Colleen can dance… Twinkletoes (1926), Grapevine Blu-ray

I heard it through the grapevine, how much longer can you be mine…? is a song Marvin Gaye sang and he could indeed have been addressing the transient nature of physical media as well as his love for Tammi Tyrell. Grapevine video, who for the last few decades have been issuing public domain silent films in various degrees of quality, most unrestored, has decided to cease its current approach. Founder Jack Hardy retiring, his colleague Jason, will continue the brand as the home for Kickstarter transfers and restorations whilst running the current stock down - the site still seems fully functional, but this is no time to dither if they have something you want!

 

Whilst this is not the greatest of news for the seeker of rare silent film grooves, and it did precipitate a rush to obtain some of the finite stock on their site, it does leave us with another route to market for higher quality transfers from archive film along with those offered by Ben Model, Ed Laruso and Red Mill Films. This model has also already been running at Grapevine and the peak Colleen Moore vehicle, Twinkletoes (1926), was one of those I backed, always keen for, erm, more Moore.

 

Coming to any film entitled Twinkletoes did give me pause, the title alone red-flagging what sounds like a feel-good rags to riches story based on a happy-go-lucky dancer with natural-born talent? Well… think again you cynical old fool, keep your post-post-modern toy-comedies and post-nuclear doom-dramas, this film is the kind of small-world drama that Greta Gerwig would love albeit one with a linear narrative that might confuse Christopher Nolan… it is filmed on celluloid though mate.

 

Colleen Moore and Tully Marshall

The superpower here is, of course Colleen Moore and time after time she rises above the source material to impress the viewer with her gleeful zest and supernatural energies. Despite the twee title, Twinkletoes is actually more at the dramatic end of her films, sure there are playful street fights, high hopes and winsome stainless steel melting smiles, but there’s also infidelity, violent confrontations with sad drunken competitors, crime, betrayal and dark motivations.

 

Perhaps more than anyone else since young Pickford does Moore represent everywoman in her twenties’ heyday with an incredible audience connection, created by her sharp-eyed expression, physical dynamism and looks that whilst they lack the style and sexuality of those other bob-wearers Clara and Louise, can be easily as pretty as the part demands. Colleen’s ordinary in an extraordinary way and as tough as the audience dream of being too. An avatar of ambition and affection rivalled by few others.

 

Perhaps the most shocking thing here is seeing Moor on point, I wasn’t aware of her dance background and that moment speaks not so much of showbusiness as ten thousand hours of pain and dedication; a tailor-made woman determined almost beyond reason to dance in those grey shoes, to stardom on stage or on screen. A multi-tasking master.

 

Colleen Moore on point and possibly wearing red ballet shoes.

Directed by Charles Brabin based on Thomas Burke’s novel Twinkletoes: A Tale of the Limehouse (1918). This was Burke’s first publishing success at the time and another of his tales from the collection, “The ‘Chink’ and the Child” (ow, apologies) had already formed the basis, of course it had, of DW Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919). Burke was born in Clapham and having lost his father when just a baby, had lived in Poplar with his uncle and attended a home for middle-class boys who were “respectably descended but without adequate means to their support…” He was attacked by the Times Literary Supplement as a “blatant agitator” but gained a reputation as “the laureate of London’s Chinatown”.

 

Brabin’s sets certainly convey the cramped poverty of the East End 5,000 miles away and the opening brings most of the central characters together in one fluid sequence… we find bare-knuckle star Chuck Lightfoot (Kenneth Harlan) striding through Limehouse taking all the congratulations for his latest victory. None of this is good enough for his dipsomaniacal wife Cissie (Gladys Brockwell) and a conflagration gradually escalates watched from above by Dad Minasi (Tully Marshall) as he cleans windows above. As the police arrive to break things up, young Twink (Moore) distracts everyone with an impromptu jig… and as the crowd dissipates, she derides both Chuck and Cissie for their bad behaviour, the former surprisingly willing to listen to the lass.

 

Twink and her father return home and there’s much affection between the two with the young woman aiming to take after her mother who had been a great dancer and the original “Twinkletoes” … a poster outside still stands testimony to her popularity, even as one of the locals, doubts his young friend can be that dancer. It’s Colleen Moore you fool, of course she can.

