Rich mix… Kennington Bioscope 9th Annual Silent Weekend Day One

 

 

Carboard Lover (1928), with John Sweeney, introduction Ben Model

 

At the end of UK premier of restored Cardboard Lover, Dave Glass asked the audience if it was indeed, as restorer Ben Model asserted in his introduction, as good as if not better than The Patsy and Show People her other two smashes of 1928? Answer there came none… we were all too busy absorbing the film, and the fine-timing of Marion and Nils Asner in one of those silent films in which you can almost hear the dialogue, a speedball of a proto-screwball, amazing pace and so knowing. The simple answer was that we couldn’t judge on a single viewing especially against two films that many had seen on numerous occasions but, one our later it feels at least on a par.

The Cardboard Lover was the second to be filmed and the last to be released and so it absolutely shows Davis hitting a peak and also displaying a perfected screen persona incorporating influences from Mabel Normand to Stan Laurel but also so much of her own mischief. She’s a force of nature in character and performance with an energy that would be hard to catch in sound: like Douglas Fairbanks after a six-month bootcamp at a clown school run by Buster Keaton, Harry Houdini and Roscoe Arbuckle.

She’s aided by a spritely performance from Nils Arsner who shows that Swedish sense of humour to great effect, matching her gurn for gurn in a face off I did not expect. He plays elite tennis player Andre who is engaged to the sublime Simone as played by Jetta Goudal who gets impersonated to death by Marion in a scene prefiguring her taking the mickey out of Marsh, Negri and Gish in The Patsy.

Nils. Jetta and Marion. In drag. Again.

Marion Davies is Sally a preppy young woman on vacation with a group including Marion’s niece Pepi Lederer as Peppy by name, peppy by nature. In life she was Louise Brooks’ best friend and the actress wrote an chapter on the tragic Pepi in Lulu in Hollywood entitled Marion Davies’ Niece, a woman who struggled to be “… a person in her own right, not a way station or would-be friends of Marion and Mr Hearst…”. Best not to dwell on what she wrote about Marion though.

 

Here Miss Davies is at her peak and sparkling through the romance and the comedy as Sally sets her sights on Andre’s autograph and then acts as his one-woman defence against the allure of Simone who he cannot stand and yet cannot resist. He makes Marion promise to prevent his will from wavering even if it means giving him a sock on the jaw, a punchline that we know is going to arrive at some point for his struggle is real!

John Sweeney played along with Marion and Nils with a deftness of touch and laughter in his hands, what’s that modern saying about game recognising game? He was swinging!

I was one of the 600 plus silent film fans who backed Ben’s Kickstarter campaign to restore and produce a Blu-ray of The Cardboard Lover and I can’t wait to see it in May and share it with my family: watching it with an audience always brings out the reaction the comedy deserves.

 

Rediscoveries and restorations 1 – with John Sweeney, introduced by Dave Glass

To my over-caffeinated and sugar-pumped corporeality this was an injection of an accelerant that provided a high impact sucker punch after being left dazed by the emotional heft of Sprechende Hande aka Talking Hands (1925), a German documentary about the Oberlinhaus Nowawes care home and school for the deafblind neat Potsdam. Directed by women’s rights activist and co-operative pioneer Gertrud Da­vid neé Swiderski, it is a humbling film that shows the patient and richly rewarding work of the church run Oberlinhaus which won a gold medal at the Paris World's Fair in 1900 for its holistic approach to treatments that brought the deafblind into the world.

The film follows the painstaking introduction of language based on hand movements which taught the subjects language through which they were then able to communicate and understand the exterior world. There’s one moment in which a group communicate by hand as a sighted teacher rads the newspaper: watching people overcome disability together places so much of our daily struggles into context.

John Sweeney had seen the film and accompanied it here and almost the first thing everyone asked after the screening was what had happened to the institution after the Nazis came to power. Luckily they were protected by their National Socialist governor Dietloff von Arnim and after surviving the war – being used as a hospital to treat the wounded in 1945 – the Oberlinhaus continues its work today with over 2,000 employees and many more residents.

Also included was another previously mislaid film rescued by Chris Bird in 2022 and screened probably for the first time on well over a century, A Victim of Circumstances (1913), from the Thanhouser studio. This featured a reporter played by Harry Benham who was romancing a woman played by Mignon Anderson although her father disapproves. The young man is arrested for photographing a rich man – I know, typical eh? – and whilst be cleared of any charge, this is enough reason for the father (Justus D. Barnes) to forbid the marriage as clearly his potential son-in-law is the wrong sort.

Things are nicely turned around though once the old bigot himself is arrested after being found in possession of stolen goods foisted on him by a fleeing snatch thief. It’s not a fair cop but the film takes us through his ritual humiliation as he is photographed, finger printed and even filmed by the forces of the law before realising that not only is Justice blind it is also fallible.

 

Young John Gilbert 

The White Heather (1919) with John Sweeney

 

Directed by Maurice Tourneur, this fab restoration from the San Francisco Film Preserve was only rediscovered in 2023 and is a beautifully filmed drama of faithless cads, true brave-hearts and financial skull-duggery that you can find on the SFFP website. I’ve previously written about it here, but it was great to see it on the big screen and with live accompaniment. Holmes Herbert plays the increasingly unlikeable Lord Angus and Mabel Ballin as Marion, the woman he wrongs. She has steadfast friends though in the form of the youthful John Gilbert playing Dick Beach who sets off in search of the Captain (Gibson Gowland later of Greed…) and Alec McClintock (Ralph Graves) who also loves Marion and will fight through hell and deep waters to save her… A cracking adventure and with some exceptional underwater scenes.

