Murder on the dancefloor... Palais de Danse (1928) with Costas Fotopoulos, BFI

“We are a nation that suffers from… mock modesty and it applies to British film… there is no reason why our films should not rank higher… Are we downhearted, emphatically no!”

Speaking thus in 1929, Maurice Elvey bemoaned the attitude of the British to our own cinema and, commenting as above, issued a rallying cry for the creative arts to stand up and be counted. Dr Lucie Dutton in her excellent introduction addressed this ongoing narrative of “mock modesty” and offered this film as yet another example of domestic cinema’s quality. Elvey himself wouldn’t have ranked Palais de Danse on a level with say his own Hindle Wakes (1927) but it’s clear to see that the former is not only highly competent but stylistically adventurous and entertainment.

Lucie quoted the above from a 1929 radio interview and an earlier interview in which Elvey also talked about wanting to make stories that touched on the common experience of the audience: “depicting human emotions in a reasonable way… (and) just the sort of happenings that must have happened to themselves.” This film, as with Hindle, helps explain why audiences at Granada cinemas voted him the most popular director in 1927.

One of my favourite sequences in Hindle Wakes is that showing the dancing in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom and here Elvey filmed 1500 extras in the Tottenham Palais (built in 1910 and only demolished as recently as 2003), Percy Strong’s camera following the mass as the circle the dancefloor marshalled impeccably by the director (was anyone better with crowds than Maurice?) and his assistant, one David Lean.  It’s hypnotic and poignant, these were are grand-parents’ moves, it was how they met and how they courted.

Mabel Poulton promotes the Danse

The film is packed full of cross-fades, dolly shots, montage, and Germanic camera mobility and it draws you into the Palais and moves the narrative onwards so effectively. At one point, Lady King (Hilda Moore), enjoying a rendezvous with “Count Alban” (aka No. 1 played by the marvellously menacing John Longden, who also co-wrote the story), are followed as they stand up from their table in Eugene’s Club and move over the room to open a door revealing a roulette table. There are also plenty of “Elvey Touches” such as when the legs and feet are shown of the professional dancers/escorts as they march out from their changing rooms to face another day of being bought and danced with… or when our modern Cinderella (Mabel Poulton) is first caught up in the show, nervously reacting to the extreme close-ups of “Prince Charming”, Tony King (Robin Irvine) as he attends to her in a tableaux vivant at the start of the film.

In the same way that, say Julian Barnes or Ian McEwan are easier reads than other middlebrow heavyweights who use too much technique (yes Martin and, especially you Will…), Elvey focuses on the story and only uses that which advances the process. I’d say he is under-rated from what I’ve seen and there are a growing number who would agree with Dr Dutton in recognising his importance in the development of British cinema from the 1910s onwards.

Mabel Poulton is an actress new to me but she’s excellent in the film as the daughter of a disabled war-veteran road worker who is plucked from her father’s side opposite 415–419 High Road Tottenham, to fill the glass shoes of a missing Cinders in the aforementioned tableaux. She catches the eye of the Hall’s owner and auditions for the leading professional dancer, Number One (Longden) who is extremely impressed after a false start in which she dances ballet.

She is allocated the number 16 and is soon foxtrotting her feet off on the daily drag round the dancefloor. The other dancers are well observed especially Number 2, played by a perpetual motion gum-chewing Chili Bouchier, as the world-weary girl with the curls who comes out with such lines as “c’mon you flat-footed son of a saxophone!” – I think we’ve found the English Marie Prevost!

It’s a culture shock for our innocent Cinders and there’s another great sequence in which she backs away, mesmerised and horrified at the mass of human interaction, shadows falling in constant motion one her face and the walls. She retreats staring at the action and finally sneaks out of the door, pausing only for one last look.

Her Prince Charming returns and gradually No 16 falls in love with Tony King but it’s not a relationship approved of by his mother nor his father, Sir William King (Jerrold Robertshaw) a judge “of few words but long sentences”. Tony pleads with her ladyship – “this is 1928, times have changed…” but not by that much and the class divide stands firm even as Lady King finds out who her Count really is.

As Number 1 starts blackmailing his Lady, Cinders overhears and tries to help… things are about to get a lot more complicated; there’ll be more dancing and a heck of a fight before the day is done in a thrilling, if completely predictable, ending.