 

Best of friends, Colleen and Kenneth Harlan

Luckily the film doesn’t focus on the inevitability of "Twinkletoes Two" but her love triangle with Chuck and his no-good wife, Cissie. This is quite a daring course for a film of this time and makes for a much more interesting drama especially as we see the lovesick boxer, removed of his physical prowess by his compromised marriage and the tenderness of his feelings for Twink; it’s an interesting role for the big lunk and he excels with what are no doubt big old Irish eyes.

 

Cissie herself is a real piece of work, another juicy role, and when she can’t beat Twinks in a fist fight or battle of wills – let alone a dance off – she is cunning and reports the dancer’s father to the police. No one likes a grass Cissie but I guess you’re not that keen on yourself either… Dad has, of course, been keeping his criminal side-lines away from Twinks as he tries to wrap up his obligations; now it’s all in danger of collapsing in on him and his pure-hearted daughter.

 

Cue the music, start the dance!

 

OK, this is hardly Pabst or Sjostrom but it is a very well-directed film that builds up a decent head of suspense and dramatic tension, from the bit set piece riot at the start to Twink’s stage triumph and the dark betrayals of Cissie. Produced by her husband John McCormick and distributed through Moore's resident studio First National, it shows her dramatic chops which they rotated with comedy fare like Why Be Good? She had the range and reminds me a little of a silent Anna Kendrick, quirky but interesting and with additional talents; sure, Anna can sing though but I doubt she can do ballet…

  

The Grapevine Blu-ray which is a transfer from 16mm materials in decent if not full restoration clarity. We should be grateful we have it at all though, these are tough times for content and there’s still a certain satisfaction in collating your own home library; you can’t take it with you but you can rewatch it and, should the family agree, take it with you in an outsized coffin buried at the base of a modest garden pyramid… 

Anyway, if you want to grab a copy it's available on their website here.

More please… Oliver Twist (1922), with John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

 

8 Great reels that make you ask for more. Will Hays says Jackie Coogan Films are the sort the World needs…

Print Advert - Wyoming County Times, 20^th December 1923

Introducing the screening of four films from his personal collection Christopher Bird delighted us with an evening of films connected with Charles Dickins and, to a lesser extent Lon Chaney.

First was Mrs Lirriper’s Lodgers (1912), an almost complete film previously considered lost and rescued by Chris from a pile of rubbish at the end of a antique collector’s garden. Painstakingly restored with over 400 manual fixes, the film, based on a story from Dickens, was a delight, telling a moral tale in limited time with the constant thought in our heads that this very nearly didn’t exist but for a collector’s endless curiosity.

Next up were three short 35mm films exchanged for a reassuringly expensive pint of lager – we all have our price and clearly the seller was happy to offload these potentially explosive nitrate curios. Included was a precious glimpse of a young Lon Chaney, looking dashing in one of the few elements of his early films still extant, this from Tangled Hearts (1916). Back to the Dicken’s theme and another previously lost film, Oliver Twisted (1918) starring Fred Evans, aka Pimple, as an actor playing Bill Sykes who seems to stagger over the fourth wall as he feels his way through an approximation of the story from our main feature clutching a wooden club and a three-legged toy dog. To watch Fred at work is to marvel at the consistency of British humour, always daft, always knowing.

Last of the shorts was Hello Hollywood (1927) a fascinating look behind the camera at eth sprawling estates and backlots of the major studios. Lon Chaney was mentioned in one intertitle and we also saw the set of Paris used in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

You've got to pick a pocket or two...

Containing roughly equal parts Dickens and Chaney was the main feature, Oliver Twist (1922) which was shown from a 16mm print again from Chris’ collection. This is another lost and found which on rediscovery in Yugoslavia in 1973, had to have intertitles inserted with help from star Jackie Coogan and producer Sol Lesser for Blackhawk Films restoration. The film is close to complete, missing perhaps a reel out to the original eight, but making total narrative sense and more.

Directed by Frank Lloyd, the film makes light of the complexity of Dickens’ original work – some 370 pages and 170,000 words, rather more than you need for a film. That said, like so many early films, it was based on a story that most people knew very well as the Pimple short further proves, including Nancy’s horrific demise – so fearful that Pimple has to change actress twice.

This feature was made just before Lon Chaney really hit the big time but, as with every one of his films that I’ve seen, he is submerged in character and all you see is Fagin, not a man heavily made up and radically adjusting his body shape to present the image of an older man, twisted by poverty and the evil that men do in picking a pocket or two. It’s fascinating how so many of the characters are recognisable in look and feel even at this early stage but Fagin is not as semitic as the Ron Moody portrayal.

