Back home… Foolish Wives (1922), Timothy Brock, Il Cinema Ritrovato 36th Edition (Part One)

OK, remind me how this goes again, we leave the country that has held us prisoner since 2016, sorry 2020, and land in a place where almost everyone wears face masks and where films of all eras are screened every day from 9.00 till passed midnight. Some how we’re supposed to sleep, eat and socialise and to take care of the other routines as the Celsius hits high 30s… and, somehow, some of us are supposed to write stuff about it? The pleasure and the pain of this festival is precisely down to their being too much to do… so, turn off you mind, turn on your out of office, relax and float downstream on the Reno.

 

Herewith begins my highlights of the first few whirlwind days… let’s start with a biggie.

 

“Sooner or later those romantically inclined American wives who believe the superficial polish of Old Worldling and his fascinating ways are the essential qualifications of a husband will be disillusioned. They are sure to come to the realization that the man for the American Woman – is the American Man.”

 

Foolish Wives (1922) 

 

The first million-dollar movie acclaimed the publicity… and, spectacularly, Erich von Stroheim delivered on the ROI and Universal had another hit on its hands from the most complex man in most parts of Hollywood whose productions had the skill of DeMille, the scale of Griffith and a dark heart the latter could never think or feel. The son of a hatmaker, the Austrian was all too aware that clothes maketh the man and, for that matter, how far you need to go to get a hat to get ahead, his incredible drive seeing his not only create himself anew in the USA but also emerge from the field of European theatricals to be trusted with audacious projects such as this one, the controversial Blind Husbands (1919) – screening later this week here – and his masterwork, Greed (1924) of which I had the pleasure of seeing the four hour reconstruction screened at the BFI a few years back.

 

He arrived in 1909 and how he built his reputation in less than a decade is a story for another time but what you can see in this film is the extent of his control, basing it on a “novel” he didn’t write, and using huge reconstructions of Monte Carlo and a cast of thousands, he effectively played a version of his invented self. Instead of a bourgeois Viennese faking German aristocratic airs, he’s a phoney Russian military officer, Count Wladislaw Sergius Karamzin, accompanied by his two cousins, minor white Russian royals who have fled the unfortunate events in their home country.

The three live in a grand villa and frequent the Casino and all the best places so they can work their various whiles on unsuspecting rich tourists, the more American the better. This is a slick crime caper movie from before the days when slick crime capers set in this period were all the rage. But Erich is making sure we see the seedier side as well, he and his two “cousins” may smile and be villains too, charming con artists, but he has a debauched sexuality which is revealed early on when Cesare Ventucci, a local tradesman/counterfeiter visits with his young daughter Marietta (18-year old Malvina Polo) who is distastefully described as “half-witted”, clutching her dolly. Marietta attracts reptilian glances from the Count, who even licks his lips (not for the last time) and if we were under any misapprehensions about the true depths of this man’s character von Stroheim makes is crystal clear right from the off.

 

It might even be described as “Hitchcockian” in another country, another decade… but the director is making us complicit in his character’s agendas from the get-go, and, as we want redemption for all our lovable rogues, he’s giving us a tricky moral maze to navigate. Also, about that redemption… this film was made in Hollywood but this is not a “Hollywood director”. The Count is charming us all if we let him, suspending our own disbelief despite all of the evidence of all that is put before us, call him Boris by any other name, or Don. This is just fantasy or is it real life?

 

Von Stroheim puts so much detail in the films of his I’ve seen and this was to have been over six hours long and split in two screenings if he’d had his way. The length was as grandiose as the location, designed by Richard Day, his debut as art director, and who later won seven Oscars and worked on Greed, and this presented the studio with all the dull problems you’d expect and with his presented cut of 31 reels, soon reduced to 14 for its New York premiere and then another four, including the spectacular extended opening. This restoration produced by MoMA and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, contains no previously unseen footage, but does attempt to recreate the balance and sense of that first theatrical release as well as the sparkling clarity, via digital processing. Scenes have been returned to their original order, the 1928 re-release – the basis of most version to date - intertitles have been replaced with the original texts, adding tinting and recreating the spectacular colour effects of the climactic fire sequence.

