I saw the light… BFI Film on Film Festival, Part One

I collect vinyl old and new, I have enough CDs to have established a secret breakaway archive in the garage and I stream and download via Bandcamp who give the creators their due. As with film - nitrate and celluloid, "a tough flammable thermoplastic composed essentially of cellulose nitrate and camphor*" available in 70mm, 8mm, 35, 16... - each musical medium has its strengths and weaknesses and each fits in with different moods or situations. The character of your listening experience is based on the qualities of the media as much as the content; clicking on a link and listening on your laptop speakers doesn't compete with the act of selecting carefully preserved vinyl, pulling it out of the cover and placing the needle on the groove. There's more consideration and physical involvement, it's a tactile, emotive connection... or maybe I'm just reconnecting with an old feeling, just ask Albert Camus**.

Sadly we don’t have the same sort of choices with film as we do with music with the majority of cinemas now showing only digital and only one, the BFI, able to screen nitrate. This new festival celebrates celluloid as only the Institute can, unleashing prints new and old from their archive in a vibrant celebration not just of the film but the projectionists, archivists and cineastes who gathered from all points to be in the moment, together in the dark, on the sunniest of days on the Southbank. Just like Bologna, inside and out… all imbued with the warmth of shared appreciation and a collective love of cinema and all of its ways.

 

Talking of nitrate… In A Fire, I’d save my hard drive and as many first pressings as possible; then maybe I could make a mix-tape for Samantha Morton if Lynne Ramsay and she ever make a follow-up to Morvern Callar. Whilst the BFI had hoped to have their new 35mm print ready we ended up watching one made on release in 2002 and never previously projected. It looked perfect or as nearly perfect as celluloid needs to be, the odd flicker and a slight wobble all counterbalanced by the warmth of the image the vibrancy and depth of colours not approximated but created by light interacting with chemicals during the original shoot and only found in the form we saw after development and washing… a process described in detail in Mark Jenkin’s wondrous new short, commissioned for the festival, A Dog Called Discord, a quite brilliant narrative on the appeal of film and it’s unique qualities in reflecting and preserving light and life.

In their introduction to the film, Morton, director Ramsay and producer Robyn Slovo talked like the closest of friends, still excited by what they achieved. Samantha observed that there are so many monitors now, film makers do not focus on the live environment, directing performance, but instead on how it looks on their digital viewer. Lynne on the other hand was down near her star’s face, unconsciously mouthing her lines as she knew them so well and just letting her run with a character that was all consuming and feeing off their trust and skill.

Samantha Morton

The result, having now seen it all the way through for the first time, is a film that feels as fresh today as anything from 21 years ago has any right to do. Morton’s Morvern exploring the possibilities of life after her boyfriend kills himself and gifts her with a novel and a chance to break free. It’s like one of Paul Auster’s moments of chance, and the film revels in the excitement of risks and new purpose in the face of nothing to lose. Morton is almost matched in fantasticness by Kathleen McDermott as her pal Lanna, not quite the Louise to her Thelma, but someone who is more reckless but still held back by caution.

A half century before, on Thursday’s opening night, we witnessed another force of nature in the form of Joan Crawford’s mighty Mildred Pierce (1945). This is why films were invented, this was the classiest of classic Hollywood and another first-time view for me – I know, I know… you can’t take me anywhere. I’m far more familiar now with Joan’s silent work but she appears to have adapted exceptionally well to the new talking pictures on this evidence.

We watched the BFI’s new 35mm print and it looks gorgeous, full of lightning soul and monochromatic drama with Joan’s huge eyes never glistening more; an albedo so intense there are probably alien scientists studying it 78 light years away. Crawford’s core is so fierce that it could overwhelm her co-stars but she is also controlled and a team player (sorry Bette…) who brings out the best in Zachary Scott as her disreputable second husband Monte Beragon, Jack Carson as her, consistently disappointed, male best friend and young Ann Blyth as her almost irredeemable elder daughter Veda: how could someone like her come from Mildred and her dependable but dull first husband Bert (Bruce Bennett)?

 

This is one of the film’s great drivers and Veda, like her mother is always true to herself, perhaps taking the honesty of her endeavour for granted; weakness created from graft. The film has great tone to accompany these rich characters and if there’s anyone born that ever delivered a one-liner better than Eve Arden, as Ida, Mildred’s dependable left-hand woman, I’ve yet to see them!

