These are a few of my favourite things… 10 from 2022

 

And so this is Christmas and what have we done...? Turns out quite a lot more than in the Year of Our Covid, 2021 but still not as much as we’d like to have done… in this game you take what you can get though and savour each experience as much as you can. Silent film doesn’t throw itself at you like an overeager superhero flick desperate to win back it’s $200 million budget, oh my no, you have to make an effort and all of that is rewarded with the shocks and joys of unremembered humanity and artistic enterprise. All of which is a Boxing Day hungover way of saying; hey Ma, will you look at these apples (and no, I don’t really know what that means)!

Woman of the Year: Dora Brandes (1916)/Poor Jenny (1912) with Stephen Horne, BFI Asta Nielsen Season

She acts, that’s the thing… she does not just pose before the camera… She impersonates a character, she makes it live and have meaning, a hundred meanings… New York Times, 1921

Who could have foreseen that Asta Nielsen would be 2022’s MVP – someway ahead of Liz Truss in terms of relevance, attainment and talent – but Pamela Hutchinson and the BFI set out one of the finest seasons of silent treasures for many a year with screenings of rare Nielsen grooves propelling us into the year with a spring in our step and a growing appreciation of this most important actor. Sure, I’d seen Asta’s before but mostly in her greatest hits, Hamlet (thrice), Joyless Street (twice), Afgrunden (so many times…) but it was a real connoisseur’s delight to be able to dig deeper into a body of work that is very rarely screened in this breadth and depth.

Asta Nielsen

As an example of Die Asta’s almost unparalleled range I’ve picked these two with accompaniment from Stephen Horne who has a way with Silent Sirens (and a CD to prove it, available here if you are shameless and unhip enough to have not bought a copy!). Poor Jenny (1912) was from the early days of the Asta series, written and directed with partner Urban Gad who the actress insisted at the time came with her to Germany to carry on the work begun with Afgrunden. It’s a typical rags-to-riches-back-to-rags again narrative but, as she joked, this was more than enough to feed her dramatic energy.

Dora Brandes, directed by Magnus Stifter, following her break with Gad, plays with the already well-worn Star is Born tropes. Asta playing a successful actress who finds herself having to choose between an older politician and a much younger journalist. Drama ensues… hearts break. As you watch you can begin to fully understand Asta’s ability to express and connect. So often at the start of her films, she’s seen smiling straight to the audience before the action begins, melting hearts and renewing her intimacy with the watchers and unflinching honest look, the only time she’s out of character, or at least the character she’s about to play. As a person she’s a mystery and her pre-show smiles just hint at the complexity to come whilst showing how easily she can draw us in… it only takes a few seconds looking at those huge dark eyes. Queen.

Asta and her infinite variety...

Downfall (1923) with John Sweeney, introduced by Pamela Hutchinson, BFI Asta Nielsen Season

Sorry, but I’m not just having one Asta moment and this was a breath-taking film that showcased the full power of Asta’s performance level whilst also confronting the fact that she was getting older – she commissioned the film aged 41. Watching her character with minimal make-up. looking in horror at her unfamiliar face in the unforgiving mirror before being deadened by her lover’s unyielding humiliations and finally vanishing from the love of her life’s vision… is oddly rewarding. Certainly, she presents one of the most searing portrayals of aged tragedy in silent film and proof, if any were needed, of her ability to transcend melodrama and to give something extra special entirely from within character.

 

Back in Bologna… Foolish Wives (1922), Timothy Brock, Il Cinema Ritrovato 36th Edition

At last, I was back in Italy and it was too hot, there was too much to do and far too much to see: I loved it!! So many highlights, watching the restored Nosferatu with Mr Brock and full orchestra in the Piazza Maggiore,  watching, The Conformist and Singing in the Rain in the same space and then the almost supernatural hit of three hours’ worth of The Beatles in Peter Jackson’s third episode of Get Back, including the full Rooftop Concert: the gear does not get any fab-er than that, a revelation and a stunning twist of the Extended Scouse Universe.

The big silent showcase was this splendid restoration of the first million-dollar movie, as acclaimed the publicity… Spectacularly, Erich von Stroheim delivered on the ROI and Universal had another hit on its hands from the most complex man in most parts of Hollywood whose productions had the skill of DeMille, the scale of Griffith and a dark heart the latter could never explain to himself. This is a slick crime caper movie from before the days when slick crime capers set in this period were all the rage. But Erich is making sure we see the seedier side as well, he and his two “cousins” are charming con artists, but he has a debauched sexuality which makes his character all too difficult to root for and yet we are conditioned to try… even now.

