Quirks, strangeness and charm… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Seven

And so, to penultimate day and, as the minstrel sang, “I’m still standing…” or rather sitting, a lot, in the dark, watching. Today there was charm Sonia Delaunay’s innovative shaping and it was approaching midnight when Mae Murray moved to a convent, taught children, had her ankles runover by truck and, oh my, was inspired to take up her bee-stung lips and walk! If there was such a thing as a typical day at Le Giornate, this wouldn’t have been it, at all.

 

So, let’s start at the very ending as that’s a very good place to start as dozens of cinemutophiles (TM P. Hutchinson of Worthing) staggered out of the Verdi trying to process what we’d just seen with Circe, the Enchantress (1924) which progressed from a saucy mythical entree, Circe/Cecilie Brunner (Murray) turning men into pigs (I know, right?), through nightclub low-jinks with her gaggle of male admirers, to the aforementioned redemption sequence. It was undoubtedly great fun and considering it was a lost film for so long, a miracle of mythical proportions that it exists at all especially as it shows us so much of why Mae was a true star.

 

While she is more than capable of inhabiting the role of an enchantress ancient and modern, we also get a chance to see her dance as well as pout and she can dance having, as Artemis Willis puts it in the catalogue notes, pioneered the path from Ziegfeld Girl to Hollywood star. There’s one number influenced by modern ballet – say Denishawn or even Isadora Duncan – then a dance with a jazz ensemble. This is American cabaret and there’s even a moment when Cecilie jumps into a water feature in the club and her men follow her. There’s one gay character, not even coded and there’s William Haines too who always has a twinkle!

 

Interesting that this festival has feature both Billy and his friend Eleanor Boardman who won the "New Faces of 1922" contest and travelled to Hollywood together. He’s good as Cecilie’s most passionately lost paramour surrounded by harder hearts in the group all still unable to resist their lady’s allure. It’s only when surgeon Peter Van Martyn (James Kirkwood, Sr.) arrives on the scene that things change as he’s got the moral strength to stand apart and Cecilie finds that very attractive.

 

The film has some ten minutes missing but the sense remains even if the final turn-around is a jolt. It matters not as Murray the Enchantress is in full bloom. Willis quotes Florence Lawrence writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, “The story…gives the piquant star a vivid and chameleon-like characterization. She is alternately the spoiled and petted darling of a circle of rich adorers, and the wistful woman, beseeching attention from the one worthwhile man in the whole of her acquaintance.”

 

Accompaniment was from a spirited trio comprising Günter Buchwald (piano and violin), Aaron van Oudenallen (sax and woodwind) plus Frank Bockius who I believe is a percussionist and without whom no GCM 42 day is complete!

 

Peter C. Leska, Mady Christians and Diana Karenne

Eine Frau Von Format (1928) proved to be the most delightful of any of the Ruritanian stream, with a superb performance from Mady Christians which caused my hardened heart to melt with a pitch perfect performance of wit and intelligence, timing and a smile that charms as it disarms. Christians enjoyed a long and successful career including as Priscilla Queen of the Deserters in The Runaway Princess (1929) and many more. She’s got such presence and whilst obviously not a stunner in the manner of Russian diva, Diana Karenne, she draws the eye with expressiveness and energy.

 

She plays Dschilly Zileh Bey the ambassador from Türkisien who has been sent to negotiate the acquisition of an island from Princess Petra of Silistria (Karenne, who it was good to see again after the rediscoveries of her work screened at this year’s Cinema Ritrovato Bologna). In this she must compete with the ambassador from neighbouring Illyria, Count Géza von Tököly (Peter C. Leska) and we’re into classic romcom territory from the get-go. The Count tries to woo Princess Petra and moves her reception forward a day so that he can be alone with the Princess, but Dschilly responds by reversing that and leaving him to think on his feet as guests arrive in their dozens to rain on his private parade. This is only the beginning of a light-hearted competition that demonstrates its operatic origins as it makes light of the diplomatic love triangle, if that’s what it is?

 

In their catalogue essay, Amy Sargeant and Jay Weissberg quote a positive review from La Dépêche (02.08.1930) “It’s a lively, graceful work, with all the colour of Viennese operetta and in a thoroughly modern vein. It takes place in the midst of enchanting locales, on a marvellous island that bears a strong resemblance to those of Lake Maggiore, and the perfume of the Borromean Islands wafts ceaselessly in the luminous air.”

