent people all round than baddies. Mike even has a childhood sweetheart Anita Supvelda (Carmen Arselle) who Kay thinks will be his wife… Most importantly, the "Mexicans" win and the Gringo’s have to respect them.

I hope there are plans for The Pride of Palomar's wider release - I will try find out! I look forward to more such projects, would it be too much to ask if the Norma Talmadge/Borzage collaborations could be next? Maybe it’s time to get more involved - we're ready to help in any way we can silent compadres.

7th Heaven (1927), with KT Tunstall, Mara Carlyle and Max de Wardener, BFI

Oh this was a sheer delight and one for the whole family.

Plaid’s Not For Threes is amongst my favourite electronica and is a genre-stretching triumph featuring a giddy diversity of sound humanised by the smooth yearning tones of Mara Carlyle. Ms C has gone on to a solo career of impeccable uneasy listening that includes virtuoso saw playing. Tonight she lined up with composer Max de Wardener known for breaking ground on film scores and, more surprisingly, for some at least, KT Tunstall.

KT has long been admired in our house and my daughter made the 300 mile round trip from Bristol just to hear her play this most curious of challenges. When Beth first saw Ms Tunstall she had to sit on the bar of the Junction in Cambridge to see her over the grown-ups’ heads, now she was in Row C with a glass of wine and a clear view above the other adults.

Oscar hattrick heroine Janet Gaynor

For all her pop pedigree, Tunstall is first and foremost a performer and she has the soul as well as the technical ability to keep pace with Max, Mara and, of course, Frank. This was uplifting music combined with a film that still proves irresistibly moving… the audience didn’t stand a chance: all cool was removed by an irresistible combination of Janet’s eyes, Charles’ smile and an exuberant score that whilst centre stage always remained a friend to their performance.

7th Heaven is a companion piece to Murnau’s perfect Sunrise, a mere third of star Janet Gaynor’s Best Actress Oscar (awarded for both films plus Street Angel (1928)), and is tonally similar – Frank and Friedrich they knew. As with Mara’s first solo album, it is The Lovely…

Heaven on the 7th floor

Plundering my daughter’s post-match thoughts… the film is seemingly religious with a continued theme of Heaven and Hell. The “remarkable” man Chico (the ludicrously dashing Charles Farrell) works down in the depths, in the city’s hellish sewers but he always “looks up” and indeed lives at the very top of a tall tenement from which he can stroll out across the roofs of Paris, never looking downwards.

Across the street, Diane (Janet Gaynor, her hair liberated from Sunrise’s dodgy wig…) is beaten down by her alcoholic sister Nana (Gladys Brockwell) and forced to forage in order to supply her with absinthe (we’ve all been there). Redemption is possible from their well-off Aunt Valentine (Jessie Haslett) and Uncle George (Brandon Hurst) but Diane has just enough strength to resist her sister’s attempts to make her lie about their virtuosity.

Sisters, sisters...

She is violently cast down for this and is in the process of being throttled in the gutter when Chico’s hand reaches out of the drains to lift Nana high above a manhole – there’s a superb overhead shot of her struggling against his might.

Chico has to lift Diane up – there is almost no fight left in her. When her sister is arrested and tries to drag Diane with her, he intervenes again telling the police that Diane is his wife.

This lie needs to be substantiated and so Chico takes Diane up the stairway to his heaven (sorry) – the arrangement is meant to be temporary, only until the Police are satisfied that their relationship is real. There’s a lovely light touch in this film and Diane’s panic at seeing the single bed in Chico’s room is played out with comedic concern until she sees her gallant room-mate set out to sleep on the floor.

I'm not sure that Mrs Joyce could cope with watching Charles Farrell in The River...

But things don’t end there and Diane grows on Chico in spite of her wayward hairdressing skills. Farrell towers over Gaynor but there’s a real gentility and respect in their physical relationship. What was a marriage for convenience soon becomes something more – Chico and Diane are Heaven together.

There’s faith in the film but it isn’t necessarily derived from organised religion. Diane and Chico’s love is based on their faith in each other and they remain true to themselves. Even their marriage is a home-made affair: no need for a priest when they are sure of love.

War is declared… and the real tests are to come as Chico heads off to the front. He gives Diane one of two rosaries handed to him by a priest but, again, these religious symbols will prove to be more about their own devotion. They promise to hold the necklaces every day at 11 and to “be” with the other – to connect no matter what the distance and to find their personal heaven.

But the war will be long and with so many tragedies around them how can Diane and Chico’s state of grace possibly be maintained…

The score was unusual for a silent film and occasionally I found myself watching the band as well as the film how can you not when there’s so much going on? Mara played ukulele, piano and, of course a saw whilst Max alternated between piano, bass and electronics, sitting on the floor twiddling with unseen buttons and dials. Liam Byrne extracted the unexpected from a viola da gamba and also the Lirone (something like a Celtic cello possessing a mournful vitality) whilst drummer Alex Thomas gave a dynamic lesson in percussive versatility.

Now, songs are controversial in the Silent Village but here they were deployed with intelligence and restraint – lyrics wound carefully around the emotional narrative, enhancing and not shouting down the visual expression; always at pains to reflect and not foreshadow. The combination of voices was also pitch perfect in every sense with both singers working generously together throughout.

Real craft went into this music and it was very much the slave to Borzage’s rhythms… from the quite understated opening instrumental sections to the martial beat of the battle and the overwhelming swells of the closing sequence.

Now, where have we seen this sort of thing recently...?

The score was a specially-commissioned as part of the BFI’s Love season which continues through December and beyond – further details are on their website.

Hopefully this joyous combination will find its way onto digital media at some point – my daughter’s not going to be the only one buying it! Thanks KT, MC, MdW and FB.

And a personal PS, my daughter’s musical heroine turned out to be every bit as genuine and gracious as she has always seemed.

Further reading on the band:

Mara Carlyle

KT Tunstall

Max de Wardener

Liam Byrne

Alex Thomas