 

Ivor and Isabel

The Triumph of the Rat (1926) with Costas Fotopoulos, introduction from Bryony Dixon

The more I see of British silent films the more I wonder how they got such a bad reputation in the first place. Granted this one is strangely uneven but it’s also deeper than you’d expect allowing Ivor Novello to demonstrate the most existential of triumphs against the most intractable adversity…

Graham Cutts’s direction was very fluid with lots of deft camera movement around the ballroom and, capturing it’s grimy decadence in most expressionist ways, the Coffin Club. It really is a film of two halves as the reformed Rat, Pierre Boucheron (Ivor), rather bored with being the kept man of Zélie de Chaumet (Isabel Jeans is A Queen!) who, as fans will recall, he seemingly spurned in the first of these three films… makes a bet that he can capture the heart of the stunning Madeleine de l'Orme (Nina Vanna) after glimpsing her at a ball.

This begins a charming rat and mouse between the former rodent and the young woman with Pierre using his wiles to catch her attention before, somewhat inevitably, falling for her. This is too much for the controlling Zélie who tells all to ruin their relationship. Pierre is too decent to make excuses and tumbles into a descent that sees him falling into poverty and being forced away from his friends at the Coffin – the always watchable Marie Ault (from Wigan) playing proprietor Mère Colline and Julie Suedo as Mou, one of the club’s dancers who has a soft spot for our hero.

 

Ivor relishes the chance to show he can play despair although he’s no Lillian Gish (but could she sing?). It’s heart-rending and his only triumph might well be to just survive… we’ll have to wait for the final film in the trilogy, The Return of the Rat (1929) to find out where this story ends up. The three have the same characters but tend to not follow the dramatic instructions left by their predecessor.

 

Week-End Wives (1929) with Cyrus Gabrysch, introduced by Lisa Stein Haven

The day started with another very fine British film which was a pretty-much perfectly exercised bedroom farce directed by Harry Lachman and starring Monty Banks. Following on from her presentation of her research into the Italian born-American star at the previous day’s silent Film Symposium (of which more later!), Lisa gave us another expert overview of this impeccable comic actor with the tiny moustache who was born Mario Bianchi in Cesena in North Eastern Italy just down the E45 from Bologna… before emigrating aged 17 to the USA. He started on stage then joined the Arbuckle company in 1918 making 35 short comedies by the early twenties.

 

Of course, for course many Britishers Monty is always down as the future Mr Gracie Fields – they wed in 1940 – but this was a marriage of Lancashire wit and talent with Umbrian nous and charm: they were a powerhouse couple and obviously great fun at parties. Banks’ British adventure began after he was declared bankrupt in 1927 after which he came to work for British International Pictures (BIP) in 1928. As Lisa points out this was after the passing of the 1927 Cinematographic Films Act which brought in the Quota Quickies. His films included Adam’s Apple (1928), Compulsory Husband (1930) and this one, the most complete and thankfully in the BFI archives on 35mm.

 

Monty has adventurer Max Ammon who cannot keep his driver in his golf-bag for long and forms a potential relationship with bored housewife Helene Monard - played by the spirited Annette Benson of Hitchcock’s Downhill fame and also Anthony Asquith’s brilliant Shooting Stars… One misunderstanding leads to another especially as Helene’s husband, uptight and grouchy Henri played with dashing flair by Jameson Thomas, is also bored and certainly fed up of egg and bacon breakfasts. It’s the little things…

 

The love quarter is, almost, completed by wannabe divorcee Madame le Grand, played by the fabulous Estelle Brody, so interesting to see her so far from the cotton mills of Hindle Wakes in this more vampish role. Brody was another American emigree who enjoyed success in the UK although this was not long to survive the coming of sound. Madame seeks legal advice from Henri and soon they are playing consultations of a more amorous kind. Then we discover that there is a fifth element and it’s the violent and unpredictable Monsieur le Grand (George K. Gee) out to win his wife back and to remove any obstacle.

Everyone gets wonderfully entangled and just when you think it’s getting too complicated it just gets more so and funnier. Comedy is precision work and Harry Lachman directs with near perfect timing.

 

I like Monty a lot and look forward to Lisa’s upcoming biography! She has also written about Sid Chaplin who made his Hollywood exit at the same time as the movies changed.

 

Der Student von Prague (1926) with John Sweeney, introduced by Michelle Facey

I missed the evening show which was the classic Weimar gothic adventure directed by Henrick Galeen and starring Conrad Veidt as the hellraising student who makes a deal with the Devil and has to confront the horror of his own dark soul. Based, as was the 1913 version, on a mix of Faust and a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson, this is a fabulous tale of a man who haunts himself with marvellous location shots and overall cinematographic excellence from Gunter Krumpf – Veidt vs Veidt is something to behold.

There’s a recent Blu-ray release from Deaf Crocodile which features the recent restoration which  runs at 133 minutes with a score from Stephen Horne. If you haven’t got it already, why not? It also has Brigitte Helm in Alraune (1928) – absolutely essential!

 

It was a day of rich content at the Cinema Museum and the best thing is, we have more of the same tomorrow! *

 

 

*Written before the Day Two write up for reasons best known to the author…

Ballroom blitz… Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

 

Joan Crawford is doubtless the best example of the flapper, the girl you see in smart night clubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurt eyes. Young things with a talent for living.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It’s been a long time since I last watched this film and, as ever when viewing Joan Crawford through the lens of her later power roles, it’s fascinating to see her strengths absolutely in place with this, her major break out role. Whilst Crawford had worked her way in successful but slight comedies like Spring Fever with William Haines, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp with Harry Langdon and most memorably in Tod Browning's gonzo The Unknown with Lon Chaney, Our Dancing Daughters was the film that turned her into a major star. And it’s easy to see why.

