Ivor’s engine… The Man Without Desire (1923), Stephen Horne, Abbeydale Picturehouse, Yorkshire Silent Film Festival

Sheffield’s Abbeydale Picturehouse had been operating for three years when a group of bright young things conceived this oddly affecting drama perhaps in one of London’s more cutting edge West End licenced establishments… Absinthe may have been consumed as director Adrian Brunel and his producers, Miles Mander and Ivor Novello conceived a story across the decades of Venetian love gone cold. “My God, a man losing his passion: can you imagine it Manders?!” Ivor might have said… “Oh ya, and boys, let’s film on location – I’ve got a wizard idea to place a camera on a gondola in the Grand Canal…”

Organiser-in-chief, Johnny Best said that having opened the festival with Novello in excelsis with The Lodger, he wanted to programme this earlier film by way of comparison. It’s certainly not as polished as the Hitchcock film but it is always good to see British film from the early twenties: there’s just not enough of it about.

Luckily The Man Without Desire is on the BFI Player BUT without this place – the Abbeydale is pure cinema in its decayed glory, propped up entirely by stubborn passion – and this remarkable accompanist it won’t be the same. Live cinema equals film plus place, music and audience and Sheffield has done silent film proud.

Ivor plays... Steve Howe had one of these (probably more)

Mr Horne brought the bells and whistles if not the kitchen sink and performed the seeming impossible flute, accordion and piano solo-three-piece we’ve come to expect and yet never fail to be impressed by. He also brought some of his finest romantic themes along and lifted what is an occasionally lumpy film to the emotional heights the producers intended.

Ivor’s not the finished Novello but he still makes for a remarkable leading man especially one with a dark secret that’s two hundred years’ old. He’s also aided by the strikingly lovely Nina Vanna as the woman he loves across those centuries: she carries off Regency and Jazz-age equally well and is as eye-catching as her leading man.

The story is an unlikely one but if you take a purely metaphysical view, entirely plausible… (yeah).

Modern men

We begin in 1923 as a strange post-dated solicitor’s letter is opened and read out to a group of specially requested men: they all settle back for a long read…

The document takes us back to Venice just after 1800 and one Count Vittorio Dandolo (Novello) who is persistently serenading a beautiful woman who stands at her window paying power-puff penance for marrying a real count. She is Leonora (Nina Vanna) and her suffering is caused by Count Almoro (Sergio Mari) off galivanting with premier-league courtesan Foscolina (Dorothy Warren).

Finally she allows Vittorio to climb up to her balcony and reveals the reason she cannot smile for him: she has a son and cannot break from her horrible husband. But Vittorio cannot leave it and neither can Almoro who begin to circle around each other.

Nina Vanna and Ivor

Before what will be, will be, Vittorio meets a very unusual and gregarious, scientist named Mawdesley (Christopher Walker) who is experimenting with, Indian mysticism and suspended animation as you do. The two become firm friends well in time for the big blow up…

Stories have been circulating about Count Almoro and he has the writer’s hands broken in punishment… revenge is planned as Almoro’s maid Luigia (Jane Dryden) drops poison into his drink whilst attempting to deliver a love letter from Vittorio to Leonora… The treachery is uncovered and Almoro forces his wife to drink the wine in order to prove her innocence. This she does, as she is, but pays the price just in time to kiss farewell to her lover who then makes short work of the murderous Almoro.

Y'see, it's all quite simple really...

Pursued by the law and in total despair, Vittorio has no way out except, that is, being sent to sleep for two hundred years by Mawdesley to escape, both grief and retribution.

Back in 1923 the solicitors despatch a doctor, Roger (also Christopher Walker) to establish the likelihood of these event and do indeed succeed in waking Vittorio. They leave him to fully “wake up” which even I with no medical training, can see is risky… so it proves as the confused Count makes his way to the Almoro family home unaware of the time of day, let alone the year.

He encounters a woman every bit as lovely as Leonora, her descendent Genevia – also Nina V – and her cousin, every bit as obnoxious as his forebear, Gordi (Sergio too).

Meet the decendants

There are some nice touches as Vittorio discovers this strange new world of telephones and motorised transport and, as he sampled a rolled-up cigarette on a motor boat in the lagoon, Stephen threw in a few bars familiar to those who used to smoke Hamlet cigars, which got one of the biggest laughs of the day.