The curved entrance to the Palais de Dance on Tottenham HIgh Road

Costas Fotopoulos accompanied with sure-footed flourishes that captured the mood and the period; rhapsodic elements mixed with jazz-age poignance. Just what the film asked for.

Palais de Danse could easily have been a Hollywood or French comedy-drama and proves Mr Elvey’s point precisely by its quality – it’s not his best work but it is very good all the same!

For more on British Silent Film, I can recommend theBritish Silent Film Symposium which takes place at Kings College London on 11thand 12th April – it’s a fascinating line up of research and films and plays a major role in the ongoing rehabilitation of British silent film.

Are we downhearted? Emphatically no!

Chili Bouchier, the English Marie Prevost?

Hot media… British Silent Film Symposium 2018, Day Two, Kings College, London

Kings Road, 1891

The joy of history, as my tutors never said directly, is in reconnection with the feelings of the past; looking through the dates to the actual emotion around events and change. Today’s presentations pulled us back to the moments when uncertainty fired invention and genuinely brave hearts kickstarted the medium we are all so cool about now. But nothing was inevitable and collaboration by men working on parallel courses determined the future. The birth of cinema was more along the lines of Hedy Lamarr’s spread frequencies than a single signal (and if there was one it certainly was not from Thomas Edison).

EARLY INVENTORS & SCIENTISTS

Ian Christie – The Tarnished Myth of British Precedence

Ian Christie kicked us off and introduced the man of the day, William Friese-Greene by way of the Boulting’s The Magic Box (1951) in which bemused PC Laurence Olivier witnesses the first projection of moving images, supposedly in 1890. Whilst Friese-Greene had not developed his magic to this extent, this scene is fiction based on fact only not William’s but RW Paul’s in 1895 when he and Birt Acres made so much noise celebrating running a film on a Paul Kinetoscope (Edison wouldn’t supply them with “his”) that a policeman did indeed make inquiries.

Why didn’t Paul get the credit and why were some so keen on attributing credit to Friese-Greene? The answer is in the ebb and flow of historical agendas and a rush to lay the crown on single heads. Friese-Greene’s reputation has paid many times over for the infamous film but both he and Paul deserve a balanced appreciation.

Ian Christie showed panels from a graphic novel detailing Paul’s work and has more to come with book, blog and exhibition. More details on the blog:

Peter Domankiewicz – William Friese-Greene and the Art of Collaboration

Peter also came up with genuinely jaw-dropping boost for WF-G’s with his re-animation of the latter’s film of Kings Road, London in 1891!  This was probably the first time the pictures had been shown on anything other than a Kinetoscope and we’d like to see more. In the meantime, it is on YouTube.

Friese-Greene, as with Paul, collaborated with a number of others to develop his technology, including John Arthur Rudge, inventor of the Biophantic Lantern. Together they made a sequence entitled Rudge Loses His Head, in which, examination of the slides revealed Friese-Greene played the body from which Rudge’s head seemingly detaches.

Later F-G worked with Mortimer Evans to develop a camera capable of taking a rapid series of pictures – 6-7 frames a second and potentially up to 100 all in 1890 (but not projectable onto a sheet for gasping policemen…).

William Friese-Green

Then there was Frederick Varley who had devised a machine for weighing mediums – to work out the impact of ectoplasmic discharge (ew!) – and with whom F-G came up with a stereoscopic camera.

After Friese-Greene’s reputation has been trashed until the point he was claimed to have contributed very little, it is ironic that a review of his choice of collaborators shows just how significant he actually was. Maybe he just wasn’t good at the PR aspect – and we know he struggled at business. Edison – a master at both, didn’t acknowledge Dickson’s role (and others’) in his’ company’s developments whilst even Le Prince wouldn’t have captured Leeds on film without James Langley’s camera.

Peter Domankiewicz also makes films and further details can be found on his site.

Elizabeth Watkins – Scientific Photography and the Fantastic in Polar Expedition Films: Reading the Notebooks of Fred Gent

There was collaboration on a grander scale in the pioneering films of Herbert Ponting who filmed the Scott’s expeditions and Frank Hurley who worked with Douglas Mawson and Ernest Shackleton.

