The Brit! Girl... Carnival (1931), Projecting the Archive, BFI

 

There are some screenings you just have to turn up for, this was the first public projection of a 35mm restoration print completed using two nitrate elements in 1997, a genuine photochemical restoration long before the new digital techniques, and the craft in evidence added to the feeling of being really treated. The BFI National Archive’s Curator, Jo Botting, was on hand to provide us with details of the work undertaken as well as the film’s star, Britain’s Clara Bow, the sensational Dorothy ‘Chili’ Bouchier who certainly had ‘It!’ – so much so she was named after the popular song, I Love My Chili Bom Bom whilst working as a sales girl at Harrods. I had only previously seen her as a bit part player in Shooting Stars (1927) in which she was cast after being spotted by director Anthony Asquith modelling at Harrods, and then in Maurice Elvey’s silent Palais de danse (1928).

 

It’s the age-old story of an older man, Silvio Steno (Canadian Matheson Lang, 42 and about a foot taller than our Chili) and his attractive (much) younger wife Simonetta (Chili B) whose attractiveness to every scoundrel in Venice and beyond will inevitably give him pause for jealous thoughts. To add that extra spice, the two are actors and in one of those parallels that seems initially too convenient, are playing Othello – Shakespeare’s Patron Saint of Green Eyes – and his poor wife Desdemona. They are introduced as he is rather convincingly throttling her only for a fellow cast member, Nella (Kay Hammond) to burst the bubble as she casually lights a cigarette immediately defusing our expectations whilst also storing them up for later on.

 

Carnival was originally filmed in 1921 as a silent directed by Harley Knoles and also starring Matheson Lang – it was based on his play after all - as Silvio/Othello along with Hilda Bayley as Simonetta and Ivor Norvello as her paramour Count Andrea Scipione of which more later. According to the BFI notes this film featured more of the play and its allusions to the unfolding action as well as more location shooting. It’s still extant so I’d love to see how it compares. Chili had been very impressed with the film and she had dreamed of playing the role and so, as Jo Botting pointed out in her excellently informed introduction, she wrote to Wilcox when the film production was announced to her him to cast her for the part.

Chili Bouchier and Matheson Lang

I can see that Novello would make for a better Scipione and Chili was disappointed in the one provided her by German actor Joseph Schildkraut, bought over from Hollywood. According to Jo Botting, quoting Chili, he would arrive at the studio every day, “short, sallow and balding and would re-appear on set two hours later, resplendent in his military uniform, heightened by shoe lifts, corseted and sporting a hair piece.”

 

Here Chili is every inch a star even at the age of just 21 during filming, especially in the stunning costumes of Scottish designer Doris Zinkeisen who also provided the stage designs too in this very effective recreation of Venice which mixes stock footage with stunning interiors, shadowy on set canals and watery alleys as our characters move about in hopeful secrecy. What happens on the rio di San Salvador stays on the rio di San Salvador unless you forget to draw the curtains on your gondola windows…

 

Doris had, according to one press piece quoted by Jo “… the knack of making actors and actresses look perfect in both face and form… the elixir of a film star’s life.” She and her sister Anna were both talented artists and whilst the latter became a sculptor, Doris pursued a career as a theatrical costume and set designer and also worked in film, providing Dorothy Gish, with her risqué gowns for Nell Gwyn (1926) directed, of course, by Mr Herbert Wilcox. There’s an interesting piece here about the two sisters and their extraordinary lives.

Every word demonostrably true... 

Here she had the perfect model in Bouchier and she slicked back her Bow-esque unruly curls and dressed her in tight-fitting silver culottes topped off with silver elaborate head gear, with feathers on top. The bodice gave the impression that the actress was wearing nothing underneath and, if the Brits had ever had a code, this would definitely be “pre…”. Schildkraut was also similarly well-adorned in a dark bodysuit accentuating his feline grace… perhaps that was the issue for Chili, she’d spent too much time with male dancers at ballet school, all with their own hair and height! We certainly see plenty of her dance skills at the carnival as Alfred Rode and His Royal Tzigane Band play but will those feet become guilty in ways later described by George Michael?