But the good humour cannot last. Mawdesley warned that there could be a price to pay for this escape to eternity… and well, you’ll just have to see it on the BFIPlayer!

The shock of the new.

It’s an enjoyable film for all its quirks and occasionally over-deliberate pacing. It’s location shoot doesn’t get overplayed but then they probably weren’t there for that long and who needs Venice when you have Ivor and Nina?

The Yorkshire Silent Film Festival continues until the end of May, full details on their site.

 

Silent Sheffield… The Lodger (1927), Neil Brand, Orchestra of St Pauls, Ben Palmer, Abbeydale Picture House, Yorkshire Silent Film Festival

This is only the second year of the Yorkshire Silent Film Festival and already you can sense it gathering momentum and a personality all its own driven by organiser-in-chief Jonathan Best. This year’s edition is a month-long celebration of silent film played out across that big county to the right of Lancashire, featuring a roster of key silent films all played by some of the most vibrant musical minds in the country, on their own or in ensembles.

Tonight was a major-league kick-off with a World premiere of Neil Brand’s sparkling new score for Hitchcock’s ground-breaking The Lodger as played by the Orchestra of St Pauls conducted by Ben Palmer. It was part of a weekend of silent spectacles in Sheffield’s amazing Abbeydale Picture House – one of the city’s oldest cinemas and one saved for film projection by a kindly benefactor who realised its communal significance far outweighed initial plans to re-work it as a climbing space.

The Abbeydale opened in 1920 but rarely can it have played host to such an intoxicating blend of on screen atmospherics and such refined accompaniment, emphatically performed by a truly World-class ensemble.  For me at least, this score far out-ranks the previous orchestration provided for the Hitchcock Nine restorations by Nitin Sawhney: that was musically interesting and inventive but doesn’t synchronise emotionally or narratively as well as Neil’s work. It’s the difference between Rita Hayworth trying to match Fred Astaire’s movement for their first feature, You'll Never Get Rich (1941), versus Ginger Rogers on their ninth: you’d still enjoy watching Rita dance but...

Here there’s a coherence that speaks of an obsession with replicating the emotional nuance of the source material and gifting supremely able players with a chance to fully immerse their sonic output with the sights on screen: from the grand moments of fear and dread murder to the sexual splash as Ivor Novello stands outside the bathroom listening as June Tripp taking a dip to a rising cluster of notes as she raises a laugh: it’s an emotional ballet written in response to Hitchcock’s 90-year old choreography.

Sat in the second row, feet away from the violins in the Abbeydale’s plush green seats, you’re swept up under the combination of giant Ivor face and mesmerising musicality… all weekly woes dissipate and the cinema takes you on a strange journey just as it would have done your grandparents… just as the director intended when, as Mr Brand said in his introduction, he decided to make voyeurs of us all…

It starts with as scream and as newspapers report all on the Avenger’s murderous spree and the people on and off screen lap it up – we can’t help ourselves. This man who only murders blondes – already with this Alfred? – has a dressing room full of show girls fascinated and so are we; both with the story and with the girls… By the by, am I correct in noticing the ultra-short trim of scouser Peggy Carlisle lapping up the gossip?

The film looms large on the Abbeydale’s huge screen imposing itself on the audience from the opening dramatics as Germanic shadows are cast over a suffocating, studio-bound London: “a story of the fog…”

Inside the cosy home of The Bunting Family all is clear with mother (Marie Ault – who is just magnificent), father (Arthur Chesney) and their daughter Daisy (June Tripp here referred to as Miss June). They are in the basement of a townhouse not far from the Houses of Parliament and are entertaining Joe Chandler (Malcolm Keen), a policeman who is romancing Daisy although as her treatment of his pastry heart reveals – a very Lubitsch touch – isn’t as keen as the cop.

Here's Ivor!

They are disturbed by a knock on the door and Mrs Bunting goes upstairs to find the strangest fellow standing on their threshold: Jonathan Drew (an unearthly Ivor Novello), a tall stranger, with scarf wrapped over his face, has come looking to rent their spare rooms. Why is this so clearly-moneyed man looking for accommodation and, why is he so strange…?

Hitchcock piles on the clues that begin to implicate Drew in the Avenger killings… his scarf is worn in the same manner as the murderer, he nervously hides a mysterious briefcase in his room and then asks for the surprisingly plentiful portraits of blonde woman to be removed after turning them one-by-one against the wall.