In his introduction, Chris Bird quoted her co-star Anita Page in highlighting how hard she worked and there’s not an ounce of effort left off-screen as Joan wrenches every last drop of drama from what could have been a routine exercise. Of course, we know now, but who knew at the time, who really knew what magic she could create on screen with her energies and almost subconscious emoting pulling the viewer in to those huge, bright blue eyes and a face that could switch from triumph to disaster in the flicker of her eyelids… and it’s heart-breaking to watch. Difficult to credit that she was just 20 when this film was made or possibly 24… she updated the year although not the date, 23^rd March, of her birth.

Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastien

With so many silent films under her belt before the advent of sound, she is one of the major examples, along with Garbo and her nemesis Norma Shearer, of silent stars who transitioned to sound but she enjoyed a longer career than those two and her renaissance post war was reflected by three Oscar nominations and a win for Mildred Pierce (1946). She wasn’t done yet either, continuing to refine the talent she had and breaking down barriers of age and preconceptions.

Here she plays Diana Medford an energetic jazz baby who is running wild in a very Clara Bow fashion, in a hurry to have a good time whatever her parents expect. The film starts with the camera focused on a pair of feet dancing ferociously in front of three full-length mirrors, the feet carry on their complex movement as, cheekily, a pair of pantyhose are pulled up over them. The camera pulls back to show a full-clothed and party-ready Joan dancing like the Charleston champion she had been on route to the movies.

“Dangerous” Di is a party animal but when asked to raise a toast, toasts herself as she wants to be able to be able to like herself all of her life and this is the key to a film that stresses the importance of being true to yourself. Di’s best friend is Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastien) who is less vivacious but steadfastly so and then there is Anni (Anita Page) a girl who is anything but as innocent as she looks – she wants to marry well and more importantly, so does her mother.

Anita Page and John Mack Brown

They have variable relationships with the men in their social group, the mischievous Freddie (Edward Nugent), the serious Norman (Nils Asther) and the seriously loaded Ben (John Mack Brown). Di and Anni have a competition for the millionaire’s affection which Ann wins through guile and pretending to be the innocent girl that Di is not. Yet Di won’t compromise her way into Ben’s affections and she suffers for it even though – red flag! – Ben is clearly lacking instinct!

Meanwhile Beatrice marries the controlling Norman and they struggle to balance their relationship. Even though Ben realises his mistake it seems that only the amoral schemer has got what she wanted and things are set for an almighty showdown and a dramatic climax.

There's a lovely moment when a drunken Anni looks down on three washer women scrubbing the floor of the night club: "Women, women... working!" – she finds them ridiculous and unreal but is this the future calling? Written by Ruth Cummings, with titles by Marian Ainslee from a story by Josephine Lovett, it’s a “woman’s film” in many respects and it was her ability to connect with her sisters in the audience that would make Joan Crawford an immortal star.

 

The Red Devils Jazz Band

Crawford won competitions not just for the Charleston but also the Black Bottom – so called after the Black Bottom area of Detroit where it was invented in the early 1920s. During the first half of the show Chris Bird treated us to some rare and probably unique films on 95mm including one which he says was recorded in Paris featuring The Red Devils Jazz Band and a couple dancing the BB. This featured a slow-motion section so jazz babies could work out the moves ourselves although it’s beyond me even with the annual Bioscope Silent Film Weekender in a few days. I can reveal that it’s a more suggestive dance than the Charleston and what it lacks in the latter’s delightful angularity it makes up for in more frenetic limb throwing and the frequent grasping of the sides between your torso and your legs. This is an important document and one we need to study further.

DJ Bird also made a welcome return pre-show with a variety of 78 rpm nuggets including - I'm guesssing - Jack Hylton and His Orchestra playing Do the Black Bottom with Me (1927). He certainly played the madly infectious Jollity Farm, later made famous by the Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band. Now, if you’ve ever wondered where Mr Vivian Stanshall got the name from, we were about to find out with an episode of Bonzo the Dog an anarchic canine created in 1922 by British comic strip artist George Studdy and the subject of some 35 short cartoon films. Here he teams up with a fox to evade the hunt a sure sign of the growing influence of the labour movement in Great Britain at the time…

 

Our King of Jazz projected by Chris Bird

Back to jazz and a world premiere of a nitrate short featuring Jack Hylton, Britain’s King of Jazz, playing as part of the Playtime at the Piccadilly cabaret at the Piccadilly Hotel that Chris had exchanged for some cartoons with a collector in America. He asked big band expert Mark Beresford about the dating and he estimated 1926-7 but it may be even earlier given the songs featured. These included Vamp Me from 1922 and My Cretonne Girl written by Earl Carroll for his Vanities of 1923 as a love song for a young woman wearing the fabric in questions which, according to the online Britannica, is a printed fabric usually made from cotton which was used to make smocks for women.

This might be the only surviving record of this band line-up, which had played in Jack Hylton’s Cabaret Follies at the Queen’s Hall, Langham Place, from autumn 1922 to mid-1924, although Hylton gave up control at the end of 1923 (according to fabulous The Jazz Age Club website). So, this film could well be his next review at the Piccadilly Hotel.

Also on the bill were a dancing troupe of eight simply called The Girls – probably the Dolly Girls, dressed by Dolly Tree and previously featuring in Dolly’s Revels at the Piccadilly with Jack’s band. They are four dressed as Cretonne clothed country girls and four in male drag, illustrating the music in the manner of a prototypical Pan’s People. Dolly was a busy woman and the Jazz Age Club website has her in London for ’24-’25 working on this review, further evidence of its date.