 

Meg Morley provided her own musical travelogue with accompaniment that was as airily in touch with the film’s tone as well as location in time and space. There were some sumptuous recurring motifs and the playing generated the same good humour as Mady on screen, in terms of all-round engagement a festival highlight!

Hope Hampton

Now, you’ve either got or you haven’t got style and for sure Sonia Delaunay’s stands out a mile. Here we had a collection of short films showing her design as well as her influence in the case of Ballet Mécanique (1924), that classic of cubist/Dada cinema from Fernand Léger, a member of the Delaunay circle, along with Dudley Murphy. Then there was striking haute couture in two-colour Kodachrome which highlighted model and actress Hope Hampton’s shock of red hair as much as the designs from Vionnett, Poiret et al. Hampton was in The Gold Diggers (1923), James Cruze’s Hollywood (1923), The Truth About Women (1924) and fair few others into the talkies.

 

Others shorts from Germaine Dulac and Marcel Duchamp were shown along with L’ÉLÉLÉGANCE (1926) directed by Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay and The Delaunay Keller-Dorian Colour Test (1928). All of which made my chance meeting with some friends in Venice and our visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection make artistic sense of the last eight days. Cinema was part of the artistic innovation of the early part of the last century and there was a boldness and dynamism which still strikes as “new” and challenging in 2023.

 

Masterclass student Andrea Goretti provided artful accompaniment! Welcome on board.

 

Now for the quickfire round:

 

The slapstick special today included Modern Love (1929) which gave a rare chance to hear Charley Chase talk, the film was an early sound film with a mix of sound and music with title cards before we get to dialogue. Charley was in his usual mess as his dress designing wife (Kathryn Crawford) has had to keep their relationship secret and then gets an offer of work in Paris with a new customer, François Renault played by the super Jean Hersholt. It’s a fine mess but you know our hero will win through and it’ll be a lot of fun in the process. It must be said that this hybrid format was not that popular at the time and the recording quality of the voices was not hi-fidelity, age or original process/both.

 

The Oath of the Sword (1914) a story of a Japanese family whose son goes to study in the USA and who pledges an oath with his beloved to return on his return. Time passes, as does he with flying colours but all this Americanisation is as nothing when he returns to find she has married a US airman… cue the sword and that oath…

 

Harlem Sketches (1935) directed by Leslie Bain was a slice of cinéma verité showing the black community of Harlem in New York City. The title cards talked of their “miserable existence” and there is much poverty in evidence as well as defiance and humour. The film was banned in some American states, including Ohio, whose censorship commission turned down the print: “Reason for Rejection: Showing Negroes of Harlem banded together in groups carrying banners displaying Communistic ideas. Advocates equal social rights for Negroes.”

 

That future the artists in Europe could see wasn’t coming anytime soon to certain communities, was it?

 

Mady makes her point.

Priscilla, Queen of the Deserters… The Runaway Princess (1929) with Phil Carli, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Streaming, Day Six

Marry! How does a princess marry? Someone she’s never seen, who’s picked for her? I wouldn’t marry a prince for anybody!

Even before the royal escapees became hot news, there were others who dreamt of live without the constrictions of “duty”. It’s not for everyone, clearly, especially given the huge social spotlight of these days and the lack of freedom of choice earlier sensibilities brought. Australian-born novelist, Countess Elizabeth Russell certainly felt the pressure of expectation, living a life of suffocating duty only enlivened by lengthy country walks with her many dogs and her writing of “The Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight” (1905) on which this film was based.  

This was an Anglo-German co-production between British Instructional Films and the German company Laender Film, with direction from Anthony Asquith for this English version and shotting split between Berlin and Hertfordshire Hollywood (Welwyn Studios). It’s an endearing fairy tale, entertaining without being that dramatically compelling or funny - not quite up there with Asquith’s Shooting Stars, Underground or A Cottage on Dartmoor – but a decent British film.

Mady and Paul Cavanagh

It does feature a winning performance from Austrian actress Mady Christians who’s Wilhelmina Marie Alexandra Victoria, Princess of Lothen-Kunitz, Grand Duchess of Gerstein… call her Princess Priscilla for short, is a bundle of innocence, energy and “Ruritanian” pluck! Natural charm combined with an ease of expression that covers the comedy and the drama with an earnestness that overcomes a rather predictable situation. She’s just turned 21 and decides to make a break for it when she is told she is to marry the Prince of Savonia, no doubt some old fuddy-duddy!