Their work was not only driven by commercial imperatives but also a supplement to established methods of scientific documentation and not juts in extensive sequences of penguins. Watkins work has focused on the influence of Fred Gent, General Manager for Gaumont (Sydney) on the resultant expedition films from the selection of camera equipment even as far as lecture rights and exhibition work.

There were some gorgeous tinted and colour shots (applied colour) of polar landscapes – Arch Berg, Castle Berg and so on which used a colour-coding following Gaumont’s lead: green for wildlife and so on. The use of colour is part of the performance and I had never thought about how specific that could be.

Castle Berg, William Ponting 1911

THE TRADE IN THE 1910s

Andrew Shail – The UK Film Market, 1907-1912

In case you didn’t know, by day I’m a marketeer and I love data – not in a Cambridge Analytica way – but as a means of understanding behaviours and better supporting customer service delivery (yes, I’m one of the Marketing Good Guys…).

I was therefore naturally in awe of firstly Andrew Shail’s – and later Nyasha Sibanda’s – data-driven analysis. Historical analysis rarely gets the chance to use a quantitative approach and Andrew’s database of some 19,000 films from 1907 to 1912 has enabled him to draw some startling conclusions about the UK film market. The data was captured from the Kinematograph Film Review and represents around 90% of the domestic film market – an over-whelming sample ration in terms of likely accuracy.

Changes in source of origin. Hard work and copyright Andrew Shail

It reveals a huge growth in the number of production companies issuing films in the UK, from just 7 in the first quarter of 1907 to 78 in Oct-Dec 1912. What’s more the country of origin, whilst being surprisingly varied with film from Italy, Denmark and even Japan part of the regular imports.

UK and France dominate until the start of 1912 when US output accelerates away, a few years before I expected with the Great War. Italian production also come in a healthy third (not unexpected perhaps) which Nordisk consistently contributes a steady flow of increasingly lengthy films. A fascinating glimpse of the size and scale of the new media as it matured during its second decade.

Lucie Dutton – From Glib-Smooth-Tongued Travellers to Cabbages: Maurice Elvey and British Distribution in the 1910s

Now for another of the traditional highlights of BSFFS, Lucie Dutton’s revelations on our most prolific film-maker and a maker of grand cinema almost the equal of Griffith (without the, you know…). In a day when so many themes interlinked, Lucie had analysed cinema advertising in Derby that showed up to 70% of films shown to be of US origin with just 21% being British.

It was therefore crucial for Mr Elvey to establish good relationships with renters and much of the director’s early film-making was shaped more by distributors than production companies: he saw himself as the producer of “the cabbage” reliant on the wholesaler to deliver to the greengrocers – i.e. the cinema. Even in the case of Elvey’s passion project – some cabbage! – which he sold to Apex for £15,000, they enabled him to make a “director’s cut” that had more action (re-shoots after some sequences were lost), educational content (the moving plans of the battles), illustrated intertitles and those stirring shots of modern warships.

It's that man again. Courtesy of Lucie Dutton

Another lovely snippet was the schools essay competition of which four entries survive detailing the pupils’ responses to the films. General agreement was that we’d love to read their reviews!

Neil Parsons – American movie-maker Harold Shaw as an agent of British Influence 1916-1920

Harold Shaw was born in Kentucky but came to work in Britain where he perhaps surprisingly produced a string of films that supported our role in the world.  Shaw seemingly succeeded in making a pro-Boer film that kept the British onside, Winning a Continent (1916) and went on to wrote a pro-Empire, Anglo-Zulu epic, The Symbol of Sacrifice (1918). He eventually made his own film, The Rose of Rhodesia (1918) and from there an anti-Bolshevik romance about a character called Lenoff (geddit?), The Land of Mystery (1920) which was immensely popular, re-assuring in the turbulent times…

He appears to have grasped the counter-intuitive notions of influential propaganda: giving the benefit of some doubt to the opposition.

The Imperial Film Company Ltd presents...