 

Erich and Miss DuPont

The other characters are almost as nuanced as the Count, with Maude George as Her Highness Olga Petchnikoff and Mae Busch as Princess Vera Petchnikoff, ugly sisters on the inside but not without good humour and some compassion; professionals without the Count’s unhealthy singlemindedness and tastes. They distract rich American Andrew J. Hughes (Rudolph Christians who was replaced by Robert Edeson’s back view after dying during production) whilst the Count attempts to seduce his much younger wife, Helen (Miss DuPont aka Patricia Hannon from Kentucky) in front of his very eyes. They first meet on a sunlit hotel veranda and the start of the seduction is so very well signified with not a moment out of place as by almost imperceptible gesture, stolen glances, over newspaper and book, yes Foolish Wives by Erich von Stroheim (100% meta) the two begin to connect and to collude. She is, after all, a bored young wife who is reading about romantic fantasy and quickly interested in the attractions of foreign nobility.

 

The Count is sexually voracious – a predator in every way – and we soon learn that he has not only wooed their maid Maruschka (Dale Fuller, excellent here as in Erich’s Greed and The Wedding March, proper skilled actor) but made her pregnant. He keeps making her promises we know he won’t keep and maybe, at the time he means it, maybe… but people pleasing won’t save him for ever and she will have her revenge at some point.

 

It’s all but pointless to describe the narrative in too much detail as its detail on screen is so full of nuance that only by viewing can you fully appreciate (yes, that is a cop out) but to see it on the giant screen in the Piazza Maggiore, was special. Which brings me to Timothy Brock’s extraordinary score and the performance of L’Orcestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna which he conducted. His score was technically brilliant in terms of the Russia themes he borrowed and interwove to support the grandiosity on screen and also the delicious lines of his own written to map every strange and unusual nuance from von Stroheim’s screen. It felt complete with the film and completed that magical connection between the place, the audience and the film that makes live silent screenings so compelling and which makes this place, almost uniquely, a truly silent city.

 

Brava Mr Brock, Bologna and Erich’s cast and crew. Glad to have you all back where you belong*.

 

*Get Back screens at the Piazza on Thursday, natch.

 

 

Tailor-made woman… Souls for Sale (1923) with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope Silent Weekender Day 2

Would you like to sin. With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? 
Or would you prefer. To err. With her. On some other fur?

Rupert Hughes (as quoted by Mr K Brownlow, on the occasion of his 81^st birthday)

This was one of the first silent DVDs I bought partly because of its cameos of Hollywood stars but mainly because of a fascination with Eleanor Boardman who was later to star in The Crowd and to feature so elegantly in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series. Yes, there’s something about Eleanor and she’s also caught up in the William Haynes legend, with them both winning a contract through Goldwyn Pictures "New Faces of 1921" and maintaining a friendship through the years of their success and beyond: you got the feeling that they both rose above the daily Hollywood grind from the get go.

Souls for Sale is pretty light fare but it’s well made and does give a playful insight into the business of show people with Boardman’s character accidentally falling into the movies after escaping the clutches of her Bluebeard of a husband…

Charlie, Erich and Jean

The glimpses behind the scenes are, of course, precious, with Erich von Stroheim seen directing Greed, giving Jean Hersholt instructions, and Charlie Chaplin playing along by over-actively directing Mem/Eleanor in a “scene” from Woman of Paris. Elsewhere you can glimpse Hobart Bosworth, Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, Raymond Griffith, June Mathis, Marshall Neilan, Claire Windsor & many more! William Haines is also in there, his first credited appearance, as Pinky (!) the assistant director to Richard Dix’s square-jawed Frank Claymore.

Kevin Brownlow introduced on his birthday – no better treat for him than sharing in his passion – and explained that the film was partly a PR exercise to show that after numerous scandals, Hollywood wasn’t a bad place, full of upstanding professionals.

The film was based on a novel by a man named Rupert Hughes – Howard’s Uncle – who produced and adapted the screenplay and directed it. Mostly known as an historian and writer, Hughes couldn’t understand why a film company would buy an author’s work and then change so much. Here he made sure his work would see the screen as intended and the rigour of his research pays off in the detailed background to the film process.

Eleanor Boardman

Boardman was already famous as the Kodak Girl model and had already made three films but this was her first time as the main female star and so, just like her character she was in at the deep end. She’d tried to make a success on the stage in New York and made some head way but this, at 24, was her biggest break yet in the movies.

She doesn’t flunk it and, for me, gives a very relaxed and confident performance as Remember “Mem” Steddon (trips off the tongue doesn’t it…) who falls into film work as a refuge from her psychopathic husband (Lew Cody) and, against the wishes of her strictly-Christian parents – an echo of Boardman’s own folks’ disapproval. Boardman was perhaps a natural, very interesting to watch on camera and varied not only in her expression but her looks. She can handle comedy as well as drama and gives a taste of her dowdy desperation in The Crowd when watching her disastrous screen test: hands pulling her hair to a mess, tears running red down a face of real misery.

