Look sharp! My year in silents, 2024.

As Millicent Martin – Daphne’s mum in Frasier – almost sang, That Was the Year, That Was and I realise that’s a cultural reference to a satirical TV show popular in the UK 60 years ago but the films I’m about to list are from half a century earlier so… keep up! We’re increasingly in a world in which everything is happening at the same time, an all-at-once cultural smorgasbord from which every generation picks what they want and new controversies rise from old in cinemas, Talking Pictures TV, $treaming sites and our beloved retailers. This is the best I can do in the post festive drop down especially as I don’t really do New Year. It’s always best to look beyond and push straight on through to the other side, even if that’s 2025 and all that goes with it but we can take it, we’ve not only been there and seen it all before, we’ve experienced it ever-present in films, books and what used to be called “social” media. So, I remember the passing year and rage into the next, thinking of the very best in my opinion and in no particular order!

 

1.       Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley, BFI

She will make a fine wife, son. Imagine an innocent young girl… in an age when there aren’t any!

The BFI kicked off the year with a couple of fine seasons, one focused on the iconoclastic programming of the old Scala cinema and another on the almost unique filmography of director Dorothy Arzner who was able to smash the Hollywood glass ceiling with a mixture of brilliance and independence. She worked with Bow on her first talkie, The Wild Party (1929), also screened, and this rarely-screened gem which was shown on a precious 35mm recovery/restoration and even though it’s still missing a couple of reels, still impressed as Clara’s supernatural energies were allowed full expression

It was indeed, as the BFI blurb put it, “a triumphant celebration of female sexuality…” a modern day fairy-tale set in France and where Bow’s character wins over the heart of rich boy Charles “Buddy” Rogers in a lovely sequence set in a wax museum choreographed by Arzner’s partner Marion Morgan. Clara’s pluck blows away every obstacle and dusty preconception as l’ancien régime has to surrender to classless, young love.

 

2.       The Rugged Island: A Shetland Lyric (1933), with Inge Thomson, Catriona Macdonald, HippFest at Home

This film sits amongst better-known works of the thirties showing island life on the extremes but actually predates Robert J. Flaherty’s docudrama Man of Aran (1934) – the Irish island, not Arran. Director Jenny Gilbertson (née Brown) had made a number of short documentaries and was encouraged to make this film by the great Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson, director of Drifters (1929) and the man who coined the term "documentary" in a review of Flaherty's Moana (1926).

The result is every inch as powerfully evocative as these other films with Jenny’s previous experience of the island, the documentary A Crofter’s Life in Shetland (1931), showing a year in the life of the rugged folk of Hjaltland… more Norse than Gallic and only 30 miles closer to Scotland than Norway. She was self-trained and this is even more remarkable when you consider that she not only wrote but filmed and edited her work. The Rugged Island is a drama and yet it still feels like a genuine intrusion on the lives being portrayed, the irony here being that Gilbertson’s was sometimes described as an “amateur” and yet clearly she was consummate in terms of technique and direction with only one professional actor - Enga Stout – with the rest being her friends and others she’d cast locally.

This is exactly why I shall be returning in person for the next Hippfest in March ’25!

3.       East Lynne (1913) Restoration Premiere with Colin Sell, Kennington Bioscope

Oh, Willie, my child dead, dead, dead! and he never knew me, never called me mother!

As Christopher Bird said in his introduction, East Lynne is not a lost film as such but when quality is, as Kevin Brownlow says, the main thing archive cinema has to sell itself to modern audiences, this film has certainly been missing in terms of the vibrancy, contrast and tasty tints we glimpsed today. Chris obtained an almost complete nitrate copy from a private collector which, compared with the black and white copy held by the BFI is missing the first reel but comes with an extra three minutes and those higher quality tints. Together with fellow Bioscoper Bob Geoghegan and the BFI the restoration work is ongoing and the hope is to present the finished item at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.

Even Rachel Lowe admired this British film and it’s a visual feast as it is with good use of depth-of-field, form and texture by director Bert Haldane and his photographer Oscar Bovill. That said, there are some impressive performances from a very modern-looking cast led by Blanche Forsythe as Lady Isobel, handsome Fred Paul and the steadfast Archibald Carlyle and who-ever it was playing Barbara Hare, the sister of the man falsely accused of a murder committed by Isobel’s would be paramour, Captain Levison, as played with pantomime menace by Fred Morgan.

This screening was part of the Bioscope’s 7^th Silent Film Weekender and it’s hard to compete with the range and passion of this gathering of like minds in Charlie’s old workhouse.

 

4.       The Phantom Carriage (1921), with Stephen Horne, Kennington Bioscope

 

After a few years of this silent film business, you have seen most of the cannon and have your own list of The Greats but all such classifications are blown out of the window when you see a screening like tonight’s with the right venue, the right audience and a supernatural accompaniment from Mr Stephen Horne that not only sent chills but brought out the full flavour of Victor Sjöström’s film and, indeed his own performance.

Not only was Sjöström probably Sweden’s finest silent film maker, he ranks as one of the finest of any era. Here with his fourth adaptation of one of Selma Lagerlöf’s works, he shows again why he is such a good interpreter of her work. Selma’s work is passionate and poetic and deceptively complex in expression and narrative form but I think Sjöström got her depth of meaning more than his contemporaries Stiller and Molander. As his thoroughly-disturbing performance shows, he may well have had a personal connection with this story as Chris Bird suggested in his introduction, for the Swede’s father was abusive and alcoholic just as his character David Holm. A film that never ceases to smash through the door and grab you.

Gerda Lundquist

5.       Gösta Berling’s Saga (1924), with Matti Bye, Eduardo Raon and Silvia Mandolini, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

"Finally, the vicar was in the pulpit..."

It’s fair to say that my Christmas came early with this presentation of this latest version from the Swedish Film Institute which is not just a restoration of the Saga but a remix and extended cut being not only some 20 minutes longer than the 1975 restoration which most of us have only seen up till now via the Kino release. It’s also in a slightly different narrative order with the party sequences and their two dramatic exiles re-sequenced as well as variations elsewhere, with a more dynamic mix for the burning of Ekeby and Gösta’s rescue of Marianne, a longer intro and new intertitles that carry more of the original author’s poetic wonder.

