The long game… Monte Cristo (1929) with Costas Fotopoulos, BFI

“It’s a wonderful film, lavish… In the sense of popular cinema, it’s very impressive. The film is sumptuous. The acting is terrific. What else can I say? It’s a good movie. Go see it.” Lenny Borger

As the sun cracked the brutalist flags on the Southbank, we were inside, in the dark and immersed in a gloriously-ambitious silent adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ (and Jacques Peuchet’s) story: real locations… almost in real time (218 minutes…). It isn’t always this sunny in London but how often do you get the chance to see a live screening of Henri Fescourt’s spectacular? This was a UK premier of Lenny Borger’s labour of love restoration and consequentially unmissable if you are the strong and (stable) silent type…

Borger worked on the initial restoration for over six years and constructed a near-complete version which debuted at the 2015 San Francisco International Film Festival. For those of us missing this year’s SF spectacle we had something and, of course, London was hotter than the Californian coast.

There’s a fascinating interview with Borger on the SF Gate website in which he explains how he didn’t chose Monte Cristo it chose him after he watched a fragment in a Czech archive – the ends of the distribution chain - and became struck with its opulence and ambition. Now, I can well understand the spell cast by those moments, Bonaparte has Brownlow and the Comte de Monte Cristo has Borger.

Fescourt’s Monte Cristo does indeed have everything as you would expect from the director of the monolithic Les misérables? (1925) (screened last month at the Barbican) he is able to hold these vast stories and translate their key components on screen capturing plot, key sub-plots, mood and character. If, as Hitchcock said, you only need a short story to make a film, condensing massive novels into even four or six hours is some task.

A night at the opera

Fescourt does this through tight scripting, stripping out characters and sub-plots and editorial control but also by cinematic verve; using those sensational locales… and, in the second half especially some judicious on set experimentation.

There’s a sequence in the Paris Opera as high society watches ballet whilst awaiting the arrival of the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo which is chock-full of inventive lensmanship: we’re on stage with the ballerinas, sweeping from box to box as the audience looks on and sweeping through the stalls as they take in the masterful entrance of the new Comte in town. It’s planned to impress as our hero finally re-appears to begin his process of revenge: a signal that we’re entering a more action-oriented conclusion.

Pierre Batcheff takes a trip

This moment is preceded by some dreamy experimentation as the son of the man who wronged our hero, is drugged on a boat trip and wakes up in the Comte’s sumptuous but almost impressionistic palace: it takes a while for the double exposure to fade and it conveys the changed tone and confusion in the young man’s mind. It’s like a superhero movie, a dream of revenge and empowerment, not at all unlike the arrival of Steve Trevor on Themyscira as he finds the Amazons in Wonder Woman (ahem... seriously, a decent movie!).

But I’m getting way off beam. The first two hours of set up feature more conventional story-telling and purposefully so; there’s a lot to fit in and Fescourt lets his scenery do the talking as the ill-starred hero, Edmond Dantès (Jean Angelo) emerges on the good ship Pharaoh arriving in port as stand-in skipper after the ship’s captain had died. He is confirmed as Captain by the shipping company, run by Monsieur Morrel (Ernest Maupain) but this arouses the jealousy of sozzled shipmate, Caderousse (Henri Debain).

Your jealousy is killing me...

For a nice guy, Edmond makes enemies easily and as we see him greet his lover Mercédès (Lil Dagover), we also see her cousin Fernand Mondego (Gaston Modot) pull a face: he wants the one he can’t have and it’s driving him mad… Overhearing Caderousse’s drunken whinging later on Fernand decides to stir up trouble for Edmond over a stop over the ship make on the Isle of Elba. This was during the period of Napoleon’s exile and being on the wrong side of the argument could be fatal.

Of course, Edmond was merely following the orders of the late captain but, when he seeks help from the deputy crown prosecutor in Marseille, Monsieur de Villefort (Jean Toulout), he, realising that the trip would implicate his own father, destroys the evidence and fits Edmond up to take the fall.

de Villefort (Barrymore-look-a-like, Jean Toulout) betrays Edmond

Imprisoned for life, without trial, on the Château on the Isle d’If in the Mediterranean, things look bleak for Edmond. After six years he meets another inmate, L'abbé Faria (German actor Bernhard Goetzke) who had dug an escape tunnel that sadly only led to his cell. Faria is a wise old lag and tutors Edmond over the next eight years, telling him all he knows of science and the arts.

