Poetry and motion – Terje Vigen (1917) John Sweeney and Lillian Henley, Kennington Bioscope

I’m not sure if Victor Sjöström and John Ford ever met but from their mutual love of spectacular nature and their belief in The Strong Man (or Woman), I’m sure they would have got on like a wooden cabin on fire.

These two films came early in both men’s careers and show how advanced performance and cinematography had become by 1917. Two wildly different subjects and locations but two master film-makers at work capturing wild drama against stunning backdrops…

Out West… Bucking Broadway (1917) with Cyrus Gabrysch

This film was only rediscovered a few years back and looks very fine from the restoration on view. It features many Ford trademarks that were no doubt anything but at this relatively stage: beautiful scenery, hard-working ranch hands, a massed brawl – unrehearsed a free-for-all just like JF like them – and a slight story, balanced by not taking itself too seriously. It’s a fun film and very good-looking.

Harry Carey stars as Cheyenne Harry, the pride of the ranch and the apple of his boss’s daughter Helen’s eye. Helen is played by Molly Malone who looks far too young for Harry (39) and yet was 29 so, you can relax South Yorkshire Police Force…

Harry and Helen

Harry carves Helen a heart which she promises to keep and the couple are delighted when her father (L. M. Wells) agrees to their union and future life in a little log cabin Harry has built.

But… into this Wyoming paradise enters a gentleman from New York City, name of Thornton (Vester Pegg) a man with a baddie’s moustache if ever you saw one! He drives his fast car and eastern allure straight into the heart of the young couple’s relationship and before Harry knows it, has started to tempt Helen away with his talk of the bright lights, the big city…

Harry Carey and Molly Malone

As Harry and Helen’s engagement is announced it’s already too late and his intended has been swept off her feet, into Thornton’s car and the express train to NYC. Harry and her Father are distraught.

In New York which, sadly, we don’t get to see; any exteriors clearly being in LA… Helen is introduced to Thornton’s “sister” Gladys (Gertrude Astor) who makes very strange eyes at the younger woman: what’s really going on – white slave trade or something even more transgressive?!

Gladys' mysterious gaze

Helen begins to wonder and sends her wooden heart back to Harry who, as all cowboys do in times of emotional stress, was about to head off on his lonesome. He quickly reverses his decision on receipt of her letter and – literally – catches the next express to New York chasing after it on horseback and clambering on at speed – ye-hah!!

It’s only a matter of time before Thornton is showing his true colours – drinking, messing his hair up and pushing Helen around in front of his weird friends… and then it’s a question of how long it will take Harry to come to the rescue…

It’s a fun film aided by Cyrus’ G’s splendid accompaniment: a man equally at home with cattle wrangling in Wyoming dust as with Park Avenue sophistication and the chaos that ensues when both worlds collide.

Up North… Terje Vigen (There Was a Man) (1917) with John Sweeney and Lillian Henley

I’d previously watched the Kino DVD of this film but this was an altogether more immersive experience: the BFI’s 35mm film was screened and, in the absence of English translations, Lillian Henley read out a translation with actorly precision and powerful, controlled tones. The film is based on the poem by Henrik Ibsen and Lilian’s voice worked perfectly with the rise and fall of the verse: perfectly pitched!

John Sweeney accompanied with some of his most dramatic lines all the while allowing Lillian the space to vocalise before re-joining the action out at sea. The result was simply one of the best silent events I’ve witnessed at the Bioscope or elsewhere: it should be bottled and prescribed for all those in need of some silent spirit!

Victor Sjöström

The film marks a step change in Sjostrom’s direction and the beginning of his glory years aided and abetted by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon. Here Jaenzon captures the rugged coastline not far from Stockholm, which passes for the unforgiving Grimstad coast where the poem was originally set, whilst there are shots on board pilot’s boats, frigates and schooners that put the audience right in the middle of the relentless North Sea.

Camera angles may help a lot but so often we see Sjöström himself, climbing up rigging to splice the sails, rowing against the tides and diving under the murk to evade capture. He was a brave performer as well as innovative director and pushes his own performance to the limits here where his ability to switch from strength to vulnerability is remarkable. There is a man and one who loses all but still finds his soul in spite of a rage vast enough to match the sea storms.

Young Terje

Sjöström’s Terje is a creature of epic desolation – hair and beard robbed of all colour by the loss of his family in the English blockade of Norway between 1809-1815 – but before we know the cause we understand the effect as he rages full-on against the sea.

In flashback we see his previous noble standing and the joy upon his return from long moths at sea of discovering his new born daughter. Happiness lasts until his girl is a few years older and crumbles when war is declared. The British prevent all supplies and Terje, their strongest and bravest, sets off to smuggle food back.

