Feathers & Lulu… Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em (1926), BFI with Meg Morley

This blog has been driven by obsession and a subjective emotional “canon” from its earliest days (no, please don’t look!) and Louise Brooks has, of course been the main one, with a copy of Pandora’s Box on DVD bought from a second-hand shop in Park Street, Bristol in 2005 starting off the whole interest and viewing the same film on film at the Prince Charles Cinema in 2010, with John Sweeney accompanying, sealing the deal. I ws hooked and my long term aim since then has been to see all the extant Brooks films on screen with live accompaniment and I even waited over a decade after buying the DVD to see Diary of a Lost Girl in its natural environment. That’s dedication to delayed gratification or just simple stupidity. Who can tell?

This film is one of the few remaining unseen on-screen and viewing the BFI’s worn, warm and wonderful 16mm flickering on the NFT2 screen, with Meg Morley’s wonderful syncopations and sparkling improvisations following an introduction from Bryony Dixon has, to paraphrase the poet, helped make not only my day, my week, my month and even my year.

 

I have seen Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em on grey-market DVD from Grapevine a number of times but not for some time – 2012! - and here I could make out more of the nuance in both Louise Brooks’ and, especially Evelyn Brent’s performance and, whilst it’s only a slight comedy, it is an all too rare example of such standard fare featuring these two. As Bryony said, many may come to Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em for Brooksie but stay for Brent who here gets to play Big Sister with warmth and wit.

Evelyn is probably best known for the films she made with Joseph von Sternberg, the lost The Drag-Net (1928), The Last Command (1928) and, especially, Underworld (1927) in which she plays Feathers McCoy but, as with Brooks, even though she has some excellent classic films to her name, her career never really maintained its momentum and she ended up so often playing, as her biographers² say, “Hollywood’s Lady Crook” with increasingly smaller parts as the thirties and forties wore on. Still, as with Louise, we can at least celebrate some of her finest work and today’s film illustrates perfectly her ability as a star performer albeit in very standard fare.

 

Brooks' Black Bottom I believe?

Directed by Frank Tuttle primarily as a vehicle for Brent it also providing the then teenage Louise Brooks’ biggest role on what seemed like an unstoppable rise and, indeed, Bryony quoted a number of favourable reviews which took this a confirmation that the 19-year old actress, whose previous roles had been bit parts in The American Venus (1926) – sadly, mostly lost, although most of her shots survive – and The Street of Forgotten Men (1926) – recently restored by the SFSFF – could actually act as well as dance and look sublime.

 

By contrast Brent was 28, had started in films in the late 1910s, spent four years on stage and in film in Great Britain making Trapped by the Mormons (1922) which has to be seen to be believed. As per Barry Paris¹, Brooks’ biographer quoted in the BFI handout, Brooks and brent didn’t get on, with his subject feeling she was in a state of anxiety after all the years of promise, which meant she was too wound up for comedy. Brooks also felt too much time was spent on trying to light Evelyn properly to up the glam which, bless her, was just natural for our Lulu.

 

This is all a bit unkind for Brent has a fine profile and is well lit in a number of scenes breaking our hearts when she sees her dopey boyfriend Bill Billingsley (Lawrence Gray) kissing her younger sister Janie, played by Brooks just when she was due to surprise him with an engagement party having decided to accept his proposal. She was by this stage a very experienced actor and adds enough quality moments to this daft script to make the film one of my favourites of its type featuring two of the most interesting actors.

 

Evelyn Brent and Lawrence Gray

I can’t find anything of Brent’s opinion of Brooks but director Fred Tuttle was certainly impressed with his main star: “The more I knew (her) the more I admired her. I loved working with her and I loved her – but who didn’t?” Well, the lady from Cherryvale for one, the intellectual lawyers’ daughter who perhaps felt Brent, working class daughter of two teenagers from Syracuse, New York* was just unsophisticated? According to biographers Lynn Kerr and James King², Brent almost got replaced on this film by Esther Ralston only to be swiftly re-instated possibly after her then husband, movie moghul Bernie Fineman, “raised long-distance hell!”. Tuttle felt Brents’ “…qualities and appearance suited the part perfectly”, even compared with Esther.

 

 

Evelyn plays “Mame” Walsh a department store worker who shares a one-room apartment with her younger and wilder sister, after promising their mother on her deathbed that she would always look after her. This determination to fulfil this promise is needless to say stretched to the limit… as indeed is her loyalty to Bill who can barely get himself to work without her prodding. He’s a bit of a sap and doesn’t value Mame as much as he should – he doesn’t see how much she supports him providing the creativity for his otherwise mundane shop window displays.

 

 

Also in their block is the weaselly Lem Woodruff (Osgood Perkins) a man who "spent six months curing halitosis only to find he was unpopular anyway." He’s not to be trusted but, for some reason Janie lets him place bets for her at the bookies… which, when we learn that, improbably and for “good behaviour” she has been given the role of the shop’s ball committee treasurer. This can’t end well. Meanwhile as Bill’s displays lead to his promotion he proposes to Mame who, unsure they can afford marriage, goes on holiday leaving her little sister free to create chaos. Firstly she seduces Bill the Numpty and then, having gambled away the funds for the ball, is cheater out of winning it back by Lem.

 

Osgood Perkins, plays no-good Lem

Jannie is confronted about the missing money and implicates Mame who is given an ultimatum of returning the money before 11 or the police will be called. She lets Janie go to the ball – “I won't enjoy a single minute of the dance, worrying about you” - and sets off to settle the score with Lem the Louse and we get two wonderful set pieces, Brooks’ dancing The Black Bottom at the ball as she impresses the senior management team and the fight of her life with Mame taking on Lem for the money in a locked room with Bill racing to a rescue that, her pugilistic prowess renders irrelevant.