As Faria’s health begins to fade he tells his pal the location of a mound of treasure, hidden on eth Isle of Monte Cristo… Edmonds not sure if it’s true of not but, when fate allows him the chance to escape, he sets off to find out for sure (you’d kick yourself wouldn’t you…?).

I tell ye boy, thar be buried treasure!

Thus, we get to the action-packed second half as the newly-enriched and ennobled Comte de Monte Cristo sets about exacting his revenge on the three men who done him wrong. So much time has passed that there is now a second generation involved: Albert de Morcerf (pretty-boy Pierre Batcheff of The Chess Player), the son of Mercédès and Mondego who is now a bit of a count himself, the Comte de Morcerf, Valentine (striking Marie Glory of L’Argent fame…) daughter of a very over-promoted de Villefort and Benedetto (a completely wicked Robert Mérin) who is presumed son of Caderousse.

Next generation: Pierre Batcheff and Michèle Verly

François Rozet and Mary Glory

All play their part as the present, no matter how complicated by new loves, gets caught up with by the past! But first Edmond adopts a series of disguises to learn more and begin to entrap his prey, starting with Caderousse and his darkly-disfunctional family.

Diane Farèze, Robert Mérin & Henri Debain

Far harder will be his old rival in love who has made himslef rich through playing sides in the Turkish war - more betrayal - an the almost untouchable de Villefort who claims to believe in Justice... well, needless to say all betrayals lead to retribution and Justice only ever serves its own end. All is played out in the most satisfactory of ways... but good must wait a long time to triumph over evil.

Locked away in an impenetrable dungeon on an island with no chance of escape; betrayed completely by enemies and robbed of his true love… is it any wonder that this story continues to hold a fascination for each generation? Sometimes hope is all you have left and once in a while, it is enough to see you through.

Costas Fotopoulos was on the marathon accompaniment and never broke pace for a moment with a classical energy that matched the story’s period of origin as well as its temperament. I particularly liked some of the romantic flourishes towards the film’s conclusion and the grandeur of the playing as Edmond headed for his cruel incarceration in the Chateau d’If.

I really hope this gets the digital release it deserves along with the director’s Les Miserables: two films that show just the strength-in-depth of French silent cinema!

Play for today… Les Misérables (1925-6), Neil Brand, The Barbican

Today was the London Marathon, one film lasting 359 minutes and one piano being played by one man for the whole length: all the right notes, in all the right order with just a couple of breaks for re-hydration and ice-pack application to wrists and brow. By sheer coincidence elsewhere in the capitol there were 40,000 people running 26 miles and 385 yards through its streets. Some were dressed in costumes but most finished in less than five hours and not a single one was playing the piano… For cinemutophiles there could be only one winner and Mr Brand was cheered to the rafters as the long day closed in triumph.

This is one of the most extraordinary silent cinematic experiences you can have this side of Napoleon or a rediscovered first cut of Greed but Les Misérables has its own tone and holds the audience in different ways. It might not be for everybody but so well does it tells its tale by the closing segment you are mourning even relatively minor characters some of whom had not even been “goodies”: shades of grey.

It's a film rich in texture and brave enough to travel at almost reading pace through substantial chunks of its source narrative. There are impressive - almost fleeting – exterior shots that link to the interior shots where most of the story is told; actual locations are used such as the Le Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris along with ancient streets that would pre-date the rebuilt Paris of Naopleon III, but these are used so sparingly in favour of more detailed character-based exposition.

The occassional outdoors

There’s an impressive shot of Gabriel Gabrio who plays grand anti-hero Jean Valjean, seemingly driving a racing carriage but that’s about as close as director Henri Fescourt gets to Gance. It’s a deliberate steering away from the visceral: the anti-Abel.