Less regal Garbo?!

She reminds me of a less regal Garbo, more down-to-earth and not quite the force or presence but still very watchable and adaptable, he relatively tall frame (over 5 feet 6… a giant in 1923!) making her both a graceful clothes horse as well as the equal of the men.

The film starts off with a shot of Mem in the back of a railway carriage with her husband Owen Scudder (Lew Cody), who is already starting to frighten her with his weird intensity – first example of Boardman’s ability to show unease. She’s desperate and jumps train at the first opportunity, landing in the middle of a desert.

Not a real sheik... Frank Mayo, Eleanor B and Richard Dix

She wanders for days and finally is saved by a Sheik on a camel… or rather handsome actor Tom Holby (Frank Mayo) who is on a location shoot for a film being made by director, Frank Claymore (Richard Dix). The crew rescue Mem with stars Leva Lamaire (Barbara La Marr… see what they did?) and Robina Teele (a feisty, Mae Busch) making sure the kid gets a break as well as medical attention. Snitz Edwards is also on hand as the lovelorn Komical Kale, who is unrequitedly in love with Leva who still mourns for her lost lover, Jim, who died as his plane was engulfed in flames.

Meanwhile Scudder with a history of marriage and murder behind him, manages to evade the cops at a railway station and then gets lucky and a little richer by taking advantage of Abigail Tweedy (Dale Fuller) who he convinces, cons and almost chokes before escaping. Of course, he’s not finished with Mem just yet…

After finding work in a hotel, the end of season forces Mem to try her hand in Hollywood and, we see her trying to sell her soul, to get into a picture, any picture… there’s a great casting session with even Eve Southern as Miss Velma Slade being told she’s only beautiful and there’s a pile of those in this town (the film was also intended to discourage people from the film business… ).

Billy Haines!

In addition to Chaplin and von Stroheim, Mem gets a tiny part in Fred Niblo’s The Famous Mrs. Fair and sees Marshall Neilan directing The Eternal Three with Raymond Griffith, Hobart Bosworth, and Claire Windsor. Star-spotting is half the fun although Kevin spoiled this by reading out the names of a table full at one point: including Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, William H. Crane, Elliott Dexter, June Mathis and ZaSu Pitts.

After a disastrous screen test with Frank Claymore and the crew, he realises that she’s made more for drama than comedy and gradually she starts to make her way with bigger and bigger parts. Eventually she gets her big chance in a circus film after Robina gets injured. By this stage Scudder is back on her trail and has decided that he’s in love with the now successful actor…

But, it’s a stormy night over the circus set and there’s not many places more dangerous than a film set based in a tent!

The ending is a tour de force as the storm hits and the flames rise higher – all tinted yellow in the Warner Archive/TCM restoration. One of the extras told Brownlow that the circus tent was soaked in paraffin for the fire… which Hughes didn’t let people know there were horses inside as he didn’t want them to clear a path for them; the result is chaotic but undeniably dangerous with a least one injury to a dancer.

As a defence of the film industry, that doesn’t show the health and safety standards in a good light but I guess the audience took it all as part of the drama.

Meg Morley accompanied in fine style matching the epic with the intimate in a film of many contrasting moods. There may have been a snatch of Liszt at one point but as ever Meg melds these themes into an overall improvisation that is unique to the moment and the setting.

Big productions!

The Old Swimmin’ Hole (1921) with Meg Morley

Talking of William Haines, the next film starred Charles Ray who bears more than a passing resemblance to the former. Based on a poem by James Whitcomb Riley, the film was essentially a series of backwoods episodes all told without intertitles. Directed by Joe De Grasse it was charming if a little ambient, but like all poetry, something you had to just relax and focus on. Meg Morley accompanied again and in a quite different manner; lots of light tones and energetically reiterated figures that played so well along with the “children” on screen.

I spotted Laura La Plante in Pickford curls as Charles’ love interest, so different from her close-cropped platinum bob of later years.

Another exceptional collection of films overall for the weekend and I was sorry to miss the final parts of the second day. All credit to the programmers, players, projectionists and volunteers who make the Bioscope happen and happen so very well!

Pure escapism… The Grim Game (1919), Barbican with Neil Brand

"The film has not been shown to the general public for 96 years. This was one of the most sought after items… the Holy Grail of Houdini history!"