Fernand Gravey and Heather Angel

Just over a decade before the European co-production Early to Bed (1933) was being produced in Germany during the final months of the Weimar Republic and featuring stars from Britain, France and Germany all working the same script in their own languages and on the same sets at UFA and around Berlin and Potsdamer. This film was new to me and described by Festival Director Robin Baker as a likeable oddity which it certainly was, a classic farce that escalated exponentially to the expected conclusion but not without running unexpected disaster mighty close.

Led by the aptly-named Heather Angel as Grete, a manicurist at a local salon and Fernand Gravey as Carl, a waiter with ambition the film features a very pleasing array of supporting actors including Donald Calthrop as an officious tour guide, Athene Seyler as Grete’s boss, Frau Weiser and the irrepressible Sonnie Hale as Helmut, projectionist at the local Kino and sausage-munching advisor to Carl. We also have Lady Tree – aka Lady Beerbohm Tree, wife of Sir Herbert – as Grete and Carl’s landlady, who is prone to wistful recollection of her many Shakespearian roles, the joke being that she was one of the leading actors of her generation with her rooms full o factual pictures from her many stage productions. She’s a joy hamming it up and playing her part in this comedy of errors.

Grete and Carl share a room but not at the same time, she does the night shift leaving at 9AM, just as Carl arrives for the day shift… it’s an odd arrangement but perhaps more common at the time. The tow never overlap but imagine each other as squinting or bow-legged, engaging in tit-for-tat acts of mischief, he scrunching her dresses, she throwing down his hats. By chance Carl sees her in the street and, not knowing who she is, he begins to romance her, especially when he believes that she is the daughter of the rich Herr Kruger (Edmund Gwenn). One thing leads to dozens of others, it’s fast and furious with that supporting cast working to keep everything aloft and in free flow.

There’s a clever device of constantly referencing the films shown in the Kino, featuring the German cast and replete with songs that feed into the main action. Heather may look like an angel but she doesn’t sing like one, but maybe that’s the point.

Miles and Maddie

Eleven years ago, London was bowled over by the BFI’s restoration of The First Born (1928) shown at the Royal Festival Hall in the LFF and with a magnificent yearning score from Stephen Horne and here it was again on a 35mm print the BFI made at the time. Miles Mander’s film is about love and betrayal and Stephen’s themes still capture that spirit in uncanny ways, perfectly describing Madeleine Carroll’s character, also Madeleine, yearning for her dastardly husband Sir Hugo Boycott (Mander), a strange, selfish politician who preaches one thing and does another… it’ll never catch on.

His wife he is willing to cast adrift as she cannot give him the son he so desires until she finds a way… a betrayal with the best of intentions. While Boycott is away Madeleine becomes close to the rather more handsome Lord David Harbrough (John Loder) who not only outranks her husband but is thoroughly decent as well… a girl could be forgiven for choosing an affair but whilst her heart is lost Madeleine stays loyal at whatever cost. It’s an intense, very well-made film, with a superb technical level placing it up with the very best of late-silent British and indeed, European cinema.

The accompaniment included some delightful extemporisation on Gershwin’s The Man I Love, Madeleine’s favourite song, her choice of 78 and her glance at Harbrough revealing all. It says so much of Stephen’s music that it feels all of a piece with his own melodies, one intoxicating line stuck in my head even as I write! There are so many variables with film and silent film especially; venue, audience, accompaniment and… materials. Film in excelsis.

The ultimate example of a film designed to replicate and control its own experience is Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room (1968/1973) a single-shot short that shows the trip up the steps and round to the old entrance of the BFI that ends up in the NFT 2. The film is only allowed to be screened in NFT 2 and this newly created 16mm print not only replicates our similar steps today but ultimately reminds us of the things that have changed and are different even as we connect with these moments of the seemingly everyday journey to the screen…

I shall follow this route as far as possible for the next screenings in this most considered and vital new festival. It’s all going to end with that shark on Sunday but there’s thousands of feet of film to unreel first!

 

Lynne Ramsay, Samantha Morton and Robyn Slovo still passionate about Morven Callar

*Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Morocco bound...

** "A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

The shock of the old… BFI Film on Film Festival, 8th – 11th June 2023

I must have been 14, fibbing about my age and sneaking with my mates into the Astra Cinema in Maghull, opened in 1930 as the Albany and where The Beatles had played back in 1962, to watch Jaws not once but twice as we hid in our seats for the second showing. Projected, as everything else at the time, on 35mm, the film was a vividly shocking experience with moments of horror I can still remember experiencing for the first time… I even dreamt about the film that night after.

