Sadie’s hard rain… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2026, Day Seven

This was always going to be Gloria Swanson’s day with a stunning presentation of one of her landmark and most-influential films but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot of action of this fine festive Friday.

 

The day started with more evidence, as it were needed, that Italia Almirante Manzini is the most under-rated diva in Italian silent film with a story as operatic as they come and daft in the stylish way only Italy can get away with. La Statua di Carne (1921). Giornate cover girl Manzini plays two roles a chaste florist Maria and a worldly, outgoing singer called Neomi Keller which is nearly weird as, they are doppelgangers and I’ve just started reading a book on this very subject by Naomi Klein*, who has so often been confused with the lunatic conspiracy theorist and bad historian, Naomi Woolf.

 

Traditionally doppelgangers spell trouble and in this story, they are in the mind of Maria’s grieving lover, Count Paul Santarosa (Lido Manetti) much as the Kim Novaks are on Jimmy Stewart’s in Vertigo: are we seeing what Paul sees or is there more to this than it might appear? Based on Teobaldo Ciconi’s 1862 play, inspired by his passion for actress Celestina De Martini Peracchi, it had been adapted before and some critics found it dated in 1921 although there seems to have been general praise for the production and Manzini’s dual performance. Vate La Pesca in La Rivista Cinematografica (Dec ’21) thought she acted “… too proudly for the characters to appear at their fullest…” and yet his colleague in the same publication, Aurelia Spada raved about her “carnal sexuality” and rich, “masterful metamorphoses”.

 

India Almirante Manzini

There’s good support from Alfonso Cassini as Paul’s good-hearted best pal Marquis Chatonnet as well as Bianca Renieri as Martha who is Maria’s BFF and marries the Marquis. They all meet when Maria and her friends find the two nobles the worst for wear and assume that their down and outs in need of some hot food. The lads like being liked for just who they are and play along although their secret is eventually out much to Martha’s delight as she immediately asks Chatonnet to marry her and he agrees!

 

The wit of the first half drops away as Maria’s congenital frailty leads to her death and Paul’s falling into the deepest well of mourning. Until he is dragged along to the theatre to meet Neomi and is struck by her remarkable similarity to the woman he mourns. For a while he worships this living statue memorialising his love but observed and observer are bound to have feelings outside of the moribund…

 

The costumes are outstanding, and the drama is rich with Daan van den Hurk providing mesmerising accompaniment.

 

 

Phantom Tram Ride of the Day: Bird’s Eye View of George Street, Sydney, NSW (AU 1906) just wins out over Oscar Lahousen de Vevremont’s elegant Eine Fahrt Mit Der Straßenbahn Durch Klagenfurt (AT 1926). There’s more risk involved in providing a bird’s eye view especially in the middle of Sydney in a country known for its dangerous fauna.

 

Weimar Uncensored: Genuine (DE 1920)

I’ve had a 43-minute incomplete copy of this as an extra on Eureka’s Caligari Blu-ray but this was an 83 minute reconstruction based on the French version which had some significant changes from the original German one – the Third French Republic still censored films. Directed by Robert Wiene it has the look of his other film, and both meet Lotte Eisner’s strict criteria for Expressionist films:

 

·       Focus on Inner Emotions rather than external reality

·       Visual Distortions: exaggerated sets and lighting create a surreal atmosphere

·       Hyper-Expressive Performances – oh my yes!

 

Genuine was to be another “Stilfilm” aimed at making the same success as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with the same creative team and with some new, perhaps too many, ideas. Fern Andra is the titular character in her first staring role and whilst she creates an intriguing and disturbing possible witch, temptress/trapped object of desire, she’s not as well formed a character as Cesare in Caligari.

 

She is bought at a slave market and dressed in outlandish clothing in a locked room where she toys with the men brought to see her by the mysterious Lord Melo (Ernst Gronau). Is it an experiment or a ritual or is it even real? The French censors found the original version too much and insisted on a framing sequence in which Percy Melo (Harald Paulsen) who has painted the image of a high priestess named Genuine, then falls asleep and dreams the whole thing.

 

Be that as it may, once released Genuine continued to manipulate men’s baser feelings and the poor confused things seem to have had trouble assimilating the narrative… A film ripe for re-evaluation.

 

“Every evening at the Marmor-Haus, tempers clash rather vigorously – some boo, others even applaud, all in dispute over the merit or demerit of a work that in my eyes is nothing more than an interesting poisonous plant.” 