 

Earlier on as the troupe rehearse Othello, and Silvio bemoans the lack of passion thinking his own character flawed in conception as surely a little infidelity should not prevent such a marriage as Othello and Desdemona’s from being pulled apart. It seems to reinforce the foreshadowing of the earlier strangulation scene especially as Simonetta does indeed attract many men and has been flirting with Scipione. Still, she seems fully committed to her Silvio and their young son and promises him a special costume for the impending Carnival.

 

Earlier she had been compromised by Scipione in a clinch on a gondola trip which was unfortunately spotted – before she pushes him away, by her good for nothing brother Lelio (Brian Buchel) who naturally uses this knowledge to blackmail her so that he can take Nella to the ball. This raises Silvio’s suspicions and playing the part of the jealous Othello, perhaps this is only natural. His sister Italia (Lilian Braithwaite) also has no time for Simonetta and has been playing Iago for some time it seems, pouring poison into her brother’s ear at every opportunity.

 

Shine on Dorothy Chili Bouchier!

Silvio is called away to see a dying friend though and Simonetta responds with childish petulance – she cannot bear to miss her Carnival and to wear her costume. Her husband has to travel overnight and so she decides to go to the Carnival anyway, to enjoy the dance and the freedom with Scipione even though she must suspect the younger man will see this as his big chance for conquest.

 

Unfortunately for everyone, Silvio has missed the last train and, as he returns to the apartment he soon stops enjoying the spectacular-coloured fireworks and wonders where his wife has got to… Are our players doomed to re-enact Othello off stage as well as on? Or will there be a deeper lesson to be learned? I hope you all get the chance to see for yourself as this film deserves more exposure.

 

The film has some issues with tone and pacing and being an early British talkie, sometimes moves slowly but all of this is mitigated by the brilliance of Zinkeisen’s design as well as Bouchier’s genuine star quality. Carnival was intended to propel her to home-made stardom but it didn’t work in the end, especially as other, less interesting choices, were forced on her. She spent more time on theatre work as the thirties progressed and was still working into the 1980s before being “rediscovered” as one of the last surviving stars in Britain, especially after the publication of her memoirs Shooting Star: The Last of the Silent Film Stars was published – copies still available on eBay and Abe Books at reasonable prices!

 

She died just shy of her 90^th birthday in 1999 almost exactly 25 years ago as Jo pointed out. None of those present at this screening will forget Chili any time soon, her star still twinkles - indeed, in the BFI's NFT 1 last night, it shone!

That’s ‘stow business… Hollywood E17 with Barry Bliss and Paul McGann

We were following in the footsteps of Ronald Coleman, Clive Brook and, yes, Maurice Elvey, as we ordered our drinks in the Dukes Head on Wood Street. It was here that cast and crew would head for a deserved libation after their working days in the sunlit film studios of Walthamstow and it was here that extras would be sort on short notice: that drunken-looking sailor in The Merchant of Venice (1916) might well have been...

We were in Wood Street, London E17 in the Borough of Waltham Forest for the unveiling of two plaques commemorating the lost film studios of Precision and Broadwest where, between 1910 and 1924, Walthamstow was the home of British silent cinema with over 400 films made by these companies and others.

Paul McGann, Barry Bliss and Pamela Hutchinson

Pamela Hutchinson, in her introduction, said that the area was chosen for its proximity to London as well as its peace and quiet – Whipps Cross being relatively rural a century ago as we were to see later…

The Gobbett brothers built Precision Studios in 1910, three years before the first Hollywood studio… and whilst only a single small image survives – as far as is known – the building had a studio with a glass roof on top and workshops below: it must have been some sight. Here were filmed dramas such as a version of East Lyne (1913) starring Blanche Forsythe and Fred Paul, and comedy shorts like Anarchy in England (1909?), directed by TJ Gobbett and reconstructing a raid on a Tottenham rubber factory.