When he died or slightly before to be absolutely precise… Harry Houdini promised his wife that he would send her a message from the afterlife. Many séances later we’re still waiting but what we have here is cinematic life after death for the extraordinary Harry.

It’s part of the magic of our times that celebrities excelling in one area will use emerging media to further promote themselves. In this case, escapologist, stunt performer and aviator Harry Houdini makes a movie in which he escapes, performs stunts, flies and acts… It is primary-source evidence of his remarkable abilities and reputedly the best of his five films.

Harry hangs on

We all somehow know Harry Houdini… he’s still part of our cultural currency with a personality larger and indeed longer than life. Here he is relentlessly energetic and inventive with the film built around his stunts: locked doors, hand-cuffs, chains and strait-jacket hanging over the side of a multi-storey building… all are overcome with muscular ease and yes he even acts as well!

We take so much trickery for granted nowadays but these set pieces are all the more impressive for being real and, like Doug Fairbanks, his force of will powers through the screen – a superhero with believable powers.

Tully Marshall. Harry Houdini and Augustus Phillips

In between the skill and the strength there’s a story, not much but good enough. It is well directed by Irvin Willat with strong support from the likes of Tully Marshall (love Mr Marshall’s work!) as the aptly-named Richard Raver a crocked lawyer with his eye set on cheating his aged client Dudley Cameron (Thomas Jefferson) out of his riches.

Mr Cameron lives in the isolated paranoid state of many Camerons: his property protected by locks and high walls – all the better for Harry to climb over… Harry is his estranged nephew Harvey Hanford who works as an investigative reporter at The Call newspaper, and who just so happens to be romantically intertwined with grumpy-uncle’s winsome ward Mary (Ann Forrest) who would dearly love to write for The Call and to marry Harvey.

Harry Houdini, Ann Forrest and Thomas Jefferson

Meanwhile, Raver is not the only wrong-‘un coveting the Cameron’s… Dudley’s doctor, Harvey Tyson (Arthur Hoyt) has somehow engineered himself the opportunity to marry Mary and the Money whilst The Call’s editor, Clifton Allison (Augustus Phillips) is desperate to secure financial backing so that his newspaper can stay afloat.

Harvey comes up with a plan that’ll save the paper: it’s a fool-proof one that couldn’t possibly go wrong… Using the boys’ favourite show girl, Ethel Delmead (Mae Busch) they’ll persuade Dudley to go off with her for a break in the country and then create the impression that his absence is down to foul play. Sensibly Harvey decides to frame himself for this by leaving clues around the supposed crime scene… The Call will lead the investigation and uncover the aged millionaire on his innocent holiday retreat with Ethel thereby clearing Harvey and really pissing off the old man even further…

Lobby card showing Harvey's first arrest

Now, whilst it’s always unwise for a journalist to push themselves to the centre of a story, there is one tiny flaw in this plan or rather three large flaws: Raver, Tyson and Allison. Unfortunately and I don’t know how Harvey missed this, it will present them with a murderous opportunity complete with ready-made patsy…

So it comes to pass that the plan goes awry and Harvey is duly arrested after Cameron’s body is found stuffed down his well. But whodunit and how will Harvey ever prove his innocence having so successfully  implicated himself? Luckily there ain’t a jail built that can hold him and, with the aid of steadfast Mary he may have a chance…

The action moves on thick and fast with escape and recapture followed by a spectacular sequence involving two planes who eventually crash together. Famously this was an actual accident that was worked into the story. Whilst the publicity had Harry as the man hanging from one of the planes it was actually stuntman Robert E. Kennedy who, along with both pilots emerged unscathed.

Full marks to cinematographer Frank M. Blount for the filming – IMAX screen not required when you have actual people wing-walking, free-air dangling and actually crashing! This was Harry’s world… where bravery was actual and not an optical effect: a 4,400 feet descent attached to a rope and hanging on for dear life. Extra-ordinary.

Robert E. Kennedy dangles and the planes collide

Neil Brand provided admirable accompaniment without a safety net and fully match-fit fresh from a six hour stint playing along to Les Miserables at Pordenone. Hopefully this will be screened at the Barbican next year?!

The Grim Game was long considered lost until a complete print emerged in the possession of Larry Weeks, a former juggler from Brooklyn…  thank to efforts from Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz of The Houdini Museum (quoted above) and then Rick Schmidlin who met the 95-year old in 2014 and subsequently restored the film for TCM.

Today’s screening was the first in Britain for a lifetime… maybe Harry finally got through the ether to send his message?