Coming soon. The Cat and the Canary (1927), Eureka, Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

 

“…  not the first of its kind, but it is one of the few hybrids that succeeds in spoofing old-dark-house clichés – secret passageways gaping open, monstrous hands extending slowly towards unwitting victims – while remaining genuinely spooky.”

Imogen Sara Smith from her booklet essay, Laughter in the Shadows

The Cat and the Canary represents a peak of silent film technique and is as good as almost any silent film made in Twenties’ Hollywood, a defining, genre-defining classic. It is not so much a horror classic but a major step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles, showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.

From previous viewing of Kevin Brownlow’s Photoplay 35mm at the Kennington Bioscope, I knew that the film had long languished in poor quality until the 1960s when he found a good print and restored it from 35mm nitrate. Eureka’s new restoration is a 4k transfer from a recent digital restoration that looks as good as the day it was first edited together, especially in Blu-ray quality: never darker, sharper or more ominous…

The Cat and the Canary it parodies what had yet to be termed as “horror”, which hadn’t really started to dominate film, although it was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. Whilst it’s one of Universal’s big three foundational shockers, along with Hunchback and Phantom, it’s also a continuation of the German style, expressionist as well as existentially oppressive in the manner of Caligari, Student of Prague, Golem and Leni’s own Waxworks. It meets a lot of Lotte Eisner’s Expressionist criteria with unsettling frames and deep shadows alive with menace.

Do not mess with Laura La Plante's hair!!

Kevin Brownlow interviewed the camera man, Gilbert Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get those acute angles and he also explained that extra lights were also needed to create the right dynamics between dark and darker. Leni used a gong to drill his player’s movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the characters… and so it was to prove.

It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to, but the collaborator of Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European filmmakers, knows what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace. 

Here's Mammy! Martha Mattox 

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed, pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles looks like our leading man, but there's a nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation. 

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope - more Ernie Wise - but he’s funny alright.

Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch and Creighton Hale

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film not to mention costumes which is pretty much all she remembered when later interviewed by Kevin Brownlow. All the same, I’m sure she’s one of his favourites!

Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and therefore becomes another Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

The film looks fabulous on this 1080p HD presentation from a 4K digital restoration of the original negatives supplied by MoMA.|There's also a fascinating new score from Robert Israel -presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, it says here - which has been compiled, synchronised and edited by Gillian B. Anderson, based on the music cue sheets compiled and issued for the original 1927 release. 

Ultimately, it’s hard to disagree with Kevin Brownlow when he said, again at the Kennington Bioscope, that The Cat and the Canary is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the epic Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House, and way beyond, through Bob Hope’s version in 1939 and onto an entire backlot of scary mansions spoofed so well in Scooby Doo.

If it hadn’t been for those pesky German kids, Leni’d never have gotten away with it…

Extra frightening features:

Limited Edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Graham Humphreys [First print run of 2000 copies]

Two brand new audio commentaries: Stephen Jones and Kim Newman plus  Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby

Mysteries Mean Dark Corners – brand new video essay by David Cairns & Fiona Watson

Pamela Hutchinson interview – excellent new discussion with writer and film critic Pamela Hutchinson who, as you would expect, thoroughly contextualizes the film, the director and the cast.

Phuong Le interview – another newly commissioned interview with film critic Phuong Le who explains the differences between the film and the play and looks at Leni's aims in making a "non-European, American film

A Very Eccentric Man & Yeah, a Cat! – extracts from John Willard’s original play 

Lucky Strike – Paul Leni gives a full-throated endorsement to the product that got him through filming The Cat and the Canary

A collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Richard Combs, Craig Ian Mann, and Imogen Sara Smith

Whilst Eureka were kind enough to send me a review copy I’ve already pre-ordered the fill set with all the above limited-edition trimmings. There’s still time for you to do the same, the Blu-ray is released on 22^nd April in the UK and you can order it direct from Eureka using this link.

Feline spooky… The Cat and the Canary (1927), Kennington Bioscope with Jeff Rapsis

This film is not so much a horror classic but a major step forward in spooky-comedy, paving the way not just for Bob Hope’s talkie remake but a whole sub-genre of scarily-funny movies. Paul Leni’s film looks great and takes many visual tropes from the German style and injects laughs into the resultant combination of eerie unease. From the opening titles, showing the title revealed by a horned hand wiping away the dust, it makes its intentions known and it really does achieve that balance between the unexpected, the unnerving and the uncannily-timed.

This being the Bioscope, we were treated to a watch of Kevin Brownlow’s own 35mm, one that resulted from his own restoration for Photoplay. We also got an introduction full of the insider jokes and insights from the man who – nearly – met the all, capturing silent stars on tape from the fifties to the eighties and preserving the oral history of the birth of film.