WARTIME AND AFTERWARDS

Chris Grosvenor – ‘Wake Up!’: British Cinema, the Outbreak of War, and the Voluntary Recruiting Movement, 1914-1916

Before the huge hits of The Somme (1916) and The Battle of the Ancre (1917) which showed those at home exactly what life was life on the front line, there were other films which were filmed on training grounds and were aimed at encouraging volunteers before the introduction of conscription in 1916. Long before the War Office set up its own committee for war-related film production, the British film industry was already doing its bit with a host of “invasion” films such as Wake Up! Or a Dream of Tomorrow (1914).

Is it to our credit that our government didn’t “industrialise” this propaganda process from the outset? Chris Grosvenor’s research highlights how – mostly - united in thought Britain was at this time.

A story book produced to accompany the film, Wake Up!

Ellen Cheshire – The Lads of the Village: From Stage to screen to court

Now for one of the day’s most shocking revelations… The Lads of the Village was a hugely popular stage play that was made into a film in 1919 (you can watch it on the BFI Player here). It was written by Clifford Harris and a man known simply as Valentine with music from James Tate. Ellen blew Valentine’s cover; his real name was Archibald Peachy, who also used the writer’s nom-de-plume of Mark Cross and who just happened to father Fany Craddock probably the UK’s first TV chef and a legend beyond her own lunch and dinner time.

Ellen is involved with Portsmouth’s Kings Theatre and as part of a research initiative, the Great War Theatre project, she discovered that it’s position in the busy naval port had meant it premiered a number of First World War propaganda plays including “Lads…” which the team re-staged in 2017.

The film turned out to be controversial, at least with the three original creators who sued Joe Peterman, the producer of both play and film, for using the story which he clearly felt, stripped of its 14 songs, was not their copyright.

Those Lads and that pig.

Christina Hink – Wonderful London in the 1920s

Harry B. Parkinson and Frank Miller’s 1924 travelogue series, Wonderful London provides a precious insight into London in the midst of change and, thankfully a BFI DVD is available of the twelve surviving films. Christina looked at the history and form of two of the films, London’s Sunday and London Old and New to show existing tensions in a city stuck between ancient and modern. It was ever thus with change the only guarantee as indeed is contrast whether between East and West, rich and poor or the future and the past.

East is East and West is Best...

Llewella Chapman – Government Policy on Filming at Hampton Court Palace, 1910-1930

As with precious architectural heritage, sometimes the powers that be just don’t understand what they’ve got until, regrettably, it’s gone…

Also, suspicious of the new-ish medium the Governments of the day were always cautious about allowing their precious property to be used as a backdrop for cheap shot entertainments. But gradually, as is our hallmark, they allowed more access, specifically to Hampton Court as Llewella’s research shows. In spite of films such as Hampton Court Palace (1926) – available on theBFI Player right now - the landowners were still not fully understanding the purpose of the films and their power in promoting their architectural wares.

Oh, the goings on in Hampton Court...

TOWARDS SOUND

John Izod – Arthur Dulay and John Grierson: fitting Drifters (1929)

Sarah Neely read Mr Izod’s words as he was sadly unable to make it and she did a grand job. The research has uncovered a fascinating instruction sheet for musicians to help them play along appropriately to John Grierson’s Drifters (1929).

The film was accompanied by an orchestra for its premier and thereafter was “fitted” both tonally and prescriptively with the themes and tunes on this instruction sheet. On the right were instructions for disc operators – the disc jockeys of their day – and on the left was a list of music and playing styles for live accompaniment. I especially liked some of the instructions: “stormy agitated” and “flowering involvement” sound grand!

Not surprisingly The Clarion reviewed the film in 1930 as “a poetry of sound”.

Arthur Dulay's sinister agitations...

Geoff Brown – Did Britain Really Invent Film Sound?

Geoff Brown gave yet another of his witty talks and his humour so perfectly suited the subject matter of hurt Great British pride as those American’s took our baby and made it run. Returning to Mr Christie’s discussion of “first-ness”, Geoff explained how domestic efforts were made to claim the breakthrough of “sound” as well as vision. No doubt there were sound commercial reasons for this and the need to remain competitive, but it does feel a little… unreserved.