Miss June

He is indeed a “queer fellow” as one of the characters observes, intense and detached and not conforming to social norms. He is hiding something but we don’t know what.

None of this distracts Daisy who takes an immediate shine to the new arrival. Daisy’s a “mannequin” and with broader horizons than her family and boyfriend… whilst Drew is something new and interesting. They start to relax in each other’s company and play chess in his room. She glances at this strangely handsome man whilst he gazes intently at her blonde locks… Hitchcock contuse his playful tone as Drew, looking intent, reaches for the poker only to cut away and casually return after the fire has been stoked.

Marie Aultgives a great performance

But we have doubts about Drew and when he leaves the house late in the evening, Mrs Bunting wakes and peers out of her window as he enters the night. There’s great light and shade in this sequence with Drew descending the darkened staircase and the dim light of the street lights illuminating Mrs B as she begins to wonder if this man may be even stranger than he appears.

And, as every Tuesday, there is another murder that night…

Staircase mystery...

Drew attends one of Daisy’s fashion shows and buys her one of the dresses she parades. This is too far for the Buntings and father returns it with some straight talking. Drew creeps out towards the bathroom where Daisy is bathing and we’re treated to a proto-Psycho moment as Daisy’s supreme vulnerability is set against the presence of a potential killer.

By now Joe has also had enough and distraught, the policeman begins to put two and two together as it looks increasingly likely that the lodger is the killer… or is that just what he and we want?

Your move...

It’s masterful story-telling and almost all in the mind of the viewer who is a clueless as Joe in terms of interpreting the evidence Hitchcock supplies. As with the story so with the score and Brand’s music keeps us guessing right until the end as the tension becomes almost unbearable…

A thrilling ride all round and an excellent start to the festival!

Flying the flag: the Abbeydale

The films continue in silent Yorkshire throughout the month and full details can be found on the festival site. You can also find out what's happening at the Abbeydale Cinema on their Facebook page here.

Neil’s score will be available on the up-coming Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release, played by the Orchestra of St Pauls with Ben Palmer conducting. It’s released on 27^th June and you can pre-order here.

Oh, silent film obssessive... is that Peggy from Hindle Wakes (right) in The Lodger (left)?

Not so easy virtue… The Vortex (1928)

"How can we help ourselves? We swirl about in a vortex of beastliness…”

From out of the gloom of the last surviving 9.5mm print comes another interesting British silent film. America may have had its Flappers and It Girls but in Britain we had the Bright Young Things (BYT as Michael Jackson might have put it…) who took the freedom of a privileged background to a level of excess scarcely seen since the student days of the last Tory government.

This film was based on a play written by the brightest of those young things, Noel Coward and starred one of the prettiest and most outrageously-talented, Ivor Novello. Even with missing footage and a stage play compromised by the cautious sensibilities of the screen, it’s a story heavy with scandalous possibilities: a mother refusing to grow old and who dallies with a young man half her age and a son unnaturally close to his mother who is struggling to form the coupling society demands.

Some bright, young British

“It’s so cheap not to get old gracefully.”

There’s so much unsaid – yes, I know it’s a silent film… and that’s clearly where a lot of the meaning is hidden. Oh Noel, you are so frightfully clever but how much of your play is left in the film?

Reviewing in The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall was confused by these gay Britishers: “It can hardly be called a pleasant or a stirring study. …Mr. Novello, Miss Kershaw and others do rather well considering the direction, but the development of the narrative is extremely feeble. It is at last an uninspiring idea, for everybody is more or less tainted.”

Which, my dear Mordaunt was precisely the point - real people: real problems even if they are posh ones… But even the British press were largely unconvinced with Theatre World calling the film “tedious” with all of Coward’s wit, dialogue and theatricality “going for nothing when translated into cinematic terms”. The playwright himself spoke up for the younger medium during the making of the film and opined that there were still some theatrical people who “regard contemptuously everything connected with film.”

Ivor

“I call this house the laundry, for apart from soiled linen, it exhibits so many wash-outs.”

All this said, what remains is less dramatic than it otherwise could have been. Ivor Novello is a shadow of his usual self, his would be composer Nicky staring mournfully out from arid piano-playing, his spirits crushed by a domineering mother and a girl of wayward affection.