The well meaning and well-to-do see the good in the boy... mostly.

This is not a starring role for Lon though, that privilege goes to eight-year old Jackie Coogan who had already made four features since his debut in The Kid and was looking good on it. It’s rare to find a child actor this accomplished but this is even more striking given the vintage. His expression is flexible and controlled and he knows how to hold himself even when there’s no dialogue or action directly involving him. He too is completely submerged in his role and is a very impressive Twist… not without an instinctive humour that places him apart from the more obviously terrorised Mark Lester! This is a tough role for a junior.

Elsewhere there is sterling work in bringing life to Dickens’ – genuinely iconic – cast of characters from the cheeky tea-leaf The Artful Dodger (Edouard Trebaol), the corpulent Mr. Bumble (James A. Marcus) to the battered but brave Nancy (Gladys Brockwell) and her loathsome man Sikes (George Siegmann); ultimately brought down by his own fears… Dickens was writing well before Freud but very few of his characters can escape from conditioning and context.

On the other side of the tracks there are a series of well-to-do saviours including the Maylie family with Rose (Esther Ralston) and a Mr Brownlow – no, not that one – all seeing the good in Oliver even when fate and his companions sometimes work against his fortune and character.

Jackie Coogan and Esther Ralston on the right

Talking of Mr Brownlow, our version, Kevin, interviewed Jackie Coogan extensively for his Hollywood series and also used the rushes of the full meeting for Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000), on which Christopher Bird worked as Editor. Two degrees of Kevin Brownlow and beyond. Coogan was very impressed with Chaney’s contribution in spire of his father’s warnings that the elder actor would try and steal scenes… well, good luck to anyone trying to distract from young Jackie and I reckon Lon did a great job.

 

John Sweeney put in a marathon shift and accompanied the whole programme with the seemingly endless variation of light and tone he has at his finger tips. In spite of the circumstances, Oliver remains good whilst so many around him are made bad through situation and malice, John sort out the enduring truths of Dicken’s social morality and gave them full voice as we watched the shadows on screen. Classic and classy all round.

 

Another Bioscope super show and with tea and Tunnocks tea cakes, who could ask for anything more?

Back home… Penrod and Sam (1923) with Stephen Horne, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 39

 

Every October we travel in time and space to Pordenone in north-western Italy for a week of silent film, socialising and the odd few hours of sleep. In these Covid-curtailed times we’re still transported digitally and emotionally if not physically by the streaming of an event many call home, as Le Giornate Cinema Muto goes online-only. It’s the best we could hope for as we hope for the best… for cinema and for culture.

 

Festival director Jay Weissberg captured the moment as he introduced a collection of travelogues, taking us from monochrome New York to silent London, via tinted Ostend and eternal Egypt, a magical carpet ride of spaces and people that are recognisably the same as those we know. He quoted from a Michel Robida article: “A journey in one’s armchair – a journey of the mind – is the nicest kind of journey, because it’s what we want it to be, because there are no obstacles, and all our dreams are granted.”*

 

There’s certainly something dreamlike about the Svenska Biografteatern footage of New York from 1911 – used in August Blom’s Danish film, Atlantis (1913) amongst others – which captures the attitude of the locals proudly being photographed in front of impossibly tall buildings, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, the Flatiron Building on 5^th Avenue and Broadway… It’s a glimpse of the future world as viewed by our great grandparents – railways over head and below, constant motion as motor cars vie with horse-drawn carriages and electric trams, with one family standing out as they’re chauffeured behind the ghost camera, that of Antoinette Lochowicz, identifiable via its number plate.

 

Accompaniment for our tour was provided by Mexico’s José María Serralde Ruiz, whose well-travelled improvisations perfectly matched our feelings of awe and longing, trapped, as surely now as the moment when the light first struck the nitrate elements of the time.

 

Tonight’s main feature was the recently restored Penrod and Sam (1923), the second of the film adaptations of Booth Tarkington’s novels about young Penrod Schofield as he grows up in a small town that is an idealised mid-western America before the Great War. Tarkington wrote three books on Penrod, and later The Magnificent Ambersons, and there are public domain audiobooks of his trilogy if you’d like to hear more. The story as seen through the film, is something of an updated Tom Sawyer, with plenty of underlying adult themes if you look hard enough.