We're all Pan's People really... (image from Chris Bird's film)

They are followed by “Leo Bill”, a ventriloquist who has the exact same M.O. as the Spanish vent, Senor Wences who had an extraordinary career after joining the circus aged 15 and then starring on stage and screen, eventually featuring on the Ed Sullivan Show and then The Muppets, living to 101 years of age. The trick was to paint a face on his hand and use this as the head on top of a dummy’s body – here Toto but later Johnny and variations of the same. The dates fit and there’s a facial resemblance so I’m calling it, especially as there couldn’t be two vents with this bizarre technique.

Next we have two gents from New York, Brooks and Ross who sing Wild, Weak Warm and Willing which was a shortening of  the full title: I Want 'Em Wild, Weak, Warm and Willing published in1923. And written by Sam Coslow and Eddie Cantor, yes, he of the wide-eyes and Clara’s Kid Boots (1926), for the Ziegfield Follies.

You can download the sheet music here... 

The Girls return in one-legged costumes to dance to I’m Just Wild Over Dancing, which they clearly are… in the manner of “jazz agents” whilst Jack, facing away from his band, holds the rhythm in his hands. Two “Bolsheviks” join the dance, throwing some vaguely Cossack steps but this ain’t no history lesson… It’s murder on the dancefloor but next there are two dancers in Hawaiian costumes and you wonder where the music is leading us? And all the while, Jack is smiling and I’m sure the audience is too!

Zelia Raye takes to the floor with the band and The Girls watching (image courtesy of Chris Bird)

Now for some culture with ballerina Zelia Raye who was a pioneer of modern dance in the UK, eventually establishing the Modern Theatre Faculty at the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing. “Straight from Paris”, Josephine Head and Albert Zapp follow and perform to Vamp Me! with the odd hint of the Apache dancing to be found in many depictions of the City of Light at this time. Finally, The Girls return to dance Hooting de Hoot which is as poignant appraisal of the contemporary political situation as you’ll find…

John Sweeney put on his dancing shoes and accompanied the variety with verve, stamina and distinction – it was a foot-tapping evening and we were only lacking a rug to cut! This was probably for the best.

 

This film captures the dances in particular in clear detail and it is so rare for this vintage. More than that it shows the spirit of the jazz age in this country and is a significant discovery reflecting the entertainments and the style of our great grandparents!

 

Pictures from the Projectionist Chris Bird

The film itself - you can see the different tinted sections (Chris Bird)

Chris's projector: a Specto with enhanced lighting

Nurturing nature… No Blood Relation (1932), Kennington Bioscope

Without noticing it I’ve now being attending the Kennington Bioscope for over 11 years and there is always something to learn every time I go: something that will delight and move me in unexpected ways as well as historical-cultural insights you don’t get in the same way or at least with the same frequency. The KB formula is flexible and based on a freer programming schedule than most other cinemas, and tonight was no exception with a first half celebrating the 130th anniversary of cinema in this country – RW Paul and the Lumiere brothers both projecting film programmes on the same day – February 20^th in London – and a main feature from Japanese director, Mikio Naruse, that just blew our collective socks off with its style and quality.

 

To start at the ending, No Blood Relation (生さぬ仲), is the oldest surviving feature-length film from a director who ended up making so many more over the next three decades and whose work is certainly less well known than his contemporaries like Yasujiro Ozu. They have different styles but Naruse is just as effective in dealing with the human condition and in foregrounding women in emotional narratives that address timeless questions about their role in contemporary Japan as it evolved into a more militaristic and industrialised country.

 

Naruse intimate film acknowledges the cultural clash as well as the changes in relationships as a successful film star, Tamae Kiyooka (Yoshiko Okada) returns home after six years away. Okada was the star of Ozu’s Woman of Tokyo (1933) and led a dramatic life herself and would defect to Soviet Russia after the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 with her lover, the acting coach and activist, Ryōkichi Sugimoto. She had already been the subject of industry scandal but would now remain in the USSR until her death in Moscow in 1992.

Yukiko Tsukuba, Toshiko Kojima and Jōji Oka

Back in Naruse’s film she is greeted by dozens of photographers and hundreds of admirers before finding her brother, Keiji (Ichirō Yūki) who helps her escape the hubbub and find a suitable hotel. He we have just seen working with a street thief, Gen the Pelican (Shozaburo Abe) in a slapstick strip scene in which a casing mob search the young man only for his pal to have taken the purse in question. This is played for laughs but their criminality will soon aid Tamae’s plan to be reunited with her daughter.

 

The scene shifts to that daughter Shigeko (a remarkably assured performance from young Toshiko Kojima) as she plays with her toys and with her adoptive mother Masako (Yukiko Tsukuba) who is married to Tamae’s former lover and is the child’s natural father, Shunsaku Atsumi (Shin'yō Nara). The two split after the baby was born as the actress was more interested in another man and her career and so Atsumi, his mother Kishiyo (Fumiko Katsuragi) and now his new wife have raised the child.

 

Shozaburo Abe and Ichirō Yūki

It's going to get worse, but Atsumi’s day is already going badly as he has been declared bankrupt; a fact that gets him little sympathy from his mother who has got used to the wealthy way of living. He receives an unexpected offer to rescue the business and is crestfallen when he meets the potential investor, Tamae, who had left him holding their baby as she moved on to another life with another man. Her offer is simple but unacceptable: let me have my daughter back and I will save your business and your honour.

 

Despite his clear lack of business acumen Atsumi stands strong and gets arrested as a result of his business mismanagement. As the investigation proceeds the tug of love begins in earnest as Tamae bribes his mother to help her kidnap Shigeko with the aid of her brother. But the child will not be swayed and nor will her adoptive mother who is far more connected than her biological mother.