Is it just age that changes our experience of cinema or is there something in the actual technology? I was taken immediately back to the Astra by the snippet shown at the launch of the BFI Film on Film Festival in the NFT 1 today, the same heat hazed expression of fear on Roy Scheider’s face as he scans the water line after the beach has been re-opened; imperfect, not crystal clear but sun-drenched, his anxiety and obscured vision is perfectly captured by the original materials: this is new light shone through chemicals originally affected by the actual light of the scene, not a perfected copy buried under microns of digital artifice. It’s not just the Gen-X and Boomers that treasure the analogue experiences but a whole new age of youngsters fascinated by the distinctiveness of technology abandoned and almost extinct. It’s like vinyl, an analogue experience with media that shows its age and is all the better for it.

We were shown a new short film made by Mark Jenkin, A Dog Called Discord (2022), which explained his fascination with film and not just the creation of narrative but also the process of development and projection, the entire mechanics. He is often handed old Super 8 and home movie footage and used one of these reels – best before 1960 – as an example of the content that can surprise; it’s a bout capturing moments and, restoring memories and feelings, a proper emotional gem that has to be seen to be understood. On celluloid of course.

Everyone in the room had their own connection to the material of film not least Robin Baker, Head Curator of the BFI National Archive who took us through an overview of the new festival’s aims and content. Whilst accepting digital strengths, there are also weaknesses, or at least differences… “A print can feel more… unpredictable. Like us it will change over time, its ‘imperfections’ helping to convey the life it has lived…” There are even films that play with the mutability of celluloid such as Charlie Shackleton’s The Afterlight (2021) which exists as only a single 35mm print which will be getting it’s 50^th spin around on 10^th June in the festival. Then there’s Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room (1968/73) 16mm’s and shot in NFT2 and, under the director’s instruction, only to be screened there and nowhere else.

The BFI is one of only 50-odd cinemas in the UK which is still set up to screen film and it’s not so much the technology as the expertise of projectionists. Then as BFI’s Head of Technical Services, Dominic Simmons, explained, it’s about the only one built specifically to screen the notoriously flammable nitrate film with a projection booth built in the early fifties with steel walls sandwiching asbestos to prevent the spread of fire. The projectors used for nitrate also have built in fire suppression with gas released to extinguish any fire, we will, almost certainly, be perfectly safe.

That said, who wouldn’t be willing to take some level of risk in order to see Rita Hayworth in 35mm in Rouben Mamoulian’s Blood and Sand (1941), Sidney Poitier in Joseph L. Mankiewicz No Way Out (1950) and Benita Hulme and Lesley Howard in Alexander Korda’s Service for Ladies (1932). These films are going to dazzle and take our breath away on 11^th June. Perhaps the greatest impact will come from Joan Crawford and the 35mm nitrate screening of Mildred Pierce (1945) on 8^th… I already have ticket anxiety having, to my knowledge never seen nitrate projected, I’m not that old! 

Joan Crawford: explosive?

On the silent front there will be the most welcome return of Miles Mander’s The First Born (1928) featuring my Grandad Bill’s favourite, Madeleine Carroll in one of this country’s finest films of the period. There will also be Stephen Horne to accompany with his music being so memorably associated with the film’s restoration screenings ten years ago. There are also two comedies directed by Manning Haynes from WW Jacobs’s wonderful short stories: Sam’s Boy (1922) and The Boatswain’s Mate (1924). Both could only have been made in this country and will have accompaniment from Neil Brand, one of the UK’s leading special effects.

Talking of such things, there’ll also be time to turn off, relax and float downstream with 3D spectacles to revisit the early fifties craze: the great outdoors with John Wayne in Hondo (1953), Grace Kelly almost within touching distance in Dial M for Murder (1954) and the blood-curdling dislocation of House of Wax (1953). See this film as it was meant to be seen along with dozens of Telekinema shorts commissioned as part of the Festival of Britain from when the Southbank complex was born.

There’s a hugely diverse offering over the festival’s four days with every possible screen in the former National Film Theatre being used to cram in every last drop of celluloid. Personally, I’ll be looking to catch Jon Pertwee in Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space, a new print of Dorothy Arsener’s Working Girls (1931) and Sight and Image: The Visual Documentary, dialogue-free films with newly commissioned live musical score. There's also the chance to tune in and turn on to Experimenta Mixtape 16mm Happening with live music by The Begotten... until the early hours on 10th June.

The First Born (1928)

For the real hardcore Gothamite, there’s a 70mm all-night treat at the BFI IMAX, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy… the teen who lied about his age to watch Jaws would have had his mind blown by this one.