Timothy Brock’s extraordinary new score was performed with vigour by L’Orcestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna which he conducted. His score included Russia themes reflecting the grandiosity on screen and also delicious lines of his own mapping every strange and unusual nuance from von Stroheim’s screen. It felt complete with the film and completed that magical connection between the place, the audience and the film that makes live silent screenings so compelling and which makes this place, almost uniquely, a truly silent city.

 

Les Misèrables (1912) with John Sweeney, Gabriel Thibaudeau and Silvia Mandolini

This was epic in length and was an unexpected joy equalling in its own way, the lengthier silent serial of 1926. Based in four parts totalling 168 minutes in length it was split into two screenings with different accompanists. The first parts, focusing on Jean Valjean and then Fantine, featured John Sweeney’s accompaniment and we were back the next day for Gabriel Thibaudeau’s piano and Silvia Mandolini’s violin as the story shifted onto Fantine’s daughter Cosette.

Recommended for students of French history and film alike; extraordinary clarity of purpose from Albert Capellani who was able to capture so much from the book with a narrative fluidity not often associated with this early period.

 

Evelyn Greeley

Phil-for-Short (1919), with John Sweeney, BFI

This film was introduced by me at the BFI and for a few hours at least, I was an honorary Nasty Woman.

Inspired by a remark made by the grandson of a one-time Yukon bordello owner, there has been an ongoing project to research and revive interest in unsung women filmmakers who broke new ground in the early years of cinema. This film is a deceptively nuanced take on gender roles in the wake of the Great War and increased recognition of women’s roles.

I wouldn’t say that Phil is a nasty woman, but she is a liberated one and just imagine how good it felt to watch her in 1919 newly enfranchised and with a range of choices starting to open up. As played by the energetic Evelyn Greeley, Phil stands out as practical, inventive and a leader; all very male characteristics for the older generation. She has to deal with reality as her aged father is still buried in the myths and legends of his books and, lovely and liberating though he is, she works the farm and is happy to step up to make things happen for herself and the men in her life.

There is now a magnificent new box set from Kino which includes this film and 98 others. It’s out now and is THE Archive Release of the Year – US and Canada can order direct.

  

Mary Johnsson - Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) 

Gunnar Hede's Saga (1923) with Guenter A. Buchwald and Neil Brand, Bonn Silent Film Festival

Have Internet will travel and virtual Bonn was as excellent as usual. As many may know I’m always up for a Saga directed by Mauritz Stiller and based on a book by Selma Lagerlöf and, even though this one is still missing about half an hour, it is a thoroughly entertaining romp through snow, love and madness which features the humanity you’d expect from Selma along with the mastery of locations and character you can rely on from Mauritz. It’s a story about reindeers and redemption (the latter, always a Selma theme) and, how fitting that a film featuring two violin players and the healing power of music, should be accompanied by the Silent Film Supergroup of Guenter A. Buchwald on violin and Neil Brand on piano… I really wish I’d been there to witness this gig in the flesh but the streaming screening will have to do for now and how!

 

Norma Talmadge in The Lady (1925)

The Lady (1925), Daan Van Der Hurk, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming

Oh, outrageous fortune! All set, ALL SET, for my first Giornate since pre-C, and I catch the latest variant a few days before I’m due to head for Venice Airport. So it goes, so it goes and at least we had the streaming version to give us some of the finest films from the full festival. 

Norma Talmadge has always been relatively undervalued in recent times, not afforded the screen time or respect of stella contemporaries Gloria, Mary or Lilian and so I was pleased to see her featured so extensively in this year’s programme and, if I had to pick just the one film to watch t would have been Frank Borzage’s The Lady, a film rated so highly by Talmadge scholars such as Greta de Groat. Norma and Frank did not disappoint and she provides perhaps the most affecting, emotionally powerful performances of her career although not one she wanted to repeat too quickly.

After the mid-teens, 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.”

A great actor but also a smart businesswoman who played the game until, to paraphrase, she no longer needed to.