 

Yoshiko Okada

She is helped by her husband’s handsome pal Masaya Kusakabe (Jōji Oka who is just so cool in Ozu’s Dragnet Girl!) who is a martial artist and heroically coded, giving the bad guys a beating but otherwise trying to negotiate between the two mothers. Ultimately it’s a tale of the desire for parenthood and the love that can only be nurtured. Timeless in its way and riveting till the end.

 

Accompaniment was provided by John Sweeney who improvised a sympathetic concerto that was entirely within the film, filling out the emotional lines with fluidity and steadfast commitment to some wonderful emoting on screen. Naruse expert, programmer Dr Kelly Robinson, introduced and gave us a summary of the director’s career and highlighted his use of camera movement and pull-ins to maximise the emotional impact of his characters, it’s a startling technique and sets him apart from Ozu and others of the time. He’s certainly someone I want to see more of and this year’s Hippfest (18^th to 22^nd March!) will feature another of his films, Apart from You (1933).

We kicked off with Ian Christie and those magnificent men and their projection machines. First up on 20^th February 1896 was a performance at the Marlborough Hall in Regent Street – now remodelled as the Regent Street Cinema - arranged by the Lumiere’s, or rather their enterprising father Charles-Antoine, which was presented by multi-skilled theatrical Félicien Trewey, a frequent collaborator of the boys who specialised in making funny hats and, indeed, we saw a film demonstrating this. There had been earlier screenings in France and their most famous film, Train Entering Station, was almost certainly not part of the programme until later in the year.

 

The films we about 50ft long and lasted some 50 seconds but still a step forward in the recording of life and entertainment. The films included Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon (1895) as well as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) which had been shown in the French screenings but no one really knows the programme for Marlborough Hall, although these early films were more likely than not. Surprisingly the brothers were not really interested in moving pictures and it was their father who thought they could improve on the equipment of the time and they had moved away from motion pictures in 1905. Their company issued about 2,500 films and, astonishingly all have been preserved and now restored. They are however, closely guarded by the Association frères Lumière and rarely screened… which is maddening, n’est pas?

 

Finsbury Technical College

Far – far – fewer of RW Paul’s films are extant and yet we can see him advancing the art of direction and narrative in ways that his technocratic colleagues from Paris did not. His programme took place in Finsbury Technical College, Britain’s first technical college opened almost exactly three years before on 19^th February and eventually to become part of Imperial College. Paul was an electrical engineer who developed his camera with the legendary Bert Acres – the pair had no option given Edison’s approach to IP… hoarding patents as well as necessity, is truly the mother of invention!

 

Paul produced 800 films and all that we have are just 83… he was an innovator and famously created the first two-shot film which Ian has restored to show a man waiting outside a museum and then looking at exhibits inside it. One small step for the cameraman but a huge one for film-kind… and there’s an HG Wells sidebar here in that the two talked about using Paul’s camera to create the effects described in HG’s The Time Machine. It sounds like Virtual Reality way too soon… neither man had the time to complete the project at the time.

When is a car not a car? The ? Motorist (1906)

 

Ian chose a variety of Paul’s films as, again, the exact programme is not known. What we could see was more narratively rich, humorous and – dare I say it – more genuinely “cinematic” than the Lumiere’s work. But it was all stunning, 130-year old life flashing in front of us and all illustrated musically by John Sweeney’s wonderful accompaniment.

 

Another one of those special Bioscope evenings. The place is haunted by the ghosts of cinema past as well as the nerds of cinema present and future. The elements intermingle and the results are always inspiring!

 

Félicien Trewey in a hat!

Spending time with HG Wells and Georges Méliès...

Yet another Top Ten, 2025 in live silent cinema...

Have you noticed that there are more and more best-of lists this year? Most are aimed at generating engagement either with heated debates on the socials or via ecommerce, but some are just the outpourings of unquiet minds, butterflies who just need to bring some order at this disturbing time of the year between normal service and Christmas’ mourning. This is one of those, it punctuates the space between regular rants about live screenings and hot digital media – or lukewarm in the case of the last post. So, here we go after the year in which I published the THOUSANDTH post on this blog and crossed the one MILLION words mark… I’ll try be brief.

Gösta Berlings saga (1924), BFI with John Sweeney

January was the hottest month as a cool breeze blew in from Sweden as the BFI screened the SFI’s restoration of Mauritz Stiller’s adaptation of Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloff’s novel. I was honoured to introduce the film and to interview Sonja Kristina, the granddaughter of Gerda Lundequist (who played the matriarch of Ekeby), who then attended the event with her children and grandchildren.

The film is long and may have its faults but it is a major work and features Lars Hanson, the young Greta Gustafson and my favourite Silent Film Principal Dancer/Actor, Jenny Hasselqvist. The restoration looked stunning bringing new vibrancy and order to the film and, cometh the three hours cometh the accompanist - John Sweeney topped things off with energy and invention, as ever the perfect player for the long dance!

Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird's collection

Museums of Dreamworlds… Kennington Bioscope Programme of Antiquities

This was a collaboration between the Bioscope, the BFI and the Department of Greek and Latin, at my daughter’s alma mater, University College London as part of Museums of Dreamworlds: Silent Antiquity in the BFI National Archive. Introduced by the BFI’s Bryony Dixon, and presented by Professor Maria Wyke from UCL it was a selection of films from 1901 to 1927 all of which drew their inspiration from the classical world of Greece and Rome – very loosely in some cases!