Happy return

He evades the patrols but on his return with three precious sacks of supplies, he gets chased down over agonising and desperate minutes by an English privateer who cares not for his tearful pleading and simply laughs in his face. He’s locked up for long years and unaware of his family’s fate and when his hell is ended by peace, he returns home to the worst possible news.

Thus has he been made and yet he exists as a pilot helping ships in danger to navigate the cruel rocks he knows so well. But he is bitter and sick – a hollow man. When chance offers him the chance to even the score with the very man who condemned him to this fate… can he possibly resist?

 
You’ll need to watch it to find out.

Terje Vigen is available on a Kino DVD with the earlier Ingeborg Holm (1913) and you can buy it from Amazon and all the usual places but... it’s nothing like the real, live, thing!

Encore Bioscope! Encore!!

It's better to travel... Upstream (1927)

 
Upstream was considered a lost film up until 2009 and, whatever minor quibbles there may be over the quality, the rediscovery of any silent film from John Ford has to be celebrated As it happens Upstream is a short but smart comedy drama featuring a strong ensemble cast that helps flesh out our knowledge of the breadth and depth of Ford’s work at this time. It’s not a classic but it is a delight that lifted my mood on a cold, flu-ey kind of day.

Some have written of the film’s debt to Murnau with subtle lighting and angular camera work underpinning the performances but the rapidly-established characterisations are Ford’s own – a strong cast, well directed in those moments between thought and expression…

Jane Winton and Emile Chautard

Given only an hour to establish a baker’s dozen parts, Ford succeeds in making us understand each and every one and we care for the outcome and the comeuppence deserved by spectacular hubris. The players are mostly theatricals holed up in rooms they can barely afford, eking out a living and helping each other best they can through thespian solidarity. Ford would have known all too much about such an environment given his elder brother Francis' vaudeville career.

Miss Hattie Breckenbridge (Lydia Yeamans Titus – a name to conjure with) runs the house and, in spite of her entreating her guests to pay in advance, she seems to generously accept their lame excuses for the cash not flowing.

Lydia Yeamans Titus reminds Sammy Cohen and Ted McNamara about their rent

This may be due to her romantic attachment to their profession or at least to the Star Boarder (Raymond Hitchcock), but, as the title card points out, such landladies’ “…legs, archaeologists say, were the very foundation of early American theatre”.

Hattie’s warmth is shared by the majority of her guests who seem generous and willing to share, even if it is only advice and condolences as the opportunities fly away.But, there’s always one…

Jack can see through Eric even if Gertie can't...

There’s a knife-throwing act comprised of an uneven love triangle formed around pretty Gertie Ryan (Nancy Nash) with snooty Eric Brasingham (an excellent Earle Foxe) competing with thrower Jack La Velle (Grant Withers) for her affection. Eric is “the last and least” of this great acting clan (related to the Barrymores perhaps…) who lives off his name and not any native talent.

He is at least first to the dinner table though and is joined by the company’s elder statesman and Shakespeare-worshiper, Campbell Mandare (Emile Chautard) who, spotting the skull-shaped tooth-pick holder ventures a bit of Hamlet before being cut short by Eric’s sneering.

Nancy Nash

Hattie greets her favourite boarder, who is being flirted with on the stairs by La Soubrette (the lovely Jane Winton – who was so good in The Patsy) and gives her younger rival a disapproving stare. A Soubrette is – wiki-parently – a stock character who is vain, girlish and coquettish: good casting then.

We see the other characters in their rooms, Juggler (John’s older brother Francis Ford) and

Deerfoot (Ely Reynolds) are cooking up some bootleg hooch whilst mother and sister team (the scarcely similar, Judy King and Lillian Worth) practise their routine. Funniest of all are the supposedly Irish hoofing brothers Callahan and Callahan played by Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen: can you guess which one of these boys is actually from the old country? This is a joke that just keeps giving as we later see them in a “before and after” advert for cosmetic surgery.

Francis Ford, Judy King, Lillian Worth and Ely Reynolds

The Callaghans dance so hard they shower the dining table with plaster, possibly increasing the nutritional value of Hattie’s soup considerably…

By the time everyone is round the table their characters are established and we see Jack casting daggers at Eric as he sweet-talks sweet Gertie who seems oblivious to the fact that he’s a bit of a rotter. Meanwhile, at the head of the table, the Star Boarder, attempts to play footsie with La Soubrette only to give Hattie the wrong idea.