 

Faces of Children (1925), with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope

2022 we were back home to the Cinema Museum and here was one of the great films of the French silent period, and one accompanied with consistently emotive, compelling improvisation with hints of period classical as well as Meg’s diverse jazz chops, so in tune with Jacques Feyder’s tale of childhood grief. The film was critically-acclaimed yet a commercial failure and for a long time this it only circulated as a two-reel 9.5mm condensed version – available on YouTube and worth watching! – and as Christopher Bird said in his excellent introduction, this encouraged the young Kevin Brownlow to seek out more complete versions. The film was finally restored over a twenty-year period starting with the Cinémathèque royale de Belgique in 1986 and ending with Lobster Films in 2004 but it is still rarely screened which is exactly why we need the Kennington Bioscope more than ever!

 

Face off: Ivan vs Brigitte

Manolescu (1929), with John Sweeney, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming

This was like watching Fantasy Silent Film, a game in which the combination of two of the best strikers in cinema muto score hattrick after hattrick combining in ways that seemed impossible especially to this viewer who had no idea they had ever played together. Manolescu… Ivan “The Cat” Mosjoukine versus Brigitte “The Panther” Helm in a battle for our eyeballs, our attention… our love. Honestly, you could have taken the script for Carry on Cabby and given it to these two and we’d all be collapsed in a pool of utter distraction. You want engagement well here he and she are…

Mr Sweeney was fully aware of all of the above and slotted into musical midfield as the great playmaker he is (that’s enough footie references. Ed.)

 

Up in Mabel’s Room (1926), Günter A. Buchwald & Zerorchestra, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming

Directed by E. Mason Hopper, this perfectly executed farce was based on the play by Wilson Collison and Otto Harbach from 1919, and like every successful comedy of this type it relies on perfectly executed performances and timing, whether from the performers and director or in the editing suite. There’s also some exceptionally pithy title cards courtesy of F. McGrew Willis’ script and Walter Graham’s text… and if a picture paints a thousand words, the expressions on Marie Prevost’s face are a British Library’s worth of inuendo!

Extra spice was added by accompaniment recorded right at the start of this year’s festival at the screening in Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, it had that live energy some of the streaming films don’t always get, although, to be fair this was an ensemble, with the local group Zerorchestra improvising alongside Günter A. Buchwald’s piano and violin. This film was the perfect finale for the streaming version though, setting us up for a physical return in 1923, sorry, 2023!

 

We’re back up and rolling and 2023 I aim to attend as many screenings and festivals as possible, I’m looking at you Hippfest, Slapstick, Europe and even further afield… as for Pordenone, we are long overdue!

Happy Christmas and a let’s have a brilliant 2023!

 

 

Look to the future now, it's only just begun.

Click on the cover to order this set!

Fire and ice… Manolescu (1929), with John Sweeney, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming, Day Seven

We belong to each other, I would never let anyone else have you…

Brigitte Helm stands to the right of the screen, a dark shadow receding behind her on the wall as gradually she lowers her right arm with a fisted hand slowly unclenched as she realisation saps the energy from her body. The game is up, devasted and all alone, she’s out of focus and for the first time, off balance… is this it, is there no way back? Don’t bet on it.

Ivan Mosjoukine’s eye’s well up, the most well-honed tear ducts in all silent film, febrile emotion twitching across his mouth and brow, as truth dawns and resolution nears. How do these people lay emotion so bare that we still feel it after almost a century of artifice and the endless replaying of trope and technique? This story was old even when it was first told but I’m still in bits.

This is Fantasy Silent Film, a game in which the combination of two of the best strikers in cinema muto both score hattrick after hattrick combining in ways that seemed impossible especially to this viewer who had no idea they had ever played together. Manolescu… Ivan “The Cat” Mosjoukine versus Brigitte “The Panther” Helm in a battle for our eyeballs, our attention… our love. Honestly, you could have taken the script for Carry on Cabby and given it to these two and we’d all be collapsed in a pool of utter distraction. You want engagement well here he and she are…

Brigitte Helm

Director Viktor Tourjansky, had previously worked with fellow emigree Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin/ Mosjoukine on Michel Strogoff (1926) and also assisted Abel Gance for Napoléon (1927) and boy does it show. This film shows every late silent period trick in the book, from audacious single take shots of Brigitte and Ivan getting out of a car, walking across through hotel revolving doors and through reception, to mixing positive and negative during a dream sequence and following every movement and expression of the performers with a camera so mobile you could pin a tail on it and call it Rover!