Fritz Olimsky, Berliner Börsenzeitung (05.08.1920)

  

Mauro Colombis on piano and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp brought the magic and the mystery, genuinely atmospheric. Not a dream.

 

Sitcom: Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew. Programme 2

 

Anyone who doesn’t just love this comedy couple by now needs to see their doctor as there is so much warmth in their relationship as Sid improvises making second wife Lucille laugh out of character but she’s not the only one as the entire cast seems to be having a ball. By Might of His Right (1915) has Sid see off his annoying Harvard educated brother-in-law by faking boxing skills whilst His Wife Knew All About it (1916) sees him dating their new cook to help enliven her social life: his friends see and jump to all the wrong conclusions egged on by Lucille!

 

It's the comedy of relationships – not just the central one – and Sid’s gags are top notch. Sadly, there are very few of these films in existence partly because he died in 1919 aged only 55. He had the gift alright, and I hope more people now get to see it!

 

Philip Carli was absolutely the man for this job and accompanied as if he was sat in the same room as the Drews! He was, of course, dressed for the occasion!

Countess Marguerita de Cippico on the left and right...

 

Make war no more: I’d seen Peace on the Western Front (GB 1930) at this year’s British Silent Film Symposium and was delighted to see it again. It’s a mix of recreated live dialogue from the IWM’s Toby Haggith and Clare Watson along with Stephen Horne’s beautiful accompaniment, and two sound discs (out of four) one of which was recently uncovered by dogged silent film researcher and writer Brent Reid. It’s a haunting film that has Moore Marriot’s old soldier explaining what the Great War was like to his grandson as the youngster has been playing with his toy soldiers.

 

It features footage from the front as it was in 1930, still very dangerous even if oddly quiet, as well as scenes of the reconstructed towns and cities of the various battles. As a slice of post-war life, it is incredibly poignant and as a lesson in history it is deadly serious as some modern politicians seem to view war in ways that would have been very familiar to Edwardian monarch states… the gap between politicians and humanity is growing.

 

A lighter look at the war was provided by Léonce Perret’s Lest We Forget (US 1918) which was released in January 1918 with the aim of reminding the US just how close they are to France – two great democracies who became republics at around the same time. The film starred and was produced by British actor Rita Jolivet also known as the Countess Marguerita de Cippico. She is great in the film as an all-action heroine would dances repeatedly with death, has luck and most importantly agency easily besting her male foes and, in the end, dramatically despatching the main baddy. Compared with her, the male lead playing her sweetheart Harry, Hamilton Revelle was made more for comedy.

 

This may have been about US /French goodwill, but Rita smuggled in a feminist main character!

 

Neil Brand did his patriotic duty with music of steadfast composition and firm resolve even as the Lusitania sank with Rita onboard…

 

A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915)

 

The Art of the Benshi:

 

Time for silent film to get a bit shouty and we were back with the benshi for a cartoon about a snake that had broken in half Chongire Hebi (1930) and mysterious sea gods in Umi No Kyuden (1930). The main feature was A Tale of the Filial Devotion of Goro Masamune (1915) which is astonishingly old for a Japanese silent and this is evident in the limited technique involved in a very wordy story about weddings and quests featuring an all-male cast. For completists only as the record reviewers sometimes say about early releases from famous groups but this was history on screen and on stage too.

 

Benshi: Kataoka Ichirō, Ōmori Kumiko, Yamauchi Nanako

Accompaniment: Katada Kisayo (percussion), Kiyomoto Nobuakira (shamisen)

 

 

Some more German Pola: Das Martyrium (1920), is the precious last 20-odd minutes of Paul Ludwig Stein’s film featuring a lot of Negri action after she discovers that her late husband had left her inheritance only if she lives and sleeps in the room where he died, all painted grey and with bare lighting illuminating his portraits on each wall… a gothic nightmare and she plays it well.

 

 

Gloria Swanson and Raoul Walsh 

The Future is Now: Sadie Thompson (US 1928)

 

This cracking upgraded restoration* seems to sit outside of time and space and I kept on thinking that this just couldn’t have been a 1928 film: it felt like a pre-code as it eventually became with Joan Crawford and Rain. The battle between Lionel Barrymore’s born-again Christian Alfred Davidson and Sadie (Swanson) the former sex worker looking for redemption and a new start, is an epic one that brings in questions about criminality, religion and the nature of faith. Davidson – hard as he tries is only offering a get-out and it’s loaded with caveats that are ultimately self-serving. He bullies Sadie into “converting” even though it’s against her best interests to return to San Francisco to pay her penance in jail. He’s physically and intellectually dominating her no matter how strong she thinks she is.