It was war, ladies and gents, a war against the impending invasion of high-tech American sound especially as viewed by those who viewed talkies as Hollywood’s revenge for the British quota system introduced in 1927. Bringing the day full circle, it was around this time when the “legend” of William Friese-Greene began to develop along with other British pioneers such as Eadweard Muybridge. As Geoff intimates thought, it doesn’t matter who came first just why exactly they were suddenly supposed to have been.

White heat of Brit-talkie invention

Nyasha Sibanda – Sound Arrives at the Tudor 1927-1931

Back to data and the rewards of a good spreadsheet well defined, maintained and interpreted! Nyasha has applied tremendous method to the ledgers of Leicester’s Tudor Cinema by data capturing tickets sold, revenue receipts, films screened over the silent era and into sound.

His findings were most enlightening showing the most popular films from 1927-29 with Ben-Hur just pipping Chaplin’s The Circus to top spot with 9,573 tickets sold. Maurice Elvey features twice with the most excellent Hindle Wakes (1928) and Mademoiselle from Armentieres (1927). The latter wasn’t the only feature I’d not heard of with something called Johnny Get Your Hair Cut staring Jackie Coogan in at number six!

British films do better in the silent era and, proving Geoff’s points about British defensiveness, after sound, Hollywood becomes ever more dominant. That said analysis of the audience feedback forms showed that they did prefer British voices but then you didn’t get many US films without an English accent…

Leicester's Top Ten: how many have you seen?

Laraine Porter – Elstree melodies and ‘the charm of the English voice’: musical moments in early British talkies

Laraine picked up on that “English voice” – seriously good programming! – and discussed the emergence of home-grown musicals which at one point made up a third of the total output from British studios featuring stars such as Jan Kiepura, one of Laraine’s favourites. Chasing what they saw as popular tastes and much to the distaste of the snobbish Close Up magazine (honestly, did they like anything?!) there was even a pop song in Blackmail with Miss Up to Date as sung by the grabby artist himself, Cyril Ritchard. The curse of the “theme song” struck the shadowlands of so many shandy silent/talkies with Sonny Boy the dubious template before full-scale musicals such as Elstree Calling (1930) all trying to emulate American successes. Despite the emergency of home grown talents such as Jessie Mathews and, later Gracie Fields and George Formby the British musical failed to compete with Americana much beyond the end of the decade. Maybe it was just not our style?

Cyd sings

By now the sun had heated our Kings College lecture room to levels that would parch a camel. It was time to re-locate and the Edgar Wallace pub awaited eager drinkers…

This was another highly successful event from the KC and BSFF team and today’s talks the most impressive of the three I’ve attended. More next year please Dr Napper!

Social mobility… East Is East (1916) with John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Florence Turner

“If you talked less you’d give your mustache a chance to grow!”

You can take the girl out of Stepney but, as this film posits, you can’t take Stepney out of the girl. Faced with unexpected rags to riches and forced to live a life in which you’re taught “not to drop your h’s but to drop your friends…” East-end girl Victoria struggles to come to terms with West-end boys and their weak ways. Then as now, it seems, the toffs don’t know it all….

There was something in the air in early Twentieth Century Europe a movement craving greater equality that pre-existed and was encouraged by the large-scale national enterprise of the Great War.  This film takes a waif who can’t even aspire to be a Covent Garden flower girl and shows what happens when she is asked to fit in to what she regards as an “artificial” world. It is fascinating that the post-Edwardians were looking for a “genuine” culture and so very interesting that an American actress can play this part so well.

4 ft 10" of pure talent!

Lucie Dutton in her excellently-informative introduction gave us some background on the talented Miss Turner who took to acting inspired by Sir Henry Irving who saw the actor in her and told her to “keep at it!” That she certainly did and by 1916 when the film was made (it was released in 1917) the New Yorker had established herself as a major star in Britain with her own production company, run with Larry Trimble, which encouraged native talent such as a cine-curious theatre director called Maurice Elvey…

Another former theatrical they employed was the multi-talented Henry Edwards who directs this film as well as co-stars. Edwards creates many dynamic moments and makes the most of the relatively fixed playing area to such an extent that you almost forget the vintage and the country of origin: this is yet another impressive British film from the teens.

Henry Edwards

Handsome Henry plays one Bert Grummett a cockney jack the lad who is cock of the walk in poor Poplar. He has a pal, name of Victoria Vickers (Florence Turner), who lives with her aunt (Edith Evans) and Uncle somewhere not far from the breadline.