Most of the films were from the BFI’s archive with one - Dans l’Hellade / In Ancient Greece (1909) from Christopher Bird’s collection on 28mm digitally scanned by the Cinema Museum. The project asks “…how did silent cinema design its Greek and Roman dreamworlds? What did cinema gain from recreating the distant past? What did the past gain from being recreated in moving images?” On the night, we found some answers and some more questions and we also discovered how Helen’s fabulous face and fancy for the tailors of Troy led to the war between Sparta and Troy: even now we know these stories so well we can understand these jokes.

A 1919 Erdmann with colour filters!

 

Early Colour Live!, Birkbeck University with John Sweeney, Christopher Bird and Iain Christie

Another collaboration and a set of early colour films on celluloid from Chris Bird’s collection and hand-cranked by the man himself on his own projector. We saw hand-coloured film that would have required sixteen images hand colouring for every foot of film equating to one second, Pathé’s pioneering stencil colour system, William Friese Greene’s Biocolour and more all revealing the sophistication and relentless innovation of cinema’s first decades.

Such treats do not come around very often and here’s hoping for more from the gang in 2026.

 

Inka Länta

With Reindeer and Sled in Inka Länta’s Winterland (1926), Hippfest at Home, Hippfest #15

 

I wasn’t able to get to Falkirk this year but luckily was able to enjoy the online edition. As online presentations go, Hippfest at Home is perhaps the most successful in capturing the atmosphere and the feeling of actually being there. You have establishing shots of the live introductions shot from the back of the stalls showing the lovely old stage of the oldest cinema in Scotland, the Hippodrome (1912) and then the option of seeing the film and the musicians accompanying. As always, Alison Strauss leads from the front with such relaxed expertise and enthusiasm – this kind of impassioned poise is reflected across the whole team who love the films but also the audience and the combination is what makes this impossible festival work so well.

Pick of the pics was this dramatized documentary about the reindeer herding lives of the Sámi people who co-existed with them in the most precarious of ways in the far north of Sweden, across Scandinavia and even into Russia. The screening encompassed Sámi old and new with the UK premiere of a new score by Sámi-Finnish joiker and electronic musician Hildá Länsman plus sound designer Tuomas Norvio, collaborating with the Norwegian Sámi musician Lávre Johan Eira and Swedish composer, cellist and bass guitarist Svante Henryson. Traditional forms of Sámi song – “joik” - were deployed alongside moder instruments and electronica to create a visceral and sometimes startling score to this restored documentation of this remarkable people.

Hotel booked; I look forward to the 16^th Edition in March!

Betty Balfour

The Sea Urchin (UK 1926), with Colin Sell, 8th Kennington Bioscope Silent Film Weekend

April and it was time for an early breakfast and the finest coffee that Lambeth can provide as we dove into this mini-Giornate del cinema muto in Charlie’s old workhouse home. Highlights came thick and fast and included the World Premiere of the new Nasty Women full programme, Breaking Plates and Smashing the Patriarchy, with Colin Sell, presented by Michelle Facey. There were British films, Boy Woodburn (UK 1922) (35mm) with Cyrus Gabrysch playing, introduced by Lawrence Napper and with Ivy Duke and Guy Newall on screen, along with rare US prints, Clive Brook in The Yellow Lily (US 1928) (35mm) with Ashley Valentine and introduction by Liz Cleary

My favourite was The Sea Urchin (UK 1926) (35mm), with Colin Sell and introduced by Lawrence Napper which included Britain’s Queen of Happiness, Betty Balfour (more of whom is coming in ’26 with a recently rediscovered film… check out the KB website!). It was a proper delight with The Sea Urchin in question being our BB’s Fay Wynchbeck who as the film starts is a disruptive student in a Parisian girls’ boarding school. Her singing and dancing leads the other girls slightly astray and there’s a fabulous shot of their after-hours partying through the keyhole which Alfred H would have been lauded for. Fay has rich relatives but there’s a family feud in her way… I swear Colin Sell laughed at parts as he played along with glee!!

Christopher Bird at the EMG gramophone (picture from Lynne Wake)

Un Chien Andalou (1928), 35mm nitrate, live 78 RPM DJ Chris Bird, BFI

June was a mixed blessing as I couldn’t make it to Cinema Ritrovato but at least I had the BFI’s Film on Film long weekend to provide the look and feel of nitrate and celluloid! This was a wonderful weekend with lots of colourful treats and my chance to stay awake (see original post in October, 2017) for all of Lubitsch’s wonderful The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg (1927), but my favourite live cinematic experience had to be the surreal presentation of Bunel’s masterpiece in NFT1.

"NOTHING, in the film, SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis." [Luis and Salvador...]

Luis Buñuel’s original score was a “mash up” – as The Kids now say – of Argentinian Tango music with Wagner et al, thereby inventing Classical Lounge Core without knowing it. Chris Bird, who collects shellac as well as celluloid, was tasked with cutting from one to the other by playing contemporary pressings on two 78 rpm turntables, one of which was a top of the range EMG machine from 1932 which produced remarkable clarity and range. It was the hip-hop triumph of the season and exactly the kind of madness the creators wanted!

 

Anna May Wong in The Thief of Bagdad

 The Thief of Bagdad (1924), with Neil Brand, BFI Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention

The BFI’s Anna May Wong season was my favourite of the year and included one great day in which I caught up with her in two of the great silent fantasy films which I had been waiting to see on film and on screen. Peter Pan (1924) caught the eye with JM Barrie’s hand-picked pocket rocket betty Bronson and its closeness to the original play as well as accompaniment from Costas Fotopoulos but The Thief of Bagdad (1924) featuring a dazzling Douglas Fairbanks and epic accompaniment from Neil Brand featured more AMW and was on such a scale it have NFT1 buzzing!! I could happily watch both films every day of the week!