Guest pianist Jeff Rapsis had flown over from Boston in the morning and was full of praise for the Bioscope – and it’s (thankfully) ongoing contribution to keeping alive the art of improvised accompaniment for which a live audience is just essential. “I have no sheet music, I have nothing prepared I just go with the film and the audience…”

Courageous Creighton Hale

The film had long languished in poor quality but in the 1960s KB found a good print and restored it from 35mm nitrate it parodies the horror film, which hadn’t really started to dominate, although it was popular on stage, where this story began John Willard’s 1923 stage play. KB interviewed the camera man, Gilbert Warrenton, who told him that they had to dig into the floor to get the right angles. Extra lights were also needed to create the right dynamics between dark and shard.

Leni used a gong to drill his play’s movements and claimed that the shadows were as important to the film as the characters… and so it was to prove. Kevin also got to talk with the film’s striking star, Laura la Plante, was too shy to be interviewed and by that time had forgotten every detail apart from the costumes. Ultimately, he feels that The C&C is a commercial film, superbly well-made and one that is critically under-recognised, certainly it had a major influence on the Universal horrors of the thirties, especially James Whale’s Cold Dark House.

Martha Mattox feels the chills

It starts with a dark and stormy night, as it simply had to, but the director of Waxworks and collaborator with Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European film-makers, knew what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle this crippled canary: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune all, as set out in his will, to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Gilbert Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of dark surprise, bad humour and menace.

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly or, indeed, pleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will. Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

Laura La Plante

The guests, all soon to be suspects, all save the murdered… arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide; eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious. There’s Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles has more regular features but nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation.

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor) both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades. Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope but he’s funny alright.

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and had some of the sharpest haircuts in all of silent film.

Gertrude Astor and Flora Finch are shocked!

Anna is revealed as the sole beneficiary and becomes the Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… personally I was hoping it might be Creighton Hale. The mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another.

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

Jeff Rapsis brought a confident narrative-driven dynamism to his accompaniment, different from UK players or just a man with his own style? The top players go world-wide and so this is music without boundaries and here he was perhaps more influenced by the film’s origins as much as he was last year when playing for Salt for Svanetia (1930).

He gave it his all and came good on his stated aim of recreating the tone and collective response to this wonderfully funny and slightly scary film!

Michelle Facey and Meg Morley - two cool cats!

There were further feline treats in the first half tonight with lots of Felix the Cat films celebrating the mad-cat adventurer’s centenary. We saw Felix in Hollywood – even Mr Brownlow couldn’t spot all the characters… and snatched of a documentary on the cat’s cool creator.

Meg Morley accompanied and then played accompaniment to the popular hit, Felix Keeps on Walking, for the Bioscope’s resident chanteuse, Michelle Facey, to sing. Michelle sells these songs so well and I think we have the beginnings of a regular spot here… Pamela Hutchinson famously described the Bioscope as London’s Silent Speakeasy and will molls like Michelle and Meg, we only need some feathers and more-illicit hooch and we’re there!! It brings the music to life, a human voice singing clearly in the new, old-fashioned way.

Brava!!

Felix learns the Black Bottom from Ann Pennington

Our guides through the life of Felix, Glenn Mitchell and Dave Wyatt

Murray Mae but Rudolph will... The Delicious Little Devil (1919)

Long believed lost, this film was rediscovered in the early 1990’s and is a precious example of early Rudolph Valentino as well as the bee-stung lips of Mae Murray. This was Murray’s twentieth film and she certainly has star billing out-pouting Pickford (as you’d expect) and throwing herself around like a ditzy dervish.

Mae in full flow

Murray had a few years on Pickford and her performance background had been dance rather than straight drama. She was part of Vernon Castle’s troop on Broadway, became a star in the Ziegfeld Follies and then made her first film in 1916 at the grand old age of 30… Movement aside – and there’s no denying the sheer zest! – Murray had great timing - she wasn’t quite the actress Mary was but then who was?

Here she’s ranges from delicious to quite demented in a vehicle high on laughs and improbable, knowing, narrative. She’s not really a devil but she pretends to be…

Edward Jobson and Rudolph Valentino

Mae plays Mary a youngster with a good heart and an irrepressible joie de vivre that makes it hard for her to hold down regular employment. She gets a good job at a hotel but can’t resist play-dancing with one of the guests shawls… her co-workers are impressed and listen wide-eyed to her story of a childhood of carefree spinning in what looks suspiciously like a medieval European town… but her boss is not and he fires her on the spot.