 

The standard line of the time would have meant Sadie taking her medicine and ignoring her chances with Sergeant Timothy O'Hara (Raoul Walsh – who also directs) in the promised land of Australia but the film doesn’t take the easy way out. What our instincts are screaming out about Davidson the longer this Christian cat and satanic mouse game is played, turn out to be true and it’s to the film’s credit that it takes its audience right to the wire and knows we’ll work out the subtext.

 

As Pamela Hutchinson writes in her recent book on The Curse of Queen Kelly, Swanson had to fight to make this film with some studios traying to prevent her, but she was right, and it was one of her biggest successes. At just 28 she’d made a film that pointed to the future and it’s just a shame that Queen Kelly didn’t allow her to move even further… but you can find out all about that in the book and watch the reconstructed film.

 

Gloria Swanson has great hair in this film and sets the style in all ways for the coming decade – and all because she wanted to!

 

The accompaniment from Meg Morley was also as fierce and nuanced as Swanson with so much texture and depth. There are long sections of the performers engaged in intense but wordless debate and to be able to ride alongside with the same force of invention is quite something for a 98-minute film! Go, you good thing!

 

Simply one of the best things we’ve heard and seen all week!

 

.

Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore

*The current copy of Sadie Thompson is a 4K upgrade of the restoration originally produced by Dennis Doros for Kino Lorber in 1987, and it is from this film that the image for the Giornate 2026 poster is taken.

Jangle all the way? The Bells (1926), Image Entertainment DVD

 

Hear the sledges with the bells—

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

Edgar Allen Poe, The Bells (1849)

 

Time for a seasonal treat as we career towards 2026 and this one is a film that has come to my attention because those crazy guys at Redwood Creek are launching another well-funded Kickstarter to, checks notes, produce a Blu-ray-R of a 4k scan and a 4k “restoration” from a “version with blue and lavender tints.. from an original tinted nitrate 35mm reduction print…" It is - apparently - "...truly miraculous to find a 35mm copy of The Bells in a private collection, a complete copy which has stood the test of time with flying colours.”

 

More on this breaking news later but, based on previous output from this outfit, I thought I’d see what is already out there and landed upon a 1998 version produced for video by the esteemed David Shepard’s Film Preservation Associates along with accompanying music compiled and performed by Eric Beheim and the William Pratt Players. This was released by Image Entertainment in 2000 and also includes Rene Clair’s Paris, qui dort (1925). This version of The Bells was produced direct from a 35mm nitrate print which features a range of tints as well. This sounds to me like at least an equivalent quality source and a transfer that, based on past form, might well be more interesting to view*?

 

Lionel Barrymore

Anyway… the film, directed by James Young who also adapted the screen play from the Le Juif Polonais/The Polish Jew (1867) play by Alexandre Chatrian and Émile Erckmann as well as the 1871 English version by Leopold Lewis which, as the opening titles reveal, was performed in the U.S. in the 19th century by the great Sir Henry Irving.  These works, plus an opera, and numerous compositions, were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, The Bells published after his death in 1849 and which relentless rhythms contain the hints of bitter compromise you would expect form such a darkly humoured soul. Poe also invented detective fiction and it’s ironic that his untimely death at just 40 has never been satisfactorily explained.

 

“… the tintinnabulation that so musically wells ... From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells…”

 

The Bells is not a long poem but it covers a lot of ground, with the titular objects denoting differing stages of life from younger possibilities to the joys of Christmas, weddings and the final chimes for the dead. So it is that this film – and those plays - also feature a Christmas murder and the ringing condemnation of sleigh bells that rattle in the mind of the guilty party’s hallucinations as he cannot escape the consequences of his selfish slaughter.

 

Foreshadowing?

We begin in the 1860s, in a hamlet set at the foot of Mount Snow-top in a fictional European country of Alsatia where we find an inn run by Mathias (Lionel Barrymore) a landlord more intent on winning friends in order to become Burgermeister - a chief magistrate - than turning a profit. His wife, Catherine (Caroline Frances Cooke) looks on in frustration at his generosity/weakness/lust for power as the clientele make merry on the never-never. Meanwhile his chief creditor, Jerome Frantz (Gustav von Seyffertitz) is playing a waiting game his eyes set not only on the business but also on trading off marriage to the couple’s beautiful daughter Annette (Lola Todd).