 

I like this display of forceful female agency and overall Mame always takes care of business looking after everything herself and hoping that Bill and Janie can ultimately catch up in terms of how much they rely on her.

 

Brooks is of course ablaze with youthful energy and your eyes are drawn in her every scene. She makes the most of a fairly narrow role and is absolutely believable as the irresponsible, self-serving teen who gets everyone into trouble. At this stage of their trajectories though Brent matches her with competence and experience. She doesn’t have the generational beauty of Brooks but she is eye-catching and, as ever, she was so much more than her later typecasting led folk – producers at least – to believe.

 

Louise provokes.

As Bryony said, neither woman had a manager directing their careers and both made bad choices. There are a thousand reasons why some actors do not sustain a career but with these two we can be sure that there could have been more, had they had the support and had they wanted it. Within months though Brent achieved stardom in Underworld and even Louise had to admit von Sternberg had brought out the best of her just as Pabst would do the same for her in time.

 

At least The Los Angeles Times was impressed with Brent, noting that this newest role “marks another step up the ladder of accomplishment for the young actress…” who, after two years at FBO, “is now a scintillating figure in her first Paramount feature…” one of  “the small group of freelance stars determined to play ‘better roles in the best films’”. Mr von Sternberg was nearly ready for her close up…

 

Meg Morley, just returned from the Bonn Silent Film Festival – you can catch her and Frank Bockius accompanying Shooting Stars (1928) on streaming until 20^th August – and her accompaniment was, as usual, pitch-perfect with a lovely swing matching Tuttle’s pacing, the movements and narrative. Meg’s music interlaced with the film in seamless ways catching the sweetness and sorrow but also Mame’s relentless optimism and strength. I also heard something of a Bechdel Bossa nova as the women’s relationship with each other was always of more consequence than that with the silly and faithless men!

 

A sold-out BFT2 had a great time and as one patron asked at the end, “when’s the Evelyn Brent season coming?” She won’t let us down!

 

Evelyn Brent

*Brent told many tales about her disrupted childhood, some of them true… she claimed later that they “led me to expect nothing of life except the fate of the moment.” Kansas City Star, 21^st June 1925

 

¹Barry Paris, Louise Brooks, Knopf (1989)

²Lynn Kerr with James King, Evelyn Brent, The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Lady Crook, McFarland & Company (2009)

Not missing out on Mary... Stella Maris (1918) with Meg Morley, Hippfest at Home ‘24

FOMOH… defined in Bo-ness as yon Fear of Missin’ Oot (On) Hippfest is high as I sit in South Cambridge 390 miles away from this year’s event but only inches away thanks to the streaming element of the festival, Hippfest at Home providing a sample pf the atmosphere and the cinematic treats being screened with accompanying piano-cam showing the players at work accompanying the silents and stirring the watcher’s hearts and minds.

Time flies and festivals fly even faster and there was, Alison Strauss the head of Clan Hippfest queuing up a vivacious introductory video from Pamela Hutchinson before introducing one of our finest accompanists, Meg Morley, who proceeded to enhance the extraordinary Stella Maris, one of Mary Pickford’s very best films and in which she gives Lon Chaney a run for his money playing two characters that look almost nothing alike.

She plastered her hair with Vaseline, smudged make up round her eyes to make them appear smaller, darkened her nostrils to make them wider and contorted her body to leave one shoulder higher and her back twisted... Pickford’s conviction and commitment to the roles is astonishing and , if you didn’t know she was both malnourished orphan Unity Blake and the titular bed-ridden privileged princess you’d struggle to recognise the most famous woman of the time…

The Mary we expect.

As Pam said, the dual roles gave Pickford a chance to draw on her impoverished, and abusive, past in deeper ways and with her great collaborator and a featured artist of this festival, Frances Marion scriptwriting, the two were able to create two unforgettable characters and to hint at real darkness. This is no Poor Little Rich Girl… Pickford was choosing her projects and her teams by this stage and this was a story she wanted to really challenge herself as well as the audience.

 

Based on the 1913 novel by William J. Locke, Stella Maris was directed by Marshall Neilan who Pickford compared the director favourably with DW Griffith, she always was a challenge, and felt that their shared Irish heritage helped him get the best out of her. As a result, this was the highest grossing film of 1918, on a level with say Barbie in tickets sold if not pink tinting and confused messaging. Stella Maris knows exactly what it wants to say about poverty and even the way wealthy women are treated by their so-called carers. By this stage Mary must have found much to identify with both her characters and that makes her choice of story all the more powerful and revealing.

 

Pickford is first seen as Miss Stella Maris a tragic young woman born into a wealthy family and yet in poor health: she cannot walk and is kept bedridden, well-protected from the horrors of outdoor life. She lives with her Aunt Julia Lady Eleanor Blount (Ida Waterman) and Uncle Sir Oliver Blount (Herbert Standing). Her favourite visitor is family friend, journalist John Risca (Conway Tearle) with whom she enjoys a fantasy existence of castles and kings. Interesting that she relies on a journalist to not tell her the truth…

The Mary we get.

But John has a darker home life with an alcoholic and abusive wife Louise (an excellent Marcia Manon, clearly having a whale of a time) whose numerous addictions are laid out for all to see: the wicked witch of this story. Listless Louise only ever gets passionate about punishment but is switched on enough to scour the local orphanage for home help in the form of the energetic but under-fed Unity Blake. Face and body posture twisted out of all proportion; Pickford must have suffered for this role in ways that only Chaney would appreciate.

 

Unity fails to meet her new mistresses exacting demands and is savagely beaten only being saved after neighbours here her screams. The police arrive and Louise is imprisoned for her assault. Wracked by guilt, John resolves to look after Unity and brings her into his house where she is looked after by his Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell). This upper-class generosity only extends so far though and they all resolve to keep Unity’s existence a secret from the enforced innocence of Stella. Here it is interesting that Stella’s innocence is prescribed by her relatives whilst Unity’s is seemingly just her natural state… in spite of all that she has been through.