Precision Studios as they were...

Elsewhere, Ethyle Batley, whose films included the provocatively titled Peggy Gets Rid of the Baby (1912), also made films in E17 studios as did the aforementioned Mr Elvey (at British and Colonial). The most watched film in British history, The Battle of the Somme (1916) was also completed here: an important place.

This has been a labour of love for filmmaker Barry Bliss who become fascinated with Walthamstow’s film heritage after moving there thirty years ago. He said that the plaques were not just a celebration of the past but the area’s continuing creative vibrancy. In addition to celebrating all four of the local studios (Precision Film Studio, Cunard Films/Broadwest Films, British and Colonial Kinematograph Company, I.B. Davidson), there will be projects involving a range of cultural initiatives in the areas.

Actor Paul McGann (a man of many, excellent, parts - I particularly like his current play Gabriel - on next week in Greenwich - as well as a super Three Sisters he did at the SouthwarkPlayhouse in 2014...) paid tribute to the spirit of the film makers and the readiness with which they adopted the new technologies – a spirit of adventure we still need, as he said, “this is your history folks!” and our future.

The next plaque was for the Cunard studios opened in 1914 and which became Broadwest Studios, run by Richard West. Anna Neagle, Victor McLaglen and others worked here and many important films were produced.

Broadwest Studios

As a last treat, Bryony Dixon showed some of the E17 films from the BFI archive, starting with a comedy, A Bad Day for Levinsky (1909/10?) shot by TJ Gobbett around the area with present-day locals recognising Wood Street station as well as Whipps Cross. The Mystery of a London Flat (1915) was next, a Broadwest film directed by Walter West, starring Vera Cornish and George Foley – this tense drama is available now on the BFI Player.

Lastly, we saw some of the remaining reels of another Walter West film, The Merchant of Venice (1916) starring the extraordinary Matheson Lang, a stage actor who clearly grasped the need to underplay for the camera. This film is available on the BFI Player and excerpts are also featured in the Play On compilation.

Matheson Lang broods in The Merchant

Local MP Stella Creasy was also on hand to commend the project – this felt like a real community effort end-to-end and one I will continue to watch with interest.

Walking back up Wood Street we saw that in the time it took to enjoy an E17 Hollywood burger in the Dukes Head, the first of a series of Wood Street Walls murals celebrating local film makers was already up and rather splendid it is too!

Walter West of Broadwest Studios

It’s a rich history and one that is still re-emerging… Few of the films made in E17 survive but the search continues… both here and at the extremes of the World-wide distribution chains: you never know.

For more details on the Hollywood E17 Project, visit the website and watch the story grow.

All the world’s a screen… Play On! Shakespeare in Silent Film on DVD/Blu-ray

“We’re not creating Elizabethan music, we’re not creating early twentieth century music… we’re doing something for us to enjoy these incredible films right now…“ Stephen Warbeck, composer

When I wrote about the debut of the Play On! Back in April, the focus was very much on the exhilarating live performance from the Globe Theatre musicians as much as the subject matter. The films whisked by and just as you were spotting the plays you’d move onto the next one: impressions of Shakespeare all featuring the buzz of silent invention as the medium of cinema was rapid-prototyped over its first three decades.

Now the BFI have released the piece on home cinema – DVD and Blu-ray – there’s more time to study the source material and, in addition to discrete titles identifying each clip, there’s a handsome booklet that lists each film used and their players: it is fascinating stuff and so very compelling for silent buffs like me who just have to know, you know.