Now, I’m not saying that Mauritz Stiller’s magnificent adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s epic novel is perfect in fact there’s a reason he was no higher than her second favourite film director of the Nobel Prize winning author*, but the ambition wins you over along with incredible lead performances. Lars Hanson oozes confusion guilt and self-loathing, Gerda Lundequist – Sweden’s Sarah Bernhardt, a legendary stage actor – brings her power and poise to the screen whilst Jenny Hasselqvist, who had a parallel career as prima ballerina with the Royal Swedish Ballet, is magnetic, micro-managing physicality with emotional expression. There’s also young Greta Gustafson who radiates an unknowing allure that would see her soon off to Hollywood with a name change, some dental work and flattering lighting.

The restoration is crisp and revelatory, never has the camera work of the great Julius Jaenzon here looked so fine from the gorgeous sweeps of the lakes and forests to the shots on set and the performer’s expressions. It’s an epic restored in an epic way and I can’t wait to see it again at the BFI on Sunday 19^th January where I promise to keep my introduction short and to the point!

Ticket details here!

 

6.       Judex (1915-16), accompanied by many hands, Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXVII

 

I can’t deny that there was a sense of triumph having watched the whole series and thoroughly enjoyed Louis Feuillade’s sense of drama, his eye for dynamic framing, his direction and team building and his ability to keep the narrative ball rolling even when you think he’s backed himself into a dramatic dead end. That’s 12 episodes and one big Prologue with not a second missed for lack of sleep, breakfast or headache… probably!

 

It's not quite up there with Les Vampires but it does have the essentiality of Musidora playing Diana Monti aka Marie Verdier, a scheming opportunist who becomes more and more dominant the longer the story unwinds. Judex himself as played by René Cresté, is a goodie version of Fantômas, part Sherlock Holmes, maybe part Eugène-François Vidocq – an actual French criminal turned criminalist. Feuillade had been criticised for glorifying his evil masterminds and so here was one of good intent even if he does kidnap and fake the death of the businessman responsible for his father’s death and many others, Favraux (Louis Leubas) before imprisoning him for life in a remote castle. And that’s just the start…

7.       Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (1926), BFI with Meg Morley

 

This blog has been driven by obsession and a subjective emotional “canon” from its earliest days (no, please don’t look!) and Louise Brooks has, of course been the main one, with a copy of Pandora’s Box on DVD bought from a second-hand shop in Park Street, Bristol in 2005 starting off the whole interest – yes, Bristol, it’s really your fault! This film is one of the few remaining unseen on-screen and viewing the BFI’s worn, warm and wonderful 16mm flickering on the NFT2 screen, with Meg Morley’s wonderful syncopations and sparkling improvisations following an introduction from Bryony Dixon has, to paraphrase the poet, helped make not only my day, my week, my month and even my year.

They may have been chalk and cheese but Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks make for a good team in this light-hearted drama in which the former plays the sensible big sister who has to rescue her less sensible sibling from all kinds of trouble. It’s a gas and we do get to see Brooksie dance which is always a bonus!

 

Conchita Montenegro

8.       The Woman and the Puppet (1929), with Günter A. Buchwald, Bonn Silent Film Festival 2024 streaming

Every so often a silent film not only surprises you but pulls you to the edge of your armchair and has you blinking at the screen in delight. So, it is with the story and the actress in La femme et le pantin (1929) in which Conchita Montenegro’s dancer not only beguiles and bewilders her puppet, Don Mateo, she completely un-mans him in the most feminist of ways reaching right out from 1929 with dazzling power and beauty. If anyone has a thousand ships that need launching… here’s your woman!

 

Based on Pierre Louÿs’ 1898 novel of the same name, the story was adapted as an opera in 1911 by composer Riccardo Zandonai, and it was also filmed as That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Buñuel. The first film version was an American film made in 1920 and directed by Reginald Barker, starring Geraldine Farrar, which is a little surprising given Louÿs’ background of erotic prose and poetry. Indeed, he was the man to whom Oscar Wilde dedicated the original French publication of Salome. Director de Baroncelli’s film is presumably far bolder than any Hollywood film could have been as, indeed, is his star performer and, it’s difficult to see anything like a literal adaptation being made anywhere else but France at this time. It is an eye-popping and an expectation-confounding work!

 

9.       The Blue Bird (1918) with Neil Brand and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

Maurice Tourneur's film featured regular collaborators such as art director Ben Carré, cinematographer John van den Broke and editor Clarence Brown. This was silent psychedelia in full bloom at a time when the World needed to believe in eternal truths and the truth of eternity. When in the heart of their fantastic journey to find the Blue Bird, the two youngsters meet not only their dead grandparents but their dead brothers and sisters, there are at least ten of them... this was a time when infant mortality was high and life came with the flimsiest of "guarantees".

The film is a sumptuous collection of such moments and visual set pieces, a hyper-creative comfort blanket that smuggles through the simple message that there's not only no place like home but that kindness must spread out from there into the heart-broken World beyond. Tourneur draws pure and naturalistic performances from his cast of children, 12-year old Tula Belle as Mytyl and Robin Macdougall as Tyltyl who react and act with genuine thrill to every new wonder. It's a child's film with many adult concerns.

The accompaniment from Neil Brand on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic out across the auditorium and melted our stubborn hearts.

 

10.   Saxaphon-Susi (1928) with Neil Brand, Frank Bockius and Francesco Bearzatti, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

Miss Saxophone was the most legal of highs, a mood-altering event with fabulous cast and sincerely joyous accompaniment from a powerhouse ensemble that left the Teatro Verdi at severe risk of an outbreak of dancing! Up on screen we had Anny Ondra showing us how fine she could look and how well she could dance and also make comedy – not for nothing should she have been called the Czech Republic’s Queen of Happiness or maybe most of Europe’s. She plays Anni von Aspen, a poor little rich girl daughter of the lecherous Baron von Aspen (the marvellous Gaston Jacquet) who wants to trade places with her working gal pal Susi Hille (Mary Parker), a cabaret dancer who gets the chance to become a Tiller Girl in London. They swap assignments with Susi heading off to posh school and Anni having to learn her dancing ropes fast.