Dinner is interrupted by the arrival of big cigar-chomping theatrical agent Gus Hoffman (Harry Bailey) – Ford’s camera captures the buzz as it sweeps across the diners’ faces: “has he come for me?”. Everyone rushes out leaving Eric alone with his food…

But the last of the line’s luck is in as Hoffman reveals “I’ve got a rush order from London for a Brashingham to play Hamlet…”. He’s not interested in the talent just the name... which is very lucky as Eric has none or does he?

Campbell Mandare inspires Ham-let

Puffed up by this opportunity, Eric still has the good sense to take up Campbell Mandare’s offer of a crash course in Shakespeare and, somehow, the veteran’s passion infects him. Before his debut in London he has a vision of his teacher and goes out to bring the house down!

Friends are soon forgotten as he laps up the plaudits and believes the hype. As Gertie waits in vain for a letter or a phone call, Eric enjoys the fruits of success without a thought for her or even his new fans: his glamorous escort dropping a rose from an admirer contemptuously on the road.

Credibility at full stretch, the story has to deliver some balance and as Eric returns to New York a publicity trip is arranged to his old boarding house… will he receive a hero’s welcome or have his friends moved on as well?

The results of Eric’s mighty arrogance are pretty certain someway out but that’s not to say it isn’t all fun to watch as you hope dignity, solidarity and good fortune will prove to be not dependent on ticket sales.

Upstream fits a lot into its allotted span and its main interest is these wonderful characters with the story essentially just a device to hang them off. A strong cast plays very well and a number were to feature in later Ford films – both Ryan and Foxe were in My Darling Clementine in 1946.

I watched the Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive DVD recently released from the US National Film Preservation Foundation. It’s another splendid compilation of which more anon… It’s available direct and from all good online retailers.

“Go Upstream to success! Wear humbly the regal laurel of genius!”

The title may have been retro-fitted into the story to enable he film to replace a scheduled release that was cancelled… whatever, it kind of works: it’s better to travel honestly than arrive complacently.

Kept a rollin’… The Iron Horse (1924)

When I studied history, we used to experiment with counterfactual analysis and one of the key questions was what would American economic development have been like without the railroads? You might just as well ask what American film would be like without John Ford…

From a modern standpoint The Iron Horse looks like the proto-typical “John Ford film” – a big-scale western – yet by the time he came to make it he had made over fifty films of varying types and, after his last silent western two years later, he didn’t make another until a thing called Stagecoach in 1939.

Reputations can be a put off and few loom as large as Mr Ford whose personal courage gets rather conflated with his work as a film director. Association with a specific genre can also be a disincentive especially Westerns which, even by this stage had become something of a cliché: the narrative, literally, running on rails... Yet, what can you make of John Ford as a film-maker and, stripping all preconceptions away, did he make enduring entertainment? Does The Iron Horse still stand on its own four metallic feet?

There’s also that hard man rep… I like the story of Ford’s publicly bawling out an aged film-maker fallen on hard times whilst secretly arranging for his secretary to help pay his wife’s medical bills and set them both up with a pension for life: he had a soft heart which he seemingly hid under the gruff exterior. Does this show in his films? There are certainly clues in The Iron Horse which is fuelled by dreams, romance and comedy as much as violence and duplicity.

But isn’t John Ford also the ultimate Republican and aren’t there political difficulties on a par with Birth of a Nation – in which Ford had briefly appeared as a Klan member? Interestingly, Ford’s baddy is actually a white man who incites the Cheyenne whilst the Pawnee are working with the white men. There are many films which came after this one which dealt a less even hand to the Native Americans although I’m not saying it's twenty first century politically correct…

Chief John Big Tree is un-credited as the Cheyenne Chief but Ford paints his tribe as heroic in their own way… mislead by white greed. As the above still shows, there was respect and he avoids Griffiths’ simplistic view and need to demonise.

That’s not to say that The Iron Horse isn't entirely objective... there’s some sugar in there as, not for the first time or the last, Hollywood improves History…

At the start we see a man called Brandon (James Gordon) who has a dream to build a railroad across the USA, his friend Thomas Marsh (Will Walling) is not convinced and thinks it’s all moonshine. Brandon’s son Davy and Marsh’s daughter Miriam play games based on surveying - the acorn has not fallen far from the tree.

Brandon and his son set off as Miriam cries and their other friend, Abraham Lincoln (Charles Edward Bull) tells Marsh that one day men like him will be building Brandon’s dream.

Brandon meets his fate

Just after they find a route through the mountains – one that will be 200 miles shorter than the Indian trail, Brandon is ambushed and killed by a group of Cheyenne. Before he dies he recognises their ring-leader as white… he is killed for his silence as young Davy looks on in helpless horror.