 

Annette meanwhile rides in the back of a haywain, playfully hiding herself from Christian (Edward Phillips), the handsome young trooper who has just been appointed as the town’s “gendarme” – Alsatia mixes so many languages. He picks her up as she falls with the straw and it’s clear the two are already an item. Jerome will just have to wait until Mathais’ inevitable bankruptcy.

 

I can make criminals confess their crimes and good men tell of their good deeds.

 

No fun at the Fair... Boris Karloff

The fair comes to town and director James Young goes to town on the celebration perhaps borrowing some leftover props from The Hunchback of Notre Dame or some other period piece with giant papier-mâché heads and gaudy wonders abounding. This is where the story takes an uncanny turn as first we need a stern-faced Mesmerist (Boris Karloff – yay!!) who can not only persuade young women to levitate but can also see deep into a man’s soul and persuade him to reveal their deepest innermost secrets.

 

Also operating on the edges of accepted science is a fortune teller (Laura La Varnie) who is so shocked after reading Mathais’ palm that she kicks him out of her tent and gives him back his money. So, to summarise, clearly something horrible is going to happen and our main character is going to have reason to feel very guilty!

Gustav von Seyffertitz

Cue Christmas – even though there was no Noddy Holder to confirm it… there are plenty of decorations and abundant free booze from the landlord who would be magistrate! A huge feast is held at the inn and Annette accepts Christian’s engagement ring as Frantz looks on in disgust. Young creates a grand party as the revels dance on a swirl and it’s all building up as a counter point to the arrival of Baruch Koweski (E. Alyn Warren), the Polish Jew, a travelling merchant from Warsaw, seeking solace from the unyielding snowstorm outside. 

Christmas brings to Mathias no “Peace on Earth” nor any “Good will” from his neighbour Franz…

He sits down to drink with Mathias who is keen on forgetting his money worries and celebrating but when he reveals that he has a small fortune in his money belt, we can see that the landlord quickly works out how he can solve his money troubles on one foul swoop… As the tint shifts from the sepia brown of most of the film to stark green and the deed is done with black drops of blood tellingly falling on the pristine snow.

Lola Todd and Edward Phillips

Telling everyone that he has inherited money from his rich uncle Mathias has seemingly got away with it but soon the murder is uncovered even though the body cannot be found and, as Christian begins to investigate, presenting his case to the newly installed magistrate, Mathais feels the weight of guilt. He starts to have visions and to not only see his victim but also hear the sleigh bells tolling for him. He refuses the investigations of Koweski’s nephew and the intervention of the Mesmerist who needs to no special powers to see how guilty this man is…

 

Much of the rest of the story takes place across the face of the masterful Barrymore who fills the screen with anguish, his eyes filled with fear as he battles his conscience and attempts to escape his own regrets. This is classic Poe even though the plays were only drawing from his influence and for this film, Young would have had ample examples of Poe-esque angst from other filmmakers not least Griffith and his adaptation of the author’s Tell-Tale Heart, The Avenging Conscience (1914). Barrymore is relatively restrained and keeps the possibilities in play even as his Mathias is subsumed in dreams both day and night. Young presents some ghostly double exposures and a superb court of the mind as Mathais dreams himself on trial.

Mind trial

The accompaniment on this disc is well played using an electric organ with sounds that don’t quite replicate a full ensemble of actual instruments but the choice of melodies by Eric Beheim is strong and the accompaniment is very successful overall – top marks for the faultless use of sleigh bells too! Timing is all.

 

The DVD is long out of print but you can still find it on eBay and around for half the price of the upcoming Redwood Creek Blu-ray-R. This new disc can still be supported and does come with blue and lavender tints as opposed to the sepia and green of the Image DVD. The stills on the Kickstarter page look clear and sharp plus there’ll be a new score from the impressive Belgian composer Laurent Pigeolet. Their blurb does say that James Wong Howe was the cinematographer but it was L. William O'Connell who does such a good job.

As ever, your choice but it’s certainly an interesting film either way!

*This, of course, depends on how Redwood Creek deploy the modern digital assets at their disposal although there have been doubts expressed about how they work on “restorations” with a very interesting analysis to be found at DVDFreak which, amongst other things, found that the “new tinted print” and “a new 4K scan…" “shared the exact same crop values, film damage and stability issues (on identical frames) as a previous version aired on German / French TV station Arte back in 2003...” suggesting much about quality control and raising questions about how “new” anything actually was.

You pays your money and takes your chance... see my next post for balance on their Fall of the House of Usher Blu-ray-R.

Season's Greetings!