Whatever the cut of your cape, you’ll find something to love in this feast of around 200,000 feet of film: 39 features, 69 shorts and 8 television works, screening from 38 16mm prints, 58 35mm prints, four 70mm prints and 16 Super 8 prints.

Checkout the full programme online now and prepare for booking which starts in the first week of May.

Experimenta Mixtape 16mm Happening with live music by The Begotten...

There's more than one way to time travel, Jon...

Joan in a state of grace… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Pordenone Day Seven

“If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.”

It was the age of the epic, films as battleships of desire armed to the teeth with huge sets, passionate stars and grand themes of endless truth and beauty. Cecil B DeMille followed DW Griffith’s Intolerance with the eleven reels of Joan the Woman in late 1916 and hoped to ride on the wave of enthusiasm for novelistic features.

This was a world premiere of the 2019 restoration and Joan doesn’t disappoint in terms of itself: it is dynamic, rangy and forceful and probably hasn’t looked this good in 103 years with the battles, pageantry and operatic drama all so crisp and with the colourised flames at the inevitable ending looking stunning. It’s not particularly historical of course but this was DeMille and not Dreyer and Joan was also propaganda for an America yet to enter the Great War.

The film has a framing sequence that has Joan (Geraldine Farrar) appear before a British soldier (Wallace Reid) who has to decide whether to volunteer for a suicide mission; now, says the ghostly Joan, it is time for you to right the wrongs you did to me/my country… This does seems a bit harsh, holding a grudge for 685 years and then having a pop at a random Englishman only, he isn’t, as Mr Reid is playing a descendant of Eric Trent who was famously the lover of Joan a character made up for the film to show that Joan was all woman (yes, exactly like Lisa Stansfield).

"Gerry" Farrar

Fact Check: The Maid of Orléans was just 19 when she was murdered by the English and here Our Gerry (actual nickname) was 34. But, enough of my history snark, I was genuinely very impressed by Farrar in this film not just for her command and expression but also because she really did get stuck into a very physical role, horse riding and battling with the boys.

This is how Hollywood has always "done" history and there’s an entertainment to be constructed which needs meet certain objectives to play to the millions eager for more drama and scale. Joan therefore has an – unrequited – love story with an English nobleman, Eric Trent (also Wallace Reid natch) who raids her village only to be stopped in his tracks by her beauty and conviction. She saves him, he saves her, she saves him, he tries to save her… it may be a set-piece romantic arc inserted for pragmatic appeal but it does humanise Joan’s character away from the saintly battles and warrior religion that might not have been enough to insure box office glory: this is Joan as A Woman after all.

There’s a cast of thousands with some of my favourite character actors including Hobart Bosworth as the noble General La Hire, Tully Marshall as L’Oiseleur a manic monk and Raymond Hatton as the weak Charles VII…

It’s a visual feast and purely entertaining if you switch off the history and was accompanied with power and panache by Philip Carli: music to storm English battlements to!

“She’s... the greatest find of the year! Beautiful, wonderful emotional quality – bound for stardom.”

Years later Joan the Dancer enjoyed a breakout performance in Edmund Goulding’s Sally, Irene and Mary (1925) tonight’s big film with another fresh restoration. Crawford plays Irene one of a trio of women trying to find work and happiness on Broadway one of the most successful themes of the times. The ethereal Constance Bennett is Sally, an elegant dancer who lives in a sumptuous upper east-side apartment kept by rich Marcus Morton (Henry Kolker aged 51) or possibly her family who are in oil… “just like sardines!” quips her pal.

Mary (Sally O’Neil) is an Irish gal on her first big stage break much to the concern of her beau, plumber Jimmy Duggan (William Haines – hurrah!) although her mam (Aggie Herrin) and Jimmy’s (Kate Price) are delighted – those two are great together and there’s lots of celtic banter! O’Neil is very sparky and I’m surprised she didn’t have a bigger career but, as with Bennet and especially Crawford, you needed to be so tough to thrive, a point the film’s glib conclusion makes as well“Broadway broke them but it won’t break me…”

The film starts in some style as the three make their way to the Dainties Theatre for the show with a lovely sequence where Irene stops to admire a black boy’s street dance, although she does drop her bag smashing her mirror… what can that mean? Then we see them in action on stage and Joan Crawford is magnificent, the ultimate flapper, arms thrown over her head as she cuts the sharpest of Charlestons centre stage: all of Lucille Fay LeSueur thousands of hours practice in full view and that’s before we’ve seen much of her uncanny responsiveness on camera.