Doctors gather to see Stella and decide that her legs can be restored through a new operation. The months pass and gradually she returns to full health. Inevitably she encounters Unity in a stunningly well realised double exposure: this is the tricky part - acting with yourself. By this stage it’s not Unity’s tale that threatens Stella’s fairy-tale world view but the world itself as she sees squads of soldiers marching past her huge garden and the questions keep on coming…

The film doesn't hold back from showing the desperation and brutality

Meanwhile, Louise is released for good behaviour and sets back to her recidivist ways aiming to ruin her estranged husband’s budding romance with the beautiful and unsullied Stella. Yet Unity has also developed feelings for her saviour… There’s a startling moment when she caresses John’s coat on a clothing stand, wrapping its sleeves around her and relishing the imagined intimacy, made almost real by the texture and the smell…

I won’t give away the ending but this is one you should see if you’re looking for Mary Pickford’s best films and if you haven’t already watched her tour de force. It's clearly one of her more political statements as well given the disparity between the two main characters and the disappointments of the rich woman discovering the nature of a world she has been deliberately isolated from. It's almost a fable of Pickford's own journey... she wants to be allowed to be both the woman she was and the successful star; with due respect to all on this spectrum of luck and life.

Meg Morley accompanied with a heart-breaking emotional narrative of her own which hit so many sweet and sour touch points in its intimate entanglement with the two Pickfords. Wonderful skill and sensitivity, I only wish I’d been there to hear it live. Next year no FOMOH!!

 

 

Dorothy and Clara go filming. Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley/The Wild Party (1929)

She was too tough for Hollywood most of her movies were hits which Hollywood loves but she didn’t modify her looks or ways or manner and as a woman directing movies she was looked on by most as a freak and as that kind of woman she was accepted less and less. 

George Cukor on Arzner’s eventual departure from Hollywood

 

Before we get to Clara we had an entertaining and revelatory panel discussion of her director Dorothy Arzner’s silent films hosted by Bryony Dixon, BFI National Archive curator and featuring season curator Caroline Cassin, provider of the quotation above, and film historian Pamela Hutchinson also of Silent London.

 

Arzner was the missing link of female directors in Hollywood, bridging the considerable gap between late period Lois Webber and the emergence of Ida Lupino in a hostile environment that treated the idea of female directors almost as a novelty. She was, however, a “novelty” who made hit pictures with all of her four silent films being successful followed by her run up until the Joan Crawford vehicle, The Bride Wore Red (1937). She made just two films after this, including Dance, Girl Dance (1940) – screening later this month – partly because, as others had found, especially after the passing of Irving Thalberg, there was no escaping the displeasure of noted homophobe Louis B Meyer.

 

How Arzner survived so long is illustrated not only by her run of success and sheer professionalism, but also by her privileged background. Unlike, say, Billy Haines, who paid the Hollywood price for being openly involved in what Joan Crawford called the strongest marriage in Hollywood with Jimmie Shields, Arzner did not have to care what others thought of her sexual preference – she had a forty-year relationship with dancer/choreographer Marion Morgan – firstly because she was of independent financial means and secondly because she was a force of nature determined to be who she wanted to be; and that was very profitable for the powers that be. In fairness to Billy though, he made a hugely successful second career, aided by customers like Joan, Marion Davies and Eleanor Boardman. Joan also stayed friends with Dorothy and got her work directing her in Pepsi commercials later on.

 

Arzner described her time filme editing as the happiest of her working life... 35 films in one year alone.

Caroline Cassin explained the director’s background and how she gave up on her study of medicine and joined the medical corps in World War One before being drawn towards the emerging art of the cinema as a force for social good. With all the confidence of her background she started working her way up the chain in movies from a disastrous start as a typist to script and film editing with her meticulous eye for detail and inventiveness gaining her big break cutting stock footage of bullfighting in Spain with Valentino miming around in California for Blood and Sand. Further editing work followed as her discipline was recognised and she was kept very busy by the likes of James Cruze and others.

 

Arzner was “very game” as Hutchinson says, learning how to play with the boys, working out how to be Hollywood’s female director of big films, being on set dressed as a cowboy during The Covered Wagon and as a sailor for Old Ironsides, she had to prove herself theatrically that she knew what she was doing. Even Frances Marion – script-writer supreme – struggled with directing but Arzner was happy to take the leadership role ignoring expectations of both sexes.

 

Cassin says she was in a very privileged position an allowance from her father that enabled her to take more risks and pick and choose in her career. Also, as Hutchinson points out, previous women filmmakers from Alice Guy-Blaché, Lois Webber, Nell Shipman… had been married and this helped them to both fit into the heterosexual film business model and to fund productions. After divorcing their men, all three struggled to maintain their position, not so for Dorothy.

 

The final step to directing followed an enormous bluff from Arzner when she announced to Walter Wanger, the head of Paramount's New York studio, that she would have to change from Paramount to Columbia in order to do the work she wanted. Duly spooked Wanger gave her the script for the now-lost Fashions for Women (1927) featuring Ester Ralston in her first starring role, which emerged a hit enabling a repeat, Ten Modern Commandments (1927), with Ralston and Neil Hamilton, and a further film, Manhattan Cocktail (1928), with Nancy Carrol and Richard Arlen of which the splendid surviving final minute was shown, an array of silhouetted dancers with dynamic montage beyond, Skyline Dance by Slavko Vorkapich.