Sideshow shocker… The Show (1927), Tod Browning

 

"… one of the most bizarre productions to emerge from silent cinema."

Alfred Eaker, Tod Browning Retrospective (2016)

The recent release of Criterion’s Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers set spurred me into finally catching up with this feature which reunites the winning team from The Big Parade, Renée Adorée and John Gilbert. The Show is not on the set and was released just before The Unknown (1927) which is featured in the restored version, along with The Mystic (1925) and Freaks (1932), arguably his most famous film after Dracula (1931).

 

All three are delicious treats on their own but The Show could easily have been the fourth film on the set, meeting, as it does, some of the key criteria for classic Browning films. It’s set in a circus, has a set of unusual characters and performers and an evil bad man who will stop at no extreme to a) win the girl and b) eliminate the opposition in as contrived a way as possible. On top of this there is the usual exotica and elements of the uncanny which may or may not be true.

 

Why was Browning so obsessed with these outsider tales? Well, he did run away to join the circus leaving his comfortable middle-class family before completing high school aged just 16 in 1896. Wikipedia has Browning’s birth year as 1889 but it was 1880 according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not to mention Wiki’s own maths which has him working 13 years in the circus as a roustabout, a sideshow "spieler", clown and a live burial act which he was billed as "The Living Hypnotic Corpse" before moving to films aged 29 in 1909.

Renée Adorée and John Gilbert

So many early filmmakers represented the American, and British, theatrical tradition but here was a man steeped in Carny Culture and whom was used to the milling crowds and on-site appeals for attention of the “barker”, the finest salesman at the greatest show on earth which as he worked through the 1910s was undoubtedly film. He made a number of gritty films with Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean as the twenties progressed and then, with Chaney otherwise engaged with Eleanor Boardman and Billy Haines in Tell it to the Marines (1927), he made The Show with the ultimate leading man, John Gilbert with Adorée on board for the heavy dramatic lifting and Lionel Barrymore for the pure spite and evil. It’s a very odd film that does indeed anticipate the subsequent Browning/Cheney classic, The Unknown and so, consider this an aperitif if you are in any doubt about purchasing the box set!

 

Our story begins in exotic Budapest, at The Palace of Illusions carnival run by a ruthless man known as The Greek (Lionel Barrymore) who has a side line in murder and extortion. He’s not the only one as handsome Cock Robin (Gilbert) is busy trying to romance Lena (Gertrude Short) the daughter of Driskai, a wealthy sheep merchant, in order to erm, fleece her. Robin is indeed the cock of the walk and is friendly with many of the women in the circus and in the general location.

 

You’re hired as freaks… not vampires!

 

He has an emotional connection to Salome (Renée Adorée) but she is involved with The Greek and therefore out of bounds. This doesn’t stop her shoeing off female interest in Robin and, as above, inadvertently foreshadowing two of Tod Browning’s best known future successes in the process, although the vampires in question are of the Theda Bara kind and not Bela Lugosi. Salome doesn’t like Robin’s womanising but she can’t do much about it: these circus folk are edgy and he's a cad.

Madame Web: Edna Tichenor unblinking.

But they're also darned strange as we meet some Browning surrealist sideshow treats including The Living Hand of Cleopatra!, ZELA the half lady! - "Believe me, boys... there's no cold feet here to bother you!" - and NEPTUNA, the Queen of the Mermaids!. Then there's ARACHNIDA! The Human Spider played by the striking Edna Tichenor (who also featured in Browning's lost classic, London After Midnight (1927)) who "...eats flies on week days... and butterflies on Sundays!" What influence the director had on popular culture you can only guess but these ideas, drawn from the carnival tradition would fuel horror and fantasy media for decades to come: film, pulp fiction and, of course, comic books.

They do, however, put on a heck of a show, the highlight of which is a re-enactment of the biblical story of Salome, complete with the dance of the seven veils (clearly not performed by Renée Adorée, the dancer having her back to camera?) with Robin playing John the Baptist and some complex trickery involved to give the impression of his head being sliced off by sword and then handed on a plate to Salome. I don’t know about you, but this looks dangerous to me… but that’s the circus and not even the audience are safe after a man is bitten by a poisonous lizard.

 

You little fool! He’s only after your money, get out of here!

 

Renée Adorée, the silent era's Olivia Coleman?