Cut forward many years and Abraham has become president – just like we all knew he would… In spite of the Civil War raging, he approves the construction of a single railway and, as predicted, Marsh is one of the men working to make this happen as the Union Pacific Railway Company builds westward and the Central Pacific heads east…

The film attempts to be as historically accurate as entertainment permits, showing the temporary cities that grew up around this vast project in California and Nevada. We see buffalo and bison being herded by one William Cody (Buffalo Bill…as played by George Waggner) as well as Wild Bill Hickcok who brought cattle across huge distances to feed the workers.

The workforces were pushed to the limit and, in one of many lighter touches, we see a grown up Miriam (Madge Bellamy) rousing the tired and disaffected to one last push on behalf of her father. One of the supervisors, Corporal Casey (J. Farrell MacDonald), looks on aghast “but ye have to swear at them!”… apparently not if you’re pretty.

Madge Bellamy

Casy and his two mates Sgt. Slattery (Francis Powers) and Pvt. Schultz (Jim Welch) provide comic relief with serious on the side. It serves its purpose in this relatively long film.

One of the money men involved in the project is Deroux - named Bauman in the "International" version of the film – played by Fred Kohler, who seems to have plenty to hide.

Fred Kohler

A rider comes bolting out of the dust followed by dozens of Indians, he heads towards a locomotive carrying Marsh’s team and somehow managers to scramble on board. It turns out to be Davy, who’s grown up (as strapping George O'Brien) and fighting for his father’s dream. He and Miriam have instant sparks a-flying but for some reason she’s engaged to Peter Jesson (Cyril Chadwick)…

Jesson is easily swayed by Ruby...

Deroux has a stake in the railway going the long way round the mountains and recruits local good-time girl/sex worker Ruby (Gladys Hulette) to persuade him that there’s no such thing as the rumoured short-cut. Jesson puts up very little resistance and is soon committed to the bad guys.

Deroux makes sure Jesson accompanies Davy in search of the ravine his father had showed him and, as the young man climbs down to investigate, he cuts the safety rope with an axe leaving him to fall to his doom…or so it appears.

Davy takes a fall

There’s a wonderful brawl once Davy returns to denounce Jesson and Ford handles the build up well… you could cut the tension in the saloon with a Bowie Knife. Miriam makes Davy promise to make peace with her fiancé but Jesson’s a fool to himself and goads Davy into delivering the beating he undoubtedly deserves. But in wining Davy also loses as Miriam feels betrayed by his brutish course of action.

All the same, the route follows Davy’s path-finding and Deroux encourages his indian comrades to step up their disruptive attacks, leading up to the conflagration that marks the film’s real climax. The Cheyenne swirl around the train as the workers mount a desperate defence as even the women join in.

As Pawnee troops ride like the wind to attempt a rescue, Davy discovers who Deroux really is and the two fight it out in the most manly fashion, their clothes simply falling of them as they wrestle to the death…

Needless to say, this is not the film’s actual climax as the coda dutifully shows the completion of both sets of tracks culminating in a re-enactment of the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. Replicas of the two locos involved, the Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter are used, even though they are claimed to be the originals (which were scrapped in 1910).

A country united by rail… will Miriam and Davy follow suit?

As history lesson, The Iron Horse is still pretty useful, in spite of the odd liberty. It was interesting to see the movable communities that sprang up and down in order to support the great project and the logistics of maintaining the labourer’s food supply had also never been connected with the “Buffalo” in Bill in my mind at least.

The filming of the scenery is, of course exceptional and really brings home the extent of this engineering achievement. Ford uses his thousands of extras well, be they cattle, men or horses and this is all the more remarkable for his working from the barest of scripts. Some sections could do with a trim – as the New York Times noted in 1924… yet Ford mixes his various strands well and you do care about Davy and Miriam.

Straping George O'Brien

Fred Kohler is suitably malevolent as the irredeemably nasty Deroux whilst George O'Brien gives a muscular performance as Davy even if he lacks the depth of his character in Sunrise (interestingly Ford was a huge admirer of Murnau… must watch for that in his later work).

Madge Bellamy is pretty good as the slightly prissy Miriam but Gladys Hulette gives a more convincing turn as Ruby the tart with a heart: a smaller role that perhaps shows the lack of character depth elsewhere.

I watched the Masters of Cinema DVD which is available from Moviemail at a very reasonable price. It features both the 133 minute UK and the longer US versions and a suitably stirring score from Christopher Caliendo.

Ford's little fib... replicas were used