 

Her third silent film, and the only one largely surviving, was Get Your Man (1927), with Clara Bow before she was given the chance to direct the studio’s first talkie again with Bow, The Wild Party (1929).  The roots of Clara’s success in The Wild Party can be seen in the relationship she established with Arzner during the making of Get Your Man (1927) and there are some similarities between the films notably the freedom of expression the director encouraged in her vibrant star and the trust is clear to see as in both silent and sound, Clara is at her best; an emoting powerhouse making the most even of some of the bum lines in The Wild Party. How good do you have to be to overcome lines that even Frederick March struggled with?

Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley

 

The BFI blurb described Get Your Man as a triumphant celebration of female sexuality and it’s hard to disagree watching this precious 35mm recovery/restoration: it’s not quite complete with two reels missing but the key moments are intact and others are covered by new intertitles to illustrate the humour and vibrancy of the story and Bow’s supernatural energies.

 

It begins in a modern fairy-tale France, with a young rich boy pledging to marry a young rich girl when they are both of age and soon we fast-forward 17 years to see the grown boy, Robert as played by Charles “Buddy” Rogers who had romanced Clara in the epic Wings, released in the summer of 1927. His father looks admiringly at the young woman, Simone de Villeneuve (Josephine Dunn) who clearly meets expectations of class and society:

 

She will make a fine wife, son. Imagine an innocent young girl… in an age when there aren’t any!

Buddy and Bow

 

Oh boy, clearly no one is expecting Clara Bow to arrive in this story. And arrive, she duly does as Nancy, a socialite on holiday in Paris at the same time that Robert has been sent there to collect the family pearls that father, Duc de Bellecontre (Josef Swickard) has sent to be re-strung for his son’s impending nuptials with Simone (Josephine Dunn) and tout Les de Villeneuves! The rom-com starts as Nancy nicks Robert’s taxi, then they meet again in the perfumery – cue astonished Clara close-up and winsome Buddy smile – before chance throws them together in the Wax Museum.

 

This sequence was choreographed by Marion Morgan, is a delight as Nancy is confused by life-like automatons and impressed with the tableaux vivant of Joan of Arc at the coronation of Charles VII; it’s all a bit more impressive than Madame Taussauds’ in Blackpool! Sadly, the whole sequence does not survive but there’s enough left in this charming build up to the inevitable spark with Robert. They meet as Robert crouches over, apparently part of a scene of murder before looking at Nancy and we see that “sweet Santa!” look from Bow – “it must be fate!”. He knows the museum off by heart and so offers to give her a guided tour, even though his memory is not quite as good as he promised.

 

This is where the film has the missing reels and the restoration used new title cards to fill the gap before part four resumes the moving pictures. Essentially it’s Nancy and fate versus the patriarchy as she has to battle not just Robert’s feeling of responsibility but the best laid plans of the Duc and Simone’s father, Marquis de Villeneuve (Harvey Clark); that’s three men vs one woman, they don’t stand a chance.

 

Clara waits to make a call

As Pamela said in the introduction, the film zips along at some pace and whilst it knows you know exactly where it’s going it contrives to entertain and surprise all the same! The ending is satisfactory in all the right ways and whilst a point has been made for the romantic audience they’ve also seen the might of Clara’s pluck blow away every obstacle and dusty preconception. Arzner enables her cast but especially Clara whose exuberance and expression does rather overshadow Buddy’s reliance on his good looks; he’s a charmer, but she’s a charmer who can act and rightly Dorothy gives her the screen time to show exactly what she can do.

Variety (12 Oct. 1927) described this picture as an ‘all-woman production’ with script from Hope Loring and Alice Brand Leahy, with choreographer Morgan and business manager Henrietta Cohn. It illustrates that there was a marketing benefit in Arzner’s position with the majority of filmgoers also “all-women”.

  

Meg Morley, “all-talented” herself, completed the experience with Clara-like energy and invention of her own with her modern-day jazz sensibilities playing catch and chase with the film’s rhythms and spirit. Meg enhances every film she accompanies and I was almost encouraged into an aisle-side Charleston by my daughter! This spirit lives on and Our Beth is keen to find out more…

 

 

The Wild Party (1929)

 

In Silent Women – Pioneers of Cinema, Francesca Stephens describes how Arzner brought a unique sensibility to the development of female characters – not just a subversion of the all-pervading male gaze but a presentation of believable and real personas. This could hardly be more apparent than in the opening scenes of The Wild Party as Clara Bow and her mates clown around in the dorm, relaxed and thoroughly modern.

 

Clara was a kinetic actress though and to enable her full range of expression Arzner devised the boom microphone, getting her sound man to lash the mic to a broom in order to allow both artists and camera to move more freely. So, rather than hover nervously within range of a static mic, Clara is free to run wild and gives a compelling and genuine performance and if she was scared or distracted by the microphone you wouldn’t know. Both Fredric March and the under-used Marceline Day join in the general over-enunciation of this period so cruelly lampooned in Singing in the rain.

 

Clara with Marceline Day as Bo-Peep

Clara plays Stella Ames, the loudest and most liked gal in her dorm of the all-girl Winston College. She is, as has been said elsewhere, very like Clara Bow or at least the Clara we think we know - bubbly, flirty, sassy and never someone to let a good party get in the way of study. One of the most under-rated actresses of the era, Bow was an emoting wonder able to hover between tears and smiles all in one moment of unconscious flow and here Arzner was able to harness this all in a sound context. And the voice? Pretty good as it goes no trace of Brooklyn to my Anglo-ears and clear diction that sounds more relaxed and natural than some of her fellow actors including Mr March.

 

In fairness Arzner clearly established a relaxed working environment and the antics in the dorm are naturalistic and familiar with banter and japes a-plenty. With the exception of her best pal, Helen Owens (Shirley O'Hara), chained to her desk studying hard and aiming high, the others are keen on a good time. There’s a Babs (Adrienne Dore) – there had to be! – and a gaggle of wise-crackin’, nail-paintin’, gum-chewin’ pals who generally treat schooling as that dreary period of obligation sandwiched between the hangover and the hair of the dog: Mazie (Alice Adair), Thelma (Kay Bryant), Gwen (Marguerite Cramer) and more.