Pina Fabbri and V Cocchi in The Winters Tale (1913)

In an introduction to the film from the BFI’s Bryony Dixon and Professor Judith Buchanan explain the origins of Shakespeare in silence and its rapid development as film-makers began to present the stories in ways only cinema could allow: special effects, lavish costumers and stencil colouring, grand sets, casts of thousands and locations including Venice for The Merchant.

From early films, limited to less than a few minutes and which showed just key moments from the plays, productions became more ambitious as the 1900s moved on and by the post-war era we have Asta Nielsen’s gender-bent Hamlet which not only attempts the entire narrative it also adds a twist or two.

Performance style developed also and from those first precious glimpses of Beerbohm-Tree's performing King John in Victorian theatrical style, through screen-skilled pantomime of the 1900s to a fascinating Shylock from Matheson Lang in 1916 to the naturalism of Nielsen (who, in fairness, played a huge part in these developments from 1910’s Afgrunden onwards) and the screen acting intensity of Emil Jannings whose Othello leers out of the screen with the force of his anger and betrayal.

Herr Jannings

Play On’s five acts are based on these developing trends and whilst they make a more cohesive statement in the context of the disc’s extras, they are also an opportunity for some wonderful music and it is the music which makes everything gel – no mean feat considering the changes in visual tempo across the twenty films.

In another visual extra, the Globe musicians are seen recording the works in the candle-lit Sam Wannamaker Theatre – the Globe’s covered playhouse – and it would have been interesting to see them play the whole pieces in that context. This band of multi-instrumentalists – and they are a band – run the gamut from pastoral to industrial with one section seeing them hitting metal with hammers as Mark Anthony appeals to the populace after Caesar’s assassination: Einstürzende Neubauten meets Warwickshire poetry in Rome.

Julius Caesar (1908)

This was a challenge in variable tonality but one the composers and musicians were more than prepared for.  As Bill Barclay, the Globe’s director of music says the score reflects “…the unique theatre music know-how that the Globe engenders in all its live energy and variety.” His composers, Jules Maxwell, Olly Fox, Alex Baranowski, Sophie Cotton and Stephen Warbeck all came experienced in the art of emotional engagement “in-the moment” as audiences normally hear the music only once – much like their silent counterparts – but also with an intuitive approach to telling richly-detailed stories with “sound and surprise”.

Sarah Homer and Jon Banks

All of which depends on the abilities of this very talented band of players to express and there’s so much experience in the dextrous hands of the band: Jon Banks plays accordion, santouri, harp and tuba, Sarah Homer plays flutes, piccolos, recorders, clarinet and bass clarinet, Harry Napier on cello, tenor horn and dilruba and Dario-Rossetti-Bonell on guitar, mandolin and oud. Stephen Bentley-Klein combines violin, trumpet and flugelhorn whilst Rob Millett plays vibraphone, percussion and cimbalom.

All are very adapt in the art of hammers on steel as even Sarah demonstrates in the aforementioned section: for a flautist she strike very hard! But they’re all jacks and masters of these instruments – a team: a band!

The band play on in  the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

I watched the DVD twice – once just to enjoy the sights and sounds and again to dig deeper into the source material. Sandwiched between a Prologue and an Epilogue are five acts…

Act I Artifice – deals with the camera-trickery that allowed a clear demarcation between the cinema and the stage. Here we see Puck (Gladys Hulette) take off and fly around the Globe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909) that looks joyful and intriguing – the full 12 minutes is included in the extras. Characters appear and disappear and poor Bottom (William V Ranous) gains the head of an ass in the blink of an eye.

Prospero releases the fairy sprite Ariel from a tree in a 1908 Tempest whilst in Julius Caesar, Calpurnia has disturbing dreams about the Ides of March. You get two ghosts for Hamlet’s father from 1908 and 1913 before Richard of York dreams his own demise in a 1911 UK version.