It’s a feast for the eyes and mine are welling up because I wasn’t able to see it on the big screen BUT at least we have the Giornate’s Silent Stream and I’ve no doubt this will get a screening in GB soon enough. In addition to the performers we also get exteriors including the Alps, Paris and Monte Carlo… all beautifully captured by cinematographer Carl Hoffmann, who had some form, including Fritz Lang’s epic Die Nibelungen and Murnau’s Faust.

The story was adapted by Robert Liebmann and inspired by the true story of the Romanian fraudster George Manolescu, a notorious fixture of the Berlin press at the turn of the century and source for three other films. In this version, Manolescu is inspired to raise his criminal game after fleeing his debtors in Paris and meeting a femme most fatale in the form of feline Cleo (Brigitte Helm) on route to Monte Carlo. Cleo is being kept in the manner to which she is accustomed by the plump gangster Jack (Heinrich George). The two meet on a train and share a night’s intimacy after Cleo sneaks into George’s compartment to avoid the police who are on Jack’s trail.

Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin/ Mosjoukine

Needless to say the combination of George/Ivan and Cleo/Brigitte is absolutely electric with the elder actor’s inherent delicacies balanced by the uncanny flexibility of Helm’s physicality. He touches her and she bends her back, forcing that unbelievable profile at an awkward angle against the cabin seat as she tries to avoid him. You sense that he respected his co-stars, just a hunch, because there seems absolute trust on show. How else to explain their ease in creating sexual tension? Fire and ice but (coolest) cat on (cooler) cat!

Cleo always follows the money and dumps George at the station in Monte Carlo before he spots her in the street and finds his way to her hotel room. Jack’s arrival forces him to action especially when the thug pulls a gun and Cleo’s cries alert the police who finally get their man. Jack out of the way, George has only one way to keep his new girl and that’s to steal jewels from the old lady next door in order to provide a viable economic and amorous alternative for Cleo and the two quickly become partners in love and crime. There’s a lovely sequence later on when George’s disguises for his crime-spree to come are lined up like a deck of cards… it’s the romance of Riviera robbery; everybody loves a con in the sun.

The two move on to Paris where Cleo’s an irresistible object to many a moveable man, flaunting her powers in front of George; the two are alike but so different and whilst he can manipulate and emotionally defraud, she cannot help herself or perhaps she is less controlled. She’s not a soulless vamp though as we shall see; these two are, of course, a tragedy waiting to happen.

Sure enough Jack, out of prison, tracks them down and in a face off with George, fractures his skull with a heavy ornament, leaving Cleo shouting murder.

The film changes course… George wakes up in hospital being cared for by nice Nurse Jeanette (Dita Parlo); it’s the calm after the storm and, almost too calm if I’m honest but, and Parlo can hold her own in this company and is the catalyst for a change in the relationship between the two leads. Can these two leopards change their spots?

 

I am only fulfilling my duty as a nurse… (yeah, right sister)

This is a truly exceptional film with a sparkling digital restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung which took over four years to combine as many original materials, in order to reconstruct the film according to the 1929 censorship certificate. All elements were scanned in 4K at L’Immagine Ritrovata as detailed in Luciano Palumbo’s notes on the Giornate site. What a job they did.

 

John Sweeney’s accompaniment wrapped itself around this film like the most luxurious of musical blankets, never strained but not just easy on the ear, as dynamic and quicksilver as the performers and the camerawork, duetting with Helm and Mosjoukine tonally, emotionally and stylistically. Oh to have been in the same room… Maybe not tomorrow but soon.

  

Jack of all trades, master too.

House of cards… La maison du mystère (1923)

I must admit to some trepidation in taking on Flicker Alley’s three-disc collection of this serial – who has the time for the best part of seven hours of serial especially when the British summer is actually happening outside, as we speak!?

But, after a couple of episodes still peaking at the garden, nipping out to clear some weeds and eat salad, I was hooked and it turns out that you can very easily make the time to find out what happens in this tense thriller. Unlike many earlier serials, La maison du mystère (The House of Mystery), isn’t really episodic and plays like the chapters in the book, by Jules Mary, it was based on. It’s effectively one long narrative often picking up directly after the events of the previous episode.