On the boat over they meet some fine English gentlemen including Lord Herbert Southcliffe (Malcolm Tod) who takes a bet that he can get in to meet the Tiller Girls backstage and then another bet that he will marry this special one called Susi (Anni)… It’s not much of a plot but it’s enough to make this amongst the most enjoyable and warmest of comedies with this fabulously charming cast.

Any programmers reading… I think I’d like to see this one again please! 

 

Ra Messerer

11.   The Second Wife (1927) with Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto

 

To Uzbekistan and this extraordinary film from Mikhail Devonov based on a story by Lolakhon Saifullina, a polish woman who married an Uzbek man and converted to Islam. It’s a reflection of the enormity of the old USSR and the challenges Moscow faced in co-ordinating so many diverse cultures into one modernising state. Saifullina worked for the Sharq Yulduzi studio writing scripts sensitive to the issues of Uzbeki women her along with former legal consultant Valentina Sobberey. The result is a tale in which women and children are exploited by old male custom and dominance even as the modern day watcher is aware of the wider context of Stalin’s impending first Five Year Plan and the eventual costs of converting an agrarian economy into an industrialised one.

Director Devonov does not lapse into bucolic orientalism and focuses on the story and the depiction of prevalent practices of early marriage and polygamy. Here a merchant’s first wife Khadycha cannot have children and so he has a second wife, Adoliat (Ra Messerer) who can.  A child duly arrives and Khadycha tries to destroy her competitor. She is far from alone in malevolence as his brother Sadiqbai (Mikhail Doronin), steals money whilst his older brother is away and also preys on young boys, as things escalate elsewhere. It’s propagandist but still shows the harshness of unresolved “tradition” and male power.

 

Eille looks down at Alexandra Palace, photo credit Yves Salmon 

12.   Silent Sherlock, London Film Festival, Alexandra Palace Theatre with Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor with Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble

 

This was the grandest of archival screenings at the London Film Festival for some time and featured the first fruits of the BFI’s restoration of Stoll Films Sherlock Holmes films. The Stoll corporation made three series of 15 episodes and two feature films, all featuring Eille Norwood as the great detective a performer that Conan Doyle approved of in the role, both on stage and on screen. The three films featured new scores from Neil Brand, Joseph Havlat and Joanna MacGregor who conducted the Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble, leading from the piano.

 

The programme is ongoing and I can’t wait for the further adventures of both the BFI Restoration Team as well as The Great Detective in 2025.

 

My 1924 Danish promotional booklet... Book Now for 19th!!

 

*Lagerlöf berated Mauritz Stiller for his adaptation of The Gösta Berling Saga calling it “cheap and sensational”.

Civil Engineering, Module One… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Day Eight

And, just like that, it was over but not before a final day with some incredible highs and a desperate search for a restaurant that wasn’t fully booked prior to the evening’s special event. Amidst the cut and thrust of a silent film festival it’s possible to completely forget that tonight was Saturday night and the locals were out for a good time too even if it was strange for us to contemplate: no live accompaniment, just recorded, not always sitting down or, indeed, sitting quietly with outbursts of boisterousness that would certainly concern those she say “shush” in the Verdi balconies.

 

Each to his own as we say in the patriarchy and we had plenty of energy of our own for Neil Brand’s new score for The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) which was arranged by George Morton, and performed live by the mighty Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone conducted by Ben Palmer. Giornate artistic director, Jay Weissberg, described before hand how Neil Brand had wanted to score a western and asked him for suggestions and the film he had in mind had been a formative silent screening for him and soon Neil was equally enamoured with this unusual story of civil engineering and the human heart.

 

At the Kennington Bioscope Kevin Brownlow once revealed that Samuel Goldwyn’s wife had been the Imelda Marcos of silent film preservation. The great mogul had stored all of his films in her closet and, in order to make room for her shoes, she cleared them out except for the ones featuring Ronald Coleman and Gary Cooper. So, we have Mrs Goldwyn and her fondness for these terribly ugly men, to thank for Barbara Worth still being extant!

Vilma Bánky

Despite their physical shortcomings, these two men are two big reasons to celebrate this remarkable film but it also features some of the most stunning cinematography of the era and if you think Abel Gance was impressive in capturing equine movement on frame than check out Henry King and his cinematographers George Barnes, Thomas Branigan and Gregg Toland. Overwhelmed by this biggest of projections we could almost be alongside Ronald and Gary as the sun-baked, sand-drenched, landscape swirls around you in a crystal clear golden-yellow.

 

And on top of all that you have Vilma Banky… born Vilma Koncsics in what is now Hungary and exported to distract the Yankees as much as she causes both Coop and Ron to lose their focus on business. The film starts like an outtake from Greed as a young woman (Vilma Banky) buries her husband in the sand and then battles to save her daughter from a sandstorm. It’s a brutal and photographed so clearly it could have been made tomorrow. The woman perishes but her daughter, Barbara, is found alive by a Mr Worth (Charles Willis Lane) and grows up to be played by Vilma.

 

The story then settles into Mr Worth and his business partner/rival, McDonald (Ed Brady) efforts to try to change the landscape by damming the Colorado River in order to irrigate the Californian plains. Coleman plays Willard Holmes who works with the rival whilst Cooper plays Abe Lee, the boy Barbara grew up with. Their romantic rivalry runs parallel to business as the mood gets mean as McDonald refuses to recognise the need for additional reinforcements on the dam… In a film like this that’s never a good sign. This all culminates in the inevitable flood and a terrifying sequence in which the townsfolk flee the deluge with not all making it. Henry King could also martial a cast of thousands and, looking back to 3 Bad Men, this is another classic silent human stampede.

 

The implications of all this for construction projects is clear in terms of risk management and the importance of senior stakeholder buy-in for completion to full safety and technical requirements. But I suppose the film was mostly about the spirit of enterprise that made the West and the loves of the lovely people who exemplify the best of humanity: civic minded and careful people who try to bring everyone with them in the joint enterprise of society. Sadly, current political systems lack many who are trained in Prince 2 project management and who care to put people ahead of profit.