This promise is not maintained by the rest of the film even though the three leads are all so good; there’s just not enough story to really make this a great film especially in Joan’s case. Iren is pursued by two men but we don’t get enough back story and motivation just lots of party lounging, looks and a mad dash in one of their cars for a spite marriage.

Idiot casts Constance aside.

Sally is tormented by her sugar daddy’s fading interest, although it’s impossible to understand why… as he tries to pick up the new girl, Irene who, being a street-smart Irish girl, you would expect would have seen him a mile off. But, no… Irene can’t resist flirting with Marcus thereby alienating both Jimmy and her new pal Sally… which feels contrived. Maybe there are elements missing but overall the film, for all its stars and style, doesn’t carry you away as far as it could.

The score was from Donald Sosin with an ensemble providing drums, double bass and guitar (will try and find their names!) who added style and were outstanding on the dance and party sequences: had there been room in a packed Teatro Verdi we might well have danced too.

Margery Wilson and William S Hart

William S Hart’s The Return of Draw Egan (1916) also had a new score, from Ari Fisher and performed by musicians from the Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Tartini, Triest, conducted by Petar Matosevic. It was thoroughly enjoyable and the film ticked all the Hart boxes:

1.  Rolling a cigarette one handed, lighting a match with the other hand, inhaling and looking well hard

2. Bad-guy-to-good guy as Egan gets a new start as a sheriff

3. Past coming back to haunt him

4. Saved by the love of a good woman/girl played by Margery Wilson (aged 19)

5. Louis Glaum playing a rabble-rousing saloon girl

All good fun and, I think the tenth Hart film of the week for me!

All this aside there was a fun sequence of mostly British shorts accompanied by Stephen Horne including a rather sad visit of Jackie Coogan to the Stoll Studios – he looked so young and tired – and the very witty What’s Wrong with the Cinema (1925) from Adrian Brunel (probably).

John Sweeney also accompanied more rediscovered shorts from the Desmet Collection including a probable Lois Webber film Twins (1911) Lupino Lane and his brother Wallace in Hello Sailor (1927) and the mesmeric dancing of Parisian Revue Attractions No. 1 (1926).

We could have danced all night but we drank instead. Thirsty work all this watchin'...

All Tomorrow’s Crawfords… The Unknown (1927) with Costas Fotopoulos

Joan’s eyes… so reflective they almost show the director and crew illuminated by the Klieg lights. So laser sharp, a flick of the lashes glancing so pleadingly towards the camera or in soft-focus, delivering a glistening tear as heartbreak turns her soul.

This was the film when Crawford truly hit her stride as she paced Lon Chaney’s own exhausting rigour and fed of the insane energies fueling his performance. There are those who like Joan and others who like Norma Shearer but whilst the latter had warned her pal about the Chaney experience, the younger actress clearly had a better balance with the man of a thousand grimaces; a face like a talking book. This might say something or nothing about Shearer vs Crawford, but the latter grabbed it as an opportunity to focus her career with the same energy, commitment and ruthless dedication she applied to her dancing and everything else.

Joan Crawford

There’s a great quote she gave after the film was released: “I want the Joan Crawford I am this year, to be only a building block for the Joan Crawford of next year. I want to be prepared for those years that come when youth is gone. I haven’t done a single thing, not a single thing, with which I’m content.”

And, that’s all it takes to become the biggest star in Hollywood and to build a career that lasted for a lifetime.

The first time I saw this film I thought it striking but quite unpleasant and that’s not only par for the course for writer/director Tod Browning, but also for a long line of films that came after him from David Lynch to Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Roger Corman, Quentin Tarrentino and many more; tales to unsettle. But not many can do this with the style of Lynch or Browning who, a former circus artiste himself, knew the dark side of the business and the attraction it held for the outcast and outlandish. He knew the transgressive fascination the tented world held for the mainstream; clowns, jugglers, strongmen and horses – we all like a freak-out.

Lon Chaney and Nick De Ruiz

But The Unknown is unsettling not just because of the setting but because of the intensity of Chaney’s character, his lack of morality and his willingness to do anything, to himself and others, in order to get what he wants. Chaney manages to convey all of this with skill, he’s scaringly true. He is maybe even more frightening than he is in the Phantom as his motivations are easier to read and believe: there is no mask to hide the real horror of the man without care. And you really – really - wouldn’t want him throwing knives at you with his feet, let alone on a moving podium…

Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless, a circus performer who is extraordinary skilled at using the only limbs he apparently has left: his legs and feet.