Sam (Joe Butterworth) and Penrod (Ben Alexander)

The opening title cards dedicate the film to “The spirit of Boyhood which always has been and always will be the same… “ and what follows is a superb capturing of childhood concerns from director William Beaudine who brings out some extraordinary performances from his cast of kids and, indeed, their pets – take a bow Cameo aka the noble Duke, Penrod’s dog. Beaudine was adept at working with youth and went on to direct Mary Pickford’s child-like fable Sparrows (1926) as well as a talkie remake of this film in 1931 and many more including Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) which may or may not be as childish as it sounds.

 

Right here in 1923, he captured the life of a pre-teen as accurately as the Swedes shot those New York streets with be-freckled Ben Alexander (11 and a ½) coached and edited to a very impressive performance as the pugnacious Penfold. Penfold, together with his best mate Sam Williams (Joe Butterworth), lead a gang of boys dedicated to re-enacting battles based on very-specific childish logic and they also have a boys-only members club called the In-Or-In Lodge, which has a strict no-girls allowed policy – not even for Majorie Jones, Penfold’s “most beautiful girl in the world” – and a rigorous ’nishiashun ceremony.

Penfold is immediately shown to be, almost literally, at war with big Roddy Bitts (Buddy Messinger) the son of the richest man in town, and the story starts with light-hearted run ins between Roddy’s rebels and Penfold’s “Federal” forces. The rules of engagement are largely non-contact and wooden swordfights can only be won by first contact with the opponent’s clothing.

Boy's club

Interestingly Roddy’s most valiant soldiers are his “colors”, two black brothers Verman (Joe McCray) and the younger Herman (Gene Jackson) who are both treated as equals in the gangs even though they look noticeably poorer. Again, both lads give excellent performances and their position in the film feels so much more natural than other black performers in many other productions of the time.

 

Herman gets captured by Penrod and Sam and hidden in Penrod’s elder sister’s wardrobe until further notice. War is Hell.

 

We soon get to meet that sister, Margaret, (Mary Philbin, who’s next film was a staring one, in Erich von Stroheim’s Merry-Go-Round) as well as the parents, Dad (the super Rockcliffe Fellowes) and Mom (Gladys Brockwell, possibly Brooklyn’s eye-roll champion of 1915…) and the family dynamic unfolds. Dad’s about business, his evening cigar and the newspaper whilst Mom looks after the housework not covered by their black housemaid and Margaret is in love with Robert Williams (Gareth Hughes), Sam’s elder brother.

Ideal American Family

Herman’s escape from his wardrobe cell, hidden under one of Margaret’s dresses is typical of the tone of the film’s mostly slapstick first half but things do take a darker turn as the boys themselves take things too far in victimising their underserving enemies, bookish Georgie Bassett (Newton Hall), whilst their deserving ones, Robby, backed up by Dad (William V. Mong), up the ante by levelling false accusations and getting Penrod a “good lashing” from his father’s belt.

 

There’s a growing dislike between Penrod and Robby that gets more intense and, as they’re destined to become grown-up rivals like their fathers, there’s no particular happy ending other than the wealthiest having the fewest real friends. Even Mr Burns has Smithers…

Mary Philbin and Gladys Brockwell

Stephen Horne’s accompaniment played deeply on the narrative and emotional vectors as he presented slapstick lines at helter-skelter pace, aiming, as he said in the after screening discussion, “… to create the feeling that it was fun but… slightly out of control and that at some point (the fun) would come to an abrupt halt!” It was the kind of sure-fingered and thematically premeditated improvisation we’ve come to expect from Mr Horne and he rounded off the viewing experience with rich dashes of humour and a melodic flourish.

 

Also in the discussion, Katherine Fusco, associate professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, observed that the boys are imitating the adults and also instructing them as it is only through remembering how it felt to be a boy that Penrod’s father is able to help his son whereas Robbie’s Dad is millions of dollars away from being able to empathise. This has echoes today but it's fascinating to see how US writers and film makers have always been suspicious of capital wealth – not so much as socialists - far from it - but in the way that money brings conflicted priorities that, if not addressed after salutary lessons are learned, will bring nothing but bad fortune to you and those you are supposed to love.

Celebrating the spirit of '76!

So, Penrod and Sam was far from child’s play (sorry) and is a typical Pordenone gem, one that was very well polished by this Library of Congress restoration!

 

More to come for the next week and full details are on the festival website. The films are available to view for 24 hours so you can still catch the show if you’re quick.

 

* Images de Paris. Girouettes. Les rêves tournent au gré des vents, La Presse, 22^nd October 1934

Duke waits to hear his master's voice...

Pordenone 

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!