 

The score was quite simply huge, with Mr Brand adopting a musical project management of his own in terms of establishing clear objectives for mood and narrative cohesion and meeting every single one in the most joyous and potent of ways. Tonal milestones – deserts, sandstorms, epic landscapes, love, hate and everything in between – were nailed with his schooling in seemingly the entirety of cinematic composition in evidence mixed with his flair for melody. There were rousing themes that pricked the hairs on the back of our necks and we fell in love with simply everyone of the cast but especially Vilma!

 

As with his other scores, Robin Hood, Blackmail, The Lodger et al, you feel that Neil builds out from the heart of each film, working his way outwards in building a musical structure that not only hangs off the narrative but supplements it. This is the very essence of meeting specification and, with Mr Palmer swinging the baton, the Orchestra Verdi lifted the roof and our spirits. We always hope for such a big finish and, yet again, we got one.

 

Forgotten Faces (1928) with Stephen Horne

 

I’ll tell you someone else who always delivers on promise and to spec, and that’s the mercurial Stephen Horne who here delivered one of the biggest musical surprises of the week by “playing” silence during the nail-biting sequence in which Clive Brook’s character leads his mortal enemy and ex-wife as played by Olga Backlanova, up darkened stairs in the moments before she realises who her mysterious guide is… it was unexpected, meta and perfectly timed.

 

In this well-crafted family thriller, directed by Victor Schertzinger, Olga plays a mixture of the shark in Jaws and Anthony Perkins’ character in Psycho, she is violently over the top and hysterical in every way – the Jack Nicholson of her day! Against this Russian fire-cracker is faced the utterly controlled Clive Brook as gentleman thief “Heliotrope” Harry who, along with his trusted right-hand man, Froggy (William Powell) is responsible for the most principled of crime sprees.

 

After one precisely-timed raid on a gambling house sees the police arrive almost in time to catch them, Harry returns home to find his wife Lilly in bed with another man as their baby daughter screams in the hallway. He despatches the other man and, realising his jig is up, leaves his baby with a well-to-do couple who he knows have recently lost a child before kindly handing himself in. Froggy keeps tabs on the daughter whilst Harry duly serves his time and she grows into Mary Brian, a fine young woman who he has given the best chance in life.

 

But, when Lilly tricks Froggy into revealing her daughter’s whereabouts and then taunts Harry in prison about taking her back, he knows he must find a way to stop her. Can he do so without breaking his strict moral and his promise to the prison governor not to harm his hellish ex?

 

OK, there are holes in this scenario but Brook is terrific, such a measured performer – a Rolls Royce if you will – whilst Olga is Olga. MY eyes may have moistened more than once, heart strings were tugged but on Brook could make for such a charming criminal who is father first and foremost.

 

Desdemona Mazza, Ivor Novello and Gabriel de Gravone

L’Appel du Sang (1919) with John Sweeney

 

After our musical Messi and Ronaldo, we also had the compositional equivalent of Mo Salah with the studied elegance of Mr John Sweeney accompanying Louis Mercanton’s tale of love, lies and longing set in Sicily. John’s elegant lines made the most of this film’s spectacular scenery from the island and also Rome, as well as the suitably classic love tangle passing in front of both.

 

This was Ivor Novello’s film debut and his Maurice Delarey is an odd creation, with even his wife, Hermione Lester (Phyllis Neilson-Terry) describing him as “like a kid”, he’s immature, full of enquiry and lust for life (his grandmother was from Sicily) unlike his bookish other half and they make the most unconvincing of partnerships. Hermione has disappointed her intellectual, much older, “best friend” Émile d'Arbois (Charles Le Bargy aged 62 here) in marrying a man of her age (both actors were 27) if not maturity.

 

She brings her new husband to the family pile in the hills of Sicily and he spends all his time having adventures with Gaspare (Gabriel de Gravone), one of the family retainers, including night fishing, yomping and swimming… it’s hard not to impose a modern “coded” view of their relationship. Interestingly both Novello and Neilson-Terry were cast to reflect the original author’s descriptions and so the physical mismatch was intentional. Novello looks so boyish and young and when he is in Sicily his Sicilian nature resurfaces, bringing recklessness and compulsive behaviour. All that midday sun for the Englishman – although, lets be honest, he was Welsh.

 

Hermione goes off to save d'Arbois who is dying in Africa leaving Maurice free to explore further and to fall in love with the fisherman Salvatore (Salvatore Lo Turco)’s daughter Maddalena (Desdemona Mazza) and there’s a beautiful shot of them finally embracing, silhouetted in the half darkness of a cave with the sea behind them. This can not be good though and to add complication, Salvatore is a mad man with easy access to weaponry…

 

Overall a dreamy film, especially with John’s playing, and worth it for the visuals and early Ivor!

 

The Red Dance (1928) with Masterclass student Andra Bacila

 

This film’s approach to history could be said to be exemplified by the appearance of an aircraft clearly not of 1917 vintage but this is the least of its crimes against Russian history. In terms of its treatment of Rasputin, the Boney M pop song, Rasputin, is more historically accurate and the general depiction of white and red Russians as inter-changeable baddies is mind wobbling given the century and more of poor treatment the Tsars had imposed on the populace. Criticise the Revolution and outcomes by all means but there were plenty of reasons for one to happen…

 

All this aside, Raoul Walsh’s mini-epic is, as you’d expect, full of grand scale and great characters. Dolores del Río as Tasia, a politicised activist determined that people should be able to read after the Tsarist regime bans schooling and arresting her father and shooting her mother on the spot in front of her blackboard and pupils. Ivan Linow plays Russian Bear Ivan Petroff, a likeably roguish army officer who is prone to sexual assault and steaking horses with which to exchange for marriage to Tasia.

 

Ra, ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen is played by Demetrius Alexis, and various other actual characters appear as 2D cut-outs. Talking of which, likable Charles Farrell is the most unlikely Grand Duke Eugene, a Russian toff with a heart of gold who wins Tasia’s heart. It struck me that Farrell is a fine romantic actor so long as he’s with a talented other half and you can add Delores to the list with Mary Duncan and Janet Gaynor in this respect.

 

Long story short, the stakes are raised when the people revolt and the Cossacks are on the defensive. Now it’s the Trotsky look-alikes and the evil revolutionary leader with a Germanic monocle who are the enemies of the people. This disappoints Tasia who announces that “women’s only cause is love…” and it may be true that love is all you need but this messy lack of faith in governance via tradition of revolution echoes our present plight and, yes, there’s an agitator called Boris.