Summer comes and this rag-tag modern family head to Kent to get work on a zero hour’s verbal contract picking hops. They push the family “Ford” – a broken down old pram – out East and pitch their meagre tent.  Cinematographer Tom White captures some lovely pastoral moments especially when we see the crew joining what appear to be your actual hop pickers: a vision of The Garden of England long vanished, smiling faces blinking at the cameras in the heat haze of summer ’16 – the year of the Somme.

Now, as luck would have it, a rich and long-lost American Uncle has just died and left all of their money to their last surviving relative… one Victoria Vickers of Stepney. The lawyers are instructed to search and enrich but the Vickers mob are out in Kent and no one has any forwarding address. If Victoria isn’t found soon the money will have to go to charity and so it would were it not for the fact that one of the solicitors decides to take his holiday in Kent where, photographing local colour, he encounters VV.

At first Victoria and co just can’t believe it but once they are whisked back to London they find out the full details. Happy days, game over… not a bit of it!

Money will only serve to come between Victoria and those she loves, the conditions of the will mean she has to learn to be a “laydey” or else those charities will get their money. She’s sent to live with well-meaning but insular Mrs. Carrington (Ruth Mackay) and her useless wastrel of a son who is busily gambling away their family fortune.

Hop pickers in Kent

Aunt and Uncle are paid off and shipped off to the New World whilst Bert backs out believing this all to be in Victoria’s best interests. Vicky writes him letters that Mrs C throws away believing that she needs to be protected from her past: there is no recognition of the validity of her previous existence (the unworthy poor).

She sends Bert £2,500 encouraging him to start up a business and to live his dream of a to-the-door, fast-fried fish and chip shop. Bert duly entrepreneurs and with a year has his own branded bicycles for home delivery, replaced a year later by vans – Harry Ramsden where you watching?

The East End of London in the Great War (Getty Images)

Bert visits Vic but his flashy suit and manners that mark him as “trade” won’t pass as middle class, at least Mrs C doesn’t think so. Bert goes off to get himself a proper tailor and a teacher to improve his manners whilst Victoria is sucked further into the loveless world of polite society. Mrs C’s son is now hopelessly in debt and he views Victoria as his payment protection insurance…  Will she become a victim of his financial miss-selling or will her old instincts make her bet on Bert, the genuine Grummett?

               

East is East is a thoroughly-entertaining film and very British in its refusal to take itself too seriously. Laugh out loud moments aside it carries a sincere message and we must always strive to be true to ourselves even when the best we can hope for is to hope for the best.

"Remarkable Exteriors and Exceptional Photography"

John Sweeney provided accompaniment with his usual grace and finesse. He strikes the keys so unerringly well you would find it hard to distinguish his music from a pre-prepared score and yet his “duet” with the film’s sentiments is improvised on the spot, seamlessly summoning themes from his vast mental back catalogue at the press of a key.

Cyrus Gabrysch provided similarly safe-handed service for the three films on tonight’s under-card – the Bioscope is always such great value! These were a 1921 serial featuring the Woman in Grey (Arline Pretty and, she is), episode 7, At the Mercy of Flames (she is) followed by an inventive cartoon from the legendary Max Fleisher, part of his Out of the Inkwell series.

Pretty in Peril!

Last up was a 1926 short comedy, Dodging Trouble featuring Neal Burns and Edna Marion. The two play a married couple trying to avoid being served a subpoena as they head off on holiday, they are pursued all of the way by Eddie Baker who is thoroughly-miss-matched against Buddy the Dog who is consequently now my favourite silent film hound!

The Woman in Grey serial is available complete on budget DVD from Amazon.com so, if you really need to see if she survives the flames you can! Various Neal Burns shorts are to be found on YouTube plus Max Fleisher’s rotoscoped clown.

You can also watch a blurry video transfer of East is East on the Internet Archive but tonight we were treated to the actual film and the re-assuring whir of the projector made the experience all the more… genuine.

Details of up-coming Bioscope screenings are available on their site including a weekender on 21/22 June – which I will sadly miss as I’m climbing Snowdon for Parkinson’s UK!