 

Balanced against this is the strait-laced Faith Morgan (Marceline Day), something like the Head Girl who makes no secret of her disdain for the 24-hour party people. But then there’s the college creep, Eva Tutt (Joyce Compton) who’ll split on anyone if she thinks she’ll benefit. Given the girl’s lifestyles, Eva will find plenty of tales to tell and she listens well to Stella’s story of accidentally climbing into the wrong bed bunk on the train returning from vacation. The bunk is already occupied by a handsome man and the two narrowly avoid reputational damage.

 

Fredric March and Clara Bow

However, it turns out this man is Professor James 'Gil' Gilmore (Fredric March) the new anthropology teacher and queue rom-com friction between attracted opposites. Then there’s a genuinely unpleasant sequence in which the girls are harassed by a group of toughs who proceed to kidnap Stella with who knows what intention. The other girls alert Gil who runs off after the car cutting across the country roads to intervene and rescue the distressed dame. The relieved couple soon fall into each other’s arms but back in class it’s business as usual and Stella resumes her partying ways… the film isn’t quite ready to succumb to narrative convention just yet.

 

OK, the story is standard fare with some cringe moments relating to “savages” but what makes it stand out is the focus on the women – the men are almost incidental and surely this is one of the few films of this period that would pass the Bechdel test? It’s about love and loyalty and all the genuine feeling is between the women whether it’s Faith’s realisation of Stella’s goodness or the latter’s unselfish and steadfast love for her friend Helen.

 

It’s another grand showcase for Bow’s star power and she delivers, punching her way into the sound era with conviction. In the end it would be external factors that curtailed her career but she shone so brightly and her director did right by her here and in their silent film. Who knows what could have been had they carried on working together… Clara Bow was made for the Thirties, Pre-Code, Screwball… she had it all. Unlike some Clara clearly had no problem whatsoever with working for a female director and it showed!

 

Of time in this city… Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 42, Day Eight

 

Is an interest in silent film nostalgia for a time before we were born? Let’s ask Albert Camus shall we, who said that: A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. So, the fascination is more in understanding the working parts as much as the feeling and in the historical, creative circumstances for the filmmakers and film audience alike. 

 

Camus also said that the artist must contact the reality of his or her time, wresting from it something timeless and universal so what we are searching for is people who have done achieved this for their time and to look beyond the ludicrous concept of “dated” in assessing the content and the context.

 

Succeeding today was William de Mille who came up with some very pertinent questioning of his own in Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) in which Thomas Meighan’s Conrad has something of a mid-life crisis and tries to regress to childhood. So, not too far off Camus’ concepts but in a more homely way which is frankly more on my level and that of Thomas Meighan, pretty well-educated but in pharmacology not philosophy. Thomas plays the titular Conrad, who a few years after the First World War is living in comfort, supported by his faithful valet, Dobson (Charles Ogle) and wondering what it’s all for. Conrad is jaded and decides the best way to reconnect with his zest for life is to revisit his childhood by calling three old friends back to the cottage they used to spend summer in.

 

It's all too much for Conrad - he's watching a Pat and Patachon...

Ah, but you can’t just go back Conrad, as his pals quickly tell him but he’s not listening and decides to track down his first love, with future director and Mr Louise Brooks, A. Edward Sutherland playing him in flashback with Kathlyn Williams playing the older woman Mrs. Adaile, who gently rebuffed him. Conrad tracks her down to Italy and tries to rekindle their previous affection; can reliving young love work for either?

 

No spoilers, but Conrad is to discover that you can over-analyse and that sometimes you need to just stop thinking and simply engage with “Life” to find that chance of happiness. It’s a perfect little fable and Meighan is his usual self, intelligent, sensitive and always watchable.

 

Donald Sosin accompanied with the air of a man completely in touch with his creative consciousness (and moral compass).

 

Also connecting with the timeless and universal and in doing so creating it, was Daan van den Hurk whose emphatic new score for Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jnr (1924) made me enjoy this very familiar film anew. The music highlighted pretty much every section of the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone and it just grew in momentum and delicious tonality with the film. After an opening prologue including the earworm main theme, the music chased around with Buster in the quieter early stages only fully coming to life when his projectionist’s dreaming begins. From then on, it’s a symphony to silent style pretty much as Keaton intended but given extra emphasis and depth as the adventure of the Projectionist and all the films he has shown is laid before us.

 

Daan reveals Buster’s own symphonic approach as the film and the music crescendos with stirring strings and full-bodied brass – and tha’ knows, I love a bit o’ brass as Hindle Wakes’ Fanny Hawthorn might say. It was one of those uplifting orchestral moments Le Giornate does so well and congratulations must go to Daan, the full orchestra (70+ players?) as well as Ben Palmer who conducted so well. I was up in the Gods again but, by ‘eck the sound filled the space so well. A thrilling sonic adventure all round!

 

Most of us tired after a full week, the Verdi still erupted with the joy of recognition or holding this shared fascination close!! In the best showbusiness tradition, Le Giornate always leave ‘em/us wanting more!

Charlie and Monta Bell

 

Before Buster there was Charlie with a film I’ve not seen before, The Pilgrim (1923) which featured Chaplin’s 1958 score arranged by Timothy Brock and performed by the Orchestra da Camera di Pordenone as conducted by Ben Palmer.