Back home she lives with her mother and Uncle Barney McGuire (Richard Cummings) with her father Patrick (Harry Rattenbury) seemingly too lazy to be bothered even living with either child or wife?

Ma,Uncle Barney and Mary

Paddy turns up when he’s told there’s a new wage-earner in the house only to be disappointed as she has quickly re-joined the ranks of the unemployed… What is she to do?

Meanwhile, over at the out of town Peach Tree Inn, manager Larry McKean (William V. Mong) is trying to think of the big idea that will save the joint from closing. Talking with aged owner Mr Musk (Burt Woodruff) and his wife (Martha Mattox) he comes up with the idea of a new jazzier approach led by a woman with a dark past (and a bright future…). He’s looking to bring a touch of sophisticated sleaze to the suburbs.

"A good future for a girl with a past."

Mary sees this intriguing ad in the local paper (Press advertising to the rescue again!) and finds a backstory for her non-existent “past” in the strange tale of the Duke de Sauterne who has been causing a scandal in Europe romancing a famous dancer, Gloria du Moine, who has left him and gone into hiding.

Mary turns up at the auditions to find Larry rapidly offending a long line of dancers thereby narrowing the odds to an elegant tall woman (Gertrude Astor) applying too much foundation and Mary who stands below the lady grabbing as much of the cast-off dust as she can.

Larry falls for it... never sell to a salesman eh?

Mary clumsily slips and looks to have lost her chance until her wayward syncopation gets the band playing some righteous rag-time. Mary jitters around and Larry is impressed… all the more so when that phoney history is revealed.

Mary’s opening night is a hoot as she descends down the Peach Trees long staircase to perform the Peacock Walk; her own creation. For all her moves, Murray plays this for laughs, especially as she almost gets stuck after bending over backwards just a little too far.

The Peacock Walk almost ends with a cramped crab...

Amongst the audience is young Jimmy Calhoun (fresh-faced, mascara-encrusted Rudolph Valentino!) who is instantly impressed with Mary’s flexibilities. He is the son of construction tycoon, Michael Calhoun (Edward Jobson) a self-made man expecting perhaps too much of his son and heir.

Jimmy romances Mary and all looks good until Dad tries to show her up at a dinner party – he thinks she’ll drink too much and make a fool of herself but Mary doesn’t drink – not even to maintain her exotic cover story – and she doesn’t rise to the bait, much to her dark-eyed boyfriend’s pleasure.

What an absolute cad!

But the evening takes a turn when the Duke de Sauterne (Bertram Grassby) arrives to reclaim his girl. Turns out the Duke is no gentleman at all and had to leave Paris after his many misdemeanors were in the process of catching him up.

Mary and Jimmy eat carefully...

Spotting the fake du Moine he doesn’t let on, clearly fancying his chances of leveraging his knowledge to disreputable effect…


Will Mary get revealed as a good girl with a bad future and will gentleman Jimmy manage to win her in the face of the Duke’s aggressive persistence… even if he does will his father let him marry so far below his station? There’s a lengthy car chase, some fisticuffs and a chance reunion that combine to settle things in a frantic closing section.

Crickey, Jimmie's a bit macho ain't he?!

Robert Z. Leonard directs Harvey F. Thew’s scenario with pizazz and it’s an energetic hour of top-notch tom foolery. Murray maybe didn’t have the striking USPs of the top tier but she acts very well and, excessive face-pulling aside, makes for a very likeable little devil.

Mr Valentino performs longing looks to no doubt dazzling effect in spite of the heavy make-up of the time. It’s Murray’s film but clearly we’re going to see a lot more of him!

I watched the Milestone DVD (the film is on a double disc with Swanson Valentino film Beyond the Rocks) which features a sprightly performance of a 1922 cue sheet by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra! Milestone and Mount Alto always do right by these precious little devils.

The way out Wests... The Cat and the Canary (1927)

“It was a cold, dark, rainy night…” but you may have seen it here first or rather, in my case, with Bob Hope in the 1939 remake. As a child I loved that film with its secret passageways and comedy-horror - all that was missing was a cowardly hippy and a talking dog. But Paul Leni’s silent version is all-together darker and the humour works primarily as counter-balancing relief to the tension as the gathered ensemble are driven hysterical by shadowy threats in the dreamy dark spaces of an old gothic pile.

House, bottles, canary and... cats

It’s expressionism by numbers but the director of Waxworks and collaborator with Lubitsch, May, Dupont and a host of European film-makers, knew what he was doing… The opening section shows mad old Cyrus West’s spires cross fade into milk bottles which imprison him, wheelchair bound, as viscous black cats encircle: his greedy relatives waiting to get their share of his fortune… A clawed hand moves across and reveals the contents of his will… to be unveiled twenty years after his death.