The sets are opulent and elaborate all the same but the focus is on those fascinating faces who emote the narrative and, over the course of over six hours viewing you grow accustomed to them: like someone else’s life flashing in front of your face…

Even the mis-en-scene and props reflect these players, connecting with their interior lives and intimacies. Valjean’s stick and his stolen candles, that leave him beholden to the forgiving Monseigneur Myriel or the doll he gifts to Cosette which represents both her lost mother and her lost childhood: “play” he keeps on insisting when she is rescued from the slavery of the Thénardier family. Her broken-heeled clog lies empty at the fireplace on Christmas, even after all she has endured, she still hopes for Santa but only Valjean can provide the gift she needs. He keeps those clogs for the rest of his life…

Jean Toulout, Sandra Milovanoff and Gabriel Gabrio argue a point

But none of this would work if the performances were not so impressive. Gabrio is a man mountain of fearsome intent who is so is initially so resilient to goodness you can’t fail to route for his turning. The woman who helps to soften his heart is played by the supernaturally-expressive Sandra Milovanoff who is able to convey both fragility and strength with equal conviction though piercing eyes and a protean physicality. Cosette, the daughter she leaves in the care of the abusive Thénardiers, is played by Andrée Rolane who is especially impressive in the gothic scenes in which she is forced into the night to fetch water from a forest alive with shadowy wolves, evil trees and ghostly threats: like Mary Pickford in Sparrows only a third of the age.

Andrée Rolane

Cosette grows up to be played by Milovanoff again who eventually falls for the gentile Marius (François Rozet) who inspite of being a bit of a self-indulgent fop (actor and character) also attracts Éponine Thénardier – a street-smart petty criminal played really well by Suzanne Nivette; all feral calculation and fearlessness, willing to fight even her own venal father;  a Waterloo-grave robber turned blackmailer played with cowardly malice by Georges Saillard.

The thieves are bad but the police are almost worst, Jean Toulout’s Javert is an almost psychotically-driven believer in the back and the white…

 
I have dabbled with Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert but, shamefully, I have to confess that I have not read Hugo and nor have I watched any of the 50 or so adaptations of this book – not even the long-running musical or film of the same. I therefore experience this all for the first time without preconception, my “Fantine” Hathaway-free.

Charles Badiole is also good as Gavroche, revolutionary urchin

As with elements of von Stroheim’s Greed, this film felt like an adaptation especially with the odd narrative leap made, possibly, with the assumption that the audience of the time knew he story. But its focus on characterisation over narrative perfection is the saving grace and you care about Marius’ monarchist grandfather Monsieur Gillenormand in the end as you do the lovelorn Éponine who does right even in death by the man she loves but who loves another… even, maybe, the conflicted policemen Javert who simply cannot compute the good that his badman target has done… it’s as if he can’t live with the uncertainty this creates: redemption is simply too much for him to accept.

David Robinson, in his notes for the 2015 Pordenone screening, quotes Victor Hugo about this ever-present possibility of turning a bad life good, for the author redemption is “…a  progress  from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth,  from  night  to  day,  from  appetite  to  conscience,  from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God”.

Gabriel Gabrio as Jean Valjean with his trusty walking stick/cudgel

This was the third time Neil had accompanied the restoration and his playing relaxed with the story; as in any marathon you need to pace yourself and there’d be time for the sprint finish later once the barricades went up and the cannons started going off. There were so many poignant phrases and a carefully constructed tempo that was both coherent and free-flowing. This is a very unusual film experience and Mr Brand saw it all coming without giving anything away in a masterclass of matched rhythm and sentiment.

At times there were measured notes filled with all the atmospheric spaces of Keith Jarrett which would then give way to huge, crashing, broken-hearted chords as two hearts meet and a third is broken, or faith is betrayed and anger rules hearts beaten down by an unforgiving state that rewards the “snitches”, the gossips and cruel-hearts in general.

Big themes and Neil provided the improvisations to match:  churlish to ask for an encore (I did) but you should not miss the chance to see him go again in Cambridge later this year. I’ll post details when they’re confirmed you really don’t want to miss this!

The Barbican Cinema 1 was over two thirds full and it’s a shame some missed out; if you are interested in silent film this is one of those events you will treasure: anyone can play a DVD in their sitting room but very few can play the piano for so many waking hour dreamers.

Credit to the Barbican for putting the show on and I hope there are more opportunities to view this stunning restoration in such a setting. Even the title card translations were inserted live as the print only came with French; another marathon, another world record!

Souvenir booklet from 1925