 

It’s a film full of Chaplin’s movement and impish humour with heart as his escaped convict steals a pastor’s clothes as he bathes and then gets mistaken for the new vicar and has to follow through as the citizens are so friendly. This was Chaplin’s final film with long-term collaborator and paramour, Edna Purviance and once again her character provides the key to Chaplin’s redemption as a former cell-mate recognises him and wants in on “the action”. It’s an old argument but there’s enough comedic violence and pointed situations to make political points and some evangelicals were also upset by The Life of Charlie. Who knows what modern US politicians would have made of the closing sequence on the US/Mexican border… or what their fundamentalist Christian brethren would. Chaplin was another able to create something timeless and universal out of the realities of his time.

 

Marlene by the wall next to Harry Piel.

A Marlene Surprise!

 

I need to pay more attention as I had no idea that our Marlene was going to feature in Harry Piel’s Sein größter Bluff (The Big Bluff) (1927) nor that he was going to play himself and his brother as well as write, direct and produce. Nobody likes a show-off Harry apart from Marlene that is.

 

This was a lively adventure which featured car chases filmed in the South of France, double crosses and quadruple bluffs which make me extra thankful for being woken up by my esteemed colleague Ms Hutchinson of Worthing just as Giornate fatigue kicked in and I was able to re-join the film as it stepped up a gear in search of stolen diamonds with a hoard of gangsters chasing it as well as the twin Piels. Over the Festival we’ve seen Harry advance his work to such a level of polished populist filmmaking that this had so many elements of a sixties caper movie; he wasn’t Pabst or Murnau but as this 76^th film shows, he was a skilled crowd-pleaser, no matter whatever came after 1932…

 

Dietrich often played down her silent films not wishing to be deemed as too old school but by 1927 she was beginning to feature more and here she plays Yvette, “a ‘lady’ who puts her intellectual – and other – qualities exclusively into the service of worthwhile enterprises”, in this case acting to steal the jewels before her rivals can. She’s a perfect fit for a Lang-type super spy/secret agent and stands out in her scenes for poised screen energy. Having just watched A Touch of Evil I can see how she refined this persona of intelligence and bold sexuality. The perfect fit for Harry’s anti-hero and twin heroes with floppy fringes and fast cars: the name’s Piel, Harry Piel.

 

Accompaniment was from Masterclass student Timothy Rumsey who did a splendid job, I look forward to hearing more in future!

 

Madeleine Renaud and Maurice Touzé

I Married the Sea, Part Deux - Vent Debout [The Headwind] (1923)

 

After the French fishermen of Pêcheur d’Islande (screened on Tuesday) gave their life to the Atlantic Ocean, Jacques Averil (Léon Mathot) finds himself drawn to the sea to rebuild his life after his father ruins the family business and commits suicide. Viewed as a part-timer by the tough nuts on the fishing boat, he asserts his authority through violence emerging as top sea dog and winning grudging respect. This maritime Fight Club does move beyond the sea and there are many turbulent times on land as a potential fortune to be made from fossil fuels presents itself.

 

After being flung into an alcoholic depression after the accidental death of the ship’s cabin boy, Guillot (Maurice Touzé), Jacques meets Marie Richard (Madeleine Renaud) begins to find his legs on land again. So, my headline isn’t entirely appropriate, will he divorce the sea and marry a human? And, will he be able to avoid financial ruin from the land-based sharks aiming to drag him down?

 

Meg Morley accompanied with the smooth transitions we’ve come to expect and melodies for drama in all weathers and surfaces!

 

So, returning to the questions at the top; why exactly do I write this blog? Well it’s an attempt to capture the feeling of what has been screened and the experience of the location, audience and accompaniment for the screening. It’s a diary, one featuring well over 1000 screenings now and which evolves over time and circumstance. Like any diary it’s a discipline and I only keep on because I enjoy trying to that slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art…  I hope you do too and thank you so much to everyone who has read so far!

 

See you next year for #GCM43!

 

 

The Queen of Le Giornate Blogging is, of course, Pamela Hutchinson and if you haven’t already caught her daily reports on Silent London head over there right now!

The orchestra and crowds pack the Verdi for this year's finale.

Say it ain’t so, Joe… Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932)/In Spring (1929), Silent Film Days Bonn 2023

S. Pel’tik

This year’s festival announced its support for Ukraine and included a number of films made when the country was part of the USSR during the early days of Stalin’s reign. These two were made during his first five-year plan a time of increasing hardship with forced collectivisation and a continuation of the “Dekulakization” of the countryside – forcing the so-called “wealthier” farmers off their land. There were thousands of revolts against the process but all were suppressed and thousands died in the process as the Moscow government prioritised Ukrainian grain for export and not domestic consumption with a famine, the Holodomor, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands a day*…

So, it’s against this backdrop that we have to view any films made during this period, one that is just part of the ongoing struggle between Russia and the Ukraine.

Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932), with Meg Morley

Directed by Їvha Hryhorovych, the only Ukraine-based woman directing films during this period, others having gone to Moscow, this film is a remarkably accomplished study of women and children in a school trying to balance education with the Communist Party’s stipulations about extra-curricular activity.

A. Zajčenko

Hryhorovych graduated from the VUFKU Odesa Film School in 1928, and her independent filmmaking career began in 1929, at a time when the USSR government decided on priority production of agitprop and educational films in support of collectivisation and industrialisation. Every film made during this time was heavily reviewed and censored . Compulsory primary education was introduced in 1930 aimed at "educating a generation capable of ultimate establishment of communism" and the regional soviet government decided on setting up a children’s film section of the Ukrainfilm production company.

This was the backdrop for Hryhorovych’s Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932), for which she also wrote the script promoting the Soviet educational reform and the polytechnicization of school education. Despite of this tight brief, she manages to make an emotionally satisfying film that is full of rich characters whose main concern is each other. This is not a didactic film but one that examines how positive process can be made, fulfilling the criteria set but not ignoring the difficulty of the project and the joys of understanding, patience and collaboration.