Accompanied only by her Professor (Fred Rains, father of Claude!), the two head off to London via Amsterdam for adventure and a normal life. Cycling on her estate Priscilla meets a Charming Man (Paul Cavanagh) who is immediately taken with this strange, pretty woman. He follows her as she makes her way on the train away from responsibility and towards the freedoms of London. She also has her first encounter with a group of forgers led by Norah Baring, who’s screen intensity instantly creates a new dynamic with knowing looks that could ignite celluloid with one glance from a hundred paces.

Norah Baring

The action picks up as Princess and the Prof change trains and the CM follows them along with a detective tasked with catching the forgers. The two only just make it into the baggage car and then exchange notes, with This Charming Man pretending to also be a detective, so that the two of them, Hand in Glove, can prevent the future Queen from being dead… (that’s enough Smith’s references, ed.).

The remainder of the film is a mixture of proto romcom and caper movie with some great shots of London especially when 'Cilla rides down Fleet Street up top on a double decker only to be kicked off with no ticket just yards from Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and Devereux Arms public houses… The steam train crossing the old bridge with St Paul’s in the background is an iconic shot of the vestiges of steam punked London.

Claude H. Beerbohm and Paul Cavanagh

Goaded by the Handsome Man, ‘Cilla determines to get a job to show she’s independence and, after failing as a roller-skating mannequin/model, she gets a job as a delivery worker using the fake fiver given to her by Norah’s Forger, before her handsome fella sabotages her delivery of millinery to, guess who, the forgers. Head forger decides that she’s the perfect person to deliver their manufactured money as she’s so dopey and innocent. Besides… she just keeps turning up!

 

Now then, will Priscilla get caught up with the criminals and will she ever find out who the handsome man is? I suspect you can have a good guess but it’s fun finding out even if the forgery storyline is a little undercooked and you feel like an opportunity has been missed about the whole Runaway Princess situation.

Up top with St Paul's in the background

That said, Mady Christians is excellent as the innocent but resilient royal and there’s some great support from Norah and Paul Cavanagh, not to mention Claude H. Beerbohm as the detective. Generally, Asquith favours the humour and this is a satisfying romantic comedy, with almost zero dramatic tension, that would soon be christened screwball. All is never as it seems, but we know that!

I wonder if there was anything deeper about the royal desire for escape. Turns out you can’t really escape your responsibilities or your destiny as the sone of a man who was Prime Minister for eight years, perhaps Anthony knew this better than most.

All tomorrow's parties... Slums of Berlin (Die Verrufenen) (1925), Edition Filmmuseum DVD

“Poverty and misery, vice and alcohol turn people into what is called the fifth estate. People who cannot escape their fate. A world of its own which we attack rather than fix.”

Weimar cinema is fascinating on so many levels, stylistically and technically but most obviously because – historically - we know what’s coming next. For too long one could lazily assume that there was a failure to address the concerns that would later fuel totalitarianism and yet so many films are concerned with the dangers of a society that was no longer working for the many. In this era of cracked actors trying to reclaim un-historical discourse and myths of nationhood, it’s chilling to view the commitments of those who we know now went on to lose the fight if not the argument.

Gerhard Lamprecht was the son of a prison padre and a humanist committed to moving society forward, a forward-thinking agenda that it’s all too easy to shake your head at: the rise of the most socially-destructive regimes was never inevitable and that is precisely why the recent history is so widely recognised in Germany and why Britain needs to take note.

Slums of Berlin (Die Verrufenen) is the story of an honourable man who through perjuring himself to save the reputation of his fiancé, falls from grace into the realms of the underclass where most cannot afford good manners and easy moral choices. It shows a depth of concern beyond an alarming amount of modern thought and whilst virtue is rewarded for some, for others there is no “levelling up”.

Bernhard Goetzke

Bernhard Goetzke – formerly Death in Fritz Lang’s Destiny – plays Robert Kramer the engineer who takes the fall for his high society girl, Gerda (Hildegard Imhof). We see him on his release from prison, granite features set in painful acceptance of all he has lost and even as he rejects the friendship of fellow con, Gustav (Arthur Bergen) so do his parents reject him in shame, his father refusing him entry as there is no place in his house for and ex-convict. Worse still, the woman he sacrificed everything for has moved on and married a wealthy man.