That’s not the evening’s only death though as Driskai gets murdered leaving Robin’s little deception becomes crueller than he ever intended, culminating in Salome disabusing his young target of his sincerity. She runs off sobbing in great distress leaving him with her money… making him look potentially guilty, is there anything that can make him realise the error of his ways? But finding a conscience is the least of his worries as The Greek decides it’s time to stop Cock Robin stealing Salome and devises a cunning plan that could see him losing his head… 

 

Barrymore is evil and Gilbert convincingly laddish but it’s Adorée who takes the plaudits for her emotional warmth and eyes forever on the brink of welling over. She’s like a silent Olivia Coleman and who knows what she could have gone on to achieve in the talkies had she not died at just 35 in 1933 after contracting tuberculosis a few years earlier. She came from circus stock herself and performed as an acrobat, dancer and bareback rider throughout Europe before her big break into acting.

Based on Charles Tenney Jackson's novel The Day of Souls (1910), The Show is every bit as offbeat as The Unknown. It has plenty of Browning weirdness including a lizard supposedly more poisonous than a snake and which kills one of the customers. Such things happen at the circus and there’ll be worse to come for visitors to Tod’s Extraordinary World of Adventures!

 

Jack the lad...

There’s a new Blu-ray due out from Redwood Creek – a 4k transfer from a 16mm copy - and also a nice crisp Warner Archives DVD which you can still pick up from eBay. Essential items for your Tod shelf alongside that new Criterion set!

Sideshow Note: One notable sidenote in a life full of them was Browning crashing his car into a train whilst inebriated in 1915. He suffered serious injury but another passenger, the great Elmer Booth – star of Griffith’s famously close-up Musketeer of Pig Alley, was killed instantly. What Booth might have gone on to achieve we can only guess but Tod survived to film another day and who knows how this brush with mortality and the guilt he carried, impacted his creative choices going forward. His films always look at the more uncomfortable aspects of our lives… even amongst the freakery and showmanship.

 

 

Hearts of darkness… West of Zanzibar (1928) & Kongo (1932)

Mr Chaney

It says a lot about the shift in audience tastes that both these film were produced so differently in just a four year period.  Technically, of course, one’s a talkie but how much did that influence the presentation of what are both fairly claustrophobic tales? The former film could easily have been a talkie such is the focus on Lon Chaney whilst parts of the latter could work equally well as a silent with so much superb physicality from Walter Huston in the same role
.

A number of people have written about the talkie after watching the silent but I’ve done it the other way round: not much of a USP but it’ll have to do. The sound film struck me as incredibly lacking in hope and more than unnecessarily sleazy whereas the original trusts in Lon Chaney to act his way through the outlandish narrative emerging with something like believable redemption. Huston’s so far damned St Peter’s bookies have stopped taking bets on which level of Hell he’ll end up in… but for Lon… Purgatory is still a long shot.

Mr Huston

The sound film starts in the heart of darkness whereas the silent explains the backstory more clearly and our sympathy is in place for a more morally-complex story. Maybe it’s slower than the sound, or maybe they just wanted to get straight to the steamy action, a more than vague hint of sadomasochism and eye-popping views of Ida Lupino’s exceptionally tight dress.

But in silence, we get caught up with another tragedy for Lon Chaney and his acting, as always, is peerless. Not that it’s so cut and dried as Walter Huston is no slouch and played the role first, starring in the 1926 Broadway play by Chester de Vonde.

Silent back-story: Phroso and Anna

In the Browning version, we see Chaney’s character in civilisation – a stage act called Phroso – another of his tragic clowns – who is very much in love with his wife Anna (Jacqueline Gadsden). Sadly, Anna’s not getting what she wants from the relationship and is making eyes at another performer, Crane (Lionel Barrymore). Anna decides to leave with Crane and in the bitter altercation that follows, Phroso is pushed from on high, falling silently, his legs lost for ever. It’s a tragedy and we feel for Phroso…

Cut forward to the talkie, directed by William J. Cowen, we start only with Huston now known as “Deadlegs” Flint. He drags himself around with the determined ease of a man who has had to re-purpose his body and who force of will still enables him to dominate all those around him. He’s a self-made monster driven on pure indignation with his remaining faculties refined by pure hate. We only discover the cause of his burning hatred later.

Flint holds court over a group of misfits all of whom are physically and mentally incapable of leaving his domain. There’s the English Cookie Harris (Forrester Harvey) whose criminal past locks him into African exile, Hogan (Mitchell Lewis)  and a woman whose purpose can only be guessed at, Tula (Lupe Velez  who is distractedly wrapped in a very pre-code cloth).