Ivan

As such it holds your attention and you never feel there’s any padding or artificial rounding off to make the stories fit within the format: the film-makers respected their audience and only now can we see their full intent by watching each element back-to-back – there was no box-set gorging in 1923; you had to wait a week at a time!

For a French production this is, of course very Russian with Alexandre Volkoff directing and Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) acting and co-scripting with Volkoff. The two maintain a superb continuity throughout and keep a tight rein on the narrative which could so easily sprawl.

Caught

The tone is playful and inventive with each episode featuring a flick of the director’s wrist: a wedding shown entirely in silhouette, an overhead shot of a group of police officers suddenly emerging and circling around a wanted man and a breathless chase across a broken wooden bridge with four men holding hands to hold it together – a sequence that lasts for half an episode and could easily have come from a much later era.

The Human Bridge

Volkoff and Mozzhukhin never tire of their story and across the years it was made – 1921-23 – and the decades covered by the story, they maintain integrity and tension: they never repeat themselves and fit in stories within each episode which add extra weight and flavour. It’s a rich experience and you feel exactly like you’ve just read a good book.

Jules Mary was known for writing around miscarriages of justice and this story is no different and, whilst I usually hate stories about innocents proved guilty, you have to see this one through to make sure that justice, if at all possible, is done. To this extent it does feel very “modern” HBO or Netflix with victory not easily won and with a magnetic star every bit as capable as John Hamm or Kevin Spacey with a “European” sensibility quite unlike Hollywood at the time – Mozzhukhin looks at the camera with worrying intensity and is matched by the malevolent complexity of   the remarkable Charles Vanel who would enjoy a 77 year career including Clouzot’s Wages of Fear and Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

Charles Vanel

Ivan Mozzhukhin (as Ivan Mosjoukine) plays Julien Villandrit the inheritor of a large mill who lives in a large country mansion in neighbouring grounds. When first encountered he is an excited youth, sprinting in shirt-sleeves to propose to the daughter of his neighbours, Régine de Bettigny (Hélène Darly). He’s so nervous he could burst and behaves with gauche uncertainty as he tries to build up the courage to pop the question to Régine’s parents.

The Mill and the House

Permission duly granted he bounds off home unable to contain himself and literally bumps into his best friend, Henri Corradin (Charles Vanel) who has also, secretly held hopes for Régine. As Julien hangs upside down from a tree, Corradin is speechless, full of loathing for this undeserving loon…

Hélène Darly and Ivan Mozzhukhin

And so it begins, as Hell has no fury like an industrialist scorned, and hatred brews that will shape the lives of this unequal triangle for ever.

A retired banker, Marjory (played by Bartkevitch) is a gentle giant who seems exceptionally fond of Régine but also her mother (Nina Raievska) gently embracing her hand as her ailing husband sleeps outside their opulent “cottage”. Then there’s the woodcutter Rudeberg (Nicolas Koline) a man of no fixed moustache and a keen amateur photographer…he is a camera and the camera rarely lies… although sometimes it withholds what it knows…

Nicolas Koline

We move forward to Julien and Régine’s happy marriage which is shown in a stunning sequence of silhouetted tableaux – it’s the type of device that sets silent hearts all a flutter and had me calling the rest of the family in to re-watch it. It’s a remarkable play – like shadow puppets but with each actor clearly discernible and in character: Julien and Régine tender and Corradin, thwarted, sneaking down stairs; making plans.

Corradin schemes

The pieces are in place but it will take a full seven years before the drama will really begin… this is a “long firm” of  a story: payback will take all but every one of the serial’s 400 minutes. Moving on… the young couple now have a precocious daughter, Christiane (Simone Genevois) – their family complete. Already turning slightly grey with the agony of disappointment, Corradin smirks when Julien struggles with the Mill’s financial difficulties and is determined that he must not only succeed, his friend must fail… totally.

Julien confronts Marjory

He focuses attention on the kindly Marjory who, in addition to secretly bailing out the mill –  repeatedly paying their outstanding bills – is also inordinately fond of Régine: really, really fond. Julien’s not made of stone and he soon begins to doubt the old man at first banning him from their house after one generosity to many and then violently confronting him. But, as Julien storms homeward, the old banker follows and, collapsing from the effort, reveals the truth: he is Régine’s father but this must never be revealed.