 

Excellent accompaniment was provided by Masterclass student Andra Bacila, one of many new and younger faces at this year’s festival. As the BFI’s Bryony Dixon said in her acceptance speech for the Jean Mitri award, the Giornate is a focus for world-wide efforts on film preservation and long may this continue.

 

And that, m’lords, ladies and gentlepeople, concludes the proceedings from this blog on Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43! Thank you too all of those who made it happen and who I spent time with – let’s twist again in 2025!!

 

Grazie mille!!

Punishment and reward… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Seven

 

In receiving her richly-deserved Jean Mitry Award, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon pointed out the importance of this festival in terms of enabling international collaborations but also as a peer group for the often embattled national archives. The Giornate had inspired Dixon along with others to elevate the reputation of British silent cinema and with the restorations not just of the Hitchcock back catalogue but also key films from Anthony Asquith especially, it has been mission accomplished with more to come. It’s a group of people who inspire each other and as an outsider in professional  media terms, I’ve always been impressed with the dedication of Bryony and others to the main goals of preservation and education. The value is in the content and to be able to achieve what she has in over three decades at the BFI is remarkable – hers are the giant shoulders on which other generations of archivists will stand.

 

At a time when the DFI are stopping filmic preservation and shifting entirely to digital, you realise the odds that are stacked against the archives – when even Germany won’t invest in the original media who else is going to stay in the game? That the other Mitry Award went to Mark-Paul Meyer from the EYE Cinema Museum in Amsterdam says it all. Long may you protect and survive.

 

Pavement Butterfly (1928) with Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Mirko Cisilino

 

This week we’ve witnessed the evolution of Anna May Wong’s performance and prestige from bit parts as racial cliches to the full flourishing of her talent in Song and this film, both made in Germany. In her home country, Anna May Wong had struggled since her first film in 1921 to gain substantial roles and also characters that weren’t stereotypes. Yet in Europe for this film and Song (1928), her first film with director Richard Eichberg, she is not only a desirable and acceptable romantic lead, she is the star.

 

Eichberg simply took her natural talents and ran with them and with this freedom of expressiveness there’s  critique of Western culture’s willingness to believe the worst of people of Asian origin: first the crowd at the circus where Wong’s character Mah works, turn on her very quickly assuming she has killed her magician partner and then later, when she is blackmailed by the man who committed that murder, her artist and romantic interest, all too readily thinks she has stolen the money.

 

For anyone who gets frustrated by such “misunderstandings” the film’s ending is richly satisfying reminding me of Hindle Wakes screened here last year, a blow for self-determination for women in general at a time when their choices were so much more limited. We don’t know what Mah will do but she’ll make her way, her way. It’s interesting to note the differences in the British and German versions of this ending too, as noted in the catalogue essay from Yiman Wang, in the latter Mah says “Ich gehöre nicht zu euch” (“I do not belong to you”) whereas for the former “I don’t belong to your world. I belong to the pavements.” - she has to know her place or the remains of Empire would crumble, clearly… (see below for more stirring Tales of Empire).

 

It’s The Eyes!!

 

There are so many close-ups of AMW in this film showing her stillness and presence from every angle and catching one of the most interesting technicians of the period who conveys so much with so little movement. Much of this stems from her extraordinary eyes but she knows how to use them and how to under-react for the camera to maximise the impact on the audience engrossed in the big screen.

 

Fred Louis Lerch plays the handsome but hopeless Fedja Kusmin an artist who lacks the purity of trusting the thing he loves and the wickedly convincing Alexander Granach as Coco the Coincidental Clown who pops up throughout the film to throw mischief in our heroine’s way. Elwood Fleet Bostwick is Mr. Working a rich business man who encourages the young artist and Tilla Garden has a fine turn as his daughter Ellis who is also interestingly enough a woman who knows her mind.

 

Günter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and with Mirko Cisilino on saxophone accompanied with the tightest of sets, bursting into life during the loft party sequence featuring the remarkable dancing of an un-named couple of hyperflexible and ultra-syncopated boys from the Cabaret, bringing out the full flavour of the gorgeous locations of Nice and underpinning the emotional narrative with the subtlety that Anna deserves. Another fabulous evening show in a week full of them!

 

Stronger than Death (1920) with Donald Sosin and Frank Bockius

 

I was standing outside the Teatro Verdi discussing the drumming of Frank Bockius with Catalonian accompanist, Florenci Salesas who pointed out from a musician’s point of view how tonally flexible and supportive of the narrative his percussion is. From the explosion of jazz technique in Saxophone Suzi to Frank’s use of subtle Indian flavours or the martial beats for the British troops in this film, he’s able to switch from rhythm section to lead player in ways that are exceptional. The hardest working drummer in Pordenone and probably anywhere!

 

Here he and Donald Sosin provided an improvised score for another of the great faces of silent film, Anna Nazimova who plays a renowned dancer, Sigrid Fersen who has a heart condition that will kill her if she has just one more dance (I know…). She has come to India to find a rich husband which seems slightly at odds with her otherwise cool bohemian aesthetic and gets one she didn’t bargain for in a love and hate triangle featuring a racist British Colonel Boucicault (Charles K. French), his caring son Doctor/ Major Tristam Boucicault (Chris Bryant) and a wealthy man of mix-race heritage James Barclay (Herbert Prior).

 

Barclay is reviled by the ex-pat Brits as he is of mixed race – terms “of the period” are used to describe this unfortunate situation not of his own making – and he hopes to gain respect by marrying Sigrid. He’s backed by the local priests though who in a surprising development are looking for revenge on the British for something or other. Lots happens but the worst of it is when the Colonel shoots Tristram’s dog Wickey. As if I could hate him more…

 

It's a load of old hooey BUT it has Naz and she is brilliant as usual. Bryant’s also good in spite of his parenting, perhaps there’s hope for the World.