Italia Almirante Manzini abides

Zingari (IT 1920), with Günter Buchwald, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

This was the pure diva pomp and circumstance of Italia Almirante Manzini playing the Queen of the Gypsies in Zingari (IT 1920) and it brought the Teatro Verdi to its feet with a combination of on-screen energy and the startling accompaniment from a super group comprised of Baldry, Buchwald and Bockius or BBB for short. The film tells the story of Vielka, daughter of the Gyspy King Jammadar (Alfonso Cassini) who is fierce and unruly, determined to sacrifice everything for the man she loves, Sindel (Amleto Novelli) even though he is from a rival clan and physically puts the old man in his place when challenged, starting the feud that runs the entire narrative.

Vielka is supposed to marry Gudlo (Franz Sala), who’s not a patch on Sindel so no wonder she burns their farmhouse and gets herself exiled. Will there be any happy ending, do operas ever have happy endings? Günter let loose his inner gypsy on violin and the others followed on with one of the most passionate accompaniments of this year’s Giornate!

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras (GB 1917), Laura Rossi, Le Giornate Del Cinema Muto 44

Made when the Great War looked like it might be winnable and has a propagandist purpose beyond earlier films in showing the changed momentum of the conflict to those back home. It is also historically significant for the events it memorialises, the techniques it uses to do this and its intent.. Geoffrey H. Malins was director of photography as he had been for the two Somme films and this film is another great technical achievement and awe-inspiring in the greater context.  It didn’t feel triumphant though, more grimly determined to help complete the job and this was partly down to the excellence of Laura Rossi’s musical choices.

Laura has scored for the other films and was on hand to hear her new composition played in the Teatro Verdi by the Orchestra di Pordenone & Coro del Fruili as conducted by Andrej Goričar. Her score enabled us to really see the film, devoid of any post-facto contextualisation, in ways that were connected to the original intent. She allowed us a bit of both but underscoring the documentation on display to allow our own interpretation – a most historical musical agenda, incredibly effective and created.

 

Lillian Gish

Way Down East (1920), with Stephen Horne, BFI, Too Much: Melodrama on Film

Another film that anyone professing to blog about silent film should surely have seen already but as with the two above, I’ve been waiting to see it “live” on film and with an ace accompanist. I was not disappointed and am persuaded that Lillian Gish probably influenced Griffiths’ development of the story. Working not only with the best actor he also had one of the best cameramen and had clearly been watching the works of Sjostrom and Weber as this story is uncompromising. It’s also a surprise to see the film take the approach it does to Gish’s unmarried mother character and, indeed, to see her fight back against the guilty party: This man – an honoured guest at your table – why don’t you find out what HIS life has been?

This feels more Gish than Griffith but either way it’s a direct hit on the Patriarchy where you least expect it. Anna’s driven by a rage of frustrated indignity at the unfairness of her situation and the fact that through no fault of her own she is denied happiness in the arms of the man she actually loves – played by Richard Barthelmess.

Stephen Horne provided yet another one-man orchestral score off the hoof and covered this film’s vast space and time with constantly evolving mood and melody all played on three or was it four instruments with just the two hands, or so he says!

 

The UK forecast...

Thank you to all who have programmed, played, introduced and archived this year, lets do even more in 2026 as I write my way towards my second million words…

 

 

 

Don't be judgy… The Hangman (1928) with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

 

This was a Weimar surprise unearthed on 35mm from the BFI’s archives by the diligence of Tony Fletcher and given its first outing in many years in front of an audience who hadn’t seen it including fearless accompanist Colin Sell! We only had Tony’s word for it but as MC Michelle Facey pointed out in her introduction, there were plenty of quality elements in this tale of crime and punishment and a story that whilst it could be predicted was still so perfectly timed that it allowed a warm glow for the audience much in need of it given prevailing weather conditions in the capital.

 

The Hangman aka Der Henker or Der Staatsanwalt klagt an in German was directed by Theodor Sparkuhl and Adolf Trotz, being the former’s only directed film although he had an incredible career as a cameraman for everyone from Lubitsch in the teens through to Hollywood and some ground-breaking film noir. He has some good ideas here and perhaps the presence of Trotz indicated that he wasn’t entirely comfortable in the role but the results are certainly very interesting.

 

It is a tale of two women or rather four with two men of honesty and rigid morality caught up in a web of bad luck and passion all of whose fate is in the hands of chance as much a judgement. It is also a tale of two very different bars, one a dive joint offering “Varieté” on tatty posters in its grimy windows plus drinks and a good time down below, the other a kind of Weimar dream bar called Spiders with webbed interior design to match and a circular serving area at the centre to which men are inevitably drawn.

Andrée Lafayette

At the heart of this particular parlour, we find the warm smile of French actress Andrée Lafayette who plays the perfect host: a beauty who welcomes her male customers and yet maintains her distance only sipping the champagne they gulp near the centre of the web. She is asked if she is happy doing this work and smiles “not really” but she’s the consummate professional doing what she needs to get by.

 

Also doing the same but in a more precarious environment is Kiki (Irm Cherry) who works as a hostess in the less salubrious venue where she must fend off the attentions of drunken middle-aged men such as the captain played by Georg John who is harmless enough especially when compared with the villain played by Fritz Kampers. She has set her sights higher though and is in love with the tall and prosperous-looking brother of Andrée’s character played by Spanish actor and former FC Barcelona player* (oh yes!) Félix de Pomés. Sorry, there are so few character names, this film is barely out there online and I’m trusting on memory: such is the thrill of the Bioscope and films that only exist on celluloid. Welcome to the future-past of physical media.