Julien runs for help but whilst he’s away, another assailant appears and is caught on camera by the shocked Rudeberg who snaps the old man’s final moments; its grim struggle mirrored in his lens.

Rudeberg's lens sees all

By the time Julien returns with help the picture he has described is far from what is found: it’s murder and he is very much in the frame…

Thus begins Julien’s epic struggle to prove his innocence and, after he is incarcerated, to get free to rescue his family and to bring the murderer and his traitorous friend to justice. Over the course of the series he adopts many disguises: itinerant, clown, foreign legionnaire – they all serve in the war – and disabled veteran who works for the Mill unrecognised.

It's an epic

Christiane grows up (to become Francine Mussey – whose open, pretty face impressed my son no end…) and never forgets her father – meeting him once when she is seven and then again after the war when she begins to help him. She form a life-long attachment for Pascal (Vladimir Strizhevsky), Rudeberg’s son which is bitter-sweet as his father has used his photographs of the murder to not only blackmail Corradin into supporting the boy but has, as a result, condemned her father to his half-life in prison and then on the run…

Francine Mussey

It’s a complex tale that unfolds at novel pace… and watching it almost all at once is not the way to fully appreciate it – filming took two years for various reasons, and audiences would have agonising waits between each episode: a huge dramatic tension guaranteeing their interest. More like old analogue TV and not digital-on-demand.

The actors are all superb, Varnel treading an expert line between friend and foe and Hélène Darly enduring years of faint hope and almost certain degradation. Nicolas Koline epitomises their shared skill of character consistency and the film’s efforts to show the moral frailty in extremes as he does the right thing by his son but is largely to blame for the whole long mess.

Hélène Darly

And Ivan… Ivan is simply magnificent; one of the very best performers of the era here allowed to go the full Alec Guiness/Lon Chaney in a succession of disguises whilst all the time his charcter gets older, worn down by war and defeat… yet still with hope and the unqualified, unwavering love of his wife and daughter.

The set is available direct from Flicker Alley or Amazon and comes with an energetic new score from Neil Brand: a musical marathon which retains common themes and under-pins events in perfect sympathy – it’s full of winning lines and carries a steadfast charm that is very much the story of Julien and Régine’s love and hope.

Ivan of many faces

Also included is a slideshow of rare production stills and a 12-page booklet featuring extensive notes about the serial’s cast and crew compiled by Lenny Borger and David Robinson.

It’s essential for all fans of Monsieur Mosjoukine and inventive European silent cinema.

A message from… Michel Strogoff (1926) with John Sweeney, British Silent Film Festival

The closing film on Day Two of the British Silent Film Festival and some of us were starting to flag and – in my case – were staring down the barrel of a lat-night return South down the M1… but, cometh the hour, cometh the film with its extraordinary star and cometh too the unfailing hands of Iron John Sweeney.

Michel Strogoff is one of the most famous products of the Russian ex-patriot community in French cinema and it is surprisingly hard to find making tonight’s screening a must-see or rather a Moz-see.

The Tartars

It is a film of scale and splendour which is lifted above the norm by extended sequences in Pathecolor – stencilled highlights over the dancers’ dresses in the ballroom sequence in the Tsar’s palace and then another truly stunning sequence as the Tartar forces mass at camp for the brutal entertainment of Allah’s judgement… it’s as if you are there; you can almost smell the burning flesh…

Director Viktor Tourjansky filmed across Europe from the palaces of France, the snows of Norway and down to Latvia where 6000 extras helped create the battles scenes and the Tartar camp. He took full advantage of the budgetary freedom allowed by the new affiliation  of Cine-France-Film with the German-led West production company.  The result was one of the few films of the period that really could truly match Hollywood scale.

Another was being filmed at the same time in the Billancourt studios and once Tourjansky had completed his effort he helped with Gance’s filming of Napoleon’s Toulon battle.

Their massed cavalry charge their horses across battle fields blurred by the speed of advance as quick cuts are made to pick up the human aspects of the slaughter; as with Napoleon this is not a film you can take likely, it’s at you from start to finish propelled by the unique intensity of its lead.