 

 

Raskolnikow (1923) with Richard Siedhoff

 

We all had the same thought after this stunner ended – Lotte Eisner was wrong, there are more than three expressionist films with this adaptation of Crime and Punishment being as emotionally titled as Caligari and with crazy-angled set design to match plus the same typography. Maybe she didn’t have access to the full cut of the film and certainly this restoration was a feast for the eyes…

 

Directed by Robert Wiene it adapts Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment in ways that carry the force if not the substance – how could it? Gregori Chmara is just fabulous as Rodion Raskolnikow who finds meaning in his life after wasting so much of his own and killing two women in a bungled robbery. So many heist movies follow similar lines but none examine the nature of guilt in so detailed a way. String cast, a-mazing set design which might jar initially but soon melts behind the human stories presented in unrelenting close-ups.

 

Too much to say, so little time, more films to see!

 

We were also treated to avant garde shorts from the studio of Joris Ivens which contained some interesting ideas and some irritating… as a migraine sufferer I couldn’t watch the five minutes of flashing lights from Willem Bon’s Is Er etc… covering my closed eyes with the programme and I’m speaking as a regular gig-goer. This was something like the brain-washing scene from Funeral in Berlin. The audience might well be under Dutch control for all I know, which is no bad thing in itself from experience! Gerard Saan’s Botsingen (1934) with its clever comparison of billiard balls with human activities provided an entertaining counter point, the eight-ball dropping pleasingly in the corner pocket after a repeat showing complete with sound.

Dancing days… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Three

 

The Truth, we can’t handle the truth, I mean I don’t even know if it is indeed Monday and not Saturday as time does flex and Richard O’Brien’s insightful poetry on the subject creeps into the corner of my mind to stay there on and off all day. To be fair we do spend a lot of time in the dark at this festival and also in the past, but there are certain jolts to the system that make you question wider realities. For the second day in a row one of these came from the Uzbekistan strand, The Minaret of Death (1924), with a film which showed the harsh history of a country that was then part of the new Soviet Union and even now, years after the block’s disintegration, the British Government informs that no travel can be considered safe. The Time Warp opens doors to dystopias past, current and future.

 

That said… at the end of the day up pops Anny Ondra with Saxophon-Susi (1928) the peppiest film of the week and accompaniment from three cats who really can swing and hearts are warmed, feet are twitching and, honestly, anything is possible in this world. More on this late-breaking news as we get it…

 

The Minaret of Death (1924), with Abror Zufarov and Sobirjon Tuyokov

 

The film was the first product of the Bukhino production company founded in April 1924, in what was then the Bukhara People’s Soviet Republic and was based on a 15^th Century legend about the daughters of the noble Khiva Khan, Dzhemal (here played by Nadezhda Vendelin) and Selekha (Valentina Baranova) who are kidnapped and taken prisoner by the Emir of Bukhara (Aleksei Bogdanovskii) a cruel mad with an over-sized harem. He has two sons, a good ‘un Sadyk (Oleg Frelikh) and a proper wrong ‘un Shakhrukh-bek (Iona Talanov) both of who fight over “ownership” of the women.

 

Nadezhda Vendelin and Oleg Frelikh admire the view

There’s a contest involving chasing after an animal carcass which the Sadyk wins only for his brother to steel his prize, Dzhemal for his harem. He then kills the Emir for pointing out his misinterpretation of the rules and blames his new concubine for the murder imprisoning her in the Minaret of Death. Now, the 12^th century brick tower, Kaylon Minar, does exist and is the tallest tower in the region also known as the Tower of Death as criminals were thrown from the top for centuries. We see some examples of this which provide dark reminders of the justice meted out by ISIS and others, and this is what will happen to the girls unless Shakhrukh-bek can think of something quickly.

 

It's a fast-paced film and with something to say about the treatment of women under non-Soviet, ie Muslim culture but also despots. The Soviet authorities did not like the film though and as per Nicora Karimova’s catalogue notes, it was declare ideologically inadmissible for distribution by the People’s Commisariat of Education – to exotic, frivolous and possible Americanised with all the lavish beauty of the harems. It also didn’t say enough about contemporary life and the kind of new country the soviets wanted to forge unlike The Second Wife screened yesterday. One thing it did aid was the role women were playing in film and, in general in a society in which they rarely appeared in public places or without their parania long robe and face covering, as per Minar. Sometimes even a “frivolous” entertainment can be an agent of social change.

 

The accompaniment from Uzbek musicians Abror Zufarov and Sobirjon Tuyokov added greatly to the enjoyment of the film which now we can see as more of an Arabian Nights fairy tale or, further East, Shiraz. It speaks to the culture of an independent nation and one with a rich tradition and a hopeful future.

 

Marcella Albani pestered by Paul Wegener

Dagfin (1926) with Günter A. Buchwald

 

We spent rather longer in 1920s Germany than some might have hoped and there was an audible gasp once Akt Neun began of Joe May’s 141 minute epic Dagfin (1926) and a woman behind me had to be revived with smelling salts. Not that it was an altogether bad film in fact it had many splendid moments, gorgeous alpine scenery and a fascinating theme.

 

Here we have Paul Wegener showing exactly what he can do as Sabi Bey, an eastern European despot who has killed and abused for decades in order to maintain his power with the aid of henchmen like Garron (Nien Soen Ling). He manipulates people including Axel Boysen (Alfred Gerasch) the former husband of glamorous skier Lydia (Marcella Albani) so that he can compromise her and take over her life in effect. He murders Boysen and has Lydia’s beau Dagfin Holberg (Paul Richter) place in the frame convincing him also that Lydia is really to blame.

 

By helping the couple he is able to mislead them in ways that send shudders down the spine but Sabi Bey is also being hunted by the last surviving member of a family of political rivals he killed - Assairan (Ernst Deutsch). Sabi-Bey is in complete control, moves ahead of anyone telling them just what they want to hear and it says so much for Wegener that he can generate a small amount of sympathy in the role.

 

Props too for the Stakhanovite efforts of Günter A. Buchwald who played with fluid invention for the whole two hours and 31 minutes and on the violin as well as the piano, sometimes both at the same time. How he does it is still unrecorded… there’s magic in the air!