We begin with two children taking advantage of a sunny day after school, Alyosha (A. Zajčenko), “a passionate fisherman…” and Katya (V. Javorskaja) who, as we shall learn, likes to stick her nose into other people’s business… A third, Vanya (S. Pel’tik) is in a nearby shed, inventing things, his nickname is “Edison” and it is fascinating in itself that the great patent collector’s fame had spread so far and persisted.

The friendly face of collectivisation: K. Dombrovskaja

At school, this inventor is struggling as the Headmistress Nina Petrovna (M. Sidorova) makes clear and outside of school, he is a member of the Pioneer Organization of Ukraine, an organisation for Soviet Ukrainian children aged 10 to 15. The leader (K. Dombrovskaja), who I think is Alyosha’s mother, can also see his dissatisfaction as they head out to help count the grain.

 

He's a lazybones, he neglects his studies and the extra work!

Vanya takes off and the Pioneers discuss it, Alyosha suggesting he needs help with his work whilst Katya is more forthright.  Vanya takes a jump into the river and causes concerned teacher Akim Avanovich (A. Charlamov) to make sure that he’s alright, the lad was just taking a break from the Pioneers but the two talk and the old man realises he needs some help.

Katya disapproves of what she sees as favouritism and when she is humiliated in class by teacher Akim – who proves she doesn’t know all of the answers – she bites back, accusing him of being “old fashioned” in an article penned in her exercise book: “this is not a pre-revolutionary school… nowadays you should teach the children something rather than expelling them from class…” Katya, of course, wasn’t even born before the revolution.

V. Javorskaja, showing Katya's nosiness

She falls out with everyone and spies on Vanya at Akim’s house but what she doesn’t know is that the boy is demonstrating an idea he has for mechanising farming, exactly what Stalin ordered. Akim’s offers to help but stresses that the youngster needs to learn the basics as well and support the Pioneers if he’s to be a man…

 

Even visionaries need to work hard and collectively. Vanya has left the Pioneers but he comes to realise the value of collaboration as do they all…

 

Meg Morley accompanied with lines that merged seamlessly with the dialectic whilst also recognising the collective’s dramatic tension and the passion of children upon whom the whole future was to rest. There was something deeper too as none of us can really watch a film of this situation without considering the outcomes…

 

In Spring (1929), with Misha Kalinin and Roksana Smirnova

In Spring (1929) was based in and around a Kyiv earlier in the period of forced collectivisation/industrialisation and was following a lighter propagandist remit to Hryhorovych. Filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman’s fast-paced spectacle shows the people as much as the landscape and the industry and their spirit says everything both historically and in terms of the daily lives. The work is as hard as it ever was and yet there’s joy amongst the enterprise and cycle-riding, sometimes backwards too.

 

Kaufman was Dziga Vertov’s brother and had been cameraman on Man with a Movie Camera; the two falling out over the final cut. Here he shows the same deft touches, the ability to make connections and convey dozens of micro-narratives within an over-arching “symphony” of the city and surrounds. The angles are acute, the cutting highly energised and the overall effect is remarkable focused on the one city. Man With a Movie Camera covered four cities, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv and Moscow, and there’s definitely more of a narrative coherence here, as the city wakes up from Winter slowly and with no little effort.

Writing in Sight and Sound, Pamela Hutchinson quoted a number of very positive contemporary reviews including this from Mykhailo Makotynskyi, the president of the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration, “If I were a poet, I would have written lyrics for this movie… I have watched hundreds of thousands of metres, but I’ve never felt anything similar to this impression.”

 

I’d previously seen the Ukrainian musicians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin accompanying this film at Hippfest earlier this year. Now, as then, they created a deceptively spaced soundscape interchanging leading lines between Roksana’s piano and Misha’s effects-laden guitar. The connection between the modern invention and the century old film not only served the traditional purpose of accompaniment but obviously re-contextualised the essential continuities of a society now under so much threat. A heartfelt, beautiful and moving act of connection and, as the Bonn Festival stated, we are all as one with Ukraine even lacking these musician’s personal connection.

 

* A 2015 study from the Ukrainian Institute of Demographic and Social Studies, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, estimated around 3.9 million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor of 1932-33.

 

The Hounds of Love… Hippfest 2023 Day Four

I’m no expert but I reckon the best pace to appreciate an ovation, apart from the stage of course, is up in the gods, with a view of the stalls erupting with cheers and applause whilst all around you in the wide sweep of the second tier join in even as you find yourself whooping. At the best festivals the applause accumulates through the day as the feeling moves in the face of fascinating presentations and high-quality programming and we saw it today, from the genius of Charlie Chase at the start through revelations of early women animators to stunning Ukrainian documentary and onto one of the canon, the iconic gothic neo-horror of The Man Who Laughs.

Neil Brand, John Sweeney, researcher Mindy Johnson, Ukrainian players Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin then finally Meg Morley and Frank Bockius built up a momentum of good will and, indeed, vibrations throughout this splendid Saturday that reached a crescendo at the end of Conrad Veldts’/Gwynplaine’s great escape – with the aid of his dog Homo of course; have there ever been so many heroic hounds on one screen? The Hippodrome is circular in construction, built when Picture Houses had yet to find a set design, and that’s perfect for the acoustic and emotional response that built high into the rafters as the evening closed, a swirling storm of appreciation under the concave roof.

The day had started with a classic one-two from Charley Chase with Dog Tired (1926) and the mighty Mighty Like a Moose (1927) a work of World-cultural significance. Charlie’s the white collar comic, as Neil Brand suggested, a Basil Fawlty figure who always trips himself up with his over elaboration and yet who wins us back with his charm and self-depreciation; he knows what a fool he’s been. Things also tend to work out for Charley, he gets the girl (Mildred June) thanks to the unlikeliest of coincidences in Dog Tired and even after trying to bath her intended groom, a rich but untrustworthy duke (Stuart Holmes) after confusing him with the dog, also called Duke.