Lupe Velez and Walter Houston

This is very much the heart of darkness and Flint maintains control over the locals through magic tricks and stage craft, persuading them to do his bidding in stealing ivory from competitors. He’s saving up for a rainy day and the visit of an old friend… here called Gregg (C. Henry Gordon).

Phroso too has created his little empire on the same basis but his entourage is rather more homely – even including a Doctor (Warner Baxter) there to help control his constant pain. “Dead-Legs” Phroso has his men and the natives steal directly from Crane and his plan becomes clearer early on: he has been keeping tabs on a woman born to his ex-wife while she was with Crane and is intent on dragging her from her protected world into his as a part of his ultimate revenge on Crane.

Lionel Barrymore and C. Henry Gordon

The girl, Maizie, (played by Mary Nolan) arrives and is soon degraded and turned to drink by his vengeful master. Phroso will break her father’s business and force him to come to deal with him and thereby find the humiliated husk of his daughter…

Back in 1932 – is this getting confusing? – Flint has used a mixture of drugs, slavery and drink to pervert not only the girl, here called Ann Whitehall (Virginia Bruce) but also the doctor, (Conrad Nagel) who comes along just before she arrives. The two are helpless, addicted and drained with Crane intent on killing them both as softly as it takes…

Mary Nolan - before

The modern vogue for “pre-code” is based on seeking out evidence of a continuity of thought – un-guarded expressions regarding crime, sexuality and the desire to lift both legs up from the floor onto the bed should the need so arise. But this film is so dark I’ve even seen modern commentators describe it as more than a little depraved.

In 1928 a lot was left to the imagination and Chaney’s unmatched expressiveness carries across so much more than just a reptilian thirst for revenge.

He encounters his nemesis and the end game begins with Lionel Barrymore’s Crane edging C. Henry Gordon’s Gregg – he is much fuller as a character and his greater role in the plot is another way the story is made more complete.

Virginia Bruce - after

Flint’s actions, remaining unexplained largely, carry less impact and are seemingly just sadistic for the heck of it until long into the story. Phroso has motivation, if not necessarily full sympathy, but that may come later.

The two doctors are men of honour, the talker perhaps the less strong-minded but both the young women perform well – both pulled down from their pure-mannered education to the life of drug-addled, jungle prostitution:  Virginia Bruce just edging it with her words actually giving her the advantage over Mary Nolan for the only time in the contest.

Warner Baxter, Conrad Nagel and Virginia Bruce

No spoilers… how could I? This isn’t just one film but two although I’d strongly recommend a hot bath after the talkie and a strong drink after the silent.

Walter Huston does give a spectacular performance as the man with mind and body twisted by the need for the most distasteful revenge against the man who robbed him of his wife and his legs. But Lon Chaney edges it for his uncanny physicality: you believe his legs are useless and you not only hate him you cry for his loss as well.

Both films are available from Warner Archives the talkie is here and the silent is here.

Griffith’s Gate… America (1924), BFI with Costas Fotopoulos

"You say you want a revolution…?” This film had its genesis in a letter from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Will Hays asking why there hadn’t been any major films about their revolution. This sounded wholesome enough for Mr Hays and strings were duly pulled resulting in this, what surely has to be the politest film about the war of independence.

America portrays the oppressors as a mix of mercenary Native Americans and home grown renegades led by a malevolent officer with a lust for power: Captain Butler (a quite superb performance from Lionel Barrymore). The version that was projected at the BFI seems to be the “British cut” which was toned down for domestic audiences and re-titled Love and Sacrifice. We do get the “no taxation without representation” part but the worst aspects of the war, civilian massacres and scorched earth, are attributed to rogue elements.

Neil Hamilton and Carol Dempster share a lobby card

But… let’s not go all historical or I’ll be on this for days. Needless to say, George Washington’s acceptance and return of the – surrendering – General Cornwallis's sword did not actually happen as the Brit refused to meet formally with Washington, or to attend the ceremony of surrender… Sore losers as it turned out.

The film cost United Artists around a million dollars and, whilst it didn’t do for them what Michael Cimino managed with Heaven’s Gate, it curtailed Griffith’s ability to undertake projects of similar scale in future. As with that later film, there are passages that don’t always fit the pace, as if something is still missing but the version projected was some 175 minutes long and is as close to the full-Monty we’re likely to see. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as Heaven’s Gate, but it has some stunning sequences.