He loves Nanon Zanzi (Joan Crawford) and she is part of his act, stripping down to a skimpy costume as he throws those knives at her and shoots the straps of her dress off… The male gaze is all over Joan and, indeed the male gauze for the love scenes… Crawford’s legs should have been down for a best-supporting role they’re featured so thoroughly and there’s not a dress that’s not tailored to within a half-inch of her figure. Those eyes are given ample chance to shine and her young face – always slightly not-Joan… shown in close-ups crafted with all the care of Brown’s Garbo or Sternberg’s Marlene.

Her physicality is a match for Chaney’s own and that’s one thing Shearer couldn’t match: Crawford has a dancer’s athleticism and she’s fearless. Ferocious in fact. She had to be with a story like this… there were a few twenty first century sniggers in a packed NFT 2, although they quickly died away. The idea of a two-thumbed man, hiding his arms for profit is bizarre as is the woman who is not just frightened of male intimacy but, specifically, their arms and hands. The sheer commitment of the performers carries all before it until you’re sitting in shock watching the lengths to which mad love can drive man and beast…

Norman Kerry’s circus strongman Malabar the Mighty seems a mite luke-warm next to his co-stars, he’s handsome, muscular and noble but here reduced to the role of love interest – a benign corner of the triangle, a sweet-hearted mirror to better reflect Chaney’s fire. Malabar longs to caress Nanon but she has been the victim of unwanted male contact too many times: she cannot bear the embrace of his manly mits and fulsome forearms.

Norman Kerry and his, um, arms...

Alonzo being armless, Nanon feels less threatened and gives her affection knowing that there’ll be none of the advances that unsettle her so. Alonzo uses this to try force her and the muscle man apart and it seems to be working… Then, out of the blue, we discover that Alonzo is far from harmless: he is a fully-armed escaped killer whose malformed thumbs have meant that he hides his hands in order to avoid detection by the police. The moment when his tightly strapped corset is opened is all the more shocking for our imagining what discomfort the actor had to endure during filming… every bit a shocking as the revelation of the Phantom’s face.

Soon he has more to hide after killing Nanon’s father Antonioni, the circus owner with his double thumb spotted by Nanon: he must keep his arms to himself and yet how can he have his love without revealing himself.

The most frightening laugh you will ever see...

By now the story has developed a cast-iron logic of its own and we believe everything even Alonzo’s last desperate leap of faith makes total sense…  but we are caught up in his fevered World and as if to illustrate the extremes, the young lovers are filmed behind a gauze by Browning, as if to emphasise the fairy-tale quality of their love. Desperation and devotion will collide in the shocking ending which still makes me shuffle uncomfortably in my seat as innocence unravels as perceived friend attempts the most dastardly revenge for the loss of his lover…

Costas Fotopoulis accompanied with assured lyricism and relishing every startling twisted nerve. He played along to the dramatic excess with restrain and period charm, gothic chords and yearning lines back-dropping the intense, bizarre, emotion on screen.

Mordaunt Hall reviewed the film of release for the New York Times and was reservedly ecstatic: “The narrative is a sort of mixture of Balzac and Guy de Maupassant with a faint suggestion of O. Henry plus Mr. Browning's colourful side-show background… Mr. Chaney really gives a marvellous idea of the Armless Wonder… he even scratches his head with his toe when meditating.

Miss Crawford is not only beautiful, but she gives a most competent performance...”

So… not just a pretty face. “Competent”, oh Mordaunt, she’d have you for breakfast mate!

The Unknown was screening as part of the BFI’s Joan Crawford season: Fierce – it runs until October and features many of her classic roles but maybe they all started here; the Joan Crawford of tomorrow, next year and after youth.

Lost in transition… Our Blushing Brides (1930)

 Wiki-parently this was Joan Crawford’s 31st film (out of a career total of 86) and her 4th sound film – a third of her films were silent - made when she was just 26 and still in the process of becoming “Joan Crawford”.

Her diction is deliberately modulated to enable the microphones to pick up something approximating a received pronunciation north eastern American accent – this gal doesn’t sound like she’s from the Bronx let alone San Antonio, Texas… that she manages to act through these constraints is a wonder and a measure of her talent.

Crawford, Page and Sebastien again!

Our Blushing Brides follows loosely on from Our Dancing Daughters (very good), Our Modern Maidens (so-so) and is a mixed bag of genre and tone incorporating shop-girl comedy, dance spectacular, rom-com and melodrama shifting sometimes awkwardly between happy and really bloomin’ sad. Throughout it all, the camera is focused on Joan in and out of a variety of stunning gowns and frankly very pre-code lingerie… Ever get the feeling you’re being exploited?