Vivien Oakland and Charley Chase

In Mighty Like a Moose, Charley and his wife, Vivien Oakland, both get plastic surgery on the same day, he for his buck teeth and she for her nose. They bump into each other and, failing to recognise themselves, embark on an illicit flirtation which culminates with Charley having to pretend to have discovered his own interlope and battling himself for his wife’s honour in the bathroom. It’s meta and it’s hilarious.

I’m definitely in the doghouse for missing Rin-Tin-Tin in his debit feature, Where the North Begins (1923) but, to be honest, I prefer his later stuff… this did leave me refreshed for the revelations in Mindy Johnson’s talk about early women animators. This is ongoing research but it’s clear that women we as involved in this line of work as they were in the whole film industry in the teens and early twenties before male corporate oppression. The focus was on Bessie Mae Kelley who worked with and inspired the likes of Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Walter Lantz, not to mention some young fella named Walt Disney. As ever the prime movers in collaborative enterprises like film are hard to untangle but without doubt Bessie Mae deserves recognition and more will come as Mindy’s research continues.

Next up we went to Ukraine for a poignant documentary In Spring (1929) based in an around a Kyiv during the punishing first of Stalin’s five year plans, not that you would know it from a film with a no-doubt propagandist remit. That said, filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman’s face-paced spectacle shows the people as much as the landscape and the industry and their spirit says everything both historically and in terms of the daily lives. The work is as hard as it ever was and yet there’s joy amongst the enterprise and cycle-riding, sometimes backwards too.

 

Kaufman was Dziga Vertov and had been cameraman on Man with a Movie Camera; here he shows the same deft touches, the ability to make connections and convey dozens of micro-narratives within an over-arching “symphony” of the city and surrounds. The angles are acute, the cutting highly-energised and the overall effect is remarkable.

 

The same can be said of the accompaniment from Ukrainian musicians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin who created a deceptively space soundscape interchanging leading lines between Roksana piano and Misha’s effects-laden guitar. The connection between the modern invention and the century old film not only served the traditional purpose of accompaniment but obviously re-contextualised the essential continuities of a society now under so much threat. A wondrous humanistic statement and Alison Strauss in her introduction once again found just the right words to capture our support and sympathy; this festival has some heart.

Promotional poster for In Spring

 

After some tea and cake – Scotland you’re treating me – we took our seats for today’s big finish and the combination of Conrad Veidt’s teeth, Mary Philbin’s sweetness and Olga Baklanova’s erm, everything guaranteed the entertainment, not to mention Zimbo the Dog who plays Homo, the Dog!

 

An American film about seventeenth century England, based on a French novel, starring one extraordinary German and directed by another, The Man Who Laughs is a truly international picture. Made at the peak of silent film technique it represents a Hollywood high-point of expressionist unease from Paul Leni, the man who directed Waxworks and The Cat and the Canary. It says much for contemporary sensibilities that audiences were attracted to the dark disturb of this tale. Connie plays Gwynplaine a man scarred for life from childhood by a group of travellers led by Dr Hardquanonne (George Siegmann) who specialised in cosmetic disfigurement in order to create oddities suitable for circus performers. In this case the latter’s brother and successor James II (Samuel de Grasse ) has ordered the mutilation as revenge on the boy’s father who has displeased him. The father, Lord Clancharlie, is mercilessly squished in the Iron Lady and the boy’s face will forever be locked in an horrific grin… laughing at his father’s betrayal… or some-such evil.

 

On paper it sounds daft as all get out but the film’s style and substance begins to work its uncanny rhythm and hope emerges as the boy, cast adrift even from his tormentors, rescues a blind baby from the bitter cold and finds sanctuary with an itinerant circus performer called Ursus (Cesare Gravina) who lives in a caravan with his pet wolf Homo. Now that’s a modern family!

 

Connie and Mary

The years pass and naturally Gwynplaine’s clown-face has made him the most popular clown in town – people just can’t help but laugh when they see his hysterical smile but, in spite of the gadgetry and painful false teeth he wore, Veidt’s eyes give so much more away: pain but also something more, his love for blonde, beautiful and blind Dea (Mary Philbin) who loves him back. But she has never seen his disfigurement nor felt his smile… Gwynplaine cannot believe that she would still love him if she knew what he actually looked like.

 

Gwynplaine’s father may be long gone but he has an inheritance and a peerage he knows nothing about.  The current beneficiary is one Duchess Josiana (Olga Baklanova – so good in von Sternberg’s Docks of New York and on fire in this film) who leads a life of carefree debauchery and expressive bathing as a servant’s key-hole view of her bathroom reveals. The Queen’s evil aid, Barkilphedro (Brandon Hurst having A Ball!), has found out that Gwynplaine is the rightful owner of the Duchess’ land: for her to retain her title and property she will need to marry him. The Queen orders his capture and immediate ennoblement…

 

A baddy, yesterday

Things are complicated by the Duchess Josiana’s response on seeing Gwynplaine’s show, she cannot decide whether to laugh or lust… there’s something more deeply intriguing about Gwynplaine’s unrelenting grin and she is determined to explore the possibilities.

 

The intrigue ramps up as Queen Anne appoints the clown to the House of Lords – I know! – and responsibility of state and political machinations once again threaten the happiness of all citizens… perhaps only Homo can save the day??

 

Meg Morley and Frank Bockius absolutely raised the bloody roof on this one with two hours of playful accompaniment with so much swing and propulsive charm – I love to hear their jazz sensibilities in this kind of endeavour and there’s was not a hit or a note out of place. Magnificent and everyone else in the room agreed with me!!

 

Bravo Hippesfest!