Billy Bitzer is on camera to help record some full-scale battle scenes adding his own flourishes as riders are silhouetted against a dusky sky, troops advance under a dawning sun and Bunker Hill is viewed through the rigging of a British man of war. There are also a number of moments when the camera rides amongst the charging soldiers – Abel Gance was almost certainly watching – and over rough terrain when the cavalry attacks – mounted on another horse perhaps?

Bitzer's camera tracks the men and horses over battlefields

The war scenes are worth the price of entry alone and Griffith went to great pains in representing the battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill. He may have had a cast of thousands rather than the tens of thousands for Birth  and Intolerance but he makes good use of them building genuine tension using his individual heroes in his usual contrapuntal way. The closing sequence sees the rebels riding hard to rescue a beleaguered fort housing their women and children. They are distracted by a skirmish with British troops before they can ride onto the fort, Griffith cuts to individual struggles and reactions, slowly people are killed and the forts begins to give way; there’s no way the rescuers can make it is there?

Carol Dempster: not Lillian but not bad either

Those individuals have often been criticised and none more so than Carol Dempster who, whilst not being Lillian Gish (a many dozens have pointed out), is Miss Nancy Montague the daughter of the loyalist Justice Montague (Erville Alderson). On this evidence I thought Carol did a swell job and it is not her acting that gets in the way of on-screen chemistry with the dashing Nathan Holden (Neil Hamilton: how good looking was Commissioner Gordon in his youth?!), it’s the story-sprawl. Then again: I believed it and realistically, it’s hard to play the American Revolution as a romance.

Brilliant Lionel Barrymore

Charles Emmett Mack is interesting as Nancy’s brother Charles a sword-wielding playboy who won’t shirk from the fight when he sees injustice for himself; he joins the rebel fight and bravely gives his life as, mortally wounded, he crawls across the battle field to hand his comrades some desperately needed gunpowder: the kind of vignette Griffith excelled at and it is well-acted.

The aforementioned Barrymore is the undoubted star performer and his centered theatrical expertise blasts most of the rest of the screen as some over-emote and generally gurn either as over-enthused baddies or misplaced comic relief.

Louis Wolheim gets mean as Capt. Peter Hare

There is some truth to his character - a native New Yorker who trained and practiced as a lawyer and became an Indian agent for the King.  This legal training did not seem to instil adherence to the concept of justice and he was indeed amongst the most hated loyalist of the region especially after his role in the 1778 Cherry Valley massacre in which a mixed force of Loyalists, British soldiers, Seneca and Mohawks under his command killed some 30 settlers, mostly women and children.

The Rebels battle through snow and flame

In the film, he is the focus for revolutionary sentiment – the taxation thing is all well and good but here’s the cutting edge of colonial brutality - leading his cartoon band of baddies into action and fuel-injecting the rebel cause as the film builds to a climax.

The scenes of the “loyalist” mercenaries attacking women and children still shock and, when they break down the fort’s outer wall, the ensuing assault on these innocents is uncomfortable to watch… maybe not so “polite” after all…

Massive set piece conflagrations abound!

America is nearly three hours long and it is tribute enough to DW that it doesn’t feel that long. Yes there were a lot of lengthy title cards and some uneven pacing but there were dramatic sweeps the equal of any contemporary in the rapidly-changing cinema of the early twenties. Some reviews of the time complained the Griffith was getting dated but isn’t that always the way when someone has been so ground-breaking – so vital… Innovation is subject to diminishing returns as others pick up, learn and refine and even the most brilliant of artists cannot maintain the same momentum. You get the feeling that DW needed time and more sympathetic collaborators – off screen – to really move on…

A tip of the hat too goes to Costas Fotopoulos who played along with remarkable energy and invention: he played a major part in helping us re-connect with the spirit of Griffith’s enterprise: bold, ambitious and with hands of steel!

The Red Man's View (1909)

Before the main film, we saw a very interesting short The Red Man's View from 1909, which showed a different side to Griffith the patriot and southern gentleman. Here he deals with the impact of the white man’s expansion on native cultures. The Indians are cruelly pushed off their land even though their chief looks close to death. The white men aim to keep young Minnewanna (Mary’s sister Lottie Pickford) but finally relent after the chief’s death and the pleading of her sweetheart Silver Eagle and (Owen Moore - Mary’s future husband).

It’s a poignant study and underplayed enough to let the audience draw their own conclusions about the film maker’s sympathies…

Lottie second left... Owen Moore in the middle, I think?

The BFI’s Griffith season continues throughout June culminating in those massive blockbusters the paved the way for tonight’s main film, Griffith’s last really big moment...

Promotional poster showing America's spectacular sequences