The scene is thus economically set and we know we’re in for a knowingly-hair-rising treat. The story came from John Willard’s 1923 stage play and, whether or not the conventions of creepy who-dunnits were already well set, this is surely one of the first films to perfect the genre: Bob Hope may have thought he knew but this mob were in on the joke earlier.

The action moves to the interior of the West mansion and Leni treats us to the works, wonderfully lit settings with Gilbert Warrenton’s camera swooping round corners with alarming grace then careering down blustery corridors as drapes and curtains fly wildly in the wind. This is a place full of bad humour and menace.

A torchlight cuts through the darkness and a figure finds and opens the safe placing a new document inside… we were right, something’s afoot.

Martha Mattox and Tully Marshall

There’s a knock on the old door and West’s faithfully grim retainer, Mammy Pleasant (Martha Mattox) – not very motherly and… yep, a bit unpleasant – opens the door which is almost held back by sheer weight of cobwebs. Enter Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) West’s lawyer, here on the dot, two decades after his death to reveal the contents of the will.

Opening the safe he finds a moth and knows someone has forewarned themselves of the contents… but no one else has been in the house only Mammy and her un-living companion who stares down with intent from his portrait.

Arthur Edmund Carewe and Forrest Stanley

There are superb shots of Mammy and Crosby, sharp, awkward, angles, back-lit and deep in thought: they’re gothic constructs as much as the house itself. Then the guests arrive and Leni gives us portraits of people with something to hide – eyes darting, greed nervously bubbling just under the surface and desperation enough to make anyone of them suspicious.

There’s  Harry Blythe (Arthur Edmund Carewe) who’s already dark eyes take on additional edginess and who almost snarls as his estranged cousin Charles "Charlie" Wilder (Forrest Stanley) arrives. Charles has more regular features but nervousness around the eyes and a mouth that suggests weakness and desperation.

Gertrude Astor and Flora Finch

Their more senior cousin Susan Sillsby (Flora Finch) arrives with her niece Cecily Young (Gertrude Astor)  both clinging on to the hope that there will be a windfall to compensate for the many obvious disappointments that have etched themselves on their faces: Susan old with bitterness and Cecily just on the cusp as youth fades.

Cue the comedy. Paul Jones (Creighton Hale) arrives in a miss-firing motor car, breaking to avoid crossing the path of a black cat and then running into the house convinced his engine’s back-fire was an assassin’s bullet. He’s no Bob Hope but he’s funny alright.

Creighton Hale sees things

The entourage is completed by the arrival of Annabelle West (Laura La Plante) – youngest of the group and seemingly as sane as sixpence. La Plante takes top billing on the film and was a major star as the silent era neared its fateful collision with the systems of sound.

The camera takes in every consideration as the family sit around the table waiting for Crosby to reveal the “winner”… almost every face a torture of hope and, bitter entitlement with two exceptions: Paul makes a joke of things and Annabelle just seems happy to go lucky…

Laura La Plante

As she is revealed as the sole beneficiary, the others crowd around secretly seething to various degrees and none more so than Aunt Susan whose head is shown warped by the news.

From this point on Annabelle becomes the Canary and the trick is to work out who the Cat(s) might be with pretty much everyone looking as guilty as can be… Now the mysterious deaths begin to happen, sliding panels start to reveal clawed hands and an escaped lunatic is revealed to be on the loose. What’s more, Annabelle must be proven sane in order to qualify for her prize or else her inheritance will go to another… perhaps the one who broke into the safe and knew of the deal before hand?

Who’ll it be? And will anyone from this strange family emerge as the unlikely hero to protect the true heir? There’s the usual miss-direction and emotional disturbance of the humour but it’s still a fun watch: golden rule of all whodunits… make ‘em all look guilty and then gradually provide them with alibis/good character.

Annabelle menaced by the Cat's hand

Leni directs with style from start to finish and you can understand why the film was so successful. For me, Creighton Hale is perhaps a little too much but he does have his moments. Tully Marshal and Martha Mattox are respectively masterfully grouchy and zealously sinister whilst you can see why La Plant was such a success with her strong, expressive features.

It’s also worth mentioning the inter-titles from Walter Anthony which add much humorous variety… there’s no “Zoiks Scoob!” but a superbly animated “GHOSTS!!”.

I watched the 2004 David Shepard restoration which uses James Bradford's original score as adapted and performed by Eric Beheim and The Cyrus West Players as well as new music composed by Franklin Stover and performed by the Mont Alto Orchestra - all suitably spooky… Tales of the Expected perhaps but done with style. It's available from Amazon as is the Kino Brownlow Photoplay Restoration... which just has to be worth investigation!