Ivan Mosjoukine

Jules Verne’s original story sounds true to his form: a time-limited chase featuring one man’s attempt to deliver a message from his Tsar to Irkutsk a city cut off by the Tartar advance. The telegraphs have all been cut and Michel must travel incognito using trains and boats across the plains making friends and beating enemies along the way. The story turns on an unlikely (but just possible) physiological event but the Russian’s present this moment as high drama and the improbable becomes powerfully cinematic.

Surrounded by the Tartars

 The story had an unique appeal for many of the crew who had seen their mother country overrun by a group with an incomprehensible agenda – to them at least. The fact that the Tartars had not enjoyed any kind of substantial military success against the Tsars for centuries is almost beside the point… the story needed an internal threat to show the benevolence of the Tsarist regime; a culture of honour and natural comradeship founded on respect for the Nation and its God-given monarch (I don’t recall Alexander II being especially benevolent…).

Acho Chakatouny

But let’s not let politics get in the way of a rollicking adventure especially one so rich in characters: the traitor Ivan Ogareff (Acho Chakatouny) is given to villainous excess it’s true but is also a very human hate-figure - Chakatouny plays his hero as a man wronged by his state who has the abilities but not the loyalty of a hero.

Nathalie Kovanko

 Love-interest Nadia Fedor (Nathalie Kovanko) is no mere adornment and it is only through her help that Michel has any chance of prevailing; she’s smart, quick to action and as determined as the men. Strogoff’s mother Maria (of course…) is similarly empowered and Jeanne Brindeau plays her with nobility and intelligence: what a pairing she and her son make – unyielding and bound by a love as strong as national pride.

Jeanne Brindeau

Marie-Louise Vois is also super as Zaugara the Tartar Mata Hari and Ogareff’s left-hand woman she can dance, dance and be a villain too… Other amusing stereotypes are available in the form of Daily Telegraph writer Harry Blount (Henri Debain) – a whiskery notepad scribbler for the status quo (they haven’t changed much have they?) and his French counterpart Alcide Jolivet (Gabriel de Gravone).

Vladimir Gajdarov makes Tzar Alexandre is far more likeable than I expected him to be whilst Boris de Fast Tartar leader Féofar-Khan is a superb creation of make-up encrusted malevolence: his evil runs so deep he seems almost serene and yet it's only ever a micro-second from boiling to the surface as he selects random vengeance from God.

Boris de Fast

Micolas Kougoucheff also features as General Kissoff who I just had to mention... no sign of Generals Sodoff or Clearoff though.

But, it’s all about Ivan who portrays a model of disciplined heroism with a twinkle in his eye that not only speaks of his wit but also his weakness. His Strogoff is not someone who can go about his triumphs in a way that makes them seem inevitable he gets stuck in even when he seems to be losing and, indeed, to have lost. What’s more, his victories are not achieved without the help of others…

 He fights off dozens of attackers on a ferry only to be struck down into the water where he makes it to shore and is saved by the kindness of an old man. In his delirium he sees himself in neo-classical torment – barely clothed and assailed by all kinds of monsters only to be saved by the two women in his life. Later he’ll look just like St Sebastian in seeming defeat to the Tartans…

Strogoff is knocked down more times than Rocky by Apollo Creed yet still gets up for one final fight with his nemesis Ogareff which is so much more than a standard silent scrap, the two push each other all over the screen and you’re not sure who the winner is until the very last as one after the other staggers out seemingly in victory…

Sightless in the snow

If we felt slightly exhausted watching all of this, spare a though for tonight’s pianist. Mr Sweeney set about his work with Mousjoukine-levels of energy and invention. His playing was impressively full-blooded and certainly contained doses of Russian that I wasn’t quite able to identify. This melodic engagement with the film must be very hard to maintain and yet he was still as fresh after the three hours: that my friends is the business of show and, indeed, entertainment! Salute Comrade Sweeney!

For such a major work – flawed but sprawlingly-brilliant – it is surprising that this reconstruction (from 2007?) is not available on DVD along with the Albatross output from many of the contributors. All we have is a VHS transfer that collectors swap amongst themselves, passed from hand-to-hand in the darker corners of bars from Omsk to Ormskirk and Irkutsk to Ipswich…

Come on, The Man, there’s money to be made in these digital disc sales!?

Sound and vision

 I drove back down the darkened motorway coffee and calories at the ready but uplifted by the show – I’d left the party halfway through but happy with all I’d seen – yes, even you, Three Live Ghosts with your soviet ret-con nonsense. Next year all four days!