 

Chimmie Fadden Out West (1915), with Philip Carli

 

Directed by Cecil B. DeMille it may be but this rather slight film didn’t feel like it belonged with the heavyweight fare normally associated with The Canon being Revisited. The film is a sequel to Chimmie Fadden directed, written and edited DeMille and also starring Victor Moore as the dry-witted, laconic New Yorker. Maybe like so many follow ups, it failed to capture the original magic. Maybe, I just wasn’t in the mood (don’t worry, that’s going to change in about two sentences…)?

 

This time Chimmie is charged with heading out West to kickstart a fake gold rush by pretending that he’s found gold, so that the railroad company he works for can make more money. No matter how you goof around, that’s not a very nice premise. Anyway, off he goes, has some genuinely good gags – remarking when a group of cowboys shoot their guns to alarm him in a bar that if they kept practicing they’d “almost make it in New York” – before finally realising that cheating folk is wrong.

 

More does have a winning smile and Philip Carli gave him good-hearted support.

 

Anny Ondra and the temptations of sax-based puns

Saxaphon-Susi (Miss Saxophone) (1928) with Neil Brand, Frank Bockius and Francesco Bearzatti

 

Now for today’s most legal of highs, a mood-altering event with fabulous cast and sincerely joyous accompaniment from a powerhouse ensemble that left the Teatro Verdi at severe risk of an outbreak of dancing! Lemme tell you that Neil Brand is a classy guy, his heart is positively "18 karat" with respect to the beat and the band and you don’t need me to tell ya that Frank Bockius is one helluva hide-hitter and can click those sticks to anything. On top we had Francesco Bearzatti who was blowin’ like it was 1928 and can really play that popsicle stick! They were attuned and they were the strawberry jam on top of this most perfect cream scone of a comedy.

Up on screen we had Anny Ondra showing us how fine she could look and how well she could dance and also make comedy – not for nothing should she have been called the Czech Republic’s Queen of Happiness or maybe most of Europe’s. She plays Anni von Aspen, a poor little rich girl daughter of the lecherous Baron von Aspen (the marvellous Gaston Jacquet) who wants to trade places with her working gal pal Susi Hille (Mary Parker), a cabaret dancer who gets the chance to become a Tiller Girl in London. They swap assignments with Susi heading off to posh school and Anni having to learn her dancing ropes fast.

 

On the boat over they meet some fine English gentlemen including Lord Herbert Southcliffe (Malcolm Tod) who takes a bet that he can get in to meet the Tiller Girls backstage and then another bet that he will marry this special one called Susi (Anni)… It’s not much of a plot but it’s enough to make this amongst the most enjoyable and warmest of comedies with this fabulously charming cast.

 

I think I’d like to see this one again please!

 

Couple of top shorts to mention:

Villa Malpenga (IT 1907-1910) a lovely candid film of real folk being happy! 

Man With White Suit (IT?, 1910-1913?) a trick film which featured every trick imaginable as a man falls asleep and dreams on his balcony… serious questions about the sobriety of cast and crew. Marvellous!

 

This is one of a number of unidentified films screening at the Festival, more details on Silent London - if you have any suggestions or clues, all are welcomed!

A day at the opera… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43, Day Two

I think we may have just hit peak Pordenone and it’s only Sunday. There are moments of submersion in the best of silent film with live accompaniment and these happened repeatedly through the day whether it was Lyda Borelli’s sublime movements in hand-coloured Rapsodia Satanica with piano and harp accompaniment, a disturbing and impactful unknown film (for me) from Uzbekistan about the plight of women in polygamous marriages or Lilian Gish wasting away in operatic style with accompaniment featuring elements of La Bohème itself. As if this wasn’t enough, we saw Paris menaced by a group of runaway pumpkins… and, thankfully after Lilian, a group of boarding school women making merry at Coney Island in 1905. Variety is the spice of le Giornate!

 

Rapsodia Satanica (IT 1917), with Stephen Horne, Elizabeth-Jane Baldry

If Bertini is the thought, the determined intellect of classic Italian Diva films then Lyda Borelli is the beating heart, the style, grace and soul. Less naturalistic than her “sister” she was the one with the classic theatrical training (Bertini being more purely “of the movies” although she did theatre too) and was remarkably expressive whilst creating a natural intimacy that compels the viewer still.

 

For me Borelli’s status as Primus Inter Divas are perfectly exemplified by this odd and spectacularly colourful take on the Faustian pact… A skilled melange of contemporary dance, art and literature, based on a contemporary poem by Fausto Maria Martin and directed by Nino Oxilia in 1915 but not released until the year of his death in the trenches of 1917.It looks divine and the hand colourization gives it an uncanny charm that seemed to fill the entire auditorium of the Teatro Verdi, touching its audience.

  

Lyda plays Alba d’ Oltrevita, an elderly society lady, who has little life left and spends her days remembering her former beauty. She wishes far too hard and from out of a painting pops the malevolent form of Mephisto (zestfully realized by Ugo Bazzini) who offers to return her youth on the condition that she destroys a small statuette of Cupid which will mean that she will be restored but never again be able to feel love… We see her looking at her reflection in a pond, surrounded by a veil of white silk that floats around her upper body born aloft by her movement: this is youth and beauty in motion and repose. She meets two brothers Tristano (Andrea Habay) and Sergio (John Cini) and proceeds to enchant them both in playgrounds, parks and parties.

The film is split into three parts with the first a prologue setting up the rejuvenation, the second the tug of love with the brothers and the third a dance of regret, desolation, hope and mortality. Borelli dominates this sequence even more than the others and there is no end of colourful moments as she wrestles with her turmoil.

 

Satanic Rhapsody is “operatic” and I doubt any other actress in Britain or Hollywood could carry it off in quite the way La Borelli does in her way. Angela Dalle Vacche – in the excellent Diva – Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema – points out the similarities between Borelli’s rapturous dance and American performer Loie Fuller but then Borelli was not only well-educated but also keen to express as much of her influences as possible. This is the richest of cinema. Art in moving expression with interpretation still sublimely elusive, just as the actress as she dances enfolded in those iconic fabrics.

 

Stephen Horne’s piano, flute and accordion were accompanied by Elizabeth Jane Baldry’s harp and their unique understanding enabled them to accompany with the beauty and emotional subtlety the film deserves. Tonally they are a two-person orchestra but they also know how to create the most magical and uncanny worlds of their own. Transported we were and the streets carried a weird vibration for hours afterwards…

 

 

La Bohème (1926) with Donald Sosin

 

 “When Lillian Gish now appears, you know she is due for a beating. . . A Society for the Prevention of Screen Cruelty to Lillian Gish should be organized." 