Gary Chapman in his excellent book on Gainsborough films, describes France Doble who’s Bunty Mainwaring is the maker or breaker of Nicky’s heart, as “gracefully ineffective” which is spot on – she looks the part with mannequin (old meaning) poise – lovely arms: total clothes horse - but insufficient plot motivation to engage.

Willette Kershaw connects the most with her Florence Lancaster raging against the dyeing of her hair. It’s a timeless tragedy the march of time and oh to be 45 again… Kershaw’s age during filming.

Alan Hollis and France Doble with her nice arms

"Florence Lancaster’s town house was her own; her complexion was not; but both were entirely renovated at regular intervals.”

The Vortex was Coward’s breakthrough, a scandalous tale of drug addiction, extra-marital affairs, the love that dare not speak and middle aged women behaving very badly. Director Adrian Brunel had his doubts about whether the essentially-slight story could make a good silent film once the story had been toned down and Coward’s furiously-skilled verbal riffs translated to title cards.

The producers checked with the Board of Film Censors and yes, the mother could not be seen to directly have a lover and no the son could not have a drug habit. Naturally Noel was not happy but commercial compromise, not for the first or the last time, won the day.

Mirror, mirror...

Brunel tried to make up for substance with style and there is some interesting cinematography from James Wilson and opulent design by Clifford Pember – all impressive enough now as a symbol of when Britain first really swung.

We can now also read through the gaps in our interpretation of Florence’s lifestyle choices and her exact relationship with young Tom Veryan (Alan Hollis). He’s a kept man who also happens to have previously been in a relationship with his mistress’ son’ fiancée, Bunty… Nicky has brought her to the family pile and things are going to get complicated.

“So amusing watching two people wondering if they dare fall in love with each other.”

But while Bunty and Tom try hard to remember why they split up in the first place, the real sparks fly between mother and son keeping their anger at the potentially double-dumping within the family.

Meanwhile Nicky gets a break as impetuous dancer, Anna Vollof (Julie Suedo) hears his music and dances into his studio. The big time looms but opportunity knocks when Anna’s drug use presents Nicky with a chance to shock some sense into his dearest and nearest.

Opportunity kicks

So… not great but still fascinating. The film flopped and in unrelated comments Coward made a plea for British producers to be more honest with themselves and “… talk less about what the box office is supposed to want.”

The case continues.

I watched the late Sunrise Silents version which does its best with the source material and a patchwork, pre-recorded score. It’s out there in the grey market.

“Patience my dear – the natural refuge of declining years.”

Gary Chapman’s London’s Hollywood - The Gainsborough Studio in the Silent Years is available from EP Publishing or from Amazon in various formats.

Cheers!

Smooth criminal… The Rat (1925), Kennington Bioscope with Cyrus Gabrysch

The year is now officially underway with the first Bioscope of 2016 and what a grand way to start with a rarely-seen British thriller featuring one of our leading men, Ivor Novello, a striking young man who for those unfamiliar is not unlike a leaner Valentino.

Novello co-wrote the script and the original stage play with Constance Collier and starred in both along with two no doubt smashing sequels - The Triumph of the Rat (1926) and The Return of the Rat (1929). This is the kind of character Hitchcock was casting in The Lodger – a contemporary leading man without peer in the UK and with a refined dramatic style that reflected a supernatural wit.

The Jeans Genie and the Thin White Duke

Directed by Graham Cutts, who enjoyed a long career from silents like The White Shadow to Three Men in a Boat (1933) and Aren’t Men Beasts! (1937), The Rat is highly stylised:  part crime caper/part love story. Crime for love’s sake, money for art’s sake… even when forced to share his last bacon rasher, The Rat still prefers to return stolen items as if the thieving of them has not satisfied him enough.

Novello prowls the opening sequences with delicious intent, Top Cat more than King Rat, breaking hearts for a living whilst being looked after by the steadfast Odile Etrange played by Mae Marsh – with whom he’d been in a DW Griffith film the previous year. He’d played a conflicted preacher, Joseph Beaugarde in The White Rose but here as Pierre Boucheron, The Rat, he has no qualms to slow down his criminal style.

 The Rat is at ease with himself, equally adept at making women fall for him as he is at throwing his cap and dagger at the wall in order to create an instant hat stand – that’s a trick for me to work on in our hallway… We first see him on the run from the police, hiding under a man-hole as they stand overhead, unaware enough for him to slice the shoelaces off one man’s shoe.