It proves to be a very uneven experience and for stretches leaves you marooned in one of its pockets of coherence as you wait for the narrative to move along whilst, other-times, it just ups and jumps to its (sometimes-inevitable) conclusions without taking the characters and the audience through the steps to get there…

Laughs!

And yet… there are laughs, snap-chatty inter-play between the three female leads and a catwalk over-flowing with dancing mannequins all wearing the finest in elegant sewing or haute couture to you. Then there’s Joan, as expressive and energetically-focused as ever: this feels like a reasonably aerobic work-out for her but she’s clearly playing within her limits – half actress half athlete.

She gets good support from Dorothy Sebastian – ideal best friend material for Miss Crawford; capable of keeping up without overshadowing the front-runner. Also good is Anita Page who performs the seemingly impossible feet of having larger and prettier eyes than Joan. Joan has to work her lids to show her peepers to full effect but Anita just has to blink. A more natural comedian than Crawford her role is all the more tragic for that.

Legs!!

The three women play a hat-trick of shop workers who all perform different roles in Jardine’s Department Store and share a humble brownstone flat on their $20 weekly pay. Joan is Geraldine "Gerry" March a model or “mannequin” – who shows off the stores finest clothes to the well-off patrons whilst Anita is Connie Blair who works in the perfume counter whilst Dorothy’s Francine Daniels sells blankets in home furnishings.

As with all store-slaves they dream of escape and it seems Connie may well have found hers in the form of the owner’s second son David Jardine (Raymond Hackett). Gerry is less certain and has a natural distrust of male motivations no doubt having been once or twice-bitten. She attracts the attention of David’s elder brother Tony (Robert Montgomery) who ogles her during a fashion show and tries his luck but it turns out that Gerry doesn’t just play at hard-to-get: she is.

Lingerie!!!

Then Francine, almost despairing of a lucky break, meets a mustachioed charmer Marty Sanderson (John Miljan) who orders $500 worth of blankets for his hotel and arranges a date at the same time: he’s in the money and she’s not bothering to check the gift-horse’s teeth…

Relationships move to the next level very quickly: Francine and Marty have a quick-fire drunken wedding much to Gerry’s concern whilst Connie soon moves into an apartment courtesy of David and it’s surely only a matter of time before he makes their relationship public.

Jeepers, creepers... check out Anita's peepers!

Then the film decides it’s time for a huge set-piece as a flamboyant fashion designer arrives to greet old pal Tony and arrange a massive show at the family pile… spotting Gerry he decides to make her the centre-piece. The limos arrive to find a massive stage erected on the vast Jardine estate and the nonsense begins with long minutes of Joan high-kicking and knicker-revealing in a flowing white dress. Swoosh, spin and bend: take that Mr Hays!!

What a swell party this is

Tony is naturally very impressed and takes Gerry off for a quite walk in the woods to show her his electronic tree house (haven’t you got one?). At the flick of a switch a large apartment is revealed and a stairway is lowered… Climbing up Gerry finds the room full of all the home comforts and yet, when Tony pulls up the stairs she feels cheated by this house-trap/tree-trick. Gerry had thought better of Tony and yet when he tries to man-splain his worldly-wise ways she realises he’s not one to trust before a tryst.

Tony's on third strike

Disgusted Gerry departs and refuses to give Tony a second chance: a line that impresses as a third chance is also spurned. Gerry leaves to live alone as expectations are momentarily confounded… Then things begin to unravel as life and the narrative takes a turn for the worse all round as the film finally decides it’s a drama after all with music and comedy put aside for the final fraught thirty minutes.

At the time Our Blushing Brides did good business and it’s not hard to see why: it was built to succeed by ticking so many boxes it could almost be a multiple choice examination on how to make a Hollywood winner. It’s a thoroughly-professional endeavour from all concerned and whilst it doesn’t engage in the way that Our Dancing Daughters did, it prefigures the mass ensemble back-stage musical dramas that were to follow.

Such a show off

It was also another staging post in the rise of the remarkable Joan – her diction and tone would improve but the look and the intensity was already in place as evidenced throughout her silent successes.

Our Blushing Brides is available on Warner Archive DVD-R either direct or from Amazons.

Don't worry dear, he liked it really...