Herbert Howe, Picture Play Magazine

 

Did someone say opera? For an entirely different approach on capturing the music and emotion on screen I give you Lillian Gish who made something of an art form out of physical deprivation in her roles with Director King Vidor fearful that he might lose his lead as well her character. To prepare for the tragic ending of this story (c’mon it’s from the opera by Puccini, what do you expect?) she visited sanitaria to study tuberculosis patients in order to learn how to breath with minimal movement of the rib cage. Then she starved herself of food and water for the three days before she shot the ending…

 

It is genuinely shocking to watch her frail last moments as she hauls herself across Paris to meet her lover for the last time. It could be horribly melodramatic but she transcends this with conviction and incredible physical bravery. Why was she doing this? Maybe she felt the need to make a statement as in some quarters her characterisations were staring to be seen as old hat. You might fault her style but never her courage and commitment. Gish also picked the best rising talent she could to make this film after seeing early cuts of King Vidor’s magnificent The Big Parade. Vidor directed with his stars John Gilbert and Renée Adorée plus the likeable Karl Dane also involved.

 

The story is set in 1830 and shows the lives and loves of a group of bohemians living in the service of their art in a tumbledown house in the Latin Quarter. Gilbert plays the would-be playwright, Rodolphe, who, to pay the rent writes stories about cats and dogs for a pet-fancier’s journal. His roommates are also struggling artists, musicians and writer Colline (Edward Everett Horton – yay!!). Their landlord constantly chases them for rent but they just about make ends meet and their diet is enlivened by the occasional windfalls of Marcel’s girlfriend Musette (Adorée) who lives downstairs in rather more salubrious circumstances… the source of her income is more than hinted at.

 

The film does allow Gish to act as a happy woman in love... and with Mr Gilbert too!

Alongside the bohemian’s room is that of a lonely lace maker and embroiderer, Mimi (Gish) who has only her pet bird for company. It’s almost too pitiful but not in the hands of Gish who, even in her early thirties could carry off “innocent battler”, she’s believable in this extended operatic universe. The landlord wants her out and she is saved by the scheming Vicomte Paul (Roy D’Arcy, relishing the in the villainy) who has more than her fabric in mind… He starts to commission work from her just so he can stay close and work out a way of having his evil way…

 

Mimi meets Rodolphe and the two fall in love. Mimi encourages the writer to work on his first play and starts to sacrifice herself for him especially after he loses his work at the journal and she has to work nights to get the money to make him think he’s still employed… Nothing must come in the way of his work but, obviously things will, pride, jealousy, the Vicomte… nothing can compete with Mimi’s love though.

 

All of this was given exceptional musical force by Donald Sosin’s accompaniment which quoted extensively from Puccini (I think?) and was one of the most potent and powerful piano accompaniments I’ve seen in this theatre. He met the film with operatic force pulling the sentiment into the Verdi in ways that made me truly engage with a film that had left me slightly cold on home DVD. Brava!!

 

 

Ra Messerer, The Second Wife

The Second Wife (1927) with Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius

 

To Uzbekistan and this extraordinary film from Mikhail Devonov based on a story by Lolakhon Saifullina, a polish woman who married an Uzbek man and converted to Islam. It’s a reflection of the enormity of the old USSR and the challenged Moscow faced in co-ordinating so many diverse cultures into one modernising state. Saifullina worked for the Sharq Yulduzi studio writing scripts sensitive to the issues of Uzbeki women her along with former legal consultant Valentina Sobberey. The result is a tale in which women and children are exploited by old male custom and dominance.

 

Director Devonov does not lapse into bucolic orientalism and focuses on the story and the depiction of prevalent practices of early marriage and polygamy. Here a merchant Tadzhibai (Grigol Chechelashvili)’s first wife Khadycha (Maria Griniova) cannot have children and so he has a second wife, Adoliat (Ra Messerer) who can.  A child duly arrives and Khadycha tries to destroy her competitor. She is far from alone in malevolence as his brother Sadiqbai (Mikhail Doronin), steals money whilst his older brother is away and also preys on young boys being seen to go through some form of marriage ceremony later in the story, as things escalate elsewhere.

 

At the same time there are two representatives of Russian youth enjoying heartier endeavous, enjoying the benefits of education and financial independence – emancipated by communism as their sisters (and brothers) suffer medieval indignities. It’s propagandist but still shows the harshness of unresolved “tradition” and male power. The tragedy continues in many parts of the World.

 

 

Gunter Buchwald and Frank Bockius accompanied with their telepathic combinations of perfectly pitched themes and punctuations, musically at home in any part of the world as it was or will be.

 

Also on my silent film dance card for today was Anna May Wong in a minor role in Driven from Home (1927) with John Sweeney on accompaniment and Virginia Lee Corbin as a young woman who wanted to marry for love not money as she frustrated her father. The family’s “sinister housekeeper” engineered a deep rift that saw everyone estranged and, as mother slowly faded away we wondered if anything would heal the rift. Anna May helped!

 

 

I watched the great Clara Kimbell Young in Trilby (1915) accompanied by Philip Carli and directed by the even greater Maurice Tourneur. Trilby was an adaptation of 1894 George du Maurie’s 1894 novel which features the mystical abilities of Svengali (Wilton Lackaye) to hypnotise his subject, Trilby O'Ferral (CKY) into being a great opera singer. I’d seen John Barrymore doing the same thing to Marian Marsh in the 1931 talkie and so this silent version struck me as rather slow (and more sober), but still fun.

 

After the opera we were also treated to some rare and magnificent shorts in Feminist Fragments 1. No Work and All Play including some Bubbles! (1904) and the street humour of Departure from the “La Sin Bombo” Cigarette Factory something along the lines of Aladdin and the Forty Thieves only in modern Argentina. A couple of short fantasies about housework preceded our badly-behaved boarding schoolgirls who, really, just wanted to have fun. And, they did! Accompanist Mauro Colombis made sure of it.

 

 

Ah yes, La course aux potirons (1908)!!