Gladys Hulette about to take off in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1909)

Act II Spectacle – there’s only so much room on a stage and on film the canvas quickly widened to include real locations and casts of thousands. A shadowed figure carries a scythe across a field filmed from a low camera-angle in a 1913 Italian version of A Winter’s Tale which was 43 minutes long. Another Italian production was Il Merchante di Venezia (1910) filmed not only in Venice but in sumptuous stencilled colour.

Il Merchante di Venezia (1910)

We’re back in Venice for a UK take in 1916 which features what looks like a superb portrayal of Shylock by Matheson Lang. But even earlier films had grandiose ideas with the 1908 Tempest having a brilliant sequence with actors on stage in the foreground with the shot of ship floating on an actual sea in the background.

But the films were getting bigger and more ambitious culminating in some huge set pieces: Caesar’s triumphant march through Rome, Cleopatra’s royal barge arriving centre-stage to carry her off in glory and a cast of thousands in the weary spread post-battle as the old king is carried wounded down a hill in Asta’s Hamlet (1920).

Set, sea and ship in The Tempest (1908)

Act II Dramatis Personae – focuses on the major players in the canon and no matter when the films were made, we recognise so many old faces.

Other rarer plays get “quoted” including Cardinal Wolsey (1912) – admittedly of disputed authorship – which sees a naughty Henry (Tefft Johnson) eyeing up the latest arrival at his court as she gets dressed in her boudoir – it’s Clara Kimball Young as Anne Boleyn: an early foretaste of Syd and Babs! There’s more star-spotting with a young Francesca Bertini playing a colourised Cordelia in Re Lear (1910) another included in full in the extras.

Tefft Johnson eyes up Clara Kimball Young in Cardinal Wolsey (1912)

Sometimes the clips are unfamiliar or fragmentary but the music holds firm and brings a cohesion and consistency of emotional engagement in spite of the sweep of centuries, style and content.

Act IV Performance – this section focuses on the actors and the development from stage to screen performance.

We start with those precious seconds of Herbert Beerbohn Tree as the dying King John – this is essentially a promo film for his 1899 tour of the play and features co-star Dora Senior as Prince Henry (hope she didn’t get typecast).

Johnston Forbes-Robertson in Hamlet (1913)

The expressions move on and as close ups develop we begin to see a more naturalistic tone as demonstrated by a trio of Hamlets. The 1908 Amleto version is crude in comparison with Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s reprisal of his signature role in 1913 – he was an impressive 60 years old at the time but still spritely.

But none are more sophisticated than Der Asta and her scene welcoming the hot new student, Horatio, is a hoot as she eyes the young man up and down with barely-contained glee. Emile Jannings comes close though in Othello (1922) – larger than life he’s a dangerous weapon whose main danger is when he’s miss-directed.

Matheson Lang's Shylock broods in The Merchant of Venice (1916)

Act V Famous Scenes – all ends on a high with a run through of some of the greatest hits; as crowd-pleasing now as they ever were.

Othello blows out his candles and nurses his raging grief as Richards murders those boys one more time. The Macbeths absorb the enormity of their murderous passions and Brutus proves to Julius that he didn’t always have his best interests at heart… Lose ends are tied up at pace in a celebration of Shakespeare’s undying ability to resolve a plot.

Florence Turner left and right as Viola/Cesario in Twelfth Night (1910)

But it’s not quite over as we’re shown glimpses of “Shakespeare’s Land” – Stratford-on-Avon in eternal calm in films from 1910 through to 1940 a reminder of the connection we still feel through place to the writer of these works whether it’s in his school, his house, The Swan or The Globe.

Stratford-on-Avon

In addition to those already mentioned the extras include the remastered seven films of Silent Shakespeare – along with King Lear (1909), The Winter’s Tale (1913) and Living Paintings – John Gielgud’s screen debut from 1924.

The DVD and Blu-Ray are released on 18^th July and are available from the BFI Shop – you can pre-order here or Amazon.

As commemorations of the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s leaving us goes, this one is appropriately memorable – it only makes you want to see more… so, play on!