Harry walks the walk… Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)

Growing up with my first exposure to silent film from Bob Monkhouse’s Mad Movies show –  a weekly home movie show for the comedian who was never more sincere than when discussing these films  – I was always aware that there was a fourth member of the top tier of silent comedians: a second Harry and one who had his own distinct proposition.*

Harry Langdon was the baby-faced hero who had a mix of Keaton’s stoicisim, Lloyd’s optimism and Chaplin’s  trousers… Langdon had his own pace though and one quite different from the rest… Timing, as we all know, is the essence of “funny” and all the comedy acts had to have it. A daft thing happens, they look into camera, at each other, into the middle distance… and then the after-effect: a fall, a slap, a hit with a brick or nothing at all… Laughter comes out of the silver shadows and the audience response is entirely down to the skills of the performer: the difference between comic or not being a complex equation involving motion, emotion and empathy.

Harry's poster girl

Harry Langdon had been around the block coming up through vaudeville and only started his film career in the early 1920’s (well into his thirties) when he signed with Mac Sennett. He really hit his stride mid-decade with a succession of feature-length comedies including Frank Capra’s The Strong Man and this film directed by Harry Edwards.

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp sees Harry as the son of a one-shop shoe-maker (Alec B Francis) who is on the brink of being driven out of business by bigger, more ruthless competitors. He needs $25,000 and has only a few weeks to get it and a son high on romantic ideals but low in useful application. The scene is set almost instantly: how will this drowsy-eyed, soft-lad ever come to the rescue?

Father seeks help from son...

There’s an almost indecent haste about a narrative that is very tightly wound around its central characters – just an excuse to set up situations for the star to act and react. Harry is revealed to be in love with the poster girl for the crushing competition, Burton Shoes, she is Betty  Burton (Joan Crawford) who just happens to be the daughter of their CEO John Burton (Edwards Davis)…  He stares longingly at her image on massive billboards that dominate the landscape as they dominate his father’s business and doesn’t seem to resent her association with his family’s imminent financial ruin.

When shoe-makers collide: Logan vs Burton

But maybe that’s it about Harry’s persona, he’s haplessly in love and we all know that in spite of the practicalities of everyday human emotional response, he’ll stay true to her and to us and that, somehow, all will be well. He’s not just a baby-face but a virtual child who the audience can trust to stay lucky in a world very similar to the one they inhabit. Tonight, just for an hour, we can achieve something just by being ourselves and trusting in love and good fortune…

Tom Murray

Not that things will be easy for Harry. His father’s landlord is a mean man called Nick Kargas (Tom Murray) who also happens to be a world champion distance walker. Big Boss Burton just happens to set up a cross-country walking race with a winner’s prize of $25,000 which Nick is clear favourite to win. It’s exactly the amount Harry needs to save his father’s shop and yet he stumbles into the competition through his disorientated affection for Betty. There’s no plan and even his determination in proclaiming that he’ll get the money fades almost the instant he steps outside and doesn’t know which way to turn….

Betty decides Harry can compete...

Carrying Nasty Nick’s bags to the event, Harry is mistaken for the athlete before being dragged into the competition: we know he’s going to win it but we’ve no idea how – he hasn’t Buster’s hidden strength or Chaplin’s doggedness but he has a disorganised courage that will rise to any occasion. So bring on the prancing walkers all six foot tall, better equipped and experienced: they haven’t got a chance and we know it.

Staring up at her picture – when, frankly, he should be making plans – he is amazed to find Betty right behind him. Incredibly there’s an instant bond between the two and a short-hand romance that takes flight with a glance, a trip and the kindest of words. Almost as if the audience need to be reassured about the love story before Harry can really set about the business of comedy…

Girl looks at boy looking at girl

Through the next 50 minutes Harry is left hanging from a fence hundreds of feet in the air, locked up on a chain gang after stealing fruit, dragged behind a train for 40 miles and goes one on one against a cyclone. Harry takes everything is taken in his stride and Betty pops up at every staging post to remind us of his additional rewards should he win.

His father follows events by means of newsreels at his local picture house – a reminder of how much cinema was plugged into people’s lives by this point: never mind the rolling news broadcasts, the people of the twenties had picture news.

Events proceed as you’d expect and the ending coda shows Betty and Harry married and secure with a new baby who, naturally, looks very much like his dad… they couldn’t resist: who needs a baby when you have Baby Face?

It’s in that odd face where Langdon’s secret lies: he never tires and bumbles through in a freeform way until finally faced with the impossible, he triumphs be it a cyclone or a big bully of a champion-walker-landlord! We should all be so lucky.

Tramp, Tramp, Tramp is available on a Kino DVD along with two other features: excellent value and a reminder of Landgon’s high-point. He may not have had the longevity of The Crucial Three but he had the hilarity.

*Probably best to reclassify these players as comedic romantic leads… and Roscoe Arbuckle is certainly up there with Mabel Normand too…