 

Lacking anyone to stand by him Robert’s only refuge is the doss house and banishment to the slums. Lamprecht depicts the life of the “fifth estate” with inspiration drawn from Heinriche Zille, a German illustrator, caricaturist, lithographer and photographer who was the first to portray the desperate social environment of the Berlin Mietskasernen, the crowded tenements filled with the poor, and he did so in cartoons that we both horrific and humorous. The film has some of this spirit, dropping the viewer into packed single rooms full of mothers and children or penniless men whilst also providing energy and wit chiefly from Gustav who seems to smile at triumph and disaster just the same and finds humour with the children on the street.

 

Arthur Bergen and Aud Egede-Nissen

Talking of which there’s a nifty scene with a young girl talking to a young boy who is ostentatiously smoking a cigarette. Unimpressed she says, “you’re good at taking a drag but have you ever been really drunk?” They grow up quick in the slums and we laugh but we sigh.

 

Goetzke’s intensity dominates the film and he carries the weight of his character’s desperation so convincingly it’s quite a shock to see his features transformed by a smile in one of the flashbacks. He wants to work and rebuild his life but finds nothing and friendless, he climbs onto a bridge to throw himself to death only to be pulled back by a local “working girl”, Emma played by Aud Egede-Nissen, who will go on to provide much of the light to Goetzke’s shade with a distinctly Clara-esque energy.

 

Emma takes him back to her tiny apartment where he meets Gustav again as the three share a basic meal. Emma is earning enough to keep Robert as well but he is determined to work even if it’s only sewing, using the skills learned in jail to make cloth bags using a Singer sewing machine liberated by Gustav during a raid on the local fortune teller’s house… there’s so much vibrant detail.

 

Gerda's husband ridicules the weakness of the poor...

The film has a series of pointed juxtapositions one as Robert is taken by Emma to the dive-bar dance, where the record table spins him round, round, round… until he’s back in a fancy ball with Gerda. In another telling scene, cutting to and from Robert and Emma’s humble meal, Gerda’s pompous husband scoffs at their dining table at the story of a man who had killed himself rather than face starvation, blaming victim for poor choices as… If someone really wants to work, he can always find something. Fine dining and ignorance, the “undeserving” poor and their lack of strategic thinking.

Robert meets a photographer called Rottmann (Eduard Rothauser) on the stairwell of their tenement and, after saying he was an engineer, the older man enlists his help in the business of taking shots of Berliners at play. At one theatre he encounters Gerda and her husband and, she makes her way to his apartment intent on getting him to accept the money to go to America – a new start for him and the end of any “embarrassment” he may cause those who knew him. He refuses and pushes the money back just as Emma returns and – sure of her man – the latter kicks Gerda out.

Bernard Goetzke and Aud Egede-Nissen

Robert has not lost his dignity and, with Emma’s help, he can move forward but good fortune is in short supply in the slums and if it wasn’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all. Robert eventually gets work on a production line in a factory run by Regines Bruder (Christian Bummerstaedt) and his kind, elegantly pretty, sister Regine (Mady Christians). There may be a chance of recovery for the engineer but fate is set by the harsh realities of social indifference and a class system based on self-perpetuated misery. To this extent Lamprecht uses Robert’s journey as a moral challenge for the audience; how are we to feel relief if this educated and decent man is “saved” when all those he leaves behind are doomed to remain. As the children play in the street near the end of the film, we know how fatuous their joy will be but in the context of the time and story, it didn’t need to be.

I watched the Edition Filmmuseum two-disc DVD which comes with Die Unehelichen/Children of no Importance (1926) which carried forward his concerns. Accompaniment for both is provided by the expert hands of Donald Sosin who enhances the emotional depth with some lovely lines and a firm grip on the emotional narrative. The set is available direct from their website.

The director is quoted in the booklet essay as wanting to use film as a social corrective but one critic at least, the educational reformer Siegfried Bernfeld, accused him of creating “a moving entertainment… (that) exhorts tears without obligation…” yet surely it is for the audience to decide how to progress their response to his work? That challenge is there now as much as it was in 1925.

Kids, yesterday... have you ever been really drunk?

Heinriche Zille