 

Now… all of these connections will be vitally important when I outline the plot and this will then revolve around the imposing presence of public prosecutor Leander played by the sharp-featured Bernhard Goetzke a man who looks like he’s walked straight off the Mount Rushmore of chiselled Weimar actors leaving Emil, Conrad and Fritz stuck to the cliff face. Leander is a stickler for the word of the law if not the spirit of justice and as the film begins we see him sending yet another guilty party to their end with the Weimar Republic having retained the death sentence after much debate; the guillotine was the favoured method.

 

The many faces of Félix de Pomés, from the Nou Camp to Hollywood!

He's not a man who can’t let his hair down though and meets Andrée’s character when dragged down to the bar by a colleague. Pretty soon he’s regularly called to the bar to find out more about this fascinating woman who retains such dignity in the face of the inebriated and weak of character.

 

Elsewhere her brother is less restrained as he finds Kitty in the arms of a customer and following the drunken man outside, there’s a scuffle and the older rival falls unconscious to the ground. Sadly, for him, he awakes to find himself being robbed by the aforementioned villain who hits him harder causing him a fatal blow on the back of the head. After the thief makes his escape the body is found and, being the decent man he is, Félix’s character believes he is responsible and confesses.

 

The circumstantial evidence is strong and this confession surely marks this as an open and shut case but, driven not only by her concern for her sibling but also her growing affection for Leander, Andrée’s character determines to try and persuade the prosecutor of the need for understanding in what seems to be a crime of passion as well as an accidental death. As things progress there is some nice interplay between the two leads and even some lighter moments courtesy of Leander’s housekeeper (Anna von Palen) who sees her role being usurped by her employer's new romantic interest. There’s also excellent support from the siblings’ mother, played by Antonie Jaeckel, who has previously been estranged for a long time from her daughter.

 

Irm Cherry wearing a hat in 1928.

The narrative flows with Sparkuhl and Trotz mixing the growing injustice, the family and romantic ties in with solid control and building up the tension as the legal rock meets the moral hard place… It’s heart-felt and heart-breaking when you look forward to the tens of thousands who were to be sentenced to death under the next regime in Germany.

 

The film features lots of pleasing late silent camera movements with clever reverse shots of the characters in the bar and tracking shots as Leander walks with his love. There is also some expressionist overlays as Leander walks dazed through the city streets contemplating what he has become in a literal tumult of conflicted emotions, the pavements and houses revolving around his intense confliction.

 

Colin Sell accompanied sight unseen and provided marvellous flourishes to adorn the twisty tale as the honesty and dogged morality of both men threatens to doom one and kill the other. We shuffled nervously in our seats as the climax approached and well… let’s hope someone else screens this film before too long! It was a hit Tony, a palpable hit!

 

Tony Fletcher also presented the first part of the evening with a look at films made at Fort Lee near New Jersey in the period before Hollywood with excerpts from the fabulous double Milestone/Kino Blu-ray Made in New Jersey: Films from Fort Lee which he had procured in Pordenone.

 

New Jersey, not Hollywood, was the real birthplace of the modern film industry. Fort Lee — just across the Hudson from the Bronx — became a key site for early film production. During the 1910s, motion pictures were a major part of suburban New Jersey community which looks much more like the old country than the dusty modernist landscapes of California. It’s a bit more built up these days and we saw a poignant documentary film showing the decaying lot in excerpts from Theodore Buff's Ghost Town (1935).

 

"Forget your land I have a nice hat..."

The Curtain Pole (1909), a short comedy directed by D.W. Griffith with an uncredited Mack Sennett as a man who search for the titular pole leads to chaos also including Florence Lawrence. The Indian Land Grab (1910), a young Indian chief goes to Washington to stop a land grab and is almost knocked off course by the daughter of the land grabber in question who is instructed to use her womanly wiles to distract him. A shock of the old certainly but the audiences were apparently more upset about the genuine romance that develops between the two than the film’s call for fairness to native Americans. Go figure

 

Talking of shocks, we also had an extract from the legendary The Vampire (1913) which featured an outrageously sexualised dance with Bert French and Alice Eis which captures the essence of Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 poem describing the dangers of women of a certain sort. The dance is watched by Harold Brentwell (Harry F. Millarde) making him consider his relationship with Sybil the Vampire (Alice Hollister) and I can’t wait to find out what happens… The poem and the story were used as the basis of Theda Bara’s A Fool There Was (1915). Women were to blame for so many things back in the day.

Bert French and Alice Eis were once arrested for performing this dance on stage...

 

John Sweeney accompanied and I had to check that his keyboard was not aflame for the above dance sequence, he plays so well anticipating the rhythms and the emotional movements in ways that really help us to connect with these archaic sensibilities, the media meets an audience who are moved to the 1910s as much as the history comes to us now. Here, actions and piano speak more eloquently than words ever could.

 

Yet another special event at the Cinema Museum and thanks to the cast and crew who enabled us to see this long-hidden film. No archive is too deep or too dusty to prevent the determined search of the Bioscope’s researchers!

 

You can order the set from Amazon.com at reasonable rates as well as from Kino in the USA. It’s worth it for The Vampire dance alone but Fort Lee remains a major part of cinematic history!

 

Andrée Lafayette also appeared in the 1923 Hollywood adaptation of Trilby the second of many Svengali features... EYE have a copy!

* Señor de Pomés played for FC Barcelona and RCD Espanyol (Barca’s reserves) in the 1910s, during the sport's amateur era and he also played for Catalonia, the national team who strangely, unlike Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t get to compete at World Cups. He was also a skilled swordsman who featured for Spain in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics. The Hangman was one of his first feature films and he made over 70 more into the late sixties, including King of Kings (1961) and Lost Command (1966).

28 appearances and one goal for Barça!