He frequents a lively nightclub called the White Coffin Club where the prevailing ethos seems to be burning out before fading away… and where the coffin-shaped doorways and general décor are simply to die for…  The redoubtable Marie Ault is superb as Mère Colline, the WCC’s mistress of ceremonies whilst the striking Julie Suedo as Mou Mou is one of Rat’s former lovers, scrapping with other contenders and ripping her skirt to dance a dirty tango with our anti-hero.

The White Coffin Club: check out the coffin-shaped doors

 Cutts' direction involves a good deal of fluid camera movement and this is seen especially well in the Club as Hal Young’s camera darts to specific characters to focus attention and to show the dimensions of their own dangerous movements – the knife fight between Rat and a jealous competitor and the dance with Mou Mou. Young had previously worked in the USA whilst Cutts had spent time in German studios and, in addition to the movement, there is some fine chiaroscuro lighting – shadows falling all too easily over Ivor’s fine-lines - a face that wasn’t made for feeding: cheekbones so sharp they could cut people dead.

Julie Suedo as Mou Mou

The editing is also cute, assured enough to allow conclusions to be reached before narrative explanation is required. Mou Mou rows with Rose (Iris Grey) and the cut goes nonchalantly from their staring each other out to a medium range shot of a tussle on the floor: this is not called the White Coffin Club for nothing. Rose fights with another ex-suitor and the object of their affection forces them to kiss and make up on the floor… there’s some frankly Germanic stuff going down.

Elsewhere there is grander entertainment as rich manipulator Herman Stetz (Robert Scholtz) treats his much younger lady friend Zélie de Chaumet (Isabel Jeans) to some culture. The dance sequences are spectacular and well filmed. Zélie is a thrill-seeker, slightly bored with it all but little does she know that her purse has just been appropriated from under her bored nose by the notorious Rat…

Stetz and his young squeeze...

Meanwhile Stetz is investigating the Coffin Club as a venue to stimulate her interest, he swans in trying to own the place but is eventually re-buffed by the smarter moves of The Rat. Undeterred he directs his aide to bring Zélie and her party: this is just the kind of decadence she will love.

Zélie arrives and duly becomes captivated by the dark-eyed, flop-fringed smooth criminal and the two engage in a middle-distance flirt off, he preening, she seething, especially after dropping her hankie and giving the biggest sequence of come-hithers imaginable. Eventually the irresistible object succumbs to irresistible force and there will be trouble ahead.

Zélie and The Rat

Meanwhile… Mae Marsh is fretting away in the background and steadfastly looking after Rat. She even takes his flick-knife to the Coffin Club where she draws the attention of Stetz… there are some uncomfortable moments between the two – is she an abused heading inevitably to another abuser – more specifically an actual, physical abuser rather than someone who just takes her for granted.

The second half of the film begins to play these themes out and is less entertaining than the more light-hearted first. In what has time and again been described as a period of stylistic struggle for domestic film, The Rat proved that our sense of humour and irony was a feature of our silent cinema and this was much appreciated by a full-house audience of considerable demographic diversity – I swear some of the denizens of the White Coffin Club may have dropped in for the night…

Odile and her Rat

As our four protagonists cross-partner, the dangers become acute and Odile’s selflessness threatens not just liberty but her life as well… Can The Rat save her; can he save even himself?!

Cyrus Gabrysch played some wonderfully fluid lines alongside the film and had a ball with Novello’s musicality: there’s a reason the songwriter’s best moments are in a nightclub.

Down in the sewers...

Tonight’s under-card was a diverse treat from an intriguing last surviving reel of a Danish gothic thriller, The House of Fatal Love 1919) featuring one of my favourites, Clara Pontoppidan, in flash-back being bricked in by an enraged lover whose read too much Edgar Allen Poe. Then there was A Trip to the White Sea Fisheries (1909), Joseph Rosenthal’s astonishing footage of the North Sea fishing fleet which shows the perfect storms the fishermen faced and yet amidst all the everyday dangers they still find time to muck about, throwing the day’s catch at each other and bobbing for apples whilst tied upside down (just wait for next Halloween!).

In keeping with tonight’s theme there was also Alice Rattled by Rats, a 1925 Disney cartoon featuring a live action Alice, dozens of dirty rats and Julius the Cat (Felix’s cousin?). Top Cat John Sweeney played along before rushing off to Bristol for more slapstick than you can shake a stick at!

Waiting for The Man?